Lenny Varnachev hit the button on his secure landline, killing the call.
‘We’re on,’ he said to the bull-necked man who sat on the couch on the other side of his office. ‘We have a meeting this Friday. I’ll go, you manage the loading.’
‘Agreed,’ said Boris Orlevski. ‘You’re better with Salah; I’ll get those missiles on the ship.’
Varnachev nodded as he lit a cigarette. After the failed assassination attempt on Zelenskyy in Istanbul, they wouldn’t get another shot at the Ukrainian president. The next mission—the Anvil—was more daring, but it had to succeed. The planning leveraged the Wagner Group’s connections in Syria, especially in the Hezbollah militia known as the al-Ridha Forces. The Homs-based militia had been trained and equipped by Wagner Group for several years, and Boris Orlevski had personally overseen some of the specialist navy commando training. The Wagner approach to regional dominance had been to work with private militias, giving them what they needed in return for services rendered in the future—services that created distance between Kremlin policy and so-called autonomous local actions. The al-Ridha arrangement was now coming to fruition, but Lenny knew his Director of Military Operations, Boris Orlevski, was not totally comfortable with the erratic and emotional commander, Salah.
‘I think I’ll bring a small inducement to our meeting,’ said Varnachev, with a smirk.
‘Salah likes an inducement, as long as we’re not kidnapping his daughter,’ said Orlevski, chuckling.
‘Shit, no,’ said Varnachev. ‘God, this isn’t fucking Africa. I was thinking of a cash bonus—something to make his eyes bug out.’
Lenny noted Orlevski’s agreement, and swivelled in his chair so he was looking over the Tartus naval base on Syria’s Mediterranean coast. The ships were Russian and so were most of the buildings and people, and while Europe’s intelligence services kept a close watch on the base, no government had raised a serious concern about it. Which suited Lenny Varnachev; his office was in the defence contractors’ annexe of the base, on the first floor of a building called Pacific Holdings Co. To anyone who asked, he was just a naval chandler, fulfilling his contract with the Russian navy to maintain their HVAC systems, or ensure the video-on-demand system worked.
‘What about our friend and his machine?’ asked Orlevski. ‘If that doesn’t work, the whole mission falls apart.’
Lenny swung back and looked at his colleague. Boris was an old-school special forces warrior who should have had a glorious career in the Naval Special Recon Unit, except the recon frogmen were under the command of the military intelligence directorate, the GRU, at a time when the FSB gained favour in Putin’s inner circle. That was how Lenny—the GRU intelligence officer—and Boris Orlevski had ended up in Wagner Group. They’d both hit FSB-created roadblocks in their advancement, and now they made a great team, thought Lenny: Boris planned and executed military shenanigans, and Lenny connected at a corporate and political level with those who needed Wagner Group soldiers and firepower.
‘Our friend says the machine works,’ said Lenny. ‘It was developed in Sarov in the 1970s—it’s predictable.’
‘I’ve heard that kind of assurance before,’ said Orlevski. ‘But still, anything out of Sarov is usually as dangerous to us as it is to our enemies.’
‘Manfred is reliable,’ said Lenny. ‘Besides, the machine is on its way to Haifa. It’s leaving Sarov this morning.’
Orlevski reached for his coffee mug. ‘Okay, so your electrical crew receives the machine and installs it on the rig? And the Syrians come in from the sea?’
‘The Syrians will have some firepower,’ said Lenny. ‘That’s your end. Will Javelins do the job?’ he asked, referring to the American anti-tank missile system.
‘Yes,’ said Orlevski. ‘They’re easy to use and we’ve been training these al-Ridha creeps on target acquisition and firing. Once you lock on to a target, it’s fire-and-forget, from a range of over two kilometres.’
Lenny laughed. ‘Trust the Americans to build something so dangerous that can be operated by a monkey.’
Orlevski chuckled. ‘I know. The operator’s screen looks like a video game. A fifteen-year-old Chechen could fire this more effectively than she could give a blow job.’
Lenny sniggered. ‘The Javelins are simple and they have great range, but do they give us enough bang? Our job is to make prime time.’
‘The Javelins are perfect,’ said Orlevski. ‘The first part of the warhead pierces steel, and the second part is high explosive.’
‘We’ll get ignition?’
‘Oh yeah,’ said Orlevski, lighting his own cigarette. ‘The warheads we’re using will blast the entire gas system with two thousand degrees of heat. It’s going to look great on television.’