Tarankov was trying to bring it all back again, and a lot of people were listening to him. Russians were tired of being second class citizens, they wanted super power status returned to them. They were tired of being hungry, they wanted to be fed. And they were tired of an aimless existence that seemed to be going nowhere, they wanted to be led. Socialism didn’t work, but Russians hadn’t learned yet how to make a go of democracy. They were tired of trying.
After the meeting in the White House, Yemlin had returned to his office at SVR headquarters on the Ring Road and written his report. He was careful to draw no conclusions or make any substantive recommendations. But in his heart of hearts he agreed with General Yuryn: Trying to arrest Tarankov would likely end in a blood bath in which dozens, perhaps hundreds of innocent people would get killed. And placing Tarankov on public trial would tear Russia apart. It would be just like the Red Army versus the White Army after the October Revolution. The nation would sink into a civil war that this time would drag on forever, and that no one could possibly win.
But if Tarankov were allowed to continue “on his course he would probably win the next election in June three months from now. Either that or he would take the Kremlin by force.
Yemlin thought about that possibility. The raid on the power station in Dzerzhinskiy was within a half-dozen kilometers of the Kremlin. The bold attack had shaken the government to its core. Yeltsin’s assassination twenty- four hours later had come as a worse shock. Perhaps they were witnessing the start of Tarankov’s end game, as Yuryn suggested. If that were the case his next move would be even bolder, more daring, and certainly more destructive. Yemlin could think of a number of plausible scenarios in which Tarankov could simply swoop into Red Square, arrest or assassinate the moderates who opposed him in the Kremlin, and de facto take over the government. A Red Square filled with a million Tarankov supporters — Yemlin believed he had that many in Moscow alone — would block a military retaliation.
Yemlin also suspected that Prime Minister Kabatov’s worst fears were true; that Tarankov’s base of support went far beyond a bunch of starving kulaks who wanted to go back to the old ways. It involved more than just a handful of old hard liners in the government and the military and the old KGB, it cut across the board into every segment of the nation’s population. He’d even heard noises from the Baltics, and from Ukraine and some of the other breakaway republics, that after all what Tarankov was trying to do was give the nation back its dignity.
He went to the sideboard, poured another vodka and took his drink back to the window where he lit a cigarette.
Yeltsin’s chief of staff Zhigalin’s suggestion that the Army and Air Force hunt down Tarankov’s train and destroy it would not work either. The people would certainly rise up against the government, and what little remained of Russia’s shaky democracy would disintegrate into anarchy. That’s if the military would undertake such an operation without tearing itself apart first. There certainly would be desertions, and possibly an outright revolution amongst the troops, and much of the officer’s corps. It might even happen that the army would move against the Kremlin, and when the government was secured invite Tarankov to take over.
Which once again brought him back to the conclusions he’d drawn several months ago. Tarankov had to be assassinated, but no one in Russia could be trusted to do it. The job would have to be done by an outsider. By someone who in the end could be blamed for the killing, because even if a Russian could be found to kill Tarankov, the people would believe the government had ordered it, and the revolution would explode.
If an outsider did it the killing could be laid on the doorstep of a foreign country, or at the very least it could be portrayed as the act of a lone gunman. A nut. Another Lee Harvey Oswald, who the Warren Commission determined had worked alone, not as a conspirator hired by the Soviet Union.
He’d shied away from that concept as well as he could through the summer and fall. But each time news of Tarankov’s exploits came to him, he was drawn back to the inevitability of the idea.
In October he’d cautiously broached the subject with his old friend Konstantin Sukhoruchkin, the director of the Russian Human Rights Commission that Gorbachev had founded after the Kremlin Coup. Sukhoruchkin had agreed wholeheartedly without a trace of hesitation. Like Yemlin, though, his only reservation was that the assassin would only get one chance so he would have to be very good. He’d also suggested that between them they attempt to build a power base of support for die idea among the people who had the most to lose by a Tarankov dictatorship.
By the first of the year it became painfully clear to both men that task they’d set themselves to was not only dangerous — they had no idea who to trust or learn who they were — but it was foolish. No one in Russia could be trusted with such a secret. So Yemlin did the next best thing by contacting his old mentor Eduard Shevardnadze, president of Georgia, who would have as much to lose under Tarankov as they would.
Shevardnadze had agreed only to discuss the issue, and only when Yemlin felt that there were no other options left to them, and that time was running out.
Yemlin put out his cigarette, finished his drink and rinsed the glass in the kitchen sink. He pulled on his greatcoat and went down to a pay phone in the metro station a block away. He never used his home telephone for important calls, nor did he bother having it swept. All the old checks and balances were in place in the SVR, which meant all but the most senior officers were spot checked from time to time. The easiest and most cost effective way to do that was by monitoring telephone calls and opening mail. But Yemlin had been around for a long time, and he had a few tricks up his own sleeve.
Sukhoruchkin answered the telephone at his home on the second ring. “Da?”
“Meet me at the airport.”
“Now?”
“Yes,” Yemlin said. “It’s time.”
Yemlin called his contact at Vnukovo domestic airport. “We would like to go flying this evening, Valeri.”
“It’s a lovely night for it,” his pilot replied. “The tops are low, so once we get above all this shit you’ll be able to see the full moon.”
“We’ll be returning in the morning.”
“As you wish.”
Yemlin’s final call was to a special number in the SVR’s communications complex. After one ring he got a dial tone for an international line that could not, by design, be monitored. In two minutes he was connected with the residential quarters of the president of Georgia.
“This is Viktor Pavlovich.”
“I expected you would call this evening,” Eduard Shevardnadze said.
“Konstantin and I would like to see you tonight. Will you be free?”
“Are you calling from Moscow?”
“Da. But we can get down there by midnight unofficially if you will have a car and driver to meet us.”
“What’s the tail number of your airplane?”
Yemlin told him.
“Take care, my old friend. Once a word is out of your mouth you can’t swallow it again.”
It was an old Russian proverb which Yemlin understood well. He hung up and headed for a cab stand.
The aging Learjet, which Yemlin occasionally leased from a private enterprise he’d set up ten years ago for a KGB-sponsored project, touched down at Tbilisi’s international airport a few minutes before midnight.” As promised the 1500-kilometer flight above the clouds had been smooth, the full moon dramatically illuminating the thick clouds below them until they broke out in the clear at the rising wall of the Caucasus Mountains.
They were directed along a taxiway to the opposite side of the airport from the main terminal, where they were met by a Zil limousine and driver, who took them directly into the bustling city of more than a million people.
Although Tbilisi was on a high plain in the mountains it was much warmer than Moscow. And it seemed more prosperous than the Russian capital, with cleaner, brighter streets and shops, though closed at this hour, displaying a wide variety of consumer goods. Georgia was not without its problems, but they were being ad dressed and slowly solved under Shevardnadze’s capable leadership. All that would change for the worse, Yemlin thought, if Tarankov was successful.
They were brought to the rear courtyard of the presidential palace off Rustavelli Boulevard and were immediately escorted inside to a small private study on the second floor. Heavy drapes covered the windows, and a fire burned on the grate. The book-lined room seemed like a pleasant refuge.
Shevardnadze joined them a few moments later. He wore a warmup suit, and carried a book, his glasses
