“Because if it is, then you are a naive man.”
“I’m an old man who has given his life in service to his country. I would like peace now.”
“Thank you for your report,” Korzhakov said abruptly. “We’ll expect to be updated should anything significant occur.”
“Very well,” Yemlin said. He rose and went to the door.
“Viktor Pavlovich,” President Kabatov said. “We are not the enemy. Nor do we believe you are. But you have an enemy in General Yuryn. A powerful enemy. Take care of yourself.”
“Thank you, Mr. President. I will.”
Yemlin paused at the head of the broad granite stairs in front of the Senate Building, letting the sharp wind and harsh snow beating against his body clear his head. He was so mentally and physically tired that he felt detached, as if his skin didn’t fit, and his feet weren’t his own.
Russians loved intrigue. It was in the national spirit, as chess and poetry were, and he was just as guilty as the rest of them for deriving pleasure from playing the game. But in this instance they weren’t talking about a mere intelligence coup. This time the future of Russia was at stake, and for one frightening moment he wished that he could recall McGarvey, or more accurately he wished that he could justify such a move to himself. But he could not.
Someone touched his elbow and he looked up, startled, into the sharply defined features of Moscow Mayor Vadim Cheremukhin.
“Viktor Pavlovich, you look like a man who could use some cheering up,” Cheremukhin said. His face was flushed and even in the wind Yemlin could smell vodka on the man’s breath.
“A good night’s sleep.” “Time enough for that for both’ of us soon, hey?” Cheremukhin said. He was of the old school like Yemlin, but less of a moderate, although behind Kabatov he was among the most important men in Russia today. “Come on, we’ll dismiss your driver and take my car over to the club. What you need is a steam bath, a rubdown, some good champagne and caviar, and then maybe a girl. You can sleep afterward.”
Cheremukhin’s private club, the Magesterium, had been constructed for his predecessor Yuri Luzhkov who’d complained that he had no place to go after hours. The Mafia had built it, along with a lot of other clubs throughout the country, for the new elite after the Soviet Union had disintegrated. Gangsters, movie stars, businessmen and politicians all had their own private sanctuaries that stressed physical security along with booze, women, casinos, and rat-races through neon-lit mazes. Anything went at the clubs; from drugs to little boys and from S&M to any other kind of kinky sex imaginable, and some that wasn’t imaginable. The Magesterium provided all of that, plus good food, quiet rooms, subservient service, mostly from black African students recruited from Patrice Lumumba University, an excellent library and oak-lined conference rooms, reading nooks, a movie theater and a computer learning center.
“I think not,” Yemlin protested. He’d been to some of the clubs, the Magesterium included. He found them to be too frantic for his own tastes. A symbol of some of what was wrong with Russia.
“Nonsense,” Cheremukhin said. He waved Yemlin’s driver off, and his Zil limousine slid in behind it. He took Yemlin by the arm and guided him down the stairs and into the back seat for the short ride over to the club.
Yemlin was too weary to fight him. A glass of champagne, a steam bath and a rubdown would be nice. Afterward he would make his own way home. He knew a number of men who’d succumbed to the club scene, their lives centered around their evenings like a drug addict’s around his needle. He wasn’t one of them.
“The center holds,” Cheremukhin said, as they passed through Spassky gate into red square, and turned right down toward the river past St. Basil’s.
Yemlin wasn’t sure he’d heard Cheremukhin correctly, and was about to ask what he said, when out of the corner of his eye he spotted a familiar figure, and his blood froze. It was McGarvey crossing Red Square. He fought the overwhelming urge to turn around and look back, or let slip an outward sign that he’d just been shaken to the core. McGarvey here in Moscow. Already. It didn’t seem possible.
“It’s guys like you who’ve keeping everything together,” Cheremukhin said. “Kabatov doesn’t have a clue, and Korzhakov is almost as bad a prospect as Tar ankov. But at least we’ve gotten rid of Yeltsin.”
Yemlin focused on the Mayor. “What do you mean?”
“Haven’t you heard?”
Yemlin shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I thought that’s why you were in the Kremlin. Didn’t Kabatov send for you to ask your opinion? He’s worried about the Americans, he doesn’t know how they’re going ta take it.”
“Take what?”
“Kabatov has been appointed chairman of the Communist Party. The center holds. He doesn’t know what he’s doing, but this time I think he’s stumbled onto something. If we take over the Communist Party, Tar ankov will have nowhere to go. It’s what the Americans call an end run.”
Yemlin’s head was spinning. If McGarvey killed Tar ankov the problem wouldn’t be so acute. In the confusion and panic that would follow no one would take notice of Kabatov’s stupid move. But he did not have the luxury of that assurance, nor could he let on even if he did. “Kabatov is a fool,” he stammered.
“Agreed, but he can be controlled.”
“By whom?” Yemlin responded angrily. “Tarankov will use it as further proof that democracy has failed. It might even force him to make his move sooner than the June elections.”
Cheremukhin eyed Yemlin critically. “I see what you mean, but I don’t agree with you. The Party is” winning elections again because it’s what the people want. But it’s not the old Party.”
“Kabatov is now President and Prime Minister of Russia as well as Party Chairman. Tarankov only has to topple one man to control everything. We’ve done his ground work for him. I’m sure he’s quite pleased.”
“He’ll be arrested.”
“Don’t be a fool,” Yemlin shot back before he could stop himself.
Cheremukhin’s eyebrow rose. “Do you know something that we don’t, Viktor Pavlovich?”
“No,” Yemlin said. “But trying to arrest the Tarantula cost Yeltsin his life, and I don’t think that Kabatov fully understands what he’s up against.”
“Some of us do, believe me,” Cheremukhin said darkly.
“I hope so,” Yemlin replied, distantly.
It was before noon, and the snowstorm had intensified, snarling traffic in the ordinary lanes. Cheremukhin’s limousine sped across the river on the Great Stone Bridge in front of the Rossiya Hotel, the official lane empty in both directions. Yemlin had to fight the urge to turn and look over his shoulder at Red Square which in any event had already disappeared. It had begun. McGarvey was in the field. In the heart of Moscow staking out his killing field. Yemlin had & fair idea what McGarvey might be planning. But if Tarankov managed to get this far they might have already lost.
“We would like your help with this,” Cheremukhin said. “You know a lot of people. I’m sure that you even know some of Tarankov’s supporters in the SVR and FSK. There has to be a way.”
“I’ll do what I can.”
“If you prefer not to work with Kabatov I’ll do whatever I can to help. I have connections too. Just say the word and I’ll pull strings.”
“For now you can keep an eye on Korzhakov. I want to be informed when they plan on making their move against Tarankov.”
“It won’t be in Nizhny Novgorod, I can tell you that much,” Cheremukhin said. “But I’ll see what I can come up with. Kabatov trusts me.”
The limousine pulled through the gates onto the private grounds of what once was a sewing machine factory. The parking lot was half-filled with Zils and Mercedes SELs. Guards dressed in American Marine, combat fatigues and armed with M16 assault rifles were everywhere. The driver pulled up to the front doors, and they were escorted inside to a large reception area that looked like the lobby of a luxury resort hotel. Cheremukhin handed him over to a beautiful young black woman wearing a skimpy bikini beneath a transparent gauze jacket.
“Renee, I would like you to meet my friend Viktor. He is to be given anything he wants, and you’ll put it on my tab,” Cheremukhin said.
The young woman lit up in a smile as ‘she took Yemlin’s arm. She smelled of cinnamon and some other spice, her accent very charming. “My pleasure to meet you, Viktor.”
“Start with some champagne, a bath, then a rubdown,” Cheremukhin grinned. “After that, who knows? But
