Peter Kirsanow - Second Strike

“Bring ten.”

MOSCOW,

AUGUST 16, 6:12 A.M. MSK

The walls of the waiting room to Stetchkin’s suite of offices were covered with paintings depicting Napoléon’s retreat from Moscow. Blood, agony, cold, snow. A metaphor, Egorshin thought, for the fate awaiting those who’ve incurred Stetchkin’s wrath.

Immediately after the phone call informing him to report to Stetchkin, Egorshin had placed several calls to his uncle. There was no answer and there was no voice mail function. He wanted to impress upon his uncle the urgency of contacting the president’s chief of staff immediately. Make sure the tyrant Stetchkin didn’t do anything insane.

The event was only sixty-six hours away. He should be at his station making calculations, verifying previous calculations. It was inconceivable that a man in Stetchkin’s position would compromise its success by taking some rash action out of personal pique.

Almost inconceivable. The image of Uganov, moving past him with eyes vacant, rendered all manner of horror conceivable. Evil. That was how Egorshin’s uncle had described Stetchkin. An active malevolence.

An aide to Stetchkin sat rigidly at a large, neat desk adjacent to the wooden double doors leading to Stetchkin’s office. He had pale skin, gray eyes, and bloodless lips resembling those of a cadaver. The eyes were pitiless, like the eyes of the man behind the doors. Eyes, Egorshin imagined, that had seen countless individuals walk through those doors and walk out minutes later, their lives shattered, bodies soon to be broken.

Egorshin keyed his uncle’s number one last time, but before the cell could make the connection, the intercom on the aide’s desk came to life. It was Stetchkin’s voice, quiet and calm.

“Send him in.”

The aide simply rose from his desk without a word and gestured toward the door. Egorshin stood and walked slowly, pausing to glance at the aide, who flicked his eyes toward the door, signaling him to enter.

Egorshin turned the brass handle and opened the door into an anteroom containing a French provincial couch and chairs. A credenza to the left held an assortment of handguns and knives and a grenade, which Egorshin guessed to be souvenirs from the Afghan war. A credenza on the right held a glass case the size of a bread box in which lay an assortment of campaign ribbons and medals. The wall separating the anteroom from the office was made entirely of glass, an archway in the middle serving as the entrance to Stetchkin’s office.

Egorshin stepped through the archway and scanned the room. It was large, neat, but otherwise unremarkable and, in fact, somewhat utilitarian. A desk, two chairs, a conference table, more chairs, and a bookshelf. Stetchkin was nowhere in sight.

Moments later, a door on the right side of the room opened and the tyrant emerged from a bathroom. He strode to his desk, the pace as slow as when he had walked down the aisle in the Kremlin. He pressed a button that activated a speakerphone.

“Have my car ready in ten minutes.”

He disconnected, turned, and gazed out the window behind the desk for several seconds, his hands clasped behind his back. Then he turned and looked at Egorshin for the first time.

“Sit.”

Egorshin proceeded to the chair opposite the desk and sat on the edge of the seat. Stetchkin remained standing, staring at the young colonel for several seconds in silence. Egorshin could hear the ticking of an unseen clock somewhere behind him.

“You have defied me twice, Egorshin. Your defiance perplexes me, particularly since it is evident that you are a coward.”

“Mr. Stetchkin, I did not defy—”

“Did I tell you to speak?” Stetchkin asked calmly, in almost a whisper.

“No, I just—”

“Then do not speak unless I give you permission to speak,” the tyrant said softly.

Stetchkin walked from behind the desk to Egorshin’s immediate right and stood directly over him. Egorshin continued to look at the space just vacated by Stetchkin, awaiting permission to look elsewhere. Stetchkin didn’t speak for several uncomfortable seconds.

“I made it quite clear to you that if I needed your services for Zaslon Unit, I expected you to provide them. I was under the impression you understood me perfectly. You did not ask me to repeat myself. You did not ask for clarification. It was a simple instruction that anyone could process.”

Stetchkin put his left hand on Egorshin’s right shoulder, sending a charge through him. Stetchkin bent and spoke into Egorshin’s ear.

“Tell me, Colonel, did I say that when Zaslon needs your services you should delegate the requested services to someone else?”

Egorshin sat mute, awaiting permission to answer.

“Speak,” Stetchkin said.

“You did not.”

“That is my recollection, also.”

Stetchkin straightened and walked slowly back behind the desk. He tapped the surface with his index finger.

“Did Zaslon Unit contact you? Speak.”

“Yes.”

Stetchkin walked back around the desk and stood next to Egorshin again. Egorshin continued to stare forward.

“Did Zaslon Unit request a service? Speak.”

“They did.”

Stetchkin paced slowly back behind his desk and resumed tapping the surface with his index finger.

“Did Zaslon Unit request someone besides you to perform the service? Speak.”

“They did not request anyone specifically.”

“That answer is not responsive to the question I asked, Colonel. Did they request someone else perform the service? Speak.”

“They did not.”

Stetchkin’s tapping became progressively slower. He tapped for a full thirty seconds without uttering a word. The only other sound in the room was the ticking of the clock.

The tapping stopped. Egorshin’s heart raced.

“So,” Stetchkin said in a whisper Egorshin strained to hear, “you understood that you were to provide services to Zaslon Unit upon request. Such request was made of you. It was made of no one else. You did not provide such service.” Stetchkin paused, then paced back to Egorshin’s side and once again placed his left hand on Egorshin’s right shoulder and bent to speak into his ear. “How, then, is that not defiance? Speak.”

“It was a misunderstanding.”

“A misunderstanding, you say.”

Egorshin did not respond.

“A misunderstanding,” Stetchkin repeated, pacing contemplatively toward his desk and then back to Egorshin. “That puzzles me. This was a simple matter. A very simple matter. I instructed that you provide services to Zaslon Unit; I instructed no one else to provide such services; yet you did not provide the requested services. You are alleged to be brilliant. You have studied at Harvard and Oxford. Clearly, such a simple matter was easily understood by you. You could not have possibly misunderstood my instructions, so the misunderstanding must have been on my part.” Stetchkin stopped pacing somewhere behind Egorshin. “Are you saying, therefore, that I am stupid?”

“Respectfully, I do not—”

Stetchkin slapped the back of Egorshin’s head sharply. “Quiet,” the tyrant whispered. “I did not direct you to speak. Or have I misunderstood our arrangement?”

Egorshin sat still, bewildered. What was this madman doing? Why was he tormenting him like this? They barely knew each other. Before now, they’d had hardly more than a couple of minutes of conversation. Why had he singled Egorshin out? What could possibly have sparked his wrath?

The voice came from behind. “Speak.”

“Respectfully, I misunderstood your initial instructions to mean that I should effectuate Zaslon Unit’s request for services. I sought to do so with the most efficient allocation of resources. Accordingly, I delegated the duty to the person within my unit charged with performing such services directly.”