by Jamie Smith
He paused, but the president said nothing so he pressed on.
“It was actually one of my analysts here in the Soviet Counter-intelligence Branch that took down the White Russian—”
“Did you say an analyst? This wasn’t in my goddam briefing!” spluttered the president.
“Yessir, Agent Marshall, he’s a fine asset to our department, so much so that he’s now been promoted to special agent status following his exploits today. It seems he’s been wasted behind a desk.”
“What use is he now that the world has seen him?”
“As I was saying, sir, it’s that very fact that we are hoping to turn to our advantage. We are hoping to position him so that the Russians attempt to turn him as a double agent.”
“This needs to start making sense very quickly, Sykes,” Callahan said ominously.
“My apologies, Mr President, it’s a complex plan. Agent Marshall is going to be sent to the Soviet Union, with the explicit orders to make himself just conspicuous enough to be picked up by the KGB. They will easily recognise him from his exploits in the news, assassinating one of their finest. He will then lead them to attempting to turn him. It would appear a major coup for the Russians to turn a national hero.”
“Only if they don’t kill him first,” the president commented flatly.
Sykes shrugged. “No spying mission is ever without risk. He’s an orphan with no strong ties, but is a patriot and the single most effective analyst I’ve ever known. Perfect for a mission such as this one. If he succeeds, we’ll be able to re-establish our clandestine operations in the east now that Yerin has been ousted.”
“What do we know about his replacement? This Klitchkov fella?”
Sykes smiled. “This is the best part, sir. Agent Marshall is our national expert on the KGB and is particularly familiar with Klitchkov, so will be perfectly placed to navigate their murky hierarchy. As we understand it, Klitchkov is no less cunning than Yerin but ill-prepared for the politics of his position. He’s very much a military man.”
“Are you saying that those who have served cannot then take office?” The president asked with an arched brow.
“Of course not, Mr President, but Klitchkov’s military career has led him down a very different path to the one you so successfully navigated. Chairman Klitchkov is made to follow orders, not build creative political strategies. Or at least so our sources suggest at this stage,” he added cautiously.
The president nodded his head, absorbing the information and attempting to process the new strategy. He grunted. “It’s unusual for a man of your position to come directly to the president with this,” he said, watching Sykes’ reaction closely.
“Permission to speak freely, sir?” Sykes asked nervously. The president waved his hand in permission. Sykes cleared his throat and his hand moved to his breast pocket where his pack of cigarettes resided, out of habit, before remembering where he was. “Well, Mr President, to be frank, we suspect there’s a mole in the White House. We are still trying to investigate what started the fire in the Capitol while Agent Marshall was bringing down the White Russian, but we suspect foul play.”
“You mean to tell me that not only did a renegade Soviet spy manage to position himself, almost overnight, as the personal bodyguard to the vice president of the United States, but that they have also managed to get someone right into the home of the US Congress? What the hell are we giving you all these taxpayers’ dollars for, Sykes?”
“Precisely so that we’re able to identify when there’s a mole somewhere in the system. It’s really more of a job for the FBI…” Sykes tailed off under the glare of the president. After only a few seconds of silence, he crumbled under Callahan’s gaze. “We’ll find the mole, sir.”
“I thought you might get to that conclusion,” the president said sternly.
“Until we do, I would advise you to keep the circle around you small; no one can be trusted until we get to the bottom of it.”
“Very well, Sykes. But I want our guy into Moscow ASAP. I like Petrenko, but I don’t trust him just yet. I need to know what the hell is going on over there. I can’t tell if we’re at the end of a long war or at the start of a new battle.”
“Yes, sir,” said Sykes, standing and shaking the president’s hand before turning to leave.
“Oh, and, Sykes?”
“Yes, Mr President?”
“Is there a code name for Agent Marshall yet?”
“I don’t believe we’ve got that far yet.”
“The Black Russian feels a little more appropriate this time around, wouldn’t you say?” he said with a wink.
Sykes smiled weakly, holding his eye roll until he was on the other side of the door.
***
Colonel Andrei Klitchkov sat in his office of brushed steel and mahogany, a combination of old and new that he felt reflected him quite nicely. He sat with his feet up on his desk and leant back in his chair, playing with his favourite revolver.
The Russian M1870 Galand was perhaps his most prized possession. His grandfather had kept it when retiring from the Russian navy in the early part of the century and it had been passed on to his good-for-nothing father. He had mainly used it to try and pistol whip Andrei and his mother when rolling in from a night of overindulgence, which turned out to be most nights. Fortunately, the vodka made him slow, and Andrei and his mother grew adept at getting out of the way. Most of the time.
His father had asked to be buried with the weapon, but there was no way Klitchkov was going to allow such a fine weapon to rot underground. Instead, he had thrown in an old Smith and Wesson in front of the unsuspecting crowd. He massaged his left knee. His whole career he had been forced to disguise the natural limp carried from a childhood injury given to him by the boot of his father. He refused to show any weakness, but it never stopped hurting.
He played with the catch of the Galand that released a lever to pull the barrel and cylinder forwards, unlike any other weapon he knew of. The well-oiled catch made a satisfying click as he released and reattached the lever, lost in thought. His thumb played over the extra thick rims of the four and a half line cartridges buried in the cylinder. Embossed across the top of the barrel were the characters ‘A Liege 1887’. A classic weapon, a rare weapon. A weapon he might yet reserve for the man who had failed him in Washington, he thought to himself.
The room was dark in the early hours of the morning. He cherished this time just before the sun came up where all was utterly silent, even here in Moscow. The deep reflection time was the closest thing he was able to get to sleep beyond two a.m. A long sleep was a luxury he had unwillingly forsaken long ago.
He looked at the FBI report in front of him, headlined ‘No Smoke Without Fire’. At the back of the report a grainy photocopy of a photograph had been pinned, showing a plume of smoke rising up above the Capitol Building. So much of the operation had been a success, but all he could see was failure.
Brishnov had been eliminated. He had been a brilliant spy, but had become unpredictable. There was no room for unpredictability in Klitchkov’s KGB, and the order to take down the vice president was the perfect trap to eliminate him. Whether or not the vice president survived was incidental. Now, Nikita was an agent who followed orders, he thought with a smile, thinking back to the news footage of him sending Brishnov plunging to the waters below.
But this smoke. This bomb. This was something else altogether. So much was so carefully poised.
He picked up the phone and dialled. It rang for some time before a sleepy voice answered. “Da?”
“Nam nuzhno pogovorit,” growled Klitchkov. We need to talk.
“Sechaz?” moaned the reedy voice.
“Yes, now!” snapped the colonel, putting down the phone. He stood and walked to his window, overlooking the Moskva River, hazy in the softly falling snow, and watched the bobbing lights of the boats moored there. On the opposite side of the river a kiosk was setting up with a large Pepsi logo painted across its awning. “T
he wheels of change will come off if we do not regain control,” he muttered to himself, his head disappearing in thick smoke as he lit a huge cigar. It had been a gift from Fidel himself. But nothing could last forever.
***
PERESLAVL-ZALESSKY, ONE HUNDRED- AND FORTY-KILOMETRES NORTH OF MOSCOW
The snow lay in droves around the picturesque town of Pereslavl-Zalessky, which sat upon the banks of Lake Pleshcheyevo. The white walls of the many monasteries glistened in the early morning light, illuminating the winding streets of the town, which lay in the hushed silence that comes with the first snowfall.
The snow covered all manner of sins in the once stunning Pereslavl-Zalessky, the town beyond the woods.
Shortly before the Moscow Olympics in 1980, the government had carried out a mass arrest of people they considered ‘undesirables’ and moved them to Pereslavl, in a bid to improve Moscow’s image when the eyes of the world landed upon it. While Moscow’s reputation soared, so did crime in the once sleepy Pereslavl.
At the heart of the plunge in Pereslavl’s reputation was Lev Veselovsky, who had put the town on the map for a completely different reason. Neo-Nazism.
During the Brezhnev years of economic stagnation, many people in the Soviet Union had begun to look for an alternative, for another extreme. So came the birth of Pamyat, a three-ray-swastika-bearing, white supremacy group intent on an ethnic cleansing that Hitler himself would have been impressed by. When they encountered their own idea of an undesirable, they acted quickly, extremely violently, and with no mercy for their victims.
But this morning Lev Veselovsky refused to contemplate anything but staying in bed for as long as possible. It was cold outside but warm under the covers, thanks to Tatiana. She wasn’t cheap but was worth every penny.
She tried to cuddle up to him, but he pushed her off. He didn’t pay her the big roubles for cuddles.
“Zebis’,” he grunted at her. Fuck off.
Tatiana’s lightly tanned face, clad in fake eyelashes and thick makeup to cover a pimply complexion, pouted.
Veselovsky ignored her completely, and with a sigh swung his short, white legs over the edge of the bed. Standing, he stretched, forcing his grubby white vest up over his huge, bloated stomach. He licked his hands and tried to smooth his comb-over flat to his head before attempting to comb the thin grey moustache perched above his small, red mouth. He hastily pulled on a shirt to combat the cold, fastening it up beneath his several jowly chins.
“Levyyy,” called Tatiana, draping her luscious figure across the bed seductively, her long black hair fanned across her back.
He again ignored her and waddling to the door, opened it and said once more, “Zebis’,” before walking out to face the day with a smile.
As he entered his grubby kitchen, he froze, the smile dropping from his face as quickly as it had arrived.
“You,” he gasped.
“Da, menya,” sneered Taras Brishnov.
CHAPTER 23
It was not by accident that Veselovsky had risen to the top of the Eastern neo-Nazism movement. He took a moment and lit a cigarette. Blowing out a cloud of smoke, he said, “You are not dead, Taras.”
“Not yet, Lev,” croaked Brishnov in reply.
They were silent for a moment, eyeing each other cautiously, before Veselovsky grinned broadly and laughed. “I knew you could never be killed by a chernozhopiy!” he exclaimed, kissing Brishnov firmly on each cheek and embracing him like a brother. Pulling back from the embrace, he surveyed the fallen spy, who had dark circles beneath his eyes and a bloody bandage around his left bicep. “You look terrible.”
“Coming from you, that is damning indeed,” Brishnov said with a smile.
“Come, come, sit with me; I want to hear everything,” Veselovsky said, hefting his huge frame into an unfortunate wooden chair.
“There will be time to tell stories later, but our plans are on a knife edge. They will torture Yerin and he will speak.”
“Viktor would not betray us,” Veselovsky said flatly. “He is a patriot.”
“Yes, but he is still a man. Everybody gives in to torture eventually.”
“Then he will die a dog.”
“Perhaps,” replied Brishnov. “But you should prepare to go underground.”
Veselovsky spat. “I will not hide. Trying to hide is what has brought our homeland to its knees. Hiding and giving refuge to Jews and chernozhopiys, while displacing true Russians to places like this,” he said, raising his arms around him.
Brishnov sat back and grinned, stretching his scar so it went taut and pink, a distraction from the dark circles under his eyes. Fury and madness burned within them. “You lead me to my next point, comrade. We have a unique opportunity to strike a blow to the very heart of the Politburo, and to give us a global voice that will have the people calling for us to lead. It is the perfect time to strike. First we strike against the party, and then we destroy the capitalist dogs in the west.”
“And where will our fist fall to launch this strike?”
“There is only one thing that motivates the one they are calling the Black Russian.” He spat the words as if chewing on something bitter. “He serves only to protect his family. It is a secret that Klitchkov has held close.”
“So what do I care about the motivations of that scum?” replied Veselovsky indifferently.
“Yerin knows where his family are. We must reach him in jail, and the information he can provide will draw Allochka to us like a moth to a flame. His crucified body will be a rallying call to the people of the Soviet empire.”
Veselovsky was pensive for a moment, before he stuck his bottom lip out and began nodding with increasing encouragement. “I like this plan, Taras. Let us seal it with a drink,” he said as he walked to the kitchen cupboard and withdrew a clear bottle of vodka. He poured it into two shot glasses and raised his glass. “To a new Russia,” he proposed.
“To revenge,” replied Brishnov coldly. A flicker of concern crossed Veselovsky’s face but he quickly hid it, drinking down his shot.
“I don’t know how you made it back, Taras. Shit, I don’t know how you are even alive. Through the door over there you will find some entertainment that is well deserved. Rest now, because we have much to do.”
Brishnov did not smile, but his eyes flashed with a look too terrible even for Veselovsky to hold. “Do you need her for anything more?” Brishnov asked.
“Niet,” Veselovsky said, his mouth taut. She had been his favourite whore, but if anyone frightened him in this world, it was Taras Brishnov.
“You can come out of hiding now, Boris,” called Brishnov as he disappeared into Veselovsky’s quarters.
Looking brutish but guilty, Veselovsky’s right hand man emerged from the shadows. Boris was a tall, thin man in his sixties with a heavily tattooed neck, proudly displaying various fascist symbols, many of them conflicting. He had a heavily ridged brow with enough brains to be second in command, but not enough to challenge for the leadership, thought Veselovsky. In his hand he clutched the straw hat he had taken to wearing.
“Boss,” he said reverently, handing him a steaming mug of coffee. “Four sugars, just as you like.”
Veselovsky took it without a word, just gazing into the dark brown liquid.
“I think we should discuss Taras,” said Boris.
“Can it wait until after breakfast?” Veselovsky replied, his small watery eyes glowing with displeasure.
“I don’t think so,” said Boris. “His motives do not sound so pure any longer. Revenge burns inside him.”
“We cannot imagine what he has gone through to be here. Do not delay my breakfast because you have a weak stomach.”
“Lev,” said Boris, using a rare level of familiarity and sincerity with his old comrade in arms. “We must be careful.”
“We will. But whatever the motives, the plan is a good one,” he replied, nodding. “Either way, we get to do a bit of cleansing which is always fun,” he added with a weedy smi
le.
CHAPTER 24
“I don’t suppose you’re gonna tell me where you’re going?” Elysia queried, her arms folded.
“Elysia…”
“OK, don’t tell me. But one of these days Jacob Marshall or Nathan Martins or whatever your name is, you’re going to give me some answers!”
“Is that so?” he said, spotting the slightest hint of a playful tone in her voice as he put his bag down and pulled her to him.
She tried to hold the cross look but it quickly faded as he kissed her.
“Don’t think you can kiss your way out of this one,” she said between kisses.
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” he replied, kissing her more deeply. She threw her arms around him and he was deeply tempted to pull her back to the bedroom but dragged himself away with great effort. “I have to go. I wish to God I didn’t, but I have to go.”
“When will you be back?” she asked, her eyes wide.
“I don’t know,” he replied honestly. “Maybe a week, maybe a month, maybe years.”
“Don’t say years,” she whispered.
“Elysia…”
“I know, I know. Don’t wait for you, you know how I feel about you et cetera et cetera,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I understand more than you think I do; it doesn’t take a genius to figure some of this out. You come back as soon as you can and we’ll figure things out then. Just… just…” her lip wobbled as she tried to say the words.
“Elysia…” he protested, trying to stop her.
“Just stay alive,” she said and his heart almost broke as he looked on her face, for maybe the last time. She pressed something wrapped in brown packing paper into his hand. It was small, the size of his palm. “Don’t open it now, but take it with you, to remind you of me.”
In the taxi as it pulled away, Nikita unwrapped the gift, and froze. Staring back at him was pocket-sized Black Russian Terrier, perfectly carved, from Cyclades ebony.