Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 09 (9 page)

           
Pavel Kazakov had continued with the
Russian tradition of raping
Kazakhstan
. He’d chosen the easiest, cheapest, and
highest-producing ways to pump oil, no matter how it hurt the land or how badly
it polluted the
Caspian
Sea
. Even after
the required bribes to Kazak and Russian government officials to bypass what
few environmental regulations were enforced, Kazakov had made immense profits.
The gamble had paid off big, and Metyorgaz soon became the third-largest oil
and gas producer in the
Soviet Union
,
behind government-run Gazprom and the richest semi-independent Russian oil
producer, LUKoil. Metyorgaz became the latest Russian Caspian Sea oil producer
by far.

 
          
He
increased his wealth and prestige by taking another gamble. The Russian
government had mandated that
Caspian Sea
oil flowing into
Russia
be transported to the huge oil distribution terminal in Samara, about
seven hundred miles north along the
Ural River
near Kujbysev, through which all of the oil flowing from western
Siberia
passed. The existing pipeline had a
capacity of only three hundred thousand barrels per day, and Kazakov envisioned
pumping six to seven times that volume in just a few short years. He had to
find a better way.

 
          
The
answer was clear: build his own pipeline. Neither the
Russian Federation
nor the newly independent
Republic
of
Kazakhstan
had money for this, so Kazakov took it upon
himself to beg. borrow, and enlist the help of dozens of financiers around the
world. He raised more than two and a half billion dollars and started the
largest oil and gas pipeline project in the world, a
nine-hundred-and-thirty-mile behemoth line from
Tengiz
,
Kazakhstan
, to
Novorossiysk
,
Russia
, on the
Black Sea
. Capable of transporting almost a million
and a half barrels of oil a day, with expansion possibilities to almost two
million barrels per day. the pipeline had opened up previously abandoned
terminals and pipelines on the
Black Sea
in
Ukraine
,
Moldova
,
Bulgaria
, and
Turkey
. Although Kazakov had to pay huge sums in
fees, taxes, leases, and bribes to the Russian and Kazakh governments, he still
became one of the wealthiest individuals in
Europe
.

           
He used his newfound wealth and
started investing in supertankers and refineries, shifting from the
oil-producing and -pumping business to the shipment and refining business. The
refineries in
Ukraine
,
Bulgaria
, and
Turkey
were happy to have him oversee operations,
and they made Kazakov even wealthier. He modernized a half-dozen facilities in
those three countries, making them far more efficient and cleaner than any yet
developed in
Eastern
Europe
.

 
          
But
his core problem still remained: his main customer was still
Russia
or Russian client-states of the
Commonwealth of Independent States, and their oil refining industry was one of
the worst in the world, hopelessly outdated and inefficient. Kazakov could pump
it profitably, but he lost money every time he sold product to the CIS, because
they could not afford to pay very much for it and payments sometimes took a
long time. The real money lay in shipping oil to Western European refineries,
and that meant shipping oil through the Bosporus Straits into the
Mediterranean
. The problem was, the number of tankers
transiting the Straits was already huge—an average of ten supertankers a day,
added to all the other traffic in the Straits, meant wasted time and money, not
to mention the tariffs
Turkey
extracted for each barrel of oil passing
through its country. Despite his enormous wealth, Kazakov was a runt among
giants when it came to competing with multinational Western oil producers.

 
          
Naturally,
as Pavel Gregorievich Kazakov’s wealth and prestige grew, so did the rumors.
Most claimed he was a Russian Mafia boss, with an organization more influential
and powerful than the Russian government; others said he was a drug dealer,
tapping into Kazakhstan’s other major export— heroin—and using his contacts in
both the East and West to transport thousands of pounds of heroin per month
throughout Europe; others said he was a spy for the Americans, or the Chinese,
or the Japanese, or whoever happened to be the scapegoat of the month.

 
          
The
bottom line for Colonel-General Zhurbenko was this: no one, not even he, with
all his access to military and civilian intelligence resources, knew for sure.
That made Pavel Kazakov a very, very dangerous man, and an even more dangerous adversary.
Zhurbenko had too many children, grandchildren, dachas, mistresses, and foreign
bank accounts to risk stirring up the mud trying to find out—he was sure
Kazakov could take all of them for himself if he chose.

 
          
Which
is why when Kazakov asked that question about his mother, Zhurbenko replied
nervously, “Of course not, Pavel,” taking a deep sip of whiskey to calm his
nerves. When he looked over at Kazakov again, he saw the young entrepreneur’s
eyes shaded in the interior lights of the back of the limo, hooded—like a
snake’s, he thought. “You know as well as I, Pavel: the Army hasn’t been the
same since our humiliation in
Afghanistan
. We could not even bring a bunch of ragtag
goat herders to heel there, Afterward, we couldn’t defeat one rebel army in our
own backyard, even if they were just some unemployed factory workers with a few
black market guns.
Vilnius
,
Tbilisi
,
Baku
,
Dushanbe
.
Tiraspol
,
Kiev
,
Lvov
,
Grozny
twice— the once feared Red Army has become little
more than a bump in the road for any two-bit revolutionary.”

 
          
“You
let those Albanian peasants chop up my father like a suckling
pig!”
Kazakov said hotly. “What are you going to do about it? Nothing! What did I
read in Interfax this morning? The Russian government is considering
removing
its peacekeeping forces from Kosovo?
Seventeen soldiers are slaughtered by
KLA marauders, and now the government wants to turn tail and
run ?
I
thought surely we would send a battalion of shock troops or a helicopter
assault brigade into
Albania
and mow down every last one of the rebel
bases!”

 
          
“We
have only four thousand troops in Kosovo now, Pavel,” Zhurbenko argued. “We
barely have enough operating funds to keep them minimally operational—”

 
          
“
‘Minimally operational’? For God’s sake, General, our troops are having to
forage
for food!
If I were in charge, I’d take one evening, send in an entire
brigade to the last man, and blow every known or suspected KLA base to hell,
capture their supplies, interrogate the prisoners, bum their homes, and to hell
with world opinion! At the very least, it would give our soldiers something to
do. At best, it would allow them to avenge the deaths of their brothers in
arms.”

 
          
“I
agree fully with your passion and your anger, young Pavel, but how little you
know of politics or how to prosecute a war,” Zhurbenko said, trying to keep the
tone of his voice lighthearted. Kazakov took an angry gulp of whiskey.
Zhurbenko certainly did not want to get on this man's evil side, he thought as he
tried to appear as understanding and sympathetic as he could. “It takes time,
planning, and most important, money, to execute an operation such as that.”

 
          
“My
father invaded Pristina with less than twelve hours' notice, with troops that
were barely qualified to do the job.”

 
          
“Yes,
he did,” Zhurbenko had to admit, although it was not the city of
Pristina
, just the little regional airport. “Your
father was a true leader of men, a risk taker, a born warrior in the tradition
of the Slavic kings.” That seemed to placate Kazakov.

 
          
But
in the intervening silence, Zhurbenko turned over the question in his mind. Go
into Kosovo with a bngade? It would take months, perhaps half a year, to
mobilize twenty thousand troops to do
anything
, and the entire world
would know about it long before the first regiment was loaded up. No. It was
silly. Kosovo was a lose-lose situation. The murder of Colonel Kazakov and
sixteen other soldiers in Kosovo only reinforced what Zhurbenko already knew—
Russia
needed to get out of Kosovo. Kazakov was
certainly a brilliant businessman and engineer, but he knew nothing of the
simplest mechanisms of modem warfare.

 
          
But
perhaps a smaller force, one or two light armored battalions, even a Spetsnaz
airborne regiment. Pavel Kazakov’s father had parachuted in an infantry company
right onto
Pristina
Airport
, right under NATO’s nose, and caught the
world off guard. It hadn’t been a shock force, just a regular infantry
unit—Zhurbenko was sure all its members hadn’t even been jump-qualified at the
time. A well-trained Spetsnaz unit of similar size, perhaps reinforced by air,
would be ten times more effective. Why couldn’t they do it again? NATO’s
presence in Kosovo was only a bit smaller than it was in 1999, but now they
were deeply entrenched in their own little sectors, in secure little compounds,
not daring to roam around too much. The Kosovo Liberation Army had free rein.
But they weren’t regulars—they were guerrilla fighters. Dangerous, even deadly in
the right situation, but no match for a Russian special forces team on a
search-and-destroy mission.

           
The general noticed something that
he had almost missed in his effort not to anger this young industrialist: Pavel
Kazakov was passionate about something—the welfare of Russian soldiers in
Kosovo, the ones his murdered father had commanded. He spoke about “our”
soldiers, as if he really cared about them. Was it just because his father had
been one? Did he now feel some sort of kinship with the soldiers killed in
Kosovo? Whatever it was, it was a sudden glimpse behind the eyes of one of the
most inscrutable personalities in the world.

 
          
“This
is very interesting, Pavel, very interesting,” Zhurbenko said. “You would
advocate a much stronger, more forceful role in Kosovo?”

 
          
“Kosovo
is just the beginning, General,” Kazakov replied acidly. “
Chechnya
was a good example of a conflict well
fought—bomb the rebels into submission. Destroy their homes, their places of
business, their mosques, their meeting places. Since when does the Russian
government condone independence movements within the Federation? Never.

 
          
“
Russia
has interests outside our borders that need
protecting as well,” Kazakov went on. Zhurbenko was fully attentive now—because
he had been thinking along the very same lines. “The Americans are investing
billions of dollars into developing pipelines to ship
our
oil, oil
discovered and developed by Russian engineers, to the West. What do we get out
of it? Nothing. A few rubles in transshipment fees, a fraction of what we’re
entitled to. Why is this allowed to happen? Because we allowed
Azerbaijan
and
Georgia
to become independent. The same would have
happened in
Chechnya
if we allowed it to happen.”