Eagle, I don't want to form an alliance anymore.

He slowly clenched one hand into a fist, then opened and closed it again, his knuckles cracking.

“When he comes, we will have a lot to say, a lot.”

PS: Regarding The King of Fighters '97 ( )

Slava walked down the steps toward the Lada. As he passed the side of the hostel, his pace slowed.

There was an open space with a row of tombstones standing on it.

The first tombstone was quite old, covered in moss. A golden corncob sat in front of it; it was unclear who had placed it there or when.

Next to the second tombstone, a pit had been dug, and a mound of earth stood beside it. The tombstone was already erected, densely covered with various items—medals, awards, and commemorative badges, gold, silver, and bronze, dozens of them of all sizes, obscuring the surface of the tombstone. From a distance, it looked like a Christmas tree adorned with decorations. The inscription was not very clear, but Slava knew who the pit was for.

The third tombstone has been erected, right next to the second. The surface is simple, without any decoration, only a few lines of text. A cup of tea sits before it, but the tea has gone cold.

The fourth one is further away, and there is a red birthmark-like mark on the surface of the stele, and the inscription is not clear.

Theoretically, there shouldn't be anything further to the right, but he saw a person. The person was squatting on the ground with his back to him, planting a new tombstone in the soil. He was tall, wearing a dark, old coat, and his white beard peeked out from the collar. His movements were slow and meticulous, as if he were doing something he had done countless times before.

Slava stopped in his tracks.

The man planting the tombstone noticed his gaze, slowly stood up, and turned around. His face was also indistinct, but the outline of his white beard and old coat was clearly visible in the dim light.

He silently watched Slava, then lowered his head to continue tamping the soil down onto the base of the tombstone. Slava, in a daze, climbed into the back seat of the car, and as the door closed behind him, he took one last look at the row of tombstones.

Although it was only for a moment, he did see his name.

Velikoslav Ivanovich Ivanov.

--------

Beep. Beep. Beep.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

Loop started... Injection complete...

...Hypothermia...Hexametasone 20cc, IV push. (Indistinct sound)

...Status normal...Begin resection...Beware of ventricular fibrillation... (muffled voice)

You still have a lot to do... (muffled voice)

"Slava!" The familiar voice pulled Slava from her dream.

"Slava, can you hear me?"

He tried to open his eyes, but the light was too bright, and he squinted for a while before he could see clearly.

White ceiling, white walls, white sheets.

Director Nian was sitting by his bedside, her hair a mess like a bird's nest, her face streaked with soot, and her eyes red, whether from the smoke or something else, it was hard to tell. Her hand was tightly holding his left hand.

"...Where did you give me this for?" Director Nian felt relieved as soon as Slava opened his mouth.

"You lost too much blood at the military hospital in Moscow. You were unconscious for two days before you woke up."

Slava blinked, taking a long time to make out his surroundings. An IV drip hung by the bedside, its tubing attached to his left arm, and a cardiac monitor beeped beside him.

He tried to move his right arm, and a dull pain shot from his shoulder to his fingers.

"Don't move," Director Nian pressed him down. "The bullet pierced your blood vessel. Although it didn't hit the bone, it tore a large piece of muscle. The doctor said it will take at least two months to recover."

Slava leaned against the pillows, staring at the ceiling. The beeping of the electrocardiogram monitor matched the rhythm of her dream.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

"Year Director".

"Ok?"

"For a fleeting moment, I saw him."

“Tell me more.” A smile flickered in her rose-red eyes, and Slava’s lips involuntarily curved upwards.

“It was a very long dream, I can’t remember it clearly,” he said. “I only remember there were many people who said I wasn’t meant to die, so they let me come back—”

That's right, I'm back after winning the revival match!

He smiled and patted Director Nian's hand.

"Tell me what happened next." "Okay."

Chapter 10: Don't say anything that would be detrimental to the unity of the alliance.

The director recounted what happened next for quite some time.

The KGB's special operations detachment arrived at the scene twelve minutes after receiving the order. A total of fourteen elite soldiers were present. The firefight lasted less than three minutes before it ended—the thugs hired by Rashidov were as fragile as paper in front of the regular special forces.

The gunmen blocking the door downstairs were cleared out in the first wave, and the gunmen behind the courtyard wall were taken away by agents from the helicopter. The remaining gunmen, never having seen anything like this, threw down their guns and ran. However, there were also casualties on the agents' side; one of them was shot in the leg, but was not seriously injured.

They evacuated by helicopter. Director Nian said that Slava completely lost consciousness on the helicopter and was already pale and about to meet Marx when they arrived at the military airfield in Ashgabat. After boarding the plane, the accompanying military doctor performed professional emergency hemostasis treatment—the blood vessels in his arm that had been punctured could only be treated after landing, so they could only continuously transfuse blood to Slava on the plane.

As for the missing young agent, things turned out exactly as they suspected—he betrayed the country. He was bribed by Rashidov's men for 30,000 rubles and an apartment in Tashkent, voluntarily handing over the information and, incidentally, the locations of several KGB contact points in Fergana. He is currently facing a military court-martial, initially charged with treason, and is undergoing a second trial; he will most likely be executed.

Moscow handled the whole matter quite swiftly. Andropov hastily closed the case under the pretext of cracking a major American spy case, announcing that a batch of foreign intelligence materials had been intercepted in Fergana and relevant personnel had been arrested. As for the burning of the residential building, it was classified as a criminal case involving a local criminal gang and had nothing to do with the espionage case.

Brezhnev didn't seem to be paying much attention. For the past six months, he had focused all his energy on the Polish issue and his deteriorating health. A security incident in a remote republic was simply out of his sight. Rashidov was more than happy that no one was involved in the matter.

Andropov gained far more than just two young men and a box of documents from this operation. Throughout the process, he ascertained the depth of Rashidov's infiltration within the KGB and, following the leads, uncovered several more bribed agents. More importantly, those in Uzbekistan who were dissatisfied with Rashidov—including a group of veteran agents like Isayev—were formally incorporated into Andropov's network during this incident. These individuals would play a crucial role in the subsequent formal investigation—or rather, the purge—of the cotton scandal.

Isayev and Alim were both transferred out of Uzbekistan to a logistics department at the Moscow headquarters. It was nominally a lateral transfer, but in reality, it was for protection. Those who know, know.

...

It was already quite cold in Moscow at the end of October.

The inpatient building was located on a quiet side street next to Leningradsky Prospekt. It was a gray, six-story building, not much different from ordinary Soviet apartments, except for a guard post and a barely noticeable bronze plaque at the entrance. Slava was in a single room on the fourth floor. The window faced north, offering a view of a row of bare birch trees across the street and a few chimneys belching white smoke in the distance.

The days of recuperating were boring, but also quiet.

With his right arm in a cast and sling across his chest, and his left hand able to move but his handwriting crooked, Slava's main activities each day consist of reading the newspaper, listening to the radio, chatting with the doctors who come to check on him, and then waiting for the year-end doctor to arrive.

Director Nian's tasks were no less than Slava's. She was also receiving KGB training. When she was busy, Director Nian also had to go to East Germany to handle some matters, but she didn't go into details.

When she had free time, Director Nian would usually arrive around three o'clock in the afternoon, always carrying something in her hand—sometimes apples she'd taken from the hospital cafeteria, sometimes sausages she'd bought from a state-run store outside. Under Andropov's arrangement, she moved into a nearby KGB dormitory, a place far superior to the safe houses in Uzbekistan.

"Have you read today's Pravda?" On the afternoon of October 27th, when Director Nian came in, she had a stack of newspapers in her hands in addition to food. She threw the newspapers on Slava's quilt, dragged a chair over to sit down on the edge of the bed, and said while eating an apple, "Damn, things are getting more and more chaotic in Poland. There are troubles everywhere. When I came back, I saw that the army had entered Poland."

Slava knew that Director Nian had gone to Europe again a couple of days ago. Andropov had asked her to run errands, which was essentially to get acquainted with his inner circle of people so that it would be easier to get things done later.

"Okay, let me take a look."

Slava opened the newspaper with his left hand. The front page was about the plenary session of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, nothing more than the whitewashing rhetoric he had seen countless times before his transmigration. But his gaze quickly shifted to the international section.

News from Poland occupied almost half the page. Solidarity had officially completed its legal registration at the end of October, becoming the first legal trade union organization in Eastern Europe independent of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Lech Wałęsa's photo appeared in the newspaper, accompanied by an article stating that he was a tool of anti-socialist forces, but Slava knew that no amount of characterization could change one fact—of the twenty-one demands posted on the walls of the Gdansk shipyard in August, at least half were reasonable, and the moment the Warsaw authorities signed the Gdansk Agreement, the first visible crack appeared in the Soviet control system in Eastern Europe.

“What did Moscow say?” Slava asked.

"Moscow—cough, just kidding—what kind of reaction could there be? The same old thing, the newspapers will rant about imperialism and subversion, then the Politburo will hold a meeting to discuss whether to send troops, and after all that discussion, they'll decide the risk is too great." Director Nian chewed on an apple. "Look at the third page, there's another interesting one."

Slava flipped through two pages and came across a report about the Middle East. The headline read, "Iraqi Invaders Meet Heroic Resistance from the Iranian People"—a rather clear stance. Saddam Hussein's invasion of Iran, launched at the end of September, had entered its second month, and the war had reached a stalemate. What the newspaper didn't mention was the change in international oil prices: the Iran-Iraq War had led to a global oil supply shortage, with prices soaring from over $30 a barrel at the beginning of the year to nearly $40, and the Soviet Union happened to be one of the world's largest oil exporters.

But soon the Soviet Union was about to support Iraq. Although the stated reasons for Iraq's invasion were the chaos within the Iranian army after the 79 Iranian Revolution and the deterioration of US-Iranian relations, which Saddam Hussein saw as a golden opportunity to annex the oil-rich city of Khuzestan, and the Soviet Union's initial support for Iran stemmed from Iraq's destabilizing influence in the region—

Khomeini after the Iranian Revolution was completely different from the previous Pahlavi dynasty. The core slogan of the Islamic Revolution was "Neither East nor West, only Islam." The Soviet Union and the United States were regarded as accomplices of Satan.

Khomeini also explicitly defined communism as an atheistic heresy that should be eliminated, just like capitalism. Furthermore, after the Iranian Revolution, the Iranian Communist Party was purged, and a large number of leftists were executed. It's important to understand that a fanatical Islamic regime is more dangerous than a pro-American secular regime—because it can export revolution to Muslims within the Soviet Union.

Tens of millions of Muslims live just across the border from Iran in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, and other republics. If the effects of the Iranian revolution were to penetrate these republics, it would shake the very foundations of the Union's rule!

This is why the Soviet Union was facing two nightmares at the same time: the Afghan jihad and the Iranian Islamic Revolution, both pointing to the same threat—the erosion of the Soviet Union's southern flank by religious nationalism.

However, this is not something our protagonist should be concerned with.

“Ha, oil prices have gone up, which is good news for the league,” Slava put down his newspaper. “At least it gives us some breathing room financially.”

“It’s just a temporary boost,” Director Nian said, throwing the apple core into the trash can and picking up another newspaper—an English edition of the International Herald Tribune, which she probably got while on a business trip in Europe. “But this boost won’t last long. Take a look at this.”

She pointed to a news report about the US election. Election Day was November 4th, and polls showed Republican candidate Ronald Reagan with a significant lead over incumbent President Jimmy Carter, making a Carter victory highly unlikely.

“It wouldn’t be good for the league if Reagan came to power.” Slava took the English newspaper; several points from Reagan’s campaign platform stuck with him.

Significantly increased military spending, strengthened containment of the Soviet Union, and deployed intermediate-range missiles in Europe. These anti-Soviet remarks made by the former Hollywood actor may seem exaggerated in retrospect, but they certainly sounded different to the Soviet leadership in 1980.

“Carter wasn’t a good person either,” Director Nian said, counting on his fingers. “He was the one who allowed the entire young team to deploy military and police in the Gwangju Uprising, and he also interfered in the Afghan issue, supported Pakistan in providing weapons to jihadists, and reinstated conscription registration—all of these were his doing. But at least Carter had some sense of propriety and knew where the bottom line was when negotiating with the coalition.”

Wasn't Reagan the same?

“Reagan was a true anti-communist at heart, and he didn’t just talk the talk.” Director Nian’s expression became serious. “If he had come to power, military spending would have at least doubled, with initiatives like Star Wars and Strategic Defense Initiative, each one more expensive than the last. He was betting that the Soviet Union couldn’t keep up.”

“That’s true.” Slava leaned back on the pillow and rubbed his temples with his left hand. He knew, of course, that Reagan would come to power, and he also knew how badly US-Soviet relations would deteriorate over the next eight years.

“Brezhnev was fooled,” he whispered. “Throughout the 1970s, the Soviet Union engaged in an arms race and expanded everywhere in the Third World. On the surface, its sphere of influence expanded, but in reality, it completely drained its own economic foundation. That’s exactly the effect the Americans wanted—they didn’t need to win a hot war; they just needed to wear the Soviet Union down in the arms race.”

"Would you dare say that outside?" Director Nian raised an eyebrow.

“People outside are saying I’ve already been sent to a mental hospital.”

"So you only dare to fire your guns in front of me?"

"Otherwise, in front of whom should I put it? You're not going to give me any mental support—"

The knocking interrupted him. Director Nian and Slava exchanged a glance. She walked to the door, opened it a crack, peeked outside, and then opened it fully.

Andropov came in, and two KGB agents closed the door from the outside.

Oh no, the leader overheard my comments that were detrimental to the unity of the alliance.

Andropov was still wearing that old sweater, with a dark gray wool coat over it, unbuttoned. He was carrying a paper bag, and after entering the room, he casually draped the coat over the back of a chair.

"How are you?" He placed the paper bag on the bedside table; inside were a few oranges and a small bag of Georgian tea. "The doctor said you're recovering well?"

"It's alright, but my right hand is temporarily useless," Slava tried to raise his right arm, a dull pain coming from the wound. "I have to use my left hand to write."

“You can write with your left hand too, just practice.” Andropov sat down in the chair that Director Nian had offered him, his gaze sweeping over the newspapers scattered on the bed. “Studying the US election?”

"Just browsing."

"Tell me your thoughts." Andropov took an orange out of the paper bag, slowly peeled it, carefully removing the white pith bit by bit before breaking off a segment and putting it in his mouth.

"By the way, I'll pretend I didn't hear what you just said."

Let's play a few rounds of Egg, family.

Director Nian coughed awkwardly and spoke first: "Reagan is going to win for sure, Carter has no chance, and the gap won't be small."

“Yes, that’s our assessment too.” Andropov chewed on an orange. “What do you think Reagan will do after taking office?”

"Large-scale military expansion and an arms race," Director Nian said succinctly.

“Yes, he mentioned a concept in his campaign speeches called ‘peace through strength,’” Slava added. “It sounds nice, but it translates to the US wanting to gain an absolute military advantage over the alliance and then use that advantage to force the alliance to make concessions.”

Andropov neatly stacked the orange peels on the bedside table and took out a handkerchief to wipe his fingers.

"I just overheard your conversation. It seems you think this strategy can succeed?"

Slava hesitated for a second.

“Yes,” he said, “if we follow his pace.”

Andropov looked at him, waiting for him to continue.

"The alliance's current economic size is about 40 percent of that of the United States, but its military spending accounts for more than 15 percent of GDP, more than double that of the United States! If Reagan really doubles the US military spending, if we want to follow suit, we will have to push our military spending to 20 percent or even more than 25 percent—which means that people's livelihoods, agriculture, and light industry will all have to give way. At that time, there will be less stuff in stores, longer lines, and people's lives will be more difficult."

He paused for a moment.

"Comrade Brezhnev was engaged in an arms race with the United States throughout the 1970s, spending astronomical sums of money to build missiles, tanks, and nuclear submarines. What was the result? Militarily, we did manage to fight the United States to a standstill, but economically, we were on the verge of collapse. The Americans saw this clearly—they didn't need to fight us; they just wanted us to wear ourselves down in the arms race."

Andropov peeled the last segment of the orange but didn't answer immediately. The room was quiet for a moment, save for the sound of withered birch branches tapping softly against the windowpane in the wind.

“What you’ve said,” Andropov sighed, “does make some sense, but things aren’t as simple as you think.”

He stood up, walked to the window, and looked out at the gray sky with his hands behind his back.

“You don’t have access to as much intelligence as I do. I can see how many missiles NATO has deployed in Europe, how much money the CIA spent training those jihadists in Afghanistan, and how many Stinger missiles they received. You also haven’t seen how many Western intelligence agencies are behind Poland’s Solidarity movement.”

“I was the KGB chairman for fifteen years, and the first report I saw every morning when I opened my eyes was the military movements of the United States and NATO the previous day. You think the arms race was a trap? Young man, if we don’t engage in an arms race and don’t maintain military parity with the United States, do you think Washington will reason with us?”

"Dignity exists only on the edge of a sword. If we are weak, why should the Americans back down? We cannot always use nuclear weapons as a means of threat. The reason why a trump card is a trump card is that it cannot be used often."

Slava did not speak.

For someone who traveled from 2019, the Cold War is a narrative in a history book, with causes and effects, a beginning and an end, and can be analyzed from a godlike perspective. But for Andropov, and for any Soviet leader of that era, the Cold War was something that happened every day, tanks parked outside the window, missiles flying overhead, and the terrifying reality that any misjudgment could lead to nuclear war.

“But then again,” Andropov’s tone relaxed slightly as he sat back down in his chair, “you are right about one thing: we can’t follow the US’s lead. If Reagan launches an arms race and we try to keep up with him penny by penny, we will indeed wear ourselves out.”

He took a small medicine bottle out of his pocket, poured out two white pills and swallowed them, then took a sip of orange juice.