Fenek Solère: Rising

‘We come here a lot’, Ekaterina was saying as a friend rolled what appeared to be a concoction of Russian and Lebanese blends, wrapped loosely in flapping cigarette papers. ‘It all started with Borovikov’s death in 2006, but now we know we have to do more than just protest.’ Some students stood, hands on hips, singing forlornly at the Moon, thin bodies weaving shadows in the firelight, hypnotic voices trailing off into frosty starlight. Tom recognised the chords of Ian Stuart’s ‘Gone with the Breeze’ and the familiar lyric being pronounced with a Russian accent.

Tom was surprised to see Vladimir, Ekaterina’s would-be suitor, mount the wall, blonde quiff waving in the wind. His slender figure wrapped in a black leather jacket, he cut a dashing figure in the moonshine. ‘Comrades’, he bawled over an ocean of pale faces. ‘I say it is time to serve justice on the mobsters that have robbed us every day of our lives, our parents’ lives, and our grandparents’ lives! They controlled our money, invited invaders to take our women, and they spat on our dignity. I say the counter-revolution has begun. It is time to take back what is ours and hang the bastards by the neck. Rossiiya! Rossiiya! Rossiiya! ’

‘Vlad is one who yearns for martyrdom’, Ekaterina confirmed. ‘The example of Luc and Sabine will be strong with him forever.’ Then, after standing in a minute’s silent tribute as the scissor breeze rolled in off the Neva, army trucks pulled up and began handing out weapons to the young revolutionaries.

Tom watched his partner take a matte-black OTs-33 as they stood under the crisping tree branches, her hair silvering with hoarfrost, snowflakes settling on the dome of the Church on the Spilled Blood, looming broodily over the Moika. Tom squeezed her empty hand, but Ekaterina’s eyes were fixed on the machine pistol and its 27-round magazine, red lips folded in defiance.

‘Katja?’

She turned to him, the glow of the eternal flame preserved in her retina.

‘Another time of troubles’, she said, leading him towards the embankment where stone melted away into the icy water. Cars were moving at top speed, ignoring the falling sleet, heading in the direction of the Hermitage, towards the bridges over to the islands.

Tom felt he was wading through shallow water, giddy roofscapes distorted by winter light, merging apartments and government buildings. ‘Do you know’, she said, ‘200,000 White émigrés left Russia during the Revolution? Many of our greatest philosophers, historians, and professors were exiled from here, forced aboard a German ship called the Oberbürgermeister Haken at the Naberezhnaya Leitenanta Shmidta.’

‘Not killed?’

‘Lenin didn’t kill everyone’, she grinned. ‘Stalin, on the other hand!’

‘Where did they go?’

‘Berlin, Prague, Paris… all the usual places.’

• The Karaganov Doctrine of protecting Russian ethnic populations wherever they may be is enacted;

• Despite objections from the UN, Russia restarts its humanitarian aid for those refugees living in Donbass;

• Alexander Dugin returns from exile;

• Naval patrols on the Volga bombard Muslim settlements;

• Russia moves 50,000 troops and fighter aircraft to Sumy, close to the Ukrainian border;

• Spetsnaz operatives fight hand-to-hand with Mujahideen forces and Pakistani special services in Ust-Labinsk;

• Russia withdraws its nuclear and strategic capability to within its newly defined ethno-state borders, defended along the line of the Pechora and Ural rivers in the north and east and the Volga in the west.

After making love, they fell asleep in each other’s arms. An hour or so after midnight, Tom woke to find her missing. He wrapped himself in a towel and went into the lounge. Ekaterina was turned towards the window, her head in her hands.

‘I sent them there’, she was saying. ‘I am responsible.’ Tom stared at her long, straight back, salt tears running through the cracks in her fingers. She waited a few minutes before turning to look at him. ‘And my grandfather, too?’ A question mark hung like a huge wire coat hanger off her lower lip.

‘That was not you. They did that to get at me.’

‘Then it is both of us!’

‘Yes’, he had to admit. ‘It is both of us.’

‘You know’, she said, ‘in 1945, a famous Russian poet fell in love with a professor from Oxford University who visited her one cold November night, and stayed talking with her until the dawn.’ Tom hunched his shoulders. ‘She called him her “Guest from the future”…’

‘Were they happy together?’

‘No, he returned to his dreaming spires, and the Soviets withdrew the writer’s state privileges and banned her poetry.’

There was a long silence as they both looked at the loaded gun on the table. ‘And just like him, you will leave?’ she said, almost accusingly. He felt intimidated. ‘It is said the poet used to stand by the window, waiting for him to return.’

Tom was in front of a firing squad. He moved forward, sweeping her up in his arms, holding her so close that his lonely heart could feel hers beat against his chest.

‘I won’t let you down’, he promised, knowing that he would.

‘Kiss me, you bastard!’ she whispered with that deep, throaty English, barely passing for European, but offering salvation for the West.

Peter Janssen was exasperated by news of the loss of the Vulcari cell. Tossing his trilby on to the bed, he cursed Yuri and Alexei, but having met Ekaterina in the doorway to his apartment block earlier, he fully realised how events had played out. Janssen had already spoken to Alyosha and Grigori, and decided on a course of action. There was no turning back. He moved over to the wardrobe and pulled out a tan leather briefcase, easing the well-oiled zip the full length of the binding so as to lift the lid. Inside was a Tec-9 ‘spray and pay’ machine pistol. Janssen assembled the weapon, twisting on the long graphite sound suppressor with a scratchy, metallic grimace.

Outside, there was a hint of moonglow across the frosted rooftops looking out over the river. Some cloud cover offered the potential for surprise, mostly by smothering the stars to the north with polluted petroleum fumes. Janssen advanced thoughtfully, combing the Nevsky for a taxi ride, wild cats rummaging through garbage, stopping for a moment to scan him with feline eyes that gleamed in car headlights before fading as the motor moved on. It was cold, too cold for love, but just right for killing.

Two Bloc heavies wearing woollen hats pulled down to their eyebrows hovered in the foyer at Ulitsa Egorova. One sat back on a chair, hands in pockets, legs stretched out, ankles crossed, causing his boots to form a V pattern on the uneven tiles. The other was leaning against the wall, slitted eyes flitting all over the hallway. The man in the chair shifted position as a European in a triby and long, black coat entered from off the road, jerking his head lazily at his Tartar companion, who managed an incoherent grunt before pushing himself away from the wall.

‘Can I help you?’ he asked in monosyllabic Russian to a man who spoke no Russian beyond, ‘ Da Tovarich, och-en pree-yat-na? ’ The muzzle flash from Janssen’s gun punctured the guard’s forehead like a hammer on a nail. The guy on the chair tried to wrestle an MP-446 pistol out of the folds of his jacket. The executioner stepped forward, kicking his jaw and sending him flying backwards, chair sliding, the man toppling, Janssen finishing him with one bullet square to the back of his head.

Stepping around jetting blood, Peter pushed the button in front of him. The lift rose slowly to the floor where Janssen knew Arkady and Bogdan to be hiding. The ping of the elevator’s arrival echoed in the corridor. As the doors slid open, Janssen stepped out just in time to meet a Bloc member coming to check who was there. The Antifa man’s face fell open as the first bullet took off his testicles and the second burst his Adam’s apple like a failed William Tell re-enactment.