“Look, my plane leaves in an hour.”
“I think you should cancel it. There will be other New Year’s Eves.”
“What are you talking about, American?”
“Have you seen the morning papers?”
“Some. Why?”
“The latest opinion ratings. The ones taking account of the press revelations about the UPF and Komarov’s press conference the other day. They show him at forty percent and dropping.”
“So, he loses the election. We get Zyuganov, the neo-Communist instead. What am I supposed to do about it?”
“Do you think Komarov will accept that? I told you once, he’s not sane.”
“He’s going to have to accept it. If he loses in a fortnight, he’s lost. That’s it.”
“That same night, you told me something.”
“What?”
“You said, if the Russian state is attacked, the state will defend itself.”
“What the hell do you know that I don’t?”
“I don’t know anything. I suspect. Didn’t you know suspicion is the Russian specialty?”
Petrovsky stared at the receiver and then at his half-packed suitcase lying on the narrow bunk of the barracks room.
“He wouldn’t dare,” he said flatly. “No one would dare.”
“Yazov and Kryuchkov did.”
“That was 1991. Different.”
“Only because they made a mess of it. Why not stay in town over the holiday? Just in case.”
Major General Petrovsky put down the phone and began to unpack.
¯
GRISHIN clinched his last alliance at a meeting in a beer bar on December 30. His interlocutor was a beer-bellied cretin but the nearest thing to the commander of the street gangs of the New Russia Movement.
Despite its portentous name, the NRM was little more than a loose grouping of tattooed, shaven-headed thugs of the ultra-right who got their income and pleasure respectively by mugging and Jew-baiting, both, as they were wont to scream at passersby, in the name of Russia.
The block of dollars Grishin had produced lay on the table between them, and the NRM man eyed it eagerly.
“I can get five hundred good lads any time I want,” he said. “What’s the job?”
“I’ll give you five of my own Black Guards. You accept their combat orders or the deal’s off.”
Combat orders sounded good. Sort of military. The embers of the NRM prided themselves on being soldiers of the New Russia, though they had never amalgamated with the UPF. The discipline was not to their liking.
“What’s the target?”
“New Year’s Eve, between ten and midnight. Storm, take, and hold the mayor’s office. And there’s a rule. No booze till dawn.”
The NRM commander thought it over. Dense he may have been, but he could work out the UPF was going for the big one. About time too. He leaned across the table, his hand closing on the brick of dollars.