Moscow
August 1991
“What did I tell you about Gorbachev?” asked Boris Nikolayevich. “The crazy motherfucker thought he could save the Soviet Union with his asinine reforms, but he’s doing more to destroy it than even your CIA ever could have done.” Yeltsin laughed at the thought and filled Sloane’s vodka glass.
“He’s the darling of Western European governments, and the effeminate intellectuals over at Foggy Bottom sure love him, that’s for sure,” offered Mako as they watched the Moscow evening news program between shots of vodka and the ranting of Boris Nikolayevich.
“How could your experts not see through what he was doing?” Boris Nikolayevich was getting frustrated just thinking about the man and his politics. “At first, Gorbachev tried to tell everyone that the socialist system was still working, but it was the people who had become lazy. His first reform was to change their way of thinking. So, what does he do? This will really piss you off, Misha. Remember the anti-alcohol campaign? The Party suddenly announces it doesn’t want people to drink anymore. When the police stations became overcrowded with drunks each evening, they started hauling them out of town and dropping them off some eight to ten miles away. Every night you’d see armies of drunks staggering their way back toward town.”
“He should have been hanged for that alone,” declared Mako, feigning outrage over Yeltsin’s retelling of Gorbachev’s infamous campaign to eradicate alcoholism and drunkenness.
“You laugh, but the bastards closed 90 percent of the liquor stores. What do you think happened? The working class began to buy sugar, flour, aftershave, and cleaning products, and the production of moonshine went up 300 percent overnight. Thousands of people died from alcohol poisoning. Then they plowed up hundred-year-old vineyards in Ukraine and Moldavia, and they almost destroyed the local economies. It wasn’t until the Party realized how much it was losing from lost tax revenues that the campaign ended.”
Boris Nikolayevich was getting himself worked up. “Then the sonofabitch starts his campaign against illegal income. The problem was that the entire country lived off ‘illegal income.’ Without ‘illegal’ activities like renting a room, or selling vegetables you grew in your garden, or using your car as a private taxi, the poor Soviet citizens would have starved! The man did not understand economics or human nature. He was nothing but a fucking communist trying to perpetuate the system! Instead of making everyone work within the system, he just made sure that everyone had to pay more and more bribes to survive outside the system. The country is so corrupt now; it is rotting from the inside. ”
Mako looked at Boris Nikolayevich and smiled. He remembered a dozen similar conversations in the past, especially when Gorbachev sacked Yeltsin from the Politburo back in 1987. Boris Nikolayevich had gotten a little too vocal in his criticism of Gorbachev and the Politburo, and the general secretary had shown his teeth. Yeltsin had bounced back, of course, and started his spectacular rise in the Russian government, culminating in his victory in the first Russian democratic election for president in history two months earlier. Boris Nikolayevich’s power was still on the rise, and he enjoyed watching Gorbachev’s star fade. He tried to take most of the credit for that naturally.
Mako was in Moscow at Yeltsin’s invitation, something which happened more and more often now that the Communist Bloc was careening out of control toward self-destruction. Boris Nikolayevich got up from his easy chair, walked over to the television, and turned it off. He looked at Mako solemnly.
“Misha, I called you to Moscow for a reason.” Again, the pause and somber stare. Yeltsin sometimes engaged in histrionics, but this time the melodrama was sincere.
“Gorbachev is on vacation in the Crimea. Like Nero playing the fiddle while Rome burned. His own people are planning to overthrow him in a coup d’état to save the Soviet Union from the reformers. I’m talking about Kryuchkov, head of the KGB; Yazov, Minister of Defense; Pugo, Minister of the Interior; Pavlov, the Prime Minister, and a few other political hacks. All the heavyweights of the USSR.”
“Jesus! You’re sure about this?” Mako’s first thought was that this piece of information had to be exaggerated.
“Misha, ne pizdi! I am the president of Russia. Can you give me the benefit of the doubt and imagine I might have intelligence sources that know something?”
“Sorry, Boris Nikolayevich. Sometimes the things you tell me are pretty wild. Like that whole deal with Suslov and the clones.”
“Ha!” Yeltsin chased his shot of vodka with a Heineken. “Here we go again. If you had been with me last week in Sverdlovsk, my little bourgeois friend, you’d change your tune about Suslov…that’s for sure. Even that rat-faced Putin has come around, except I’m concerned at what the KGB wants to do with that project. Anyway, that’s neither here nor there. We’re talking about a putsch that’s going to happen in a couple of days.”
Yeltsin stood up and began pacing around the room. “I could stop it if I wanted, but I’m going to let it happen. I don’t think the bastards can pull it off. They don’t have the balls, and it will put the USSR out of its misery. I’m going to see to that.”
Mako was left to ruminate over that startling piece of information as Yeltsin walked out of the dacha to meet a black Toyota Land Cruiser with darkly tinted windows that had just pulled up into the circular driveway of the presidential dacha. He was debating whether to let Drake Herrin know about this wild declaration by the president of Russia. The information was so sensitive that it could only have come from a handful of possible sources. Was it worth the risk to place Boris Nikolayevich in possible jeopardy, so the U.S. government would know the shit was about to hit the fan in Moscow?
Sloane was contemplating the implications of an attempted coup d’état on the security of the United States when he saw Nastya and Vasiliy coming into the dacha loaded down with large plastic bags full of summer delicacies from the market. At seventeen years of age, Vasiliy could have passed for either a Russian or an American teenager, at least physically. He was already six feet tall and would have had finely chiseled features if it weren’t for a broken nose suffered in a boxing match with the light heavyweight champion of Kazakhstan earlier that fall. Vasiliy himself had decided to end his amateur fighting career after that match to the great relief of his mother. An intellectual intensity accompanied his love for physical tests of courage and strength, and that seriousness of purpose, evident in his eyes and rigid jaw set, distinguished him from his peers, both Russian and American. Vasiliy’s native Russian was complemented by an excellent command of English which he spoke with only a slight accent. He knew his father was a “confidential” American economics advisor to his great uncle, and he chafed at Sloane’s lengthy absences. He needed a father but realized his was only part time and half-ass.
“Privet, Pap!” Vasiliy greeted Mako as he walked into the dacha kitchen.
“You should speak English with me, Vasiliy. It’s good practice for you.”
“Why’s that? Are you planning to take me to America some day?” Vasiliy couldn’t help but let a little sarcasm slip into his response.
“You would give up the life of Russian royalty and trade it in for the American middle class?”
“Someday I’d like to see where my father came from and be in a place I don’t have to hide my roots.” Vasiliy spoke very matter-of-factly, but there was no resentment in his words, just a recognition of reality. “Pap, you really shouldn’t drink this much,” added Vasiliy, pointing to the nearly empty bottle of Pshenichnaya on the table.
“It hasn’t seemed to hurt your great uncle’s career, has it?” Mako didn’t intend to listen to a lecture on lifestyle and poured himself another shot of vodka.
“It will. Give it time.” Vasiliy predicted and went off to his bedroom.
●
“It’s happening, Misha. Get your ass out of bed. We’re going to my office!” Boris Nikolayevich burst into the bedroom where Mako and Nastya were still sleeping early on the morning of August 19. “You’ve got ten minutes to get dressed. Gorbachev is under house arrest in the Crimea, and tanks are rolling into Moscow. This is it.”
An hour later at 9:00 a.m. Yeltsin and Sloane arrived at the Russian White House after a wild ride through the Russian countryside and crisscrossing Moscow to avoid possible roadblocks. Boris Nikolayevich and his top Russian advisors met immediately and issued a declaration denouncing the anti-constitutional coup and urging the military not to support the usurpers. A general strike was called. Since all Yeltsin-controlled newspapers as well as radio and televisions stations had been shut down, the declaration was distributed in flyers around the city. By early afternoon crowds had begun gathering around the Russian White House to block an expected military assault by the army. Sloane had become concerned about Yeltsin’s inaction and called him aside for a private conversation away from his advisors.
“Boris Nikolayevich, I think it’s time for you to address the people. Things are hanging in the balance right now. The hardliners are hesitating. They’re afraid to launch an attack because of the crowds out front. Talk to the people and the troops; it could be the turning point.”
“Good idea, Misha. I hear there’s an independent television crew out there. We might be able to get it all broadcast. What do you think I should say?” asked Yeltsin. Since the events in Sverdlovsk back in 1979, he trusted Sloane’s tactical abilities implicitly.
“I’ve put a few ideas down on paper. How do you think this sounds?” Sloane started to read from a scrap of paper.
Storm clouds of terror and dictatorship are gathering over the whole country. They must not be allowed to bring eternal night.
Yeltsin smiled. “I love that. Probably should appeal directly to the soldiers out there as well.”
“Got that covered too, Boris Nikolayevich. How do you like this?”
Your commanders have ordered you to storm the White House and to arrest me. But I, as the elected President of Russia, give you the order to turn your tanks around and not to fight against your own people.
“Misha, that’s damned good. Probably should throw something emotional and patriotic in there too.”
“Yeah, I thought about that. Here’s a line I remember from War and Peace:
I believe in this tragic hour you can make the right choice.
The honor and glory of Russian men of arms shall not be stained with the blood of the people.”
Yeltsin smiled broadly. “Brilliant. Let’s go with it. Where do you think I should deliver this little speech?”
“Let’s get up on top of that lead tank out there. Get a few of your security guys up with you. I’ll stand up there beside you as well. It’ll be one hell of a photo op. It might even make you famous.”
“Misha, you are so full of shit!”