December

by James Steel

  Alex narrowed his eyes and looked back at him suspiciously. He didn’t want to have a deep conversation with Sergey. The Russian’s typical lack of personal boundaries was invading Alex’s very well-defined English ones.

  He could guess why he had said what he did; old girlfriends had always told him that he had a brooding look. His height, dark hair and the strong bones of his face gave him an air of authority that they said they liked. But Alex had never realised how his personal demons manifested themselves.

  Sergey pressed on.‘Last night you questioned the integrity of my motives for this coup—that maybe I am in it just for the money. Well, a lot of people are!’ he admitted. ‘But to be me, and to take the lead in this, to risk everything,’ he gestured around at the magnificent house, ‘you need much more than that.

  ‘And you,’ he pointed at Alex, ‘need to understand that I am committed.’ He held a hand to his heart.

  ‘OK,’ Alex said calmly.

  Sergey swept his hand out. ‘We all look for something for meaning to coalesce around in our lives and for me this operation is the meaning of life!’ He banged the table and then stood up, and began pacing around. ‘I know we Russians are a bunch of miserable fuckers—“Today is worse than yesterday but better than tomorrow”,’ he repeated the expression with a tired wave of the hand as he walked around and then turned back to Alex. ‘Comrade, forgive me, the lack of light eats away at the soul. But,’ he held up a finger and looked at Alex, ‘this Russian sadness is actually a truer appreciation of humanity. You see you can only be truly happy once you have been truly sad. A Russian understands this—that all emotions are just facets on the jewel of the human soul! In the west of Europe you have this obsession with happiness that demeans that jewel; you see only half of it, but the Russian soul has many sides.’ He used that expression again: Russkaya dusha.

  Alex was struggling to keep up with the way Sergey was flicking from one thing to another.

  ‘The world of the soul touches our everyday world in the same way that the waves of the sea touch the shore. Sometimes it is a gentle lulling motion that calms our hearts.’ He sighed with mock contentment, and rested his head on one side on his folded hands with closed eyes, as if asleep. Then he woke up suddenly. ‘Often, when we are tired and spiritually dead, it is like when the tide is out, the sea seems a long way away, we cannot even see the water; the dry beach goes out for ever.’ He stretched an arm out, looking across the room with a far-off gaze. Then he jabbed his finger insistently as he spoke. ‘But at other times, like this, the sea is a crashing wave that pounds against us, forcing us to move! That is what it is like for me now. I cannot ignore it!’ He clutched his head. ‘The spirit has spoken to me at this time—and what must I reply with? I must reply with magnificence! A magnificent spirit, a great heart, Russkaya dusha!’

  He calmed down and looked at Alex questioningly. ‘Maybe every country has a soul—I don’t know. What is the British soul?’

  Alex shifted uncomfortably. ‘Well…I hadn’t really thought about it,’ he said evasively. He was actually impressed with the fury of Sergey’s feelings but he hated being pressed on his own thoughts. He had always found it safer to keep them to himself.

  Sergey continued regardless, ‘Well, Russia has a soul, a magnificent soul. If you could know the warmth of its people, the strength of its fathers, its mothers, its families…But, it has two sides to its soul. Just as it has a magnificence so it also has a subservience. Its governments…’ He held up a hand in despair. ‘I have to be honest with you, Alexander Nikolayevich. We have had the longest history of…’ he paused to get the right words and then spat each one out, ‘brutal, oppressive, corrupt, useless governments of any country!’ He listed them on his fingers. ‘Mongols—psychopaths! The Tsars—fucking idiots! Stalin—the second greatest mass murderer in history! Russia deserves better than this! Krymov wants to turn us back the way we came. Ever since the Mongols our freedom has been suppressed by these autocrat sons of bitches! But we were not meant for it! We are not born into slavery! You see…’

  He had a sudden moment of inspiration, stopped and then bounded over to one of the huge bookshelves lining the room. He hunted along the shelves, muttering to himself, ‘Come on, you fucker, where are you?’

  ‘Ah!’ He pulled a large volume out.‘This is Chekhov, writing to his publisher.’ He opened the book where a piece of paper was stuck in it. ‘He was the same as me before all this bullshit,’ he waved a hand around to indicate the house and his riches, ‘a humble provincial lad. So he’s explaining how he developed from being a cowed boy to a freedom-loving adult.’

  He paused as he hunted for the right passage and then carefully read out: ‘“Write about how this young man squeezes the slave out of himself drop by drop and how, waking up one fine morning, he finds that the blood coursing through his veins is no longer the blood of a slave, but that of a real human being.”’

  He nodded in agreement, put the book down, came back to the table and sat down at the head of it.

  ‘So the question he is asking is the same one I am facing today: which part of the Russian soul will win? Its slave soul or its free soul? You see, this is why I love Russian literature! In Russia we explore our soul through our novels. Every one is an expedition into our unconscious and you must read them to know us! To do this mission!’ he cried enthusiastically.

  ‘And how many people share your enthusiasm for this mission?’ Alex made a circular motion with his hand to indicate the people who had been in the room.

  Sergey ticked them off on one hand. ‘Well, I know Lara understands me, Grigory and all the TV people care about human rights and press freedom, Fyodor…’ he made a tipping gesture with his hand and then sighed. ‘Alexander, I may look like a lunatic but I am not naïve enough to believe that Lieutenant-General Fyodor Mostovskoy is doing this because of his love of the Russian soul or his humanitarian concern for the people of Russia. He couldn’t give a fuck about them. All Fyodor cares about is himself and money. He hates Krymov because when they merged Mikoyan and Sukhoi and all the other Russian aircraft manufacturers into the United Aircraft Corporation, he and the airforce didn’t get nearly the share of control on the board that he feels they deserved. That’s why he is able to get us the support of the airforce as a whole, because they want the entire military-industrial complex restructured in their favour and away from Krymov’s cronies.

  ‘So I have promised him that when we win, he will be very well rewarded. So then he’ll feel happy.’ Sergey paused, then grinned and flicked an eyebrow. ‘Until he decides he wants something else, but we’ll deal with that later.’

  His mood became very serious. He leaned close and laid a hand on Alex’s forearm. ‘Alexander, I am speaking to you alone for a reason. I have to tell you something that the others can’t know at this stage…’ He looked down for a moment. ‘I may require you to carry out another…mission, when we get to Moscow.’

  ‘Riiight,’ said Alex warily. He withdrew from Sergey’s grasp and folded his arms as the Russian outlined the extra requirements.

  Sergey concluded with, ‘I don’t know what missions you have done before but this one is going to be a motherfucker! You will need a big heart to get through it.’

  He clutched Alex’s arm again with one hand and pointed at him with the other. ‘You are my man in this! You are leading the fight! Vasily Grossman said that when he was in Stalingrad only those with quiet at the bottom of their souls survived. You will have to find that quiet place in your soul—where the wolf drinks from the river at midnight—and then you will find your courage!’

  Alex stared back at him, trying to take it all in.

  By the time Sergey had finished his rambling explanation of the plan he had forced a lot of food and drink down Alex, so that he was feeling somewhat befuddled when he eventually left.

  He stood on the pavement, swaying slightly as the large electronic gate clicked shut behind him. He shook his head and looked around the darke
ned street, trying to remember which way was home.

  His senses were definitely not working well. After he stumbled away, a man in the patch of gloom across the street muttered into a lapel mike on his heavy parka, detached himself from the shadows and followed him.

  Sergey continued pacing up and down his meeting room for some time after Alex had left.

  He talked animatedly to himself, waved his arms around, pulled books off the shelf and flicked through them; lovingly reacquainting himself with favourite passages, nodding or frowning as he did so. His mobile phone rang several times and each time he glanced at the number, grunted and ignored it.

  As he sat down on his day bed with a copy of Sholokov’s And Quiet Flows the Don, it rang again.

  He grimaced, looked at the screen and saw the word: ‘Vozhd’.

  The Boss.

  It was Stalin’s old nickname and Sergey used it for the secret, secure communication channel that Krymov had insisted on having with him.

  He hurriedly put his book down, stood up and became very animated as he answered the call.

  ‘Yo, Comrade!’ he began.

  Chapter Seven

  From: firstclassdrycleaning.com

  To: Customer 39789G

  Date: Saturday 6 December

  Customer notice: First Class Dry-Cleaning regrets to inform you there has been a problem with your order. Please contact our Customer Service division immediately for details.

  ‘Fuck,’ Alex muttered to himself as he stuffed his BlackBerry back into his jacket pocket.

  What the hell was going on now?

  This project already had him on edge, without their emergency contact route being used already. It was only the morning after his last briefing with Sergey.

  He replied to say he would collect his dry-cleaning in twenty minutes and then legged it out of the door of his house and up the Fulham Road to the upstairs room of the Fulham Tup pub, which they had agreed to use as a meeting point.

  Sergey had an arrangement with the owner to use the room, which was normally let out for parties only in the evening, during the day. It wasn’t perfect but they could both slip in via a back entrance and it was less obvious than Alex turning up at Sergey’s house, or his offices in Mayfair, which he was pretty sure were under observation by the SVR.

  Alex squeezed through the back door, stamped the snow off his feet and ran up the stairs into a room filled with empty tables, the noise of his footsteps echoing on the floorboards.

  Sergey was already there, sitting at a table away from the window, wearing an Aquascutum overcoat, his hair as tousled as ever. He rose as Alex came in and strode over to shake his hand, offering profuse apologies.

  ‘Alexander, I am so sorry to call you out of your house in this weather!’

  Alex demurred and they sat down.

  For once, Sergey seemed in a sombre mood. He looked at Alex in the wintry light from the window.

  ‘I’m not sure what is going on…’ he started hesitantly.

  Alex waited for him to continue. Could this whole fucking madhouse scheme be about to collapse? A sudden urge within him hoped it would.

  ‘Krymov called me yesterday after you left; he wants me back in Moscow.’ Sergey pursed his lips and looked across at the window.

  Alex frowned. ‘That doesn’t sound good.’

  Sergey nodded. ‘They might know something. Gorsky, the SVR guy you met at the party, might have picked something up.’ He narrowed his eyes in thought. ‘No, it’s too quick, we haven’t done anything yet for them to pick up on.’ He looked at Alex candidly. ‘Krymov sometimes calls me in the middle of the night to discuss things. He trusts me.’ Having voiced his concerns, he seemed to have come to a decision. ‘No, he wouldn’t have taken fright so quickly; it’s nothing that I can’t smooth over with him.’ Having convinced himself that he was safe, he perked up again. ‘So, I will fly to Moscow today and see what it is all about. For you, just ignore it.’

  Alex spoke calmly: ‘Well, I’ll need a week to get the team sorted out in Herefordshire anyway, so I guess you will know for sure by then what it is about?’

  ‘Yes, exactly! We’ll know for sure by then. I’ll keep sending you the all clear signal about the mail order,’ he waved his BlackBerry at Alex, ‘but if they do screw me over then it will stop and you will know to call off all the plans. If they start interrogating me then I have no illusions about my ability to resist the boys in the Lubyanka. They really know what they are doing in there,’ he said with grudging respect, ‘so I’ll tell all and they’ll just kill me quickly and the whole thing will be over anyway.’

  Alex was disturbed by Sergey’s clinical assessment of the possibility of his own brutal death. He suddenly had a sense of the ruthlessness that had built Sergey’s vast business empire.

  ‘So, Lara will have to fly down to your house to check up on you on her own, eh?’ He cocked a knowing eyebrow at Alex, who responded with an innocent expression, even as he fought to control the surge of interest that this comment provoked inside him.

  Alex had decided to assemble his team of mercenaries at Akerly. It still had a huge area of parkland around it and so was completely private. It was also snowbound, which would be good training for cross-country skiing and other drills he wanted to put the team through, plus it had sufficient accommodation and no outsiders need be involved. All in all, at short notice, it had seemed the perfect place.

  The idea had been for both Sergey and Lara to fly down in Sergey’s helicopter to inspect the team, but obviously that wasn’t going to happen now.

  Alex didn’t rise to Sergey’s bait. ‘Well, I’m sure we’ll manage without you.’

  ‘Hmm,’ Sergey mused. He didn’t seem to have given up on his game entirely. ‘Well, I brought you some Russian literature to read in the long dark nights by the fire.’

  Alex groaned internally. He couldn’t stand it when people pressed their favourite books on him.

  ‘Oh, OK,’ he said in an unconvincing display of enthusiasm.

  ‘No, really, it’s good stuff!’ said Sergey defensively, as he pulled a slim paperback out of his overcoat pocket. ‘I told you you needed to read more Russian stuff to know what this coup is all about.’ He handed the book to Alex: We by Yevgeny Zamyatin.

  ‘It’s acknowledged by George Orwell as the basis for 1984,’ Sergey continued in a self-justificatory tone. ‘The fucker ripped off the plot completely. Written in 1920, really ahead of its time.’

  ‘What’s it about?’ Alex took an interest now, despite himself.

  Sergey grinned a little too smugly for Alex’s liking. ‘It’s a story about a straightforward guy who falls in love with a crazy girl who is trying to overthrow a totalitarian state.’

  He looked at the Englishman meaningfully. Alex blanched. He was beginning to learn that it was typical of Sergey to mix apparently trivial and serious issues.

  Sergey shrugged apologetically. ‘Look, it’s OK. Just be careful, huh?’ He grinned. ‘In Russia, we tell folktales about Brother Wolf and Sister Fox. Now, what you have to know is that Sister Fox is the smart one and she always wins. Watch out for her, she’s a man-eater.’

  Chapter Eight

  Sergey settled back into his luxurious white leather chair and watched the lights go out across London.

  His Gulfstream G550 intercontinental jet had got one of the last take-off slots of the day at London City airport. For once, the snow had stopped falling and it was a clear, dark evening, so he had a perfect view through the porthole as the aircraft banked over the East End and they shut off the electricity substations one by one.

  A whole block of Dagenham suddenly winked out, the orange grid of street and house lights all went in an instant, leaving just a few car headlamps floundering in the murk.

  Well, oppressed people of Britain! You won’t have to put up with that for long if my plan works out! Sergey broadcast in his head.

  As the plane levelled off, Bayarmaa sauntered in from the kitchen section at the
front of the aircraft in a tight black cocktail dress with a tray of Sergey’s homemade vodka, pickled mushrooms and meats. She knew him well enough to see that he wanted to be left alone so after stroking his hair and kissing his cheek she slunk back out again. Sergey followed her slim backside with a dangerous look in his eye. He hadn’t yet got through the lust phase with her; he knew he would move on, but he was enjoying it at the moment.

  Other things occupied his mind now, though; he took a shot of vodka and chewed on the food slowly as he thought. The softly lit cabin was a good brooding cocoon as they hurtled out over the North Sea towards Moscow. His face darkened and he pursed his lips, staring into the night and thinking hard.

  Although he had been full of bravado with Alex he was actually deeply troubled about the forthcoming encounter with Krymov. He thought about what the summons could mean; it was hard to tell, as the President was such an erratic character.

  Sergey wondered at his own capacity for duplicity. He was a good example of Soviet era ‘double think’—the ability to think opposite thoughts at once. He had grown up with it as a boy: the ability to swear passionate allegiance to Marxist-Leninism at school and then go out and indulge in the raw, black-market capitalism that was necessary to survive it.

  He remembered an Uzbek expression that one of his operations managers from a refinery there had told him: Uzbeks can say one thing, think another and do a third.

  Sergey was a prime example of such flexibility. Sometimes he lived the part of a supporter of the regime and enjoyed the intellectual trickery of misleading them so much that he felt he had lost touch with what he really believed in. Only at odd moments of solitude, like this, would he call to mind the feelings that drove him. He suddenly felt the whole weight of the coup resting on his shoulders—he had a moment of self-consciousness like an out-of-body experience.

  What the hell did he think he was doing?

  He was trying to overthrow the government of Russia. No one had done that since the Bolsheviks in 1917. He could be on the brink of a major civil war. Even after the Bolshevik victory, it had taken two years of vicious fighting that had raged across the whole country and taken millions of lives. Was he about to inflict the same on his beloved Mother Russia?