by Fenek Solère
Hands still wet, the Englishman played with the lock-chain. Grigori was staring back at him through the crack in the door. ‘It is well that you protect yourself’, the Russian said reassuringly. ‘There are people who will want to disrupt the conference, intimidate speakers, you know the kind of thing!’
‘Certainly!’ Tom reckoned that Grigori was no stranger to strong-arm tactics himself.
‘I thought we could take a drink downstairs?’
Throwing on his jacket, Tom followed Grigori to the lift. They made ground level, stepping out into a lobby full of theatregoers sheltering from sheeting rain. Taking alcove seats in the Borsalino bar, Grigori continued being affable and polite, but Tom sensed a tightness in his movements, as if he was doing his best to hide his anxiety.
‘Traditionalists like us are often misunderstood’, he was saying. ‘Our enemies try to present us as partisans for lost causes, soliloquies for dark movements.’
‘Yes, I have experienced that’, Tom agreed, ‘and damned annoying it is too!’ The Russian liked Tom’s English expressions.
‘Ivan Ilyin, the White’s philosopher manqué, saw this from the outset. His Knightly Way meant religiously rooted state voluntarism. You see, he knew victory could only be achieved through spiritual resistance. For him, the war began in our own hearts.’
‘“This test posed to every Russian soul the same direct question: who are you? By what do you live? What do you serve? What do you love?”’
‘I see you are familiar with Ilyin’s speech in Berlin.’
Tom affirmed with a cursory nod. ‘Russia’s situation, like that of many nation-states, may be as precarious right now as it was in 1923 when Ilyin spoke, but then, as now, there are signs of a stirring of nationalist forces. It often seems darkest before the dawn.’
‘True!’ Grigori was saying as the maitre d’ swept past in a small claret waistcoat. ‘Remember, I told you, we saw this start many years ago. By 1979, I already knew that Islamic fundamentalism spreading out from the Gulf was a major problem. I have friends who served in the Alpha and Zenith Special Forces in Kabul and arrested President Amin Halizullah in the Tajberg Palace.’
‘Didn’t they execute him on the spot?’
‘Only after he was tried by a military tribunal. We were under no illusions. Even then we knew the CIA was funding the Mujahedeen with three billion dollars. And we know who finances the Arab Spring, ISIS, and the insurgents now.’
‘The same people.’
‘Who else? You can use the modern titles like neocons, cosmopolitans, and one-worlders if you want. Or you can call them usurers, Communists, or Bolsheviks. The labels and ideologies do not matter. If you scratch the surface, you find the answer. They use any means, financial or military, often interchangeably, if there is a profit to be had. Now, it suits their purpose to pull the strings of the Muslims. You know, we used to laugh about them. But look at your history books. In just over one hundred years after the death of their Prophet, the Muslims had taken over the Middle East, North Africa, and Spain. An empire larger than that of Augustus Caesar, and gained in half the time.’
‘Well, Osama bin Laden did claim “the dissolution of the Soviet Union goes to God and the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan”.’ Grigori’s eyes lifted to the ceiling in exasperation.
‘And you see parallels with today?’
‘It was the opening shots of the Clash of Civilisations!’
Descendants of Russian religious schismatics are rounded up in the Bukhtarma Valley and deported by rail to the new border checkpoint at Orenburg;
Archaeological sites like the Denisova Cave complex are destroyed by Islamic demolition squads seeking to extinguish evidence of the Seima-Turbino migrations, as they offend the Prophet;
Dog-like domestic canid fossils are broken up by sledge-hammers in the Razboinichya Cave, for being ‘unclean’ in the eyes of God;
Snow Leopards, Steppe eagles, and the black stork are hunted to near extinction as rumour that extracts from their spinal columns enhance male sexual performance spreads amongst Chinese homeopaths;
Wild herds of Wisent and Ibex are factory farmed to meet the dietary needs of those migrating west;
A large part of the inaccessible Ukok Plateau is turned into a restricted military centre, served only by the M52 highway;
Evidence of the original Pazyry culture, such as the Bronze Age tomb of the fifth-century Scythian Ice Maiden, with elaborate tattoos and silk clothing, are dynamited to ensure no prior claim to ownership of the land is possible.
The bar was half empty, but Grigori was still watchful, eyes sweeping the room, ensuring no one overheard them. Over on the far side of the restaurant, a Negress with mother-of-pearl drop earrings sat at a piano, nicotine-stained fingers tickling blues standards from ivory. A waitress approached.
‘Cappuccino’, Tom asked nonchalantly. Grigori ordered a brandy. The Englishman was willing him to speak, to spit out what he had really come to talk about, noticing how his fingers had played with the paper napkin, twisting it into knots, as they had talked about the old war. Grigori continued with small talk as the waitress returned with their order.
‘Please’, Grigori insisted, gesturing for the receipt.
‘Not on room?’ the girl asked. Grigori looked directly into Tom’s eyes.
‘This is from me!’
At the other end of the bar, American tourists were tucking into pizza and babbling on about Brooklyn. Just for a moment, Tom wished the natives did not have to witness the eccentricities of such gauche Cold War warriors. They had won the peace by default, but were now in sharp decline. Obama’s immigration mandates had all but bankrupted the ‘Land of the Brave’ and turned California into Disneyland for Latinos. Grigori began to speak as Tom ripped open a sachet of brown sugar.
‘You know’, he said, ‘a very handsome poet called Sergei Yesenin slashed his wrists and hung himself in this hotel back in 1925. It is said that his final poem was written with his own blood.’
‘How very melodramatic.’
‘That is Russia for you’, Grigori speculated. ‘Always willing to make the grand gesture.’ Tom saw his opportunity.
‘And tell me what grand gesture would you like me to make?’
‘So quick to the point!’
‘No need to make a song and dance like your poet friend.’
‘This is not British way?’ Grigori was genuinely taken aback, laughing into his balloon glass.
‘It’s my way, let’s forget stereotypes, horosho?’ The Russian agreed, his eyes narrowing.
‘It seems someone in my team has betrayed your whereabouts to the Bloc.’
Tom’s eyes scanned the face of the man before him. ‘Am I safe?’
‘Probably not.’
‘How dangerous are these people?’
‘Well, they do not share our taste for academic freedom if it contradicts the wishes of their globalist masters.’
‘Can you protect me?’
‘Not 24/7.’
‘But some of the time, right?’
‘We have one man from Europe working with local supporters.’
‘Europe?’
‘I think he is Belgian by birth. He was trained by our brothers in Norway.’
‘A political soldier?’
‘A vanguardist!’
‘I fully understand. I will take precautions. I am not speaking until the final day, anyway, so it gives me plenty of time to sit in my room and prepare.’
‘Yes, you are the plenary keynote.’
‘Indeed!’
‘But you will attend tomorrow, no?’
‘Most certainly, there are several very interesting papers being presented. I am looking forward to it.’
‘Good, I was very worried you would be scared off!’
‘Well, of course I am concerned, but there is very little I can do about it now.’
Grigori’s familiar guttural laugh broke out across the room causing heads to turn. ‘That is more like it, famous
British stiff upper lip!’
In a replay of the Mongol invasion of 1238, the 900-year-old Collegiate Church of St Demetrios and the Cathedral of the Virgin are destroyed by Muslim terrorists;
The Church of St Boris and St Gelb on the Nerl River is the scene of a mass rape of schoolgirls taken by force from a suburb of nearby Orgtrud;
Twelve Orthodox priests are discovered hanging by the neck from the green and gold domes of the St Euthymius Monastery;
Thousands gather around miracle-working icons at the Valdai Monastery, believing the end times have come.
Yulia Gavrilova, a plump and officious conference attaché, was ushering the delegates across the Astoria’s lobby, clucking like a mother hen, counting them as they stepped up onto the metal footplate of a minibus with university markings. ‘I’m afraid we have to take precautions’, she was warning. ‘RASH protesters are blockading the venue.’
‘And the politsiya?’ asked Ulrich Hoffman, striking a match to light the tobacco in the pipe bowl hanging before his grizzled chin.
‘They have Kamaz personnel carriers.’
‘That’s 13mm armoured plate’, the smoker coughed. Tom knew Hoffman to be an expert on the German Conservative Revolutionary Movement. A widely respected veteran of the identitarian movement, his family had been among the hundreds of thousands dispossessed and murdered along the length of the Danube after 1945.
‘And Kord 6P50 machine guns’, remarked Francine Karre, a dark-haired Parisian, reputed to be a rising political influence in France’s Resistance. Her frequent appearances on Canal Plus defending militants like Sabine D’Orlac, known as La Petroleuse, had caused consternation in the Conseil Representatif des Institutions juives de France. Tom was particularly interested in her paper on Henry Coston. He had already read several of her monographs on Jacques Ploncard d’Assac and Yves Guerin-Serac, a founder of the OAS.
The driver banged the door, ready for their short journey down Nevsky. The sky was trying hard to rain, spitting Baltic phlegm at the windscreen.
‘The Symposium’, Yulia was explaining, ‘will proceed as per the pre-arranged programme. Please’, she said, handing out some pamphlets and timetables, ‘these are some updates written in English.’ The mini-bus heater was going full blast, filling the narrow cabin with a dry, unctuous odour bearing the taint of adolescent sports bags. Francine waved a folder in front of her face until another man in a brown trilby and tweed jacket asked in splintered Russian for it to be turned off. The English Professor eyed the man in the hat carefully before introducing himself.
‘I don’t think we’ve met?’ The young man extended his hand.
‘Peter Janssen’, he said in accented Dutch English. Tom noticed the bulge in his jacket.
‘Identitair Verzet?’
‘Something like that!’ They smiled knowingly at one another before Tom turned, looking out through the condensation on the window. The bridge to the left led over to the strelka. The shops to the right were full of Western products that no one could afford. A large red crane twisted clockwise on the English embankment, winching a pontoon out over the river. Tom was thinking how he had nearly rejected the offer to come to Russia as the bus took a tight right onto the esplanade. Back then, his mind had been set on flying to Buenos Aires rather than St Petersburg. An old contact had asked him to attend a live television debate on the controversy over paying a special pension to the surviving members of the nationalist student group that had hijacked an Aerolineas flight and diverted it to the Malvinas Islands, displaying the Argentine flag, ‘in an act of national recovery and dignity’ back in 1966. Indeed, the Professor had always greatly admired Dardo Cabo’s Tacuara, so the offer was tempting. He recalled reviewing his options in a Bayswater bedsit where he had stayed the weekend with a young Ukrainian blonde called Nadezhda. She had come to his attention at a meeting of Carpatho-Pagans at Kings College. Later, they had a drink together in Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese on Fleet Street, and she confessed she was heavily involved in translation work for the Strike! Website. He remembered she had been wearing a black motorcycle jacket and carrying a copy of Political Thought of the Ukrainian Underground. From that moment, the East had become his magnetic north. Within weeks, he was in contact with various Pan-Slavic groups, and had been invited to give a paper in former Leningrad.
‘The space technology industry was a big employer here’, Hoffman was explaining as he looked out over the columns of people trudging like shell-shocked soldiers to the front. ‘A friend of mine at MIT wrote a book arguing that if the CIS countries could harmonise their intellectual creativity, their average GNP growth would be triple that of the USA inside a decade.’
‘I think things have deteriorated considerably’, Peter Janssen corrected. ‘Russia’s research in science and technology was recently evaluated as being equivalent to Holland’s’ Hoffman shook his head.
‘Sign of the times.’
The bus came to a sudden halt outside a crenelated lemon wall, more like a castle under siege than a seat of learning. Outside, hordes of protesters hurled abuse, waved red flags, and tried to squeeze by the security cordon to throw rotten eggs at the van’s windows. ‘No more reactionaries like Prokhanov, Dugin, Glazyev, Fursov, Platonov, Narochnitskaya, and Father Tikhon—to hell with Den Fascisti . . . Shut down Pavlov—Rossiya is dead!’ Tom glimpsed placards bearing the crossed-out faces of Viktor Alksnis, Yuri Vlasov, and Igor Artemov with the salutation ‘RIP’ scrawled beside their images. Yulia stood, her back arched, at the front of the bus.
‘Please do not be concerned, we are perfectly safe’, she said, to comfort herself as much as the guests. ‘We will wait just one moment until the police have cleared a path.’ Just then a rear window shattered, and a steel rod bounced about on the floor of the cabin. Janssen was up on his feet, hitting out at the hands pulling at the side of the vehicle, his blade slicing through fingers yanking on the metal.
‘Go!’ he was shouting. The driver pulled forward, the gates opening and the police sweeping down from the side-streets, beating at the crowd with riot shields and truncheons. Once they were inside, Yulia opened the sliding door. One by one they fell out, crumpled, shocked, and gasping for air. Janssen waited until everyone was clear, then slipped his knife back inside his sleeve. Tom followed the others through a side door into a narrow corridor where an old babushka took their bags and coats.
‘Jesus Christ!’ a Canadian from the Parti Unite Nationale shouted. ‘How close was that?’
‘This way, please’, Yulia was saying, leading them up a stairway, circling the conference room’s arched porticos. ‘The building is protected!’ Tom estimated there were over a hundred delegates crowded into the anteroom where hot drinks and digestive biscuits were being served. Taking a cup and spooning sugar, he looked over his shoulder. Janssen was nowhere to be seen. The Professor figured he was supervising security.
‘Anyone here from the USA?’ someone called. ‘I’m from Dallas.’ Tom found himself talking to a short, fat American clutching a book entitled Suprahumanism. They exchanged business cards. Everyone was sizing each other up in the usual academic dick-measuring contest that these events inevitably became. The atmosphere was male and predatory. Young, female interpreters were getting plenty of unsolicited attention.
‘I think some are hookers’, the Texan said under his breath. ‘See the butt on that one!’ Tom looked with a degree of contempt at the paunchy wisecracker in front of him.
‘That, my friend, is a product of the Shintashta gene pool!’ Tom replied, casting a warm gaze over the slinky figure of a young student, ‘the very same people who first mastered the horse, used the wheel, and gave birth to the Proto-Indo-European languages.’
‘What is it with these women, man?’ came the superficial reply. The American’s eyes were bulging, lips moistening with the thought of unfastening her bra strap.
‘You are looking at a time capsule. That is what women should look like. Your attraction is more than just physical. It is embedded
in your DNA. Do you have any idea of her lineage?’ The American was lost now, he was hoping to talk about copulation and alcohol. This lecture was unnerving him. ‘She is a descendent of Vlasta, the famed female warrior who gave rise to the legend of the Amazons. Anna Michailivna and Queen Olga of Kiev who annihilated the Devlians.’ He stopped for a moment to gauge the American’s response. Sensing confusion, he decided to make it easier for him. ‘And through her Rus heritage, she is Varangian. Their women stood side-by-side with the men in the shield wall. A lady called Marulla drew a line in the sand at Lemnos with the tip of her sword, before driving off Mohammed’s Turks.’
‘Awesome!’
‘Quite!’
He sat on the window’s ledge, flicking through vintage editions of Nash Put (Our Path), observing the networking. Peter Janssen was talking confidentially to a tall man with a wire running to his ear. Karre was flirting mercilessly with a swarthy Spanish liaison officer from the Populist Party. Behind him, in the courtyard, two lichen-covered statues stared blindly back in a tone of intellectual defiance. Memorials to academic heavyweights, he thought to himself. Names on Russian journals and research papers he would never read or comprehend. They were yesterday’s men. Fighters like Janssen were today’s men, a new breed. He smiled inwardly, thinking about where he fit in. What was it Eliot had written?
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quite meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or as rat’s feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion . . .
His reverie was broken by Yulia’s harping. Her words fell irritatingly like cockroaches dropping from a straw roof. Hoffman was standing next to him, nicotine fingers stroking his chin.