Stroika

by Mark Blair

  A loud, sudden knock on the door made her jump.

  ‘Hurry up, I have to be on in five minutes,’ said a girl’s voice.

  Taking one final look at herself, she pulled the short black silk dressing gown around her, sufficient to obscure the gun, and opened the door. A girl she recognised but couldn’t name looked at her.

  ‘You new?’

  ‘Sveta,’ Viktoriya introduced herself.

  ‘Well, don’t hog the loo. There’s only one between all of us girls,’ she said, and pushed past.

  Viktoriya nodded, suitably chastened. Up ahead she could hear women’s voices and what sounded like an argument. Music from the club above throbbed through the ceiling. Heart pounding, she took the staircase to the basement and the narrow corridor to Kostya’s door. A single guard looked her up and down. His eyes travelled down her bare arms and legs, and back to her gown, which hung provocatively open, revealing her corset and G-string.

  ‘Konstantin sent for me,’ she said in explanation. The guard bent forward to hear her above the din of the club immediately above the corridor and attempted to slide his arm inside her gown. Viktoriya jumped back and felt the automatic shift in her belt.

  ‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you.’ She reached up to his face and stroked his cheek. ‘Maybe later. What’s your name?’ she asked him.

  ‘Taras,’ he answered. He had large hands and a round face that glowed orange in the subdued light.

  ‘Okay… Taras… Kostya doesn’t like to be kept waiting, you know what he’s like.’ Her hands went to her G-string. She adjusted the elastic lower on her hips.

  Taras pushed open the familiar door to Kostya’s office and closed it behind her.

  Kostya looked up from his desk. He was pouring over some list or other with Bazhukov. They both seemed more bemused than irritated, no doubt wondering why one of the club girls had suddenly appeared uninvited. Bazhukov started to say something, but it was Kostya who reconfigured her appearance first. He looked startled.

  ‘Vika!’ he exclaimed.

  Bazhukov went for the gun in his shoulder holster but he was slow. Viktoriya already had her hand on the Markov; she slid it out from under her belt and pointed it in his direction. Bazhukov took a step back and raised his hands.

  ‘Kostya, keep your hands on the table where I can see them,’ she said more calmly than she felt, ‘and Bazhukov, you keep them up… I have to say I don’t think much of your security.’

  ‘So what is it you want?’ Kostya asked coolly.

  Viktoriya raised the barrel a fraction and squeezed the trigger. Bazhukov made a pouf sound and tumbled over the chair behind him.

  ‘You’ll need a new head of security now. That’s for my father.’

  Kostya’s hands shifted down the desk a fraction.

  ‘That’s far enough,’ she warned, and pointed the gun squarely at him. ‘So explain.’

  ‘Explain, ah… well it’s nothing personal.’

  ‘It never is with you, Kostya.’

  ‘Somebody wants your friend dead… somebody high up. Until now it’s only been me that has stopped them… but it’s imperative now, you see. I have no idea why… you know, if it wasn’t me, it would only be someone else.’

  ‘And who is somebody?’

  ‘The question I ask myself… KGB… the military… the new government.’

  ‘And me… did that figure in their equation or yours? I thought we trusted each other… but then I should have known better. We are all means to your ends, aren’t we, Kostya – every one of us, dispensable.

  ‘Are you going to pull that trigger?’ he said, staring at the barrel.

  ‘I’m considering it.’ She took first pressure.

  Konstantin tensed.

  ‘Kill me and our friend dies.’

  ‘Isn’t it the other way round? Why is he suddenly our friend now?’

  ‘You’ve made your point,’ Konstantin said, looking at Bazhukov’s body and the large red stain spreading over his shirt. ‘Look, if you kill me they will just give the contract to someone else. They are not going to stop. Maybe it will be Vdovin and his merry men. He’s not going to worry about losing a few soldiers taking Morskaya. Look… if the coup succeeds, the best you can do is get out of the country. If it fails – and these guys are crazies – maybe, just maybe, it will all stop. I can keep them satisfied for now, tell them Misha’s in a coma and not going anywhere. Kill me and you’ve signed Misha’s death warrant. Besides, did you think I had given up? You know me, Vika.’

  Konstantin lifted his hands off the table and sat back in the chair.

  There was a knock at the door.

  ‘Call him in.’ She hoped there’d be only one.

  The guard who had tried to grab her walked in to deliver a message he had in his hand. She pointed the gun at him and waved him over to Konstantin’s side.

  ‘Quite a party now,’ said Kostya, smiling.

  ‘One last thing, and this is going to hurt, Kostya… Misha thought you might try something like this. That money you sent us – the last batch, all eighty-five million of it – it’s sitting in an intermediary account in the Cayman’s… I might just recall or divert it somewhere more useful.’

  It was the second time in the last ten minutes that Kostya had looked shocked.

  ‘Whatever happened to my word is my bond?’

  ‘The same thing that happened to friendship… So here’s the trade,’ she said, waving the automatic at him. ‘You stop whatever devious plan you have in train, your men remain strictly hands off Morskaya and Misha, and you escort me nicely out of the club.’

  ‘And my money?’

  ‘Let’s see if you can behave first.’

  Kostya nodded, picked up the phone and dialled RUI on Morskaya. Viktoriya heard Alina’s voice answer.

  ‘Alina, this is Kostya. Tell the nurses to throw away all the injectables and ensure you get a fresh supply. Have your doctor check it over.’ He replaced the receiver.

  ‘It’s a shame, Kostya, you could have been anything. Now both of you remove your guns and drop them on the floor. Use the tips of your fingers.’

  Kostya nodded to the guard and the pair of them removed their automatics.

  ‘Now, we’re going to just walk out the way I came in.’

  The corridor was empty. With Kostya directly in front, she walked her two captives steadily up the stairs.

  ‘Get my bag, Taras.’ She pointed at the toilet door. ‘And now the back. Tell your man to down his gun.’

  ‘You’ll need to put your coat on, Vika.’ She could hear the faint tone of amusement in Kostya’s voice. ‘And if you ever want a job…’

  ‘Don’t tempt me, Kostya.’ She nudged him in the back with the silencer.

  The man who had let her in backed away from the door as they exited onto the alley. Viktoriya thought how the scene might look to a passer-by: three men – and a woman, barely clothed, holding a gun.

  She waved them back inside, kicked off her shoes and sprinted up to the main street. A black Volga screeched to a halt in front of her. Ivan threw open the door.

  ‘Okay, the station. I need to catch that late train.’

  Viktoriya cast one last look down the passageway at the lonely figure of Kostya staring back towards her.

  Chapter 59

  Moscow

  Colonel Ilya Terentev gazed out the café window to the food queue across the street that had formed in front of a pop-up stall. Children tugged at their mothers’ hands while the elderly stood patiently, inured to a crumbling system. All day, state television had broadcast pictures of the general mobilisation in response to so-called Western provocation. Was it going to be 1956 all over again? Thousands had died in Hungary. Yuri was right that things had to move on. But where had that landed his friend? Locked up in Lubyanka for anti-Soviet activity
and, if the coup prevailed, it would get much worse. He gulped a mouthful of lukewarm coffee and grimaced at its bitterness.

  The door opened. A man with a neatly trimmed beard and red scarf tucked into a dark grey wool overcoat stepped in, signalled the waitress for a coffee, and took the chair opposite Ilya.

  ‘News from the front?’ asked Terentev.

  ‘None of it good, I’m afraid, Colonel.’

  Terentev counted his good fortune. At least he felt could rely on his men’s loyalty. Sticking together in an organisation as large and amorphous as the KGB was the first rule of survival.

  ‘Our lot have the general secretary holed up in his dacha at Peredelkino. I sent Vasily there to check it out. Have you ever been there, Colonel?’

  ‘Many times, with my wife. My friend has a dacha there.’

  Terentev pictured its woods, small well-tended gardens and evening gatherings when dissident artists rubbed shoulders with the political elite.

  ‘The Emergency Committee has not done itself any favours holding the general secretary so close to Moscow. How many men?’

  ‘Forty… fifty… maybe more. No one gets in or out… under the direct command of the KGB chairman himself.’

  ‘And General Marov?’

  ‘General Volkov visited him this afternoon… came away furious apparently. It doesn’t look like Volkov got what he wanted.’

  ‘Support, I would guess,’ said Terentev. Safety in numbers. Yuri would be a perfect addition to the list of conspirators. ‘I doubt General Marov is going to be rushing to the cause.’

  Volkov was clearly not as confident as he appeared. Terentev doubted if the new colonel general could rely on the undivided loyalty of every district general. Yuri might just give him the credibility he needed with the outriders.

  ‘Are you reporting this up?’

  Terentev shook his head. Where? If anyone found out that he was conducting a surveillance operation in Peredelkino he would land up in the same place as Yuri. The question was what could he do about it, if anything? The answer was plain enough, not very much. The deputy general secretary, secretary of defence, even his own boss were all complicit. Rumblings had not converted to people on the street… not yet, but then it had been less than forty-eight hours since the general secretary had disappeared from public view. The average citizen wanted to believe the Emergency Committee, but that confidence would soon evaporate if there were no sightings of the general secretary soon, and then what?

  His junior officer sat waiting for instructions, staring out the window at the queue Terentev had been studying ten minutes before.

  ‘Just keep me informed; any change, let me know immediately.’

  For now, he would just have to wait.

  Chapter 60

  Moscow, Lubyanka

  Yuri relieved himself in the hole that excused itself as a toilet in the corner of his small cell, zipped up his jeans and pulled on the overhead chain. He needed more water; the jug by the table had run dry an hour ago.

  Through a gap in the hatch he counted four cells opposite and, if he stood sideways, the solid reinforced door giving on to the narrow corridor.

  ‘Derevenko… Yev!’ he shouted. Silence. If they wanted to isolate him, he thought, they had done a good job.

  He went back and lay on the bed and wondered whether Anatoly had got through to Leningrad and what Viktoriya would make of it all if he had.

  He thought back to Smolensk. It felt like a lifetime ago when Viktoriya and he had wandered the streets in that early first winter snow, of how he had kissed her under the prying eyes of an elderly woman who sat on a chair at the end of her hotel corridor. He remembered how Viktoriya had looked at him with a mixture of suspicion and amusement. You remind me of a wolf, she had said randomly, looking at him with those icy-blue eyes. How off guard he had been caught by that remark and how much he had thought about it since: predator, instinctual, powerful animal, threatening were all epithets one could attach to the word wolf. When he asked her what she had meant, she had just shrugged. Maybe she was right, but he wasn’t sure he entirely liked it either, not in the way she felt about him, anyway. But how else would he want to be perceived: a snake, a lamb…?

  Neither of them had made any promises to each other when they had set off for their respective destinations the following morning: she to Leningrad, he eventually to Moscow; it had all been left hanging in the air, suspended, unresolved. If they ever met again, he wondered if she would pretend it never happened.

  Yuri’s mind turned to Volkov again and the other district generals. Had they thrown their lot in with the new chief of staff? Presumably they had by what he had witnessed in Migalovo, or was it an intended consequence of a general mobilisation, with no time for introspection or dissent. All the same, Yuri didn’t think they would all be happy with it either. Ghukov was respected, but he did not believe Zhakov of the Far East district or Ivchenko of the Urals – who he got on with personally – would be eager to support a revived Communist government, not after the debacle of Afghanistan. General Alyabyev of Central Command Moscow, though, was that much harder to read. Older, no doubt approaching retirement, Yuri had little to do with him personally apart from staff meetings in Moscow. Alyabyev gave little away.

  The sudden jangling of keys in the door made him sit up. The defence minister entered, followed by a guard with a jug of water, a bowl of something and a piece of rye bread. Were they trying to kill him with kindness now, he thought?

  ‘General, please eat.’

  The defence minister gestured at the bowl.

  ‘May I say, General, I am deeply sorry to meet you under these circumstances.’

  ‘Well that makes two of us, Comrade Dubnikov.’

  Yuri had met the defence minister, Viktor Dubnikov, on several occasions, although it was Ghukov as chief of staff who met with him mostly. He was definitely communist old guard. In his sixties, Dubnikov had served Brezhnev before the present general secretary. Yuri guessed he was part of the political balancing act that the general secretary had needed to perform in the Politburo. Neatly dressed in a black suit, white shirt and red tie, the minister took the only chair and sat down. He removed a handkerchief from his trouser pocket and mopped his face.

  ‘As I said, I am sorry to see you under these circumstances,’ he repeated.

  ‘We could take this conversation to a café,’ Yuri countered.

  ‘Well that would be awkward, I’m sure you will appreciate. Colonel, General Volkov has, I understand, been to see you. I just wanted to reassure you personally that should you decide to support the Emergency Committee, you would be well rewarded. You may have your personal difficulties with Volkov, but he does respect your military ability, he has told me so, as I do, I might add. We need talent like yours, General… How would second in command to the colonel general sound?’

  ‘Comrade Dubnikov, I’m truly flattered, but all this can be easily solved. Let me see the general secretary. If he is ill, as you say he is, I will certainly reconsider.’

  ‘I’m afraid that will not be possible. The general secretary is not receiving visitors, he is too unwell.’

  ‘Why did I think you would say that?

  ‘Comrade, I said this to someone quite recently, do you want to be on the wrong or the right side of history? Do you, Comrade Dubnikov?’

  Dubnikov stood up, blue in the face, and banged on the door for the guard.

  ‘I’m sure General Volkov pointed out that our patience is limited,’ said the defence minister coldly. ‘We need you final answer by this time tomorrow.’

  Yuri stood up and took a step towards him so they were face-to-face.

  ‘Comrade Dubnikov, I, of all people, am not someone who takes kindly to being threatened, remember that.’

  The minister blinked and, without another word, left.

  15 OCTOBER 1989


  Chapter 61

  Moscow

  Viktoriya sat on her duffel bag outside Terentev’s flat on Degtyarny. Six thirty in the morning and it was still dark. She had already worked out that the doorbell to flat five did not work and decided to wait fifteen minutes and see if anyone opened the main door before she started ringing bells randomly waking residents and drawing attention to herself.

  Her sleep had been fitful on the Red Star from Leningrad. Travelling second class in a women’s-only four-berth couchette, her only fellow passenger was a woman in her forties visiting family in Moscow. She did not proffer anything more than visiting a friend herself. What would she have said if she had told the truth – taking photographs of indefinite significance to a KGB colonel?

  The door clanged open. Viktoriya jumped to her feet. A man, mid-thirties, sporting a military-style haircut and a canvas duffle bag hung off one shoulder, stepped onto the street.

  ‘Can I help you?’ he asked, looking her up and down and the bag parked on the street. She had slipped on a pair of jeans and a blue cashmere sweater in the car before boarding the Red Star but had still not bothered to remove her make-up from the night before.

  ‘I’ve come to see a friend. I’m from out of the city; his bell doesn’t seem to be working.’

  ‘If you don’t mind my asking, who is it you have come to see?’

  ‘Ilya Terentev.’

  The man stared at her for a moment, sizing her up. She felt slightly unnerved.

  ‘I’ll show you up. I know where he lives.’

  Viktoriya protested that that wouldn’t be necessary but he ignored her. Extracting his key, he unlocked the street door and waved her in. There was nothing else for it. She picked up her bag, slung it onto her shoulder and let her hand drop inside.