Feyodov had gotten where he had by manipulating the Communist system. Early on it was his father's intervention. Later it was a flawlessly executed practice of strategically alternating between political backstabbing and bootlicking. He had compelled others to follow his orders at gunpoint so that his star might shine more brightly. At his various cozy appointments, his successes came on the strained backs of others. But he-Boris Vanovich Feyodov-could never claim credit for personally achieving anything in his life.
On the day he was released from the hospital, Feyodov learned that he had been dishonorably discharged from the military the day he had been discovered in the Grozny cellar.
For Boris Feyodov-with his career gone, his country lost and the only world he understood vanished into the mists of history-there was only one way out. In his service trunk he found his father's old World War II revolver, a treasured memento of the only Feyodov who had truly earned his rank.
With a bottle in one hand and the great field marshal's gun in the other, Feyodov staggered out into the cold streets of Moscow. Near a chain-link fence that overlooked the river he took a last bracing swig of vodka. Smashing the bottle to the frozen ground, he slurred a curse at the cold air and stuck the barrel of the gun into his open mouth.
And there he stood. The night wind cutting through his greatcoat. The twinkling lights of the city reflecting on the rolling waves, now a garish siren call to capitalism.
Feyodov struggled with the gun. His teeth and tongue tasted the metal. His finger almost touched the trigger.
But in the end he was too much the coward. Drawing the cold barrel from between his chapped lips, he hurled the gun into the Moscow River. Boots crunching on the broken glass, the general fell sobbing against the fence.
The weeks after that were a blur of hard drink and a hazy gray twilight of pitiful anguish. He barely remembered being approached at a bar by a former subordinate in the Red Army-a colonel who had been stationed at Sary Shagan. The months-long hangover hadn't even lifted before he found himself working for the black market.
So he became a criminal. So what? Wasn't everyone in Russia a pimp or a whore to the West these days? And since it seemed unlikely he would ever work up the nerve to kill himself, he would have to eat. Besides, this new Russia inspired corruption. No, it deserved it.
Many of his new associates were former military men like him, betrayed by the system that had made them all gods.
No one knew of his disgrace. The war in Chechnya was too important for the Kremlin to allow news of its cowardly general to be leaked to the public.
Almost without effort, Feyodov climbed the ranks. He soon learned that capitalism and communism were not so different at their most basic levels. He applied his old tactics to his new life, killing or currying favor until in scarcely more than a year's time he became one of the new power elite in Russia. A crime lord.
Many who marveled at the way he worked the system assumed the old Communist had become a born-again capitalist. But the truth was, Boris Vanovich Feyodov was the hollowest of hollow men, loathing life but frightened of death. He did what he did only because he had no idea what else to do.
When he was approached by the fools of Barkley early on in his new career, he agreed to see them only because of their promise of money.
Zen Bower and Gary Jenfeld had met with Boris Feyodov at the Moscow McDonald's. The men had owned an ice cream shop in the city and out of necessity knew well of the Russian underworld. Their contacts had pointed them to Feyodov.
"We hear you're someone who can get things done," Zen had said craftily at that first meeting almost a year before.
Zen and Gary hunched over their trays of food.
Feeling very much like spies, they glanced at doors and windows.
"What do you want?" Feyodov demanded. He was a busy man now, with no time for nonsense. "We come from a small community in America," Zen whispered. "But please don't hold that against us. The truth is, we've had it with being part of that whole love-it-or-leave-it, apple pie, racist, sexist, homophobic testament to dead-white-maledom. We want out, and we're willing to pay."
"You want out of what? America?" Feyodov scoffed. "I have seen your kind before. You men are fools."
He started to get up. Zen grabbed his wrist. "You don't know what we're willing to do. Or pay. "
There was an intensity in his eyes and voice that Feyodov hadn't seen in years. It was the earnestness of a diehard Communist. Someone willing to do anything for the great People's cause. Feyodov retook his seat.
Zen smiled. "We need nuclear weapons," he hissed.
"Although we're firmly antinuke," Gary interjected.
"That way, pig America would never dream of attacking," Zen said. "We could bury a couple ICBM silos on the Barkley U campus, target L.A. and San Diego. You give us one of the long-range suckers, and we could even threaten the East Coast. That way Washington has to stay off our backs. Without the jackbooted threat of Uncle Sam breathing down our necks, we can finally create Marx's dream of a socialist utopia."
Feyodov looked hard at Zen Bower. "I would not sell you idiots a water pistol, let alone a nuclear weapon."
He stood once more.
Zen was growing desperate. As Feyodov started walking across the dining area of the restaurant, the ice cream man called frantically after the former general.
"Don't you want revenge against the filthy capitalists who destroyed your workers' paradise?" the American shouted.
The words seemed to echo at him from down a long tunnel.
It was a moment like no other Boris Feyodov had ever experienced in his life. It was an epiphany. An instance of pure, crystalline realization.
These men had money and hated America. Feyodov hated both America and Russia. What's more, he had contacts, power and a decade-old secret. And the weapon that went with it.
The outline of a plan came to him in a flash.
On wooden legs, he returned to the table. He accepted their money. Seemed to do everything they asked. He gave them their weapon, the means by which they hoped to secede from the country that had given them everything in abundance. But even as he brought over the particle-beam device piece by piece and set it up in that wealthy California community, the former Red Army general kept secret a scheme of his own. One he hoped he had the nerve to execute.
Boris Feyodov would get his revenge against this Russia that had made him face the mirror and see his true self. He would have vengeance, too, against America for bringing the land of his birth to ruin. He would play both sides against each other in a final showdown. He alone would bring the Cold War roaring back to the boiling point. And in order to do all this, he would manipulate the imbeciles of Barkley just as he had the Communist leaders of old.
And when the bombs started to fall like summer rain, General Boris Vanovich Feyodov might just be sitting there to greet them. A smile of triumph on his tired, sagging face.
Chapter 20
As he stormed through the network of underground tunnels beneath the city of Barkley, Boris Feyodov did not smile.
His boots clattered urgently along the metal plates. All around heavy insulated pipes channeled power to the smuggled particle-beam weapon.
The idiots had been charging and firing nonstop for more than three hours. The constant operation shocked the very ether in the fetid underground rooms. The short hairs on his neck rose and his fillings ached as he charged into the main tunnel. The air was ripe with nervous mingled body odors.
Zen and Gary were back, standing above one of the monitors. Professor Melvin Horowitz sat at the console, nervously tracking the latest targeted satellite.