The Soviet Comeback

by Jamie Smith

  She softened slightly and brushed the hair from her eyes. “Sorry, Jake, I’m just a bit tired today for some reason.” She smirked at him. “And this case is driving me nuts.” She pulled out a cigarette, lit up and breathed out, closing her eyes in thought. “If this White Russian is real…”

  “I know,” he said, nodding. He coughed as she blew smoke in his direction, but she ignored him.

  “Christ, I figured I would be doing low level analysis when I joined, not investigating the existence of a KGB agent that could cause the outbreak of World War Three. Have you ever seen this guy before?” she asked, signalling to the photo of Brishnov which lay open on the desk next to her.

  “Never,” he said without missing a beat. “Which is incredible if he was senior enough to be close to both Yerin and Brezhnev. Like Yerin, perhaps he was very much Brezhnev’s man, which would support the SE’s theory that he’s potentially now a rogue agent.”

  “This would be a hell of a lot easier to look into if they hadn’t cracked our codes and executed all of our agents on Soviet soil in the past couple of years.”

  Nikita pulled the report from the file. “Any idea what ZB is?” he asked, pointing at the letters at the bottom of the page.

  She peered over at it. “No idea. I guess initials of someone over there.”

  “You don’t know who?”

  “Jake, I don’t even know where their office is, let alone who those vultures are. What does it matter who put the report together anyway?”

  “Hmmm? Oh no, I don’t suppose it does; I was just curious. I mean where did they get the idea to look into CCTV footage on this particular street?”

  She shrugged. “Head up there and ask if it bothers you so much. Our job isn’t to ask questions but to find the answers.”

  “You’re right. I might not survive a trip into the lion’s den of the SE office. They’re probably all white,” he joked in an undertone as he stood up, fighting the curiosity and desire to meet another KGB asset within the CIA.

  “We have to take this to Sykes,” Chang said. “If nothing else it puts the involvement of the nuclear disarmament process out of the picture. We need to loop in Blaine too.”

  “You think we should go to Sykes with no proof and just another empty theory? I could do without another dressing down. Let’s ask Blaine.” He signalled to his desk mate who was looking increasingly worse for wear, and looked relieved to have a reason to step away from his paperwork.

  “What’s up? If you’re going to suggest the bar again tonight, then no way man. I can’t keep pace.”

  Chang laughed. “What happened to your strong Irish blood?”

  He looked mournfully at Chang. “You don’t look much better.”

  “Charming,” she said, crossing her arms. Blaine spluttered to try and correct himself but Nikita saved him. “Yes, we all look awful. This isn’t about drinking though, this is about the case Sykes wants us to work on, and we have a new lead that could save you a lot of grunt work.”

  “I don’t hate the sound of that,” said Blaine, brightening slightly. Nikita passed his colleague the file and watched his eyes widen as he looked through. “You guys think this is legit?” he asked.

  “Jake does,” said Chang archly. “I’m not so sure, but it’s the only lead we’ve got and it would fit with the current political climate in Russia.”

  “I can’t deny that it makes me happy. Trying to predict Russian disarmament is difficult enough without it becoming part of a major conspiracy to crush America. Definitely a line worth pursuing. Look into it before telling the chief though; he doesn’t like empty theories. I found that out the hard way when I suggested the Boston Celtics would win the playoffs this year. Big mistake.”

  “I agree,” said Nikita. “Sarah, we need to find answers on this and fast. Lives depend on it.”

  “OK. First of all, we need to find out who the White Russian is, and where he is,” she replied.

  “I’ll find the who, you find the where,” said Nikita. “If he is close to Yerin then I should be able to track down someone who can give me that information.”

  They each returned to their desks with a renewed energy and sense of purpose. Nikita sat down and smiled inwardly. So far, the plan was working.

  CHAPTER 18

  Agent Taras Brishnov almost shook with excitement. Being forced to play second fiddle to the black piece of shit, a man he exceeded in rank, experience, kills, and not to mention the fact that he was actually Russian, had started a fire of rage in his gut. Now, finally a mission worth his quality.

  From his days growing up in Leningrad he had always felt different to others. Other children shunned him and he viewed them all with a cold detachment. The only time he felt anything was when he was allowed to cause them pain.

  Pain.

  That was everything. Pain was power. Pain was pleasure.

  He snaked the barrel of the gun over the quivering form of the woman below him, enjoying her whimpers. She could not be much older than eighteen and looked half starved, but those big brown eyes drove him wild.

  “Pwease, you are hurrding me,” the skinny young woman pleaded dully, the leather strap stretching her mouth and drawing blood as she tried to speak. Bruises on her arms showed that she was used to cruelty, but rarely did she feel as afraid as she did now. The leather strap wrapped around the back of her head and looped into a handle which the KGB agent had his hand through and was pulling back.

  “Hush, child,” he crooned, trailing the barrel of his Desert Eagle down the spine of her pale white back as he stood behind her, with her crouched on all fours on a shabby four-poster bed. Not usually his gun of choice, it felt too showy and he preferred something much subtler. But for an occasion such as this he could not deny it gave an enormous sense of power.

  “This is a very special day and we must treat it as such. Do you know why it is so very special?” he asked. The girl said nothing, and he tugged on the strap sharply causing her to groan with pain.

  “I asked you a question, my dear,” he said flatly.

  “Why it speshal?” she said, her head jerked round as he pulled at the leash again. A thin trail of blood was trailing its way down her neck from the corner of her mouth.

  Brishnov unbuckled his belt and pulled down the zip of his swollen trousers and his eyes rolled into the back of his head as he forced his way inside the young prostitute. He snaked his finger up the trail of blood, before putting the gun to her temple as his pace quickened.

  “Pwease no,” she said stutteringly, trying to grimace and get through the ordeal. He laughed cruelly and pushed the gun harder into her temple, so that blood was drawn from there too, and he felt himself become even more aroused. He let the gun drop onto the bed in front of the woman.

  “This day is special, my love, because I have been asked to kill the vice president of the United States.”

  Now she began to cry and the tears made their way down her cheeks, mingling with the blood and sweat around her chapped and gagged mouth. “Pwease, I donn wanna know,” she sobbed, knowing what him providing her with that information meant.

  She began to squirm against the bonds around her wrists, which only served to drive the man behind her even wilder.

  “I am going to strike a fatal blow right to the heart of these capitalist pigs who think to govern the world. Soon America will fall to the might of Communist Russia,” he gasped as he pounded faster and pulled back harder on her leash so that her body was contorted painfully. Now the blood fell thickly from her mouth and she was crying in fits.

  He broke into a stream of Russian that the girl didn’t understand, and she tried to push him backwards with her foot but he was so strong that she had no hope of overpowering him. He pulled her head around to the side so that she could not see him reach for the gun.

  He allowed the leash on her head to relax and she prayed to God for the first time in years that he was showing her mercy, but then she felt the cold metal of the gun’s barrel pre
ss against her skull.

  “Please no!” she screamed, in her terror having managed to bite clean through the leather at her mouth. His pace was fast and furious and he was grunting amidst the solid monologue of Russian that he uttered in a fast, low voice.

  The screaming only served to spur him on and suddenly he tensed and shouted, “Mat’ Rossiya!” As she screamed once more, and her back arched, he pulled the trigger of the Desert Eagle.

  She slumped forward and he gasped as drool dripped from his mouth and he shuddered from the intensity of the pleasure.

  He wiped his mouth on his sleeve and looked down at the pitiful form in front of him, a mixture of blood, sweat and tears and the shame flooded him, as it always did.

  Looking around the room as if taking it in for the first time, Brishnov looked at the crumbling four-poster bed with the well-worn satin sheets and sputtering candles around the walls. How could he have been so careless?

  “Bol’ do udovol’stviya,” he said to himself. Always pain before the pleasure.

  To become a slave to his own depravity was unforgivable. And with an American girl no less. His father would never forgive him.

  But then, he probably would not have forgiven his son for killing him either. Taras Brishnov’s father had been a cold man who would warm himself on cold Leningrad nights with strong vodka and even stronger kicks to his young son. Like every beaten dog, one day he turned on his master. It was Brishnov’s first kill. He fervently hoped this American hooker was not his last.

  He moved over to the window of the room, which had been painted over, and with some effort, forced it open. The seasoned KGB agent looked out at the deserted alleyway below and weighed his chances. Backing himself, he jumped out without a backward glance at his pitiful victim and landed on all fours on the cold concrete a floor below, rolling to absorb the impact.

  After brushing himself down, he stalked off, the cold killer once more with no thoughts of the flesh to distract him.

  The White Russian was on the move.

  As he walked away, an expressionless face with a toothbrush moustache and large thick glasses appeared at the window of a building opposite the brothel and peered after the assassin, focusing the lens of a bulky camera and snapping him silently. He took out a pen and made a note in a small notebook he produced from within his long coat, before snapping it shut. On the front cover were the letters ZB.

  ***

  Viktor Yerin walked purposefully through the ornate gilded halls of the Kremlin. For a man well into his sixties he moved well, the result of a daily regime of calisthenics and a history of military discipline carried with him throughout his adult life.

  The chairman of the KGB was dressed in a dark grey suit and black tie, and in his hand carried a briefcase. As a key member of the Politburo, the supreme executive and legislative body of the Communist Party and Soviet Union government, for the past three years he had been able to move with ease through government halls, but it was rare that the leader of the Soviet Union summoned him directly. Or at least it had been, but times were changing.

  Walking straight past the secretary, Yerin paused outside the heavy wooden door of the leader’s office, then setting his shoulders, raised his head and knocked.

  “Da,” came the reply, and he pushed open the door.

  Yerin remembered the office as it had been under Brezhnev. He even remembered it from a visit once while Nikita Krushchev was general secretary, when he had maintained the look and feel Stalin had enjoyed. Back then there had been a highly decorative, polished wooden floor and walls of deep crimson. All that now remained was the dark oak desk behind which sat the leader of the communist world and the largest nation on the planet, surrounded by grey walls and a largely colourless room.

  Mikhail Petrenko pushed himself up from the hard wooden chair. “Viktor, thank you for coming,” he said in his firm voice and shook hands with the KGB leader. “You look tired, comrade,” he added.

  “Work loves fools,” said Yerin, reciting the Russian proverb.

  Petrenko laughed. “Yes, but no water runs under an idle stone,” he replied with a proverb of his own. He gestured towards a chair at his desk. “Please sit,” he said and returned to his own seat. He sat looking at Yerin, his hands folded in front of him.

  Stirring uncomfortably, Yerin asked, “You summoned me?”

  The smile faded slightly from Petrenko who with a grunt pulled open a drawer at his desk and delved into it. Yerin surveyed the man before him. His skin was almost grey, and the size of his belly had crept over the mark from portly to fat.

  He produced the bottle of vodka and the two glasses he had been searching for.

  “I keep the good stuff for those I know will appreciate it,” Petrenko said smiling, and Yerin saw that his nose was a deepveined red as he poured the clear liquid into the two glasses. “Nazdarovje,” said Petrenko, raising his glass, which was echoed by Yerin.

  “To the matter of business then,” said the Soviet leader. “I want an update on the situation in America; I feel devoid of information.”

  “You are not receiving my missives, sir?” asked Yerin, knowing full well that he had been.

  “You and I both know that there is a great deal missing from your missives, Viktor, and I would know the full story. I am hearing rumours that they have uncovered the Black Russian. Tell me this is not true.”

  “It is not true,” Viktor replied coldly. He prided himself on the thoroughness of his reports.

  “Come now, Viktor, you are very sensitive for a man who leads the world’s greatest and toughest security agency. I also know that you are a master of clandestine work and missives can fall into the wrong hands so easily. But now in person I would know all that is too sensitive to be written down.”

  Yerin nodded, pacified. “The Americans have begun to get dangerously close to the truth, but Colonel Klitchkov is devising a plan to lead them elsewhere.”

  “You think him cleverer than the CIA, FBI, NSA and US government?”

  “Without a doubt, sir,” replied Yerin without a trace of humour. “I do not yet know the full details of his plan, but as it stands the Black Russian’s identity remains intact, and we are working to ensure that the agent we call Kolokol remains unmasked.”

  “Is the influence of Kolokol still as great?”

  “This year alone he has given us over thirty foreign agents of the CIA operating in Soviet territories. We believe we have now gathered the vast majority of American spies in Moscow thanks to him. He has been the single greatest asset we have ever possessed.”

  “You did excellent work in turning him, Viktor. But I am concerned about why they are getting so close to our Black Russian.”

  “The agent has carried out his missions perfectly, and is doing excellent work in undermining the CIA’s Soviet counter-intelligence work.”

  “If he is so perfect then how do they know he exists?”

  “At present, sir, they remain unaware of his existence; they merely suspect that a KGB agent is on US soil carrying out assassinations. They have exceeded expectations in putting together a trail of breadcrumbs from the deaths, despite our efforts to ensure all of them looked natural or accidental.”

  “You have a silver tongue from your years in politics, Viktor!” chuckled Petrenko. “But either you have underestimated our enemy, or you have made a grave mistake with the missions you have sent our agent on. Which is it, I wonder?” the general secretary asked, suddenly serious.

  Viktor said nothing.

  “We both know that you have far too much experience to underestimate our American adversaries, which means that your orders are where the problem is. Give me the list of all of his missions.”

  Yerin opened his briefcase and withdrew a sheet of paper. Petrenko’s eyes widened and he looked over the top of his glasses. “You are not serious, Viktor.”

  “Yes, sir, they were all targets identified by our analysts that needed to be eliminated. The research was good.”

&n
bsp; “Be that as it may, to order the elimination of this many key figures in such a short space of time, is madness! It looks almost as if you wanted them to find out.”

  “I assure you, sir, that I acted only in the best interests of the country.”

  The Soviet leader threw a photo down in front of Yerin. “And tell me, comrade, how is this acting in the best interests of the country?”

  Yerin wiped his glasses with a handkerchief. Placing them back on, he peered down at the photo. It showed him standing next to a black state security car, seemingly deep in conversation with an ugly, overweight man wearing an ushanka and a long coat. A gap between the fur of the hat and the collar of the coat revealed a tattoo of a three-ray swastika.

  His eyes bulged. “You are spying on me?”

  “Do not insult me with false naivety, Viktor. Why are you colluding with Lev Veselovsky, the known leader of the neo-Nazi group Pamyat?”

  Yerin was clearly working to remain calm, but shifted restlessly on his chair. “It was part of an investigation into the growing far right movement, sir. Strictly routine. Sir, I assure you I am not aligning myself with him. I have served loyally for many years.”

  “If it was the photo alone, perhaps I would believe you. But the facts are not in your favour, my friend.” He read a message from a piece of paper on his desk. “‘Lev, together we shall free Russia from the brink of collapse and the shackles of our rudderless leader’. I can go on if you want, Viktor? The letter is quite illuminating and appears to have your signature at the bottom.”

  The colour had drained completely from Yerin’s face, and his knuckles were white as he gripped the chair.

  “You have two choices; resign right now, or force me to declare you a traitor and enemy of the state, for which you know better than anyone the penalty.”