Mark Blair - Stroika

‘I also have a letter of introduction from the Leningrad gorkom and my director at Leningrad Freight.’

‘You do indeed come highly recommended,’ said Federov, glancing at the documents before returning them. He took off his glasses and placed them on the table.

‘So, Miss Kayakova… back to the beginning. It says in my notes that you wish to discuss fuel supply problems for… Leningrad Freight. Normally I would not get involved in such matters but, as I said, you come highly recommended, not least by General Marov, who tells me you are trustworthy and discrete.’

Viktoriya had the impression Federov was beginning to talk in code.

‘Leningrad Freight is the second largest shipping company in Russia,’ he continued. ‘You have done well to rise so fast. You must only be…’

‘Twenty-eight.’

‘Yes, I have that here too,’ he said, referring to his notes, ‘first-class honours in Economics at Leningrad State.’

Viktoriya felt this was turning into an interview.

‘You will appreciate I like to know who I am dealing with.’

He turned a page. It was a list of diesel supplies to Leningrad Freight over the past four months.

‘I am a petrochemical engineer,’ he added apropos of nothing. ‘Your requisitions have increased substantially. It’s good to know that at least someone is moving goods around Russia,’ he said with a deadpan face and shut the folder.

‘May I suggest we continue at a café close by? They do much better coffee and it has stopped raining now.’

The café was indeed close, a few doors down from the ministry. It was spacious with a freshly painted vaulted ceiling and newly installed red velour booth seating.

‘I think this will be more private, Miss Kayakova.’

Coffee arrived almost instantly.

‘I’ll come to the point. You have a supply contract with Mikhail Revnik’s cooperative to supply him diesel, in which… how shall I put it, the gorkom also have an interest?’

The minister for oil and gas was not a simple state-level bureaucrat, after all, she thought.

‘Yes, fuel surplus to Leningrad Freight requirements.’

‘Quite, sound economics… Tell me, do you know of the oil refinery at Roslavi?’

Viktoriya said she did. Leningrad Freight had made sporadic deliveries for it going back years. It was south of Smolensk, halfway to Bryansk.

‘General Marov, I am sure, is very familiar with it from his previous command,’ added Federov. He paused, and she wondered for a moment whether he would continue.

‘It will not come as a surprise to you that perestroika has turned everything on its head. First there were rules, and now there are none. Many of our industries, and that includes oil refineries, are plagued by criminal gangs. In our motor industry there is wholesale theft from the production line of spare parts, even cars. No one dares challenge them, not if you value your life. Mikhail Dimitrivich has his bank – Moika – and accounts in Switzerland?’ he continued.

She nodded.

‘Do you think that between yourselves and General Marov you can secure Roslavi?’

Secure Roslavi? Occupy it, militarily? That was a tall order, she thought.

‘And if I could?’

‘I grant your new cooperative a distribution agreement with the refinery, all you can manage.’

‘At the domestic price, in roubles?’

‘Naturally… and 15 per cent of the market price, US dollars, into a Swiss bank account, which your friend will set up for me.’

What he was proposing was on an entirely different scale. The current offtake would seem like petty cash to this. The revenues would be enormous.

‘Comrade Minister, let me speak with my principals. I’ll come back to you shortly.’

‘Well don’t wait too long… carpe diem .’

The aircraft taxied to the edge of the runway. Out of her window, Viktoriya glimpsed the aeroplane in front lift from view, its wheels already retracting, as it rose into an unblemished morning sky. On cue, the giant Ilyushin made a slow turn to face down the runway, square onto the flight strip. It rolled forward a few metres and stopped.

‘Prepare for take-off,’ said the address system.

Viktoriya looked at the second hand of her watch as the engine noise swelled to deafening pitch and she resisted the temptation to cover her ears. Like a dog anxious to be unleashed, the aircraft struggled against its master, shaking and shuddering. Surely now, she thought. There was an almost imperceptible change in gravity, the infinitely small gap between stillness and kinesis, a stasis, where opposing forces cancel each other out. The sudden, precipitous, forward movement of the aircraft forced her, almost threw her, back in her seat. She looked again at her watch as the behemoth gathered momentum and lift with every inch. Thirty, thirty-five, she had guessed fifty seconds, forty, forty-five; the Ilyushin slipped the lead and clawed its way skyward before turning north to Leningrad.

She reached for the briefcase stowed under her seat and pulled out the latest shipping figures. Blankly, she stared at the numbers, unable to concentrate on the neat schedule of rows and columns. Her mind drifted to the meeting she had just finished with Yuri, who had delivered her to the airport that morning. They had sat in the busy concourse watching the early morning bustle while she recounted her conversation with Federov.

Yuri had sat quietly thinking it through. It was entirely within his power whether they went ahead or walked away.

‘I know what you are thinking, but there is no honour in penury, not unless you’re a religious obsessive, and we’ve surely had enough of them,’ she had thrown in. ‘And if it is not us, it will be someone else.’

‘Not always the best way to justify one’s actions.’

‘Maybe not, but you can see the state things are in… One day soon the ordinary Russian is going to wake up and discover that the money in his bank account is worth nothing, zero, the government have spent it all. I don’t want to be that ordinary Russian. You don’t either.’

He had stared at her for a moment. His expression changed. It was as though he were seeing her for the first time.

‘ Carpe diem ,’ he had said with the hint of a smile on his face.

‘ Carpe diem .’

‘Look, I can’t commit the military, not to secure the refinery, but there is a way. It’s no secret that we are decommissioning whole regiments with the Afghan pull-out. There are a lot of soldiers looking for work – officers and men. I know a few from my old regiment. We build our own security force.’

‘A private army.’

‘Four hundred men… to start, one battalion. The way things are going we’ll need more, a lot more. Tell your minister we’ll take care of Roslavi.’

She closed her eyes.

‘Coffee, madam,’ asked the hostess. She looked up and placed her cup on the small tray held out to her.

Yuri – he was his own enigma, she thought. What did he ultimately want? She didn’t believe it was all about money… but didn’t wealth and power go together, and was he not quietly accumulating both.

MOSCOW, THE ARBAT

‘So we are agreed on the preliminary timetable?’ Yuri heard himself say. He looked around the long table at the district generals and their delegates. Here and there was the nodding of heads, none spoke. It had been another exhausting and frustrating meeting trying to tie down a phased time for the evacuation of the Western Forces Group from East Germany… should negotiations get that far. He thought, at last, after months of meetings, they were finally there. On an easel at the far end of the meeting room stood a flip chart listing a dozen or more military groups with dates scribbled out and reinserted. ‘We evacuate through Rostock and Reugen.’