December

by James Steel

  On the lectern in front of him was the Russian emblem of state, the double-headed eagle. Two Russian tricolour flags stood behind him, furled on poles, just as if he were a president making an important announcement. They had all agreed that Russians were conservative people who respected strong authority so the whole tone of the broadcast had to be sombre and dignified.

  The only radical touch was the new flag they had constructed that was stretched out fully between the two Russian tricolours. It was light blue with a black double-headed eagle in the middle of it; Roman would explain its significance later.

  ‘Thirty seconds to on air.’

  Lara shielded her eyes against the lights and looked in front of her at the crowd of three hundred United Civil Opposition supporters, who had been summoned by a simple email network. It was important to give the impression of popular support at the beginning to get the whole revolution moving.

  ‘Twenty seconds to on air.’

  ‘Cut from other channels. Run graphics.’ Ilya’s voice sounded calm and reassuring in her ear.

  Everywhere across Moscow and the whole of Russia now people looked at their TV and radio sets in astonishment as their usual news, music, lifestyle, business and shopping channels all suddenly cut off and handed over to her feed, the graphics package ran and a voice announced: ‘Good morning, Russia and welcome to a new day.’

  Lara now knew that she had the attention of the best part of one hundred and forty million people in Russia and that all the main international news channels were also carrying her broadcast live.

  In the conference room on the floor below, Alex and the rest of the team sat hunched around a TV mounted on the wall as the baffled presenter on the BBC News channel responded to the shouting of her director in her ear and handed over to Lara’s feed. ‘We’ve got news of something big coming in now from Moscow…’

  ‘Ten seconds to on air.’

  Lara felt sick and weak.

  How could she do this? Her body was about to snap and shatter into a thousand pieces right there on air as the tension built up in her.

  The floor manager in front of her was holding up the five fingers of his right hand next to the remote camera with the red light on and her autocue rolling up over it.

  He counted out loud, ‘Seven, six,’ and then cut off to allow silence before her cue from the gallery; she watched each of his fingers fold into the palm of his hand. It made a fist and then his index finger shot out and pointed at her.

  She remembered the feel of Sergey’s words in her ear when they were together—as soft as snowflakes falling on water—and she suddenly felt beautiful.

  She took a deep breath, pulled herself up and looked straight at the camera, her wide blue eyes positive and smiling. ‘Good morning, Russia and welcome to a new day.’

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Sergey tried to avoid anyone’s gaze as the Line 9 train ground into Chekovskaya station.

  He was standing hunched in the corner of the carriage with his back to it and his head stuck in a copy of a free newspaper he had picked off the floor. At least his scruffy coat made him anonymous from behind.

  Fyodor’s uniform was a lot more obvious so he was sitting on the shelf seat, wedged right in the corner, with Sergey standing in front of him. They were both terrified of being stopped by a guard or policeman.

  The other passengers, though, were not paying any attention. For them it was just another Tuesday morning journey to work. Things weren’t great at the moment: inflation eating away at their wages, and the petrol rationing was just ridiculous. No one could believe it when it was introduced; the state control of media had been so tight up to the point that foreign oil company staff were withdrawn and the refineries stopped working, that it came as a complete surprise. OMON riot police had then harshly suppressed the protests, but enough word of them had got out onto the street for that to add to the disillusionment with the government. People were beginning to realise the value of what they had given up in the good economic times under Putin when he had stripped away constitutional freedoms. Now that times were hard they had no choice but to obey a government that they despised.

  They were a mixed crowd: businessmen, shop workers, students and a few tourists; all in various stages of early morning daze, thinking about what they had to do today or trying not to.

  Svetlana Glazkova was an intense, nineteen-year-old student of political science at Moscow University, heading off for a lecture. She was a news junkie, had her earphones on and was watching the internet broadcasts on a portable DVD player that her parents had brought her.

  When her usual programme was interrupted and cut through to the intro graphics from Ostankino, she frowned and tapped the small unit. It stayed on channel and then Lara Maslova came on.

  What’s she doing?

  Lara might be the people’s favourite, but Svetlana didn’t regard her as a serious newscaster.

  She was announcing a big new day for Russia. A new government was coming? What the hell was she talking about?

  Roman Raskolnikov had been freed from prison and was back in Moscow!

  This was serious.

  Svetlana realised that something very big was going on and that she had to share it. She jumped up, ripped her headset out of the jack and turned the volume on the small speakers up to maximum.

  ‘Hey, what are you doing?’ the old lady next to her asked. ‘That’s too loud!’

  ‘Everybody, shut up!’ Svetlana yelled down the carriage.

  People looked up from their newspapers and conversations.

  ‘Raskolnikov has been freed from prison and is back in Moscow—he’s about to do a live broadcast. Just listen!’

  She ran into the middle of the carriage and held the TV up for people to see.

  ‘Raskolnikov?’ A murmur went up and down the carriage and people gathered round the TV.

  Sergey and Fyodor cringed in their corner, while trying to listen at the same time.

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Lara kept her intro short, her delivery was modest and to the point. In the gallery, Grigory couldn’t help a moment of professional awareness of the added impact that this would have on ordinary people who were used to her being a lot more bubbly.

  They cut to a brief underlay, where she did the voiceover as the screen showed highlights of Roman’s sporting career: all his amazing goals, him lifting trophies in front of cheering crowds and of course the ‘Our last hope!’ moment against Germany.

  ‘And, so, ladies and gentlemen, in this Time of Troubles, a new saviour has flown in to be with us this morning. Will you please welcome…Roman Raskolnikov!’

  Ilya cut the cameras over to Roman as the crowd of supporters in front of him cheered and waved their blue flags. Grigory nodded to Ilya from down the control desk. It really did look like a rally for an established political party.

  Roman was famous for his tell-it-like-it-is style, so he didn’t go for flights of rhetoric. The very fact that he was standing in front of people was enough of a shock for them. His face told his story as much as any words could: people could see what two years in the camps must have been like from his weight loss and the frostbite burns on his cheekbones.

  He outlined the problems that the country was facing first, putting forward a lot of facts that the government had suppressed about how and why things had gone so badly wrong, how the siloviki control of companies had ruined their competitiveness and driven out foreign investment. Then he turned to the loss of political freedom that people were only now beginning to regret.

  He began his finale, and became more high-flown. ‘The last Tsarina once said “Russia loves and needs the feel of the whip”, and we must address this addiction to authoritarianism in our nature.’

  There were some shouts of agreement from the audience at this.

  ‘We must address our paranoia about foreign enemies that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. But I tell you now that our greatest threats are not external but internal! I am
standing here before you now, a prisoner just freed from our country’s most shameful secret, the new Gulag system that the government has hidden from you. I worked there as a slave under that Russian whip, but now I am free, and I have to ask you today to face up to a question about the nature of our beloved Motherland!’

  He paused and looked long and hard at the camera in front of him.

  ‘And we must face this question,’ he pronounced each of the next words slowly, ‘is Russia a slave country?’

  There were shouts of ‘No!’ from the crowd.

  ‘Then if she is not a slave country, she must be prepared to stand up for her freedom. For too long we have had governments that have not matched the spirit of the Russian people. Governments that have lied to us, cheated us and oppressed us!’

  The crowd was wild now, shouting, waving their flags and cheering.

  Roman’s earnest face filled the screens across the country as he shouted, ‘Is the Russian soul a slave soul?’ He banged the podium insistently. ‘No! No! No! It’s a free soul! So I call on you now to demonstrate on the streets! I announce to you now a new Revolution! I want you to join the Blue Revolution!’ He pointed a finger at the stunned viewers across the country. ‘We have chosen this colour from our national flag.’ He turned, grabbed the corner of one of the furled tricolours and pulled it out so he could point dramatically at the different colours. ‘Not for us the Communist Reds or the Tsarist Whites! Not to be the left, not to be the right, but to be the centre of the flag!’

  He gripped the central blue stripe and held it up over his head.

  ‘To be the voice of the ordinary, decent people of Russia, who for too long have been caught up by the whims of the extremes. I call on you now to come out onto the streets and let us make a peaceful protest on a scale that this terrible government cannot ignore! The people’s will cannot be ignored. Let us express our souls! Let us be free!’

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  In the Metro carriage complete silence reigned as people stared at the screen.

  It really was Roman Raskolnikov.

  The face was more worn, the voice was older and rougher, but it had the same lilting Volga accent, and he was the same man they had known and respected for so many years, telling them things about themselves that they knew but did not realise that they knew.

  All across Moscow, cars had pulled over on the side of the road, mothers on the school run shut their children up to listen, people over the breakfast table were left staring at each other. In shops and factories, workers and customers had looked up as the usual muzak and phone-in chatter had cut out and then they heard this extraordinary blast of rhetoric.

  In the 568th Regiment’s huge canteen, the soldiers had been lazing in their chairs over breakfast, when Darensky had jumped up onto the table under the TV set on the wall and shouted, ‘Right, shut up! Listen in! There’s an important announcement on the telly.’

  He jumped down and turned the volume up to max with the remote. It was a good time for the broadcast as the CO, Colonel Karenin, and the officers loyal to him had had another big drinking session last night and weren’t out of their beds yet. He had got the junior officers and NCOs who supported him together and he returned to their table to watch.

  Would the men come out in support of the revolution or would he be shot for mutiny?

  He would find out soon enough.

  ‘Fuck off, mate,’ muttered Sergeant Platonov at him under his breath to the younger Private Novikov next to him. He was sick to death of the whole officer corps in the regiment; they were all arseholes, as far as he was concerned, driving the whole unit into the ground with their implementation of Colonel Karenin’s sadistic regime.

  Private Novikov nodded. Like most of the men he was depressed and terrified by Karenin’s reign of fear. All he wanted to do was to serve his time and get the fuck out of the army as fast as he could; he was not looking to be a hero.

  The show on the TV was a brightly coloured, high-energy, knockabout breakfast programme that the lads used as a sugar-rush to wake them up in the morning. A pop video was playing when, in the middle of it, the shot cut back to the studio; the normally hyper young male and female presenters suddenly looked worried as they listened to instructions in their earpieces.

  The lad with spiky hair did the best he could to convey an air of gravitas: ‘Well, folks, we’ve got a bit of a weird one for you here. We’re gonna have to say ciao for now ’cos there’s something really big going on…’

  His voice trailed off, he looked in confusion at his floor manager, and then the screen blinked and cut to some graphics.

  The men in the canteen frowned and paid more attention.

  Lara came on screen and a cheer went up. ‘’Ello, love!’, ‘Awright, darling!’, ‘Fucking love ’er! Look at those tits!’, ‘What’s she looking all posh for?’

  Darensky looked on in horror; this was not the reaction that he had hoped for.

  The men settled down once Lara mentioned Raskolnikov. He was hugely popular amongst working-class Russians, and his trial and imprisonment had been bitterly resented, but people had just had to shrug and say, ‘What can you do?’

  Now he was back on the screen in front of them and the men craned forward to hear him.

  Darensky watched the broadcast but also kept flicking his eyes to the men to see how they were taking it. Some of what Roman said about the state of the economy struck home. There were nods about the petrol rationing and a few ‘Yeahs’ about the price rises, but a lot of the more soaring stuff about freedom and the Russian soul just met with blank faces.

  As an earnest student of politics, Darensky found it inspiring and was aglow with fervour by the end. He hit the mute button on the remote and jumped up onto the table under the TV. This was his great revolutionary moment and he threw his arms open to the men in front of him.

  ‘Right, lads. Well, there you go! Wow! That was really Raskolnikov and he really socked it to them, didn’t he? I want us to get the tanks and APCs out and go down to Ostankino right now to support him!’ He punched the air with his fist. ‘We’ve suffered here enough from that bastard Karenin, but if we join with them now we can get rid of him! Really change the country; make it a better place!’

  He looked at them expectantly but met with rows of blank faces.

  They were ground down and, as Russians, the idea of joyous optimism for a better future just wasn’t part of their psyche. Nothing that he had said had set light to their imagination and a stunned silence prevailed.

  Sergeant Platonov broke it by scraping his chair back on the concrete floor; he was a heavy-set man from a coal mining family in the Donetzk area, who had joined the army as the only way out.

  He shrugged and said, ‘I agree with Raskolnikov. Krymov has done a shit job with the economy. It’s stupid that people don’t have jobs. But Krymov will never fall—he’s too strong. You can’t overthrow the government. Besides, Karenin would kill us.’

  He shrugged again and sat down; there were nods of agreement around the tables as a consensus was reached. The men quietly began picking up their bowls and walking over to the food counter.

  The temporary spell from Raskolnikov’s broadcast was broken and, as the soldiers moved past Darensky, they avoided his gaze. He felt suddenly ridiculous, standing up there on the table. He climbed down and walked back over to the group of junior officers, who looked at him equally disconsolately.

  In a short while, Karenin would get out of bed, his orderly would tell him what had happened and they would be arrested, beaten and shot for mutiny.

  But worst of all, Darensky knew he had failed. He had let the revolution down. The key to it, the Ostankino tower and the control of the airwaves that went with it, was now wide open to attack from troops loyal to Krymov. No matter how many ordinary people came out onto the streets, without regular army support, they wouldn’t be able to stop the OMON and the MVD.

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  As the crowd’s raptur
ous applause rang out, Lara walked across the stage to Roman, kissed him on the cheek and then embraced him. An even louder cheer went up and the crowd started chanting: ‘Our last hope! Our last hope!’

  The pair of them then held hands and walked down the steps into the sea of blue flags and applauding supporters; UCO party activists struggled to clear a path for them as they were mobbed.

  In the gallery Grigory smiled as he looked on. From a media point of view it was stunning. Lara looked amazing; the flipside of her inner sadness was that when she did turn on her smile it was dazzling. Her star quality shone a light around her and the combination of this beautiful national icon holding hands with the grizzled national hero was irresistible.

  Grigory looked at Ilya standing next to him in the gallery, smiled, punched his fists in the air and then embraced him; they both knew they had done a great job.

  After a round of whooping and hugs amongst the production team, Grigory quickly slotted back into the desk and checked the feeds from the five news crews they had out around Moscow to catch public reactions.

  He punched the connection to his reporter on Ulitsa Arbat, the big pedestrianised shopping street a few blocks west of the Kremlin.

  ‘Stepan, get me some reactions! I need interviews.’

  The camera feed showed huddles of people beginning to form in front of a TV shop where the owner had turned up the sound on all the sets in the window and opened the doors. A crowd of people were gathering around it to watch the coverage from Ostankino and begin to discuss what had happened.