“Despite their numbers we are ready for them. The Baltic Fleet will harass and interdict NATO’s naval and amphibious forces as it sails east to conduct landings on the Estonian coast. Even if the invasion force succeeds in getting through and landing on the beaches, 6th Army has established strong defensive positions on the Estonian coast on all the likely invasion beaches, while maintaining mobile armored reserves in depth ready to counter-attack. In the south, 20th Guards Army is deployed on the southern Lithuanian border. I can also report that 2nd Guards Tank Army has moved from its garrison in central Russia, at Samara, and been transferred to Western Military District. Meanwhile, the forces we withdrew from Kaliningrad and Ukraine will continue to contain the Forest Brother insurgency across the Baltic states.

“As for the air battle, NATO will be unable to win air superiority. Our Vorozneh radar in Kaliningrad is the match of anything they have and it can cover out to hundreds of kilometers. That’s enough to keep all of Eastern and Central Europe under surveillance and capable of tracking more than five hundred aircraft simultaneously. Once detected, NATO aircraft will be easy meat for our S-400 and S-500 air defense missile systems as well as our own interceptors. So we are confident that we will retain the air superiority that will allow us to defeat NATO decisively on the ground.”

“What about Kaliningrad? Is there a danger that NATO could try and attack us there?”

“We think not, Vladimir Vladimirovich,” answered the Foreign Minister, who had remained quiet up to now. “NATO goes on endlessly about being purely a defensive alliance. It is one thing to implement Article Five of the Washington Treaty to defend a member state, but quite another to attack Russian sovereign territory. NATO will never get the agreement of the NAC to do that. Apart from anything else, our friends in Athens and Budapest have confirmed they would veto any such proposal.”

Gareyev intervened. “We know that the Americans and British use their Special Forces as the tip of their spear. We have been watching them carefully and I can tell you there are no Special Forces anywhere near Kaliningrad.”

The President looked satisfied; very much more his old self.

Because if the Alliance does attack, Komarov thought to himself, and Russia does see them off as Gareyev clearly believes they would, then the President’s position, and mine alongside him, would be sealed for the rest of his life.

If NATO did the sensible thing and rattled their sabers, but no more, then the result would be the same: the President would have won. He and the President were only at risk if Russia were defeated and were that to happen, every man around this table would be in the same sinking ship. No, on reflection, although these were dangerous times, the President’s fate was firmly linked with that of Russia and it was the same for these men.