Derek Lambert - The Red Dove

He raised his glass, drank the vodka in one gulp and quenched its flames with Narzan. ‘So,’ he said, ‘we are at the beginning of a new year, a fateful one I suspect. We have managed to achieve a measure of arms control on earth but, as Grigori is fond of pointing out, the battleground has shifted to the heavens.’

He replenished their glasses. ‘I am sorry, gentlemen, to strike this sombre note at a time of celebration but we have to agree how we are going to continue this campaign. None of us knows how much time we have left…’

When Tarkovsky began to speak the President held up a hand to silence him.

He hadn’t, he said, been entirely truthful with either of them. Tarkovsky had come up with proposals to maintain Soviet dominance, but then so had Vlasov; and neither had been told about the other’s schemes.

‘It’s quite probable that you, Grigori, still know nothing about Nicolay’s machinations. But I’ll wager that you, Nicolay, have discovered everything there is to know about Tarkovsky’s…’

The statement posed the question and, with a flicker of a smile, Vlasov admitted: ‘I know all about what he intends to do with the Dove shuttles. Finding out about such things is my business.’

Before Tarkovsky could round on Vlasov the President said: ‘Which seems to indicate, Grigori, that you haven’t been entirely truthful with me. Nicolay certainly didn’t get the information from you – or from me for that matter – so he must have obtained it from… Would accomplices be too strong a word?’

Tarkovksy said: ‘Only a few trusted comrades…’

Briskly, the President said: ‘It’s immaterial now. The point is, time is running out and I have decided that very shortly either one plan or the other will have to be adopted. But it’s only fair that you, Grigori, should know what Nicolay has been doing.’ Turning to Vlasov, he said: ‘Tell him.’

Shrugging, Vlasov recounted progress in the computer operation.

‘So,’ the President said to Tarkovsky, ‘what do you think about these tactics?’

‘I don’t consider that such hare-brained intrigues come into the category of tactics. I should have thought the chairman of the most comprehensive secret police force in the world would have been a little less naϊve.’

By accusing Vlasov of naϊvety Tarkovsky was implicating the President. Vlasov decided to let him have his head.

Beneath his thick eyebrows the President’s dark eyes appraised the Minister of Defence. ‘Vlasov’s tactics seem to have worked so far.’

‘So far, perhaps. But has it occurred to either of you that he’s being double-crossed?’

Vlasov said patiently: ‘It was the first thing that occurred to me. Which is the reason why I have insisted on a series of dummy runs. But, in any case, can you give me one good reason why the United States would go to all this trouble?’

The President, one hand inside his jacket in the Napoleonic posture he had adopted since the implant of the pacemaker, said: ‘If Nicolay can’t think of a reason then I’m sure neither of us can.’

‘Perhaps,’ Tarkovsky said gruffly, ‘all will become apparent all too soon.’

The President drank some Narzan. ‘Perhaps. Meanwhile I have to decide which option to recommend to the Politburo. You, Grigori, hope to achieve Soviet supremacy in space through aggression. No disrespect – you are first and foremost a soldier. You, Nicolay, hope to achieve it through cunning. No disrespect – you are first and foremost a conspirator. And it shouldn’t come as a surprise to either of you that I prefer Nicolay’s strategy. Total victory without a shot, missile or beam weapon being fired.’

‘Or total defeat,’ Tarkovsky commented. ‘Isn’t it about time that this man Massey, this renegade American,’ his tone expressing his contempt for deserters, ‘penetrated the United States defence system a little deeper?’

With a nonchalance that he didn’t entirely feel, Vlasov said: ‘Tomorrow, Grigori.’

‘And what are you going to abort this time, a German V2?’

‘No,’ Vlasov replied silkily, ‘I’m going to destroy an American spy satellite.’

The President prodded a thick forefinger at the two of them. ‘Don’t interrupt. I was about to say that what Grigori proposes could be the beginning of the end of the world. But if the Massey connection fails then we have no alternative. We are at the beginning of a new year which will see either one super-power or the other emerge, through space, as the undisputed rulers of civilisation. I don’t have to tell you that the super-power in question has to be the Soviet Union. And to make sure that it is we have to act quickly.’ He turned and stared into the fire.

Looking past him Vlasov saw caverns of fire, towns ablaze. The logs shifted, igniting fresh flames.

The President turned again. Pointing at Vlasov, he said: ‘You, Nicolay, must prove by the second week of January that you have penetrated the United States military programme in space to the extent that it can be paralysed. If not—’

‘We implement Tarkovsky’s plan?’

‘We assemble it,’ the President said. ‘Not launch it. It would only be implemented if we discovered that the United States was about to take a decisive military initiative.’

‘You mean attack?’

Tarkovsky said with elaborate patience: ‘It would be up to my advisers to decide what constitutes military initiative.’

‘But they would be guided by you,’ Vlasov said.

Guided, by an old man seeking glory before death, to a holocaust.

The President tossed back the last of his vodka and put down his glass with finality. To Vlasov he said: ‘It’s up to you, Nicolay, to pre-empt such action,’ and to Tarkovsky: ‘If he fails then the heavens are yours.’

As they walked towards the door Tarkovsky said to Vlasov: ‘Are you quite sure you fully understand what I’ve proposed to the President?’

‘Quite sure,’ Vlasov replied. ‘With the fleet of Dove shuttles you intend to build a series of platforms in space equipped with the latest beam weapons that can destroy every western satellite in orbit.’

‘That’s not—’

‘Furthermore, you intend to use the Doves themselves to launch nuclear attacks on the United States, a course of action that would almost certainly lead to total nuclear war and the destruction of the world as we know it today. Happy New Year, Grigori.’

At what stage in adventurism did you judge a military leader to be crazy?

Was Napoleon crazy when he decided to invade Russia?

Was Hitler crazy when he decided to do the same?

Was Grigori Tarkovsky crazy when he considered arming Dove shuttles with orthodox hydrogen bombs to destroy the United States’ military space centres?

Vlasov sank deep into the leather cushions of the Zil taking him home with his wife to Kutuzovsky Prospect. And stared without seeing at the moonlit countryside merging with the suburbs of Moscow. Instead he saw the latest medical report on Tarkovsky supplied by the Kremlin Clinic. (The medical histories of all Kremlin VIPs eventually reached Vlasov.) According to the report the combination of circulatory weakness and pressure from the steel plate in his cranium were combining to produce symptoms of schizophrenia.

Which didn’t necessarily mean he was crazy. Many august leaders thoughout history had been schizophrenic, meaning that they suffered occasional disconnections between thoughts, feelings and actions. On the other hand schizophrenia wasn’t a certificate of total sanity.

Two factors decided Vlasov against taking steps to have Tarkovsky removed from office: the old men would rally round him (who wasn’t having circulatory difficulties?); his scheme, although it was cataclysmically dangerous, was so bold that it just might work.