Ted Bell - Tsar

Inside the general’s black case was an electronic device, one of only two in existence, which carried the codes to initiate detonation of every single Zeta bomb on the planet. The one he carried was to be used only as a backup to the primary, that one always in the possession of Korsakov himself. Kuragin knew the codes as well. They were permanently inscribed in the folds of his brain. He’d never even written them down.

“Good evening, Mr. President,” Kuragin said to Rostov, with a sharp nod of the head.

Rostov glared at him. “You’re part of this, aren’t you, Nikolai? You lying bastard. All these years, all I’ve done for you. You’ve pretended to be my friend and ally. And now you betray me for this perverted megalomaniac?”

“Watch your tongue,” Kuragin barked at him, and Rostov sank even deeper into the cushions. It was over now, he knew. All was lost. All.

Korsakov looked at Kuragin, a wry smile playing about his lips. “The president thinks we may have gone a bit over the line destroying the American city, Nikolai.”

“Really? Why does he think that?”

“He’s afraid of the American reaction. NATO. And the UN.”

“He’s afraid of shadows,” Nikolai said. “Always has been.”

“He needs courage, perhaps. Pour him another drink. From my carafe.”

Kuragin took Rostov’s glass from his hand and filled it from the silver carafe emblazoned with the Korsakov coat of arms. Handing him the glass, he said, “Drink.”

Rostov needed little encouragement at this point. He swallowed the contents in one gulp, then held out the crystal tumbler for a refill.

“Another?” Kuragin said, his eyes on Count Korsakov.

“Coals to Newcastle. Why not, Nikolai?”

His glass full once more, Rostov tilted it back, swallowed, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He glared at the two men who’d betrayed him.

“And tonight this fucking fox in the henhouse?” he managed to croak.

“Fox?” Korsakov asked the president. “Henhouse?”

“This Englishman you invite into your home! Who is he? Do you even know? He could well be a spy.”

“Oh, we know this fox quite well, do we not, Nikolai? We’ve had this particular fox in our sights for a very, very long time. Here. Have another drink, Volodya.”

President Rostov staggered to his feet, stood for a moment, then collapsed back into the deep leather cushions.

“You two want war with America, do you?” he said. “Ha! You know her submarines encircle us, like wolves underwater. With missiles aimed straight at our mothers’ hearts. You provoke whom you should appease, comrades. At least, until…until…”

He made a harsh choking sound and could not continue. His head fell back, and he stared at his two tormentors, glassy-eyed. The empty glass in his hand fell to the floor, smashing to bits on the stone.

“Are you all right?” Korsakov asked, looking at him carefully.

“Agh. A horrible headache. I feel…”

“Volodya. My dear old friend and comrade. I’m afraid it’s time you took your leave from this mortal coil,” Korsakov said, crossing his legs at the knee. “Your passing is premature, I’ll grant you. I was going to bid you farewell in the morning when the helicopter arrived to ferry you back to the Kremlin. But now-”

“Tomorrow?” the man croaked.

“Yes. A doomed flight. Tragic. A crash in the Urals. A state tragedy. A world tragedy. But my dear Volodya, such things happen. Life goes on.”

“Doomed?”

“You are dying, old friend. Poisoned. Not slowly and painfully like our erstwhile friend Litvinenko in London some years ago. This method shouldn’t take long. Perhaps, what do you think, Nikolai? Twenty minutes?”

“Cyanide prevents the body’s cells from using oxygen so death should arrive in short order.”

“Time enough, then, to show him the future?”

“The future belongs to us, sir. We have more than enough to share.” Kuragin smiled.

“Ivan?” the dying Rostov repeated, his eyelids fluttering. “Are you there?”

“Volodya, can you still hear me? You see the case General Kuragin carries? Do you wonder at it? Our very own nuclear football, as the Americans would have it. I call it the Beta machine, or simply the Black Box.”

“Yes, Ivan, I see it,” Rostov said weakly, peering at the case Kuragin carried.

“You’ve been drinking cyanide, Volodya. Call me old-fashioned, but sophisticated nuclear poisons like polonium I find unnecessarily messy. Unless one wants to send a message. There is no message here tonight, Volodya. Only the future burying the past.”

“The Americans, I tell you.” Rostov gasped. “Will annihilate us.”

“Let me assuage you in your final moments. Nikolai, open your case. Show it to our dying friend.”

“Yes, sir,” Nikolai Kuragin said. He detached the leather case from his wrist and placed it on the low table, where Rostov could see its contents. When he entered a code into the keypad, the case popped open, and then the lid rose automatically. Inside the lid was a vivid CRT screen displaying a real-time satellite map of the world in three dimensions. Pinpoints of light, hundreds of them, thousands, millions, flashed on every continent.

“These lights represent countless Zeta machines, each broadcasting its precise GPS location and a unique identification number,” Korsakov said. “As you can see, they are everywhere on earth. Numberless millions of them, in every city, town, village. And inside each of them is eight ounces of Hexagon, Volodya, a powerful bomb waiting for my detonation signal.”

“Bombs everywhere,” Rostov mumbled.

“Everywhere on the planet. Many are controlled by my agents in the field on a strictly limited, as-needed basis. But on a worldwide basis, the millions are controlled by this single unit. Here, let me zoom in on a city. Which one? Paris? Honolulu? Bombay? No. L.A.”

Korsakov manipulated the controls to bring the city of Los Angeles forward to full screen. It was a solid mass of tiny blinking lights.

“This number here in the corner of the screen represents the number of Zeta machines within the Los Angeles city limits. As you can see, there are exactly three-point-four million units in this one city alone. Should I choose to, now, I could detonate any one of them in an instant. Or, more dramatically, every one of them in the same instant.”

Nikolai Kuragin laughed. “We could, at this very moment, do exactly to L.A. what we did to Salina.”

“Or London, Honolulu, Buenos Aires, or Beijing,” Korsakov said, scrolling rapidly through those cities, their skyline images coming up on the screen.

“You’re insane,” Rostov whispered, and they would be the last words he would utter in this earthly realm.

“Do you want me to remove him?” Nikolai asked, staring blankly at the corpse.

“Later. But have him incinerated tonight. And his remains placed aboard the helicopter as soon as it arrives in the morning. Along with his luggage, where I have already packed a Zeta. They’ll find his ashes and tiny shards of bones in the mountains with the burned-out wreckage.”

“Yes, sire.”

“Sire. I like the sound of that. So, Rostov is finally no concern of ours. Good. Now, tell me about the mood at the Duma. I plan to go before them tomorrow evening, as you know.”

“I don’t anticipate any problems with your succession to president. In fact, I anticipate unanimous support. Rostov is now gone; it’s the obvious thing to do. You’re revered throughout the country. Most of the embittered Communists, members of the Other Russia, and other parties who would be opposed have already had their minds changed with offers of money, property, or positions in your new government. Those who refused, or balked, have already gone far away.”