In His Image by James BeauSeigneur

Author:James BeauSeigneur [BeauSeigneur, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Second Advent, Holy Shroud, General, Science Fiction, Cloning, Thrillers, Large type books, Fiction, Religious, Espionage
ISBN: 9780786254002
Publisher: Thorndike Press
Published: 2003-06-14T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16

The Hand of God

The Kremlin, Moscow

Eleven hundred miles and nearly due north of Tel Aviv, the Russian Security Council was meeting to discuss the events in Israel. It was now 4:00 a.m. in New York, and 11:00 a.m. in Moscow, which shares the same time zone as Israel.

At 86 years old, Defense Minister Vladimir Leon Josef Khromchenkov was the oldest of the thirteen men assembled in the Kremlin’s war-room. Khromchenkov was born in 1917, sometime during the night of November 6-7, the same night that the Bolsheviks had seized power. His father had missed the birth, choosing instead to take part in the fighting in Petrograd. Throughout the revolution and the years that followed, Khromchenkov’s father somehow managed to walk the fine line of being close to Lenin, Stalin, and Trotsky and yet was never so close to any one of them that he was considered a threat by the other two. His ability to maneuver through politically treacherous waters had been passed on to his son. After serving for nearly forty years in the Soviet Army, Vladimir Khromchenkov first came to the Kremlin during the early days of Gorbachev as a candidate of the hard-liners who opposed Gorbachev’s reforms and were afraid he might ‘give away the store.’

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200 In His Image

Boris Yeltzin had made several attempts to weaken Khromchenkov’s political power and even to remove him from the Security Council, but without success. Khromchenkov knew the inner workings of everything and used this to his advantage. Had he wanted it, he might well have become President, but Khromchenkov preferred manipulating to being manipulated. It was said of Khromchenkov that he believed that just as he had been born on the night the revolution began, it was his destiny not to die until the Soviet Union had been restored as a world power. And though he gave the credit to others, it was Khromchenkov who had engineered the invasion of Israel as a key step toward bringing about that destiny.

“Comrades,” Defense Minister Khromchenkov began in old Soviet style, which always irritated some of those around him but warmed the hearts of others, “our intelligence reports have just confirmed that this morning’s strike against our international peacekeeping forces in Israel was conceived and initiated by Israeli insurgents. We have very recently regained communications with General Serov, who is in charge of the Strategic Defense Control Facility at Mizpe Ramon. He reports that the Israelis apparently took control of the nuclear forces from a remote facility, from which they launched this morning’s attack. At present, the insurgents are fighting our troops stationed in the cities, and a small force of Israelis has set up camp outside the control facility. General Serov has sealed the blast doors so his forces are in no danger from the insurgents outside. Presently, he reports, he is working to isolate the breach in operations in order to attempt to regain control. One other point,” Khromchenkov said, as if it were only an afterthought, though in reality

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