Mark Blair - Stroika

‘That we do not wake up one morning with the Americans and NATO parked on our borders,’ interjected Vdovin.

‘Quite…’ continued Karzhov, ‘we do not intend to dismantle our general forces or lower our strategic guard.’

Nuclear capability by another name, thought Konstantin.

‘And how do you intend to prevent that?’ Konstantin asked. A revived Soviet Union would make his life a lot simpler.

‘By any means,’ the KGB chairman said, looking at him directly.

There had been countless talk of coups. Something had to give, Konstantin thought. Back in Leningrad it had become so bad that the newly elected mayor was doling out Western food relief. And here he was with arguably the most powerful man in Russia talking about any means – that old communist epithet.

‘And in what way do you want my help?’ said Konstantin before the chairman asked him.

‘You have your network, not unlike our own, covert… global… sworn to secrecy? You understand the meaning of betrayal,’ Karzhov continued.

‘We don’t have defectors… not live ones, if that’s what you mean.’

‘You have political and business affiliations, money and… what shall we call it, your own security force? When the time comes… when our plans are further advanced, I might call on you for support… to neutralise, shall we say, anti-Soviet elements… Do we have an understanding?’

‘Of course, Comrade Chairman… and the arms licence?’

The chairman nodded. ‘You’ll have that by the end of today.’

MOSCOW

For a split second, Yuri struggled to remember her name, distracted by the twin sensation of her finger, as it traced the long shrapnel scar on his left side, and her tongue, that flicked over his lips… Natasha.

‘General Yarouchka ,’ she whispered, using the diminutive. ‘Surely a general can make his men wait.’

General Yuri Marov moved back a few inches to take her in. Her auburn hair fell straight to her shoulders. She was still wearing the blouse she wore the previous evening hung open and off one shoulder.

‘What meeting is more important than me ?’ She lunged forward with bared teeth to bite his lower lip as he snapped back out of range, grabbed her by the shoulder and overbalanced her onto the bed, pushing her face into the pillow. His hand traced the inside of her leg.

‘I knew you were KGB when I first laid eyes on you!’ he said, laughing. He had met Natasha two nights before at a high-level Moscow party. She was a cut above many of the women he had dated, an ex-model turned businesswoman. She ran her own Moscow agency specialising in exporting models to Western Europe.

‘I have to be going…’ He let go of her and jumped off the bed like a trapper releasing a wild animal. She rolled over.

‘You have a beautiful apartment.’

He guessed what she was thinking, how this on a general’s pay?

His apartment on the Arbat had indeed cost him a great deal of money; army pay would hardly have covered a studio rental within the Sadovaya Koltso – the Garden Ring – around Moscow.

‘Thank you,’ is all he said, without elucidating.

Forty minutes until his car arrived. He looked at his uniform and pressed shirt hanging on the wardrobe door and then at the woman on the bed looking up at him with those smokey eyes, her lips distractingly parted.

‘Ten minutes… ten minutes!’ he heard himself say.

Five minutes later than he normally would have been comfortable with, Yuri took the lift to the ground floor. He passed the concierge seated behind an expensive-looking reception desk, more sculpture than furniture, and took the revolving door onto the street. His staff car was directly outside. The driver, a young dark-haired Chechen, jumped out of the vehicle and rushed round to open the rear passenger door. As Yuri bent down to get in, he noticed a man standing on the other side of the road, ten feet from a parked Lada. He wasn’t sure why he noticed him that morning. Maybe it was a gap in the traffic that was normally bumper to bumper. But his brain had registered something. Without giving the Lada or the man a second glance, he climbed in and settled back into his seat as his driver pulled away from the kerb.

Yuri shifted his position so that he now had clear sight of the wing mirror. The man he had spotted opposite was climbing hurriedly into the Lada, which had pulled up swiftly beside him. A second later, the man and the car disappeared from view.

Had he been imagining things? Could it have been a simple coincidence, he thought? He went through a mental list of likely suspects: CIA, MI6, and MSS. One was almost as likely as another. But this was Russia, he reminded himself, where not even generals were to be trusted.

‘Viktoriya Nikolaevna Kayakova. I have a ten thirty appointment with the minister of oil and gas.’

As the receptionist checked the minister’s calendar, Viktoriya looked across the entrance hall towards the front door where Yuri stood making sure that everything went smoothly.

An hour earlier, the two of them had had coffee together to discuss strategy in a café close by the GUM. Yuri had seemed distracted, directing her to a corner table out of earshot of other patrons and telling her to keep her voice down. He was clearly wary of something. She wondered what he did now that he was back in Moscow. It was not something he ever raised or discussed; she knew better than to broach it with him. All she knew was that he worked at general staff headquarters. Misha guessed it was all to do with the Afghan pull-out, which according to official media was nearly complete. But whatever his role, where her director had failed, Yuri had succeeded. There had been no hesitation from the minister in meeting them once there had been a call from his office.

‘ID?’ said the receptionist, a dowdy-looking woman in a grey uniform. Viktoriya wondered if she was always as rude or had just taken an exception to her. There was a tap on her shoulder.

‘I have to be going,’ said Yuri as he kissed her on both cheeks. ‘You’ll have to give me a full report later.’

Viktoriya held his arms for a moment.

‘Everything all right, General,’ she said, using his title affectionately. Outside, it had begun to rain heavily. A passing truck hit a pothole in the road, sending a sheet of water over the pavement.

‘Yes, absolutely,’ he said, his normal smile returning. ‘A lot going on, that’s all.’

A young man interrupted them and motioned for her to follow. Viktoriya watched as Yuri ran out into the street and jumped into his staff car. Despite his protest, she couldn’t banish her sense of unease.

‘Please wait here,’ said the young man. He parked her in a bare-looking meeting room, all wood and frosted glass, and pointed to a pot of coffee brewing on the table.

Before she had time to pour herself a cup, an older man – she guessed late fifties, in a regulation Soviet double-breasted grey suit – stepped into the room and introduced himself as Stephan Federov.

Viktoriya wondered if Federov had any real sense of the power he wielded, his fiat over every well, refinery, and fuel distribution centre. Most state-level bureaucrats she had met simply had no understanding of how the rea l system worked.

‘Viktoriya Nikolaevna, a pleasure to meet you,’ he said, self-consciously tidying his hair. ‘What can I do for you? General Marov made the introduction, I gather? Can I ask what your relationship is with him?’

Viktoriya explained that Leningrad Freight had dealt with him on customs and security issues when he was a colonel in charge of Smolensk and he had been kind enough to recommend her. It was halfway to the truth.