Tonya Pasternak had once proposed the idea of reuniting the SVR and FSB back into a combined organization and giving it the traditional name of the KGB, but Vostov opposed the idea. That would concentrate entirely too much power in one organization. Many of the old Soviet bosses after Stalin had risen to prominence in the KGB, to the point that it could be inferred that the intelligence community ran the country. Despite Vostov being a former KGB officer in the decade before its split into the SVR and FSB, he deeply distrusted a reunited and integrated KGB. He’d prefer to deal with internal security separately from foreign operations. From a pragmatic aspect, each organization was jealous of the other and routinely devoted resources to spying on their opposite numbers, which could keep a coup from happening. And in the abstract, Vostov was convinced that an integrated KGB would be bad for the country and would be unpopular with the citizens, and anything unpopular with them could cause him to lose an election.
The Chairman of the FSB, General Gennadi Sevastyan, was tall and slender, with a handsome open face graced with bushy eyebrows and a full head of salt-and-pepper hair. His age was indeterminate, either late forties or mid-fifties. In working with Sevastyan over the past decade, Vostov had grown to trust the man, inviting him to the presidential offices for after-work drinks of the vodka that only politicians and diplomats could obtain. Sevastyan was a family man, like Vostov, with two children in grade school, with a pretty and friendly wife. His hobbies were rowing, his dacha on a river where he would row a one-man scull for hours while dictating memoranda on a waterproof recorder, his deputy the recipient of all of Sevastyan’s memos and random thoughts.
“Gennadi,” Vostov said, smiling at Sevastyan. “Good to have you with us.”
Sevastyan smiled and nodded. “We almost lost Avdey from this trip. I caught him just as he was climbing into a plane.”
“Oh?” Vostov looked at the FSB Deputy Chairman, Colonel General Avdey Ozols. Ozols was much older than Sevastyan by at least a decade, a trim man of medium height who had a rigid posture and a military bearing. He was a storied FSB operative, having been involved in the hostage rescue from the Chechen takeover of the Moscow Dubrovka Theater in 2002, when 850 hostages were taken. Most were rescued, with the forty terrorists killed, and despite the loss of 131 hostages during the counter-assault, Ozols had been credited with the public relations win. Ozols had gone on to half a dozen more high-profile successes, and was considered a viable successor to Sevastyan. As head of the presidential security detail in addition to his normal duties, he was a man Vostov trusted as deeply as Sevastyan. If only, Vostov thought, his trust for their opposite numbers in the SVR were as deep.
“I was headed to a trouble spot, but as it turned out,” Ozols said, “my people took care of things before the door could shut on the plane.”
“Well, I’m glad we got you here in any case,” Vostov said. “So, Tonya, can you go over what our itinerary is for this trip one more time?”
For the next ninety minutes, Pasternak briefed the five men, the room’s displays lit up with her presentation on the Status-6 torpedoes, the
“Gentlemen, go ahead. We will meet you at the Sevmash Shipyard. I have something to go over with my chief of staff.”
Once the engines were shut down, the jet became ghostly quiet and the air inside cooled.
“You wanted to talk to me, sir?” Pasternak prompted.
“Yes, Tonya. Something serious is happening in my personal life.”
“It’s Larisa, isn’t it?”
Vostov knew Pasternak had never liked Larisa, thinking her entitled and immature. Her dislike might have been fueled by her thinly disguised desire to have a more personal relationship with Vostov.
Vostov looked at his chief aide. She was tall, only a few centimeters shorter than he, slender, with long legs, a thin waist, and large breasts. She had long gleaming raven-black hair, puffy red lips in a model’s face with high cheekbones and large almond-shaped dark eyes. She dressed professionally, but her beauty shone through any outfit she’d wear that attempted to mute her femme-fatale appearance. Her voice was deep for a woman, which helped in this mostly all-male group of officials, giving her a more authoritative air.
Vostov pursed his lips. “It’s Larisa. The marriage is over. But you know Larisa. She’s volatile and has a volcanic temper. Divorce proceedings will be a disaster. This could destroy my candidacy and the campaign.”
