Patriot

CHAPTER 23

There are few bleaker outposts in the trackless wilds of the Siberian tundra than the tiny village of Tvas. It consists of two perpendicular and normally muddy streets: the Crossroads of Nowhere, some waggish early tsar once called it. There are, too, a number of crumbling one- and two-story cottages, a cobbler, a blacksmith, a rooming house, a pub of sorts. And, the former Winter Palace of the tsars — now the secret KGB Headquarters.

There is also a one-room rail station.

The lord of this mostly forgotten realm is a relic of a stationmaster who has been there so long he seems more like just another piece of dusty furniture. His name is Nikolai Arsenyev and today, like every day, he is clothed in a grey Tolstoyan shirt of no particular shape, cinched by a broad leather belt, baggy grey woolen trousers, and worn felt shoes.

His snow-white beard usually reaches his knees before he thinks of trimming it, and hair falls down around his shoulders. Someone passing through once told him he looked like the fiddler on the roof, Tevye, but that traveler was met with a blank stare from the stationmaster. A fiddler? On a roof? Why? The outside world had been a lifelong mystery to him. He’d never been to the cinema, and television was only a rumor.

Nikolai, seated by his woodstove on this wintry summer day, peered outside the station house windows, marveling at the weather swirling around his barren platform. A freakish snowstorm slammed into the little village late last night. It hadn’t stopped snowing all day long! He smiled. Summer in Siberia! Come to Tvas!

Summer’s Winter Wonderland! Holiday Capital of the World!

Whoo-whoo! At the approaching sound of a train’s mournful whistle, Nikolai instinctively looked up at the Soviet-era station clock gathering dust above the door. Five o’clock. He was expecting the legendary Red Arrow, a luxury train, one that only stops at this forlorn map speck when there are “special passengers.”

Nikolai was almost always notified in advance. Some higher-up at the “palace.” Administrative assistant, the bossy woman named Tania, called herself. Why she thought she could boss him — He paused midthought. He heard the old Arrow slowing as she chugged through blowing snow, coming up the steep grade of the final hill. He looked at his big pocket watch… precisely seven minutes past what the station clock said.

He knew that one of the passengers today must be very “special” because an unmarked white Sno-Cat from the Winter Palace arrived one hour ago. Two uniformed government police officers entered the station, drank every drop of his coffee, and left without a word of thanks or even hello.

For the last hour or so they’d been sitting in the warmth of the Sno-Cat, smoking and sipping from a shared flagon of vodka. He didn’t begrudge them. It was warmer in the Sno-Cat. And the soft leather seats in the luxurious vehicle were vastly more comfortable than either of the two hard wooden benches that Nikolai could offer.

They were KGB guards, of course. And they had journeyed forth from the old country estate once owned by the powerful Korsakov family, the Winter Palace of the tsars. In earlier centuries, it was a vacation residence. It was now a top-secret military and police training facility for the Muscovy elite. And Eastern home of the secret police.

Nikolai well knew that KGB officers were not expected to be polite, but still… he looked up and saw that the two men had left the tracked vehicle. They were on the snowy platform, stamping their feet, their boots crunching in the snow. He noticed that they were slinging Škorpion automatic weapons from their shoulders, a sign that this was no ordinary diplomatic visitor from Moscow. Someone needed protecting — or arresting.

The old stationmaster, making what for him was a snap decision, stepped outside into the cold. He wanted a little fresh air and perhaps even some excitement. He could use a little, always, living the solitary life he did. The first robin of spring alighting outside his window months ago was still strong in his memory.

The long scarlet ribbon of train arrived, wearing a filthy mantle of ragged black ice. It pulled slowly into his station, screeching and snorting to a grinding halt. Immediately, the two frozen policemen began stomping up and down the platform, looking in every window for someone waiting to make an exit.

Nikolai stood in the cold in his front-row seat. This was what passed for dramatic excitement in his sedentary life.

Finally, a door at the rear of one of the scarlet-and-gold first-class wagons was flung open by a porter. A passenger, a very large man, appeared, filling the door frame. He was not Russian, not European, but rather some sort of Westerner. He stooped to retrieve something and then heaved a large red duffel bag out onto the platform. Nikolai saw that it was emblazoned with the symbol of a snarling black bear, a giant on its hind legs, gnashing its teeth. Some kind of big-game hunter, perhaps? What business would he possibly have with KGB bigwigs at the palace?

It was a place where men were taught how to kill — but not wild animals, of course.

One policeman bent to pick up the heavy duffel while the other stepped forward to greet the man as he stepped down from the train. To Nikolai’s amazement, the Russian saluted the stranger.

“Colonel?” the KGB man said in heavily accented English.

“That’s me,” the big man said. No last names once he arrived; he and the Russians had agreed to that up front, just “Colonel” would do.

“I am Major Adropov,” the husky Russian said. “Welcome. My superiors are anxiously awaiting your arrival. You’ve had a long train ride, Colonel. We have some refreshments waiting for you in our vehicle.”

“Heavy,” the other KGB guy said, hefting his bag. “What do you have in here?”

“Bricks,” the American said. “Just in case I need to build a shithouse. You got any further questions?”

The stranger was tall and broad shouldered, thickly muscled, with long blond hair pulled into a ponytail at the back. Nikolai admired his beaded rawhide jacket with long fringe hanging from the sleeves. But, being a keen observer, Nikolai always looked at a passenger’s shoes for any real clues to a person’s true station in life.

He’d seen pictures of boots like these. A picture book of Texas cowboys he’d had as a child. But these red ones had jagged silver lightning bolts up the sides.

Nikolai got an odd feeling about him. Nikolai had never seen an actual Hollywood movie star, but he had a pretty good idea that this was exactly what they looked like. Big white smile when he wanted to flash it. He was handsome enough, but it seemed that if he were in a western movie he would be one of the men in the black hats, not the white ones. There was something in his dark eyes that made you want to avert your own.

So what in God’s holy name was a movie star doing in Tvas? Nikolai could hardly wait to hurry over to the pub for his supper — it wasn’t often that he had quality gossip of the very first order for his comrades at the old Hammer and Sickle. He’d already laid out his story. Hollywood had come to Tvas. One of the producers and a movie star were here to look them over. The movie was going to be called Dr. Zhivago II. Something like that, didn’t matter much what, he’d make it up.

One of the two police officers brushed past Nikolai and spoke to the handsome visitor in English.

“We’re glad you arrived safely, Colonel. Are you ready to go? Do you need to use the lavatory?”

“Matter of fact, I do. The only one still working on that damned train was clogged up and that foulmouthed woman attendant was too damn drunk to fix it.”

Hearing that, Nikolai rushed back inside the station house, grabbed the plumber’s friend from the utility closet and went to work feverishly on the station’s one and only commode.

Things are looking up around here, he thought to himself, whistling while he plunged. It wasn’t every day you had a bona fide movie star make good use of your crapper after all. Next thing you knew? A bare-naked woman might come marching right through his door.

There was a rear bench seat in the Sno-Cat. The two KGB men up front were silent, having exhausted their English vocabularies. Colonel Brett Beauregard spent most of the two-hour journey staring out the window at the undulating plains of snow and dense green forests painted white. He was a long way from Texas, where he kept his heart, but he found the vastness of the vistas beautiful. After about an hour, the plains gave way to hills and valleys leading to the south.

The snow had stopped, and shades of purple and gold tinted the hills in the fading light of the setting sun.

The erstwhile Texan was lost in his thoughts. His mind confronted whatever lay ahead with mixed emotions. He was pissed at the Russians, it was true. When his own countrymen, namely the White House Wienies and Congress Candyasses, threw his beloved Vulcan beneath the bus, the Russkies had been right there with them, step for step. Not as brutal as the Americans, maybe, but he and his men had plenty of axes to grind with the Kremlin. And if the brave men who remained with him after the shit hit the fan were good at anything, they were major-league axe-grinders.

There was one thing you just didn’t never ever call a Vulcan warrior, especially in the New York Times. And that one thing was “traitor.”

Putin himself was on his shit list too, right at the top, and they’d get around to his own personal payback sooner or later. There was one other KGB asshole he’d dealt with who seriously needed killing. Close friend of Putin, his guys told him, went by the name of “Uncle Joe,” and his death would send Vladimir a message, that was for sure.

The backstory was what made this trip very mysterious on the one hand, and very tempting on the other. He had no idea who had invited him to Russia, nor why. A private courier had delivered a package to his beach home in Costa Rica. Inside were first-class airline tickets from Miami to Moscow and then on to St. Petersburg. One night in a suite at the Grand Hotel. A first-class ticket on the Red Arrow to Tvas, and a packet of rubles the size of a large brick.

A typed note, no signature, said only that a meeting had been arranged with someone very high in the KGB who had an offer for him that would literally change his life. A name was used that he recognized, a high-ranking general, someone named Krakov. A man he’d dealt with when the Russians were one of his most prized and most profitable clients. His Excellency, General Krakov, the invitation said, was very much looking forward to his presence and he would find himself an honored guest at the Siberian Winter Palace.

Was Putin aware that the Colonel was hell-bent on revenge for the worldwide humiliation his boys had suffered? Had to be. After the first few spy assassinations he’d executed around the world, Paris and Maine, et cetera, it was no longer any great secret among the world’s intelligence community. Maybe this whole deal was just a bogus setup, a payback for another assassination. It didn’t smell like it. But, of course, at this level, it wouldn’t, would it?

Well, what the hell, he said to himself finally. Beat the hell out of getting fat and lazy in Costa Rica.

It wasn’t in him to turn down an invitation like that.

And, besides all that, he was bored shitless living on a beach with two ugly whores and a ratty-assed dog.

An hour later, he woke as the big Sno-Cat shuddered to a stop. He lifted his chin off his chest, rubbed his tired eyes, and looked around, confused. Where the hell was he? Oh, yeah. Siberia. It didn’t look the way you pictured it when you heard that word. Not at all. The sun was down now, a faint glow on the western horizon. He sat up and peered out the large window to his left.

The Russian Sno-Cat had come to a stop on a hilltop in a copse of hardwood trees. Below was a small valley with an elongated lake, gleaming silver in the strong moonlight.

Along its banks stood the magnificent white palace, ablaze with golden light glowing in hundreds of windows. From this vantage point it appeared to be three stories of gold and grandeur, the best of European and Russian architecture, with massive galleries and flanking wings that stretched along the lakefront for a good nine hundred meters at least.

“Is that where we’re going, boys?” the colonel said, leaning forward between them. “Looks like something you might find in Disney World.”

“The ancient home of the tsars,” the driver said, his voice full of national pride.

“Mighty fancy place for this old cowboy. You fellas reckon I maybe should have worn me some different kicks?” He raised his right leg between the two front seats to let them eyeball his trademark lightning bolt cowboy boots.

The driver looked at the boots, then up at him, and then glanced over at the officer beside him, shrugging his shoulders as if to say, Americans! Who the hell can understand these people?