Peter Pišťanek - The End of Freddy

“About this tall,” Urban gestures. “In a leather pilot’s cap.”

“A leather pilot’s cap?” the other man shouts. “That was Konstantin Trifonovich. A geologist, a doctor of science! Yes, the geologists were here with their samples. We’re taking them now to St Petersburg with the mail. Oh, so you were conned by Konstantin Trifonovich?”

The men stop loading the mailbags. They laugh so hard that they bend double. When Stalin’s grandson notices Urban not laughing with them, he is abashed and becomes serious.

“Konstantin Trifonovich is a member of the Academy of Sciences,” he says. “He’s a famous scientist. At least in the airport bar.”

They both break out laughing again.

“His only problem is that he’s a boozer,” says Stalin’s grandson. “But he’s got his wits about him, the son of a bitch! He’s always conning someone. He said he was a pilot!”

Despite their fits of laughter, Urban remains grave. He has nothing to laugh about.

“And where can I find him now?” he asks formally.

“Try to find the wind in the tundra!” says the second man. “They all left at five in the morning in a launch.”

“Look,” says Stalin’s grandson. “My plane can’t make it to Junja. You need a bigger machine for that. A plane like a Lisunov, a Yak, or a Douglas. With extra fuel tanks to make it across the ocean. This is not a one-hour flight, mate. And no one will take you there for seven hundred bucks. If you need to get to Junja, you pay for it. No ordinary tourist goes to Junja now. But look, I know all the pilots this side of the Kola peninsula. I can find you one who might be willing to take you to Junja. Where are you staying?”

“Hotel Zarya,” says Urban.

“Right, I’ll leave you a note to tell you who to look for,” says Stalin’s grandson. “But it’s your baby afterwards.”

“And what do you want for it?” Urban asks distrustfully.

“Nothing,” says Stalin’s grandson. “I’ll get my percentage from what you pay the pilot. Don’t you worry about me, matie. And I hope you find what you’re looking for in Junja.”

Stalin’s grandson raises his eyebrows meaningfully, gets into the cabin and starts the engine. From the exhaust comes thick smoke, the propeller begins to turn. A second man bangs the cargo door shut and sits next to the pilot. The aircraft begins to move, rolls out onto the runway and is soon a mere dot in a clear sky.

* * *

Telgarth gets straight down to his meticulous macro-political and community work. He is grateful to the guerrillas for making him supreme commander of Űŕģüllpoļ—New Bystrica, because New Bystrica is only his first aim, the first conquered fortress. It is a microcosm, a laboratory crucible in which he can try everything out in miniature before doing the same for the whole country. Yes, Telgarth sees himself as the whole archipelago’s future leader. So far he’s made no mistakes in pursuing this aim; anyway, the local Slovaks have no one else like him.

All ethnic Junjans have to wear a white ribbon on their arms and to work all day clearing the ruins. They live together in the city market hall. Their flats have been requisitioned and given to Slovak families who were previously forced to live in shanty towns.

After the conquest of the city, Czech submarines anchor right in the city harbour to unload their cargo. Likewise, Czech transport planes begin to land at New Bystrica airport. Besides crates of humanitarian aid, the Czech aeroplanes also bring journalists, military instructors and observers. Telgarth has polite relations with them, but he is not overly friendly. For the time being he keeps to himself his negative attitude to the Czech plan to restore Czechoslovakia. The railways are in Slovak hands. Part of the humanitarian aid stays in New Bystrica; the rest goes by rail up north, where savage fighting is raging. Young Slovak commanders then fly in Czech planes back to Bohemia to take an intensive commander course; others take a course in sabotage and explosives. That, too, is a part of Czech humanitarian aid. Telgarth now limits it after seeing young commanders returning from Bohemia full of harmful Czechoslovak ideas.

Telgarth is seriously ambitious for power. Each day he devotes half an hour of his time to journalists from all over the world. Improvised press conferences are held in his office. He feeds journalists fresh news from the battlefield. If he has none, he makes it up. He answers their questions, even what the journalists consider unpleasant ones — on human rights, treatment of prisoners, and discrimination against ethnic Junjans. Telgarth responds with a smile, but radically. It’s a question not of cosmetic changes, but of a huge national movement. Slovaks will get their rights and there’s no power on earth to stop them. The Russians? They have nothing to eat. NATO? They have their own problems. UN? They’re happy if they can take a piss without too much pain. And so on.

Work on outlining the shape of the future Slovak state consumes Telgarth so much that he sleeps at most four hours a day. He sleeps in his office on a stark military bed. He eats modestly; every day he opens a tin of Czech humanitarian aid. His only hobby is hunting in the tundra outside the city limits.

Nests of Junjan resistance in New Bystrica are successfully suppressed. Soon the time seems near when no one will have to be coiled up.

One day, as Telgarth together with three armed men in a Pobeda car are on their way back to the city from a hunting trip, he is stopped in the suburbs of New Bystrica by a unit of armed men. It’s immediately obvious that they are Junjan mercenaries. Telgarth’s driver tries to reverse quickly and get clear, but a well-aimed bullet kills him. Telgarth and his two guerrillas run out of the car. Both guerrillas are shot down by bursts of submachine fire. It seems to be a well-laid trap. The mercenaries know only too well who has fallen into their hands.

Telgarth is swooning. Horror makes his forehead break out in cold sweat. For a fragment of a second he wishes this were a dream: he wants to wake up in his cosy office at the main railway station. Alas, this is no dream. There is no point thinking. Telgarth pulls out his pistol, but before he can turn it on himself and pull the trigger, the armed men throw themselves at him, handcuff him and knock him out with a well-aimed blow to the back of his head.

When he comes to, he is lying, trussed like a rolled ham, in someone’s flat.

“He’s awake!” an armed man guarding him shouts in Russian to the others in the flat.

Soon two mercenaries show up. The older one, probably a commander, is smiling.

“Well, well,” he says in Russian. “So we’ve got you, One-eye. You know we’ve been waiting for you for days, planning for it. You didn’t expect that, right? The great Telgarth himself, the commander of Űŕģüllpoļ: and now you’re nothing. You’re a piece of shit. And now we’ll give you a taste of what you give our people. We’ll tie you into a coil, too, and see how you like it.”

Telgarth turns pale. They can’t be serious.

“Release me right away!” he says in broken schoolboy Russian. “I promise that none of you will be hurt. I’ll say nothing to anyone.”

The mercenaries laugh.

“If you don’t let me go, I’ll be freed by my own men soon,” says Telgarth. “And then you’ll be harshly punished. Just consider the situation. You’re almost defeated. There are more of us. Be sensible. We can always do a deal.”

“So now you want to do a deal?” snaps the mercenary commander. “And why wouldn’t you do a deal with our friends when you coiled them up and used them to perfect your shooting skills? Now you’re in trouble, you want to do a deal. You’re doing no deals with us. We want nothing from you. We only want you to croak, but as slowly as possible.”