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“Mr. Pamfilov?”

“Yes. Who is this?”

“I had to lie to get your phone number. We don’t know each other. But I may have something for you. There was another attack last night. On the residence of the Patriarch. An attempt to assassinate him.”

“You’re crazy. An attempt on the Patriarch? Rubbish. There’d be no motive.”

“Not for the mafia, no. Why not get over there?”

“The Danilovski Monastery?”

“He doesn’t live there. He lives at Number Five Chisti Pereulok.”

Pamfilov sat in his car listening to the whine of the disconnected phone. He was stunned. Nothing like this had ever happened in his career. If it was half true, it was the biggest story he would ever handle.

When he arrived at the side street he found it blocked off. Normally he could flash his press pass and walk past the cordon. Not this time. Fortunately he spotted a militia detective inspector whom he knew personally and called out to him. The man walked over to the cordon.

“What’s going on?” asked the reporter.

“Burglars.”

“You’re Homicide.”

“They killed the night watchman.”

“The Patriarch. Alexei, is he safe?”

“How the fuck do you know he lives here?”

“Never mind. Is he safe?”

“Yes, he’s away at Zagorsk. Look, it was just a burglary that went wrong.”

“I have a tip they were after the Patriarch.”

“Bullshit. Just robbers.”

“What’s to rob?”

The detective looked worried.

“Where did you get that from?”

“Never mind. Could it be true? Did they steal anything?”

“No. Just shot the guard, searched the house, and ran.”

“So they
were
looking for someone. And he wasn’t there. Boy, what a story.”

“You be bloody careful,” warned the detective. “There’s no evidence.”

But the detective was becoming worried. He became even more so when a militiaman beckoned him over to his car. On the phone was a full general of the Presidium. Within a few sentences he began to hint at the same thing as the reporter.

¯

ON December 23, the media were in uproar. In the early editions each newspaper concentrated on the particular story to which Monk had directed it. As the journalists read one another’s stories, there were copious rewrites that knitted the four attacks together.

The morning television news carried composite accounts of four separate assassination attempts, one of them successful. In the other three cases, they reported, only extreme luck had saved the intended victims.

No credence was being given to the notion of burglaries that went wrong. Analysts were at pains to point out that there would be no point in a burglary at the home of a pensioned-off general, nor the apartment of a single senior police officer while ignoring all the other flats in the building, nor on the home of the Patriarch.

Burglary might be the justification for raiding the home of the hugely wealthy banker Leonid Bernstein, but his surviving guards testified that the onslaught had all the hallmarks of a military attack. Moreover, they reported, the attackers had been looking specifically for their employer. Kidnapping was also a possibility, or murder. But in two cases there was no point in a kidnap and in the case of the general it had not been attempted.

Most pundits speculated that the perpetrators must have been the all-pervading gangster underworld, long since the cause of hundreds of murders and kidnappings. Two commentators went further, however, pointing out that while organized crime might well have reason to hate Major General Petrovsky of the gang-busting GUVD, and some might have a score to settle with the banker Bernstein, who could hate an old general who was a triple-Hero to boot, or the Patriarch of Moscow and All the Russias?

The editorial writers deplored for the thousandth time the astronomical crime levels in the country and two called on Acting President Markov to do precisely that—act—to forestall a total breakdown of law and order in the countdown to the crucial elections in twenty-four days’ time.

Monk began his second day of anonymous telephoning in the late morning, when the hacks, exhausted from their labors of the previous day, began to trickle into their offices.

A rolled-up tissue in each cheek disguised his voice sufficiently for it not to be recognized as the caller of the day before. To each of the possessors of the major bylines in the seven morning and evening newspapers who had carried the four-assassinations story, he conveyed the same message, starting with Pamfilov of
Pravda
and Repin of
Izvestia.

“You don’t know me, and I cannot give you my name. It is more than my life is worth. But as one Russian to another I ask you to trust me.

“I am a very senior officer in the Black Guard. But I am also a practicing Christian. For many months now I have been more and more distressed by the increasing anti-Christ, anti-Church sentiments being expressed in the inner heart of the UPF, mainly by Komarov and Grishin. Behind what they say in public, they hate the church and democracy, intend to set up a one-party state and rule like the Nazis.

“Now I have had enough. I have to speak out. It was Colonel Grishin who sentenced the old general to die because Uncle Kolya saw through the facade and denounced Komarov. The banker because he too was not fooled. You may not know this, but he used his influence to force the TV stations to cut off the propaganda broadcasts. The Patriarch because he feared the UPF and was about to go public. And the GUVD general because he raided the Dolgoruki mafia who are the paymasters of the UPF. If you don’t believe me, check out what I say. It was the Black Guard who mounted those four attacks.”

With that he put the phone down, leaving seven Moscow journalists traumatized. When they recovered, they began to check.

Leonid Bernstein was out of the country, but the two commercial television channels quietly leaked that the change in editorial policy had come from the banking consortium to whom they were in hock.

General Nikolayev was dead, but
Izvestia
carried extracts of the earlier interview under the banner headline: “
WAS THIS WHY HE DIED
?”

The six early-hours raids by the GUVD on the warehouses, arsenals, and casino of the Dolgoruki gang were common knowledge. Only the Patriarch remained cloistered in the Zagorsk Monastery and unable to confirm that he too might be targeted as an enemy of the UPF.

By midafternoon the headquarters dacha of Igor Komarov off the Kiselny Boulevard was under siege. Inside, there was an atmosphere close to panic.

In his own office Boris Kuznetsov was in shirtsleeves, damp patches under each arm, chain-smoking cigarettes he had given up two years earlier and trying to cope with a battery of phones that never stopped ringing.

“No, it is
not
true,” he shouted at inquiry after inquiry. “It is a foul lie, a gross libel, and action will be taken in the courts against anyone who gives it further currency. No, there is no link between this party and any mafia gang, financial or otherwise. Mr. Komarov has gone on record time and again as the man who is going to clean up Russia. ...
What
papers now being investigated by the GUVD? ... We have nothing to fear. ... Yes, General Nikolayev did express reservations about our policies, but he was a very old man. His death was tragic but utterly unrelated. ... You just cannot say that; any comparison between Mr. Komarov and Hitler will be greeted with immediate litigation. ...
What
senior officer of the Black Guard? …”

In his own office Colonel Anatoli Grishin was wrestling with his own problem. As a lifelong officer of the Second Chief Directorate, KGB, it had been his job to hunt down spies. That Monk had caused trouble, massive trouble, he had no doubt. But these new allegations were worse: a senior officer of his own elite, ultra-loyal, fanatical Black Guard turned renegade? He had selected every one of them, all six thousand. The senior officers were his personal appointees. One of them a practicing Christian, a wimp with a conscience when the very pinnacle of power was within sight? Impossible.

Yet he recalled reading once of something the Jesuits used to say: Give me the boy until the age of seven and I will give you the man. Could one of his best men have reverted to the altar boy of years ago? He would have to check. Every single résumé of every senior officer would have to be gone through with a fine-tooth comb.

And what did “senior” mean? How senior? Down two ranks—ten men. Down three ranks, forty men. Down five ranks, almost one hundred. It would be a time-consuming task, and there was no time. In the short term he might have to purge his entire upper echelon, sequester them all in a safe place and forfeit his most experienced commanders. One day, he promised himself, those responsible for this catastrophe would pay, and how they would pay. Starting with Jason Monk. The very thought of the American agent’s name caused his knuckles to whiten on the edge of his desk.

Just before five, Boris Kuznetsov secured an interview with Komarov. He had been asking for two hours for a chance to see the man he hero worshiped in order to propose what he felt should be done.

As a student in America Kuznetsov had studied and been deeply impressed by the power of slick and proficient public relations to generate mass support for even the most meretricious nonsense. Apart from his idol Igor Komarov, he worshiped the power of words and the moving image to persuade, delude, convince, and finally overcome all opposition. That the message was a lie was irrelevant.

Like politicians and lawyers, he was a man of words, convinced there was no problem that words could not resolve. The idea that a day might come when the words ran out and ceased to persuade; when other, better words might outmaneuver and trounce his own; when he and his leader might no longer be believed—such a day was unimaginable to Kuznetsov.

Public relations, they had called it in America, the multibillion-dollar industry that could make a talentless oaf a celebrity, a fool a sage, and a base opportunist a statesman. Propaganda, they called it in Russia, but it was the same tool.

With this tool and with Litvinov’s brilliant- film imagery and studio editing he had helped transform a former engineer with the gift of oratory into a colossus, a man on the threshold of the greatest prize in Russia, the presidency itself.

The Russian media, accustomed to the crude, pedestrian propaganda of their Communist youth, had been credulous babes when presented with the slick, persuasive campaigns he had mounted for Igor Komarov. Now something had gone wrong, badly wrong.

There was another voice, that of a passionate priest, echoing across Russia through the radio and television, media Kuznetsov regarded as his personal fiefdom, urging faith in a greater God and the return of another icon.

Behind the priest was the man on the telephone—he had been told of the campaign of anonymous telephone calls—whispering lies, but oh-so-persuasive lies, into the ears of senior journalists and commentators he thought he knew and owned.

For Boris Kuznetsov the answer still lay in the words of Igor Komarov, words that could not fail to convince, that had never failed.

When he entered the leader’s office he was shocked by the transformation. Komarov was behind his desk looking dazed. Spread all over the floor were the daily papers, their headlines blaring accusations upward toward the ceiling. Kuznetsov had already seen them all, the allegations about General Nikolayev, attacks and raids, gangsters and mafia money. No one had ever dared talk about Igor Komarov like that before.

Fortunately, Kuznetsov knew what had to be done. Igor Komarov must speak, and all would be well.

“Mr. President, I really must urge you to give a major press conference tomorrow.”

Komarov stared at him for several seconds as if trying to comprehend what he was saying. In his whole political career, and with Kuznetsov’s approval, he had avoided press conferences. They were unpredictable. He preferred the staged interview, with pre-submitted questions, the set speech, the prepared address, the adoring rally.

“I do not hold press conferences,” he snapped.

“Sir, it is the only way to terminate these foul rumors. The media speculation is getting out of hand. I cannot control it anymore. No one could. It is feeding on itself.”

“I hate press conferences, Kuznetsov. You know that.”

“But you are so good with the press, Mr. President. Reasoned, calm, persuasive. They will listen to you. You alone can denounce the lies and rumors.”

“What do the public opinion polls say?”

“National approval for yourself, sir, forty-five percent and falling. From seventy percent eight weeks ago. Zyuganov of the Socialist Union, thirty-three and rising. Markov, the acting president for the Democratic Alliance, twenty-two, rising slightly. That excludes the undecided. I have to say, sir, the past two days could cost another ten percent, maybe more, when the effect filters into the ratings.”

“Why should I hold a press conference?”

“It’s national coverage, Mr. President. Every major TV station will hang on each word you speak. You know when you speak, no one can resist.”

Finally Igor Komarov nodded.

“Arrange it. I will create my address myself.”

¯

THE press conference was held in the great banquet hall of the Metropol Hotel at eleven the next morning. Kuznetsov began by welcoming the national and foreign press and lost no time in pointing out that certain allegations of unspeakable foulness had been made over the preceding two days concerning the policies and activities of the Union of Patriotic Forces. It was his privilege, in offering a complete and convincing rebuttal to these ignoble smears to welcome to the podium “the next president of Russia, Igor Komarov.”

The UPF leader strode from between the curtains at the rear of the stage and walked to the lectern. He began as he always began, when speaking to rallies of the faithful, by talking about the Great Russia he intended to create once the people had honored him with the presidency. After five minutes he became disconcerted by the silence. Where was the responsive spark? Where was the applause? Where were the cheerleaders? He raised his eyes to some distant clouds and evoked the glorious history of his nation, now in the grip of foreign bankers, profiteers, and criminals. His peroration resounded through the hall, but the hall did not rise to its feet, right hands upraised in the UPF salute. When he stopped the silence continued.