Tom Clancy's op-centre_ mirror image - Tom Clancy [23]
"Tomorrow!" Kosigan said. "We are men of action!" He poured vodka in his and Shovich's cups. "Our friend Nikolai does not drink, so we'll allow him to toast us with tea." He raised his cup. "To our alliance."
As the men touched the rims of their cups together, Dogin felt a burning in his belly. This was a coup, a second Revolution. It was empire building, and people were going to die. But while he accepted that, he found it difficult to accept Shovich's casualness. The mobster had moved from the concept of kidnaping to killing as though there was no difference.
Dogin sipped his tea and reminded himself that this unholy marriage was necessary. Every leader made compromises to move forward. Peter the Great changed Russian art and industry with ideas he brought from Europe. German cooperation enabled Lenin to overthrow the Czar and withdraw from World War I. Stalin consolidated his power by murdering Trotsky as well as hundreds of thousands of others. Yeltsin forged alliances with the black marketeers to keep his economy from collapsing entirely.
Now he was collaborating with a gangster. At least Shovich was a Russian. Better that than going to the United States with hat in hand, begging for money and moral support as Gorbachev and now Zhanin had done.
As the others emptied their cups, Dogin avoided Shovich's eyes. He tried not to think of the means, only the ends. Instead, he envisioned a map on the wall of his office. A map of a grand new Soviet Union.
CHAPTER TEN
Sunday, 8:00 P.M., New York City
After receiving the bagel order from St. Petersburg, Herman Josef had put ten pounds of plastique in a shopping bag. He placed bagels on top of them. Then he walked three blocks to Everything Russian, a shop that sold books, videotapes, and other goods from the homeland. Sixty minutes later, he'd taken another ten pounds of explosives to Mickey's Pawn Shop of Brighton Beach.
During the day Herman had made fifteen deliveries, bringing a total of 150 pounds of explosives to different locations. He didn't know if he was being followed, but he assumed that he was. So at each stop he took payment for the deliveries, even bitching audibly on the way back if his tip wasn't big enough.
When Herman left each site, the explosives were carried by another messenger to the Nicholas Senior Citizens Home, where they were packed into a body bag, taken to the Cherkassov Funeral Home in the St. Marks section of New York City, and loaded into a coffin. The Chaikov family left the procuring of weapons and explosives to the Belnicks. Their expertise was in planning and executing operations.
The Queens-Midtown Tunnel stretches under the East River in New York, from 36th Street between Second and Third avenues. It connects Manhattan Island to the Long Island Expressway in the borough of Queens. The fifty-year-old tunnel is one of the principal arteries from the city, and at any given time its 6,000-foot length is filled with traffic.
At this time on a warm Sunday evening, the tunnel was not being used by commuters. The bright orange lights lit the way for families returning from a day in the city or travelers heading to JFK International or La Guardia Airport.
Tall, white-haired, white-bearded Eival Ekdol rolled down the window of the hearse. He breathed in the oil-thick air, air which reminded him of Moscow. He didn't think about who the people around him were or what they were doing. It didn't matter. Their deaths were the price of fighting for a new world order.
As he neared the tunnel exit, the Russian native pushed in the cigarette lighter. His left front tire blew, and he guided the swerving hearse to the wall. He ignored the curses of drivers who had to change lanes to avoid hitting him. Americans were always swearing, as though bad things had no right to happen and, moreover, were directed at each of them personally.
Ekdol put on his emergency lights, got out of the hearse, and walked to the tunnel exit. Upon emerging, he took a cellular phone from his