Mark Blair - Stroika

‘Volkov has backed down for now, but I don’t know for how long… maybe he is just biding his time.’

‘For what?’

‘I don’t know… a new general secretary?’

‘You mean a coup?’ It was more a rhetorical statement than a question. Yuri shrugged. His friend continued. ‘Personally I think all this rumour-mongering is just the same old state paranoia that not so long ago led to purges and arrests. Look… the KGB would be the first to pick up on anything.’

‘You may be right. It’s just there have been some high-level meetings taking place between the military, KGB and senior government figures.’

Ilya didn’t respond.

‘And Karzhov?’ Yuri said, leaving his name hanging in the air. It was Ilya’s time to shrug.

‘Our new chief? Not much to say… met him at a directorate meeting. Old KGB, bit of a closed book, as you might expect.’

‘This is good, Ilya,’ he said, downing his last piece of bread.

‘I don’t suppose you get much home cooking.’

Yuri laughed and shook his head.

‘I also think I’m being followed.’

His friend’s face took on a serious expression. He was silent for a moment.

‘I’ll tell you what. I’ll make some discrete enquires, see if I can come up with anything.’

Yuri took his leave just after ten and caught a lift back to within a couple of blocks of his apartment. Making a wide circle around his building, he came out on the street in front of the main entrance, on the pavement opposite, a hundred or so metres down, and stopped. His eyes searched for the tail he’d had this morning. The street was empty. Reassured but still cautious, he made his way round to the secret exit he had left by and took the emergency stairwell back to the first floor and the lift to the seventh.

He entered his apartment and switched on the light. There was a sound from down the hallway. Yuri reached for his automatic hanging discretely behind his coats on the wall rack. Silently, he slid back the safety catch and rebalanced the grip in his hand.

The door giving onto the living room was open, the room in darkness. His free hand reached for the switch and rotated the dimmer switch. There was a sudden movement from the sofa. He swung round to meet it as his finger took first pressure, ready to loose two rounds. Svetlana lay there in a short dress and heels.

‘Don’t shoot!’ she said, over-dramatically raising her hands above her head in mock surrender.

‘ Fuck , Svetlana… I could have killed you…’

LENINGRAD

Misha looked around the vault. Viktoriya stood next to Grigory, who was idly weighing up wads of dollar bills in his hands before placing them back where he had found them.

‘Did we get the last of Kostya’s money,’ Misha asked Grigory.

‘Over two hundred million US. He seems in a hell of a hurry.’

‘That’s way up on what he told me,’ Misha said, frowning.

Misha cast a glance in Viktoriya’s direction as if she might be able to throw some light on Kostya’s extra millions. It was odd. She guessed Moika was not the only bank Kostya was pushing his money through and Misha would definitely not have been his first choice. Why the rush now? There was less chance of it being noticed by the authorities if it were drip fed.

The wall phone rang and Grigory picked it up.

‘Ivan on the phone.’

They had been waiting for news on Roslavi. Ivan had joined Major Gaidar’s brigade and entered the plant at first light. They had little idea what to expect, only Federov’s hazy report.

‘Put him on speaker,’ said Misha.

‘We have the plant under control, but they were waiting for us, someone must have tipped them off… a heavily armed local gang, maybe fifty, ex-army I suspect, ten dead, four of ours.’

It was almost useless speculating who had leaked their arrival, thought Viktoriya, but they did need to improve their own intelligence about such matters.

‘And the plant director?’

‘Not very cooperative, at first… he’s onside now. If he gives us any trouble he’ll be out and he knows it. Vika, you can send in your tankers in forty-eight hours, but it’ll take time to get back to half-decent production levels. The place is a mess.’

The Soviet Union writ large, thought Viktoriya. No wonder Federov was so keen to secure the place, and thank God for Yuri. Between him and Ivan it had taken less than ten days to assemble a small army, kit them out and put them in position.

‘Comrade director says that requisitioning spare parts is futile; he’s been doing so for months. The only thing it generates is more paperwork – not what he needs.’

‘Ivan, just tell him to give you the list,’ said Misha. ‘We’ll sort it out, bring in the parts from Europe. It’ll be much quicker, and tell him to get hold of some contract engineers. Put them on our payroll. Let’s get this refinery up and running. Who knows how long we’ll have to benefit.’

The sums they were looking at on the trading side were enormous if they could get back to anything like the capacity levels Federov had told them had been achieved two years before; sinking some of their profit into improving their return would be a small price to pay. Besides, Federov had even hinted that he might get the ministry to cover the cost ultimately, but first things first, thought Viktoriya.

‘I’ve LF setting up the transport depot as we speak,’ said Viktoriya, ‘on the outskirts of Smolensk, courtesy of Federov. I’ll fax you the details. I’m positioning the first five freighters there this week, more next. They’ll need security.’

Smolensk was no safer than any other city.

SMOLENSK

Yuri sat enjoying a drink at his favourite bar in Smolensk with Viktoriya sitting on the bar stool opposite. Combining a visit to the Western District with Viktoriya’s visit to the Leningrad Freight depot seemed like a good plan.

‘Bring back memories, General?’ she said smiling. Two girls at the far end of the bar had been making eyes at him for the past ten minutes.

‘Not much changes round here… fortunately.’

‘I’m sure. How long were you stationed here?’

‘Eighteen months.’ Eighteen months , it had seemed more like a lifetime immediately after Afghanistan.

‘So…?’ she said, interrupting his train of thought.

‘I was thinking how beautiful you are.’

‘You’ll have to do better than that, General. I’m not one of those girls,’ she said, casting a glance down the bar. But he could see she was not offended.

‘Old habits die hard.’

Sitting there only inches from her, Yuri wondered if she were seeing anyone. He knew that she and Stolin were no longer, only from what Misha had said, but that was as far as his knowledge went.

‘Do you mind if I ask you a question?’ he asked.

‘Depends.’

‘You and Konstantin Ivanivich… no, it’s none of my business,’ he said, suddenly getting cold feet.

‘We’re not seeing each other, if that’s the question.’

‘Not quite, more why, really, or a how.’

‘You mean how a nice girl like me gets involved with someone like him… maybe I’m not so nice.’

‘That I can’t believe.’

‘It’s complicated. I’ve asked myself the same question… often. He’s smart… good-looking… I always used to feel I could rely on him… he came to my rescue once.’ She looked down at the floor, and Yuri could see she was struggling with her emotions and wished he hadn’t pursued the conversation. She looked back up at him with watery eyes.