Moscow Rules

by Robert Moss

  Zotov voiced no objections as he read:

  Because of the lack of experience of democratic development in our country, and as a safeguard against chaos and anarchy, all political activities are strictly forbidden until civil order has been guaranteed. Providing they respect this regulation, political emigres who left the country under the former regime are welcome to return at their own expense. They will no longer be considered enemies of the people under a Soviet legal code that has been abolished.

  There was a lengthy section on economic reforms. Sasha thought of this as the ‘Zaytsev Plan,’ since it was in Fedya’s house, after the grueling Spetsnaz exercise that had pitted them against each other, that the necessity for placing individuals in charge of their own fortunes had come home to him. The collective farms were to be abolished, and land redistributed to individual farmers, ‘so that Russia can feed herself again.’ The profit motive was to be recognized in industry, and light manufacturing was to be opened up to the private sector.

  ‘Utopian,’ the Marshal muttered.

  His frown returned as he came to the section on foreign policy, which was terse. The basic drift was that it was sufficient for Russia to be indestructible; .the country did not need foreign adventures that wasted the resources required for reconstruction at home. Sasha’s document stated:

  The Military Revolutionary Committee harbors no aggressive designs. In order to prevent civil disturbances, we will maintain a military presence in Eastern Europe. But the citizens of the member-countries of the Warsaw Pact, no less than our own people, will be afforded the chance to develop their own course of political evolution.

  The Marshal choked on the Afghan section, which was unambiguous:

  A schedule will be announced for the phased withdrawal of the occupation forces, whose original deployment was a major blunder by the former Soviet regime. The Military Revolutionary Committee will convene a conference at which all the principal factions involved in the Afghan conflict will be urged to participate in a power-sharing arrangement. The Committee is ready to sign a nonaggression pact with a coalition government representing all the popular forces in Afghanistan.

  The Marshal slammed the red folder shut and threw it in Sasha’s direction.

  ‘You know what you can do with this!’ he bellowed at Sasha. ‘I’ll never accept it. I’m surprised at both of you.’ His glance shifted to Zaytsev. ‘You’ve fought those black-asses in the field in Afghanistan.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Sasha interjected. ‘We’ve seen what the war is doing to the army, and we don’t believe it’s worth the cost.’

  ‘Your whole approach is wrong,’ Zotov went on. ‘It’s not just Afghanistan. You seem to want to back off from all our internationalist responsibilities, forfeit the influence we’ve acquired. You seem to imagine that the Americans and the rest of our enemies are going to love us just because we’re wearing shoulder straps. You’re making a big mistake. You’ve seen these?’

  He held up some satellite reconnaissance reports.

  ‘The Americans are mobilizing in a big way. I bet they’re shitting in their pants. This isn’t the moment for us to start swallowing the isolationist slop they gulp down like Coca-Cola. It’s the moment for us to stand up and show that we’re strong. That will help us bind the country together. That’s what I intend to tell the Central Committee, and they’ll vote my way. You can count on it.’

  He rose, as if to dismiss his visitors.

  ‘We have a different perspective,’ Sasha said. ‘We think that our most pressing priorities are on the home front. We’ve got nothing to fear from the Americans. I’ve seen them. Their politicians and their media prefer to deny they have any enemies, so they don’t have to pay the price of standing up to them. If we make a gesture to them now, they’ll shower us with gifts.’

  He bent down to pick up the red folder, which had landed on the floor.

  ‘You didn’t just suck that out of your thumb overnight, did you?’ The Marshal returned to the attack. ‘Why didn’t you tell me about this earlier on?’

  ‘I didn’t know whether you were ready to accept it.’

  ‘Ready?’ Zotov mocked him. ‘Well, you were damn right. You have one or two ideas we can use, I’ll admit that. But you can tear up this foreign policy shit. We’ll do things the proper way.’

  ‘You mean you’re going to preserve the Party.’

  ‘It will be our show, Sasha. You know that. There’ll be changes, of course. But not all at once. We have to bring people around, build support.’

  ‘And disappoint all the hopes we’ve raised? Don’t you see the people are with us? How long do you think they’ll be on our side if they see that the system is going to stay the same?’

  ‘I’ve made my decision,’ the Marshal said. ‘You are both dismissed.’

  Not quite,’ Sasha responded. He held up the red folder. ‘We would like you to broadcast this to the people tonight, as Chairman of the Military Revolutionary Committee.’

  ‘Perhaps I haven’t made myself clear,’ Zotov erupted. ‘You can stick that academic twaddle up your ass. We have to live in the real world.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Alexei Ivanovich. But with or without you, this is the way it’s going to be. We didn’t risk everything to end up with some kind of Soviet Jaruzelski. We would like you to lead us — ‘

  ‘That’s very gracious of you,’ the Marshal interrupted.

  ‘But only if you are willing to accept the changes that Russia needs. I beg you to reconsider.’

  ‘Zaytsev!’ Zotov roared at the general. ‘Don’t just stand there like a dummy! Remind your friend that we still have discipline in the Russian army.’

  ‘I would have obeyed any order from you until now, even at the risk of my life,’ Zaytsev replied. ‘But Sasha is right. You must do as he suggests.’

  Marshal Zotov’s eyes seemed about to burst from their sockets. ‘Are you both insane?’ he roared. ‘Do you dare to threaten me in my own office? I’m not fucking Askyerov. I’ll place both of you under arrest. Believe me, Sasha, I’ll do it.’

  ‘Then go ahead.’

  Zotov rang his secretary. ‘Who’s on guard duty?’

  ‘Major Petrov, sir.’

  ‘Send him in at once.’

  He banged down the phone and said, ‘I’m prepared to forget this, Sasha. Your apology will be sufficient. Come on, spit it out. There’s time.’

  ‘I can say I’m sorry, Alexei Ivanovich, and I mean it from the bottom of my heart. I’m sorry that a line has been drawn between us. I’m sorry you couldn’t cross to our side. I’m sorry you insist on remaining in the past.’

  ‘Have it your own way, then!’ the Marshal roared at him. ‘Don’t think I’m going to make it easier for you because you’re married to my daughter! You forget to do your duty on that front too! I can see you make it a habit to let down your family.’

  Sasha folded his arms and stared at the ceiling.

  Major Petrov marched in, armed to the teeth. The Marshal didn’t recognize him. He was in Airborne uniform. He clicked his heels and saluted.

  ‘Major,’ Zotov instructed him, ‘you will place these two officers under arrest for gross breaches of discipline and confiscate their sidearms.’

  Instead of obeying, Petrov turned and looked quizzically at his commanding officer, General Zaytsev. ‘It’s all right, Petrov,’ General Zaytsev said. ‘The Marshal is overtired. He’s been up all night. I want you to arrange an escort and take him home. He is to remain there for the next week for recuperation. Got that?’

  ‘Yes, sir!’ Petrov responded cheerfully.

  ‘You bitches!’ Zotov yelled at all of them. ‘This is fucking mutiny!’

  ‘There’s time for you to think again, Alexei Ivanovich, ‘ Sasha said to him as Petrov led him toward the door. ‘We’re doing what the people want. You ought to be with us, not against us.’

  Zotov replied with a stream of profanities. Then he shoved his big face up against Sasha’s and muttered, ‘How cou
ld you do this to me?’

  Sasha slowly recited, ‘If you live with wolves, howl like them.’

  *

  With the arrest of the Central Committee and the confinement of Marshal Zotov, Sasha held absolute power in Moscow. For most of the day the radio stations had been broadcasting military music and Tchaikovsky; Moscow television was off the air. At 7:00 P.M., the ‘1812 Overture’ was interrupted.

  ‘Attention! Attention!’ said an unfamiliar announcer. ‘Stand by for an important communiqué.’ There was a pause. Then a tape recording of Sasha’s voice came over the air waves.

  ‘Fellow citizens,’ it began. ‘The dictatorship of the Communist Party has been ended. According to the decision of the high command of the armed forces, full powers have been transferred to the Military Revolutionary Committee, which is resolved to put an end to the corruption and tyranny of the former regime and restore the spirit of true democracy. Martial law is in force. We expect all citizens to remain calm, to avoid demonstrations, and to observe curfew regulations. All citizens are required to remain in their homes between the hours of 10:00 P.M. and 6:00 A.M.’

  Sasha summarized some of the key points in the program. He concluded: ‘The name of our country, which has been tarnished in the eyes of the world and our own people by the actions of the former regime, has been changed to the Union of People’s Republics. The rights of all nationalities and religious communities within the Union will be upheld.’

  Vassily Fedotov, a taxi driver from the Eleventh Garage, had just dropped a passenger at the Rossiya when he heard the news. He set his headlights on high beam and started driving around the center of Moscow. Soon a procession had formed, and the blare of car horns chorussed the church bells.

  On Lenin Hills, university students broke into the building that housed the relay radio transmitter and took over the special network, reserved for civil defense announcements. When Sasha’s broadcast was repeated an hour later, the amplifiers carried it all across the campus.

  An elderly couple paused by the swimming pool that Stalin had built over the rubble of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. Dabbing at her eyes, the woman said to her husband, ‘Listen, Petrushka, listen to the bells.’

  ‘It’s like the old days,’ he said. ‘It’s like the birth of a Tsarevich.’

  At Gogol Boulevard, Sasha worked deep into the night. The office he had taken over was like a revolving door. Men in uniform rushed in and out, bearing messages, needing instant decisions. Leybutin came in with mud on his boots and dumped an object that looked like a piggybank on Sasha’s desk. It was solid gold.

  ‘What’s this?’ Sasha asked.

  ‘We dug it out of Askyerov’s backyard. There were six more like it. You wouldn’t believe it, Sasha! His dacha was fitted out like a bloody emporium. He had a dozen big American freezers packed with prime meats, like a fucking supermarket! Whole arcades stuffed with fancy perfumes, video recorders, cameras, you name it! He had a Rolls-Royce and three Mercedes, and a whole library of pornographic smut. Oh, yes; show him, Vanya.’

  Leybutin’s aide produced a sack full of Askyerov’s favorite staple from his old freewheeling days in Baku: blocks of pressed diamonds.

  Leybutin wanted to form a flying squad to deal with graft. In his no-frills, soldierly way he proposed to call it the Anti-Corruption Command.

  ‘You don’t need my authorization,’ Sasha said. ‘You’re in charge of Moscow District. You ought to get some of those investigators who were on the tail of Galina Brezhneva. As I recall, there was an honest man in the Prosecutor’s office, perhaps not the only one.’

  ‘It won’t be hard,’ Leybutin said. ‘There are plenty of people who are ready to spill their guts, if only to save their skins. And the gang haven’t had time to hide their loot.’

  Sasha turned the gold pig over in his hands. ‘Don’t forget Askyerov’s Armenian,’ he said softly. ‘He was holding parties in the Rossiya three or four nights a week, spreading gifts and starlets.’

  ‘None of those bitches was clean!’ Leybutin exclaimed. ‘They were all in it up to their necks! If the people could only see —’

  ‘That’s an excellent idea,’ Sasha chimed in. He turned to Petrov, who was fighting a losing battle with the phones. ‘See if we can track down Kozlov,’ he ordered.

  ‘Yevgeny Kozlov?’

  It was a household name, like Vissotsky. This Kozlov was a popular journalist and balladeer who had got himself booted out of the Writers’ Union after somebody ratted on an amateur satirical review he had taken to holding in his apartment on Friday nights. His usual butt was the lifestyle of the Party elite.

  ‘Find him and tell him we’re making him head of state broadcasting,’ Sasha went on. ‘Tell him to clean out the TV studios, hire anyone he wants, and start telecasts tomorrow evening. His first project’ — he turned back to Leybutin — ‘will be to work with you, Pavlik. Get your boys to show him Moscow. Let’s get all of it on videotape — the cars, the lovenests, the caches of black-market goods. We’ll show all of it on TV, day after day, night after night. The Secret Lives of the Party Bosses. Well, Kozlov will think of the right title. That’s his job. We’ll show their fat mugs, and we’ll run little excerpts from those speeches they made about Leninist principles and socialist morality. Then we’ll show how they lived up to all those fine words.’

  Kolya Vlassov was waiting at the door. Sasha had entrusted him with provisional responsibility for foreign affairs. Kolya had a huge grin on his face.

  ‘What’s so funny?’

  ‘We just received our first congratulatory telegram. At least one foreign government has decided to recognize us.’

  ‘Who is it from?’

  ‘It’s from West Africa. From someone both of us know.’

  Sasha took the cable. It read: ‘Heartfelt congratulations to my most gifted pupils. We welcome you to the ranks of the national liberation movements.’ It was signed: ‘General George Afigbo, Chairman of the Provisional Military Council.’

  ‘Our first ally.’ Sasha chuckled.

  ‘I think the British could be next,’ Vlassov reported. ‘Her Majesty’s Ambassador is urgently requesting a meeting. I think they’ve decided to recognize us.’

  ‘The lion may have lost its teeth, but not its cunning,’ Sasha said reflectively. ‘What about the rest of the Europeans?’

  ‘I think they’re holding their breath, waiting to see whether we stand or fall. The French have an internal problem, as you’re aware.’ The French Communist Party, still allied with the Socialists, had denounced the officers’ coup as a conspiracy against the Soviet workers, funded by the CIA. ‘The krauts don’t know which way to jump. Our people report that the East Germans have gone rushing to Bonn with proposals for immediate reunification. They’re scared shitless that their own people are going to string them up from the lampposts.’

  ‘Perhaps they will. But we can’t tolerate any move toward German unification. Get onto our people at Karlshorst. Inform the leaders of the German Democratic Republic that they will break off the negotiations with Bonn or suffer the consequences. NATO won’t oppose us. This is in their interest as well as ours. What about the Americans?’

  ‘They’re scared. You’ve seen the report.’ He gestured to the GRU intelligence summary in its gray folder on Sasha’s desk. Since the declaration that an anonymous officers’ group had seized power in Moscow, the Washington Administration had ordered a full-scale mobilization. On Wall Street, the Dow-Jones industrial average had dropped nearly Too points in a single day, and the price of gold on the commodities markets had soared $113. ‘I think they were happier with the devil they knew,’ Vlassov commented. ‘They suffer from the illusion that anyone in uniform is bound to be trigger-happy. Their Ambassador is requesting a meeting too. I think it’s just a fishing expedition. They don’t know how to deal with us. They’re scared we’re going to bomb them into the stone age.’

  ‘See the Ambassador,’ Sasha instructed. ‘Tell him to inform Washin
gton that I am sending a special envoy. We’ll use the General Secretary’s plane.’

  He looked at George Afigbo’s cable again, remembering the raucous, hustling city where they had met, and the vipers’ nest on East 67th Street, and the sanctuary he had found, for a time, with Elaine. All that belonged to a different age, a world before the flood.

  *

  Elaine had been held for three days in a private room in a clinic outside Moscow. It was a pleasant room, with a view across the silver birches. But there were bars on the window, and her door was kept locked, and the only person who came to see her was a woman about her own age who introduced herself as Amalia. She had a broad, friendly peasant’s face, and she wore a gray military uniform instead of a nurse’s white. Elaine couldn’t even go to the bathroom without her. Twice a day Amalia accompanied her on brief walks in the gardens. She was chatty enough, on subjects like when the first snows were expected. She even pointed out a hunting lodge among the trees and said, ‘That used to belong to Stalin.’ But she closed up tight whenever Elaine asked, ‘What am I doing here? Am I a prisoner? Please tell me what’s happening.’

  Then Colonel Orlov arrived, with a Chaika limousine and a motorcycle escort, and asked her to get her things together as quickly as possible. There wasn’t much to pack, although they had brought her clothes from the hotel. She bundled up in a thick sweater under her coat, but the wind still sawed through to the bone as she crossed the courtyard to the waiting car. When they crossed the Moskva River, she saw that ice had already started to form along the banks. She studied the familiar skyline of Moscow and realized that something was missing. Where was the great red star atop the onion domes of the Kremlin?

  ‘That’s not all that has changed,’ Orlov said enigmatically. He was not much more forthcoming than Amalia.