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“If he comes back, tell him to stop by for a drink,” he called after the departing Grishin. Then he muttered “Asshole,” and closed the door.

Grishin warned his informants in the Immigration Division that he needed to know if ever Sir Nigel Irvine, or Mr. Trubshaw, sought to reenter Moscow.

The following day General of the Army Nikolai Nikolayev gave an interview to
Izvestia
, the country’s biggest national newspaper. The paper regarded the event as something of a scoop, for the old warrior never gave interviews.

Ostensibly the interview was to mark the general’s up-and-coming seventy-fourth birthday, and it began with general inquiries about his health.

He sat bolt upright in a leather-backed chair in a private room at the Officers’ Club of the Frunze Academy and told the reporter his health was fine.

“My teeth are my own,” he barked. “I don’t need eyeglasses and I can still outmarch any whippersnapper your age.”

The reporter, who was in his early forties, believed him. The photographer, a woman in her mid-twenties, gazed at him with awe. She had heard her grandfather tell of following the young tank commander into Berlin fifty-four years before.

The conversation drifted to the state of the country.

“Deplorable,” snapped Uncle Kolya. “A bloody mess.”

“I suppose,” suggested the reporter, “you will be voting for the UPF and Igor Komarov in the January election?”

“Him, never,” snapped the general. “A bunch of Fascists, that’s all they are. Wouldn’t touch them with a sterilized barge-pole.”

“I don’t understand,” quavered the journalist, “I would have thought …”

“Young man, don’t think for one minute that I have fallen for that phoney patriotism crap Komarov keeps churning out. I’ve seen patriotism, boy. Seen men bleed for it, seen good men die for it. Got to recognize the real thing, don’t you see? This man Komarov is no patriot, it’s all bullshit and catcrap.”

“I see,” said the reporter, who did not see at all and was completely bewildered. “But surely there are many people who feel his plans for Russia …”

“His plans for Russia are bloodshed,” snarled Uncle Kolya. “Think we haven’t had enough bloodshed in this land already? I’ve had to wade through the damn stuff, and I don’t want to see anymore. The man’s a Fascist. Look, boy, I’ve fought Fascists all my life. Fought ‘em at Kursk, fought ‘em at Bagration, across the Vistula, right to the bloody bunker. German or Russian, a Fascist’s a Fascist, and they’re all …”

He could have used any of forty words that in Russian refer to private parts, but as there was a woman present he settled for
merzavtsi
—villains.

“But surely,” protested the journalist, who was completely out of his depth, “Russia needs to be cleaned up of all the filth?”

“Oh, there’s filth all right. But a lot of it is not ethnic minority filth, it’s home-grown Russian crap. What about the crooked politicians, the corrupt bureaucrats hand in hand with the gangsters?”

“But Mr. Komarov is going to clean out the gangsters.”

“Mr. bloody Komarov is financed by the gangsters, can’t you see that? Where do you think the tidal wave of his money is coming from? The tooth fairy? With him in charge this country is bought and paid for by the gangsters. I tell you, boy, no man who ever wore the uniform of his country and wore it with pride should ever put those black-uniformed thugs of his guard in charge of the Motherland.”

“Then what should we do?”

The old general reached for a copy of the day’s paper and gestured at the back page.

“Did you see that priest fella on the box last night?”

“Father Gregor, the preacher? No, why?”

“I think he may have got it right. And we may have got it wrong all these years. Bring back God and the czar.”

The interview caused a sensation, but not for what it said. It was thee source that caused the furor. Russia’s most famous old soldier had delivered a denunciation that would be read by every officer and trooper in the land and a large number of the twenty million veterans.

The interview was syndicated in its entirety in the weekly
Our Army
, successor to the
Red Star
, which went into every barracks in Russia. Extracts were included in the TV national news and repeated on the radio. After that the general declined to give any more interviews.

In the dacha off Kiselny Boulevard, Kuznetsov was almost in tears as he confronted a stony-faced Igor Komarov.

“I don’t understand, Mr. President, I just don’t understand. If there was one figure in the entire country whom I would have assumed to be a staunch supporter of the UPF and of yourself, it would have been General Nikolayev.”

Igor Komarov, and Anatoli Grishin who was standing staring out of the window onto the snowy forecourt, heard him out in bleak silence. Then the young propaganda chief returned to his office to continue calling the media to try to limit the damage.

It was not an easy task. He could hardly denounce Uncle Kolya as a geriatric who had lost his wits, for this was clearly not true. His only plea was that the general had got it all wrong. But the questions about where the UPF’s funding was coming from were getting harder and harder to handle.

A fuller restoration of the UPF position would have been made easier by devoting the whole next issue of
Awake
to the topic, along with the monthly edition of
Motherland.
Unfortunately they had been silenced and the new presses were only now leaving Baltimore.

Back in the president’s office the silence was finally broken by Komarov.

“He saw my manifesto, didn’t he?”

“I believe so,” said Grishin.

“First the presses, then the secret meetings with the Patriarch, now this. What the hell is going on?”

“We’re being sabotaged, Mr. President.”

Igor Komarov’s voice remained deceptively quiet, too quiet. But his face was deathly pale and bright spots burned red on each cheek. Like the late secretary Akopov, Anatoli Grishin too had seen the rages of which his leader was capable and even he feared them. When Komarov spoke again, his voice had dropped to a whisper.

“You are retained, Anatoli, at my side, the closest man to me, the man destined to have more power in Russia than any save me, to prevent me from being sabotaged. Who is doing this?”

“An Englishman called Irvine, and an American called Monk.”

“Two of them? Is that all?”

“They obviously have backing, Mr. President, and they have the manifesto. They are showing it around.”

Komarov arose from his desk, took up a heavy cylindrical ebony ruler, and began to tap it into the palm of his left hand. As he spoke his voice began to rise.

“Then find them, and suppress them, Anatoli. Find out what the next stage is, and prevent it. Now listen to me carefully. On January sixteenth, in just a few short weeks, one hundred and ten million Russian voters will have the right to cast their ballot for the next president of Russia. I intend that they shall vote for me.

“On a seventy percent poll, that means seventy-seven million votes cast. I want forty million of those votes. I want a first-round win, not a runoff. A week ago I could have counted on sixty million. That fool of a general has just cost me at least ten.”

The word
ten
came out close to a scream. The ruler was rising and falling, but Komarov was now hammering the desktop with it. Without warning he began to shriek his rage at his persecutors, using the ruler to hit his own telephone until the plastic cracked and shattered. Grishin stood rigid; down the corridor there was utter silence as the office staff froze where they were.

“Now some demented priest has started a new hare running, calling for the return of the czar. There will be no czar in this land other than me, and when I rule they will learn the meaning of discipline such that Ivan the Terrible will seem like a choirboy.”

As he shouted, he brought the ebony ruler down again and again on the wreckage of the telephone, staring at the fragments as if the once-useful tool was itself the disobedient Russian people, learning the meaning of discipline under the knout.

The last scream of
choirboy
died away and Komarov dropped the ruler back on his desk. He took several deep inhalations and resumed his grip on himself His voice returned to normal levels but his hands were shaking, so he placed all ten fingertips on the desk to steady them.

“Tonight I will address a rally at Vladimir, the greatest of the whole campaign. It will be broadcast, nationwide, tomorrow. After that I shall address the nation every night until the election. The funds have been arranged. That is my business. The publicity belongs to Kuznetsov.”

From behind his desk he reached out an arm and pointed his forefinger straight at Grishin’s face.

“Your business, Anatoli Grishin, is one and one only.
Stop the sabotage
.”

The last sentence was also a shout. Komarov slumped into his chair and waved his hand in dismissal. Grishin, without a word, crossed the carpet to the door and let himself out.

¯

IN the days of Communism there was only one bank, the Narodny, or People’s Bank. After the fall, and with the onset of capitalism, banks sprang up like mushrooms until there were over eight thousand of them.

Many were blink-and-you-miss-it affairs that quickly folded, taking their depositors’ money with them. Others vaporized in the night, with the same effect. The survivors learned their banking almost as they went along, for such experience in the Communist state was sparse.

Nor was banking a safe occupation. In ten years over four hundred bankers had been assassinated, usually for failing to see eye to eye with gangsters on the matter of unsecured loans or other forms of illegal cooperation.

By the late nineties the business had settled down to a basic four hundred reasonably reputable banks. With the top fifty of these the West was prepared to do business.

Banking was centered in St. Petersburg and Moscow, mainly in the latter. In an ironic mirror of organized crime, banking too had amalgamated, with the so-called Top Ten doing eighty percent of the business. In some cases, the level of investment was so high that the enterprise could only be undertaken by consortia of two or three banks acting together.

Chief among the major banks in the winter of 1999 were the Most Bank, the Smolensky, and biggest of all, the Moskovsky Federal.

It was to the head office of the Moskovsky that Jason Monk addressed himself in the first week of December. The security was like Fort Knox.

Because of the dangers to life and limb the chairmen of the major banks had private protection squads that would make the personal security of an American president look puny. At least three had long since removed their families to London, Paris, and Vienna respectively, and commuted to their Moscow offices in private jets. When inside Russia their personal protectors ran into the hundreds. It took thousands more to protect the bank’s branches.

To achieve a personal interview with the chairman of the Moskovsky Federal without an appointment made days ahead was at the very least unheard of. But Monk managed it. He brought with him something equally unheard of.

After a body search and an inspection of his leather briefcase on the ground floor of the tower building, he was allowed to go up under escort to the executive reception, three floors below the chairman’s personal suite.

There the letter he offered was examined by a smooth young Russian who spoke perfect English. He asked Monk to wait and disappeared through a stout wooden door that opened only to a code in a keypad. Two armed guards watched Monk as the minutes dragged by. To the surprise of the receptionist behind the desk, the personal aide returned and asked Monk to follow him. Beyond the door he was frisked again and an electronic scanner was run over him as the smooth Russian apologized.

“I understand,” said Monk. “Times are hard.”

Two floors further up he was shown into another anteroom, and then ushered into the private office of Leonid Grigoreivitch Bernstein.

The letter he had brought lay on the blotter of the desk. The banker was a short, broad man with crinkly gray hair, sharp, questioning eyes, and a beautifully cut charcoal-gray suit from Savile Row. He arose and held out his hand. Then he waved Monk to a chair. Monk noticed that the smooth one sat at the back of the room, complete with the bulge under his left armpit. He might have attended Oxford University but Bernstein had ensured he also completed his studies on the range at Quantico.

The banker gestured to the letter.

“So, how are things in London? You have just arrived, Mr. Monk?”

“Some days ago,” said Monk.

The letter was on very expensive paper of cream linen weave, topped by the five splayed arrows that recall the five original sons of Mayer Amschel Rothschild of Frankfurt. The stationery itself was perfectly genuine. Only the signature of Sir Evelyn de Rothschild at the bottom of the text was a forgery. But it is a rare banker who will not receive a personal emissary from the chairman of N. M. Rothschild of St. Swithin’s Lane, City of London.

“Sir Evelyn is well?” asked Bernstein. Monk dropped into Russian.

“So far as I know,” said Monk, “but he did not sign that letter.” He heard a soft rustle behind him. “And I really would be most grateful if your young friend didn’t put one of those bullets in my back. I’m not wearing body armor and I would prefer to stay alive. Besides, I am not carrying anything dangerous, and I did not come here for the purpose of trying to hurt you.”

“Then why did you come?”

Monk explained the events since July 15.

“Rubbish,” said Bernstein at last. “Never heard such rubbish in my life. I know about Komarov. I make it my business to know. He’s too far right for my taste, but if you think insulting Jews is anything new you know nothing about Russia. They all do it, but they all need banks.”

“Insults are one thing, Mr. Bernstein. What I am carrying in this case promises more than insults.”

Bernstein stared at him long and hard.

“This manifesto, you brought it with you?”