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“I don’t think so,” countered the GRU man, who had more experience of the West than any of them, having studied it for years. “American politicians are deeply subject to public opinion, and for most Americans today anything that happens to the Iranians can’t be bad enough. That’s how the broad masses of Americans see it.”
All four men knew the recent history of Iran well enough. After the death of the Ayatollah Khomeini and an interregnum of bitter political infighting in Teheran, the succession had passed to the bloodstained Islamic judge Khalkhali, last seen gloating over American bodies recovered from the desert after the abortive attempt to rescue the hostages of the U.S. embassy.
Khalkhali had sought to protect his fragile ascendancy by instigating another reign of terror inside Iran, using the dreaded Patrols of Blood, the Gasht-e-Sarallah. Finally, as the most violent of these Revolutionary Guards threatened to go out of his control, he exported them abroad to conduct a series of terrorist atrocities against American citizens and assets across the Middle East and Europe, a campaign that had occupied most of the previous six months.
By the time the five Soviet soldiers were meeting to consider the invasion and occupation of Iran, Khalkhali was hated by the population of Iran, who had finally had enough of Holy Terror, and by the West.
“I think,” resumed the GRU man, “that if we hanged Khalkhali, the American public would donate the rope. Washington might be outraged if we went in, but the congressmen and senators would hear the word from back home and advise the Presiden
t to back off. And don’t forget we’re supposed to be buddy-buddies with the Yankees these days.”
There was a rumble of amusement from around the table, in which Kozlov joined.
“Then where’s the opposition going to come from?” he asked.
“I believe,” said the general of the GRU, “that it wouldn’t come from Washington, if we presented America with a fait accompli. But I think it will come from Novaya Ploshchad; the man from Stavropol will turn it down flat.”
Novaya Ploshchad, or New Square, is the Moscow home of the Central Committee building, and the mention of Stavropol was a not-too-flattering reference to the General Secretary, Mikhail Gorbachev, who came from there.
The five soldiers nodded gloomily. The GRU man pressed his point.
“We all know that ever since that damned Cormack became the great Russian pop star at Vnukovo twelve months ago, teams from both Defense Ministries have been working out details for a big arms cutback treaty. Gorbachev flies to America in two weeks to try and clinch it, so he can liberate enough resources to develop our domestic oil industry. So long as he believes he can get our oil by that route, why should he shaft his beloved treaty with Cormack by giving us the green light to invade Iran?”
“And if he gets his treaty, will the Central Committee ratify it?” asked the general from Baku.
“He owns the Central Committee now,” said Kozlov. “These last two years, almost all the opposition has been pruned away.”
It was on that pessimistic but resigned note that the conference ended. The copies of Plan Suvorov were collected and locked in the marshal’s safe, and the generals returned to their postings, prepared to stay silent, to watch and to wait.
Two weeks later Cyrus Miller also found himself in conference, although with a single man, a friend and colleague of many years. He and Melville Scanlon went back to the Korean War, when the young Scanlon was a feisty entrepreneur out of Galveston with his meager assets sunk in a few small tankers.
Miller had had a contract to supply and deliver his new jet fuel to the U.S. Air Force, delivery to be effected to the dockside in Japan where the Navy tankers would take it over and run it to beleaguered South Korea. He gave Scanlon the contract and the man had done wonders, running his rust-buckets around through the Panama Canal, picking up the AVTUR in California, and shipping it across the Pacific. By using the same ships to bring in crude and feedstock from Texas before changing cargoes and heading for Japan, Scanlon had kept his ships in freight all the way and Miller had got ample feedstock to convert into AVTUR. Three tanker crews had gone down in the Pacific but no questions were asked, and both men had made a great deal of money before Miller was eventually obliged to license his know-how to the majors.
Scanlon had gone on to become a bulk petroleum commodity broker and shipper, buying and transporting consignments of crude all over the world, mainly out of the Persian Gulf to America. After 1981, Scanlon had taken a pasting when the Saudis insisted that all their cargoes out of the Gulf should be carried in Arab-flag ships, a policy they were really able to enforce only in the movement of participation crude—i.e., that bit which belonged to the producing country rather than the producing oil company.
But it had been precisely the participation crude that Scanlon had been carrying across to America for the Saudis, and he had been squeezed out, forced to sell or lease his tankers to the Saudis and Kuwaitis at unattractive prices. He had survived, but he had no love for Saudi Arabia. Still, he had some tankers left which plied the route from the Gulf to the United States, mainly carrying Aramco crude, which managed to escape the Arab-flag-only demand.
Miller was standing at his favorite window staring down at the sprawl of Houston beneath him. It gave him a godlike feeling to be so high above the rest of humanity. On the other side of the room Scanlon leaned back in his leather club chair and tapped the Dixon oil report, which he had just finished. Like Miller, he knew that Gulf crude had just hit $20 a barrel.
“I agree with you, old friend. There is no way the U.S. of A. should ever become dependent for its very life on these bastards. What the hell does Washington think it’s up to? They blind up there?”
“There’ll be no help from Washington, Mel,” said Miller calmly. “You want to change things in this life, you better do it yourself. We’ve all learned that the hard way.”
Mel Scanlon produced a handkerchief and mopped his brow. Despite the air conditioning in the office, he always had a tendency to sweat. Unlike Miller he favored the traditional Texan rig—Stetson hat, bolo tie, Navajo tie clasp and belt buckle, and high-heeled boots. The pity was he hardly had the figure of a cattleman, being short and portly; but behind his good-ole-boy image he concealed an astute brain.
“Don’t see how you can change the location of these vast reserves,” he huffed. “The Hasa oil fields are in Saudi Arabia, and that’s a fact.”
“No, not their geographic location. But the political control of them,” said Miller, “and therefore the ability to dictate the price of Saudi and thus world oil.”
“Political control? You mean to another bunch of Ay-rabs?”
“No, to us,” said Miller. “To the United States of America. If we’re to survive, we have to control the price of world oil, pegging it at a price we can afford, and that means controlling the government in Riyadh. This nightmare of being at the beck and call of a bunch of goatherds has gone on long enough. It’s got to be changed and Washington won’t do it. But this might.”
He picked up a sheaf of papers from his desk, neatly bound between stiff paper covers that bore no label. Scanlon’s face puckered.
“Not another report, Cy,” he protested.
“Read it,” urged Miller. “Improve your mind.”
