Leningrad Deception

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.© 2021 Richard C. G. LynttonPublished by Malchik MediaAll rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, scanned, uploaded, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.ISBNs:979-8-9860794-1-7 (eBook)979-8-9860794-2-4 (paperback)978-1-959755-01-2 (hardback)978-1-959755-02-9 (audiobook)Library of Congress Control Number: 2022908433Second publication/printing.Cover and map design by Jae SongInterior design by Gary A. Rosenberg • thebookcouple.comEditing by Candace Johnson • Change It Up Editing, Inc. Thanks in advance for reading LENINGRAD DECEPTION  Enjoy North Korea Deception and Hyde Park Deceptionavailable now in The Deception Series:https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08LDR8RW2Follow this link for THE DECEPTION SERIES book trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUnIz_M63NkVisit https://richardlynttonbooks.com/contactfor more information and to join our FREE Reader Regiment newsletter (click the black JOIN NOW button). As always, for my wife, Michelle Wenitsky, and my sons, Stefan and Blake “General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”—RONALD REAGAN, BERLIN, JUNE 12, 1987 ContentsForewordProloguePART 1Chapter OneChapter TwoChapter ThreeChapter FourChapter FiveChapter SixChapter SevenChapter EightChapter NineChapter TenChapter ElevenChapter TwelveChapter ThirteenChapter FourteenChapter FifteenChapter SixteenChapter SeventeenChapter EighteenPART 2Chapter NineteenChapter TwentyChapter Twenty-OneChapter Twenty-TwoChapter Twenty-ThreeChapter Twenty-FourChapter Twenty-FiveChapter Twenty-SixChapter Twenty-SevenChapter Twenty-EightChapter Twenty-NineChapter ThirtyChapter Thirty-OneChapter Thirty-TwoChapter Thirty-ThreeChapter Thirty-FourChapter Thirty-FiveChapter Thirty-SixChapter Thirty-SevenChapter Thirty-EightPART 3Chapter Thirty-NineChapter FortyChapter Forty-OneChapter Forty-TwoChapter Forty-ThreeChapter Forty-FourChapter Forty-FiveChapter Forty-SixChapter Forty-SevenChapter Forty-EightChapter Forty-NineChapter FiftyChapter Fifty-OneChapter Fifty-TwoChapter Fifty-ThreeChapter Fifty-FourChapter Fifty-FiveChapter Fifty-SixChapter Fifty-SevenChapter Fifty-EightChapter Fifty-NineChapter SixtyAcknowledgmentsAbout the Author ForewordThe Berlin Wall was built by the Communist government in East Germany in August 1961 to keep Germans from escaping from Communist-dominated East Berlin into Democratic West Berlin. The twelve-foot concrete wall extended for a hundred miles, surrounding West Berlin, and included electrified fences and guard posts. The wall stood as a stark symbol of the decades-old Cold War between the United States and Soviet Russia, in which the two politically opposed superpowers wrestled for omniscient supremacy, stopping just short of actual warfare. In the author’s opinion, it marks the beginning and sews the proverbial seeds for the invasion of Ukraine by Russia on February 24, 2022.This speech by President Ronald Reagan to the people of West Berlin contains one of the most memorable lines of his presidency. (Abridged).“Chancellor Kohl, Governing Mayor Diepgen, ladies and gentlemen: Twenty-four years ago, President John F. Kennedy visited Berlin, speaking to the people of this city and the world at the City Hall. Well, since then two other presidents have come, each in his turn, to Berlin. And today I, myself, make my second visit to your city.“Behind me stands a wall that encircles the free sectors of this city, part of a vast system of barriers that divides the entire continent of Europe. From the Baltic, south, those barriers cut across Germany in a gash of barbed wire, concrete, dog runs, and guard towers. Farther south, there may be no visible, no obvious wall. But there remain armed guards and checkpoints all the same—still a restriction on the right to travel, still an instrument to impose upon ordinary men and women the will of a totalitarian state. Yet it is here in Berlin where the wall emerges most clearly; here, cutting across your city, where the news photo and the television screen have imprinted this brutal division of a continent upon the mind of the world. Standing before the Brandenburg Gate, every man is a German, separated from his fellow men. Every man is a Berliner, forced to look upon a scar.“President von Weizsäcker has said, ‘The German question is open as long as the Brandenburg Gate is closed.’ Today I say: As long as the gate is closed, as long as this scar of a wall is permitted to stand, it is not the German question alone that remains open, but the question of freedom for all mankind. From devastation, from utter ruin, you Berliners have, in freedom, rebuilt a city that once again ranks as one of the greatest on earth.“In the 1950s, Khrushchev predicted: ‘We will bury you.’ But in the West today, we see a free world that has achieved a level of prosperity and well-being unprecedented in all human history. In the Communist world, we see failure, technological backwardness, declining standards of health, even want of the most basic kind—too little food. Even today, the Soviet Union still cannot feed itself. After these four decades, then, there stands before the entire world one great and inescapable conclusion: Freedom leads to prosperity. Freedom replaces the ancient hatreds among the nations with comity and peace. Freedom is the victor.“And now the Soviets themselves may, in a limited way, be coming to understand the importance of freedom. We hear much from Moscow about a new policy of reform and openness. Some political prisoners have been released. Certain foreign news broadcasts are no longer being jammed. Some economic enterprises have been permitted to operate with greater freedom from state control.“Are these the beginnings of profound changes in the Soviet state? Or are they token gestures, intended to raise false hopes in the West, or to strengthen the Soviet system without changing it? We welcome change and openness; for we believe that freedom and security go together, that the advance of human liberty can only strengthen the cause of world peace. There is one sign the Soviets can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance dramatically the cause of freedom and peace.“General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!Beginning ten years ago, the Soviets challenged the Western alliance with a grave new