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Page 420
it was succeeding to a great extent. The Pentagon had received scattered reports about a purge in Moscow, in the Kremlin. Had Cherny used the information they had given him to save himself and his government? Was the purge more widespread, or confined to the capital? How can we analyze this situation properly with no human intelligence from Russia since David Milstein's death? Satellites could relay only that which had already happened, not why or how it happenedthe most critical information.
The few newspaper accounts from correspondents in Moscow that had come out before the blackout was imposed said unequivocally that Marshal Suvorov, Admiral Aleyev, and Air Force General Kalinin had been executed on Cherny's orders. What of Kondratiev, the Security Service chief? Earlier reports claimed that Kondratiev was recruiting for Soyuz among the services. The armed forces, except for the nuclear units, were pitifully weak, Kellner knew, and very poorly paid. Senior officers sometimes had to perform menial tasks, like guard duty. Entire units had declared independence and often refused to fight in the brushfire ethnic wars, even those in Russia. Almost half of those conscripted into the army avoid service, Milstein had said. But all it would take was one or two tank units and an air force squadron to follow the rebels, and civil war could break out in the heart of Moscow. One of the strangest accounts Kellner had heard came from a Swedish correspondent, who had left the country on one of the last flights before the blackout. He claimed that Lenin's mausoleum had been dynamited by the insurgents, who then had been attacked by elements of the army and routed. If it is true, Kellner thought wryly, those who had expected Soyuz to reinstate the Communist party were wrong. Again.
What else was happening there? Was Aleksandr Cherny still in charge of Russiaor, in any real sense, did Russia still exist? Russian TV and all the Western networks' Moscow bureaus had been shut down completely. Russia was cut off from the rest of the world. In this most dangerous moment,

 
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