Coercion

by Tim Tigner

  “‘So why are you laughing?’ I ask. And then Mehmet gave me the power to change my life. He said to me, ‘Alex, we’re probably going to die today. I want to enjoy myself while I still can.’”

  Anna stopped to stare at the faux lace tablecloth and think about what she’d just heard. Alex let her think. Finally, she looked up at him and said, “Better vibrant than vulnerable.”

  “Exactly. Of course, I didn’t get it at the time. There in the well I thought Mehmet was crazy.”

  “What did you do? How did you get out?”

  “Doesn’t matter. The point is that Mehmet didn’t get out. But he did get to die on his own terms. He died laughing. He found the strength to enjoy the bitterest of ends, and has been my role model ever since.”

  Chapter 48

  NOVOSIBIRSK, SIBERIA

  Alex looked up to see Anna enter the kitchen with a triumphant stride. “I got your map.”

  “That’s great. How did you manage it so early on a Sunday morning?”

  “My neighbor is a geologist. One thing we have plenty of in Russia is scientists.” Anna unfolded the top of her tiny kitchen table, turning it from a two-seater into a four-seater. Then she rolled the map open, securing one end with the saltshaker, the other with the pepper.

  Alex took a minute to get oriented. He wanted to be sure of himself. It was not the same type of map he had seen scanned onto an acetate in the Irkutsk Motorworks boardroom, and the scale was different, but the distinctive landmark gave him his bearing nonetheless. “That’s where I have to go,” he said, pointing to the right of Lake Banana.

  “That’s not going to be easy. That complex is a KGB facility, the regional headquarters. It’s also within the same fence line as an abandoned nuclear power plant, so it’s doubly dangerous. There’s lots of security—a high fence and patrols.”

  “But people do go there to work?”

  “Hundreds work at the KGB complex. The power plant, however,” she traced her finger a couple kilometers north to another complex, “Nobody in their right mind would go there.”

  “Hum,” Alex thought. The words “nobody goes there” smacked of a clue, but before he could process it, he noticed a sadness in Anna’s eyes. “What’s wrong?”

  Anna blinked, and a silent tear dropped onto the map. Then she told him about her brother Kostya, and the others who lost their lives to the radiation leak. “Sometimes people still climb the fences, ignore the radiation signs and wander back there to hunt or scavenge. They end up dying in my hospital if they don’t go straight to the morgue. If you wander into the wrong place back there, Alex, it’s . . . it’s beyond horrible.”

  “Why would the KGB keep its office so close to a radiation zone?”

  “They had just finished building it a month before the accident, a beautiful new facility. I thought it was strange myself that they didn’t move it, but apparently the radiation is very contained. There are a couple of kilometers of what they call a green shield between it and the offices. It obviously works since none of the employees has had a radiation problem. We monitor them closely.”

  “Green shield?”

  “A forest.”

  “I see.”

  “Let’s talk about something else,” she suggested. Alex smiled, and before he knew it they were back in chitchat mode again while Alex’s mind processed in the background. The hours flew by.

  After lunch her eyes began to sparkle with a hint of intrigue, and she said, “I want you to take a nap now.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, for starters, you’re not fully recovered yet, but the main reason is that we have a big evening ahead of us.”

  “Big evening?”

  “It’s a surprise. Now get some sleep.”

  Chapter 49

  MOSCOW, RUSSIA

  Foreign Minister Sugurov was worried. That wasn’t like him. Worrying was wasted energy. Better to spend your time fixing a problem than fretting over it, he always said. And there was the rub. For the first time in his life, Sugurov was at a loss for how to fix a problem.

  It had been one week since he had heard from Andrey. One week since his chief of staff had gone into Chulin Air Base to pry Alex from Yarik’s clutches. And one week since an airplane had exploded. That was all Sugurov knew for certain. Everything else was just conjecture.

  It was possible that the escape had gone awry, and the plane had blown up with everyone aboard, but Sugurov didn’t think that was likely. Andrey was too good. He was also the most likely cause of the explosion. Sugurov clung to the assumption that Andrey and Alex either never got on the plane, or had jumped off before it exploded. This optimistic hypothesis gained credence when Sugurov got word that Yarik had survived but was missing in action. But a week had passed, and there was still no word from Andrey. Sugurov’s optimism was waning.

  It was time to take action, and unfortunately, that action would have to involve other organizations. Sugurov composed his thoughts and then got his assistant on the intercom. “Natasha, I need to make two calls . . .”

  Chapter 50

  NOVOSIBIRSK, SIBERIA

  As he walked the long central corridor at SovStroy, Karpov tried to meet everyone’s eye, if only for a second. He was ostensibly at the Knyaz’s photovoltaic plant for a dress inspection. His actual intention was just the opposite. Karpov had come to SovStroy to be inspected.

  He had been spending a lot of time there lately, a fact that was not lost on the workforce. They were proud that General Karpov, a man who had dozens of factories under his purview, chose to spend so much of his precious time with them. It must be personal, they reasoned. All they made were bricks. If they only knew.

  Karpov picked up a freshly cast brick, a Karpov brick, and felt himself begin to glow. He held the future of the world in the palm of his hand. For now, however, he was the only person at SovStroy who knew it. Unlike Irkutsk Motorworks and RuTek, where sophisticated product lines forced him to bring management into the Knyaz loop, here at SovStroy ignorance remained his asset.

  That was about to change. Soon the whole world would know that you simply needed to connect Karpov’s bricks with Karpov’s mortar to transform your building into a power plant. Be that as it may, the electrifying secret would remain grounded until he was ready to flip the switch. To figure out that Karpov bricks were solar cells and Karpov mortar a conduit, you would need to see the other half of the puzzle.

  That other half was located six hundred kilometers away at a Knyaz-owned factory in Krasnoyarsk called RuTek. There, one manufacturing line over from the latest microchip out of Seattle, a group of skilled workers was cranking out Karpov Controls. Karpov Controls were the power-management and storage systems that would harness and direct the energy collected by his bricks. Bill Gates might control computing power, but Vasily Karpov would control the power of the sun. Russia was about to become the source of the cheapest, cleanest, most revolutionary power source on Earth.

  The billions he would earn personally were but a means to an end for Karpov. He was put on the planet to raise Russia to its proper place at the very top of the global food chain. To make that happen, he needed the power of the presidency. To attain that, he needed the support of the people.

  The workers and families at Karpov’s factories would form a core political base that spanned three major metropolitan areas. They would seed a swell of grassroots popular support that would blaze across the country. In no time, everybody in Russia would know that people who worked for Karpov lived better and felt better about themselves. At the end of the day, that was all anybody required of a politician.

  All he needed now was a dead president, and Victor was about to create one.

  Chaos would break out when Gorbachev died. The prime minister was not popular. Presidential wannabes would come out of the Moscow woodwork, and a nasty battle would ensue, further dividing the country and adding to the mayhem. Af
ter a month or three of that, after the people and the reporters tired of the speculation and the mudslinging, Vasily Karpov would launch his product lines on the market, and spring onto the world stage. By the time the constitutionally mandated elections rolled around a few months later, he would be the very symbol of Russia’s future. A living legend. A favorite prince virtually forced to be king. If the people got their way.

  With the economic miracle arranged, and the Supreme Court in the bag, the only thing with the potential to derail Karpov now was the assassination itself. Framing the Americans was the perfect solution. Like his bricks, it was simple, elegant, and easy to understand. That was why he was so keen to have Ferris under lock and key. Where was Yarik? It had been a week.

  Maddening though it might be, and since there was nothing he could do to make them appear faster, Karpov turned his attention to the issues he could influence. With all the ups and downs surrounding Yarik’s disappearance and Stepashin’s death, he had dropped the courtship ball. It was time to pick it back up and run for the goal line. Perhaps he could leverage the death of his friend. Stepashin would surely approve. He could go to Anna in his grief and play to her heartstrings.

  Karpov looked at his watch. It was eleven thirty already. In an hour he would have lunch in the SovStroy employee cafeteria and then make a motivational speech for dessert and have a coffee with the employees of the month. He would be out of there by three and back in Academic City by four.

  As he pondered his next move, Karpov found himself feeling romantically inspired. Perhaps he should just drop in on Anna. He wouldn’t even need to change. She had not seen him in full dress uniform except on TV. His thick stack of medals and gilded general’s trim always impressed women. Yes, it was time to show Anna his softer, spontaneous side . . .

  Chapter 51

  NOVOSIBIRSK, SIBERIA

  The surprise Anna had teased him with was dinner at her mother’s, a fine rendition of chicken Kiev for which he had so far complemented his charming hostess no less than three times. The actual surprise was Anna herself.

  She had disappeared into her simple bathroom only to emerge fit for the cover of a French magazine. Her long brown hair beautifully coiffed up in a spirited tangle. Her strong Slavic features made up to accent her sparkling amber eyes. Plump lips painted red to match a dress that relentlessly funneled his gaze beyond polite conversation.

  “I understand your mother was Russian?” Mrs. Zaitseva said, her voice warm and comforting. A handsome woman in her mid to late fifties, she looked nothing like her daughter, but she shared the same disarming manner. He’d felt at ease from the moment she first cracked the door.

  “That’s right.”

  “Where did your parents meet?”

  “Geneva. My father was there on a banking internship the summer before he graduated from Wharton. My mother was working at the Soviet consulate. Mom got pregnant and they got engaged. When Dad graduated, he moved to Geneva and they got married. My twin brother and I were born a few months later.”

  “Did you grow up in Geneva?”

  “Primarily.”

  “Are they still there?”

  “No. They died years ago.”

  “I’m sorry. Were you close?”

  “To my mother.”

  “But not your father?”

  “Mother!” Anna said.

  “It’s okay,” Alex said, still looking at Mrs. Z. “Probably do me good to talk about it. It’s been a pretty healthy week in that regard. Your daughter has quite the bedside manner. Now I know where she got it.”

  Mrs. Z just smiled and took a sip of the wine they had brought.

  “My father never took much interest in Frank or me. We just seemed to be the obligatory two kids he needed standing next to his beautiful wife in the family photo on his desk at the bank.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “That’s a good sign. Nobody should. My father was all work. He was a banker, like his father. Climbed the ladder all the way to managing director before . . . before he died.”

  “Did he love your mother?”

  “I’d like to think he did, at least at first. As my mother explained it, babies are tough; twins are tougher. It was too much for dad, so first he dove into work. Then he dove into other dalliances.”

  “Sounds tragic, but not that unusual. How did your mother react?”

  “Not the way you would expect. Her nonchalance was always a mystery to me.”

  “How about Anna’s father? Where did you meet?” Alex asked.

  Mrs. Z gave him the family history, peppered by Anna’s colorful anecdotes. By the time dessert was over, Alex knew as much about Anna as anyone else in his life. The only standard topic they did not discuss, the one conspicuously absent from all their other conversations to date, was relationships. Alex appreciated their discretion. He was single, but for a reason. Nobody ever left it at that, though. You couldn’t just say, “I’m not fit to be a husband” and switch to the weather. Everyone had to know why, so they could convince you that you were wrong. It was as if they wanted you to join their religion. So eventually he would have to tell them the story of his father’s philandering ways. He hated telling the story. People always smiled reassuringly and nodded with understanding, but they never really understood. To be perfectly honest, neither did he.

  “Are you bringing Alex to church?” Mrs. Z asked Anna while pouring cups of fragrant jasmine tea from her samovar.

  “I don’t think he would find that particularly interesting, Mother, and we don’t want him to be seen.”

  Alex surprised himself by saying, “Actually, I would like to go.”

  Mrs. Z gave him an approving nod and said, “We’ll say that you’re Anna’s cousin from Vilnius.”

  Anna looked back and forth between him and her mother with a bemused smile on her face. Alex was pleased to have Mother as a coconspirator. Because his looks and accent weren’t pure Russian, saying that he was from Vilnius, the capital of the distant Soviet Republic of Lithuania, would work just fine. Making him a relative would further diffuse the speculation that would undoubtedly arise in their small village if Anna suddenly produced a foreign suitor. Two points for Mom.

  As the three walked slowly through virgin snow, Anna explained, “It’s not a regular church service. It’s a memorial service that has evolved into something of a community social event. We have it every Sunday night at eight o’clock. You remember I told you about Kostya being killed along with twenty-four other villagers from a radiation leak?”

  “Yes, I remember.”

  “Well, you can imagine the staggering impact a tragedy of that size would have on a small village like ours. Everyone lost a relative or friend. Five years later we’re still mourning.”

  Alex knew about loss, but he did not want to turn the discussion in that direction, so he just reached out to hold Anna’s hand. They walked on in silence.

  They arrived thirty minutes early for the service, as planned. Anna wanted to show off their beautiful church. “It was built nearly six hundred years ago,” she explained while tying on a scarf to cover her head, “back when our annual fur fair was a major regional event.”

  European dates always amazed Alex. To think, this building was three times older than his country. It really put things into humbling perspective. His curiosity aroused, Alex pulled enthusiastically on the brass handle of the massive door. It sprang outward with surprising ease and brought the scent of burning beeswax to their noses.

  “It’s perfectly balanced,” Anna said with a knowing smile.

  The nave of the church was a semicircular dome. At the front was an assortment of ornate gilded icons behind a hand-carved pulpit. For a town of this size, it was magnificent.

  Although the first to arrive, they walked around quietly while Anna pointed and explained the history and architecture in a whispered voice.
It was as though the church itself was not to be disturbed. Nevertheless, as they approached the pulpit, Anna said, “It’s okay to go up; we’re all family here.”

  Alex mounted the pulpit and found himself looking at an enormous ancient Bible. After an approving nod from Anna, he flipped delicately through a few pages of the beautiful book. The printing was done mechanically, but the illuminations were delicately wrought by hand. It must be worth a fortune, he thought, but not to anybody within a thousand miles of here.

  “Alex,” Anna whispered.

  He looked up, but she wasn’t there.

  “Alex.”

  Where was she? Had she slipped behind an icon? Into a secret antechamber? Through a trapdoor? He looked around with bemused curiosity. Then he heard her laugh. A moment later he saw her approaching from the rear of the church, wearing a big smile.

  “What was that?”

  “Did you like it? It’s because of the dome.” Anna gestured upward with her head. “The nobleman who built the church set it up so the peasants could sit quietly in the chapel off the back of the nave and listen to the service out of sight of the gentry. Some say he did it so the peasants wouldn’t feel ashamed of their common clothes. Others think he just didn’t want to have to look at them. Now we’re all peasants so it doesn’t really matter.” She gave a carefree shrug and reached for his hand. “Actually, the chapel is kind of cozy; come have a look. It’s where we hold the memorial services.”

  Alex walked to the back of the church and ducked through a narrow, arched tunnel into an ancient, windowless room with a low domed brick ceiling. “You were whispering from here?”