By now he knew that the end was near. For him and for his beloved Russia.
He had become just another general after that. With postings at crumbling bases all over the dying empire. When the Soviet Union finally collapsed, Feyodov had remained in the military, dutifully obeying the commands of his civilian superiors. Eventually, he had gone to Chechnya, accepting a battle command for the first time in his lifelong army career. For Feyodov, this would be the final nail in the coffin of a grand life grown pathetic.
Chechnya had been a trouble spot ever since the death of his beloved Soviet Union. Like many others before it, the predominantly Muslim republic craved independence. Another bleeding scrap of meat to tear off the wheezing, dying body of the shrunken Mother Russia.
Feyodov didn't see the situation as very complicated. The Muslim separatists were infected with the same disease that had plagued what had once been the great Soviet empire. The rebels embodied all the disloyal, anarchic traits that had killed the USSR.
Boris Feyodov took command in Chechnya with one thought on his mind: revenge. These miserable Muslim dogs would pay for all of his own personal defeats and humiliations.
The bombardment against the capital of Grozny was vicious. They bombed from land and air. Day after day of punishing, endless assaults against the city, ordered by Boris Feyodov with the blessing of the Kremlin leadership.
When the bombing stopped and the smoke cleared, Feyodov declared victory. The rebels were defeated. Those left alive had fled the city.
The taste of triumph thick in the air, the general had climbed into the lead truck in the convoy that would reclaim Grozny for Russia. He and his men rode down from the hills, through the pathetic barricades and into the heart of the city. For a few brief moments-as he beheld the buildings, collapsed at his order, and passed by the burning cars and along cratered streets-Boris Feyodov was once more a god.
As apotheoses went, this one was short-lived. The first gunshot came from the darkened doorway of a tumbledown apartment building.
In the lead truck, General Feyodov jumped. He wasn't quite sure what the noise was. After all, he had never heard a bullet fired in battle before. At first he thought it might be a firecracker.
The next shot sounded an instant later, followed by the next and the next until they became a nightmare chorus. His uncertainty sprouting wings of desperate fear, Feyodov dropped down. Bullets whizzed overhead.
Panicked, he jerked his head around.
His driver was dead, slumped over the steering wheel. The men in the back of his truck had already suffered heavy casualties. Bodies were tumbling from the trailing trucks. Terror washed over the Russian troops.
Bullets thudded into metal.
He ordered his men to attack. They were already firing.
He ordered them to protect him at all costs. No one could hear him over the raging gunfire.
He ordered retreat. They were surrounded. Blinded by fear, Feyodov grabbed for the door handle. Twisting it, he fell to the ground. As the men above him fought for their lives, their commander crawled beneath the dark belly of the lead truck. Terrified hands covered ears; elbows and toes dragged him forward.
The truck was at the side of the road. A stairwell led into the shadowy basement of a bombed-out building.
Unnoticed by rebel or soldier, Feyodov toppled down the concrete stairs. Bloodied and dirty, he scurried beneath the collapsed archway and crumbled ceiling.
As the battle raged in the street far above his basement hideaway, General Boris Feyodov fled deeper and deeper into the shadows. He crawled until he could go no farther. As the final shots were fired and the last Russian soldier spilled his blood on the streets of Grozny, the general who had abandoned his troops was far away, cowering in a dank corner of his basement haven, his knees tucked up to his chin, rump settled into a cold, muddy puddle.
He was found eight days later.
The general was malnourished and dehydrated. He had soiled himself, drinking from the same filthy puddle.
As soon as he was pulled from the basement he was shipped back to Moscow. To have the leader of the Russian forces in Chechnya appear weak, gaunt, disheveled and cowardly, would only help to further the rebels' cause.
The war would be fought without him.
It was during the long months of his recuperation that Boris Feyodov the loyal Soviet, Boris Feyodov the aparatchik, Boris Feyodov the Communist Party virtuoso, finally learned the truth about himself. He had found that-no matter what his service rank was-he had never been a soldier.
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.