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who will fight with me. I cannot allow my country to fall to Soyuz and the new Oprichnika. Czar Ivan the Terrible's black state within a state had been reborn once with the Communist party and blighted Russia for seventy years. It must not come again.
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And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?
It must be my rough beast born, and Dovi's, not Kondratiev's, Cherny thought passionately. We can never again slip into barbarism.
He walked purposefully back to his desk and picked up a telephone. "Connect me with the Defense Office," he said. He waited while the surprised and confused operator did as he was told. It was unusual for this President ever to call the Defense Office. Aleksandr Cherny had never been interested in military deployments. Until today.
When the duty officer answered, Cherny closed his eyes for a moment, then spoke in a firm voice: "Connect me directly with General Lieutenant Komarov of the Thirtieth Shock Army at Stavropol."
"At once, Mr. President."
The Thirtieth Shock was a people's army, one of the last to be withdrawn from Eastern Europe. They were not the Kremlin guards, goose-stepping like Prussians in front of the Spassky Gate and the mausoleum. Vladimir Komarov had spoken out with enthusiasm about the new Russia. Milstein had trusted him. But enlisting any active duty officer of the armed forces in such an enterprise as Cherny had in mind might be risky. Perhaps Kondratiev had already approached Komarov, persuaded him to follow Soyuz. While he waited, he ticked off members of his cabinet who were increasingly restive, showing that their sympathies lay with Kondratiev. Yevgeny Suvorov, who apparently confused his authority as Minister of Defense with that of the President, for one, and of course old

 
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