Stroika

by Mark Blair

Burglaries were becoming a common occurrence, and Viktoriya expected to find her apartment ransacked. To her surprise, everything looked in perfect order. The coffee table with photos of her and her parents, and one of her and Misha taken as teenage school friends, found recently, were undisturbed, as was an expensive wristwatch she had left there in full view that morning. Viktoriya wondered if the concierge had somehow got it wrong, mixed up her apartment with someone else’s. She looked at her two bodyguards and shrugged.

  ‘Let’s check the other rooms,’ she said, and explained the layout of the apartment.

  Leaving Viktoriya in the living room, the two men moved down the corridor. There were two doors to the right – her bedroom and a spare room – and her bathroom and one for storage on the left.

  The doors were all closed except the one to her bedroom, which was slightly ajar.

  ‘Do you remember how you left these?’ asked the bodyguard facing the first door on the right.

  ‘No,’ said Viktoriya. ‘The cleaner was in this morning.’

  As the door was already slightly ajar, they decided on the bedroom first. Vladimir extracted a small torch from his jacket and, with his fingers, slowly and carefully began to explore the door frame for wires or triggers. He moved down the door and architrave, waving the torch beam back and forth for any filament reflection.

  ‘Where’s the light switch,’ the first bodyguard said, looking back at Viktoriya, who was now at the sitting room end of the corridor.

  ‘On the left as you go in.’

  He nodded, and pushing the door open a fraction more, he reached in with his hand and switched on the light.

  The bedroom was as Viktoriya remembered it, except, of course, for the now made-up bed. She slid open the mirrored wardrobe that ran along one wall of the bedroom. Dozens of dresses and outfits, neatly arranged, hung from the wardrobe rail, and below them pairs of shoes and boots stretched from one end to the other. Viktoriya shrugged, baffled.

  They repeated the same procedure for the spare room – again nothing. They returned to the bathroom door where they had almost begun. Maybe the whole thing was some sort of prank, or the concierge really had got it wrong. Viktoriya thought of calling the front desk, asking the concierge to come up to the apartment and confirm that this was the one he had let the electrician into, but her two security service men were concentrating on the bathroom door and she decided not to disturb them. Vladimir tensed to push it open.

  ‘Stop!’ she shouted. An alarm rang in Viktoriya’s head; some instinct or ghost of intuition screamed at her that something was wrong.

  Startled, the two men stepped back. The bathroom door was always left ajar to ensure it was properly aired, so that damp did not build up. Her cleaner, an elderly woman, had told her in a motherly way not to close it. She always left the door and the outside bathroom window open a crack.

  ‘I may be overreacting, but that door is normally left open,’ she explained.

  From the corridor there was no way they could see into the bathroom.

  Vladimir opened the storage room door, pulled up the sash window and leaned out. It was a short distance, six feet, from the corner of the storage room window sill to that of the bathroom, a stretch and a bit. He looked down four floors to the street below; a wide shelf ran around the outside of the building, four or five feet directly below the window.

  ‘Are you sure you are up for this?’ said Viktoriya, genuinely concerned.

  ‘The alternative is to go through the door. No, this is a piece of cake.’ He didn’t sound so confident.

  As he flattened himself against the wall, with his partner firmly gripping his left hand, Viktoriya watched Vladimir edge his way along the shelf, testing it gingerly with his foot as he went. He stopped when his hand made contact with the end of the bathroom sill.

  ‘Right,’ he said out loud to himself. He took a deep breath, let go of his friend’s hand and shuffled directly under the bathroom window. With his left hand firmly grabbing the sill, he forced the sash window up with his right and hauled himself through the gap.

  ‘I am in!’ he shouted, not without some considerable relief in his voice.

  ‘Can you see anything Vlad?’ Viktoriya asked.

  Underneath the door she saw the beam of his torch moving back and forth and then the door open inward.

  ‘All-clear,’ he said brushing ice off the front of his jeans.

  The electrician or the cleaner must have closed the bathroom door, she thought.

  Going back into the living room, Viktoriya flopped down on the sofa.

  ‘I want the concierge gone by tomorrow.’

  Neither of them commented.

  It was then she noticed something she hadn’t picked up on before. The phone on the small coffee table by the sofa normally faced away from the sofa but now faced towards it. The cleaner might have moved it but she invariably replaced it where she found it. Viktoriya put one finger to her lips and caught the eyes of the two men. Inspecting the outer casing first, she gently unscrewed the mouthpiece. Inside was a tiny electronic listening device. She had seen something similar before at a friend of her father’s, who worked for the Peasants’ Union. Viktoriya pointed the device out to Vladimir and the other guard, and then carefully reassembled the receiver and replaced the handset back on the glass tabletop. She stepped back into the centre of the room away from the sofa.

  ‘I said I’d call in on Misha this evening. Let me get my coat.’

  Viktoriya spoke to them again when they were all out in the corridor.

  ‘I want you to go over my apartment with a bug detector, every centimetre… but do not disturb anything… you never know, it might come in useful.’

  11 October 1989

  Chapter 37

  Moscow

  ‘Come in, General Marov. Thank you for coming to see me so promptly.’

  Yuri heard the door click shut behind him.

  Colonel General Andrei Ghukov stood next to a wall map of Europe. A line traced the Iron Curtain dividing East from West and coloured pins the disposition of allied and enemy forces – red for Soviet, black for local and blue for NATO.

  ‘I’ve just met with the general secretary… I suppose you have been following the reports.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ was all he said. What had started a month ago, with Hungary opening its borders with Austria and letting thousands of East Germans use it as an escape route to the West, had escalated into mass protest against the East German government. The general secretary’s recent visit had only increased tensions.

  ‘Honecker is a fool if he thinks he can keep a lid on this,’ Ghukov continued. ‘The general secretary has signalled change and all his government have done is stonewall. He is losing control. He’s been there too long.’

  Eighteen years, thought Yuri. Honecker and the Communist East German government had seen three general secretaries come and go.

  ‘We are putting pressure on him to resign, as are his colleagues. I don’t think it will be long in coming. But the long and short of it is that the general secretary will not intervene. He has assurances from the Americans that they will not take advantage of the situation if we allow Eastern Europe to break free.’

  ‘You trust them, sir?’

  ‘I don’t think we have a choice, not if we want to avoid a lot of bloodshed.’

  ‘And General Volkov?’ asked Yuri. Volkov had enough hardware and manpower to steamroller Western Europe.

  ‘Volkov called and recommended I persuade the general secretary to intervene before it’s “too late”, to use his actual words.’

  They were both silent for a minute.

  ‘And your view, sir?’ asked Yuri.

  ‘We shouldn’t intervene. I am with the general secretary for all the reasons we have discussed. It’s time we stepped back.

  ‘General, you are close to the
district generals. How do you think they will react?’

  Yuri shrugged. ‘I don’t know sir, they are hard to read… with the exception, of course, of generals Volkov and Vdovin… I can’t say there is much enthusiasm around the table for Soviet troop reductions.’

  Yuri wondered whether the colonel general, having come so far, might backtrack. He and the general secretary were clearly under pressure.

  Ghukov fell silent and contemplated the map as though the answer he was looking for might be there.

  ‘Where are you going to be for the next few days, General?’

  ‘Archangel, sir… a new weapons trial. I can reschedule if you’d rather I stayed in Moscow.’

  ‘No, General, you go. It would send the wrong signal not to.’

  As Yuri’s staff car drove him back to his apartment building, Yuri reflected on the conversation he had just had with the chief of staff and earlier that morning with Terentev. His KGB friend had drawn a blank; there was no record of any meetings, which only deepened his suspicions. He knew from the lieutenant that that wasn’t the case, and he didn’t think she was lying.

  As he passed reception, the concierge handed him an envelope. Yuri waited until he was in his apartment before opening it. Inside, a card read:

  Dear General, Further to your enquiry, I can confirm your suit will be ready on October 13.

  It was a message from Biryukova. So there was to be another meeting. He must get a message to Ilya. If Ilya could have some of his men trail the committee members the lieutenant had identified, maybe he could take his suspicions to Ghukov with some hard facts. He called a driver and scribbled a note.

  Thank you for dinner the other evening and sorry I will miss your celebration on October 13. See you when I return from Archangel.

  He was sure Ilya would get the point.

  Chapter 38

  Leningrad

  Adriana rolled a dollar bill, inserted it into her left nostril and snorted the line of white powder Konstantin had neatly cut her and left on the low table. She closed her eyes and fell back into the sofa. When would Konstantin be back? She couldn’t remember what he had said now. Her heart was pounding in her ears so loudly that she thought it might burst. He had only left a few minutes before, but she wasn’t certain now. The sound of catcalls and music filtered down from the bar. For the first time that evening she was alone, away from lecherous looks and pawing hands.

  How many lines of coke had she snorted that night? She tried to remember. Evenings had begun to blur since she had begun to work at Pravdy. Konstantin seemed to take a special pleasure in summoning her when she had been on the floor a few hours. He would pump her with coke before fucking her on the sofa or presenting her to one of his political cronies or that disgusting General Vdovin, tipping her with extra coke if she performed well. She hated all of them.

  There was a bang on the door, and a male voice shouted ‘On in ten minutes!’

  ‘Okay!’ she shouted back. Re-energised, Adriana stood up and loosened her short pink satin kimono; she was boiling. Catching sight of herself in the mirror, she eased it off her shoulders and gyrated to the dull beat of the music. She looked great, better than great. Thank God for coke, she thought. Had she had one or two lines before sex with Konstantin? She lost her balance, nearly fell over and grabbed the edge of the desk. He had to keep the stuff somewhere in his office, the way he dished it out.

  She kicked off her high heels, walked round to the other side of the desk and pulled open the main drawer: Cuban cigars, a guillotine cigar cutter, condoms, a vibrator, a Markov automatic with its safety catch off, a photograph of Viktoriya. She held it up and studied it. She was finding it hard to focus and wondered if she would be able to make it back on stage. Maybe she could persuade Irina to take her place. Studying the image of her former competition, she wondered what was so special about her. She was good-looking, but then weren’t all the girls in Konstantin’s clubs? She knew that they had had an almighty row some time ago and he had thrown her out, but according to the other girls he had never roughed her up, ever, but how did they know. She put back the photo and picked up an old ID card. A man in his fifties with Brezhnev eyebrows stared up at her. She read his name out loud, ‘Pavel Pytorvich Antyuhin.’ She thought it looked like the same card Konstantin had been holding in his hand when she had re-entered the room after his old flame had been shown out. Maybe it had been her who had given it to him. Buried under a small notebook Adriana found what she was looking for, a small bag of white powder. Using the ID, she marshalled two lines on the desk and snorted them back in quick succession.

  Recharged, she stood up and wiggled back on her shoes. The face of Antyuhin stared up at her from the desk. She picked it up again, puzzled. Who was he? Trouble, no doubt, for that too good whore ex of Konstantin.

  Chapter 39

  ‘These are the proscribed, the supposed enemies of the state.’ Konstantin looked down the list. Someone had taken the trouble to put it into alphabetical order and head it Leningrad. On it were seven names: Gavrilov from the gorkom was there, marked with a tick, Artem, a deputy, a tick, the list went on with ticks and crosses… and Mikhail Dimitrivich Revnik, a cross.

  ‘They…’ said Vdovin. The famous they, thought Konstantin, ‘…want you to detain the ticks and eliminate the crosses.’

  Vdovin gawped at him across his desk.

  ‘You signed up to it,’ Vdovin reminded him when Konstantin said nothing. ‘They can revoke that arms licence just as easily as they issued it.’

  Vdovin was right in more ways than one. He could hardly back out now, not unless he wanted his own name added to the list. He would just have to make sure he covered his tracks.

  ‘For the record, I tried to change that cross to a tick. He wouldn’t wear it. He’s adamant, made a big point about it. He also said you can sequestrate his business and take over control of Leningrad Freight for good measure.’

  Mikhail Revnik. It was an irony that that one-time-nothing had become public enemy number one. And over what… some fogged photographs? Before, keeping him alive might have mattered, but not now; he didn’t owe him or his ex-girlfriend anything. Hadn’t he even offered him a partnership and been laughed off? Konstantin took a lighter from his pocket, lit the list and watched it turn to ash.

  ‘And when does this all kick off?’

  ‘Imminently… East Germany is not going to be allowed to collapse.’

  ‘And how will I know?’ For the first time in years, Konstantin felt he was back taking orders from his old colonel again.

  ‘When I give you the code word.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Stroika.’

  12 October 1989

  Chapter 40

  Viktoriya answered the phone.

  ‘I hope I haven’t caught you at an awkward time.’ It was Yuri. She had not heard his voice since the evening in Smolensk.

  ‘No, it’s fine.’ She looked at her watch: eight thirty in the morning.

  ‘I just wanted to say how much I enjoyed our evening and I hope we can do it again.’

  ‘Yes, that would be lovely.’

  Indeed, she had thought of that evening a great deal. Not much had happened. They had kicked the snow, walked and talked and talked. She had hardly noticed the freezing temperature buried inside his coat. But back in Leningrad she had felt different, more settled, centred. It was hard to define, but she was sure it was to do with that evening.

  ‘Maybe when I’m back from Archangel.’

  She hadn’t had the opportunity to tell him about her eavesdropper and was beginning to regret not having it removed. ‘I leave Moscow tomorrow for a few days; we can sort something out when I get back, maybe even go to Europe, if I can pull some leave. Yes,’ she found herself saying. ‘I could give you the grand tour.’

  There was a pause as if he were weighing something up, trying to be c
areful with words. It occurred to her then that he might well suspect her phone being bugged; he couldn’t take the chance that it wasn’t.

  ‘Okay, I’ll let you plan it. It’s like what we were saying at the bar, now or never. Take care, Vika.’

  She replaced the receiver and stood staring blankly at the wall going over his words. She should have felt delighted but somehow it did not ring true… now or never. They hadn’t talked about now or never. They’d talked about a potential coup and a tipping point. But, of course, that’s what he did mean. He must know or suspect something, and weren’t there all sorts of rumours flying around about what was going on in Eastern Europe?

  A loud bang on her apartment door made Viktoriya jump. She switched on the security camera. Outside in the corridor three uniformed police stared up at her while another argued with her two bodyguards, waving a piece of official-looking paper at them.

  Viktoriya pulled open the door.

  ‘Viktoriya Nikolaevna Kayakova?’ asked the one with the official-looking paper in his hand.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We have a warrant for your arrest in connection with the death of Pavel Pytorvich Antyuhin.’ The officer showed her the warrant and his badge.

  ‘I don’t know what you are talking about,’ she lied. How did they know? What could they know? Kostya wouldn’t have betrayed her, not when he was directly involved. ‘You’ve made some mistake.’

  ‘You’ll have to come with us, madam, I’m afraid. You can either do it peaceably or not.’

  He stood there and stared at her, calmly, daring her to disobey him.

  Vladimir stepped in between her and the police officer.

  ‘You’re not taking her anywhere.’

  The last thing she wanted was a fight.

  ‘Vlad, it’ll be all right. I’ll sort this out; there’s clearly been some mistake. You can follow me to the police station. I was meant to meet Misha and Konstantin Ivanivich later. Will you please tell them straightaway what has happened?’ Indeed, she had no plan to meet Kostya that day, but maybe he could figure out what was going on.