Ask No Mercy

by Martin Österdahl

  “The Goose has arrived,” said Max.

  70

  Pashie made a new attempt to lift her head. She was so terribly cold; she probably wouldn’t have survived if her body hadn’t been full of vodka.

  It couldn’t be long now before the sun disappeared behind the walls of the building. Then the moisture from the Baltic would cool her down again.

  On either side of her, on the walls of the shed, she saw scrape marks in the brownish-yellow slime. Had someone hung here before her? Had hunger and thirst driven a woman like her to scrape her teeth against the slime?

  What kind of prison pit was she in? It reminded her of things she’d heard about the Gulag archipelago.

  What was that?

  Something had touched her.

  Something was alive in the water-filled pit in which she was submerged—tiny creatures, like the young of some animal. But also something bigger. Something slipped past her, bumping against her body, against her shin and thigh. Suddenly this touching became a nibbling. Panic seized her, and she pulled herself up by her arms, kicked around wildly in the water. Hyperventilated.

  She couldn’t hold herself up forever. The strength in her arms gradually decreased, and she had no choice but to let the lower part of her body sink into the yellow-green soup once again.

  Then it came back.

  She didn’t want to think about what could be sharing the pit with her. When the nibbling began again, she no longer had the energy to fight back.

  We were going to go there together, to Thailand, to Bangkok, where people put their feet in fish tanks. Do you remember when we talked about that? One of many things we were going to do when we were done fixing things, when we were done with the injustice and the rootlessness. When we could dare to invest in each other, make a new start, build our own secure foundation. A family.

  Max. If the sun is to shine on me again, you’re going to have to hurry.

  Thirst took over her consciousness. She licked the walls of the shed for the sake of a little moisture from the dew. Her tongue was swollen and as hard as leather. Her mouth felt like sandpaper. A fever pounded in her head.

  Lazarev had come out and stood in front of her. She had somehow acquired new strength when she had heard the door with the frosted glass open and seen him approaching. Earlier, she had felt herself slowly going numb. Hate had given her new strength; she wanted to see the day that swine would pay.

  Lazarev had opened her blouse and looked at her breasts. She had pretended to be unconscious so he wouldn’t subject her to anything else. This tactic had worked; he hadn’t shown any great interest in her. But if he or his friends tried to force themselves on her, she would do anything to keep them from getting what they wanted. She would mobilize her last strength to resist them, to hurt them.

  You won’t have me.

  She belonged to one man only.

  The rising wind brought sounds to her from the other side of the building. She heard car doors opening and closing again. Deep voices greeting each other in Russian.

  His friends in the organization.

  Pashie felt her whole body suddenly start to shake.

  If she fell asleep now, she might not wake up again. The men’s voices became louder, approached her.

  You won’t have me.

  I’d rather die.

  71

  How would they react to having been brought together now? When they realized who the others in the organization were? When his own identity was confirmed?

  Nestor Lazarev observed his guests. He had chosen the site with care; this was his old domain. No one knew the area better than he; this was where he and his subordinates had trained hundreds of the best men in the Red Army during the dark period of his life when his identity had been as secret as this facility.

  This place was their link to the man they still served. Few men had stood so close to Stalin and survived. Lazarev hadn’t just lived close to Stalin; he had bloomed at his side.

  Reopening the rooms of the Colony Field would make it possible for Lazarev to determine who had been corrupted and who was still of pure faith. He didn’t let them into his private office, but on the way he pointed it out and made sure they all saw the door and the painting that hung beside it.

  Do you have any idea how I had to fight to save that door from the residence in Kuntsevo, the one that led to his room—how I have hidden it and kept its existence a secret for all these years? From men like Molotov and Beria?

  He studied them closely as they passed. Which of them recognized the door?

  Where were you that night, on the first of March 1953? Do you remember the early hours of the second of March, when the panicked Lozgachov used the private telephone in the bedroom to call the doctors? When they found that he had suffered a stroke, and his double, Dadayev, was called in?

  Where were you on the fifth of March, exactly forty-three years ago? When the citizens of the empire were mute with sorrow and neither ate nor went to the toilet?

  Only seventy-four years old. Think what they could have achieved together if the doctors hadn’t been so incompetent.

  He remembered Levitan’s voice on the radio; every word was burned into his memory forever. “With deep sorrow, the Central Committee of the Communist Party, the Council of Ministers, and the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR must inform the party and all workers that on the fifth of March, at ten minutes to ten in the evening, Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin, the General Secretary of the Communist Party and Chairman of the Council of Ministers, passed away after a period of serious illness. The heart that had belonged to Lenin’s closest colleague, to the follower of the genius of Lenin’s work, the wise leader and teacher of the Communist Party and the Soviet people, stopped beating.”

  People had been trampled to death when the grieving masses grew too large. How many had died that day? Hundreds. In the schools of the empire, the children had stood in the corridors and sobbed.

  Even today, the day of his death was a greater tragedy than the Great Patriotic War.

  He wasn’t just my father. He was the father of all of us.

  Did you ever stand outside this door, with your heart hammering in your chest, with that tickling feeling in your fingertips, with your lungs so full of air that you felt stronger than ever, lighter than ever, as if you could fly?

  Lazarev led his guests deeper into the hangar. He said nothing to them when they passed the old airplanes he’d restored and put in place, two Ilyushin Shturmovik ground-attack planes and a DB3 long-range bomber.

  He led them into the meeting room, a simple room separated from the rest of the hangar by a thick glass wall. Were they too much creatures of comfort to meet here? Did the smell of gasoline and lubricant make them uneasy? Or did it have the opposite effect—did it fill them with confidence and hope? With a longing for war?

  They took their places at the improvised conference table, which was constructed from simple workbenches. They studied the maps of Russia and Western Europe Lazarev had put up.

  They were all military leaders who had been attracted by what Lazarev had spoken of and was striving to achieve: the restoration of the Soviet Union as it had existed under Stalin. So much had been lost; there had been so many years of catastrophic reforms and traitors, from Khrushchev and Brezhnev to Gorbachev, who had finally dissolved the union. Yeltsin’s crime was unforgivable. He had realized this himself, and this was why he was drinking himself to death before he could be deposed and put on trial.

  Lazarev had first come in contact with these men in connection with Tichakov’s inquiry regarding a mission in Prague in 1968. Step by step, that beginning had led to this organization and this day. Lazarev had realized that he was not alone in his despair over the decay of the empire. There were other right-thinking and powerful people within the armed forces who would not let themselves be stopped by the political order, or rather lack of order, of the day.

  The group had helped Lazarev invest in the radio license. He h
ad succeeded in convincing them that their economic power would be much greater if it was united, and that a consumer-oriented company in a fast-growing sector could help them launder their war booty into clean money.

  The plan was simple. By avoiding taxation, the business could grow at rocket speed and then become a publicly traded company. The sums the organization would subsequently have at its disposal would be larger by orders of magnitude; their own fortunes would be small potatoes in comparison. Such a collective fortune could make a real difference. They would be able to buy advanced technology and weapons. Establish a military force strong enough to back up and focus their scattered political actions.

  Ivanovich. A unifying force that could restore the Soviet Union as a superpower.

  Lazarev let the round of presentations begin. Those present updated each other on how developments were going in their respective areas. The reporting progressed from east to west so he himself would have the last word.

  The next-to-last speaker was Bykov, who was former defense minister Yazov’s sister’s son and a strongman in Tula Oblast. An agent in his department had established contact with a group of Chechens who had acquired two OTR-23 Oka short-range mobile ballistic missiles, complete with nuclear warheads. He named the price the Chechens demanded, and it provoked a good deal of anger and murmuring around the table. Lazarev sat silently, met Bykov’s gaze, and nodded.

  The Russian spiders belong to us. We will take back our missiles and fill the Chechen scum with lead.

  When Bykov had finished, they all looked expectantly at Lazarev. He waited a moment to make sure he had everyone’s attention, then stood up.

  “I praise you for your contributions,” he began. “Today we begin our journey toward the realization of our ultimate vision. This charade of a presidential election is a perfect distraction. Let the Western powers dangle their monetary policies in front of people, and let the populace focus on the fabricated lie of freedom to vote. We have now secured our positions and real power over the nation. We are ready to take control of the future.”

  “But are we really?” asked Kolymin, who was from Kurgan in the south.

  Kolymin was thoughtful and intelligent. It was he who had come up with the idea of using old Soviet retirees and their tax-exempt status to solve the problem of import taxes on cellular telephones. Intellectually strong but of little faith.

  “Haven’t we all heard the latest reports about how the Western world has changed position and now backs Yeltsin wholeheartedly again?” Kolymin continued. “About the support from the World Bank and the shameless plan to finance his election campaign? About how what started with the oligarchs’ initiative in Davos has now acquired such tremendous momentum? Many people I speak to are worried that with the media and popular culture behind him, and with the CIA infiltrating and controlling the election process, the traitor Boris Nikolayevich is going to end up the victor.”

  “What do you think is the shortest path to reestablishing totalitarian power in this country?” asked Lazarev. “Going through the broken, thoroughly compromised Communist Party led by the weakling Zyuganov? Do you think that would lead to anything resembling the major power you and I want Russia to become again? Can you see that happening in our lifetimes?”

  Kolymin stared at him. “Do we want Yeltsin to win the election?”

  “Yeltsin signed the Davos pact with his own alcohol-poisoned blood. He is only a tool, and he knows it. His successor has already been chosen.”

  Silence spread around the table. Those who did not have knowledge of this particular matter looked for the identity of the successor among those assembled at the table.

  “He is not here tonight,” said Lazarev. “But he is in our city.”

  Tichakov nodded.

  Lazarev walked around the long table to the opposite side of the room and stood in front of the maps on the wall. His long index finger pointed at the region of greatest interest.

  “Together, these small regions have the same GNP as all of Russia today. They are all defenseless and more or less in negotiations with NATO.”

  “But we’ve only begun to rebuild our military power base within the borders of the union,” said Kolymin.

  “We can’t wait until the rat brains in the Kremlin and the so-called Communist Party manage to figure out how they are to regain control over the world’s largest country by means of reforms,” Lazarev said with new energy in his voice. “Would any good Bolshevik behave that way? The most dedicated and persistent people, many of whom were trained under my supervision, are international agents, men who have been spared the state of affairs in today’s Russia.”

  “What is happening around the Baltic?” asked Bykov.

  “We’ve succeeded in infiltrating the telecommunications systems in Sweden and Finland. A sleeper agent in Stockholm has been activated. He is one of our best men, and he is making remarkable progress with a number of groundbreaking experiments. I will admit that Kolymin is right in one respect. We don’t have the invasion capacity we once had. But war doesn’t look the way it used to, and we must undergo corresponding changes ourselves. We can take control via the new information technology.”

  “And no one masters that area as we do,” said Tichakov.

  Tichakov represented the organization’s interests in Tomsk. He had courage and backbone. It was he who had taken control of lobbying activity, in relation both to Mayor Sobchak and to the oligarchs. He had paved the way for the young man in the mayor’s office who had made such a good impression on the oligarchs thanks to his ability to get things done and his good business sense. This former KGB man wouldn’t reveal his true loyalties until he was in the Kremlin himself. And then the oligarchs who had put him there would have to eat their words and their gold coins and would curse the day they had unknowingly invited the black generals to take power again.

  “You don’t carry out invasions with tanks anymore. You attack the aortas that feed blood and oxygen to these countries’ systems: money and information. And we’re starting with Sweden.”

  Surprise and shock on some faces. Euphoria on others. None of them had expected this. Lazarev could see temptation gradually replacing surprise around the table.

  Sweden, the unthinkable target.

  “I assume you’re familiar with GSM technology and the fast-growing system of linked personal computers known as the internet?” Some around the table nodded. “In ways that cannot be traced, we can get into their central systems and take control of them. But it isn’t as it was before, when we just sat and listened to what people said to each other on the telephone. Now we can control the flow of information, and in a country such as Sweden, which is leading this global trend, more and more of the society’s most important functions are being moved into systems we can control.”

  The murmuring around the table increased in intensity. Pride filled Lazarev.

  I have been planning this for so many years; I swore by your grave.

  “We can extract files from systems used by the government, by hospitals, by prisons. We can interrupt and knock out signals that control airports as well as radio, TV, and telephony. We can disrupt and redirect payments to banks, pension funds, the Swedish National Social Insurance Board. We recently carried out a test in which we knocked out three hundred thousand Swedish cell phones.”

  Now even the most skeptical looked approving.

  “But that’s far from all,” said Lazarev. “GSM technology offers fantastic opportunities for remote control of technical applications, including those for pacemakers, missile launch ramps, and explosives. And if we control the phone towers, they can be armed with nuclear weapons and weaponized gases. GSM, my friends, is the perfect trigger.”

  Lazarev let his words sink in. Endless possibilities. A networked world. Remote control of countries’ brains and hearts from inside Russia. Destruction from a distance at the push of a button. He had known the generals around the table would understand.

  Now the hour was at ha
nd. Lazarev held up his hands to silence the buzz of talk.

  “The global revolution is still within reach. The decadence of recent decades has lost us a great deal of ground. To reach our ultimate goal, we must again become what we once were, warriors of the doctrine. I will begin with myself. It is time for me to be resurrected.”

  The men looked at each other. Their gazes shifted around the room.

  Some of you know. Others suspect. Some have understood nothing.

  “As Nestor Lazarev, I have secretly worked to restore his honor. I was born to Russian parents in Ukraine. Not once did I hear my parents question our leader’s vision of an empire greater than all others, an empire worthy of the superior Russian people. I was raised to sacrifice. To set aside all egotistical desires for the collective, for eternal life after the abolition of death, for Utopia. And he took me as his own. My true name is Viktor Gusin.”

  “The Goose?” he heard Kolymin whisper.

  “Koba’s son,” said Bykov.

  The men stared at him.

  “Are you prepared to do battle as men did battle in the beginning?” asked Lazarev. “Are you prepared to give up your comforts and fight as soldiers on the streets of the city? As the fathers of our country did?”

  “Under your command, Colonel General,” said Bykov, and the other generals around the table nodded forcefully.

  Lazarev held up a hand and felt the heat spread through his body. He picked up his glass and lifted it in a toast.

  “To the man whose heart stopped beating on this day forty-three years ago. Long live Stalin.”

  “Long live Stalin.”

  72

  The cold wind blowing through the narrow streets of Gamla Stan smelled of cinnamon. Sarah thought Gamla Stan had a Christmas feel as long as it was still winter, even in March. She pulled up her scarf so it covered her throat properly. The north wind, she thought, that wind that’s so particular to Stockholm. The wind Max seemed to have a special relationship with after his childhood on Arholma. The meteorologists on TV spoke of “the Russian cold”; they said the cold north wind brought with it the cold of Siberia. It certainly felt that way when she closed the door of the taxi behind her.