Mark Blair - Stroika

‘Where’s the light switch,’ the first bodyguard said, looking back at Viktoriya, who was now at the sitting room end of the corridor.

‘On the left as you go in.’

He nodded, and pushing the door open a fraction more, he reached in with his hand and switched on the light.

The bedroom was as Viktoriya remembered it, except, of course, for the now made-up bed. She slid open the mirrored wardrobe that ran along one wall of the bedroom. Dozens of dresses and outfits, neatly arranged, hung from the wardrobe rail, and below them pairs of shoes and boots stretched from one end to the other. Viktoriya shrugged, baffled.

They repeated the same procedure for the spare room – again nothing. They returned to the bathroom door where they had almost begun. Maybe the whole thing was some sort of prank, or the concierge really had got it wrong. Viktoriya thought of calling the front desk, asking the concierge to come up to the apartment and confirm that this was the one he had let the electrician into, but her two security service men were concentrating on the bathroom door and she decided not to disturb them. Vladimir tensed to push it open.

‘Stop!’ she shouted. An alarm rang in Viktoriya’s head; some instinct or ghost of intuition screamed at her that something was wrong.

Startled, the two men stepped back. The bathroom door was always left ajar to ensure it was properly aired, so that damp did not build up. Her cleaner, an elderly woman, had told her in a motherly way not to close it. She always left the door and the outside bathroom window open a crack.

‘I may be overreacting, but that door is normally left open,’ she explained.

From the corridor there was no way they could see into the bathroom.

Vladimir opened the storage room door, pulled up the sash window and leaned out. It was a short distance, six feet, from the corner of the storage room window sill to that of the bathroom, a stretch and a bit. He looked down four floors to the street below; a wide shelf ran around the outside of the building, four or five feet directly below the window.

‘Are you sure you are up for this?’ said Viktoriya, genuinely concerned.

‘The alternative is to go through the door. No, this is a piece of cake.’ He didn’t sound so confident.

As he flattened himself against the wall, with his partner firmly gripping his left hand, Viktoriya watched Vladimir edge his way along the shelf, testing it gingerly with his foot as he went. He stopped when his hand made contact with the end of the bathroom sill.

‘Right,’ he said out loud to himself. He took a deep breath, let go of his friend’s hand and shuffled directly under the bathroom window. With his left hand firmly grabbing the sill, he forced the sash window up with his right and hauled himself through the gap.

‘I am in!’ he shouted, not without some considerable relief in his voice.

‘Can you see anything Vlad?’ Viktoriya asked.

Underneath the door she saw the beam of his torch moving back and forth and then the door open inward.

‘All-clear,’ he said brushing ice off the front of his jeans.

The electrician or the cleaner must have closed the bathroom door, she thought.

Going back into the living room, Viktoriya flopped down on the sofa.

‘I want the concierge gone by tomorrow.’

Neither of them commented.

It was then she noticed something she hadn’t picked up on before. The phone on the small coffee table by the sofa normally faced away from the sofa but now faced towards it. The cleaner might have moved it but she invariably replaced it where she found it. Viktoriya put one finger to her lips and caught the eyes of the two men. Inspecting the outer casing first, she gently unscrewed the mouthpiece. Inside was a tiny electronic listening device. She had seen something similar before at a friend of her father’s, who worked for the Peasants’ Union. Viktoriya pointed the device out to Vladimir and the other guard, and then carefully reassembled the receiver and replaced the handset back on the glass tabletop. She stepped back into the centre of the room away from the sofa.

‘I said I’d call in on Misha this evening. Let me get my coat.’

Viktoriya spoke to them again when they were all out in the corridor.

‘I want you to go over my apartment with a bug detector, every centimetre… but do not disturb anything… you never know, it might come in useful.’

MOSCOW

‘Come in, General Marov. Thank you for coming to see me so promptly.’

Yuri heard the door click shut behind him.

Colonel General Andrei Ghukov stood next to a wall map of Europe. A line traced the Iron Curtain dividing East from West and coloured pins the disposition of allied and enemy forces – red for Soviet, black for local and blue for NATO.

‘I’ve just met with the general secretary… I suppose you have been following the reports.’

‘Yes, sir,’ was all he said. What had started a month ago, with Hungary opening its borders with Austria and letting thousands of East Germans use it as an escape route to the West, had escalated into mass protest against the East German government. The general secretary’s recent visit had only increased tensions.

‘Honecker is a fool if he thinks he can keep a lid on this,’ Ghukov continued. ‘The general secretary has signalled change and all his government have done is stonewall. He is losing control. He’s been there too long.’

Eighteen years, thought Yuri. Honecker and the Communist East German government had seen three general secretaries come and go.

‘We are putting pressure on him to resign, as are his colleagues. I don’t think it will be long in coming. But the long and short of it is that the general secretary will not intervene. He has assurances from the Americans that they will not take advantage of the situation if we allow Eastern Europe to break free.’

‘You trust them, sir?’

‘I don’t think we have a choice, not if we want to avoid a lot of bloodshed.’

‘And General Volkov?’ asked Yuri. Volkov had enough hardware and manpower to steamroller Western Europe.

‘Volkov called and recommended I persuade the general secretary to intervene before it’s “ too late ”, to use his actual words.’

They were both silent for a minute.

‘And your view, sir?’ asked Yuri.

‘We shouldn’t intervene. I am with the general secretary for all the reasons we have discussed. It’s time we stepped back.

‘General, you are close to the district generals. How do you think they will react?’

Yuri shrugged. ‘I don’t know sir, they are hard to read… with the exception, of course, of generals Volkov and Vdovin… I can’t say there is much enthusiasm around the table for Soviet troop reductions.’

Yuri wondered whether the colonel general, having come so far, might backtrack. He and the general secretary were clearly under pressure.

Ghukov fell silent and contemplated the map as though the answer he was looking for might be there.

‘Where are you going to be for the next few days, General?’

‘Archangel, sir… a new weapons trial. I can reschedule if you’d rather I stayed in Moscow.’

‘No, General, you go. It would send the wrong signal not to.’

As Yuri’s staff car drove him back to his apartment building, Yuri reflected on the conversation he had just had with the chief of staff and earlier that morning with Terentev. His KGB friend had drawn a blank; there was no record of any meetings, which only deepened his suspicions. He knew from the lieutenant that that wasn’t the case, and he didn’t think she was lying.