Page 22 of Dead Fall

It was bullshit when Hitler tried to justify his actions on behalf of “ethnic Germans” and it was bullshit now as Peshkov engaged in a similar lie.

Of particular importance was that Europe and its Western allies had learned their lesson eighty-plus years ago with Hitler. This time there was no feckless Neville Chamberlain happy to stand aside in exchange for a bogus promise of peace and an end to any further territorial ambition.

The West had made it crystal clear that it wasn’t going to give the Russian President an inch. Peshkov had woefully underestimated their response. But his decision to invade hadn’t been made in a vacuum. He’d had good reason to think he might not meet serious resistance.

Less than ten years earlier, the Russian President had successfully rolled his battalion tactical groups into eastern Ukraine and sliced off a nice chunk of the country. The rest of the world had done nothing. Worse still, the United States—a key signatory to the Budapest Memorandum, an agreement promising to protect the territorial integrity of Ukraine in the aftermath of the implosion of the USSR in exchange for Ukraine giving up its nuclear weapon stockpiles—did little more than shrug.

Next to some light sanctions and a few strongly worded letters, the only serious thing that happened to the Russians in the wake of their first invasion was that they got kicked out of the G8, which then became the G7.

As far as Peshkov was concerned, it had all been worth it. He had taken another step toward his ultimate goal of reconstituting Imperial Russia. As the old saying went, “There can be no Russian Empire without Ukraine.” He was on his way.

But when he went to take his next step, his lightning-fast invasion was stopped dead in its tracks. The undertrained, underequipped Ukrainians put up a fierce defense. What should have only taken the Russians a matter of days, weeks tops, had turned into a meat-grinding stalemate. No matter how much the Russians threw at Ukraine, the Ukrainians fought back twice as hard. They simply refused to be defeated. Their obstinance enraged Peshkov.

The Russian President doubled down and pulled out all the stops. Absolutely nothing was off the table. It didn’t matter if he smashed every building and killed every last Ukrainian civilian in the process. Russia was a global power. He would not be embarrassed by a bunch of peasant farmers from a country known as the breadbasket of Europe. Not onlywouldRussia conquer them, but these peopledeservedto be conquered. Better yet, they deserved to becrushedand to have their culture wiped from the face of the earth and forgotten by history.

The biggest problem for Peshkov was that the crushing and wiping from the face of the earth wasn’t happening fast enough. That was why Leonid Grechko and Oleg Beglov were meeting.

Pulling out his cell phone to check for any updates, the intelligence operative looked toward the door and saw the presidential advisor enter.It was about time.

“Sorry I’m late,” said Beglov as he approached the bar and signaled for the barman.

He was a good fifteen years younger than Grechko, in his mid to late forties. Easily the youngest of Peshkov’s confidants. He was tall and trim, with a head of thick, somewhat damp hair. His mustache and detached, pointy beard, as well as his narrow, brown eyes, were reminiscent of Lenin’s.

Moscow gossip had him pegged as Peshkov’s protégé, the man who would one day replace him and lead all of Russia.

Grechko wasn’t sure how much of that to believe. As the saying went, those who know don’t talk, and those who talk don’t know. Russians loved to speculate. It was practically a national pastime. That was especially true inside the intelligence services.

After ordering a gin and tonic, Beglov tilted his head toward an empty table in the corner. “Shall we take a seat over there?”

Grechko scooped up his change from the bar and walked over while the advisor waited for his drink. There were only two chairs and the intelligence operative took the one that gave him the best view of the room.

A few moments later, Beglov, cocktail in hand, joined him. He threw his overcoat over the back of the other chair and set his briefcase on the floor by his feet. “To your health,” he offered, raising his glass.

“Vashe zdarovye,” Grechko repeated, lifting his in return.

There was a rowdy chant from the other side of the room as a group of students recited a drinking poem and downed a round of shots. The intelligence operative rolled his eyes. Not overdramatically, but enough for his colleague to notice.

“Not your type of place?” Beglov asked.

Grechko smiled. “I’m just sorry there isn’t any karaoke tonight.”

“That’s only on Wednesdays,” the advisor said, smiling back.

“So, you’re a regular?”

“I’m in the neighborhood from time to time,” he responded, adjusting his wedding band. “I have a friend who lives nearby.”

The intelligence officer knew a thing or two about his counterpart. One of them was that in addition to a wife and two grown children, Beglov had a mistress—a younger and very attractive associate curator at the State Tretyakov Gallery, the leading collection of Russian fine art in the world. Grechko assumed that this was the “friend” who lived nearby and also the reason why Beglov had arrived late with wet hair.

Enough of Grechko’s time had already been wasted and so he pivoted to work. “I have news from Turtle Bay.”

Turtle Bay was the New York City neighborhood where the United Nations was located.

Beglov leaned in.

“The contraband seized in the Gulf of Oman is going to Kyiv.”

American warships from the Fifth Fleet, along with vessels of the British and French navies, had interdicted multiple fishing trawlers attempting to smuggle Iranian weapons to Tehran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen. Thousands of Russian-style battle rifles, machine guns, antitank missiles, surface-to-air missiles, engines for land-attack cruise missiles, and over a million rounds of ammunition had been seized.

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