"The Venetian Betrayal" - читать интересную книгу автора (Berry Steve)

THIRTY-THREE

VOZROZHDENIYA ISLAND

CENTRAL ASIAN FEDERATION

1:00 P.M.

ZOVASTINA WAS THRILLED WITH THE CROWD. HER STAFF HAD promised five thousand would appear. Instead, her traveling secretary told her on the helicopter flight, northwest from Samarkand, that over twenty thousand were awaiting her arrival. More proof, she was told, of her popularity. Now, seeing the bedlam of goodwill, perfect for the television cameras focused on the dais, she could not help but be pleased.

“Look around you,” she said into the microphone, “at what we can accomplish when both our minds and our hearts work in unison.” She hesitated a moment for effect, then motioned outward. “Kantubek reborn.”

The crowd, thick as ants, cheered their approval with an enthusiasm she’d grown accustomed to hearing.

Vozrozhdeniya Island sat in the central Aral Sea, a remote wilderness that once housed the Soviet Union’s Microbiological Warfare Group, and also provided a tragic example of Asia ’s exploitation by its former masters. Here was where anthrax spores and plague bacilli were both developed and stored. After the fall of the communist government, in 1991, the laboratory staff abandoned the island and the containers holding the deadly spores, which, over the ensuing decade, developed leaks. The potential biological disaster was compounded by the receding Aral Sea. Fed by the ample Amu Darya, the wondrous lake had once been shared by Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. But when the Soviets changed the Darya’s course and diverted the river’s flow into a twelve-hundred-kilometer-long canal-water used to grow cotton for Soviet mills-the inland sea, once one of the world’s largest freshwater bodies, began to vanish, replaced by a desert incapable of supporting life.

But she’d changed all that. The canal was now gone, the river restored. Most of her counterparts had seemed doomed to mimic their conquerors, but her brain had never atrophied from vodka. She’d always kept her eye on the prize, and learned how to both seize and hold power.

“Two hundred tons of communist anthrax was neutralized here,” she told the crowd. “Every bit of their poison is gone. And we made the Soviets pay for it.”

The crowd roared their approval.

“Let me tell you something. Once we were free, away from Moscow ’s choke hold, they had the audacity to say we owed them money.” Her arms rose into the air. “Can you imagine? They rape our land. Destroy our sea. Poison the soil with their germs. And we owe them money?” She saw thousands of heads shake. “That’s exactly what I said, too. No.”

She scanned the faces staring back at her, each bathed in bright midday sunshine.

“So we made the Soviets pay to clean up their own mess. And we closed their canal, which was sucking the life from our ancient sea.”

Never did she use the singular “I.” Always “we.”

“Many of you I’m sure, as I do, remember the tigers, wild boar, and waterfowl that thrived in the Amu Darya delta. The millions of fish that filled the Aral Sea. Our scientists know that one hundred and seventy-eight species once lived here. Now, only thirty-eight remain. Soviet progress.” She shook her head. “The virtues of communism.” She smirked. “Criminals. That’s what they were. Plain, ordinary criminals.”

The canal had been a failure not only environmentally but also structurally. Seepage and flooding had been common. Like the Soviets themselves, who cared little for efficiency, the canal lost more water than it ever delivered. As the Aral Sea dried to nothing, Vozrozhdeniya Island eventually became a peninsula, connected to the shore, and the fear rose that land mammals and reptiles would carry off the deadly biological toxins. Not anymore. The land was clean. Declared so by a United Nations inspection team, which labeled the effort “masterful.”

She raised her fist to the air. “And we told those Soviet criminals that if we could, we’d sentence each one of them to our prisons.”

The people roared more approval.

“This town of Kantubek, where we stand, here in its central plaza, has risen from the ashes. The Soviets reduced it to rubble. Now free Federation citizens will live here, in peace and harmony, on an island that is also reborn. The Aral itself is returning, its water levels rising each year, man-made desert once again becoming seabed. This is an example of what we can achieve. Our land. Our water.” She hesitated. “Our heritage.”

The crowd erupted.

Her gaze raked the faces, soaking in the anticipation her message seemed to generate. She loved being among the people. And they loved her. Acquiring power was one thing. Keeping it, quite another.

And she planned to keep it.

“My fellow citizens, know that we can do anything if we set our minds to it. How many across the globe declared we could not consolidate? How many said we’d split thanks to civil war? How many claimed we were incapable of governing ourselves? Twice we’ve conducted national elections. Free and open, with many candidates. No one can say that either contest was not fair.” She paused. “We have a constitution that guarantees human rights, along with personal, political, and intellectual freedom.”

She was enjoying this moment. The reopening of Vozrozhdeniya Island was certainly an event that demanded her presence. Federation television, along with three new independent broadcasting channels that she’d licensed to Venetian League members, were spreading her message nationwide. Those new station owners had privately promised control over what they produced, all part of the camaraderie League membership offered to fellow members, and she was glad for their presence. Hard to argue that she controlled the media when, from all outward appearances, she did not.

She stared out at the rebuilt town, its brick and stone buildings erected in the style of a century ago. Kantubek would once again be populated. Her Interior ministry had reported that ten thousand had applied for land grants on the island, another indication of the confidence the people placed in her since so many were willing to live where only twenty years ago nothing would have survived.

“Stability is the basis of everything,” she roared.

Her catchphrase, used repeatedly over the past fifteen years.

“Today, we christen this island in the name of the people of the Central Asian Federation. May our union last forever.”

She stepped from the podium as the crowd applauded.

Three of her guardsmen quickly closed ranks and escorted her off the dais. Her helicopter was waiting, as was a plane that would take her west, to Venice, where the answers to so many questions awaited.