Fenek Solère: Rising

‘Papers, please?’ A flat, outstretched hand commanded an instant response. When he saw the British passport, the Slav’s face split open. ‘James Bond, right?’

‘Yeah, 007!’

The young man slapped his shoulder with genuine warmth, then continued, stumbling over his words, ‘Null, null sem, your mission is over, God save the Queen!’ Tom laughed, pocketing his passport and moving away, anxious not to draw any further attention to himself. His flight was still hours away, so he took the escalator up to the first floor. There were a few newsstands and gift shops still operating along the mezzanine. A husband and wife bought a map of London marked with Cyrillic script. The couple were pointing out Big Ben and the London Eye to their kids. It was obvious they were the first of many refugees anticipating Armageddon, pretending to leave for a short vacation, but in reality planning never to return. He recognised the words ‘Madame Tussauds’ and went off to buy a coffee.

Tom took an empty table and sat alone, wondering if flights would be cancelled or if he would be stopped from boarding. He was not taking the calls or texts that Grigori was sending every 10 minutes. The coffee tasted like river silt. He drank it anyway, grains and all. It was something to do. People moved around him, talking, shouting, smoking cigarettes. There was an endless babble of excitement and confusion about the unfolding situation. The travellers’ eyes were drawn to the black electronic screens with rolling green lettering, telling them when they could board their flights. Helsinki, Oslo, and Milan came up early. A hijack in Kaliningrad meant the outbound to London was delayed. His anxiety began to mount. He sat staring down the clock, willing time to disappear. Eventually, they announced his flight, and he moved through passport control, first heading for a bar where three Mediterranean-looking girls were parked uncomfortably on stools before using a hand basin in the restroom to freshen his face. The obligatory duty free shop was not especially inspiring. He hovered for a little while over the perfumes and lingerie, wondering who to buy them for. There was no one left. No one at home.

Around 17.00, he stepped onto the escalator to the departure gate, queueing for the final security check, shuffling off his shoes, getting frisked once again. His fellow passengers were already passing through the sliding doors to the West. For a moment, the Englishman hesitated, still pondering his options. A stewardess asked for his boarding card. Her eyes flitted over the incomprehensible markings. A red nail pointed him in the direction of the airplane.

Once aboard, he threw his jacket into the overhead compartment, and the blue envelope handed to him by the hotel receptionist floated down into the aisle. Picking it up, he took his seat by the window. Engines cranked into operation and roared as they powered the plane along the runway, lifting the undercarriage. Then there was that sudden, gut-churning moment when they left the ground. The plane banked to the west, flying out over the Gulf of Finland. From his seat, Tom watched as a cold winter Sun burst through the misty sky, shooting dirty clouds with rocket fire. To the east, frozen rain crystals sparkled like wet diamonds showering down over the city’s fading skyline. He could just make out St Isaac’s golden dome and the smoking factory towers shrinking as they climbed.

The Professor removed his glasses, pinching the bridge of his nose. Swallowing hard, his fingers nervously handled the letter. He smelled it and recognised the delicate handwriting. It was dated for that day. Sliding the white sheet out, he read:

Below him, he could see the rugged land turn to frozen sea. Black cranes lurched drunkenly on the derelict docks, warehouses falling off the shore. A criss-cross of clear blue sword-slashes ran between endless plates of ice. Their pure, flat surfaces scraped by the wind, forming a stiff, white crust over the Baltic. Every now and then, a rusting red ship would cut a channel through the sheets en route to Denmark, Sweden, or Norway. He imagined some seasoned captain at their helm, steering cargo westwards, guided as much by his nose as the 1950s navigation equipment that bleeped on the oil-splattered screen in his cabin. There he stood, the pilot, riding the waves, pushing on through the gulf towards a point where the sea met the sky in a rapture of crushed turquoise.

Further out at sea, the sky became thick and overcast. Tom’s gaze followed the plane’s wingtip as it passed over one small island after another, until at last these isolated rock outcrops, stretching toward Scandinavia, were swallowed by the crash of hungry waves. The aircraft pierced the mocha meniscus of the cloud line. Engines accelerated at full throttle. With the jet’s roar throbbing in his ears, he twisted his neck one last time to see the lights of St Petersburg slowly disappear in a warm glow over the eastern horizon. Leaning back in his seat, he felt thankful to have been present at the birth of Russia’s new revolution. ‘And now to liberate the West’, he swore to himself.

Fenek Solère writes novels in the tradition of the New Right. Following his critically acclaimed debut novel The Partisan (2014), he has published articles at Counter-Currents/ North American New Right and the New European Conservative websites and has been interviewed at Radix.

Copyright © 2017 by Counter-Currents Publishing

All rights reserved

Cover design by Kevin Slaughter

Cover Image: Yevgeny Vuchetich, The Motherland Calls ,

Volgograd, Russia

Adapted from https://www.flickr.com/photos/jakuza/6111636957/

under Creative Commons License

Published in the United States by

COUNTER-CURRENTS PUBLISHING LTD.

P.O. Box 22638

San Francisco, CA 94122

USA

http://www.counter-currents.com/

Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-940933-29-0

Paperback ISBN: 978-1-940933-30-6

E-book ISBN: 978-1-940933-31-3

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Solère, Fenek, 1972-author.

Title: Rising / by Fenek Solère.

Description: San Francisco : Counter-Currents Publishing Ltd., [2016]

Identifiers: LCCN 2016008873 (print) | LCCN 2016020765 (ebook) | ISBN 9781940933290 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781940933306 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781940933313 (e-book) | ISBN 9781940933313 (E-book)

Subjects: LCSH: British--Russia (Federation)--Fiction. | Political fiction.

Classification: LCC PS3619.O43253 R57 2016 (print) | LCC PS3619.O43253 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016008873