Last Call for Blackford Oakes by William F.; Buckley Read Free Book Online

an important undischarged obligation: to name Dmitriev as his successor. And what happened, of course, in the absence of any testamentary word from Chernenko, was a political dogfight, in which one Mikhail Gorbachev prevailed.
    General Baranov had had an agenda. He had communicated parts of it to Premier Chernenko, especially his conviction that the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan should be called off. It was costing too much, in lives, money, and international favor.
    There were the hot young military men—there are such in almost every situation—who wished to pursue the military objective with, Baranov argued, the kind of undiscriminating tenacity Hitler had shown even when his fascist war was clearly doomed. There was no prospect that the Afghan adventure would actually doom the Soviet Union, but the high cost of it threatened other state enterprises, including a badly needed reform of the administrative structure. Nikolai Dmitriev, discreetly committed to the same reforms, was sidelined under the new Gorbachev regime.
    â€œThose who lose out in high-powered competition in politics,” General Baranov said to Oleg Pavlov, his son-in-law and closest aide, “are almost always destined to be sidelined in life. There is a large apartment house at Sukharevsky 298 with small apartments in it. One of them was occupied during the last years of his life by Nikita Khrushchev, another was occupied by Vyacheslav Molotov. I do not want to end my days there.”
    The general struggled to bring the whole scene into focus. The government was weak, after two years under Mikhail Gorbachev. The Afghan war had stalled, but Gorbachev still resisted bringing it to a close. The general staff—and who should know this better than Leonid Baranov, the senior general in active service?—was demoralized.
    It was late in the evening, after many drinks shared with Pavlov, who had the rank of captain. General Baranov talked about how different the prospects would be for a healthy Soviet Union if Dmitriev had been selected as general secretary.
    Captain Pavlov spoke now with an odd abruptness in his tone. “General, is a coup d’état proscribed by Marxist … thought?”
    The general paused with vodka glass in hand instead of emptying it down his throat, as he had done many times during the long evening.
    In measured tones, though there was a slight slur in his speech, he said that the purpose always was to advance the revolution. “If this can be done by deposing the ruler—the wrong ruler—would Lenin have approved of such a movement? Lenin was careful to supervise his own succession. Perhaps you will say, Oleg, that he was not careful enough, because although he warned privately about Stalin, it was Stalin who took command.”
    â€œGeneral”—Pavlov always thus addressed his father-in-law—“we have never spoken about the plot last year against Comrade Gorbachev. You should know that Ivan Pletnev, a boyhood friend of mine, is the brother of one of the conspirators in that plot.”
    â€œWas he himself involved in it?”
    â€œAbsolutely not. He was in Afghanistan at the time. But when the plot failed and they had his brother in custody, the KGB summoned him from the front and … interrogated him vigorously. Too vigorously.”
    â€œWhat do you mean by that?”
    â€œHe is crippled, living at home with his mother. He speaks to me with great candor. He tells me that the plot, which almost succeeded, depended heavily on the Americans. If, with Gorbachev out of the way, the Americans proceeded to recognize the government of his successor, everything would fall into place.”
    â€œHow did he learn all this, if he was off in Afghanistan?”
    â€œViktor, Ivan’s brother, confided in his oldest friend, a woman called Galina. They grew up as close as sister and brother. And after Viktor’s death she confided in Ivan.”
    â€œWas she also