The Soviet Comeback

by Jamie Smith

  “That is very good, but what do you mean that Pamyat’s plan is me?”

  “Of course, yes. Some hours ago, I was visited by your good friend Agent Brishnov—”

  “Impossible,” said Nikita. “Brishnov is dead; I killed him myself. Spout another lie, and I will plant a bullet in your brain.”

  “Come now, Allochka. We both know you have been sent here to kill me. With some patience I may yet be able to save you. I do not know what happened between you, but I can assure you that Taras Brishnov is very much alive. Perhaps now the last of his sanity has deserted him, however.”

  “Impossible,” whispered Nikita, but a dreadful coldness crept across his heart. It was what he had feared, with no evidence of his body ever found.

  “But that fall… no one could have survived it,” he said to himself.

  “If there is one thing, I can tell you about Brishnov, it is that you should always expect the impossible. Normal laws do not seem to apply to the man.”

  Nikita was replaying the moment atop the crane in his head; the drop must have been eighty feet, while dealing with a gunshot wound through a bicep. The odds of survival were… small. Tiny in fact.

  “I was angry. So angry. Perhaps my judgement was clouded.” Nikita accepted it dubiously, not able to shake the image of Brishnov falling from such a height. He shook his head. “Why was he here?” he demanded.

  “At first, I had believed, or perhaps just blindly hoped, that he was here to rescue me. What a foolish old man I am. But of course, once he got the information he required, he no longer had need for a man who has lost all of his influence.”

  “What was the information? Must I drag everything out of you?”

  “Patience, agent, patience,” Yerin said, holding up his dripping wet hand. The decrepit old man had begun to shake. Nikita pulled his parachute from the bag and wrapped it around him. Yerin smiled benignly in return. “Kindness can be as disarming as violence, I see now. Perhaps it should be added to the KGB syllabus,” he said with a rasping chuckle. Seeing Nikita’s angry face, the chuckle died. “Yes, yes, OK. I can see I can avoid this no longer.” He looked forlornly at Nikita. “He wanted to know the location of your family.”

  Nikita’s eyes were wide with fright. “And what did you tell him?”

  Yerin looked sadly up at him. Quick as a flash, Nikita spun, and with the shiv in hand sliced Yerin’s throat deeply. His body trembled as he stared in horror at the once great leader of the KGB.

  The old man began to choke, but instead of trying to stem the bleeding, he spat and gurgled the words that were only faintly discernible. “I am sorry.”

  “This is an act of mercy you do not deserve, Yerin,” Nikita said, and plunged the shiv into the old man’s heart, leaving it planted in his chest. Without a glance back at him he was already running faster than he ever had back up the corridor, fear and fury gripping every fibre of his being.

  He ran through the common area, willing guards to attempt to stop him, daring them to stand in his way. But whether by luck or design he was able to get through to the kitchen without being seen. The air was thick with smoke and he could hear voices but didn’t ee anybody. The flames seemed to have extended beyond the stove to a doorway next to it and guards were working to get them under control with extinguishers. Hardly believing his luck, Nikita slipped like a shadow through the haze and clambered up the chimney swiftly, covering it in giant thrusts, driven by an overpowering adrenaline. When he looked back, Nikita would never be able to recall how he escaped from the prison.

  He untied the rope from the chimney stack and sprinted to the other end of the roof. Looking over the edge, he could see that he had the right spot; the wall ran straight down to the street, with only a spiked, barbed wire fence running around the perimeter at the bottom.

  He tied the rope around a robust metal pipe running along the inside of the low wall that stood around the edge of the roof. Then, without looking, he jumped backward off the building and abseiled down, not even looping in his foot as he raced against time. Only one thought was in his mind. My family, save my family.

  As he lowered himself down, impervious to the rope burns tearing at his hands, he approached the fence. Brutal looking spikes topped it, along with vast loops of barbed wire. It was around four metres to the ground. He squatted his leg into the wall and forced himself off and out, releasing the rope just as he cleared the fence. He landed with a roll, ignoring the jarring pain that shot through his shoulder and hip, and leapt up before charging down the street.

  Around the corner a polished Land Rover awaited him. Feeling under the wheel arch, his hand landed upon the keys, snatching them out. He scrambled behind the wheel.

  The handbrake was off and the car moving before the engine even kicked in. He accelerated away, weaving through traffic, ignoring the blaring of horns, his chest constricted and breath short.

  “Brishnov is alive and knows where my family is,” he muttered, disbelieving. “How could I have been so foolish?” he admonished himself.

  As he passed a phone box, he slammed on the brakes and screeched over to the kerb. Leaving the engine running, he jumped out and dialled Klitchkov.

  “Allo, ofis Predsedatelya,” said a lyrical female voice.

  “Dymnav’ya dzen,” Nikita replied, quietly uttering the codeword.

  “Da, what is it, agent?” replied Klitchkov’s secretary coolly.

  “Katalina, I need the Chairman NOW. It is very urgent.”

  “One moment please.”

  “Da? What is it, agent, this is not protocol?” came Klitchkov’s voice.

  “Brishnov is alive and knows where my family is.”

  “Is this line secure?” Klitchkov said sharply.

  “I don’t give a damn, sir. Did you hear what I said?”

  “Understood. Was your evening rendezvous successful?”

  “Yes, sir,” Nikita replied, exasperated. “But my family—”

  He was cut off by a click on the line and the sound of Katalina’s voice returned. “Please go to Vnukovo Airport, agent.” Then the line went dead.

  After running back to the car, Nikita jumped in and made a screeching turn before speeding to the former military airport, now the most popular for private usage.

  The journey from Matrosskaya Tishina Prison to Vnukovo Airport should have taken an hour, journeying across the heart of Moscow. Nikita cleared it in thirty minutes, breaking every Soviet driving law going. Miraculously, he encountered no issues with police.

  He pulled up outside the airport, parking the car illegally and leaving it there. He was on his way hurriedly into the airport, when an arm grabbed him and pulled him back.

  He looked into the familiar cold blue eyes of Chairman Klitchkov, peering out from under his furry ushanka, and wearing a long charcoal coat.

  “Allochka, come,” he said, gesturing to the same black ZIS-115 in which he had been earlier.

  They climbed in, and drove up to a high fence with a gate manned by Soviet Army privates. As the car approached, the gate opened and the soldiers stood to attention and saluted the chairman as they passed. He rolled down the window and saluted in return.

  “Chairman—” began Nikita, but was cut off by a raised hand from the leader of the KGB.

  “He lives?” Klitchkov asked, eyes staring straight ahead.

  “He visited Yerin today.”

  “You have proof?”

  “None. But I am confident Yerin did not lie. He found his remorse at the end.”

  “Yerin never did anything if he did not stand to gain from it.”

  “Perhaps. But, Chairman, I must go to my family. If there is even a chance of him being alive, his desire for revenge will know no limits. Please, sir,” Nikita implored, on the verge of tears.

  Klitchkov looked at him distastefully. “Remember your training, agent. Emotions are for the weak, and they will betray you.”

  Nikita cleared his throat and set his shoulders. “Of course, you are right,”
he said with an even voice, though his heart continued to race.

  The chauffeur taxied them around the two runways to a private hangar on the far side of the airport. As they entered, Nikita could see the Antonov An-32, the Soviet’s answer to the Learjet. The slender, twin-engine aircraft looked like a hawk desperate to take to the skies.

  “Will this make it to Siberia?” Nikita asked dubiously.

  “Under the circumstances it is our best hope for making it before Brishnov. It can land us safely in Norilsk.”

  “Our?” Nikita replied curiously.

  “You have failed with Brishnov once. Fail again and I will kill you myself,” he said icily, patting his side so Nikita could hear the dull sound of a concealed weapon. “Shall we?” said Klitchkov, gesturing towards the waiting plane.

  Nikita said nothing. He saw their faces swimming before his eyes in a way he had been able to block for many months. In his pocket his hand clutched the carving Elysia had given him, which he now carried everywhere with him. Holding it helped to calm him slightly. His skin prickled and he moved swiftly into the plane.

  Nikita and Klitchkov settled into seats opposite each other in the compact but luxurious KGB transporter.

  “Brishnov had many hours’ head start; we must fly swiftly. As we know he can be very resourceful. I would very much like to know how he was able to return from the United States with a gunshot wound,” said Klitchkov. “I have scrambled for backup, but no troops are based anywhere near Norilsk, so we may be some way ahead of them.”

  Nikita was silent, not interested in bandying words with his unpredictable superior. He longed for a drink, picturing a whiskey on the rocks, but was determined to keep his mind fully clear. A slight sweat broke above his upper lip. He thought of Elysia, focusing all of his attention upon her. He felt himself calm as the engines fired up and the craft taxied to the nearest runway.

  He could see through the window a queue of other aeroplanes which had been forced to pause to allow their take-off. As the Antonov An-32 boomed along the asphalt and forced its way into the Moscow skies, still heavily powdered with snowfall, Nikita sat back in his chair. The military craft sliced through the white night and climbed above the clouds to reveal an inky black, star-studded sky. Nikita forced himself to close his eyes.

  “I am coming for you, Taras,” he whispered to himself.

  It was only four hours later that the plane scudded down on the cracked, icy runway of Alykel Airport in Norilsk, one of the world’s northernmost cities, sitting deep inside the Arctic Circle. Thick snow drifts lay at either side of the runway from where they had been cleared. In this part of the world, it was easier to count the days on which it didn’t snow that those when it did.

  A gentle glow sat on the horizon, signifying dawn. The sun would not rise much higher in this polar winter.

  The plane had barely ground to a halt when Nikita was up and waiting impatiently by the door. ‘What if I am too late?’ kept looping around his mind. Brishnov would show no mercy, and it would be even worse if he had taken the Pamyat thugs with him. Nikita shook himself to rid his mind of the thoughts. Brishnov would not likely have access to a high-speed aircraft able to land in Norilsk. Even with his head start of many hours… it would be very close.

  As he crossed the tarmac to the waiting four by four, for the first time in his life Nikita looked up to the inky blue skies and prayed.

  He waited for Klitchkov to descend the steps, his body humming with nervous adrenaline. The moment Klitchkov entered the car and sat beside him, he hit the accelerator before the door was even closed.

  “Patience, Allochka,” Klitchkov snapped. “These roads cannot be traversed in a hurry.”

  Never had a truer word been said, as even with Nikita’s prodigious skill behind the wheel, the roads were caked in hard packed snow and ice, forcing the chain-clad wheels of the UAZ-469 Soviet military off-road vehicle into a throaty roar as he had to rev hard in low gears to avoid spinning off the road. Regular inclines of the pure white Arctic tundra surrounded them for miles, with only the occasional truck coming the other way as a sign of any life. The heater on the dash was turned up full, but still their breath rose in front of them, steaming the windows. After forty minutes of driving in silence, they passed Norilsk itself, but Nikita ploughed straight past, skirting the city’s edges.

  The few people they passed looked tough and hardened, collars up against the harsh winter. In this unforgiving corner of the world temperatures rarely rose above minus seventeen degrees Celsius at this time of year.

  As they left the city behind, signs of life became fewer and further between, with only the occasional stone house set back from the road, candlelight glowing behind the windows and smoke billowing from chimneys, and scrubby, ill-looking trees dusting the white expanse.

  Thirty minutes later, they passed the town of Talnakh, an expanse of low concrete buildings spread across a flat plain, surrounded by distant hills. A misty, green glow seemed to hover across the town in the twilight-like haze, inhabited by only the hardiest of people, driven there by the deep nickel mines.

  Again, Nikita drove on, the location etched in his memory, despite his only previous visit being well over a year ago.

  “What is your plan, agent?” asked Chairman Klitchkov, as they took the narrow winding road beyond the town towards the mountains.

  “To secure the safety of my family and eliminate any threats to them or to the state,” Nikita said shortly.

  “Excellent to see you have thought through every detail of this potentially explosive scenario,” Klitchkov said with mock joviality.

  Nikita tightened his mouth. “The path to the izba cuts across the top of a low hill before curving down to the building. We will have a good vantage point from the hill top, and any foreign bodies should be easily identifiable in the surroundings.”

  “And if the enemy is already there?” Klitchkov asked.

  Nikita’s knuckles whitened on the steering wheel. “They must not be,” he replied.

  Klitchkov laughed coldly.

  “Whose side are you on, sir?” Nikita exploded, before he was able to stop himself.

  Klitchkov turned to look at him, his pale blue eyes unreadable. “What did you say to me, agent?” he asked in a horribly controlled tone, eyes looking almost psychopathic.

  “You say you will look after my family, but maroon them in outer Siberia. You shoot me in Kamchatka — yes, I know it was you — and then you treat me, you look at me like something on the bottom of your shoe, but then accompany me on a rescue mission. What the hell sort of game are you playing?” he shouted, the words pouring from his mouth like champagne from a corked bottle, his shoulders shaking with the release.

  “ENOUGH!” shouted Klitchkov. “Who do you think you are, Allochka? I should kill you now for talking to a superior this way, you insubordinate little shit. Perhaps Brishnov is right and your tiny African mind is incapable of comprehending the greater workings and the grander plan, of considering the complex vastness of the USSR.”

  Nikita drew his gun and pointed it at Klitchkov, not taking his eyes from the road. “Give me a reason, Chairman.”

  Chairman Klitchkov did not so much as blink at the weapon only inches from his face. “Threatening to kill the leader of the KGB? That is gross misconduct and treason. Whatever happens today you will face court martial and you will hang. So, OK, agent, I will give you answers, if that is what you seek. Who am I to deny a dying man’s request?” he said, grinning.

  “Yes, we put your family as far from civilisation as possible, although I must confess it was Yerin’s idea. If you can tell me anywhere else within the Soviet Union that they would have been welcomed, I’d be interested to hear. I gave them the only thing I could, a life away from physical and emotional abuse. Believe me, I know the meaning of abuse,” he added, his eyes sliding to the side momentarily as he ruminated on some long past hurt. “Shoot you in Kamchatka?” He said, snapping back to his retort. “I do not deny it! M
y only regret is that I did not wound you further. I knew that we would require you to endure more than any other KGB agent and I had to be sure you were strong enough. You walked miles with a gunshot wound to the leg and high-level blood loss. I challenge you to look me in the eye and tell me it didn’t reveal in you a strength and endurance you had never previously known.”

  Nikita said nothing. The road had narrowed, carved out of banks of snow higher than the vehicle itself. The chain-clad wheels were furiously working for grip on the powdery road. There was not, and would not be, any sign of habitation now until they reached the Allochka home.

  “I knew that you had found out that it was me,” Klitchkov continued. “The fact you were able to identify that in those circumstances shows that you are made to be an extraordinary spy. Do you know how many others I have done the same thing to, and not one of them has ever known that.

  “You think I hate you? That I despise you? Tell me, who was it that recruited you for the KGB?”

  “Do not pretend that you had my own interests at heart,” said Nikita drily.

  “I do not. But I am not in the habit of taking children from their families, yet I have never felt any guilt. Imagine your life in Kamenka now if I had not given you an opportunity that a million young Russian men would dream of. You would not have survived, and neither would your family. I gave you a life, a skill set. You will never go hungry.”

  “Assuming I survive,” Nikita retorted.

  “Assuming you survive,” agreed Klitchkov. “I cared little for you. Come on, nobody in Russia likes anyone who is not a Russian!” He laughed. “But I admit to finding you now worthy of the title of Russian, more so than many white men I have known. I live in a nasty, cruel world, and make no apologies for being a nasty, cruel man. I must confess that I often rather enjoy it!” He laughed maniacally. “The begging, the pleading of lesser souls gives me quite a thrill. Not to the level of depravity of Brishnov, you understand, but I enjoy the power. I always have. Murder never bothered me. But I am also a man of my word. You may not like my decisions but I have always kept my promises to you. I promised to keep your family safe. That much I will do,” he said, before adding, “and I also really want to make that Veselovsky dog suffer.”