It will, its author claims, be the most sensational book to be published about Russia since the dismantling of the Soviet Union. Gen Alexander Korzhakov, the former KGB officer who headed President Boris Yeltsin's 16,000-strong corps of bodyguards, was closer than anyone to the centre of power in the Kremlin. He now openly despises his former master and has vowed to display all of Mr Yeltsin's dirty linen to an eager public in Russia and the West when his book, From Dawn to Dusk, is published later this year. Gen Korzhakov was so close to Mr Yeltsin that he was believed to have a Rasputin-like hold over the President; to the Yeltsin grandchildren he was known as Uncle Misha, and to the presidential entourage he was terror incarnate.
Important officials, even the President's chief-of-staff, Mr Sergei Filatov, complained that Gen Korzhakov had their phones tapped. Leading apparatchiks left their offices when they wanted to discuss important subjects and went for long strolls in the open air in order not to be bugged.
If there was anything to be known about the Yeltsin administration there is no doubt that Gen Korzhakov knew it. He was on the plane at Shannon, for example, when the then Taoiseach, Mr Albert Reynolds, waited in vain to meet Mr Yeltsin and in an excerpt from the forthcoming book, purchased by the Sunday Times, he claims that Mr Yeltsin's absence was caused, not by vodka, but by a bout of heart trouble.
Since that extract was published, Gen Korzhakov, at a Moscow press conference, elaborated a little more on the Shannon incident. In response to a question posed off-microphone by a Russian journalist, he replied: "You're right. He had a bout. But that bout had been preceded by something."
The answer fits in well with this correspondent's experience. On the night before the Shannon episode, I was in the small town of Novi Afon, in the breakaway region of Abkhazia. The hills were still full of armed bands who had fought in the recent local war in which the local Abkhaz
had routed their former Georgian masters.
It was extremely unsafe to be out at night and I found myself, in the company of a British correspondent, watching some rather boring programmes on Russian TV.
An unscheduled and unannounced programme late at night showed Mr Yeltsin being interviewed in the US by three Russian journalists, before he boarded the plane for Shannon. Having watched just a few minutes of Mr Yeltsin's performance, the British journalist and I decided to head for the Russian border and a Western-owned hotel in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, where a reliable telephone system was installed.
The Russian President was behaving in bizarre fashion, gesticulating dramatically, slurring his words and making menacingly aggressive statements. At one stage, he pointed a finger at a questioner and said: "I am the President Russia. Understand?" We both felt that a debacle at Shannon was on the cards and that our offices would demand background articles on Mr Yeltsin's bizarre behaviour in the past. We were right.
If the failure to leave the plane was genuinely due to illness it would appear that this illness might have been brought on Mr Yeltsin by something else.
That Shannon incident, by the way, was regarded as being of major political importance in Russia. It is still frequently referred to, not only by Mr Yeltsin's political enemies but also by ordinary Russians who felt a sense of shame at what happened at Shannon and also at Mr Yeltsin's attempts earlier to conduct a military band in Germany.
The Irish Times Moscow office received a number of phone calls immediately afterwards from ordinary Russians who wanted to apologise for the actions, or more precisely the inaction, of their President.
THE really damaging parts of Gen Korzhakov's book, however, are likely to be directed not at Mr Yeltsin, who cannot stand for a third term as President, but at those members of the Yeltsin entourage who may harbour ambitions to succeed him.
The current Kremlin strong man, Mr Anatoly Chubais, is so universally unpopular in Russia that he is unlikely to be elected to any position, but it seems likely he will be targeted all the same. The young deputy premier, Mr Boris Nemtsov, from Nizhny Novgorod, is already beginning to lose his lustre following allegations of closer than healthy links with rich Russian bankers.
Gen Korzhakov knows enough to sink any presidential hopeful he wants to. Officially he is now an ally of the sacked security chief, Gen Alexander Lebed, but the man most likely to benefit from any damage to the image of Mr Yeltsin's supporters is undoubtedly the Mayor of Moscow, Mr Yuri Luzhkov.
A man of enormous energy and no small ego, Mr Luzhkov has of late been devoting his attentions to national as well as local issues. A sycophantic movie based on his life has recently been released and, on September 7th, he will preside over the biggest extravaganza Russia has seen since the Soviet Union was dissolved, when Moscow celebrates the 850th anniversary of its foundation. An old friend of Gen Korzhakov's, Mr Yeltsin's former tennis coach, Mr Shamil Tarpishchev, has already been installed in the Luzhkov camp.
