Chapter Four

The May Day Victory parade kicked off at eight o’clock the next morning.

Forty columns of Okupatsi troops marched past the Fifth Avenue reviewing stand. They looked impressive in their crisp lime-green uniforms. Eyes right, weapons held tight against their chests, their helmets and bayonets gleamed in the early sun.

Follow-on troops carried banners bearing socialist slogans. They were followed by more soldiers carrying huge portraits of Stalin, Lenin, and Marx. All the while, the pair of noisy Yak-38 VTOL fighters circled continuously overhead, red-dye contrails spewing from their exhausts.

Thanks to the joint ops cadre, a bounty of vodka had arrived from Russia earlier that week, twenty-six thousand gallons of it. Carried in huge metal kegs, a substantial portion reached Midtown at the parade’s conclusion. This was when the real celebration began. Thousands of soldiers took advantage of the free alcohol. They drank and sang and danced in the streets. Music blasted from everywhere. Fireworks were lit off.

Out on Eighth Avenue, a handful of T-72 tank crews drunkenly fired their massive 122-millimeter guns into the Hudson River, killing thousands of fish. At high noon, the three dozen Russian ships anchored off Battery Park began blasting their horns and would not stop. The Yak fighter jets returned over Midtown every half hour or so to perform wildly reckless—some said drunken—maneuvers, one trying to outdo the other, to the delight of the boozy crowds below.

This raucous citywide party would last through the night and into the following day.

The Russian success was also celebrated on the top floor of 30 Rock.

Enveloped in security gear, guarded by nearly a hundred Militsiya police, and off-limits even to the three commanders of the Sostva, it was the kvartira v nebe, the apartment in the sky, the lavish penthouse that Commissar Vladimir Zmeya Mikhailovich, chief of NKVD operations in America, called home.

With fifteen rooms, six fireplaces, six bars, and two Jacuzzis, the space included a vast kitchen and dining area and an even larger function room. Lots of polished brass, lots of red oak walls. It was wrapped in floor-to-ceiling windows and had a view that seemed to go all the way to California.

By midnight, the penthouse’s ballroom was crowded with senior NKVD officers: one hundred and six of them, all in black dress jackets, Cossack pants, and knee-high Kirza boots.

This was a very exclusive group, the top of the NKVD’s chain of command in America. Still, every officer had to pass three extensive security checks just to get to the front door, including surrendering all firearms.

There were a similar number of high-priced prostitutes in the room. Some had been dragooned into being waitresses and barmaids; others mingled with the crowd. All were blond; all were wearing short tuxedo-like negligee dresses and black heels. They, too, had had to pass rigorous security measures for entry into the penthouse, including spending a week in isolation, under twenty-four-hour NKVD surveillance.

The penthouse itself was guarded by ninety-two Militsiya special-operations police. They were assisted by two dozen Milashki—or Cuties—an all-female NKVD unit who processed IDs, checked fingerprints, and operated body scanners. All had pledged their lives to keep Zmeya safe.

As for the Chekskis, none had ever gotten within twenty floors of this place. The Militsiya considered their NKVD cousins foul and unstable, a view shared by the commissar himself.

A stage had been set up at one end of the big function room. A curtain behind it hid a massive, well-stocked horseshoe bar and, beyond that, windows to the outside world.

While the city went crazy below, no alcohol had been served up here yet, putting everyone on edge, especially the NKVD officers. Although this was the first reception held in Zmeya’s new American apartment in the sky, they’d attended similar functions he’d organized overseas in the last couple of years. They knew how terrifying they could be.

The problem was the boss himself. Zmeya was a masterful tactician, a whiz at intelligence gathering, and as cold and calculating and vicious as they came. He got things done, which is why he was here in New York. The Kremlin adored him.

But Zmeya had issues, one of them being EDS, emotional disregulation syndrome. Antisocial behavior, compulsiveness, hostility, lack of restraint, sexual deviation, he’d displayed all of these symptoms in public at various times. He had medication but took it sparingly.

The commissar also had a second, even more disturbing, condition: He was a bad drunk.

Anything could happen with him after a few cocktails, especially if he hadn’t taken his meds. The horror stories were well known. During one gathering in newly occupied France a year ago, Zmeya drunkenly ordered the hats of two latecomers nailed into their skulls because they didn’t take them off quick enough in his presence.

Zmeya demanded that his lovers beat him before the act, enjoying bloodletting as foreplay. Videotaping his assignations was routine; three-camera shoots were de rigueur. He also loved to watch other people have sex. As part of his massive luggage train, he carried a giant glass terrarium. Twenty feet by twenty, it contained a king-size bed and nothing else. Toward the end of almost every drunken gathering, Zmeya would select a couple of guests—not always of the opposite sex—and force them inside the huge glass room.

They would be ordered to have intercourse or else, while the commissar and selected attendees sat outside and watched. If Zmeya liked the performance, the participants would be rewarded with their lives. If not, and depending on how drunk Zmeya was, a more unpleasant outcome awaited them.

Attending the commissar’s bacchanals was mandatory; it’s just that guests didn’t know if they’d live to see the party end. A single wrong word, or if Zmeya didn’t like the look of you—or your female companion—and you might never see the sun rise again.

The function room’s lights dimmed and Zmeya himself finally stepped out from behind the curtain. There was no applause. The one hundred officers saluted him, and he saluted back. Then the room fell silent. Half the crowd was in awe, the rest were trying hard to look that way.

Zmeya was dressed in black as always. A fitted NKVD uniform, a tailored leather trench coat, and Kirza boots. His face was partially hidden by an oversize black fedora, pulled down low, and dark glasses.

He was handsome, though, or at least what could be seen of him. His narrow jawline appeared chiseled from the same granite as the penthouse’s kitchen counters, but the rest of his face was soft and almost feminine. He had blond hair and cobalt-blue eyes. Standing six feet one and obviously muscular, he was so good-looking, in the past, people had mistaken him for being German.

Zmeya reminded some of a younger version of another ghastly Russian hero, Viktor Robotov, the superspy. Positively Luciferish in looks, no one ever mistook Viktor for being anything but Russian. Still there was an eerie resemblance.

Zmeya had appeared out of nowhere two years before, joining the reconstituted NKVD as an interrogation officer in Leningrad. In just a few weeks, he’d eliminated all his rivals, quickly moving up the ranks. Twenty months later, he’d taken over the coveted top spot, commander of the NKVD’s Foreign Operations Bureau. This was where he and others had planned how to take over the world.

From a nobody to running the most feared police organization in the world in less than two years? Gossip said Zmeya had had substantial inside help during his rocket-like ascent, assists from someone even higher up the very secretive Moscow food chain.

Zmeya stepped up to the microphone. He covertly retrieved a handful of index cards from his pocket and palmed them in his left hand. This would be his victory speech. But he was not a good public speaker and had displayed anxiety when addressing large groups in the past.

“We are here to make the vision of our leaders back in Moscow a reality,” he began. “And we have taken a big step in that regard as our forces have successfully occupied the grandest city in the world.”

A murmur immediately went through the crowd. Something was not right here. Zmeya usually communicated in a low, surly voice, hunched over the microphone, at times barely audible. He also tended to phrase everything breathlessly, as if every other word contained breaking news.

But now he was standing straight, head up and projecting his voice in an even manner. He was speaking clearly, enunciating every word with its proper emphasis. What’s more, his straggly hair appeared to be combed under his hat and he was wearing a sexy two-day growth of beard.

None of this was normal.

“Our goal is to finally put an end to America and replace it with a new country,” he continued. “Our new country. One large colony of Russia. A Communist paradise. A paradise we can all live in together.”

He paused again, almost laughing at those last few words. He seemed to be happy and nervous at the same time—and completely sober. Again, not normal.

He smiled, briefly, but long enough to elicit another gasp from the crowd. Few people had ever seen him smile. He realized immediately what he’d done, and his face flushed.

He returned to his index cards. “But to get there, a lot of work still needs to be done, and more battles need to be fought. I’ll be blunt with you: This continent needs to be cleansed—and we are here to do it.”

More murmurs from the crowd, then an uncomfortable silence. A signal from offstage made him put down his notes. This would be a new experience for him. Zmeya unscripted.

“But let’s not dwell on such gloomy matters,” he said brightly. “Before coming out here, I received a message from Moscow. They are so pleased with the results of this past month, they’ve asked me to declare this city renamed. It is no longer New York City, my friends. From this moment on, it will be known as Russkiy-NYC.”

Now there was applause. A lot of it. It became boisterous and stayed that way until Zmeya signaled for calm. This brought everyone’s attention back to him. Again, the people standing before him wondered about his odd behavior. Nothing had changed in his job performance. Just an hour earlier, he’d signed an executive order allowing the Chekskis to execute and dispose of two hundred “homeless hooligans” they’d picked up, including children. As head of the secret police, he’d okayed orders like this every night this week and many during the previous month. No trials. No explanations. Just cleansing.

So why this change?

After the applause died down completely, Zmeya stood in silence for a few seconds. His eyes darted left, and some in the crowd caught the shadow of a woman standing just offstage. She was wearing a long, dark cloak with its hood up, showing only her face, most of which was in shadow. Still, that was enough for people to see that she was stunning.

There had been rumors of a new girl in the commissar’s life and reports that she was different. These were hard to give credence to, though, because there were so many Zmeya stories floating around and so many women in the past couple years.

But, at that moment, it seemed like an angel was standing just twenty feet away from him, directing him, encouraging him, making him seem more … human.

Finally, Zmeya tossed away the index cards, wished everyone a good evening, and left the stage with a big wave. Thirty seconds later, he and his companion were seen walking through the shadows backstage, hand-in-hand. Then they were gone, off into the night.

The guests were stunned. Nothing like this had ever happened before. Zmeya leaving his own party? It was unthinkable.

But then the guests’ surprise turned to giddiness, then giggling, and finally to outright laughter of pure relief.

Maybe they’d see the sunrise after all.