Moscow Machination (5 page)

Kremlin, Moscow

By the
time President Petrova retired to bed, it was close to midnight. Under her
leadership Russia had entered unchartered territories, especially dwindling friends
and mounting sanctions. Publicly she had repeated what every Great Russian
leader before her had said, “Russia is vast – Russia has lots of natural
resources – We are just short of a couple of reforms from taking on the West – And
who needs the West anyways.”

Russians over
of 35 neither agreed nor cared. The young on the other hand… well they were
young.

Anna
Petrova wondered what the hell was wrong with her great nation. Russia had more
oil and gas than the Gulf States combined. Yet OPEC the tail wagged the Russian
Husky. Coal, iron, diamonds, fish, timber - there was almost nothing Russia had
less than any other nation.

So why did
Russia suffer? What the heck was wrong with her country? Some blamed it on pop-history.
They accused the Bolsheviks and their purging of intelligentsia. But that was
almost a century ago.

So why did
Russia suck? Some blamed it on geography. The lack of warm accessible ports and
the dependence on Sevastopol which incidentally had also brought about the Crimean
crisis.

Some said
Russia was just too cold. Too much ice, too much snow, blah blah the permafrost,
blah, blah… the harsh winters. But without the cold, Russia wouldn’t have stood
a chance against genocidal losers like the French midget and that German eunuch.

Some blamed
it on Vodka. Heavy drinking among the young. Even more so with the old. This
wasn’t even factually true. The scheming Poles and Finns, lead them by almost a
gallon per capita.

Some said
Russia was too old. Not enough births. Faced a demographic Anti-Armageddon. Yet,
so did Germany, Italy and Japan. Latest data even suggested an uptick in
Russian births. And unlike the west, Russia had done it the old fashioned way -
by giving a fuck where it mattered.

Some
blamed it on how thinly the Russian population was spread and how it took a
week to travel or ship between Siberian cities and how Russia was bleeding by
supporting unsustainable settlements in the Far East.

Petrova begged
to differ. Ninety percent of Russian settlements and cities were bang on the
Trans-Siberian
Railway
. Which essentially made Russia into a very, very long country… not
unlike Chile, a libertarian darling bent over by Pinocchio. Or perhaps, more
like Canada, whose populations, ever afraid of grizzlies had never ventured 10
miles beyond the 49
^th
parallel. The Canadian fear of the grizzlies
was so epic, that a few years ago they had rounded up a bunch of grizzlies and
shipped them down to Memphis.

Some
blamed it on communist infrastructure. While the
Trans-Siberian
had been
about sustenance, the
Baikal-Amur Magistrale
over the Tundra, had been all
about foresight and growth and trade.

Yet,
something had gone wrong.

After the
fall of the Union, some Western analysts and ‘think tanks’ had even suggested
to split up Russia into three or four ‘manageable chunks’. Obviously Muscovy
would become a basecamp of sorts, to ravage the wild east, while the rest of
Russia disintegrated to become the apocalyptic New Africa.

But despite
the self-denials and an army of Soviet apologists, something had gone wrong.
Something had terribly, terribly gone wrong with Russia. Anna Petrova tossed
and turned in her bed.

At half
past one, the President heard a muffled noise… a grating. She sprang up and sat
on the massive Catherine the Great’s bed. She wasn’t sure if she had imagined the
noise.

Eleven
seconds later she heard the noise again. But the grating didn’t come from the main
door. It seemed to come from the fireplace. The Federal Protective Service,
tasked with her security had assured her that the fireplace was decorative. The
chimney had been sealed and the fireplace hadn’t been used since the days of Khrushchev.

Anna
Petrova, the first ever female President of Russia contemplated the situation nervously.
She didn’t want to alert her guards just yet. Being a member of the female form,
the guards had assumed her to be soft and often treated her with kid gloves.
For some reason they were also under the impression that she was afraid of the
dark. Sure, she had had a couple of nightmares involving Iron Felix and Yezhov,
but who could blame her… some real dark shit had gone down in the Kremlin’s
five hundred year existence.

Plus a
good majority of the Kremlin’s previous tenants hadn’t vacated by choice. Even
when they did, they had ended up on the Kremlin’s Wall Necropolis.

President
Petrova tried to breathe deeply. Six deep breaths usually did it. One. Two.
Three. She forgot about the breathing.

Plus there
had been zero nightmares or ‘incidents’ since the departure of her cats.

Crrrank
. Fuck there it was again. Anna Petrova contemplated
making a dash for the main door. The door was almost 30 feet away. The ambient
Moscow lights, and the lamps from the Kremlin grounds presented reasonable visibility.
Or maybe she could just pick up the phone…

“Good
evening Ms. President.”

“Who’s
that?”

A light
came on near the fireplace. A short rotund, man in a long white coat climbed
out of the fireplace.

“Good
evening Ms. President. Sorry to disturb you at this hour.”

He looked
old but well kept. Non-threatening.

The unsure
President asked, “Are you part of my security detail?”

“Madam, my
name is Otto Fuchs and…
I am the Messenger.
”

Anna
Petrova woke up with a start. What a freaky dream. Even the fine Afghani kush on
during her ‘aid’ trips to Ashgabat had never made her hallucinate about old men
crawling out of fireplaces. Even that Iron Felix-Yezhov nightmare had depicted
them as young sexy revolutionaries. This psycho Santa was a first.

She opened
her eyes and found herself in a Lazyboy facing the fireplace. On a nearby Lazyboy
sat the rotund dude of her dreams. Seemed like he was sampling her beer collection.

“Oh God! I’m
still in that dream… oh no. Who the hell are you? The guards never appear in
the dreams…” Anna whimpered softly.

Ms.
President, or shall I say Anna… you are back. You fainted and fell. I moved you
to these fine chairs. Here have a Corona. Corona, almost as good as Bavarian.”

“What?”

“Just have
a beer Madam. Trust me I am not the enemy. I am just a Messenger.”

“A
Messenger? Ok whats the message?”

“The
Weapon is ready.”

“The
Weapon is ready? What weapon?”

“Sorry.
That’s all I can say.”

“Wait …
are you that scientist from Izhevsk that defected to France? Didn’t you…?”

“Oh. No. Like
I said I’m just the
Messenger
.”

“Wait a
minute…. you said your name was Otto? Are you German?”

“Yes.”

“Oh god.
The nightmare hasn’t ended… can I have another Corona?”

“As you
wish, Madam.”

After
chugging the Corona, President Petrova tried again… the only way to come out of
the dream was to indulge it, “Ok whats the purpose of this weapon? Wait why are
we employing German scientists? This isn’t 1945 anymore… Which facility do you
belong to? Who’s your Minister?”

“Sorry
Madam. I can’t answer any of those questions. Like I said, I am just the
Messenger, and the message is: The weapon is ready.”

“So whats
the point of telling me it’s ready, you creep? Wait this beer tastes awfully
good… this mustn’t be a dream… I think I am going to call my guards.”

“Sure. But
you can’t hurt me. No one can hurt me.”

“Eww why
is that…? Please don’t tell me you are a ghost or a half dead werewolf or something
like that… please…”

“I am very
much alive Ms. President. Don’t worry, I won’t eat your brains out. It’s just
that
we
have taken the necessary precautions this time. Not after that
incident with Leo.”

“Oh… Leo…
of course, Leo…. who the fuck is Leo?”

“Leonid
Brezhnev.”

If she had
been on a chair instead of the Lazyboy, the President would have tipped over. “You
have met Brezhnev? Wait ‘We’? There are more of you lot…? Are you some surviving
Old Bolshevik?”

“No Ma’am.
We have no political ethos. Last time, my brother Karl was picked to deliver the
message. He had an encounter with Leo… that awful unibrow and his guards...”
Otto shuddered before continuing, “they… they killed Karl…. ugh… ya long story
short, they fucking killed him. Since then it was decided to always go in with
the safety on.”

“You met
Brezhnev, dead Karl, more of you… Oh god… I think I know what this is …it’s the
Chinese revenge… the Chinese have drugged me…”

“No madam…
Anna… Just finish your beer… oh ok good… here chug another one… ya.”

In the
Corona fueled swirl, Anna Petrova wondered how the Chinese had bribed an Old
Bolshevik to kill her. Because the Bolsheviks didn’t believe in money… so had
to do with ideology… but ‘Otto’ the German had just said… no political ethos… ethos…
German… Lebowski… Nihilists… Nazis… ah... they weren’t called the National
Socialists for nothing… Socialists… Karl Marx… the Father of all Reds…
but how
did the Chinese fit in
… oh yeah they were Reds too... Must have something
to do with Mao… and his Old Chinese Politburo… the one that was into purges…. aha…
so the Soviet Reds, the Chinese Reds and the German Reds had all gotten
together to Assassinate her… oh god… why… why… why…. that’s it… she knew why… because
the old geezers couldn’t stand a woman on top... aha… noooooo….

Anna
Petrova’s usual somniloquy lasted anywhere between 45-183 seconds. At 389 seconds
and counting she was on a tear tonight. At the 450sec mark when they heard the loud
‘Nooo’, the guards had had enough. The Federal Protective Service aka the
President’s’ body guards entered the bedroom.

“Madam is
everything all right?” asked the leading guard Mika. He immediately saw the old
guy in the white coat seated next to Petrova. “Shit there is someone else in
the room… looks like that chicken guy... hey who are you…?”

“Looks
more like Santa…” screamed Vlad one of the other guards on the detail.

Otto Fuchs
waved at the three Presidential guards. “Hola. This time the safety is on.”

Seeing
Otto the rotund guy, seated next to their sweet, sleep talking President, the
guards almost went America over Otto’s ass with the ‘Sir… hands where I can see
them… lie down on your tummy… slowly spread your legs…’ routine. Almost.

But then, Mika
and his men weren’t some inner city blues,  they were Russian Special Forces,
the best in close-quarter hand to hand combat.

So Mika the
main guard, ran and punched Otto in the face. Hard. Otto blanked out. But his
safety
was still on.

The commotion
nudged Anna back out of her mind bending assassination plot. She was fully
awake in about 87.6 seconds and wondered whether the nightmare had ended. She then
noticed the unconscious Otto sprawled under Mika.

“Madam are
you alright? Did this man hurt you?”

“Yeah. I
think I am ok. A little bit drunk though.”

“Ma’am do
you know this man?”

“No. He said
some strange things about a weapon.”

“A weapon?
Don’t worry ma’am. We will extract all information within the hour.”

President
Anna Petrova ordered the guards to start interrogating Otto then and there,
right in her room. The guards had suggested calling in the bigger guns from the
FSB, but the President had been adamant. She needed to know first-hand. The
Russian public and world leaders had often assumed/accused her of being soft
and lacking experience. So she really wanted to see one of these things in
person… see an old man spill out his bloody guts. A sort of an initiation.

Fifty
minutes into the torture session, Anna pleaded with her guards to stop. She just
couldn’t take it anymore. The so called new torture technique was unbearable.
Even the Pacquiao-Mayweather bum fight had been more interesting than this ‘session’.
The insane new technique was an assault on her senses and an insult to the long
line of Great Russian torturers.

Over the
years, Russian torture techniques had evolved beyond the cutting off of pinkies
and testies. Plus these days, it was getting harder to get people to clean up
the remnants of these sessions. Those Tajiks and Uzbeks had suddenly gotten ‘better
offers’ where they could ‘set their own schedules’ and instead of just cleaning
up, were invited to get ‘intimately involved’. The FSB blamed it on globalization.