Still talking, Tarankov pushed open the side door, scrambled out of his seat and jumped down onto the street with the people before Drankov or anyone else could stop him. He was still connected by radio link to the loudspeakers on his units all across the city by now.
“MOSCOW… HOW MANY STRAINS ARE FUSING IN THAT ONE SOUND FOR RUSSIAN HEARTS!” he quoted Pushkin.
The crowd roared its approval. “what store of riches it imparts!” Women and men and old babushkas crowded around in an effort to touch him. His voice seemed to be everywhere, it seemed to be coming from heaven itself.
“I WILL RETURN YOUR PRIDE, YOUR HOPE, YOUR DIGNITY. I WILL RETURN THE UNION!”
Chernov climbed down from the APC, and he and Liesel joined Tarankov for the last half-block into the square. Unit Four had pulled up and was herding its prisoners from the city and federal buildings into a clear area in front of the frozen fountain. The square was jammed with people, tens of thousands of them, possibly more than one hundred thousand, one third of the entire population.
A broad path opened automatically for Tarankov and his column as if he were Moses parting the Red Sea.
“IT IS BETTER TO LOSE A RIVER OF BLOOD NOW, THAN THE ENTIRE COUNTRY LATER, EVEN IF IT IS RUSSIAN BLOOD. BECAUSE WE WILL ONLY SPILL THE BLOOD OF TRAITORS.”
A lot of the people in Kirov knew what had happened in other cities that Tarankov had visited, and now that the prisoners were in plain view an odd, ugly mood began to sweep over the crowd. Liesel called it the “blood lust,” when a crowd suddenly began to act as a single entity. A wild animal that wanted to kill.
“LOOK AROUND AND YOU WILL SEE WHAT THEY HAVE DONE,” Tarankov’s voice boomed across the square, now ringed with his mobile units.
“Units One and Two are completing their mission,” Chernov said at his ear. “Radar is still clear.”
Without breaking his stride Tarankov led his column into the square down the long path to where the two dozen city and district officials were lined up. They hadn’t been allowed to get their hats and coats, and they stood shivering in the bitter northwest wind that gusted across the square. It would probably snow later today, but most of them understood that they wouldn’t be alive to see it.
“IT IS TIME FOR A CLEAN SWEEP. THE FILTH MUST BE RUTHLESSLY CLEANED AWAY BEFORE WE ALL CHOKE ON THE DUST.”
A low, guttural murmur spread across the square.
“WHEN OUR STRUGGLE IS COMPLETED, I WILL RAISE A BRONZE STATUE IN MOSCOW’S DZERZHINSKY SQUARE WITH MY OWN TWO HANDS. IT WILL BE OF A YOUNG SOLDIER, HIS RIFLE RAISED OVER HIS HEAD, AND HIS FACE POINTED UP TO HEAVEN IN HOPE.”
“Unit Three has completed its mission,” Chernov said. “All units are on the way back. ETA under five minutes.”
Tarankov held a hand over his lapel mike. “Was Unit Three successful?”
Chernov spoke briefly into his lapel mike. He nodded. “No gold this time but they got millions in roubles, and a very large amount of hard currencies. Mostly Swiss francs.”
“Distribute the roubles, we’ll keep the francs for our expenses,” Liesel said, Chernov waited for Tarankov to respond.
“It’s expensive running a revolution, Zhennia,” Liesel prompted.
Tarankov looked at his wife, then nodded after a moment, and Chernov relayed the order. Reality was sometimes a bitter pill, something his countrymen for all their tribulations under Stalin had never learned. He would have to teach them.
The armored column stopped fifty meters from the fountain. Drankov’s commandoes piled out of the transports to take up defensive positions in case they had to retreat under the press of the crowds, or under fire by an organized force.
Tarankov continued up the broad path, his stride long and purposeful. Ten meters from the prisoners he unbuttoned the flap on his holster.
Kirov’s Mayor Eduard Bakursky, a democratic reformer who’d been trying unsuccessfully to jump start the city’s flagging economy, stepped to one side and pulled out a pistol that one of the commandoes had slipped him.
The prisoners nearest him reared back.
“You bastard!” Bakursky shouted. He raised the pistol and started shooting, the bullets apparently going wild. They were blanks. He’d been set up.
Tarankov stood his ground and calmly drew his pistol, switched off the safety and fired two shots, one hitting Bakursky in his chest, and the other catching the portly man in his thick neck just below his chin. He was driven backward into the frozen fountain, his blood splashing across the ice and snow.
“TRAITOR,” Tarankov shouted, his voice thundering across the square. “TRAITORS TO THE PEOPLE, ALL OF YOU.” He shot the man who’d been standing next to the mayor, and as the prisoners tried desperately to get away, Tarankov followed them, emptying his pistol into the group. The Unit Four commandoes opened fire with their Kalashnikovs on full automatic, killing the remaining prisoners within seconds.
As the sounds of the final shots echoed off the buildings and faded, the huge crowd suddenly erupted in a frenzy of cheering and clapping and whistling. They began to sing the old Communist Party anthem. The Internationale, though probably not one in a thousand knew that the song originated in France in the last century. But it didn’t matter. The people were happy. Blood had been shed, but it was a just killing. The revolution had finally come to Kirov and the crowd was drunk with the thrill of it.
And Tarankov too was drunk on their passion, as he turned to address his people.
The Kremlin
Russian President Boris Yeltsin, red faced and sweating, stumbled on the stairs into the old Soviet Presidium building, and one of his bodyguards had to reach out to stop him from falling. Lunch with Prime Minister Yuri Kabjatov and his staff of old women had been nothing short of grueling. Only with vodka could he keep his sanity, although on days like this he wondered why he bothered.
His chief of staff, Alexi Zhigalin, and his military liaison, Colonel Igor Lykov, were waiting for him upstairs in his outer office, and their faces fell when they saw what condition he was in.
Zhigalin handed him a glass of tea. “Generals Yuryn and Mazayev are on their way over, Mr. President. Are you up to seeing them?”
Yeltsin flung the glass across the room, and brushed the impertinent pissant aside. “Unless NATO’s tanks are knocking at our back door, the generals will have to wait. Two hours,” he thundered as he entered his office.
Zhigalin and Lykov exchanged a glance. “It’s the Tarantula. He’s struck again, this time in Kirov,” Zhigalin said, his long, narrow face even more pale than usual.
Yeltsin pulled up short and turned back, shooting the two men an ugly glance. “The madman’s name is Yevgenni Tarankov. You will not utter that other name in my presence again.”
“There was a massacre in the city square,” Lykov said, the heels of his highly polished boots firmly together.
Yeltsin thought he looked like a drugstore cowboy. A fairy. But what he was saying was finally beginning to penetrate the fog. “In Kirov?”
“Yes, Mr. President,” Lykov said. “The mayor and his staff along with all the district judges, and some others were gunned down. Tarankov himself apparently shot Mayor Bakursky and a couple of others to death.”
“Where was the Militia, the army?”
“General Kirpichko was apparently on joint army-air force maneuvers a hundred kilometers north of the city. By the time he could return, Tarankov was gone.”
“But they didn’t chase after his train?”
Zhigalin shook his head. “It wouldn’t have done much good, Mr. President. The people of Kirov support him. Now that our officials are dead it would take a full military intervention to bring order—”
“Do it,” Yeltsin said.
“Sir?” Lykov asked.
“Find out where he’s going, get there before him, and either arrest him or kill him.”
“It wouldn’t be so easy as that, Mr. President,” Lykov said. “He has many supporters in the military and the Militia. Even in the Security
Service. And his commandoes are better than the best of our troops.”
Yeltsin walked back to Lykov and looked him up and down as if he were a raw recruit at parade inspection. “He has two hundred men with him. The best troops in all of Russia. Each one better than any ten of ours.”
“Yes, sir.” “Then send ten thousand soldiers to arrest him. Send tanks, rocket launchers. Send helicopter gun ships. If he’s near water, send ballistic missile submarines. But arrest him!”
“The people are with him,” Zhigalin said.
Yeltsin turned his now steady gaze to his chief of staff.
“Then arrest them as well—”
“Quite impossible, Mr. President,” FSK Director General Nikolai Yuryn said coming in. “We would have the healthy beginnings of a full scale armed insurrection. It’s exactly what he wants.” The FSK, or Federal Service for Counterintelligence, with its headquarters at the Lubyanka, was the internal security arm of the old KGB.
Militia Director Captain-General Mikhail Mazayev came in behind him. Both men were in uniform.
“Nikolai is correct, of course, Mr. President,” Mazayev said. “By playing into his hands we’d be making matters worse.”
“What do you suggest?” Yeltsin asked. He was at a slow boil and his generals knew it. The tension in the room was electric.
“I suggest that we bide our time,” Yuryn answered. “He will make a mistake sooner or later. He will go to excess — all men of his ilk do at some point. It’s inevitable. When that happens the people he claims to champion will desert him. Probably his own people will kill him.”
“Are all of you agreed on this course of action?” Yeltsin asked reasonably.
“Da,” Yuryn said. He was a large man, even bigger than Yeltsin, and he towered over everyone else in the room, especially the diminutive Zhigalin.
The others nodded.
Yeltsin let his shoulders sag as if he were defeated, started to turn back to his office, but then stopped, his face even redder than before. “Find out where Tarankov is going. Get there before him with as many troops and as much equipment and ordnance as you think you’ll need … no, twice that much … and either arrest him or kill him. Have I made myself clear, Comrades?”
“Perfectly,” General Yuryn said indifferently. “I’ll have the order drawn up and on your desk for signature by morning.”
“Do you feel you need such a document?”
“Yes, Mr. President, respectfully I do.”
“Then have it here within the hour,” Yeltsin said, and he went into his office and slammed the door.
TWO
Tarankov’s Train
Yevgenni Tarankov replaced the telephone on its cradle, sat alone staring at a map for a full five minutes, then left the train. They were stopped on an unused siding about three hundred kilometers east of Moscow. Camouflage netting was draped over the entire train even though it was the middle of the night, they were still under a thick overcast and the sideboards had been lowered, making them appear to be a freight train with markings for Volgograd.
The nearer they got to their prime objective the more Chernov and Colonel Drankov insisted on such stringent security measures.
In four days they would hit Nizhny Novgorod, which would be their most ambitious, and therefore most difficult and dangerous target. After this morning’s success at Kirov he’d felt that they were gaining a momentum that soon would be unstoppable. But all that was changed. He lit a cigarette, then stepped away from the tracks out from under the netting suddenly feeling confined, claustrophobic.
Two of his commandoes appeared out of the darkness. “Comrade, may we be of assistance?” one of them asked in a respectful but firm voice. They were armed with Kalashnikovs.
“I’m going for a walk.”
“Yes, sir. Would you please extinguish your cigarette?”
Tarankov looked sharply at the trooper. He wasn’t over thirty, none of Drankov’s commandoes were. But he looked like he ate barbed wire for breakfast, and wrestled black bears for sport. In the dim light reflected from the snow cover the man’s face seemed as if it were carved from granite. He towered nearly two meters and easily weighed one hundred kilos, but standing nearly motionless it seemed as if he had the moves of a ballet dancer. He didn’t flinch under Tarankov’s hard gaze.
Tarankov dropped the cigarette into the snow, and when he looked up the second commando had disappeared without a sound.
“What is your name, soldier?”
“Lieutenant Ablakov, sir.”
“Gennadi?”
The man cracked a smile, pleased. “Yes, sir.”
“Are you married?”
“Yes, sir. My wife is living with her mother in Yakutsk.”
“It’s a hard life there, but she is out of harm’s way. Do you have any worries?”
“No, sir. But I miss her.”
“As you should, Gennadi,” Tarankov said gently. “Do you understand what we’re doing?”
Lieutenant Ablakov straightened slightly. “I wouldn’t be here ill didn’t.”
It was a good answer, Tarankov thought. Ablakov and the others were respectful of him, but not fearful. That, of course, would have to change in time. But for now it was a useful attitude. Stalin understood that the people around him in the beginning would develop a familiarity that.in time would become unacceptable. Diminishing his absolute authority. It was the reason for many of his early pogroms. Penicillin cured the infection, but too much penicillin killed the patient so it had to be flushed out.
Chernov came out and together they walked to the last car beneath the netting where Tarankov lit another cigarette. “They don’t like you wandering off alone,” Chernov said.
Tarankov looked into his chief of staff’s eyes. The man had been the best Department Viktor killer the KGB had ever fielded. Even better than the legendary Arkady Kurshin who’d worked under the old Baranov regime. Those had been hard times, which demanded hard men. But, Tarankov mused, these were even harder times.
“Without you there would be no movement. Drankov and his men would be gone within the hour.”
“What about you?”
Chernov shrugged. “There’s always work to be done. I might return to Moscow. I have friends.”
“You need an organization.”
“Such institutions exist”
Tarankov chuckled. “In Iran, perhaps?”
Chernov cocked his head. “They could use a steady hand,” he replied. “What’s troubling you tonight?”
Tarankov looked away. They were in a forest here, the shadows dark, and mysterious. Russian shadows, he thought. Hiding something. “No one in Russia would raise a hand to kill me.”
Chernov said nothing.
Tarankov turned back to his chief of staff. “Yeltsin has ordered my arrest because of Kirov.”
“That’s not unexpected.”
“They’ll be waiting for us in Nizhny Novgorod. Army, Militia, FSK helicopter gunships. A real coordinated effort.”
“It’ll take more than that.”
“Five thousand troops under arms.”
“Nizhny Novgorod is a city of over a million people. If they rise up, the entire Russian Army could do nothing but watch,” Chernov said. He studied Tarankov’s eyes. “Do you want to call it off?”
“This time they mean business, and they have four days to impose a curfew and make it stick. It takes a Russian a lot longer than that to rebel.”
“Then we’ll go first thing in the morning, before they’re fully prepared,” Chernov said. “If you avoid Nizhny Novgorod because of the army, they won’t have to arrest you. Yeltsin will have won his point. Even a Russian will be able to see that.” “If the army shows up,” Tarankov said.
Chernov was suddenly bemused. “You’ve already thought this out,” he said. “You know exactly what we’re going to do.” “Da.” “Do you have a timetable?”
Tarankov nodded, content for the moment to let Chernov work it out for himself.
“We’ll go to Nizhny Novgorod next week. But first we’ll hit Dzerzhinskiy in the morning, and then I’ll send you to remove our biggest obstacle.”
Chernov’s eyes narrowed. “If you mean to do what I think you mean to do, there could be dangerous repercussions. Not only in Moscow, but in the West as well. At the moment Washington sees you as an internal problem, vexing only to the Kremlin. If I do this thing, that perception will change.”
“True, but it takes Americans even longer than Russians to react. Look how long it took before they moved against Castro or Noriega or Saddam Hussein. By then it will be a fait accompli, because Russia will be mine.”
“This is different.”
“Yes, because we will once again become a definite threat to their security. But by the time Washington realizes the fact, our missiles will be fully reprogrammed and operational.”
“What missiles are left.”
“You only need to kill a man once to ensure his death, not ten times.”
“Very well,” Chemov said after a moment. “I’ll brief Drankov and his unit commanders. What are we targeting in Dzerzhinsky?”
“The Riga electric generating facility.”
A slow smile curled Chernov’s lips. “The nuclear power station.” “Da.”
Dzerzhinskiy
A Moscow Suburb
The train slowed to a crawl in the chilly predawn darkness. Two commandoes leaped from the lead car and raced thirty meters ahead to the mechanical switch, shot the lock off, and moved the lever to the right which shunted them off the main line and onto the spur which served the power station.
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