Mark Blair - Stroika

‘Another drink?’ he said, and she caught the bartender’s attention and pointed at her near empty glass.

‘Galina,’ she said, introducing herself – Lieutenant Galina Biryukova, he remembered. He had caught her studying him across the table during the day’s negotiation. He put her in her early thirties.

‘Please call me Yuri.’

Galina cast her eyes nervously around the room.

‘Just to reassure you… Yuri… I don’t normally go out looking like this. I had to pay the doorman five dollars to come in… I assume that’s the going door rate for sex workers.’

‘Well I do look like this when I go to hockey matches,’ he countered, and smiled, trying to put her at ease. She was certainly more provocative than in uniform.

Her drink arrived. Yuri waited for the waitress to move out of earshot.

‘Does General Volkov know you are meeting me?’

Galina shook her head.

‘So what is it that is so important?’

‘I am not sure.’

‘Not sure?’ Yuri started to wonder whether the lieutenant was wasting his time.

‘General,’ she slipped into army mode, ‘Yuri… I trust I can rely on your discretion. From what I’ve seen and heard, I believe I can.’

‘I think you need to spit it out,’ Yuri said, without giving her any guarantee.

She nodded and seemed to relax, almost anticipating the relief of telling him what was troubling her.

‘Look, I may be way off beam but something is going on which I can’t explain. You know I am General Volkov’s adjutant; I’ve been working for him just under three years. I organise, attend and take minutes of all his meetings. There’s not much I don’t know. But a month ago he attended a meeting at the Ministry of Defence. It was only by coincidence I found out. I was delivering some papers to the ministry and spotted him coming out.’ She hesitated.

‘Go on,’ Yuri encouraged her.

‘Well, it was who he was with.’ She paused, almost frightened to say their names.

‘And… they were?’ Yuri prompted her.

‘Gerashchenko, Karzhov, Dubnikov and Vetrov.’

Yuri frowned, puzzled. The deputy general secretary, KGB chairman, Soviet defence minister and the interior minister. There might be a hundred reasons why such a meeting might take place, but he couldn’t think of one offhand.

‘Did General Volkov see you?’

‘Yes… I could see he was startled at first… he could see that I thought it odd. He just said, “ An emergency security meeting ”. It just didn’t ring true. I know him. There isn’t a meeting in three years that I have not known about, not until that day, at least. When I got back to Berlin, I checked his desk diary. Under July 5 he had written in faint pencil the letters EC… I am not in the habit of checking on my commanding officers…’

‘No, I understand… please continue.’

‘Well, I flipped back through the diary and found two other EC s, a week or two apart and coinciding with his visits to general staff in Moscow. It’s just he’s never mentioned them…’ her voice trailed off. ‘And that’s it really. I’m sure there is a perfectly good reason…’

‘But you can’t think of one… and nor can I at this moment.’ Not one that sounded innocent at least. He could understand now the risk she was taking by seeing him. ‘And why did you bring this to my attention and not someone else.’

‘I’m not entirely sure myself… you seem to be doing the right thing… we do need to move on… and General Ghukov trusts you, and the general secretary.’

Yuri was silent for a minute. He needed time to think on what she had said. Maybe there was an alternative explanation, a legitimate reason, but then why the secrecy and why the deputy secretary general and all those people in the same room? Yuri took a gulp of beer as the lieutenant waited patiently for him to respond.

‘Does General Volkov have any idea of your suspicions?’

‘I’m not sure. Clearly he knows I saw everyone at the Defence Ministry.’

Volkov was no fool, though, thought Yuri. If there was something going on he would not want it leaking out. He wouldn’t want loose ends.

‘Have you noticed any sort of surveillance?’

‘No… I’m not sure… maybe, maybe it’s just paranoia creeping in.’ She smiled for the first time.

‘Well, you did the right thing, raising this with me. The safest course of action for you now is to carry on normally. Doing anything else is going to set alarm bells ringing… if something is going on.’

LENINGRAD

Misha looked down on the dark waters of the Bolshaya Neva as his small cavalcade crossed the Dvortsovy bridge and headed south onto Vasilyevsky Island in light traffic. Reflexively, he pulled the collar of his coat tight around his neck. Soon the islands would weld together in a vast seamless plane of white and grey. Ivan turned and looked at him and then glanced at the black Volgas tucked in close behind; the one to their front was already beginning to make a left turn.

‘I’m not expecting any trouble,’ said Ivan. He extracted his automatic and distractedly examined it before returning it to his shoulder holster.

Misha thought back to the days of the red Zhiguli not that long ago, when he hadn’t bothered with protection. Life had been a lot simpler then, freer. He was a target now to kidnappers and criminal syndicates, not to mention the more straightforward entrepreneur who saw an opportunity to accelerate market share by bumping off the competition.

A grand plan there had never been. He would have laughed at anyone who would have mentioned the strategy word. It was just an opportunistic progression and money made money . In the Soviet Union, he reflected, nothing belonged to anybody, not until now, and those that controlled enterprises and contracts had little compunction in virtually signing anything away, as long, of course, as there was something in it for them.

The car in front dipped as it ran over a pothole, and they swerved slightly to avoid it. The cavalcade had picked up speed now, and there was no stopping for red lights. They ran two, horns blaring and headlights full beam, and took another sharp left and stopped. Four identical cars sat on the cobbled forecourt of the Academy Café; their occupants seemed barely to give them a second glance. Misha recognised Bazhukov in the nearest car.

He climbed out of the car and looked across the water and to the Admiralty to the east. A gust of wind caught him.

‘You wait by the car,’ he told Ivan. ‘You can keep an eye on these guys.’

The café was a large conservatory-like structure moored against the Neva’s edge, all glass and heavy metal beams. He pushed open the door and took the wrought-iron staircase to the first floor. Misha spotted Konstantin at a table set back from the bar, sipping a cup of something, enjoying a view of the river and the left bank.

‘I always like the view from here. Dramatic, don’t you think?’ Konstantin said when Misha sat down opposite. There was no shaking of hands or warm smiles. Misha thought back to when he had spoken to him last – a year ago, maybe longer? Konstantin looked slightly heavier than he remembered him but not necessarily the worse for it; traces of premature grey peppered his jet-black hair.

‘Thank you for coming.’ Konstantin waved at the barista standing at the bar well out of earshot. Misha wondered how many scenes like this the waiter had witnessed. A normal morning turns into a gangland meet.

The barista took Misha’s order for a cappuccino, brought it to him and retreated out of range.

‘We can’t go on meeting like this,’ Misha said with an over-serious face and laughed.