Chapter XVI
Chapter XVI
Alexei Avianovich was dreaming he was back in the Congo. But not in the jungle. Rather this was a pleasant dream about his two-week recovery in Leopoldville, after the shit-show Operation Cyclone II, during which his left thigh got a bullet and his right upper arm a blade slash. The beer was cold, the military-police kept their distance, and the women were willing. He was smiling when he was shaken awake by General-Major Baron May-Mayevsky. It was a Hell of a face to which to wake up to.
"I am terrible sorry, Alexei Avianovich, but something had happened in Akthy, in Dagestan."
Alexei managed a nod, and waved for the older man to take a seat. It was five in the morning. The Baron grabbed an armchair and gave his take on the Dagestani incident. It was decidedly bent, because he made excuses for Mostovoy, Pankov and the getaway driver, saying he understood their motivations, while at the same time claiming the whole thing was a put-up job. As before, Alexei felt odd about partially agreeing with the Baron. The timing of the attack with the Gathering about to take place reeked of a false-flag operation, but then again, Legionnaires were not exactly the brightest bulbs. They certainly showed a complete lack of judgement and piss-poor timing by rioting in Riga last year and giving the authorities the excuse to ban them as a result.
"What are your thoughts, Alexei Avianovich?"
"I think Pavlovich is in trouble, and it may give us an opening to wring something out of him."
It was the wrong thing to say, realized Alexei, as soon as he said it, for the Baron beamed wide and launched into a monologue on how this changes everything and will energize the good and the loyal.
As soon as Yaroslav Alexandrovich left his villa, Pavel Pavlovich rang the bell for his valet.
"Jacket, then shirt" said the prince, and the valet divested him of the General-Admiral jacket he had worn for the meeting with the Mikhailite. Sweat stains soaked through the undershirt of Pavel Pavlovich and left a wet trail down his back. The valet took off the undershirt as well. The meeting had lasted two hours and the guileless creature who before the Incident in Akhty was content with running the Air Force had transformed into a seasoned debater and had gotten a seat on the Regency Council for himself and a ministry for his oldest son. With one seat already earmarked for Kirill Konstantinovich, and two promised to Rotislav Nikolaevich, Pavel Pavlovich had only one more Council seat to give away.
Pavel Pavlovich was toweled down and a new shirt and jacket produced and placed on him. He signaled his satisfaction with a grunt. The valet retreated. Pavel Pavlovich glanced at the clock. He had two more hours before Kirill Konstantinovich would come to have his pound of flesh.
Her Serenity Princess Natalie Kropotkina noted every female servant in the Corner House went out of their way to make sure to walk by and take a gander at Prince Mikhail Mikhailovich, though to be fair, he was worth a look, or two. Broad of shoulders, strong of body, with a bubble butt, and dimples which caused a flutter among the chambermaids the first time they made their appearance known. He was dressed in a seafoam green silk shirt with a low cut which showed off more than a hit of chess hair, a mint green and white houndstooth jacket, brown trousers and tennis shoes with crepe soles. Natalie enjoyed having a nothing chat with him which lasted over a quarter of an hour, gazing into his eyes, before the young man got the real reason of his visit.
"My father is the oldest Romanov at the Gathering. He will speak first. You may be assured he will nominate Prince Alexander Alexandrovich as Regent and the Grand-Princess Katerina Borisovna as Guardian. Unless you wish him to vote someone else on the first ballot to confuse your foes?"
"I think we can play with the cards showing on this one, Mikhail Mikhailovich."
Two hours into chopping wood, after his bruising meeting with Kirill Konstantinovich, Pavel Pavlovich finally lowered the axe and exhaled. The anger was out of his system. The valet appeared out of the shadows with a robe. Pavel Pavlovich gave a grunt and the man put him into it. A hot towel was applied to his face and his hair combed. The Prince noted an under-footman off to the side, biting his pale lips.
"Yes?" commanded Pavel Pavlovich.
"His Highness Prince Rotislav Nikolaevich has had his courier deliver this, master."
Pavel Pavlovich ripped out letter from the man's trembling hands. It was an invite to have tea. How proper. Pavel Pavlovich resisted the urge to rip up the invite, pocketed it and waved off the man, who fled, thankful to be able to escape unharmed. Pavel Pavlovich sat down on the chopping block and studied his callused hands, wishing they were wrapped around the fat necks of his fair-weather allies. He closed his eyes and thought of the words of the Grand-Princess. Napoleon stooped to pick up a crown. He could make himself stoop to pick up the Regency and Guardianship. Maybe.
Per the report Captain Stirling compiled, the Snowdown Colliery near Dover employed 1,000 miners. Their club was built with a peak audience of 3,500 in mind, to ensure come Christmas the place would be large enough for the miners, their families and even management. On the day of Powell's speech, there were over 4,000 miners jam packed in the club. A welcoming committee of two dozen stood at the doors to ensure only those who had worked at the East Kent collieries were allowed in, though Captain Stirling did manage to convince the lads to let in a dozen newspapermen. Liberal and Labour activists from nearby universities were turned away, but prominent Labour and Liberal miners and trade unionists were naturally allowed entry, on the basis of their profession, provided they were from Kent.
This time there was no shortage of volunteers to introduce J. Enoch Powell, Bart., and after consulting the notes of Captain Stirling, Powell settled on an Independent Liberal trade unionist who represented the men working underground (there was a separate shop steward for the miners who worked on the surface). The transplanted Yorkshireman warmed up the crowd. Backstage, Powell's bodyguard sensed the Governor was in a state of high dudgeon. The last time he recalled seeing him in such a way was when a pair of Iraqi Jews were killed in Northern Bengal. The men had come to the region to look for oil, but instead found a ruby deposit. They dutifully submitted their discovery and asked for permission to mine. The bureaucrat in charge of the paperwork hid it instead, arranged for the men to be killed, and then gave away the claim to his relative. When the Governor found out... The locals called the resulting purge of the bureaucrats the Great Massacre of Calcutta.
"... Enoch Powell, the man who speaks the truth!" hollered Arthur Scargill. There was applause.
Powell went up to the dais to cheers. He acknowledge them with a nod and gave his shopworn thanks and platitudes, giving them time to settle, before gripping the podium and glaring out.
"It occurs to me there is some confusion as to what I meant when I last said the first step in recovery of your true economic worth is for the British government to stop propping up the price of Scottish oil..."
There were massive cheers once more, and agreeable and pungent profanity filled the air.
"What I meant... the British government must stop propping up the price of Scottish oil."
There was a standing ovation, and Powell basked in it, smiling. He felt a weight fall off his chest.
Untitled hereditary nobleman Colonel Dolgorukiy stood before a hard used blackboard full of names. In the corner he had reduced the grand list of 44 Romanov eligible voters to just half dozen: Michael Feodorovich, Sergei Alexievich, Alexander Sergeyvich, Alexander Mikhailovich, Yuri Kirillovich, and Alexander Vladimirovich. They were all Mikhaililtes, and they could swing the vote, by giving Pavel Pavlovich an insurmountable lead, making Gavril Ioannovich the favorite, or making the preferred candidacy of Katerina Borisnova appear to be gathering momentum in the crucial first round of the vote. They were different men, with little in common save their clan and surname. But they were not men of iron will and hard opinions. They were malleable. The key was Michael Feodorovich. He could sway quite a few, just by virtue of his order in the rollcall. Where he would go, others would follow.
Court-Councilor Zub of Okhrana did not care for female assets or stringers. But sometimes one was required to use them, and each time it made him feel odd. Not nervous. Odd. Sitting in the cramped bedsit of Klavdiya Taraskina and watching her apply the tools of her trade, he wished he was elsewhere. Klavdiya Ivanovna had what the wits at Okhrana called a "proletarian upbringing," her father was an alcoholic unskilled worker and her mother a streetwalker. It was unclear, and not much of interest to Zub, when Klavdiya decided to follow in her mother's footsteps. But it did not take her long to pick up a Venusian malady and pass it on to a politician who did favors for the Okhrana. The survival rate at the Siberian labor camps for women was no better than the rate for the male prisoners, so she was eager to cooperate, and someone, someone else other than Zub, made the call to keep her on-call. Her malady was treated, or rather prevented from escalating further, and she fell into the orbit of a series of handlers. More than a few were tempted by the dubious charms of Taraskina, which is why Zub was put in charge four years ago. In that time, she had gone under the knife several times as surgeons did to her what the Okhrana required, and Zub found her pitiful and disgusting.
When it came to getting glittering prizes, being yet another princeling from the brood of the youngest son of Tsar Nicholas I did not yield many. Prince Mikhail Feodorovich was never made general of anything, not even as an honorary post. And he was never named regimental colonel of anything in the Imperial Guard - Old, Middle or Young. They did not even make him chef d'escadron of some ancient cavalry outfit. The best he could get was being named colonel of the Apcheronsky Musketeers. It was 81st regiment in Russian seniority, and very much not in the Imperial Guard, but as his dear now-departed father proudly told him, the fellows in it once stood knee-deep in their own dead at the Battle of Kundersdorf in 1709, and for this they were allowed to wear red gaiters. A singular honor. Mikhail could not recall what he did with this information when his father said it, but he must have muttered something polite. Politeness had been, after all, beaten into him. Now, in the 52nd year of his life, he was no longer feeling polite. And he was very much feeling bereft of a true prince's pleasures, such as being able to haunt the Bolshoi or even Maly, picking off ballerinas and actresses. He was not a greedy man, and did not demand he be handed the prima-, but surely a star was not too much to ask, given his blood and surname? Alas, all of those young women were earmarked for more powerful men.
Thankfully there existed an enterprising race of men unburdened by morality called New Yorkers, and one such fellow came to Moscow a mere five years prior and saw a need. Many wealthy men wanted to better get to know famous actresses and dancers, but there was not enough ladies to go around. So he acquired a stable of working-girls and a pair of surgeons, and had the worthy doctors cut up the women to make them look like the famous. At first there was a natural reluctance on the part of the Prince to patronize such a fellow. But three years ago, in a moment of weakness, Mikhail Feodorovich had his sleaziest under-footman call up the discrete-enough service and summoned a Bridget Bardot lookalike. Since then, when the need struck, he would partake, and the under-footman would arrange it.
Mikhail Feodorovich inhaled, exhaled, braced, and rang the small bronze bell and the under-footman slunk into the room and bowed.
"Jacqueline Bisset, tonight, I should think."
"Yes, Highness," said Krizhovnikov, thankfully not giving a greasy smile.
The creature slithered off and Mikhail Feodorovich collapsed on the sofa, drumming his immaculately buffed nails on the velveteen. He once more told himself he was doing nothing untoward. Just a simple call, to address a need. A call like any other that he has done before. Nothing different.
"A thousand pardons, Highness. But they are out of Bissets, but they do, uh, have a Claudia Cardinale."
Krizhovnikov saw his master pale and nearly recoil. It was a very odd reaction to a simple statement. And it is not as if the discrete-enough service had not on occasion run out of the more popular choices in the past. Bisset was the flavor of the month. Cardinale, decidedly not. Thus availability. As the under-footman thought his thoughts, the prince seemed to have calmed, a bit, and took on a false cheer.
"Ah, fancy that. They still have those around. Hmm, it's been a while, I suppose. Why not. Go on."
"Yes, Highness."
After the deed, the driver dropped off Klavdiya Ivanovna Taraskina at a small house in the woods, where Zub waited for her debrief. Someone else would deal with the driver. Shame really, thought Zub, as the driver was good at keeping his mouth shut, but the operation demanded absolute silence. Zub positioned himself on the sofa and thought about the good old days. His pay packet was a fraction of where it now stood, his rank far lower, and he was not in the know about any grand or even major operation, but still, they were the good old days. Tsar Nicholas III was among the living, and the Okhrana were his able executors. On some feast days, His Imperial Majesty would personally grace the long table of the Okhrana brothers in Moscow, never St. Petersburg, and honor his most loyal by taking them into his confidence, discussing such and such policy and international event. He would at times solicit opinions. Granted, given the phrasing of most questions and statements, all knew what the Tsar wanted to hear and would parrot it back to him with gusto for his listening pleasure, but still, it was the appearance that mattered. Since the death of the Great Tsar, no one from Okhrana was welcomed at any royal table. When they were called for it was by some stone faced liveried majordomo to carry out grizzly tasks with which none of the other security agencies wished to soil their precious white gloves. Mayhap Pavel Pavlovich would be different. Some men above Zub certainly thought so, or, more cynically, they simply regarded him as the least worst option of the lot.
"And here I am," said Taraskina floating inside. She was clearly nervous.
"How did it go?"
"You really want the gory details?"
The false bravado was grating, but since the exercise was ending with her death, Zub accepted it.
"When and how did you tell him the message?"
"Afterwards, when were in a postcoital embrace. I gave some of the sins you gave me on him and said all these and more would come to light unless he voted for Gavril Ioannovich."
"And how did he react?"
"He rather didn't."
"How you mean?"
"I mean, he sneered at me, but that's it. I had expected him to swear, at least. Or hit me. He didn't."
"But he did sneer? He did not look scared."
"No, not at all. But it's just... Not even swear words, Fofa. It was all so odd. I expected him to yell."
"Yes, well, he's a weakling," said Zub with a sneer of his own, and realized it was the wrong thing to say as soon as the words were out of his mouth. He had a moment of frailty, sitting here on a soft sofa, cushioned by nostalgia, and said what he was thinking, which is not at all what he would do under normal circumstances. And it was the wrong note to hit, precisely because it showed he did not care what she knew about his views on a Romanov prince, on account she would soon be dead at his hands. He saw her spook and rear up and sighed.
"It is getting late. One for the road?" he asked as a peace offering he knew would not work.
And now she ran, for her life. But she was wearing heels and he was stronger and faster. He tackled her halfway to the door and her nails, elbows and knees all missed him. He rolled her over on her stomach, slipped on a choke, and then leaned back, suffocating her, avoiding the angry stabs of the scarlet fingernails and ignored the pleas croaking out of her mouth. When she expired, he dropped her face first on the floor, stood up with another sigh and shook his head. It did not go well at all. But it went.
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