The Soviet Comeback by Jamie Smith (best ereader for academics TXT) 📕

one of our agents in Moscow. I expect it will be on the news tomorrow but it doesn’t lessen the shock of his replacement being Chairman Klitchkov.”

Sykes grunted. “Nothing surprises me any more about the communists. What do we know about Klitchkov?”

“A fair amount, sir; I built up a file on him.”

“Give me the highlights.”

“Sure thing. Andrei Klitchkov was born in the city of Volgograd, then called Stalingrad - a little shout out to Stalin’s arrogance - in 1927 and his mother died at birth. For this his father blamed him, drinking heavily and beating him regularly. He grew up on the fringes at school, always poorly dressed and bullied and shunned by his peers for being different. It’s then I believe he developed his cruel streak, by retreating into his own vicious fantasies and dreamt of being a ruler himself, which was all he had known in a world that had shown him little kindness—”

“Jacob, I want the career highlights, not his therapy session analysis,” interrupted Sykes.

“Of course, sir. KGB psychological profiling is very thorough; you’d be amazed at how—”

“Marshall!”

“Sorry, sir. When the USSR entered World War Two in 1941, his father was conscripted into the Red Army, but died in one of the first battles of Operation Barbarossa; I’m not clear exactly how or where. I wonder did he shed a tear for his departed old man?”

“This is your last warning,” snapped Sykes.

“By this point Andrei, only fourteen, showed early signs of his cold determination and found a way into the army despite being significantly underage. There he fought valiantly, gaining great fame for his exploits during the Battle of Stalingrad. He won the medal for the defense of the city, as well as the Medal of Courage. Due to the incredibly high death toll, he, quite incredibly, became a captain by the age of fifteen and was awarded the Order of Suvorov for his leadership against a numerically superior force. However, he became better known for his cold ruthlessness and detachment from the atrocities he was both surrounded by, and more often than not committing. He would personally shoot anyone in his company who turned away from the field of battle, and famously never allowed his men to retreat even in the face of certain failure.

“From there, his career is easier to follow. He stayed with the Soviet Army for another decade after the war before being recruited by the KGB in 1956 and led the more clandestine charge against the leaders of the Hungarian Revolution. Since then, he has been a key player within the KGB, but has never got close to a position of clear leadership due to his coldness, even by Soviet standards, and a tendency to go off-piste a little too often.”

“You have done your research on him,” said Sykes. “How worried should we be?”

“He’s an interesting character,” acknowledged Nikita. “But he has never been under consideration for the KGB secretariat, nowhere near. He was second chief directorate of the KGB for counter-intelligence, but there were several other candidates well ahead of him, and it was generally accepted that Oleg Livenko was next in line.”

“His deputy?”

“Yes, sir. Like Yerin he was a Brezhnev fan and a hard liner, but Klitchkov is far more unpredictable. If the general secretary doesn’t keep him on a tight leash, it’s not unreasonable to say he could light the touch paper on the Cold War. He’s a lifelong servant to the USSR; the one thing we know is that patriotism runs to his core. But it’s the equivalent of jumping from colonel to general, which he probably will get now too. It’s a real curve ball of an appointment and smacks of a scandal involving Yerin, as they’re obviously wanting someone not too affiliated with him. I suspect Yerin’s days are numbered.”

The phone on Sykes’ desk began to ring, startling them both. “Find out more about why he was removed; we need more intelligence. I want to know what game Petrenko is playing here, and what sort of leader of the KGB Klitchkov is going to be,” he said before picking up the phone and waving Nikita away.

Nikita picked up the telegram and stalked back to his desk. His head was spinning; had Klitchkov known when he saw him only days ago that he was in line for a promotion? He couldn’t imagine that to be the case; the chairman of the KGB did not, and could not, visit assets on foreign soil.

As he got to his desk, he saw a large envelope. He sat down and opened it and inside found a number of photographs.

The first showed the unmistakable figure of Agent Brishnov walking away from the photographer down a dingy alleyway.

The next showed a gory image of a woman lying on blood-drenched sheets, still tied up and naked; little was left of the back of her head.

Nikita noticed there was a slight bulge at the bottom of the envelope and in it he found a cartridge casing of a .50 AE Magnum bullet, one of the largest cartridges you could get in a handgun. Nikita only knew of one gun that could hold the bullets — the new Israeli-manufactured Desert Eagle.

Not many places in Washington DC would sell such cartridges. And the KGB definitely did not provide its agents with Desert Eagles.

“Hey, Lahart, did you see who brought this envelope in?”

“Yeah, some guy, about twenty minutes ago,” replied Blaine distractedly, not looking up from his work.

“Can you be more specific?”

“I wasn’t paying attention; I’m right in the middle of something. I think he had a moustache.”

“A moustache? That’s it?”

“Yeah, a toothbrush moustache.”

“Like Hitler?” replied Nikita incredulously.

“I was thinking like Charlie Chaplin, but I guess I’m not as judgy as you,” said Blaine, now looking up and smiling.

“Forget it,” said Nikita, turning back to the documents