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by Frederick Forsyth

  An eighth and obvious target in any putsch would be the Defense Ministry. This huge gray stone building at Arbatskaya Square would also be thinly staffed, but at its heart was the communications headquarters that could speak instantly to any Army, Navy, or Air Force base in Russia. He assigned no troops to storming the place, for he had special plans for the Defense Ministry.

  Natural allies for any extreme right-wing putsch in Russia were not all that hard to find. Foremost among them was the Federal Security Service, or FSB. This was the inheritor of his own once all-powerful Second Chief Directorate, KGB, the vast organization that kept repression in the USSR at the levels demanded by the Politburo. Since the arrival of the despised theory called democracy, its old powers had waned.

  The FSB, headquartered at the famous KGB Center on Dzerzhinsky Square, now renamed Lubyanka Square, and with the equally famous and feared Lubyanka jail behind it, was still in charge of counterespionage and also contained a division devoted to combating organized crime. But the latter was not half as effective as General Petrovsky’s GUVD and had thus not generated the insistent demands for revenge from the Dolgoruki mafia.

  To assist in its labors, FSB commanded two forces of rapid reaction troops, the Alpha Group and the Vympel, Russian for “banner.”

  These two had once been the two most elite and feared of special forces units in Russia, sometimes optimistically compared to the British SAS. What had gone wrong was a question of loyalty.

  In 1991 the Defense Minister, Yazov, and the Chairman of the KGB, Kryuchkov, had mounted a coup against Gorbachev. The coup failed, although it brought Gorbachev down and Yeltsin to preeminence. Originally the Alpha Group had been part of the coup; halfway into the coup it changed its mind, allowing Boris Yeltsin to emerge from the Duma, leap onto a tank, and become a hero before the world. By the time a traumatized Gorbachev had been released from house detention in the Crimea and flown back to Moscow to find his old enemy Yeltsin in charge, question marks about the Alpha Group were hovering in the air. The same applied to Vympel.

  By 1999, both groups, heavily armed and hard fighters, were still discredited. But for Grishin they had two advantages. Like many special forces, they had a preponderance of officers and NCOs and few greenhorn privates. The veterans tended, politically, to the extreme right; anti-Semitic, anti-ethnic minority, and anti-democracy. Also, they had not been paid for six months.

  Grishin’s courtship had been like a siren’s song: restoration of the old powers of the KGB, the pampered treatment owed to a true elite, and double salaries, starting the moment of Komarov’s coup.

  On the night of New Year’s Eve, the Vympel troops were assigned to arm up, leave the barracks, proceed to the Khodinka Airfield and army base, and secure both. Alpha Group was given the Interior Ministry and the adjoining OMON barracks, with a detached company taking the SOBR barracks behind Shabolovka Street.

  On December 29, Colonel Grishin attended a meeting at the sumptuous dacha outside Moscow maintained by the Dolgoruki mafia. Here he met and addressed the Skhod, the supreme council governing the gang. For him it was a crucial conference.

  So far as the mafia was concerned, he had a lot of explaining to do. The raids conducted by General Petrovsky still stung. As paymasters they demanded an explanation. But as Grishin spoke, the mood changed. When he revealed that there had been a plan to declare Igor Komarov an unfit person to participate in the forthcoming elections, alarm took over from aggression. They all had a major stake in his electoral success.

  The body blow was Grishin’s revelation that this idea had now been superseded; the state intended to arrest Komarov and crush the Black Guards. Within an hour it was the mafiosi who were seeking advice. When he announced his intended solution, they were stunned. Gangsterism, fraud, black market, extortion, narcotics, prostitution, and murder were their specialty, but a coup d’état was high stakes indeed.

  “It is only the biggest theft of all, the theft of the republic,” said Grishin. “Deny it, and you go back to being hunted by MVD, FSB, all of them. Accept it, and the land is ours.”

  He used the word zemlya, which means the land, the country, the earth, and all that therein is.

  At the head of the table the senior of them all, an old vor v zakone, a “thief-by-statute” who had been born into the underworld like his father and all his clan, and who among the Dolgoruki was the nearest thing to the Sicilian Don-of-Dons, stared at Grishin for a long while. The others waited. Then he began to nod, his wrinkled cranium rising and falling like an old lizard signaling assent. The last funds were agreed on.

  So also was the third armed force Grishin needed. Two hundred of the eight hundred private security firms in Moscow were Dolgoruki fronts. They would provide two thousand men, all fully armed ex-soldiers or KGB hoods, eight hundred to storm, take, and hold the empty White House, home of the Duma, and twelve hundred for the presidential office and attendant ministries grouped on Staraya Ploshad, also empty on New Year’s Eve.

  ¯

  ON the same day Jason Monk called Major General Petrovsky. He was still living at the SOBR barracks.

  ‘‘Yes.”

  “It’s me again. What are you doing?”

  “What’s that to you?”

  “Are you packing?”

  “How did you know?”

  “All Russians want to spend New Year’s Eve with their families.”

  “Look, my plane leaves in an hour.”

  “I think you should cancel it. There will be other New Year’s Eves.”

  “What are you talking about, American?”

  “Have you seen the morning papers?”

  “Some. Why?”

  “The latest opinion ratings. The ones taking account of the press revelations about the UPF and Komarov’s press conference the other day. They show him at forty percent and dropping.”

  “So, he loses the election. We get Zyuganov, the neo-Communist instead. What am I supposed to do about it?”

  “Do you think Komarov will accept that? I told you once, he’s not sane.”

  “He’s going to have to accept it. If he loses in a fortnight, he’s lost. That’s it.”

  “That same night, you told me something.”

  “What?”

  “You said, if the Russian state is attacked, the state will defend itself.”

  “What the hell do you know that I don’t?”

  “I don’t know anything. I suspect. Didn’t you know suspicion is the Russian specialty?”

  Petrovsky stared at the receiver and then at his half-packed suitcase lying on the narrow bunk of the barracks room.

  “He wouldn’t dare,” he said flatly. “No one would dare.”

  “Yazov and Kryuchkov did.”

  “That was 1991. Different.”

  “Only because they made a mess of it. Why not stay in town over the holiday? Just in case.”

  Major General Petrovsky put down the phone and began to unpack.

  ¯

  GRISHIN clinched his last alliance at a meeting in a beer bar on December 30. His interlocutor was a beer-bellied cretin but the nearest thing to the commander of the street gangs of the New Russia Movement.

  Despite its portentous name, the NRM was little more than a loose grouping of tattooed, shaven-headed thugs of the ultra-right who got their income and pleasure respectively by mugging and Jew-baiting, both, as they were wont to scream at passersby, in the name of Russia.

  The block of dollars Grishin had produced lay on the table between them, and the NRM man eyed it eagerly.

  “I can get five hundred good lads any time I want,” he said. “What’s the job?”

  “I’ll give you five of my own Black Guards. You accept their combat orders or the deal’s off.”

  Combat orders sounded good. Sort of military. The embers of the NRM prided themselves on being soldiers of the New Russia, though they had never amalgamated with the UPF. The discipline was not to their liking.

  “What’s the target?”


  “New Year’s Eve, between ten and midnight. Storm, take, and hold the mayor’s office. And there’s a rule. No booze till dawn.”

  The NRM commander thought it over. Dense he may have been, but he could work out the UPF was going for the big one. About time too. He leaned across the table, his hand closing on the brick of dollars.

  “When it’s over, we get the kikes.”

  Grishin smiled.

  “My personal gift.”

  “Done.”

  They fixed details for the NRM to rendezvous in the gardens of Pushkinskaya Square, three hundred yards up the road from the mansion that housed the government of the city of Moscow. It would not look out of keeping. The square was opposite the principal McDonald’s.

  In due course, mused Grishin as he was driven away, the Jews of Moscow would indeed be taken care of, but so would the scum of the NRM. It would be amusing to put them in the same trains heading east, all the way to Vorkhuta.

  On the morning of December 31, Jason Monk called Major General Petrovsky again. He was in his office at the already half-staffed GUVD headquarters in Shabolovka Street.

  “Still at your post?”

  “Yes, damn you.”

  “Does the GUVD run a helicopter?”

  “Of course.”

  “Can it fly in this weather?”

  Petrovsky peered out the barred window at the low, lead-gray clouds.

  “Not up into that lot. But below it, I suppose.”

  “Do you know the locations of the camps of Grishin’s Black Guard around this city?”

  “No, but I can find out. Why?”

  “Why don’t you take a flight over all of them?”

  “Why should I?”

  “Well, if they are peace-loving citizens, all the barracks lights should be on, with everyone inside in the warmth, having a noggin before lunch and preparing for an evening of harmless festivities. Take a look. I’ll call you back in four hours.”

  When the callback came, Petrovsky was subdued.

  “Four of them appear closed down. His personal camp, northeast of here, is alive like an anthill. Hundreds of trucks being serviced. He seems to have moved the whole force to the one camp.”

  “Why would he do that, General?”

  “You tell me.”

  “I don’t know. But I don’t like it. It smacks of a nocturnal exercise.”

  “On New Year’s Eve? Don’t be crazy. Every Russian gets drunk on New Year’s Eve.”

  “My point exactly. Every soldier in Moscow will be plastered by midnight. Unless they are ordered to stay sober. Not a popular order, but as I said, there will be other New Year’s Eves. Do you know the commanding officer of the OMON regiment?”

  “Of course. General Kozlovsky.”

  “And the commander of the Presidential Security Guard?”

  “Yes, General Korin.”

  “Both now with their families?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Look, man to man, if the worst should happen, if Komarov should win after all, what will happen to you, your wife, and Tatiana? Worth a night of vigil? Worth a few phone calls?”

  When he had put the phone down Jason Monk took a map of Moscow and the surrounding countryside. His fingers roved over the area northeast of the capital. That was where Petrovsky had said the main UPF and Black Guard base was to be found.

  From the northeast the main highway was the Yaroslavskoye Chaussee, becoming Prospekt Mira. It was the principal artery and it ran past the Ostankino television complex. Then he picked up the telephone again.

  “Umar, my friend. I need a last favor from you. Yes, I swear it’s the last. A car with a phone and your number through the night. ... No, I don’t need Magomed and the guys. It would spoil their New Year’s Eve party. Just the car and the phone. Oh, and a handgun. If that wouldn’t pose too much of a problem.”

  He listened to the laugh down the phone.

  “Any particular kind? Well, now …”

  He thought back to Castle Forbes.

  “You wouldn’t be able to get hold of a Swiss Sig Sauer, would you?”

  CHAPTER 20

  TWO TIME ZONES TO THE WEST OF MOSCOW THE WEATHER was quite different, a bright blue sky and the temperature barely two below zero, as the Mechanic moved quietly through the woods toward the manor house.

  His preparations for his journey across Europe had been meticulous as always, and he had experienced no problems. He had preferred to drive. Guns and airliners seldom mixed, but a car had many hiding places.

  Through Belarus and Poland his Moscow-registered Volvo had attracted no attention and his papers showed he was just a Russian businessman attending a conference in Germany. A search of his car would have revealed nothing further.

  In Germany, where the Russian mafia was well established, he exchanged his Volvo for a German-registered Mercedes, and easily acquired the hunting rifle with its hollow-point ammunition and scope sight before pushing further west. Under the new dispensation of the European Community the borders were virtually nonexistent and he passed through in a column of other cars with a bored wave from a single customs officer.

  He had acquired a large-scale road map of the area he sought, identified the nearest village to the target and then the manor house itself. Passing through the village he had simply followed the signs to the entrance of the short drive, noted the signboard that confirmed he had the right address, then driven on.

  After spending most of the night in a motel fifty miles away, he had driven back before dawn but parked his car two miles away from the manor and walked the rest of the way through the woods, emerging at the edge of the tree line behind the house. As the weak wintry sun rose, he created a lying-up position at the bole of a big beech tree and settled in to wait. From where he sat he could look’ down at the house and its courtyard from three hundred yards while remaining out of sight behind the tree.

  As the landscape came alive, a cock pheasant strutted to within a few yards of him, stared at him angrily, and scurried away. Two gray squirrels played in the beech above his head.

  At nine a man emerged into the courtyard. The Mechanic raised his binoculars and adjusted the focus slightly until the figure looked to be ten feet away. It was not his target; a manservant fetched a basket of logs from a shed under the courtyard wall and went back inside.

  On one side of the courtyard was a row of stables. Two of the stalls were occupied. The heads of two large horses, a bay and a chestnut, peered over the tops of the half doors. At ten they were rewarded when a girl came out and brought them fresh hay. Then she went back inside.

  Just before midday an older man emerged, crossed the courtyard, and patted the horses’ muzzles. The Mechanic studied the face in his binoculars and glanced down at the photo in the frosty grass by his side. No mistake.

  He raised the hunting rifle and peered through the sight. The tweed jacket filled the circle. The man was facing the horses, back to the hillside. Safety catch off. Hold steady, a slow squeeze.

  The crack of the shot echoed across the valley. In the courtyard the man in tweed seemed to be pushed into the stable door. The hole in his back, at the level of the heart, was lost in the pattern of the tweed, and the exit wound was pressed against the white stable door. The knees buckled and the figure slid downward, leaving a smear on the paint. A second shot took away half the head.

  The Mechanic rose, slipped the rifle into its sheepskin-lined sleeve, slung it over his shoulder, and began to jog. He moved fast, having memorized the way he had come six hours before, the way back to his car.

  Two shots on a winter’s morning in the countryside would not be so odd. A farmer shooting rabbit or crow. Then someone would look out of the windows and run across the courtyard. There would be screams, disbelief, attempts to revive; all a waste of time. Then the run back to the house, the phone call to the police, the garbled explanation, the ponderous official inquiries. Eventually a police car would come, eventually roadblocks might be set
up.

  All too late. In fifteen minutes he was at his car, in twenty minutes moving. Thirty-five minutes after the shots he was on the nearest highway, one car among hundreds. By that time the country policeman had taken a statement and was radioing the nearest city for detectives to be sent.

  Sixty minutes after the shots the Mechanic had hefted the gun in its case over the parapet of the bridge he had selected earlier and watched it vanish in the black water. Then he began the long drive home.

  ¯

  THE first headlights came just after seven, moving slowly through the dark toward the brightly lit complex of buildings that made up the Ostankino TV center. Jason Monk sat at the wheel of his car, the engine running to charge the heater against the cold.

  He was parked just off the Boulevard Akademika Koroleva, on a side road, with the principal office building straight ahead of his windshield across the boulevard and the spire of the transmitting tower behind him. When he saw that this time the lights were not from a single car but a column of trucks, he killed the engine and the telltale plume of exhaust died away.

  There were about thirty trucks, but only three drove straight into the parking area of the main building. It was a huge structure, the base five stories high and three hundred yards wide, with two main entrances; an upper superstructure a hundred yards wide with eighteen stories. Normally eight thousand people would work in it, but on New Year’s Eve there were fewer than five hundred to ensure the service continued through the night.

  Armed men clad in black jumped out of the three parked trucks and ran straight into the two reception areas. Within seconds the frightened lobby staff were lined up against the back wall at gunpoint, clearly visible from the outer darkness. Then Monk watched them ushered away out of sight.

  Inside the main building, guided by a terrified porter, ;the point unit made straight for the switchboard room, surprising the operators while one of their number a former Telekom technician, disconnected all lines in and out.