The Sum of All Fears.pdf - Delta Force

have.
'And with my side, it is true,' Kadishev admitted casually. 'Andrey Il'ych, do
you say that we must agree with you on everything?'
Narmonov turned, his eyes momentarily angry and wide. 'Please, not that, not
today.'
'How may we help you?' Losing control of your emotions, Comrade President? A bad
sign, my friend . . .
'I need your support on the ethnic issue. We cannot have the entire Union break
apart.'
Kadishev shook his head forcefully. 'That is inevitable. Letting the Balts and
the Azeris go eliminates many problems.'
'We need the Azerbaijani oil. If we let that go, our economic situation worsens.
If we let the Balts go, the momentum will strip away half of our country.'
'Half our population, true, but scarcely twenty percent of our land. And most of
our problems,' Kadishev said again.
'And what of the people who leave? We throw them into chaos and civil war. How
many will die, how many deaths on our conscience, eh?' the President demanded.
'Which is a normal consequence of decolonization. We cannot prevent it. By
attempting to, we merely keep the civil war within our own borders. That forces
us to place too much power into the hands of the security forces, and that is
too dangerous. I don't trust the Army any more than you do.'
'The Army will not launch a coup. There are no Bonapartists in the Red Army.'
'You have greater confidence in their fealty than I do. I think they see a
unique historical opportunity. The Party has held the military down since the
Tukhachevskiy business. Soldiers have long memories, and they may be thinking
that this is their chance . . .'
'Those people are all dead! And their children with them,' Narmonov countered
angrily. It had been over fifty years, after all. Those few with direct memory
of the purges were in wheelchairs or living on pensions.
'But not their grandchildren, and there is institutional memory to consider as
well.' Kadishev leaned back and considered a new thought that had sprung almost
fully formed into his head. Might that be possible . . . ?
'They have concerns, yes, and those concerns are little different from my own.
We differ on how to deal with the problem, not on the issue of control. While I
am not sure of their judgment, I am sure of their loyalty.'
'Perhaps you are correct, but I am not so sanguine.'
'With your help, we can present a united front to the forces of early
dissolution. That will discourage them. That will allow us to get through a few
years of normalization, and then we can consider an orderly departure for the
republics with a genuine commonwealth – association, whatever you wish to call
it – to keep us associated economically while being separate politically.'
The man is desperate, Kadishev saw. He really is collapsing under the strain.
The man who moves about the political arena like a Central Army hockey forward
is showing signs of fatigue . . . will he survive without my help . . . ?
Probably, Kadishev judged. Probably. That was too bad, the younger man thought.
Kadishev was the de facto leader of the forces on the 'left,' the forces that
wanted to break up the entire country and the government that went with it,