Джозеф Файндер - The Moscow Club

The arsenal was dark, illuminated partially by the light from the outside corridor. The stench of gas was overpowering, and the air in the room was hazy. Rozanov could hear a distinct, loud hiss.

“Don’t touch that!” Rozanov shouted when the KGB guard reached for the light switch. “This place is full of gas! A spark from the light could set this off.”

And then he noticed the tank, in the center of the room, from which the hiss was coming. And then the wires that ran throughout the room, and the blocks of plastic explosive, and the grenades. A bomb? Here?

“What the fuck–?” was all he had time to say as he wheeled around and was bayoneted in the throat by a second KGB guard, whose form was suddenly framed in the arsenal’s doors.

So much seemed to happen in unison at the Revolution Day ceremonies in Red Square, Admiral Mathewson noticed.

Squeezed into the dignitaries’ section, he had an unrivaled view of the mausoleum, maybe ten yards away.

Everything was synchronized. A man in a gray suit, a parade marshal, stood on one of the lower balustrades of the mausoleum, directing the crowd, instructing it when to cheer. Two open limousines careered through the square, one carrying the commander of the Moscow district, the other carrying the minister of defense, and as they passed, the serried ranks of soldiers chanted Ooorah! Ooorahl The troops, thousands of them, turned as a man, mechanical as robots.

Then the tanks moved in, the missile launchers with their thick rubber tires, the machine-gun carriages, drawn by four horses – a homage to the old days, surely – all rattled across the cobbled square, which was filled with blue-gray exhaust fumes.

The crowd, chanting agitatedly but joylessly, red ribbons pinned to their breasts, were unaware of the extensive security precautions, Mathewson knew: the squads of soldiers with automatic rifles gathered in the underground passageways outside the square, the plainclothes-men standing in the bleachers astride the mausoleum, wearing earplugs and bulging guns beneath their coats. Security for the summit was tight.

Mathewson watched his President up there, waving and smiling broadly, and felt a flush of pride. For the first time, a president was paying respects to the Russian Revolution. The Cold War was definitely over.

At shortly after eleven, several little girls with bows in their hair climbed the mausoleum steps to hand cellophane-wrapped bouquets of red carnations to the members of the Politburo, bouquets supplied by Gorbachev’s office staff.

Mathewson watched the Politburo members, looking bored atop the tomb, their right hands extended in a weary salute. A nearby mother – clearly the wife of an important official – was holding up her child and whispering excitedly, “Can you see Gorbachev? That’s Gorbachev! And there’s the President of the United States!”

Colonel Nikita Vlasik of the MVD watched Charlotte Harper with sad gray eyes and decided that maybe he believed her extraordinary story.

This was the man who had once – it seemed long ago, though it was mere weeks – arrested her. The man who had given her advice on how to stay out of trouble. Charlotte felt a strange kinship with him.

He nodded without smiling. “You know,” he said, as he gestured to his chief lieutenant, “you remind me even more of my daughter. Only you and she would do something as foolhardy as you’ve just done, breaking through a KGB barricade.

“Vanya,” he said to his lieutenant, “we have not a second to waste.”

It was 11:03.

By 11:05, the KGB guard had locked the arsenal door once again, leaving the dead body crumpled inside. He had orders to follow. Everything smelled like gas, the arsenal and everything outside it, and as the guard stood watch to make sure no one else intruded, he thought he was going to be sick.

Inside the arsenal, the digital numbers on the electronic detonator indicated that six minutes remained.

The propane continued to hiss loudly out of the cylinder.

At 11:07, a team of MVD militiamen, bearing axes, chemical fire-extinguishers, and the assorted other equipment of the bomb squad, emerged from the door in the Kremlin wall directly behind the mausoleum. In order to avoid attracting too much attention, they had swung around into the Kremlin and entered from this side, but even so their presence caused a stir in the reviewing stands on either side of the tomb. There was a line of them – nine militiamen, to be exact – and they ran toward the mausoleum.

When they reached it, they split up to search.

But they were not diverted for long. The smell was overpowering now. All of the mausoleum stank of propane, and within forty-five seconds, seven of the militiamen had located the source.

The KGB guard saw the militiamen running toward him, and he raised his pistol and fired, but he was overwhelmed by gunfire.

The electronic detonator read 11:09.

With the aid of an ax they were able to sever the lock and force the arsenal doors open. The place stank.

The militiamen, experts in their work, at once saw the bomb apparatus and trod over the bodies in their haste to find some way to disconnect it.

The men coughed, overcome by the fumes.

There was no time!

Several of the men collapsed on the floor from inhaling the propane; they hadn’t all brought masks – who could have known? There were seconds remaining, literally seconds, and the wiring was such a mess, such a tangle, that even tearing at it as they did seemed to do nothing to stop the maddening, terrifying, hypnotic reddish flashing of the digital readout, the numbers that rushed toward 11:10. They could see the target time on a separate readout, the precise time at which the small black detonator would click the circuit open, and the plastic explosives–

Tear the wires out of it! Pull the plastique away from the electrical current! But there were too many blocks of explosive.

It couldn’t possibly be done in eight seconds. The whole thing would detonate and they and the mausoleum and the world leaders who stood unawares, mere yards above, would be incinerated….

At 11:09:55, one of the militiamen spotted the connector and dove for the wiring, wrenched the leads apart, end from end.

Would it …?

“Stand back!” a voice shouted.

The clock’s digits froze. Lying on the floor, surrounded by a tangle of wires, the militiaman gave a deep sigh. The bomb had been dismantled.

And it was over.

One of the militiamen spotted a face he recognized, and the two men drew close for an instant. They shook hands, and the first one said under his breath one word: “Staroobriadets.”

Atop the mausoleum, the President of the Soviet Union and the President of the United States waved at the crowd. On either side of them stood members of the Soviet and the American leadership. Most of the Americans, cold and uncomfortable, their legs weary, wondered how much longer they’d be able to stand it up there. Their Soviet counterparts, more accustomed to very long public ceremonies, gave stiff little waves and stood still to conserve body heat.

Unnoticeable to observers in Red Square, a small slip of paper was passed from a military guard standing next to the mausoleum, to a civilian security officer, and eventually to the Politburo member Aleksandr Yakovlev, who handed it to Gorbachev.

Gorbachev glanced at it briefly, then looked back to the crowd.

The President turned to him. “Urgent business?” he asked genially.

“No,” Gorbachev said. “A little problem, but we’ve taken care of it.”

Charlotte stood, protected by two guards from the MVD, behind a checkpoint near the Historical Museum, just outside Red Square. The cheers and martial music of the parade were overwhelmingly loud. At last the car pulled up, a rusty Lada, looking like a squashed bug. She’d hoped the MVD would be able to find them, and they had.