Moscow Machination (8 page)

Kremlin, Moscow

“Madam
President, I think this is a terrible idea. And I want this to go on the
record… you know,” declared Mika the presidential guard. This was beyond madness.

The
President was unmoved.

“At least
we should check with my boss…”

“Mika, get
a grip. I am like your boss’s boss’s boss’s boss. So shut the fuck up. Otto lead
the way,” said Anna Petrova.

The
President’s yellow phone rang. She hesitated… she was on the precipice of
something here… darn it, it was Sergey Luzkhov the Foreign Minister.

She had to
answer it. Probably important.

“Whats up
Sergester?”

“Madam, apologize
for the late call, but there was an incident in the Far East.”

“Make it
fast…”

“Uh… the
Chinese… they tried to go after one of your tigers… our tigers. We believe it’s
a retaliation for those trains.”

“I thought
we took pre-emptive measures.”

“Sure, we
were thinking along the lines of Damansky Island or some silly trade embargo. Well
they got creative. We can’t predict everything Ma’am.”

“Ok.
Thanks for the update. I am kind of in the middle of something right now. Bye.”

“Oh. There
is one other thing…” Luzkhov persisted.

“Hmm?”

“We didn’t
save tiger Zoya, it was the North Koreans who saved her.”

“What? But
why did they get involved? Are we even allied?”

“Err… well
they didn’t want to get sucked into a nuclear blowup. Out there the DPRK also
has an ICBM silo. It’s about 5 Km from ours. So if a nuke went off the
Americans would jump on it and spin things to say that the North Koreans did
it.”

“Even if
it was a Russian nuke?” asked Petrova incredulously.

“Yep. They
wouldn’t dare accuse us. Even if they did we would deny... with proof. And nobody
wants another he-said-she-said quagmire at The Hague. No. That’s not their
style. North Korea would be the easy bogeyman. A great chance to sell more
shitbirds to Tokyo and Seoul….”

“…any
casualties on our side?”

“None.
Like I said we have zero assets out there… by design. But the Chinese
intelligence chief was killed. Their Premier Xiannian probably won’t walk for a
while.”

“What the
fuck??? Why were the Premier and the Intelligence Chief out on the field?”

“Guess they
took it personally.”

“Shit.
That’s serious shit.”

“Yeah, nothing
good comes out of stalking cats.”

After a
few seconds the President asked, “So, will the Chinese go after Pyongyang now?”

“Nah. The
young leadership was clashing with their old school intelligence Chief. It was
just a matter of time….”

“If you
say so… What about the tiger, is it safe?”

“Yes. She is
being sent to Pyongyang as we speak… on a luxury train. That brat probably
thinks a selfie with a Siberian is cool…”

The
President lifted a finger to the waiting Otto and her guards to hang on a bit
longer.

“Ok. Whats
our move Sergey? Do we even want the tiger back?”

“Our Pyongyang
envoy, Dimitroff is one of the best. We will let him play.”

“Alright,
Sergey, keep me posted.”

Otto extended
an arm into the fireplace and felt around. Then he did a little tap, tap
causing the bottom to give away exposing a 3x3ft square shaft. The shaft was
lined with a good looking iron ladder. Otto yielded left as Mika and the
President took a look. It was just a black square hole. Nothing more to it.

“Are you sure
this is the way to your bunker?” checked the President.

“Yes Madam
President,” replied Otto, his enthusiasm rising by the tick.

“So who
goes first?” asked Mika fearing the answer. Exploring underground caves in
search of the ‘ultimate weapon’ wasn’t something he looked forward to.

“Me of
course,” cried Otto. “I go in first. President next. Then the three of you.”

“Oh. Okay.
That sounds fine. But let me just switch places with the President.” Suggested
Mika.

“Mika, how
long do you think we can be away, without raising alarms?”

“Madam, its
1.45 now. We clocked in at 12.30 so that should give us three, three and a half
hours.”

An excited
Anna Petrova clapped her hands, “Alright gentlemen let’s get this party
started.”

Otto
Fuchs, Mika the guard, President Petrova, the other guards Vlad and Marat all
descended down the fireplace. Their mission: to find this weapon that Otto had
been blathering about.

Fifty feet
into the abyss, they hit a small landing. Upon further review it was just big
room with no doors or windows. “In the old times we called this Rest Point 1.
To catch your breath. Ten minutes, we move again,” said Otto.

“Otto we
are fine. Let’s get going. I don’t have all day for your antics,” chided the
President.

“Sure
madam. Follow me to the eastern wall.” The group headed by Otto went to a bare
white-ish wall. Otto felt up the wall and touched something. The wall slid away
and exposed a shiny metal door with a vertical slit down the middle.

“Madam, I
present to you….”

“An elevator?”

“Yes of
course.”

As Otto
depressed the down button, the elevator opened with a traditional chime. Like many
of its contemporaries, it was shiny steel on the inside, no pansy mirrors, an
emergency phone, and just two buttons on the panel that read ‘0’ and ‘1’. It was
certified to carry twelve.

Otto hit
‘0’ and said “We should be out in four minutes.”

“Four
minutes? How far does your rat hole go?” asked a petrified Vlad.

“Oh it’s
pretty, pretty deep. But don’t worry, its air conditioned and we got
entertainment too.”

“What
kind?” asked the President.

As the
elevator tumbled down, Jon Bon Jovi’s Livin’ on a Prayer began playing. But
instead of playing the whole song, it kept repeating
“…we are half way
there…”

Four
minutes later the piper and his followers exited into a dazzling underground
metro station.

Trains whizzed
in and out as busy crowds scurried along. “Jeez this don’t look like Moscow …” said
Marat the guard.

“No,”
confirmed Otto, who looked like the cat that barbecued canaries.

“So where are
we?” asked the President.

Mika
muttered something under his breath.

“Whats
that Mika?” asked the President.

“It’s the D-6,”
Mika hissed.

“No! D-6? Come
on that’s an urban legend.”

Legend aka
the CIA, had it that after the war, the paranoid Stalin had built a deeper and
more extensive Metro system below the Moscow Metro. This purported Metro, the
‘D-6’ supposedly linked various ministries and key installations and doubled
down as a mega bunker in case of a fallout with the West. Legend, again the CIA
book of facts, suggested that Stalin’s orders had been carried out well beyond the
initial scope.

Feigning
curiosity, Otto shook his head smugly. He probably deserved another punch. Mika
went into motion. Fist tightened. Elbow in line with Otto’s face. Pull back… and
boom.

Instead of
receiving the punch politely, Otto dodged the hurtling fist. As Mika’s knuckles,
with an incredibly poor coefficient of drag, a lowly 0.5, searched for some skin,
the butt of an AK 108 rifle with a better coefficient of drag (0.3), crashed
into Mika’s skull.

The Police
dudes patrolling this secret railway encircled the survivors. Marat and Vlad also
met with rifle butts and collapsed like a sack of rotten cabbage.

President
Petrova was more surprised than scared. There were still a ton of people milling
around them.

“Hey what
the fuck….I thought…” protested Petrova.

“Sorry for
the inconvenience Madam. We still mean no harm to Russia or… you, the
President. It’s just precautions,” announced an ebullient Otto. “Our guys will
take care of your guards. Trust me it’s for their own good. They won’t be
harmed…”

“Otto, I
don’t trust your brutes…”

“Oh a small
correction… they are
your
brutes.”

“Take me
to this weapon.”

“Absolutely
Madam, this way please.”

As Otto
and the President walked, the new guards formed a security cordon around her. A
few onlookers tried to observe, but the President’s entourage shooed them away.

“Ok. So if
this isn’t the D-6, is this an extension of the Moscow metro? What line is
this?”

“Madam, the
D-6 is real… but rather unspectacular. Unlike…”

“Unlike?”

“Rossiya-2
or R2”

“There is
an R2?”

“Yes.”

“My head
is spinning.”

“Of course
Madam, totally understandable… this way please, Madam I present to you the
Express One.”

They stood
in front of a sexy streamlined, fast looking train, whose livery beautifully
complemented the Russian flag.

“Express
One – The Presidential Train. Trust me Madam, this is sort of the train’s
maiden journey.”

“No one’s
ever ridden it?”

“It’s been
waiting for you.”

“Aww.”

As Otto
and the President strapped in, a group of stewardesses buzzed around efficiently.
They offered everything from caviar to king crabs.

“Alright
Otto, shoot,” ordered Petrova.

“Ya like I
said, the D-6 exists, but it’s just a glorified taxi service for the FSB brass…
ill planned, underutilized.”

“Well I
will add it to my agenda. So whats up with your Rossiya-2 or R2 is this some
secret metro below the D-6 built by Beria and Yezhov?”

“Not those
buffoons Madam. No way. Haha, Beria… what an excuse for a security chief. No,
this train, this station, this network is bigger than anything you can
imagine.”

“Bigger
than the D-6?”

“Think Bigger...”

“Bigger
than the Moscow Metro and D6 put together?”

“Bigger.”

“Shanghai
Metro?”

“Try even bigger.”

“Otto you
are nice and all. But I am getting a little tired of your antics. Its 3AM, well
past my nappy time ….”

“Madam, I
got three words.”

“Hurry the
fuck up.”

“
Underground
Trans-Siberian.
”

Beneath Moscow

“
Underground
Trans-Siberian
?” Anna Petrova stumbled with her thoughts.

As the
stunned President was bombarded with reiterations on the scale of this secret railway,
the maglev train chugged out of the Kremlin Station.

Its
cruising speed was a cool 1941 Km/hr on the long and sexy maglev tracks. As
they exited the station the cabin began to fill with brilliant sunlight. The
sudden change in lumens forced Anna Petrova to swivel away from the bragging Otto.
One second it seemed like the eastern suburbs of Moscow and the next they were
whizzing past the glorious Russian country side. Gentle rolling fields… on both
sides.

“Oh that’s
beautiful… Otto… Hey wait, I thought we were underground, plus it’s just 3 in
the morning… What the fuck?”

“Ah it’s
just an illusion, Madam. All our trains are super long and the little ones tend
to get bored. So we tiled our tunnels with giant LCDs.”

“Oh boy.
Oh boy…” President Petrova was afraid to ask the obvious question. “Where is
this ‘all the way’?”

“Muhahaha.
V to the L to the A to the D, to the I… wait to the O to the T to the … wait
V-L-A-D-I-V-” Otto was a terrible rapper.

“Vladivostok,
so the entire
Underground Trans-Siberian
is paneled with LCDs?”

“There you
go, Madam,” Otto grinned like proud pug.

“All the
way to Vladivostok? So how long does this thing take?

“About
eight hours tops. But this being the Express One, we should do it in seven
forty five.”

“I don’t
know what to say,” admitted the completely bamboozled President. She downed a
vodka shot, closed her eyes and shook her head in an effort to wake up from this
nightmare.

When she
reopened her eyes, the President saw the conniving dick Otto, the obsequious
attendants and the historic downtown of Nizhny Novgorod.

“Are we
already at Nizhny? Was that the fucking Novgorod Kremlin?” Nizhny Novgorod the
once super-secret closed Soviet city was five hundred Kms east of Moscow and most
surface
trains clocked in at 15hrs. Otto confirmed her fears. They had
breached the gates of Nizhny in forty minutes.

“Madam,
maybe we should invite the pilot for a drink. He is doing a fine job and I’m
sure it would be a great honor for him to meet his President for the first
time.”

“I
appreciate your offer. But no. I think I am going to be sick.”

Otto
clapped at a stewardess and ordered some honeyed lemon tea to suppress the
rebellion in Anna’s gut. “Don’t worry Ms. President we’ll Tiananmen the shit
out of it.”

A bad
commie joke? Ughh. Otto had tipped the rebellion and lost.

Anna
Petrova rushed to the restroom as a deferential stewardess held the door. One moment
the President was trying to quell some half masticated caviar and the next she
found herself falling into an untamed Volga. The President screamed as she fell
headfirst into the Russian river…

At about a
meter from impact, the tumbling President caught herself and cursed these freak
shows for going overboard with their damned LEDs and LCDs. The restroom’s floor
was one massive LED screen that made these Under-Russians seem like the South
Koreans of the Korean peninsula. After some frantic searching, Anna Petrova finally
unloaded onto the correct basin… which was a shaped like a hydroelectric dam…

After several
minutes and sodas Anna was feeling better. Or so it seemed.

“
Decembrists
Station, Krasnoyarsk
,” announced the train.

“Krasnoyarsk?
Jesus, how long was I in there?”

“Perm…
yeah since Perm. An hour maybe… perhaps a tad more.”

“Fuck. Ok.
So what’s the agenda here?”

“This is
one of our bigger facilities from a weapons stand point. We don’t have time to
go all the way to Magadan or Norilsk. Unless you insist…”

“Magadan?
I thought this was only a
Trans-Siberian
? Is there an underground
Rail
of Bones
too?”

“Madam, I
can assure you one thing… no bones were used to build any of this.”

That
actually sounded great. Relieved, Anna said, “Let’s go see this weapon.”

The
Presidential party exited the gleaming station and entered a cool Under-Krasnoyarsk
city. Apparently the
Underground Trans-Siberian
line was the highest
point in Otto’s world. Cities, due to lack of space had been dug out and they
had gone deeper and wider over time. The sprawl was inevitable.

This
underground Krasnoyarsk had everything from streets, avenues, street cars,
trams, shops, parks, universities and a ton of people. It even had stars in the
fake sky. “At night, the LEDs mimic nights and during the day they crank out sunlight,”
offered Otto.

“Of
course.”

A five
minute ride on a Zil limo, brought them to a modern looking office building.

A tall
gangly guy, with unsettled hair introduced himself as the Lead Weapons
Scientist, Mueller. After the perfunctory exchanges, they went into the
conference room. Mueller explained everything. He showed Petrova the weapon. He
explained its ins and outs. But there weren’t too many ins or outs. They were
done within fifteen minutes.

Anna
Petrova was super disappointed for the second time that night. That was
insanely anticlimactic. This weapon, was just a new missile based on existing
ICBMs. But instead of stock ICBMs the new ICBM looked like a regular commercial
aircraft. Essentially they could be sent into enemy territory like a scheduled
commercial airliner and go kaboom.

According
to Mueller, these ICBM-AVIs could be customized to look like any major airliner
in operation like the 777, 320, 737, 330, etc. Before Anna Petrova could
protest, Otto interjected “We also got most of the Antonovs, Tupolevs, Sukhois,
and Ilyushins.”

“Good.”

“Well we
are pretty much done here Ma’am,” said Mueller.

“That’s
it?”

“Pretty
much Ma’am,” added Otto.

President
Petrova sighed. “Ok, have a few obvious questions here. What’s your source of
power, how do you get the materials and what about your economy here? What do
you guys eat?”

“We mine,”
fired Otto.

“You mine?”

Mueller
took the lead, “Yes. We mine iron ore, we drill oil and we mine diamonds…
pretty much anything we need for research. Trust me it’s not easy.”

“Ughh...
no wonder Gazprom is a perennial loser.”

“But these
were the Koba’s orders... Stalin himself authorized this.”

“Fine,
whatever. What happens when you run out of stuff or you can’t get something here?
Say vodka or diapers?”

“Well
there is more to it Ma’am,” replied Otto as Mueller shifted uneasily, “it’s not
just the ores, sometimes when we can’t keep up with our weapon’s demands, we go
overboard… we borrow actual stuff from above the ground…”

“You mean
Russia… Russia on the surface?”

“Yep,”
nodded Otto.

“You mean
you come up and literally steal our shit. Jeez. Like what?”

“Borrow Madam,
borrow. We have built a few ‘special corridors’ or tunnels under industrial
centers... like say Magnitogorsk for steel, Samara for vehicles, Moscow-St.
Petersburg for everything, Komsomolsk for aircraft parts, Norilsk for nickel,
Volgograd-Makhachkala for food. We ‘borrow’.”

“Fuck,”
said the stunned Russian President.

“But we
were,” justified one of the scientists, “… following Herr Stalin’s orders… to
do whatever it takes to build this weapon.”

“No… just
do it… that’s what he said,” interjected another nameless scientist.

President
Petrova continued with the questioning, “Stalin said, just do it? Hmm. So what
else do you steal?”

After some
murmuring someone said, “People.”

“FUCK. Let
me guess you abduct Russia’s brightest to develop this super lame decoy
missile?”

“Yes Ma’am.
But I wouldn’t call it lame,” it was Otto the rat.

It hit
Anna like a Soviet hammer. It was hard. It was cold. It was heavy. It also explained
every one of Russia’s maladies. They stole her goods, her people’s productivity,
they stole resources, Russia’s resources and then they stole grown Russians… for
what…? To build this dipshity lame ass weapon… that was so pre-2001.

Otto
began, “Ma’am, I know what you are thinking. We get news down here too. But we
are not the reason why Russia has lagged….”

Petrova had
had enough with these co-opting retro-Nazis.

Petrova let
it rip, “You assholes are the reason… the only reason… why Russia has
underperformed and disappointed and imploded for so long. It wasn’t communism
or military pending. Neither the noble rouble, nor Afghanistan or even the CIA,
that brought down the USSR. It was you. You…. bastards…. you conniving little
Nazi bitches.”

“Madam you
aren’t getting the point. We were following…” it was Mueller.

“What…
Stalin’s orders? Dude get a grip.”

Petrova puffed
like a 70s era steam loco hauling a mile of coal across the tundra, “And, and
this so called weapon of yours… what a fucking joke? Let’s get real for a
minute! Forget the DARPA or the CIA, I bet even excuses like Ukraine and Serbia
have something in their panties to shoot your fucking… fugly planes…”

President
Petrova pushed on, “… haha… Russian people turn around and bend over… and planes?
That was your big friggin idea? Planes? Have you fucking seen the news lately,
you fucking retards?”

It seemed
like the tirade was getting through as the scientists and Otto bowed and looked
about nervously. Mueller tried a fresh sorry.

“Stuff
your sorries in your assholes… I want you all arrested… executed right now. Purged.
Yes that’s right, purged off the face off the earth. I never thought I would
say this. PURGED. I get it. Stalin’s had to do what he did. Coz he was just
dealing with morons.”

The
President turned to the lead security guy, “GUARDS, are we gonna purge or what?”

The group
of guards instantly went into attention and saluted their real President.
Allegiances had changed. After weighing the options they had decided to ditch
the nerds and back the politician.  And now they were ready for their first
ever purge. Yeah!!!

Even the
President was slightly surprised by the flipping of the guards. While she had
found the answers to some of Russia’s maladies, the eagerness of the
Presidential guards to carry out a purge was still a mystery.

Sensing a seismic
shit storm, Otto and Mueller blurted out something in unison.

“What?”

“We have
another project... another weapon…”

“Really?”
Anna asked sarcastically expecting more bullshit from this posse of insane
clowns.

“The new
weapon can
████████████
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America
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by the balls
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smash
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.”

“Are you
for real?” asked the still suspicious President. After getting a resounding
yes, she said, “Go on.”

“
████████████
 
█
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████████████
arctic =
████████████████████████
monkeys
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████████████
.
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████████████
rusty trombone =
████████████
silver back
████████████
Tim Hortons
 ██████████████
Tbilisi
████████████
double hump
████████████
snow patrol
████████████
.”

Anna
Petrova sat on a plush couch. She kept shaking her head. She had been doing so for
half an hour.

“Madam
trust me, this weapon is real.”

Finally she
looked up. “If this thing is half as good as you suggest… this is beyond
revolutionary... and you better not be bullshitting me… to avoid the purge.”