Czar of England (SOKOLOV Book 6)

by Ian Kharitonov

  Czar of England

  SOKOLOV #6

  Ian Kharitonov

  Czar of England

  Kindle Edition

  © Copyright 2021 Ian Kharitonov

  Wolfpack Publishing

  6032 Wheat Penny Avenue

  Las Vegas, NV 89122

  wolfpackpublishing.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any means without the prior written consent of the publisher, other than brief quotes for reviews.

  Kindle ISBN 978-1-64734-658-4

  Paperback ISBN 978-1-64734-659-1

  Contents

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  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Epilogue

  If you liked this, you may enjoy: Devil’s Dance, Trackdown Book 1

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  About the Author

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  Czar of England

  1

  They knew they’d have to dig several graves to hide the man’s body after they killed him. Each of them had been trained how to properly dismember and burn a corpse before burying the remains in different spots around the forest. They had the cutting tools in the back of the SUV which was heading outside Moscow.

  Four men, clad in leather and denim, their faces showing no emotion. Two in the front of the obsidian-black Mercedes-AMG GLC 63 Coupé and two in the back, sandwiching their handcuffed victim. Leo Gromov, member of the Russian Parliament, the Duma. The fifty-two-year-old man’s face was a bloodied and bruised mess after prolonged interrogation sessions. He stared blankly at the road in a near-catatonic state, resigned to his fate, beaten into submission. Tomorrow he would be a distant memory in the minds of those who had known him, and one they would desperately try to forget.

  The Mercedes turned off the highway, reaching the forested area. It was deserted in the early hours of the morning, the SUV’s headlights cutting through the semidarkness. The thugs got out and led Gromov into the dense thicket. The broken man made no attempt to struggle.

  The air was damp and cold, smelling of moss and dead leaves. Gromov stumbled, tripping on a root, but a shove in the back pushed him forward.

  At a clearing beyond a row of birch trees, they forced him down onto his knees.

  Standing behind him, one of the executioners pressed the muzzle of an SR-1 Gyurza pistol to the back of Gromov’s head.

  “My family. Do anything you want with me but spare them!” Gromov managed to beg despite his broken teeth and swollen tongue.

  His plea remained unanswered.

  A gunshot sounded.

  The 9mm slug blew a hole through Gromov’s skull and his dead body fell to the ground.

  Then the real work began for the killers. They got down to cutting off the head and limbs from the torso and scattering the body parts around.

  Before the sun was fully up, the stench of kerosene and burning flesh filled the woods.

  The men did their job thoroughly. Should someone eventually dig up the charred bones, they had nothing to worry about. The cold case would land on the Homicide Desk of the FSB, Russia’s omnipresent secret police.

  The four FSB officers would be investigating themselves.

  2

  Siberia. Since the days of the czars, a land of freedom and oppression existing side by side. Some four centuries after the Cossacks had conquered her for Russia, Siberia remained an uncharted territory of beauty and brutality where gulag inmates and their guards had become one.

  Georgi Zimin had been born here sixty-five years ago in a Red Army barracks, his character forged by the hardship of the wilderness, his face weathered by the elements. The craggy appearance belied a man of immense power. Underneath his camouflage outdoor jacket, he was wearing a Brioni shirt and a cashmere jumper, and the diamond-studded Rolex on his wrist offset his mud-stained boots.

  He strode from the hunting lodge—a luxury dacha, complete with an indoor pool and sauna, which he’d built in the middle of the wildlife sanctuary—to the helicopter. Accompanied by his trusted hunting guide, Vanya, who carried his rifles, he boarded the American Bell 407.

  Zimin was the Governor of Krasnoyarsk Krai, a province totaling an area of 2.34 million square kilometers—larger than Mexico and three times the size of Texas. The land mass of his fiefdom spanned from the icebound shores of the Arctic Ocean to the lush lake-dotted forests reaching toward Mongolia.

  As the chopper soared in the sky, Zimin surveyed the tree-covered landscape of the nature reserve below. The Krai he governed was rich with resources, including 95 percent of Russia’s nickel and platinum reserves, 25 major oil and natural gas deposits, and 20 percent of the country’s timber.

  Moscow was stripping all this wealth away and giving nothing in return. It made Zimin’s blood boil. Even worse, the Kremlin was quietly allowing the Chinese to take over the plundering of Siberia, for a fee.

  The fact had caused growing unrest among the local elites. Privately, other Siberian governors had voiced their discontent with President Frolov’s policies to him. They were sitting idly atop all that wealth while Moscow was robbing them. Why did they need the Kremlin’s control in the first place? Whispers of secession began to spread.

  Zimin had a better idea. He himself was a multimillionaire but he could seize so much more. Instead of breaking away with a chunk of Russia, he wanted it all. Frolov was weak, hence the constitutional reform he’d proposed recently. Zimin would topple him and finally become the rightful ruler of his land. A plan had already been set in motion.

  As the Bell 407 swept over the crest of a hill, Zimin spotted game at the edge of a stream.

  A large brown bear—a female—with two cubs.

  Vanya handed Zimin his rifle—a Benelli R1 semi-auto with a mounted scope.

  As the chopper hovered to give Zimin a broadside shot, he aimed through the telescopic sight, locking the crosshairs on the animal’s back.

  Aerial hunting wasn’t just an unethical practice banned in most countries, it was a criminal offense punishable by Russian law, but the governor played Siberian safari by his own rules.

  Zimi
n squeezed the trigger, the rifle recoiling as he fired off a .338 Winchester Magnum round. His shot placement was off and he hit the mama bear in the shoulders, wounding her. The animal staggered, roaring. Blood streaked down the brown fur, mixing with the water in the stream.

  Zimin fired again, this time going for the heart or lungs. The shot punched the bear’s chest cavity, hitting the vitals, and killing it.

  Agitated, the orphaned cubs nudged against their slain mother.

  Zimin shot them next, a single bullet more than enough for each kill. The .338 Win Mag was too powerful for the younglings, shredding the meat, but Zimin didn’t care about the damage. He was doing it for the thrills, not trophies.

  Then something unexpected happened.

  As the pilot eased the chopper down for landing to pick up the carcasses, a thundering explosion shook the helicopter, blowing off the tail rotor. The chopper spun crazily and Governor Zimin’s life ended in the next instant. The fuel tank detonated and the Bell 407 crashed in a fireball, with the three men aboard dying in the flames.

  3

  In the torture chamber of the FSB’s Lefortovo Prison, a naked man lay strapped to a table, his genitals wired up by a latex-gloved interrogator.

  A wealthy Moscow businessman before his arrest, Felix Boiko had been stripped of not only his finances but also basic human dignity. His flesh was covered with black marks inflicted by a police baton that he’d been clubbed and raped with earlier.

  “Let me go! I beg you!” he pleaded. “I’ve told you everything I know, I swear!”

  The interrogator turned the switch.

  The electric shock jolted the prisoner.

  An inhuman scream filled the room, reverberating around the walls.

  Thirty seconds later, the FSB officer turned down the intensity of the current.

  “One more time,” he demanded. “Where did your instructions come from?”

  “London,” the businessman moaned through anguished cries. “London!”

  4

  Contrary to popular belief, the President of Russia did not reside in the Kremlin. The magnificent palatial props were only called upon for official occasions when protocol required it. The Russian president spent most of the year living in either his villa in the subtropical climate of Sochi or the tranquil suburban residence of Novo-Ogaryovo.

  The latter had been the nineteenth-century estate of Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich Romanov, later ‘nationalized’—a euphemism for stolen—by the Soviets and redesigned for Stalin’s would-be successor, Malenkov.

  Located in the prestigious Rublyovka community ten kilometers west of Moscow, the presidential retreat consisted of the mansion itself, built in the English Gothic architectural style, a guest house, extra facilities like gym, swimming pool and conference hall, a helipad, and even a church, the Cathedral of the Savior. The residence also included a huge park which sprawled all the way to the banks of the Moskva River.

  The compound’s exact layout and total area were classified. Its perimeter was surrounded by a six-meter stone wall and protected by phalanxes of FSO guards patrolling around the clock.

  Even the bearded priest at the cathedral, a Father Theophanes, was a full colonel who carried a firearm under his cassock.

  President Saveliy Ignatievich Frolov enjoyed the Novo-Ogaryovo residence so much that among his first executive decrees in office had been the transfer of the residence from government property to his private ownership.

  Today, the morning air was crisp. It was that brief period between summer and autumn when the stuffy heat had gone, but the miserable cold was yet to set in. President Frolov strolled through the park along a cobbled walkway with his guest, Patriarch Galaktion, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church. Frolov wore a wool coat while the Patriarch was dressed in his everyday attire of black cassock and white headgear. Frolov wondered what Galaktion would look like in his full military regalia. Like Frolov, the Patriarch was a career KGB officer, and he kept his general’s uniform under lock somewhere. His secular name was Vasiliev, and Frolov had been his handler in the KGB’s Fifth Chief Directorate—countering political dissidents. Galaktion’s legion of snitches spying on churchgoers during Soviet times had grown into an all-encompassing informant network that covered every parish across Russia. Each priest acted as an FSB asset for indoctrination and surveillance, pushing the Kremlin agenda disguised as sermons and reporting the mood of the population.

  “Your Holiness,” Frolov began. “How have the people reacted to your latest initiative?”

  “They’ve met it with great enthusiasm. Prayer for the President has been a success. From now on, it will be held every Sunday everywhere in Russia. It is certain to boost your popularity even further.”

  “And what is the general feeling among ordinary Russians?”

  “Fear,” said Galaktion. “Fear of the unknown. The news of an upcoming constitutional reform is causing confusion and concern.”

  “What are they afraid of?”

  “They’re afraid of a new perestroika.”

  To millions of Russians, perestroika had been a curse. By nature, they had been slaves for centuries, and nothing had changed in their collective psyche. Freedom, glasnost, human rights, and democracy were alien to them, things they had never yearned for. Instead, they had equated the reforms with chaos, poverty, and the collapse of their country. The vast majority of the populace hated Gorbachev with a passion.

  They hated Yeltsin, too, but at least the old drunk had given them the 1993 Constitution. Born from the blood, guts, and flames of the shelling of the Russian Parliament, it had established an authoritarian super-presidential rule in Russia, so a measure of order had been restored.

  Now, the promise of amendments to that constitution posed a threat. The Russians did not want another crisis that could ruin their lives. They loathed liberalization and the insecurity it might bring.

  Such fears were unfounded, of course, though hardly surprising. The public on either side of the Iron Curtain was oblivious to the perestroika’s true meaning.

  Both Saveliy Frolov and Galaktion (Vasiliev) understood it too well.

  The West still fawned over Gorbachev, the last Soviet dictator falsely portrayed as a champion of democracy. But Gorbachev had merely acted as a frontman for a project which had been the brainchild of another man—Yuri Andropov, the KGB boss.

  From the beginning, it had been a ruse to fool the gullible West, a gambit to snatch victory in the Cold War.

  Back in the 1970s, the Soviet Union began exporting oil to Western countries, under the watchful eye of the KGB, who dealt with all foreign trade operations. The resulting cash flow of hard currency was too strong a temptation for the KGB to resist. The Chekists felt the need to unshackle themselves from Marxist dogma and shake off the burden of the Communist party keeping them in check. In order to seize control of the wealth, a transition had been necessary.

  Thus, the Perestroika Deception had come into being. Under the guise of democratic reforms, the Andropov Plan had been going on in full swing. The Communists had found themselves on shaky ground, their authority eroding until they finally lost everything in 1991 and the Chekists had gradually taken over, seizing Russia fully in their iron grip by the start of the new millennium.

  The Andropov Plan had triumphed, surviving its mastermind, duping the West, and setting the country’s course to crony capitalism for decades to come. It had come at a cost of lost territories and the mayhem of the 90s, but the latter stages of the Andropov Plan implied a re-consolidation of power and a recapture of the former Soviet republics back into Moscow’s orbit.

  Liberty had never been on the cards.

  Now, Frolov prepared to complete the deception with a crowning achievement.

  “What do the people want?” Frolov asked Galaktion.

  “Stability. Benefits. And a strong hand. They want a Soviet Union led by a czar.”

  Frolov nodded contentedly. The findings of the Church confirmed the polling
data processed by the FSB. According to the intel reports from the Lubyanka, most Russians would favor a return to monarchy in the event of a referendum.

  “I’ll make their dreams come true,” Frolov declared. “It must be kept secret for a while, but the new constitution will reinstate the position of Czar.”

  Galaktion stroked his long, unkempt beard. “It would be a huge honor for me to anoint you during the coronation ceremony, Saveliy Ignatievich. This country needs someone like you, a wise ruler. Someone whose power will be absolute, and not hindered by any democratic circus.”

  “Thank you, Your Holiness. Together, we will be unstoppable. Nobody can stand in our way.”

  The Patriarch’s support was key to Frolov becoming the new Russian Czar. On the death of his predecessor, President Alexandrov, Frolov had emerged as an unlikely candidate to succeed him in the Kremlin, a stop-gap solution to balance out the conflicting interests of various groups striving for political influence—the oligarchs, the Mafia, the ex-KGB strongmen, the clans of local elites. In the current Kremlin setup, the President was above all an arbiter chosen by these groups to manually regulate a system of checks and balances among them. As the U.S. sanctions put Russia under increased pressure, Frolov felt a need to solidify his reign. He wanted to rid himself of the Kremlin factions’ ability to undermine his position. Similarly, Frolov viewed even a sham election as an unnecessary chore that carried potential risks; risks he was unwilling to take. Not after what had happened in Belarus, where the local dictator had lost out to a school teacher in a landslide defeat, despite a fully rigged campaign, his refusal to step down sparking nationwide protests, prompting Moscow to intervene.