War with Russia

Komarov flicked the switch on the remote control and the screen went blank. The President sat silent, deep in thought. Here, Komarov could see, was a man who had thought he controlled events, but was now beginning to recognize that the dynamic he had started was not so easily controlled. Obviously, the propaganda war was not going as planned. The two NATO ships sunk in Riga and the US airmen slaughtered at Lielvārde had been written off as an unfortunate error—collateral damage. But the sinking of the Eckernförde had so enraged Germany that it looked as if it had jolted them out of their traditional pacifism. Not only were the Germans rediscovering their balls, they were now ready to implement the collective defense guarantee.

The unexpected consequence of these errors was that NATO had agreed Article 5, but that meant little on its own. Certainly, none of the Europeans, except for the British—still under the illusion that they were a serious international player, despite shedding power quicker than a whore dropping her knickers—had looked to be preparing for offensive action. But the President’s extraordinary humiliation at Ligatne had changed the whole dynamic and with it their plan.

Once Britain had signed up to Article 5, HMS Queen Elizabeth had become a legitimate target. However, there had been international TV crews and journalists on board and on nearby ships, some now dead. Footage had gone out to the world of the sudden and unexpected torpedo attack under a sunny blue sky; followed by the mass drownings recorded for posterity on film, with associated sounds. Westerners everywhere could imagine their sons and daughters aboard the stricken ship as it sank.

Now every NATO ship and every base everywhere in the world was on full alert against another Russian attack. Newspapers and TV shows were endlessly debating the legitimacy, or not, of the attack. People who had never even heard of NATO, let alone Article 5, were listening to rolling TV news and programs where experts discussed the importance of signing up for it. And all because the President had taken the Ligatne attack personally and ordered the sinking to get his own back on the British.

Cold, pragmatic self-interest would have left the ship afloat and tolerated the British playing their delusional war games with their undersized and underfunded armed forces. Before long the outrage of the West over the Baltics would have fizzled out and Russia would have been left free to deal with her rebellious Baltic peoples. Instead, a new British prime minister had taken over—a man, it seemed, very unlike his predecessor and with the stomach for battle. The House of Commons vote to implement Article 5 to fight for the Baltic states, which would almost certainly have been knife edge or rejected before the sinking, had passed with a massive majority.

Now even the most cynical foreign observers of the British scene were remarking at the return of the “Blitz” spirit of 1940. Even more unexpected had been the reaction of hitherto pacifist Germany, where the Bundestag and Constitutional Court had been almost bellicose in their support for Article 5. Meanwhile, it looked as if America under its new president, despite its much-heralded Asia–Pacific pivot, might be about to refocus on Europe and resume its infernal interference with European defense. This was despite the President’s clever move in repatriating the American bodies and prisoners taken at Lielvārde air base in Latvia with due ceremony, in an effort to make some sort of amends, and try and draw a line under the matter. In Moscow and St. Petersburg, word had it that the intelligentsia, hitherto uncritical supporters of the President, were whispering—very quietly—that all this had come about because the President had lost his temper and become a laughing stock.

And now, the President had just ordered General Gareyev to put Major Vronsky, his lead operative in Latvia and the man currently charged with hunting down the leaders of these Forest Brother terrorist cells, to finding a lowly British captain of infantry; a man so unimportant that he hardly even counted as a pawn in the deadly game of geopolitical chess they were now engaged in. That more than anything made Komarov wonder whether the whisperers might be right; that the President was losing his sense of perspective and with it his grip. He prayed he was wrong because, as the President’s enabler, it would be a very exposed place to be if the President insisted on making any more poor decisions.

At that point the President’s mistress entered the room. “Darling,” she purred as she ruffled the President’s sparse hair. “Have a glass of champagne. Our dinner is nearly ready…”