Panic Switch полностью

“I’ll see you soon, baby,” he said.

“Tonight, Daddy?”

“We’ll see. It might be late, after your bedtime. Now listen to Mommy and be good for Daddy, yes?”

She smiled and nodded. He stood and waved at her and she waved back.

He hurried from her room and down the hallway to the elevator. As he left her room, he was joined by two of his SBP Sluzhba Bezopasnosti Presidential Security Service guards.

“Good morning, Mr. President,” the senior man said.

“Morning, gentlemen,” Vostov replied without thinking. He hit the speed dial for his chief of staff, Tonya Pasternak. She answered on the first ring.

“Good morning, sir,” she said alertly and formally.

“Tonya. Call off all the week’s meetings. The trip we’d discussed, to Murmansk? Make it happen. Now. I’m having my driver bring me to the airstrip. Pack for a week and send a detail to my suite to get a week’s worth of suits, plus clothes suitable for touring a factory and going into a submarine. Get the plane fueled, loaded, and staffed. We’re leaving immediately.”

Most aides, Vostov thought, would sputter and object to such a radical change in the schedule, especially with the itinerary the upcoming week held, but not Pasternak.

“I’m on it, sir. Who do you want to accompany us?”

Vostov thought for a minute as the elevator descended. “Get Sevastyan and his deputy, Ozols, and Mikhail and his deputy, Prokopiy.” General Gennadi Sevastyan was head of the FSB — the internal security organization and half of what had been the KGB before its breakup in the 90s — and Colonel General Advey Ozols was his second-in-command. “Mikhail” was the nickname they called Marshal Radoslav Konstantinov, the minister of defense. General Osip Prokopiy was his deputy.

“No one from SVR, sir?” The SVR was the other half of the former KGB, the group responsible for foreign intelligence and covert operations.

“Not for this trip, Tonya.”

“Understood, sir. I will see you at the jet.”

The presidential motorcade was perhaps the riskiest portion of the trip. Tonya Pasternak always fretted that the opposition party would attempt an assassination or kidnapping. Vostov had no such fears. His opponents had a small but key portion of the journalists in their pockets and some foreign support. They’d most likely come at him head-on, he thought, in the upcoming election. It would be more dangerous for him after he won another term, he thought.

The motorcade arrived at the secure base, recently constructed close to the Kremlin after the condemnation and demolition of a dozen western hotels, to the protests of the corporations involved. The sleek supersonic Tupolev Tu-144 waited at the end of the 3000-meter runway, its loud jets already at idle. The previous Russian president had used a Sukhoi Superjet 100, a twin-engine subsonic passenger jet upgrade, but Vostov had had a Tu-144 rebuilt from scratch, the magnificent Russian-designed supersonic transport brought to the market even before the Concorde. The TU-144s had all been warehoused in 1999, but Vostov had commissioned the construction of a new, improved version based on the original plans, with more powerful jets, the interior modified for presidential use. It was louder and less comfortable than the Superjet, but much faster. Vostov used it for travel internal to the country — overseas trips were for the Superjet, the latter more civilized, not breaking the windows of a host country’s buildings.

Vostov’s limo rolled to the access stairs to the forward hatch. He ducked inside and greeted the two Air Force pilots, moved back through the communication and tactical compartment, which was able to conduct a nuclear war remotely, to the more luxurious staff accommodations and the galley. At the end of the plane was the soundproofed and heavily secured outer and inner office Vostov used for meetings and for when he wanted to be alone, with a small desk, conference table seating six, a private bathroom and a small bunk with a reading light. Computer flatpanel displays lined the bulkheads, leaving only one small window on either side of the office.

Vostov was accustomed to boarding his plane before the staff. As he waited, he and Pasternak took seats at the conference table, with Pasternak opening a pad computer for her to present to Vostov the daily briefing. He could see out the window as an Air Force staff car disgorged the four-person tactical and communications team, who would take their positions in the first compartment, ready for any emergency involving wartime operations. He could see the disgusted look on the face of the commanding colonel as he emerged from the car. Obviously, the Air Force staff disliked the supersonic transport, much preferring the Superjet, which allowed twice the number of officers and more redundant comms equipment.