"Sense?" the president blurted. "Zhirinsky, you are a menace. I will see to it that you are forced to live on rats and muddy water in the deepest, dankest cell in Lubyanka Prison for the rest of your lunatic life."
"I do not think so," Zhirinsky said with oily superiority. "Do you think I don't know what is happening in Mother Russia? The match is lit. The people have heard the cry of revolution and have taken to the streets. Moscow is mine, and you do not even know it. You are a prisoner in your own palace, Mr. President." The words dripped contempt. "When I make my address at midnight tonight, the days of lapping the boots of the capitalists will be over."
The president's grip tightened on the phone.
It was true after all. He had hoped that the rumor was false. The crazy man Zhirinsky intended to address the Russian population. And with the current national mood, the madman could actually become a figure of revolution.
The great purges under Stalin and Lenin, the nightmares of the gulags, the persecution of any dissenting thought, the decades of the evil terror of the KGB-all would be as nothing compared to what would become of Russia if Vladimir Zhirinsky were to take the reins of power.
"I will stop you," the president vowed darkly.
"You cannot," Zhirinsky replied. "You have not the capability to disrupt my signal. If you were a wise man, you would land a helicopter within the Kremlin's walls and fly out this evening. You have been a dutiful lapdog. The Americans would no doubt let you hide behind their skirts."
"I have spoken to their President," the Russian leader said. "I have offered military assistance to remove you."
He could almost see the smile bloom beneath Zhirinsky's bushy mustache.
"Send your soldiers. When was the last time any of them were paid? Every true Russian will turn to my cause. Not only that, but you know it to be true, for I smell your fear. If I were you, I would begin packing. And if you are still there when I arrive in Moscow in triumph..."
There came a delighted sound of clicking teeth on the other end of the line. With that, the phone went dead in the president's ear.
With wooden movements he replaced the big yellow receiver. His fingers felt fat and clumsy.
Pavel Zatsyrko still stood near the plain wooden door, an anxious expression on his face.
"Is it true?" the SVR man asked the president. "Did you offer troops to the American President?" At his wobbly table, the president looked up. Dark bags rimmed his pale eyes.
"He refused," he said. "According to him, they have their best already in Alaska." The Russian glanced back at the four men seated against the wall. "But I do not see how two men could go up against an army," he muttered under his breath.
"Only two men?" Zatsyrko asked, amazed.
The president shook his head. "He did not tell me that. I heard this from our agent in Alaska. She is on her way back here even as we speak. She has assured me that they are more capable than any army."
Pavel Zatsyrko did not ask who this mysterious woman was. Apparently she was very highly placed, for she did not come under his jurisdiction at the SVR.
"Let us hope so," Zatsyrko said seriously. "For if Zhirinsky truly does have a nuclear bomb and uses it within the United States, the anarchists who roam Russia's streets will become the least of our problems."
The president didn't seem to hear. Tiny fingers drummed the wooden table.
"The two former presidents are still here in the Kremlin?" he asked suddenly.
"They could not leave if they wanted to," Zatsyrko said. "Their cars would not be able to get past the mobs."
"Bring them here," the president insisted. "And have them bring their bodyguards with them." His voice grew soft, his gaze distant. "If she is correct, the worst for me may come if the American agents somehow manage to succeed."
BEHIND HIS DESK in the Fairbanks city hall, Vladimir Zhirinsky took his hand from the phone.
Framed in the window at his back was the fluttering hammer and sickle of the Sovyetskii Soyuz. The flag waved proudly over Zhirinskygrad's cold night streets. The ultranationalist smiled into the camera.
"And ...cut," Zhirinsky ordered.
Across the room, an aide lowered the video camera he'd taken from the home of a Fairbanks real-estate agent.
"We must record every moment of this," Zhirinsky insisted. He smoothed out his mustache with two quick strokes of his index finger.
With fussing hands he picked up the pen from his desk and began to make grand sweeps across the clean, top sheet of a yellow legal pad.
"Um, Comrade Skachkov phoned a few minutes ago," the aide said nervously. He held the camera protectively to his chest. "He is still looking for the American spies."
Zhirinsky noted the quaver in the man's voice. His pen froze in place as he raised his dark eyes. "Is there something wrong?" he asked suspiciously.
The man with the camera thought of what Skachkov had told him. About all the dead soldiers at the airport and the fact that every one of their helicopters had been destroyed. He also thought of what Zhirinsky had done to Ivan Kerbabaev.
The nervous young man worked only part-time two days a week in the ultranationalist's Moscow office. And if his boss was willing to bite the nose off a full-timer, he dared not imagine what Zhirinsky might do to him.
"No, no," he said, smiling sickly. "Nothing more. But perhaps you should deliver your speech now instead of waiting until midnight. By all accounts, the people are ready. You have inspired them with your actions here. There is no reason why the revolution needs to wait any longer. We can leave for Russia as soon as you are done."
"Nonsense," Zhirinsky said. "We have all the time in the world." He tapped his pen to his chin as he licked the bristles of his bushy mustache. "What rhymes with 'invade Afghanistan'? Ah, yes."
Sticking his chin deep into his uppermost medals that adorned his jangling chest, he got back to work. With a feeling of deep dread, the man with the camera backed quietly from the room.
Chapter 31
Ivan Kerbabaev's eyes were clamped tightly shut. With one hand he clasped the door handle. With the other he gripped firmly on to the front of the rear seat. "Hurry," Ivan begged.
"I will try not to cause any pain."
"I am already in pain," Ivan said, his voice quavering.
Ivan sucked in a gust of injured air at the sudden tearing at his face. Opening his eyes, he saw nothing between them but a tiny nub of white bone. The spot where his nose should have been felt wet and open. Ivan made a few pitiful sobbing moans.
On the back seat next to him, the Russian soldier who had just removed the bandages winced.
Blood bubbles percolated out of exposed nasal cavities. A strand of cartilage hung from the tip of the triangular bone. The discolored flesh around the wound was curling inward. Teeth marks were visible on the skin.
The soldier forced an encouraging smile. "It does not look so bad," he said.
Ivan had just caught a glimpse of his deformed face in the rearview mirror.
"Oh, God," Zhirinsky's aide wailed pathetically.
"Maybe you should see a doctor," the soldier suggested.
"There are no doctors," Ivan moaned. "That bristle-faced lunatic has banished them all from town." The soldier stiffened. Comrade Kerbabaev's words were troubling. They would need to be reported. Careful to remain without expression, the young soldier rolled down the window. He threw the bloody bandages out into the street. A cold wind grabbed the gauze, blowing it away. Rolling up the window, he reached to the floor of the car where he began fussing with a small case Ivan had liberated from the downtown dentist's office.
"Aren't you ready yet?" Ivan begged after what seemed like an eternity. "I am in agony."