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uniforms or Cossack outfits, they set great store by old Russia's imperial history. Some pretend to be royalists, which is not exactly credible in a Russia so short of real Romanovs. They loathe America and the West for being 'mongrel races' and purveyors of anarchyfor that, read democracy and human rights." |
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"So far you're talking skinheads and sheet-wearers," Morgan said. "We've got them in all colors right here." |
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"Perhaps if Marsh Gray over at CI were a skinhead, and if Charlie Fisk at the FBI were the same, and if Levining at Defense liked to make like a Grand Dragon, you might take a different view, Colonel." Vincent Kellner was unsmiling. |
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Morgan accepted the rebuke. From time to time the Russian extremists became "fashionable." A glossy woman's magazine had run a spread on one of the Soyuz leaders, Yevgeny Suvorov. Eight pages of text and color photographs of Soyuz members dressed up like Cossacks and (as the magazine put it) "playacting." And yet Aleksandr Cherny was rumored to be about to name Suvorov as his choice to take over the Ministry of Defense. What sort of pressure was being applied to the mild Cherny to win that particular concession? The appointment had raised no premonitory hackles in the foreign press. The United Nations was still stumbling along, trying to define its role as a peacekeeper in an all-too-unpeaceful world, on three continents. The possibility of a general Balkan war still loomed on the horizon. The bones of the old Soviet Union were constantly being disturbed by scavengers, but many bullets had to fly and much blood flow before the American media would even notice the story, let alone cover it night after night. The problems in Russia had few answers yet, if any, and that alone meant that they were old news. And the American public had troubles enough of its own: hurricanes, floods, unemployment, local bad-ass politics, taxes, terrorist bombings, and drive-by shootings. |
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I am as much at fault as anyone, Morgan thought. All I've been thinking about is myselfhow to get out of this town. |
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