“Now you listen to me, Mikhail Nikolayevich,” he raged. “Just over a month ago, you assured me that you would have the insurgency in the Baltic states under control! And now you tell me that you have lost freedom of movement, except when moving in force, on all but major roads because of the actions of these Forest Brother guerrillas! Was it for this that you thinned out the troops in Ukraine and the garrison in Kaliningrad? And what about detaining that British captain I ordered you to find? Still no sign of him? He’s making a monkey of me . . . and you for that matter. I won’t have it. Do you understand? If you can’t deliver him, I’ll find someone who can!”

Gareyev stayed silent. He knew better than to interrupt the tirade and Komarov assessed that, with the President in this mood, he would soon switch targets. He was right. The President next turned on the Director of the FSB, Merkulov.

“A month ago you assured me, Lavrentiy Pavlovich, that NATO was in disarray! And yet you now tell me that all your stations in NATO capitals report a renewed unity and sense of purpose and a determination to do whatever needs to be done to take the Baltic states from us! How do you explain that?”

As head of the FSB, the feared State Security and Counter-intelligence service and heir to the KGB in both reputation and practice, Merkulov, despite his mild, bespectacled appearance was deadly. Komarov saw him as the only man in Russia capable of frightening the President.

Quietly, almost nonchalantly, he murmured, “Vladimir Vladimirovich, you should recognize that it was the unfortunate sinking of the two mine countermeasures vessels and your decision to torpedo the Queen Elizabeth when it posed no threat to us in the western Baltic that united NATO. And, if we wanted to ensure that America stepped up to lead the Alliance, we couldn’t have done better than slaughter those American airmen and women at Lielvārde Air Base in Latvia. If we had left the Americans well alone, they would not be threatening us now. And NATO without the Americans is nothing. That simple. But we didn’t and they are. Which is the problem we are facing now. What else is there to say?”

There was silence around the table. However, nobody moved to reprimand or distance themselves from Merkulov and that told Komarov much of what he feared: it increasingly looked if he was inextricably linked to the wrong man.

The President visibly curbed his rage. As an ex-KGB operative and former head of the FSB himself, he knew the power Merkulov wielded and that he needed his support.

In an effort to regain the initiative for him, Komarov changed the subject. “Vladimir Vladimirovich, may I recommend that we ask for a report on NATO dispositions.”

The President looked at Gareyev. “Go ahead, please,” he grunted in an effort to appear magisterial.