A mane of brown hair with neatly-trimmed sideburns. A tapered face, long-nosed, with narrow lips curling into a grin.
Sokolov felt somewhat relieved. At least they hadn't made the mistake of crashing in on the wrong guy.
Lili came round just as Sokolov finished strapping his wrists and ankles together with duct tape. A terrified expression twisted his face. Sokolov almost felt sorry for him, but only until he started yelling.
“Who the hell are you! I don't have anything valuable. But you, you'll pay for this! You picked the wrong apartment to rob!” Spittle flew. “My friend works for the FSB. As soon as he comes here, he'll rip your heads off!”
“And when is he coming?”
“He should be here in a few minutes,” Lili said triumphantly.
Sokolov held the dive knife before his face. The serrated edge of its blade was as sharp and menacing as shark's teeth.
“Excellent news,” Sokolov said. “We'll definitely wait for your friend.”
With that, he cut off a piece of duct tape and put it over Lili's mouth.
8
ANTON MINSKI GROANED, RUBBING his sore neck as he sat behind the wheel of his Mini Cooper. Just two days ago, he didn't have a care in the world and now pressure was piling on him endlessly. First he received the shocking news of Fisenko/Chagin's death. He couldn't stand funerals, but there was nobody else to arrange the services for the late professor. Today, alongside other officers he had endured a grueling briefing from their superior in relation to the ongoing counter-terrorist measures. This whole terrorism business had given the FSB a jolt, and the edgy colonel was making sure all of his officers including Minski were on high alert. His schedule had been ruined because of it. He had promised to take Lili out for dinner tonight to that nice new French restaurant recommended to him by a pop starlet. Instead, they'd have to settle for a nightclub.
He reached Lili's place. The district was a hellhole. Lili was always nagging him to buy him a new condo but Minski found the current location too convenient, away from prying eyes.
Minski had his own key. He fumbled for it in the pocket of his Armani suit, opened the lock and stepped inside.
Strange. The apartment was totally dark save for some light seeping from the bedroom.
“Lili?”
Minski advanced without taking off his kangaroo-leather shoes.
“Lili!" he called. “What's the matter?”
If his boyfriend was mad at him for the canceled dinner, it was an odd way of showing it. Then he heard some stifled mumbling coming from the bedroom.
As he entered, Minski froze in disbelief. Pinpricks ran down his nape.
The muted bedside lamp illuminated Lili's figure lying flat on the floor. He was bound with duct tape, immobilized and gagged. Sweat beaded his face. His eyes bulged.
Sitting motionless on the edge of Lili's bed was a man dressed in a trench coat. He had a nonchalant air about him, but his gray eyes reflected the dark intensity of storm clouds. His left foot rested on Lili's stomach. He kept his hands in his lap, holding a Kedr submachine gun.
Minski backed away toward the exit, only to receive a strong shove in his spine. He staggered, pushed by a second man who blocked the way out.
“Hello, Anton,” said the man in the trench coat. “Do you recognize me?”
The quiet voice chilled Minski to the core. Of course he remembered him. The sandy hair was shorter, the face more careworn, the body leaner but it was him. Someone whom he had encountered years ago. Someone whose file he had had to study today during the briefing. Minski swallowed.
“Yes, I remember you,” he said. “You are Constantine Sokolov. The man from al-Qaeda.”
9
CONSTANTINE'S FACE BETRAYED NO emotion, but his blood was boiling.
“What else do you know about me?”
“Your code name is Imran. You are the one of the world's most dangerous terrorists. You masterminded the Theater Drive and Arbat bombings. It is believed that you and your brother are plotting new attacks. Every FSB operative in the country has received instructions that you must be terminated with extreme prejudice. Bit by bit, the Counter-Terrorism Department has put together the full record of your activities. You're a Wahhabi extremist, financed by Sheikh Mahmoud Abdul-Kader of Saudi—”
“Enough!”
Constantine gripped the gun handle tightly. Arab sheikhs? Al-Qaeda and Wahhabism? Preposterous!
They had constructed a hideous, absurd lie—but he would turn it against them. The fictitious story of Imran induced fear, and it was a weapon more powerful than the Kedr in his hands.
He studied Minski. His eyes showed nothing but panic. The arrogant young informant had matured into a sleek, complacent bureaucrat. Despite nominally being branded an FSB 'officer' Minski had never done any real work and was oblivious of tradecraft. He seemed more interested in designer shirts. The sight of Constantine petrified him.
“What do you want from me?” Minski pleaded. The large Adam's apple bobbed up and down his long neck.
“The Red List.”
Minski blanched.
“I have nothing to do with it, I swear!”
“But you learned enough about it from Chagin. That's all I want. Then we'll leave. You have my word. However, if I decide that your information is insufficient, I will shoot you.”
“Please … I beg you … Not in front of Philip.” There was desperation in his voice.
Constantine gestured to Eugene.
“Take him away.”
Knife metal flashed.
Eugene slashed the tape securing Lili's legs, propped him up onto his feet and led him away to the bathroom. The sound of water rushing from the tap became audible.
Constantine and Minski remained alone, one-on-one.
“Well? The Red List,” Constantine said. “I want you to tell me everything you know about that organization.”
Minski swallowed again nervously and shook his head.
“It's not an organization.”
“What is it, then?”
“Exactly what the designation suggests. It's a list. A list of names. Thousands of names.”
“A structure? The set-up of some network?”
“No. There is no hierarchy. The names are not directly connected. As far as I know, the list is broken into parts.”
Constantine was confused.
“What purpose does it serve? Is it connected with the Golden Fleece? A catalog of artifacts?”
Minski did not raise an eyebrow at the mention of the Scythian treasures.
“The Golden Fleece was just a nice distraction for Chagin,” he said. “The Red List enumerates personal names, belonging to real people. The reason for its existence is control. Personal accountability. There are many databases identifying those killed under Stalin. The Red List identifies the killers. Those who actually effected Stalin's orders.”
Constantine felt as if he had struck by electricity. His breath was cut short.
Minski shrugged. “I know nothing else. Chagin told me that Nina stole some documents relating to it. I suspect that she did it for you, being your accomplice. I have no idea why the Red List is important to you, and I'm not interested in knowing. For me, it's ancient history which is irrelevant. I don't deal with classified documents. You can kill me like you killed Chagin, but you won't find what you're looking for here.”
Minski feigned ignorance of the active neo-Bolshevik cabal or its role in the bombings. It didn't matter to Constantine. He had already discovered everything he was after. He stared Minski in the eye and realized that the FSB man was fully aware of the official 'al-Qaeda' version being fake. But the paralyzing fear stilled gripped him. It was palpable. Imran the phantom terrorist did not intimidate Minski, though. Minski was afraid of the real Constantine Sokolov, avenging Nina's death. Scared out of his wits.
“This morning, my friend Pavel Netto was arrested. He must be released tomorrow.”
“I … I'll do what I can.”
&
nbsp; “No, you'll get it done. Or else I will come back and kill you and your boyfriend.”
Constantine got up, motioning to Eugene that it was time to make their exit. As he left Minski alone in the bedroom, he paused in the doorway and asked, “Which part of the Red List was Chagin responsible for?”
The answer came like a punch in the gut. The words rang in his head as he rushed outside.
“Operation Keelhaul.”
10
CONSTANTINE COULDN'T WAIT TO get back to the Land Rover. The ground was slipping from under his feet. For him, the information on the Red List was overwhelming. Even incomplete, the jigsaw puzzle had been assembled to present a gut-wrenching picture.
They descended the stairs rapidly and traversed the short distance to their car. Compelled to act, Constantine felt completely lost as though caught in a whirlwind. He needed motion of some sort to clear his thoughts. The conversation with Minski had shaken him. For the first time in his life, he was hit with a revelation so profound that it rocked him physically inside, sending icy waves that washed over his body.
Eugene started the engine and navigated the Wolf to the main road. They cruised the streets aimlessly for several minutes.
“You look like you've seen a ghost,” Eugene said.
“More than one.”
“Can you tell me what Operation Keelhaul is?”
Constantine drew a deep breath, not knowing where to start.
Compared to this, the Golden Fleece seemed a minor distraction indeed.
“Have you ever heard about the Victims of Yalta?”
Eugene answered in the negative.
“All right, I'll put it this way,” Constantine said. “Before the fall of the USSR, do you remember all those bureaucratic forms that our parents had to fill out constantly?”
“Of course. The Soviet bureaucracy was tireless. Everyone had to answer questionnaires.”
“Almost without exception, these forms contained an additional question: Did you remain located in Nazi-occupied territories?”
“That's right. Our father made great fun of it, given that the very same forms required him to provide his date of birth. And in 1950 even as a toddler he had no chance of remaining in Nazi-occupied territories.”
“My question is, decades after the war, what made the Soviets so afraid of that? What should they have done to their people before the war that they suspected Nazi collaborators in every man, woman and child who happened to end up behind the front line? That totaled eighty million Soviet civilians left behind as the Germans marched towards Moscow.”
“You mean, what could make an entire population feel that Stalin's peace was worse than Hitler's war?”
The words lingered in the air.
“The fact is,” Constantine said. “That the Civil War—the one fought between the Soviets and the Russians—has never had an official end date. There is no treaty between any sides to cease hostilities. Its conclusion cannot be pinpointed to 1920, '23, or any other time and place. In reality, it went on until the Second World War—and continued beyond. Decossackisation. Artificial famine resulting in holodomor. The Great Terror, the purges, the concentration camps… The Bolsheviks waged their war by mass murder. At the start of the Second World War, they didn't just maintain their reign of terror, they expanded it. Don't forget that together with Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union instigated the war, attacking Poland, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. But when one aggressor turned against his ally and Hitler stabbed Stalin in the back, the Bolsheviks ran for their lives. The Red Army disintegrated on the spot. The Communist commanders fled to save their skins, and the ordinary soldiers refused to fight for the kolkhoz and the gulag enslaving their families.”
“So the Soviet leaders basically threw millions of civilians to Hitler's mercy… and then blamed the innocent people whom they had abandoned,” Eugene said with contempt.
“Not only that—Stalin ruled that the forsaken millions must be punished. For daring to survive outside his whim. By 1945, over five million Russian refugees had flooded Europe, escaping from the war zone and the merciless Red commissars who followed the front line as it swung back West. During the Yalta Conference, Stalin posed an ultimatum to the Allies. All of the Russian Displaced Persons had to return to the USSR. Churchill and Roosevelt eagerly accepted the terms. Thus from the secret agreement in Yalta hatched Operation Keelhaul,” Constantine concluded. “Operation Keelhaul was the forceful repatriation of the Russians. It doomed them to perish at the hands of the Bolsheviks. Some were murdered immediately in the Austrian forests, some died years later in Stalin's camps. The handover included every Russian bar none—even those who had never been Soviet citizens, the old White émigrés who were Stalin's foes. If it hadn't been for Operation Keelhaul, his deadly tentacles would never have reached them.”
“Foreign nationals,” Eugene breathed. “That includes Adrian Sokolov.”
“I'm sure of it. Adrian and Grigory had fallen victim to the last secret of the Second World War. They were among the Victims of Yalta. That is why their files are classified to this day. Even in death, they are dangerous to those who protect the Red List. Their truth would make Communist restoration impossible, because it ends the myth of Stalin's 'great' and 'patriotic' war, exposing for what it is—a disgraceful list of Bolshevik crimes.”
“As a result of one criminal agreement, the Poles were massacred in Katyn,” Eugene mused. “An accord in 1945 sent the Russians to hundreds of Katyns. And the Red List places an individual name against each executioner?”
“Personal accountability,” Constantine said, echoing Minski. “Evidence for a trial against Communism.”
Supporting the prosecution would be two silent witnesses, Adrian and Grigory Sokolov. Constantine tried to visualize their faces, but no features emerged from the haze of his imagination. He had nothing to go by, deprived of the knowledge what his forefathers had looked like. Their images remained locked in a file somewhere.
Yet had the object which, despite a century's age, established a direct bond with the past, transferred from Adrian's hands.
From his trench coat he extracted the presentation case of red leather.
He opened the small box. Resting inside, the white St. George's cross gleamed. The weathered enamel caught reflections off the street lights.
“We must obtain the files at any cost,” said Eugene. “Chagin never recovered them. Nina had them hidden somewhere out of reach. But she's only made one trip outside Russia, to France—” He broke off in mid-sentence and turned sharply to Constantine.
The Land Rover decelerated.
“My God,” Constantine uttered. He examined the case. Carefully, he held the gold-and-black ribbon, taking out the medal. The case was empty but for the padded insert. He removed it.
Underneath it, taped to the inside of the case, was a micro memory card.
“Here it is.”
He peeled off the tape and held the memory card between his fingers.
“The Red List.”
11
THE LAND ROVER WOLF served as their hideout and base of operations. Away from the bleak industrial districts, they reached the highway and left the city behind. For the layover, Sokolov chose the parking lot of a 24-hour hypermarket. It was a little after midnight and the enormous open space was virtually empty. He failed to spot any security cameras in the vicinity, but still pulled his hood up as he climbed out to retrieve the laptop.
It was a Getac B300, built to military standards and perfect for EMERCOM field operations. Next to other 13-inch laptops which were considered ultra-portables, this ultra-rugged model was extremely thick and heavy. The laptop's solid feel pleased Sokolov. And despite the toughness—and the design features—of an armored briefcase, the Getac boasted state-of-the-art specs and unparalleled battery life.
It came with a magnesium alloy docking station which Sokolov also fetched. He mounted it on the Wolf's dashboard, inserted the Getac and hit the power button. After the
laptop had booted, he inserted the memory card into the SD slot.
The operating system recognized the card instantly, and a file manager window popped up atop the hi-res EMERCOM logo wallpaper. The card contained a folder and a video clip. Both of the icons were labeled CONSTANTINE.
Sokolov double-clicked on the movie file.
It was a self-recorded phone video. Nina held the camera aimed at her face, gorgeous as ever. The poor lighting couldn't conceal her beauty; her radiant eyes, perfect cheekbones and natural, rosy lips.
She paused for a beat, making sure that the camera was recording before she spoke.
“Together with this video, you will find certain files stored on the same card. These are the document scans that I made at the FSB Archives. The files contain the entire known history of the Sokolov family. Most of all, these documents describe the way in which Adrian and Grigory Sokolov met their end… and identify their murderers. I've also included many other names of those involved in the Communist crimes. They themselves call it the Red List. I have only seen the part largely relating to the Second World War, but there are others, connecting various periods. Some of these criminals who are still alive, or their descendants, have formed a terrorist group trying to seize power.”
Her eyes shimmered with moisture.
“I would have wanted to show you the Sokolov files in person … but if you're watching this video, it must have been impossible. I love you.”
Holding back tears, she ended the recording.
Constantine stared at the screen long after it had gone blank. Teardrops streaked his cheeks. He sat silent and motionless.
12
ADRIAN CONSTANTINOVICH SOKOLOV, COSSACK of the Starocherkasskaya stanitsa of the Don Cossack host, graduated from the Nicholas Cavalry School in St. Petersburg with flying colors. Wearing the Cossack uniform of the Imperial Russian Army, he looked like he had been born just for that honor. The olive-green military tunic fit him as if tailored for his athletic figure. Ramrod-straight, wiry, without an ounce of fat. A confident stance even posing for a photo, his hands held behind his back, his feet at shoulder-width. Tucked into high boots, the dark blue breeches with scarlet strapping accentuated his physical fitness.
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