Fenek Solère - Rising

‘I have an original copy of Vehki !’ Dimitry announced.

‘Ah’, said Grigori, ‘so much for Berdyaev’s words… a conservative man of letters today is almost a contradiction in terms…’

‘I hear the same comments from current American pundits’, said Tom.

‘Same dirty tactic to marginalise us’, Grigori said. ‘You know our security services told the FBI about the Boston bomber, Tamerlan Tsanaev.’ Tom recognised the words Chechen and terrorist as they punctured the rapid Russian dialogue like bullets with a displaced centre of gravity, the ones that spiral through human flesh, lodging in the most difficult places in the bones for a surgeon to get at. ‘We can’t even protect the children in our schools or the people going out to the theatre’, Grigori cursed. ‘I tell you, Beslan shamed us. The Shahidkas set off bombs in our train stations and on our trolley buses.’ Tom recalled hearing of the thirty or so dead in Volgograd and seeing the uncensored TV footage of the Russian officer crucified in the city square in Grozny years before. The brutal execution of Rodionov, a young conscript clinging to his silver cross, even as his killer, Khaikhoroyev, sawed at his throat with a rusty blade, still haunted his mind. ‘And all this in the name of the desert god, Mohammed. Our armies have not been destroyed in battle’, Grigori was preaching. ‘Both Napoleon and Hitler were stopped in Russia. Our retreat from East Germany was a terrible mistake. Between 1989 and 1991 we gave up an empire. Armenia, Belarus, Estonia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. At least our intervention in Crimea and South Ossetia arrested that decline!’

‘Back then our confidence was gone’, Dimitry moaned, ‘Remember Unit 20004? The officers stole the soldier’s wages. I blame the General Staff!’

‘No’, Sveta said. ‘It was Gorbachev’s mistake not to join the August Coup.’

‘Better they had seized Yeltsin and kept him in Zavidovo.’ Grigori sounded morose, even bitter.

‘Don’t talk to me of that hero’, someone breathed like hot steam. ‘What a fool, standing on top of that tank and shaking his fist. It is a pity one of those Alpha sharpshooters did not put him out of his misery.’

‘Like they did with Boris Nemtsov?’

‘California style!’

‘Put us all out of our misery’, they laughed, raising glasses in salute.

‘But at least it meant the end of a one-party state’, ventured Tom tentatively.

‘You think?’ Grigori’s drunken face betrayed his ill-temper. ‘Listen, English’, he said, ‘the government bombed our own people in Ryazan with hexogen to cause a backlash against the Chechens just to keep themselves in power. The Americans learned that trick from us. But as always, they had to do it in a bigger way. Look at the USS Liberty incident. That was a false flag attack! What do you think the Twin Towers were?

‘Well, I don’t know. Are you a 911 conspiracy theorist?’

‘Well, George Orwell is one of you, no?’

‘One of what?’

‘British writer!’

‘Yes, so?’

‘Think about Nineteen Eighty-Four. ’

‘What about it?’

‘Well, Osama bin Laden was Goldstein. You think Big Brother is just a stupid TV show on BBC?’

‘Well…’

‘No, you’ll see that it is true.’ He swilled yet more alcohol. ‘The one-party state is all over the world now. Globalism is paramount. That is why people like Dugin are hunted down. It is written in the Eurasian Mission Statement that “we Eurasianists defend on principle the necessity to preserve the existence of every people on earth, the blossoming variety of cultures and religious traditions, the unquestionable right of the peoples to independently choose their own path of historical development”. Is there a difference between the Democrats and Republicans in Washington? I cannot see any. Is there a real divide between Labour or Conservatives in Westminster? I think not.’

‘But The Sunday Times is not Pravda , yet!’

‘You say not. I say, yes!’ Grigori slapped his guest on the shoulder. ‘Alexander Temerko, a man who made billions out of the Yukos fraud, funds your Conservative Party. Fukuyama’s Open Society translates into whole populations coming under the control of those same people who run the world of finance and have a monopoly on the world’s media. We are all being assimilated into a One World Government.’

‘So Eurasianists think that by forming a Berlin, Moscow, and New Dehli axis they can counter the forces of Western Atlanticism?’

‘Leonid Savin said, “Russia is not part of Europe or Asia”… we will oppose Neo-Liberalism to our dying breath.’

‘I’m guessing you are not a big fan of Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History, then.’

‘Hell, no!’

‘Anyway, I think his influence over American foreign policy is long gone.’

‘Yes, now he talks of state-building.’ Grigori could barely hide his distaste. ‘Listen, my friend, who was Saddam Hussein’s biggest supporter in the war with Iran? Who invaded Iraq and why? What did your Tony Blair stand to gain? Who was pulling his strings? Same question now with Assad’s last stand in Aleppo and Damascus. We stood our ground alongside General Mohammad Ali Jafari’s Iranian Revolutionary Guard, who came to defend Sharyat and Tiyas against those IS fanatics. But who funds them and who pulls America’s strings?’ Fat fingers played the puppeteer with invisible puppets over the table.

‘I’m too drunk to debate’, Tom protested. Grigori poured him another.

‘Not drunk enough!’ he shouted. ‘We were in Afghanistan, remember. We saw this jihad at close quarters long before your people ever did.’

Around midnight, a black BMW came to collect him, its bumper rubbing tight-up to the blockwork, headlights blinking twice as a signal for Tom to leave. All along the Griboedova embankment, people were leaning, comatose, on the iron-work, languorously smoking cigarettes, bottles of Danish beer lined up one after another along the cold stone wall. In the Sakura, a passing waitress helped Tom to find his coat. Saying goodnight, he stepped outside, his breath forming a lattice scarf of French needle-point before him.

Walking around to the back of the car, Tom pulled on the door handle, reassured by the click of German engineering.

‘Would you like a tour of the city by night?’ asked the silver-haired driver as Professor Hunter sank into the deep leather seat.

‘Why not?’ He felt happy, succumbing to the eddy cocktail of alcohol and jet lag. His arms stretched out across the spacious cream interior, smelling of leather polish and jasmine air freshener. Suddenly, the car jumped the kerb. There was a cat’s squeal of burning rubber as the vehicle spun along a tight spiral arc. Tom caught a glimpse of the driver smiling mischievously in the rear-view mirror.

‘I will show you a good time’, he promised. There was a curl to his lip like a wild dog let off the leash. Pedestrians scattered to left and right in the rogue’s headlights. Tom gripped the door handle as the car shot along the waterside, weaving between oncoming traffic, out past the mosaic domes of the old Cathedral and the Mikhaylovskiy Gardens. They rushed across narrow bridges, under the outstretched metal arms of 1930s street lighting. They emerged onto a stretch of road between the old city and the brooding Neva.

‘This is a good place to walk in daytime.’ Tom noted the ominous emphasis on daytime. To his right he could see the city spread-eagled across the smoky blue horizon. His tired eyes drifted over the bridges to the shimmering windows running along Kamennoostrovsky Prospekt.