RED STORM RISING [ RACKETEER INFLUENCED AND CORRUPT ORGANIZATIONS US Title 18 ]
Tom Clancy
PRINTING HISTORY
G.P. Putnam's Sons hardcover edition / August 1986
Berkley mass-market edition / August 1987
Page 20
"Comrade, your experience in foreign and defense areas is slim, no?" the Defense Minister asked.
"I have never pretended otherwise, Comrade Minister." Sergetov answered warily.
"Then I will tell you why this situation is unacceptable. If we do what you suggest, the West will learn of our crisis. Increased purchases of oil production equipment and unconcealable signs of activity at Nizhnevartovsk will demonstrate to them all too clearly what is happening here. That will make us vulnerable in their eyes. Such vulnerability will be exploited. And, at the same time" - he pounded his fist on the heavy oak table - "you propose reducing the fuel available to the forces who defend us against the West!"
"Comrade Defense Minister, I am an engineer, not a soldier. You asked me for a technical evaluation, and I gave it." Sergetov kept his voice reasonable. "This situation is very serious, but it does not, for example, affect the Strategic Rocket Forces. Cannot they alone shield us against the Imperialists during our recovery period?" Why else had they been built? Sergetov asked himself. All that money sunk into unproductive holes. Wasn't it enough to be able to kill the West ten times over? Why twenty times? And now this wasn't enough?
"And has it not occurred to you that the West will not allow us to purchase what we need?" the Party theoretician asked.
"When have the capitalists refused to sell us -"
"When have the capitalists had such a weapon to use against us?" the General Secretary observed. "For the first time, the West has the ability to strangle us in a single year. What if now they also prevent our purchase of grain?"
Sergetov hadn't considered that. With yet another disappointing grain harvest, the seventh out of the last eleven years, the Soviet Union needed to make massive purchases of wheat. And this year America and Canada were the only reliable sources. Bad weather in the Southern Hemisphere had damaged Argentina's harvest, and to a lesser extent Australia's, while the U.S. and Canada had enjoyed their customary record crops. Negotiations were even now under way in Washington and Ottawa to secure such a purchase, and the Americans were making no trouble at all, except that the high value of the dollar made their grain disproportionately expensive. But that grain would take months to ship. How easy would it be, Sergetov wondered, for "technical difficulties" in the grain ports of New Orleans and Baltimore to slow or even stop shipments entirely at a crucial moment?
He looked around the table. Twenty-two men, of whom only thirteen really decided matters - and one of those was missing - were silently contemplating the prospect of over two hundred fifty million Soviet workers and peasants, all hungry and in the dark, at the same time that the troops of the Red Army, the Ministry of the Interior, and the KGB found their own fuel supplies - and because of it, their training and mobility - restricted.
The men of the Politburo were among the most powerful in the world, far more so than any of their Western counterparts. They answered to no one, not the Central Committee of the Communist Party, not the Supreme Soviet, certainly not the people of their nation.
