Brian Haig - The Kingmaker

“What kinds of things is this group doing?”

“You wouldn’t believe it.”

“Try me.”

“Where do I begin?”

“I don’t know. But it’s late, so begin.”

She went to the minibar and got herself a bottle of red wine. It was a Russian vintage and probably tasted like rotten vinegar. I sipped from my scotch and hoped it gave her a splitting headache.

She sat back down on the bed, took a sip, and said, “Let’s start with Georgia. How much do you know about it?”

“Let’s see. Small country, south of Russia, Stalin came from there, so they don’t have a lot to brag about. How’s that?”

“I didn’t realize you were such a man of the world.”

“I once watched a three-hour PBS special on political issues in Eritrea. It completely cured me of my compulsive curiosity toward countries I don’t really give a crap about.”

“I see.” She took another sip and no doubt considered the fact that I was a moron. I actually knew more about Georgia than I admitted, like I know the people there speak a language called Georgian, but I don’t believe in showing off.

She said, “You’ll recall that this was where Morrison and Alexi first met, back in 1990 or 1991?” I nodded as she added, “Alexi confessed that, yes, their first meeting was a setup.”

“Why?”

“Because when the KGB and border troops were sent in by Gorbachev to control the riots, they were under strict instructions not to respond violently. If the Georgians turned violent, they were supposed to withdraw. Gorbachev didn’t want them to create an explosive situation. Instead they committed two massacres that incited the rest of the Georgian people and caused the situation to fly out of hand.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Alexi and Viktor suspected that somebody manipulated the situation. Somebody persuaded the KGB to ignore Gorbachev’s order, to create the massacres, and undermine Gorbachev’s position. Alexi wanted to find out what the CIA knew about it.”

“We’re still stuck back in 1991.”

“Don’t get impatient. After the Soviet split-up, the Georgian people turned to Eduard Shevardnadze and asked him to return and lead the country. Are you familiar with him?”

Indeed I was. Shevardnadze had been Gorbachev’s foreign minister during the eighties, had orchestrated the peaceful end of the cold war, and was a huge international hero as a result.

I nodded and she continued, “The Georgians thought that if Shevardnadze took over, he had the international stature to reduce Georgia’s dependence on Russia and open ties with the West. He knew all the world’s leaders and had that fantastic reputation. So he came back, and one of his first steps was to start wooing Western companies to build pipelines across Georgia to carry trans-Caucasus oil and natural gas to the Black Sea. Russia didn’t like that plan. For obvious reasons it wanted the pipelines to go through Russia.”

I yawned. I mean, this was a very interesting history lesson, but it was late at night and Georgia sat right beside Eritrea on my give-a-crap meter.

She somehow detected my growing disinterest and picked up the pace a bit. “The point is that before Shevardnadze could even get his balance, a civil war erupted in Georgia. The Abkhasians who live in the northwest corner of the country somehow got their hands on a large arsenal of tanks and artillery. There was a very short, very brutal war, but because of all these tanks and artillery, it was completely lopsided. By 1995, the Abkhasians had defeated the Georgian army and driven tens of thousands of Georgians out of the Abkhazia.”

“The Abkhasians you say?” She nodded, and I said, “Well, I don’t recall it.”

“Stop being a jerk. When that happened, the Russians offered to broker a cease-fire, Georgia had no choice but to agree, and Russian troops have been stationed inside Georgia ever since. The effect was to castrate both Shevardnadze and his plans for the pipeline. After all, who’s going to build a multibillion dollar artery through such an unstable country?”

“Okay, got that.”

“What piqued Alexi’s curiosity were the T-72 tanks and BMP fighting vehicles and heavy artillery. Alexi said it was top-of-the-line equipment that just mysteriously appeared.”

“Couldn’t they have bought it? Russia was a mess back then, its troops weren’t being paid or housed, and they were selling anything to feed themselves.”

“I asked him the same thing.”

“And?”

“He said rifles and grenades were for sale on every street corner. But the heavy equipment, tanks and artillery, were strictly controlled and well secured.”

“And there’s a point to this, I presume.”

“Yes, and you should pay better attention because this is where it gets very interesting.”

“I’m paying so much attention my brain’s about to freeze.”

“Wiseass. The point is that Alexi was tasked by Viktor to find out where this equipment was coming from. It was Russian equipment. It had to be manufactured here. He sent out teams to the battlefield to collect serial numbers from destroyed tanks and artillery. They brought back the serial numbers, ran them through the Ministry of Defense’s databases, and none of those serial numbers existed.”

“That is strange.”

“It gets stranger.” Next came a very long tale about the same kinds of shenanigans in the war between Armenia and Azerbaijan. I didn’t understand what the war was about, or what stake Russia had in the fight, except that somebody mysterious also gave lots of tanks and artillery to the Azerbaijanis, who used them to win. This was followed by an even longer description about how Yeltsin never wanted to fight the Chechens when they declared independence from Russia until this same cabal organized and supplied an uprising of Russians citizens inside Chechnya that failed miserably and shamed Yeltsin into sending in the Russian army. Indeed, Katrina was in the process of explaining how this cabal also scuttled each of the Chechen War cease-fires, most recently by blowing off bombs in Moscow apartment buildings and blaming it on Chechen terrorists, when I’d finally had enough.

I interrupted her spiel, saying, “Do you believe in this cabal?”

“Yes… I think.” With some exasperation, she said, “Don’t you understand what I’m telling you?”

“Sure. Russia has been meddling in the affairs of the countries it used to own and doesn’t really want to let go of.”

“That’s how it’s been made to appear, but that’s not what it is. Alexi said the Russian government’s policy was hands off. It was drawn into those situations but didn’t cause them.”

“Katrina, do I need to remind you that these guys in frumpy suits with bushy eyebrows have more experience concocting foreign revolutions and wars than anybody? It’s what they do. Don’t be naive.”

“I’m not. And please recall that my parents fled from this region. I know something about it, and I don’t look at it through rose-colored lenses.”

“Point in your favor.”

“Thank you.”

“Are we done?”

“No, there’s more. A lot more. The same kinds of mysterious things have been happening in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Belarus, just about all the former Soviet republics. This secretive cabal has been treating them all like banana republics, engineering coups, murders, even wars. These were the things Alexi was reporting to Bill and Mary.”

“I see. Do you mind if I get another drink?”

“Get me one, too.”

As I was reaching into the minibar, I said, “What did you have for dinner?”

“What?”

“For dinner, what did you have?”

“I had venison.”

“And Alexi?”

“A bowl of borscht.”