Vladimir’s brutality had grated on the Spetznaz soldiers, who, though they were certainly not humanitarians or choir boys in their own right, recognized that if this young Stalin ever intended to lead people, there might need to be some people left to lead. His tactics were more akin to an extermination than a systematic search of the village. They noticed, but did not question (yet) his brutish methods, mostly because they needed him to guide them through the town and its maze-like structures.
Coldly, and violently, the team went from house to house on their mission.
In the Warwick Gymnasium, Mikail was doing his best to hold together both his crumbling coalition and his relationship with the Spetznaz soldiers who nominally had the most firepower in the town. The civil war was turning against Mikail, mainly because the splintered and fragmented opposition was starting to coalesce into a loose affiliation of those whose only unifying tenet was their opposition to Mikail and the Communists.
The tide had turned sometime during the mid-afternoon. Mikail couldn’t precisely pin down the moment his short reign in Warwick had come to an end, but he increasingly recognized the signs. Hitler had experienced such a turning point, as had Robespierre and other failed revolutionaries. In fact, almost all agitators who advocate for a takeover of power, unless their cause is backed by consent of the people or sufficient force to ignore such consent — almost all such would-be dictators in their turn come to the realization that all is lost. As a student of history, Mikail knew that there was only one avenue possible once his grip on power released, and that was… recriminations.
Recriminations. That’s a very nice word for “payback,” and such a fancy word does little to describe the awful meting out of revenge that can follow tyrants like a shadow follows a man on a sunny afternoon. Mikail knew his moment in that sun had passed as he felt the fiery orb setting over his small, troubled town.
There was a look in the eye of the Youth Revolutionary Forces, and that look began to evolve and spread, and soon a unit of Spetznaz forces approached with the inevitable official announcement that Mikail was very earnestly encouraged to meet with representatives of the coalition forces in the village. He knew this meant he would be asked to arrange his own surrender for trial.
This was how it had to be. It was destiny. History tends to impress this fact on the mind for those who care to venture into books to learn of the spiritual physics of such things. Mikail had done so, and he knew the implications.
So Mikail met with the “peace” commission, and terms were arranged and agreed to, although he did not go completely quietly into the approaching, dark night. He had a word for them as they departed.
“The only thing you all have in common is your hatred of me!” Mikail shouted at the backs of the opposition commission as they turned to leave the gymnasium. They turned to look at him in contemptuous regard. He laughed out loud. “What will you have when I am gone?” he asked. “You will have civil war and strife until you are all dead!” He said this in the way that prophecies are often uttered, though perhaps even he didn’t realize that what he said was so prophetic. It was more of a statement of fact mixed with the slightest hint of wishful thinking.
“That is what we have now,” Konstantin Kopinsky, the jeweler’s son, shouted back. His anger was emphasized by the sound of the gymnasium door slamming itself shut, effectively ending Mikail’s reign over Warwick. Mikail was given twenty-four hours to cede control of the government and all of his forces to the coalition, at which time he would be arrested and taken to the prison, where he was certain he would be locked away for the rest of his natural life.
That was the deal that he agreed to, though he had no intention of hanging around Warwick long enough to honor it. He would not allow himself to be the subject of his own revolutionary dogma. He would not suffer the indignities of his own interminable crimes. He would not allow his indiscretions to result in the crowd’s recriminations.
On Tuesday morning, Peter announced to the other three in the tunnel that they needed to put a watch (or more accurately, a “listen”) back at the tunnel entrance, inside the tunnel but below the bureau in Peter’s basement. They would want to know, he said, if anyone came snooping around the basement and, by listening from the post below the bureau, a person could faintly hear the racket going on outside, in the town. Cole was the first to volunteer, saying he liked the opportunity to read the scene by the details coming from the imagination he applied to the noise.
The battle had raged through the night, and by the morning of Election Day in America, some of the fury and rage in Warwick had spent itself, but not all of it. Upon his return to the dugout, the pudgy intellectual gave a full report. “There is still sporadic fighting. It’s hard to hear from the tunnel, and we only get an idea of what is going on in that one area of town, but the tempest certainly isn’t as loud as it was last night,” Cole said. He took off his glasses and began to clean them. “I wouldn’t say it was all much ado about nothing, but I suppose all’s well that ends well.”
“Oh, you and your Shakespeare!” Natasha said. She shook her head, but you could see that there was the slightest hint of a smile on her face. She looked over to Lang and added, “I’ve had to put up with this my whole life!”
Kolya put his glasses back on to his face. “As you like it, dear sister.” He then turned to Lang and said, “my dearest blood-kin here is a shrew that needeth to be tamed.” He winked.
Peter glared at Cole, not entirely appreciating his humor in such a critical moment, but then his face softened and he smiled. “Well, I’ll not try to keep up with you measure for measure, so we’ll end the Shakespeare titles game and maybe you can give us the rest of your report?”
Cole smiled. “Well, it didn’t sound like anyone has been in the basement. The bureau is still there and secured, and the whole time I listened, I didn’t hear a thing, except for the occasional bark of a pistol or a shout from someone off in the distance.”
Peter nodded his head, but remained silent while Lang shifted his weight, giving an indication that he was uncomfortable just sitting around in the dugout.
“Why don’t we go find this water plant, Peter? We can’t just stay down here for days. Anyway, we can hide out there until things become less… cloudy.”
“I figured we’d just stay here until maybe Friday. It is safe and warm, and besides, we have such nice toilet facilities in here!” Peter pointed his thumb in the direction of the underground “outhouse.” In the dugout, which was at the midway point in the tunnel, Peter and Lev had dug a tiny (and short) little indentation into the dirt, which turned to the left so that the person using it could have a little privacy. The facility consisted of a hole dug three feet deep with a wooden box atop it. The box had a hole cut into it. There was a bucket full of sawdust next to the toilet so that after it was used, the waste could be covered with a thin layer of wood shavings. This kept the scent down. Lev Volkhov and Peter had used the toilet while building the tunnel, so that they didn’t have to go all the way back up to the house each time they needed to eliminate.
“The toilet is fine, Peter. A fine invention it is,” Lang said, smiling. “But I’m getting a bit batty just sitting around. Cole can read the same books over and over again, and I think he’s memorized The Poems of C.L. Richter, but since I didn’t find any Solzhenitsyn in Clay’s backpack, I need some fresh air and some trees over my head. I’m just getting tunnel fever.”