Scoop on 'Operation Nose'

One of the more remarkable events of recent days was the swift recovery of Defense Minister Pavel Grachev, who, as you will recall, was struck down by a mystery illness only days after being congratulated by the Security Council for the success of his military operation in Chechnya.


There has been much speculation as to the nature and cause of this illness. My personal theory is that it was simply shock, occasioned by that very Security Council meeting. Not that Grachev scares easily -- he is, after all, a military man, a veteran of the Afghan war, to whom the crash of artillery and the whoosh of Katyushas are as much a part of life as Moscow traffic. No point in sneaking up behind him and bursting a paper bag.


But picture the scene, just before that Security Council meeting. Even the steely paratrooper general was feeling a bit unnerved. All the way to the Kremlin he had been preparing himself for what was bound to be a pretty unpleasant session. And when he got there, the others were all waiting out in the lobby and nobody would say a word to him. Still, he had faced worse in his time. He would see it through.


And then the next thing he knew, Yeltsin was clapping him on the back and punching him playfully, if numbingly, on the arm -- they were actually congratulating him for the mess he had made in Chechnya. It was probably all too much. By the time he got home, his head was spinning. Then flashing blue lights, oxygen mask clamped against his face and the bumpy ambulance ride down Rublyovskoye Shosse to Kuntsevo, through the steel gates and into the soothing embrace of the TsKB, the Central Clinical Hospital, better known as the Kremlyovka.


The Kremlyovka has been responsible for easing the aches and pains of Moscow's most powerful since the early days of communist power. At that time, it was actually located inside the Kremlin, the better to act at its masters' behest. But well equipped as it was, it was not necessarily such a great privilege to be treated there. Mikhail Frunze -- he of the embankment -- commander of the southern Red Army during the Civil War and one-time contender for power during Lenin's fading years, was done to death on one of its operating tables in 1925.


But in the modern age, under the smooth administration of the fourth directorate of the KGB, it became much more benign. Leonid Brezhnev spent much of his time there in his latter years; it was virtually home for his next two successors as General Secretary, Yury Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko.


In those days of gerontocracy, the wards were kept constantly busy by a never-ending stream of doddering old men, with nurses and doctors kept on the hop by unceasing demands for bedpans, wheelchairs and pacemaker batteries. But the cult of youth pursued by Mikhail Gorbachev brought quieter times and the hospital was able to settle down once again to a more appropriate ambience of dignified tranquility.


Or so it was until the beginning of December. The first sign that something was afoot was a memorandum that announced that the running of the hospital, hitherto the responsibility of the government, was henceforth being taken over directly by the president's administration.


The reason soon became apparent. On Dec. 11, Russian tanks began rolling across the borders of Chechnya toward Grozny. A few hours earlier, a smaller, but no less significant group of vehicles, slipped through the Kremlyovka gates. Operation Nose had begun, apparently a complicated campaign because it kept President Boris Yeltsin incarcerated for over a week.


What the hospital actually did with Yeltsin's septum will doubtless remain hidden behind the Hippocratic Oath. Nasally, he appeared unaltered by the operation, inasmuch as one can judge by his rare television appearances. But they provided an invaluable service in keeping him out of sight, reach and responsibility during 12 very rough days.


It was an example quickly picked up by Yeltsin's underlings. In the last few weeks, a succession of highly placed patients has arrived at the hospital. First came Nationalities Minister Nikolai Yegorov, Yeltsin's special representative in Chechnya and favorite for the role of scapegoat. He was followed by Finance Minister Vladimir Panskov, a man with hundreds of reasons to keep his head down.


And then Grachev with his mystery ailment -- and his even more mysterious recovery. Or is it just that he doesn't like hospital food?