The stand-off had to be ended, Yeltsin decided.
Sporadic fire burst out at 7 a.m. on October 4th, 1993. It was impossible to tell which side had started the shootout, but in minutes it intensified into a full-blown urban battle. The civilians were caught in the crossfire, which was soon directed at them by the police units who stormed ahead to occupy the Parliament’s ground floor. Army snipers perched on adjacent roofs picked out innocent bystanders below, augmenting the panic. Droning choppers circled the area like vultures.
Utter pandemonium raged as the crowd was riddled with lead in a sickening bloodbath.
Yet no one believed their eyes when a rolling column of tanks took position on the Novoarbatsky Bridge. Their turrets started revolving, turning the fearsome cannons in the direction of the beleaguered white house. The protectors of democracy could not fathom that any of this was real.
Insanity!
But it was real.
The T-80’s recoiled as their mammoth 125-mm guns blasted HEAT rounds in thunderous unison. Direct hits registered in clouds of disintegrating concrete, setting the building ablaze. Inside, the explosions tore human bodies apart, mingling flesh with shards of glass and rubble. More salvos followed. The armored execution squad gutted the white house. Consumed by flames, it soon turned charred black.
The cannonade continued until the evening, the howling shells tearing through the Parliament’s long-dead corpse.
At 6 p.m., the few survivors of the siege surrendered to the police, hands raised as they walked past the bodies that littered the embankment of the Moskva River.
Yeltsin had exhibited his own vision of Russian democracy. No terrorist could have ever conceived such a cold-blooded, bestial attack.
Official reports masked the exact number of casualties, pegging it at 74 dead. Several thousand Muscovites were presumed to have gone “missing” during the unfolding “events.”
Ivan Sokolov’s body was never recovered. The state refused to admit the death of a citizen it had killed.
As they watched the gory skirmishes and gun battles that had climaxed in a tank barrage live on television, Constantine, Eugene and their mother had their hearts ripped out and crushed. Their husband and father was no more.
Dead.
They could never overcome their grief ever since. They merely pretended to exist. Misery was their world.
Hollowness.
There wasn’t even a grave they could visit.
7
My will to live came back when Gene and I resumed school. One day, we were standing in the cafeteria queue at lunch break. A big fellow was passing, talking to his friend. He said to him that the best action flick he’d ever seen on TV was the shooting of the Parliament.
“I don’t know the guy’s name. All I can remember now is that he was from grade ten. A pimple-faced heavy metal hooligan that scared even the teachers. He was at least a head taller than me. I didn’t care about his size then.”
“What did you do?”
“I hit him in the crotch. Hard. He crashed on the floor, but his friend fisted my head. Gene ran at the second guy and bit his arm. A real fight started. Two of their buddies joined in. They thought that they’d mince the two of us but Gene and I gave them a hard time. We made them chase us around the cafeteria while we toppled tables. We threw chairs at them, forks, knives, anything we could use. Even hot soup.”
“How did it end?”
“The principal came in with a cop. Lucky timing, because they had us cornered and the pimple-faced bastard had already taken out a switchblade. So I got away with a swollen eye and a few bumps and bruises. Gene had a split lower lip and a sprained wrist from punching one of them in the ribs. Oh, and the principal suspended us from school for a month.”
“And how did your mother react?”
“She was extremely unhappy with us. And more so with herself. She had failed to protect us, and we couldn’t protect ourselves. She told us that we must learn to beat the crap out of anybody. Make the others dread the idea of trying to hurt us. So she took us to a karate dojo, which I later quit.”
“And after that school fight you found a reason to live on?”
“Mom had the two of us, her boys that were her life, so she lived for us. As for me and my brother, I guess we were driven by an urge to right the wrong, in the memory of our father. Each of us did it in his own way. I majored in history at Moscow University, trying to get to the roots of the evil that infested my country. Gene entered the EMERCOM Academy, and enrolled in the Rescue Corps.”
Malinin prodded on.
“Was it then that you and the Metropolitan got close?”
“Yes. At one point, theology engrossed me. I attended lectures at the St. Sergius seminary, vying to grasp the divine reasons of life and death. That’s how we met. Ilia was my teacher there. I was seeking the comfort of knowledge. And then mother passed away…”
Constantine’s vision dimmed. He had to fight back tears.
Malinin waited.
“At the same time, Gene got badly injured, in hospital, fighting for his life. Father Ilia became… well, a father figure. The closest person outside my family… Every day, he prayed for my brother, and for me. After that, we spent a lot of time together, talking. For hours. Eventually, I told him about what had happened to my family.
“One day, during our conversation Ilia told me that he’d learned the name of the person who had ended my father’s career. He asked me if I wanted to know.
“Out of sheer curiosity, I asked him. At that time the name was meaningless. I had no idea how important it would become in a few months. The corrupter, the man ultimately responsible for my father’s death, was Nikolai Alexandrov.”
“President Nikolai Alexandrov?”
“General Alexandrov back then. He’d returned from Germany, becoming an apparatchik in the headquarters staff. At the time, the public didn’t know that he would become the heir apparent to the Kremlin throne. Neither did I, of course.
“After I learned the man’s name, I detached myself from the world, hollow again, not caring about anything happening around me. Gradually, my heart filled with hatred. I became obsessed with the name. I imagined the beast hiding behind it. The name itself, each black letter of it that I doodled on white paper, gave me no answer. A name is faceless. Like a sign on a locked door.
“When I saw the Metropolitan again, I inquired how he’d been able to learn about the man’s identity. Father Ilia, ambiguous in his usual way, said that he respected the anonymity of his sources. I wondered aloud if his sources could tell him more about the man.
“Soon, details emerged. The source shoveled a lot of dirt. Stuff that could ruin the career of an aspiring politician. And destroy a successful president. The scale of the corruption in the Army boggled the mind. I attempted to make this information public knowledge. But one night, the visitors came. They made a point of dissuading me.”
“I see hatred in your eyes, Constantine.”
“It is there.”
“A hatred that is bigger than you,” Malinin said. “I think you are just the man I need. Because your hatred will serve you well.”
Malinin stood up and placed his craggy hand on Constantine’s shoulder.