Captain Lev Darensky’s shoulder muscles were filling up with acid. They seared as if they were cutting their way out of his skin.
He had been in the ‘dried crocodile’ position for nearly half an hour now—his arms locked in press-up position holding onto the rail at the head of the bed and his feet apart pressed against the rail at its foot.
The individual vertebrae of his neck and back were each made of red-hot iron that had now fused together into a single burning rod. Each tendon stood out on his neck and a fit of trembling ran through his shoulders. He fought against it but the tremors were becoming more and more insistent.
I can’t keep this up for much longer but I know what they will do if I fall.
A fresh current of fear pumped through his blood system and steadied the tremor for a minute more. He tried moving his head from side to side to ease the pain. His vision was reduced by the sweat dripping from his fair hair into his eyes, but he could see two of his fellow officers and sergeants either side of him in the same position on the beds in the barrack room, their heads down and teeth clenched against the pain.
‘Hey, Darensky! You’re a dried crocodile, not a live one! Keep your fucking head down or I’ll thrash you so hard you’ll forget your name!’
Colonel Karenin’s voice sounded like a bull’s bellow from the other end of the barrack room. A heavy-set man with a chubby, vodka-ravaged face, he was drunk and looking forward to punishing the first man to drop from his stress position. He sucked his gut in under his combat jacket and squared his shoulders. This was the sort of thing that they had done in the army in his days as a conscript—when the Soviet Union was great.
It was what his old friend Krymov had appointed him to do—to restore the dignity of the armed forces from the snivelling wreck that it had become under Gorbachev and Yeltsin: forced to accept advances by NATO on all fronts, into the Baltic States for God’s sake! To sell off its flagship aircraft carrier to the Chinese to become a floating casino. To be reduced under Yeltsin to infighting on the streets of Moscow like a rabble of hooligans. Never would they accept such humiliations again. Never!
And the fight back began here! That was why it was important that these junior officers and NCOs suffered, to make sure that they did the same to the men under them, who would do it to the privates and conscripts under them, who would then do it to the enemies of the Motherland that they were sent against.
This remorseless logic drove him on in his campaign of sadism against the 568th Regiment. He would make them strong, if it killed them.
He felt that his work was all the more important because the 568th had such a vital role in the defence of Moscow. Based twenty miles north of the capital, near Sheremetyevo airport, it was ready for immediate deployment there in case
of terrorist attack. Krymov’s paranoia also meant that he feared a full-scale foreign airborne assault on the capital, so the regiment was a powerful force equipped with T-90 tanks, anti-aircraft artillery and armoured personnel carriers, all of which were kept at a high state of alert, with a full fuel and weapons load.
That evening, Karenin had got drunk with his three company majors and some sergeants and they had hauled the youngest officers into a barrack away from where the main body of the 568th Regiment was based. He was happy for this to go on all night, as far as he was concerned.
This practice of
dedovschina
, or bullying, was institutionalised in the Russian armed forces. At its worst the process culminated in
opusteet
—‘taking someone down’.
Male rape.
The thought of it excited Colonel Karenin now.
‘I’ve got the antiseptic cream, boys!’ he laughed as he paced up and down along the row of beds behind them and waved a tube of the lubricant.
Equally the thought of it revolted Darensky and he pushed his arms out and clenched his vertebrae.
They won’t do that to me! No—not that!
Darensky knew he couldn’t last much longer. He had fought against the final collapse so long that it had overwhelmed him. The only thing in his consciousness now was pain and he was getting tired of it.
He just wanted it to stop.
Never mind what Karenin did to him, it couldn’t be worse than this. His right arm juddered and he didn’t try to stop it.
This was it. He was going to fall onto the bed, be dragged away, sodomised and beaten to a pulp.
So what? Here I go.
‘Ah!’ There was a brief cry and thud from down the room as Lieutenant Panin collapsed onto the bed.
‘Ha ha!’ Karenin shouted, and ran down the line of beds to see his victim. ‘Well, we have a volunteer after all for special duties!’ He signalled to the sergeants to drag the man out.
‘The rest of you, stand easy!’ he laughed, and followed the inert, moaning form as it was dragged past Darensky with its feet trailing on the floor.
Darensky and the other men collapsed on their beds and screamed and writhed as the cramp overcame them.
The morning after, Captain Darensky was summoned to the administration block where they had dragged Panin.
Darensky was a young and lively officer but he moved now like an old man; his neck and shoulders were stiff from the ordeal and he hunched himself up with fear as he walked slowly around the edge of the snowy parade ground to the old, four-storey, concrete building. The square was bounded by several Soviet-era blocks on each side, their grey cement sides streaked a darker grey by rainwater, and hung with icicles now. The shouts and curses of the regimental duty officer echoed off them as he got the men lined up for morning parade.
What have they done to Lieutenant Panin and what will they do to me?
His brother officer hadn’t come back last night. Darensky walked reluctantly up the steps from the main parade ground to the glass-panelled door and pressed the buzzer. There was a long pause and then he heard footsteps dragging inside the door and it was yanked open.
Colonel Karenin looked awful after a night’s heavy drinking. His grey hair stuck up on one side of his head and his face was creased from where he had passed out asleep on the floor.
‘Darensky,’ he growled, ‘get some men…’ He paused ‘There’s been an accident.’ With that, he shuffled off, leaving the door open.
Darensky stood on the threshold for a moment, staring ahead before he returned to the main mess hall, picked three men and came back.
They went inside.
The body of Lieutenant Panin was lying in the hallway against the wall, wrapped in a grey army blanket like an old carpet that was being thrown out. Darensky stumbled in shock but directed the men so that they each took a corner of the blanket and picked him up.
They could then clearly see what had happened.
He was naked and had been beaten until his face was unrecognisable; an entrenching tool handle stuck out from between his buttocks, stained with dried blood.
Colonel Karenin appeared at the end of the corridor and swayed, glowering at them.
‘Get it out of here,’ he grunted, and gestured to the door.
The four-man squad stumbled down the steps of the command block, trying not to let the body bump against their legs or to look down at the face swollen with purple bruises.
Darensky was stunned. He had joined the army as a young volunteer because he was filled with ideas of doing his duty to the Rodina, the Motherland.
Not for this.
Not for sodomy and murder.
Darensky was from a middle-class family and his parents wanted to buy him the usual doctor’s certificate that kept nice boys like him out of the draft. However, the young Lev had craved a challenge and looked forward to the hardships of conscription as a rite of passage into manhood.
He had been a member of Nashi—‘Ours’—the pro-Putin youth movement founded to promote the resurgence in Russian national pride.
Nashi had pumped him full of ideas and he believed the old Orthodox mantra that Moscow was the Third Rome, the seat of faith on Earth and therefore of all righteousness. He knew that Russia was
the
special nation on earth, neither European nor Asian but Russian. He wasn’t exactly sure what Russia’s message to the world was, only that it had one and that it demanded respect.
But the reality of his time as a conscript had battered that idealism.
He found himself asking: why was it necessary as a recruit to be kicked out of your bed every night and beaten by drunken ‘lords’ from the different platoons: Recce, Tanks, Artillery, Signals? Whose turn was it tonight?
How much abuse could his frame take?
The black eyes, split lips, bruised ribs, cuts and grazes, broken bones, concussion—he found himself living with the iron taste of blood in his mouth from busted teeth and gums, exhausted by the permanent state of fear.
What was the point of being so starved that you ate tubes of toothpaste for nourishment? Of having no equipment issued so you had to wrap your feet in newspaper instead of socks?
But when he asked those questions, his inner sense of duty had replied that it wasn’t the system that was at fault, it was him. It was his own weakness that was the problem. The challenge of maintaining the constitutional order of the Motherland was a tough one and he just wasn’t up to it. He should try harder, he could not fail.
This devotion forced him to stay on as a volunteer and propelled him through to the rank of captain. It was at this
point, once he was on the inside, he discovered that it was the system that was at fault and not him. He realised that what was happening was not character-building—it was soul-destroying.
It had to stop.
The activism in his character that had fired his nationalism now fired a rebellion. Two months ago he had contacted a journalist to try to get a story run on the reign of terror that Karenin was pursuing in the 568th.
The journalist had told him quietly that there was no way that the story would ever be published with the censorship of the media under Krymov’s regime. However, the man had then put him in touch with Sergey Shaposhnikov, who was only too pleased to hear about a potential rebellion in a powerful military force stationed near the capital. Sergey had encouraged Darensky to organise a group of similarly mutinous NCOs and junior officers and to await his instructions as to when to bring the regiment into action.
The only problem was that at the moment the rank and file of the 568th, although they hated Colonel Karenin, were too afraid of him and the system to rebel. As Darensky dragged the body past the regiment on parade that morning, he looked at the lines of men and received only averted eyes and sickened expressions in return. They had no stomach for a fight.
Panin’s body bumped against his feet as they walked along and he shifted his grip on the blanket. He felt sick and weak.
He didn’t know how he was going to get the regiment to mutiny.
MONDAY 15 DECEMBER
President Krymov was sitting at his desk staring out of the window.
He had taken his glasses off and his thick-set face had a lost expression as he looked across at the other side of the hexagonal courtyard in the middle of the Senate building complex.
He was back at the grindstone, trying to control every aspect of life in Russia, surrounded by the piles of paperwork that made him feel like he was achieving something. He had paused from his deliberation of what to do with a new pipeline proposal and was now thinking about the business with Shaposhnikov last week.
Who was this Devereux man and what is Sergey up to with him?
He was annoyed with Commandant Bolkonsky. Apparently his first attempt to have Raskolnikov killed in an accident had failed and he hadn’t heard anything since then. If the man couldn’t get it sorted out then he would just have him removed and find someone who could.
Major Batyuk knocked on the huge wood-panelled door and then entered. ‘Message just come in to the ops room,
sir. Bolkonsky says Raskolnikov will be killed in the sawmill tomorrow.’
Krymov stopped looking out of the window and shot a defensive glare across the large room at him. Well, there was his answer: Bolkonsky was getting on with the job after all.
‘Hmm, very good,’ he nodded, and Batyuk turned to go.
Krymov chucked his glasses on his desk and folded his hands as another thought came to mind.
‘Batyuk?’ The tough-looking major paused by the door. ‘You know that I care a great deal about Shaposhnikov.’ The major looked back at him respectfully but with a lack of animation that made it transparently obvious that he didn’t care about Sergey. ‘But I want him to learn an important lesson in loyalty.’ Krymov paused. ‘I’m going to call him.’
He nodded and Batyuk withdrew.
Krymov picked up the phone on his desk and called Sergey’s mobile number.
At that time Sergey was in a meeting in his offices in Moscow with some partners in a clothing chain that he was trying to turn around. He had to go through the whole thing pretending that he hadn’t just got the email from Alex in Siberia saying that they were launching the raid that night and that therefore he didn’t know that a civil war was about to break out.
As usual, when he saw the word ‘
Vozhd
’ light up on his phone, he grabbed it and ran out of the meeting room, back into his private office.
‘Hey, Boss, what can I do for you?’ he asked cheerfully.
‘Shaposhnikov, what are you doing?’ Krymov sounded suspicious.
‘Oh, you know, a bit of this, a bit of that. I’m trying to sort out a company that sells bras and knickers, if you must know.’
Krymov grunted in amusement. ‘Hmm, well, I think I have a little cause for celebration and I want you to come over tonight to get drunk and help me relax in the banya.’
‘Well, you know me; I’m always on for a drink, Boss, but…’ Sergey said as he desperately looked around his office for inspiration to get him out of this.
Of all the nights to be with Krymov he couldn’t afford to tonight, not when the news of the raid hit Moscow. If they got Raskolnikov at six a.m. Krasnokamensk time that would be one a.m. Moscow time. It would take longer than that for the news to be reported but he just could not risk being anywhere near Krymov tonight.
He thought fast. ‘I’ve got a big awards dinner that I’m doing the keynote speech at tonight so I’m afraid that you’re going to have to get pissed without me.’
Krymov stood up at his desk, his face flushed red as he bellowed down the line, ‘Now listen here, Shaposhnikov! If the President of the Russian Federation requests your presence tonight then you’d better get your fucking arse over here! They’re going to kill Raskolnikov tomorrow morning and you need to make sure you raise a glass to it, d’ya hear! Or you may be packing your bags to Siberia as well!’
There was nothing Sergey could do when Krymov was in that sort of mood.
‘Boss, Boss, of course, of course. I’ll be right there.’
When he hung up, Sergey sat on his desk with his head in his hands.
He had caused the revolution that would start tonight and now it looked like he would cause his own death as well.