Stroika

by Mark Blair

‘So what are we up to at the moment… diesel… deliveries?’ Misha asked.

  ‘Eight tankers per day, six days a week, thirty-two thousand litres per tanker,’ said Viktoriya reeling off familiar numbers.

  ‘A million and a half litres a week,’ threw in the director.

  ‘And no let-up in demand?’ said Viktoriya.

  ‘None. Ilaria could place three times that with Eastern European customers. We are only scratching the surface.’

  Viktoriya thought about the millions of US dollars pouring into the company’s Swiss bank account. It was hard to get over how simple an operation it was. Buy at the domestic price and sell for four times as much on the international market.

  ‘So supply…?’ Misha continued.

  ‘Moscow can’t supply us any more fuel, more than we have at the moment, that is,’ replied the director. ‘They are having their own delivery problems. I offered him more money, as you suggested, but my contact says it is out of his hands. When I pressed him, he suggested I take it higher.’

  ‘Namely?’

  ‘The Ministry of Oil and Gas.’

  ‘Do you have any connections there?’

  ‘No… not my area – transport, yes,’ said Maxim.

  ‘Well, where there is a will, and a dollar to be made, there’s a way. Let’s all think on it. We need to get this right.’

  Chapter 25

  Moscow

  A tired-looking General Ghukov entered the general staff meeting room. Yuri snapped to attention and was bid to take a seat by the colonel general, who placed a wad of papers wearily on the table. Yuri had seen the colonel general six months before, when he had visited his command, but he seemed to have aged ten years in the intervening period. His normally round face looked gaunt, and there were dark bags under his eyes. Yuri speculated on the pressure he must be under.

  That morning, Yuri had boarded the military flight to Moscow with some apprehension. His orders had not come via his own commanding officer but directly from the chief of staff, Colonel General Andrei Ghukov. He had summoned him to general staff headquarters on Znamenka Street in the Arbat district. There had been no hint of its significance, only a brief order to report.

  Yuri had wracked his brain for possible explanations. Were the army suspicious of his connections with Misha Revnik? Did they judge his loyalties divided? Or was it his radical views on reorganising the Soviet Army into a smaller, better-equipped regular force?

  The gulags may have disappeared, but there was always some forlorn military outpost as an alternative. It would be a disgrace, money or no money, if he were reassigned to some backwater.

  ‘Colonel Marov,’ the colonel general began, ‘how aware are you of the talks going on in Geneva?’

  Yuri felt a wave of relief and hoped it didn’t show.

  ‘Very little, sir… bilateral talks between Afghanistan and Pakistan with the United States and us present… to end the conflict… and that the mujahideen will not take part.’

  ‘Well summed up, Colonel. The pace has of late been glacial, but there seems to be a thaw underway. What I am about to discuss, Colonel, you will appreciate is top secret and not to be discussed with other staff. Do I make myself clear?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Your views on the reorganisation of Soviet forces are well known. I reread your subversive academy paper on this recently to refresh my memory. You are to be complimented, Colonel. As you know, these ideas are not welcome in many quarters but the fact of the matter is that virtue has become a necessity in our present economic predicament.

  ‘It is likely that a Russian pull-out of Afghanistan will be announced shortly, maybe within days, of uniformed troops anyway, but in parallel, and to come to the point, we have been quietly sounding out the Americans on a withdrawal of Soviet troops from Eastern Europe. Our retired generals have been in discussion with theirs… all hypothetical of course. Privately, the general secretary has made it abundantly clear to me that he will not have Soviet troops suppress an East European uprising, not like in Hungary.’

  The colonel general turned over the top page of the pile on the table and handed it to Yuri.

  ‘Read, Colonel, Eastern European military dispositions.’

  Yuri was finding it hard to take in. It was not what he had been expecting; the end of his career it wasn’t. He began to read. Twenty-four divisions, forty-seven airfields, four thousand tanks, six hundred and ninety aircraft, six hundred and eighty helicopters… he continued down the page… in total just under three hundred and sixty thousand soldiers and two hundred and eight thousand civilians, relatives and employees, in three hundred locations.

  ‘I can also tell you we have one hundred and eight thousand military personnel in Afghanistan,’ Ghukov added when Yuri had put down the sheet.

  ‘I see,’ said Yuri, dropping the sir, stunned.

  ‘A reorganisational nightmare.’

  ‘Or opportunity, sir,’ followed Yuri, finding his second wind.

  ‘I thought you of all people might see it like that, Colonel. This will be a pull-out on a different scale, perhaps the largest anywhere in peacetime history. The general secretary is looking for a half-million troop reduction. I need someone to chair the committee of district generals and evolve a plan. Someone who is not part of the current group… I think that person is you, Colonel Marov.’

  For a moment Yuri was speechless. Each district general commanded several armies. This was not just about downsizing, it would be about generals unwilling to surrender their fiefdoms – their parallel economic and political interests.

  Yuri thought of the main military groupings and what he knew of their district commanders. The North-West under Vdovin would oppose, as would Volkov of the Western Group of Forces in Germany; the same went for Southern; the others – Central – he didn’t know.

  ‘Thoughts, Colonel?’

  He was being placed directly in the firing line. If he succeeded, all well and good; if he failed or the government faltered or failed to gain sufficient support, he would be the first to go.

  ‘What can I say, sir, that it would be an honour.’

  ‘That’s what I hoped you would say and no more, Colonel… Major General now.’

  July 1989

  Chapter 26

  Moscow, Lubyanka, KGB Headquarters

  ‘I’ll give you Afghan economics,’ said Konstantin coldly; he had been trying to get his point over for the past half-hour. ‘This is how it works: 5,000 tons of opium, 500 tons of heroin, $250 billion dollars street value. It doesn’t come much bigger.’

  The KGB chair, Karzhov, nodded. General Vdovin sat silent next to him.

  ‘Occupation or no occupation, Najibullah needs arms and the Soviet Union wants to supply him arms; well, I can do that… Geneva Accord or no Geneva Accord,’ he said, trying to not to raise his voice. While the KGB were past masters at espionage, frustratingly, their apparent grasp of markets was less secure.

  In fact, forget Najibullah, he thought, they were all at it – more factions and tribes than he could name – they all wanted to get their hands on more weaponry to kill each other.

  ‘Look, you sell me arms, I pay you in dollars, they pay me in opium and it costs this country nothing in Russian lives. The Americans were at it before, and now it is our turn.’

  The KGB chairman stared at him a moment. ‘And where do you make opium into heroin?’

  ‘Along the border with Pakistan. I just need the political cover to operate – like before – and an arms licence, that’s the new bit. The KGB receives a share and you get a slice into your Swiss account. You don’t have to worry about the transactions in between, delivery… nothing… that’s my responsibility.’

  ‘But you want support – my support?’

  ‘Yes. I don’t want the military breathing down my neck… that new guy, General what’s his nam
e… their rising star?

  ‘General Marov?’ said Karzhov.

  ‘Yes, General Yuri Marov… Well, when they brought him back from wherever he was and put him in charge of the Afghan pull-out, he gave me a lot of grief. Grounded aircraft, delayed shipments to my suppliers, questions, questions. He never caught us out; we were always a step ahead, well informed, thanks to you.’

  ‘He’s nobody’s fool. He complained to the Defence Ministry. Fortunately, they see things the same way we do,’ said Karzhov.

  Konstantin remembered bumping into Marov in Kabul at a late-night bar only the month before. He was with a beautiful Persian woman. It was the general who had approached him.

  ‘I don’t want you fuelling this conflict while I am reducing the garrison,’ he had warned him. ‘I have one hundred thousand men to get out of here as safely as I can.’

  Thirty minutes later the bar had been abandoned in the face of a rocket attack from outside the city.

  ‘I find a rocket with a Made in Russia sign on it, I’ll make it my personal business to make sure the person who put it in their hands pays,’ was the general’s parting shot.

  He was a cut above most Russians, Konstantin thought, and had money too, that was the rumour. Marov was not someone he could buy, that was clear. And wasn’t he thick with Revnik and his old flame?

  ‘What precisely is the general up to now?’ asked Konstantin.

  Vdovin, who had remained mostly silent until then, spoke.

  ‘Apart from the pull-out… reorganisation of the military.’

  The KGB chairman shook his head. ‘God knows where it will end. The general secretary,’ he said in a mocking tone, ‘is discussing a troop withdrawal from Eastern Europe. Our enemies must be rubbing their hands with glee.’

  ‘And where does the Politburo sit in all of this?’ asked Konstantin. It was hard to keep track of events, they were unfolding so fast.

  Karzhov shrugged. ‘They’re all clowns,’ he jeered, ‘there’s even talk of devolving more powers to the republics.’

  The Soviet Union seemed to be teetering towards collapse,

  Karzhov threw a glance at General Vdovin, who nodded back.

  ‘The general says you are to be trusted?’

  ‘We’ve worked well together so far; our interests are not dissimilar,’ Konstantin replied.

  ‘There is a group of us, a small group, but I am sure with wide general support, who are committed to ensuring that the Soviet Union does not disintegrate, that all that has been achieved through decades of sacrifice is not lost.’

  ‘That we do not wake up one morning with the Americans and NATO parked on our borders,’ interjected Vdovin.

  ‘Quite…’ continued Karzhov, ‘we do not intend to dismantle our general forces or lower our strategic guard.’

  Nuclear capability by another name, thought Konstantin.

  ‘And how do you intend to prevent that?’ Konstantin asked. A revived Soviet Union would make his life a lot simpler.

  ‘By any means,’ the KGB chairman said, looking at him directly.

  There had been countless talk of coups. Something had to give, Konstantin thought. Back in Leningrad it had become so bad that the newly elected mayor was doling out Western food relief. And here he was with arguably the most powerful man in Russia talking about any means – that old communist epithet.

  ‘And in what way do you want my help?’ said Konstantin before the chairman asked him.

  ‘You have your network, not unlike our own, covert… global… sworn to secrecy? You understand the meaning of betrayal,’ Karzhov continued.

  ‘We don’t have defectors… not live ones, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘You have political and business affiliations, money and… what shall we call it, your own security force? When the time comes… when our plans are further advanced, I might call on you for support… to neutralise, shall we say, anti-Soviet elements… Do we have an understanding?’

  ‘Of course, Comrade Chairman… and the arms licence?’

  The chairman nodded. ‘You’ll have that by the end of today.’

  Chapter 27

  Moscow

  For a split second, Yuri struggled to remember her name, distracted by the twin sensation of her finger, as it traced the long shrapnel scar on his left side, and her tongue, that flicked over his lips… Natasha.

  ‘General Yarouchka,’ she whispered, using the diminutive. ‘Surely a general can make his men wait.’

  General Yuri Marov moved back a few inches to take her in. Her auburn hair fell straight to her shoulders. She was still wearing the blouse she wore the previous evening hung open and off one shoulder.

  ‘What meeting is more important than me?’ She lunged forward with bared teeth to bite his lower lip as he snapped back out of range, grabbed her by the shoulder and overbalanced her onto the bed, pushing her face into the pillow. His hand traced the inside of her leg.

  ‘I knew you were KGB when I first laid eyes on you!’ he said, laughing. He had met Natasha two nights before at a high-level Moscow party. She was a cut above many of the women he had dated, an ex-model turned businesswoman. She ran her own Moscow agency specialising in exporting models to Western Europe.

  ‘I have to be going…’ He let go of her and jumped off the bed like a trapper releasing a wild animal. She rolled over.

  ‘You have a beautiful apartment.’

  He guessed what she was thinking, how this on a general’s pay?

  His apartment on the Arbat had indeed cost him a great deal of money; army pay would hardly have covered a studio rental within the Sadovaya Koltso – the Garden Ring – around Moscow.

  ‘Thank you,’ is all he said, without elucidating.

  Forty minutes until his car arrived. He looked at his uniform and pressed shirt hanging on the wardrobe door and then at the woman on the bed looking up at him with those smokey eyes, her lips distractingly parted.

  ‘Ten minutes… ten minutes!’ he heard himself say.

  Five minutes later than he normally would have been comfortable with, Yuri took the lift to the ground floor. He passed the concierge seated behind an expensive-looking reception desk, more sculpture than furniture, and took the revolving door onto the street. His staff car was directly outside. The driver, a young dark-haired Chechen, jumped out of the vehicle and rushed round to open the rear passenger door. As Yuri bent down to get in, he noticed a man standing on the other side of the road, ten feet from a parked Lada. He wasn’t sure why he noticed him that morning. Maybe it was a gap in the traffic that was normally bumper to bumper. But his brain had registered something. Without giving the Lada or the man a second glance, he climbed in and settled back into his seat as his driver pulled away from the kerb.

  Yuri shifted his position so that he now had clear sight of the wing mirror. The man he had spotted opposite was climbing hurriedly into the Lada, which had pulled up swiftly beside him. A second later, the man and the car disappeared from view.

  Had he been imagining things? Could it have been a simple coincidence, he thought? He went through a mental list of likely suspects: CIA, MI6, and MSS. One was almost as likely as another. But this was Russia, he reminded himself, where not even generals were to be trusted.

  Chapter 28

  ‘Viktoriya Nikolaevna Kayakova. I have a ten thirty appointment with the minister of oil and gas.’

  As the receptionist checked the minister’s calendar, Viktoriya looked across the entrance hall towards the front door where Yuri stood making sure that everything went smoothly.

  An hour earlier, the two of them had had coffee together to discuss strategy in a café close by the GUM. Yuri had seemed distracted, directing her to a corner table out of earshot of other patrons and telling her to keep her voice down. He was clearly wary of something. She wondered what he did now that he was back in
Moscow. It was not something he ever raised or discussed; she knew better than to broach it with him. All she knew was that he worked at general staff headquarters. Misha guessed it was all to do with the Afghan pull-out, which according to official media was nearly complete. But whatever his role, where her director had failed, Yuri had succeeded. There had been no hesitation from the minister in meeting them once there had been a call from his office.

  ‘ID?’ said the receptionist, a dowdy-looking woman in a grey uniform. Viktoriya wondered if she was always as rude or had just taken an exception to her. There was a tap on her shoulder.

  ‘I have to be going,’ said Yuri as he kissed her on both cheeks. ‘You’ll have to give me a full report later.’

  Viktoriya held his arms for a moment.

  ‘Everything all right, General,’ she said, using his title affectionately. Outside, it had begun to rain heavily. A passing truck hit a pothole in the road, sending a sheet of water over the pavement.

  ‘Yes, absolutely,’ he said, his normal smile returning. ‘A lot going on, that’s all.’

  A young man interrupted them and motioned for her to follow. Viktoriya watched as Yuri ran out into the street and jumped into his staff car. Despite his protest, she couldn’t banish her sense of unease.

  ‘Please wait here,’ said the young man. He parked her in a bare-looking meeting room, all wood and frosted glass, and pointed to a pot of coffee brewing on the table.

  Before she had time to pour herself a cup, an older man – she guessed late fifties, in a regulation Soviet double-breasted grey suit – stepped into the room and introduced himself as Stephan Federov.

  Viktoriya wondered if Federov had any real sense of the power he wielded, his fiat over every well, refinery, and fuel distribution centre. Most state-level bureaucrats she had met simply had no understanding of how the real system worked.

  ‘Viktoriya Nikolaevna, a pleasure to meet you,’ he said, self-consciously tidying his hair. ‘What can I do for you? General Marov made the introduction, I gather? Can I ask what your relationship is with him?’