by Albert Able
“I think you are all aware that I am a Hero of Russia,” he declared with pride, “and you know how I earned that decoration. So, should anyone ever intimidate or harm a ‘Pulaski Dame’ again, the consequences for those concerned in any way will be swift and terminal.
“As a concession in this final instance, I will give an amnesty to whoever is responsible for the three current hijackings - that is, providing the drivers, their vehicles and their cargos are returned unharmed within the next twelve hours.”
This resulted in the immediate return of the three kidnapped drivers and their vehicles and although much of the cargo was lost, Igor kept his word and sought no retribution from the thieves.
This brazen public warning however caused Igor Pulaski to be hauled before the Chief of Police in St Petersburg. “You can’t go around threatening people in that way, Igor!” The frustrated officer cautioned unconvincingly as he faced the tall young entrepreneur.
Igor, now an influential businessman and much respected by the authorities, shrugged his shoulders indifferently.
“Too late my friend, it’s already been said and what’s more, I meant it. So it is just as well that the drivers and trucks have been so quickly returned.” He stood in his familiar stance, with his hands on his hips challenging the rebuke. “So if it happens again?”
“You’re right of course; I only wish I could be so forthright.” The stressed Police Chief confessed, raising his hand in a calming gesture. “But you must try to be a bit more moderate, especially on local radio. Please? It’s not like the old days you know. People complain about everything now!”
Igor smiled. “Don’t worry, Chief, I understand.”
Then his face-hardened. “But just between you and me, no bastard is going to injure one of my people and get away with it.”
The smile returned to his face. “See you soon.”
It only ever happened once again after that, when a ‘Pulaski Dame’ with a load of timber was hijacked just after it crossed the Italian border. The driver was shot and thrown on to the road, the truck and its load of timber driven deep into Italy.
Igor Pulaski was furious and immediately travelled to the site of the hijack determined to keep his word, find the culprits and draw blood.
Although the cargo was extremely valuable, typically Igor Pulaski was genuinely more concerned for his driver, who amazingly, he was pleased to discover, was still alive but in intensive care at the local hospital.
Igor visited the seriously injured driver at the hospital, only to be told by the buxom matron who barred his way like a challenging wrestler: “For your information she had been badly injured but is now in a stable condition. But she is definitely not able to answer any questions.”
Igor had absolutely no intention of challenging the matron’s awesome authority.
“Thank you I understand, so when you can, will you please tell her Igor was asking for her.”
Igor left the hospital and called in at the police station. The officer on duty showed little enthusiasm for cooperation, preferring to caution: ‘Leave it alone; you don’t know what you’re dealing with, these people are all powerful in these parts.’
But that was not Igor’s style and so he persisted with his inquiries, demanding to speak with more senior officers who all politely advised restraint.
The following day, at about eight thirty in the morning as he was preparing to leave his hotel room, he received a visit from a couple of men in smart suits.
Igor opened the door in response to the knock. “Mr Pulaski?” the first man asked.
“How can I help?” Igor responded politely.
The two men stood in the corridor and made no attempt to enter the room.
One of the men addressed him: “You are making a fool of yourself, Mr Pulaski, and we have been sent to advise you to go home. You are interfering in others peoples business.”
The other man remained silent with his hand tucked inside his jacket. Igor assumed he was concealing a weapon.
Realising that they were only emissaries, Igor leaned on the doorframe and smiled. “And just who exactly sent this message?” he asked casually, making an exaggerated gesture of folding his arms and looking up at the ceiling.
The men’s eyes followed his gaze. In that instant Igor’s hand flashed forward grabbed the first man around the neck and turned him to face the startled gunman.
“Now you, gun on the floor.” Igor snapped.
Too shocked by the dramatic attack to know what to do, the gunman did not move for a moment.
The face of the other man bunched up in the crook of Igor’s arm gasped for breath, Igor squeezed a little harder. “Now!” Igor repeated.
The man’s hand withdrew slowly from the jacket. It was, as Igor had suspected, holding a snub nosed revolver.
“On the floor!” Igor demanded, nodding at the weapon, “and slowly.”
The man hesitated for a moment before lowering his hand and letting the weapon drop to the carpeted floor.
Igor aggressively pushed the choking man away, picking up the revolver in the same swift movement.
“Right,” he waved the pistol menacingly, he was no longer smiling. “Now what you are going to do is to tell who ever sent you that this is my business, and I will not stop being difficult until I can talk to the person responsible for things around here. Is that clear?”
The men looked at one another nodded agreement and half turned to leave but then the one Igor had held by the throat, turned back suddenly. He was holding a small black pistol.
“I don’t think so,” Igor growled, cocking the hammer on the revolver he had taken from the other man and pointing it menacingly at the man’s stomach.
The man froze at the sound of the revolver being cocked; his own gun fell to the ground.
“Perhaps you didn’t understand me, eh?”
Both raised their hands in abject surrender.
Igor took a deep breath. “Good, I’ll try again.”
He continued in a low tone and speaking more slowly. “I decided not to kill you, because you are only the pawns in this game. Yes?”
There was no reply.
“I want to meet with the man who sent you. The man who makes the decisions. Is that quite clear?”
The terrified men nodded repeatedly in silent understanding.
“I want him here and within two hours. Is that clearly understood this time?”
The men, whose last flush of courage had finally ebbed away, again nodded nervously and left without speaking another word.
“Two hours,” Igor barked at them as they scurried from sight down the corridor.
Igor picked up the second revolver and returned to the room, closed and locked the door and with his heart still pounding in his chest, flopped exhausted into a chair. A few minutes later he opened his eyes, took a long measured breath and exhaled.
“Nearly overplayed your hand that time, Igor Pulaski!” he said aloud, closed his eyes, allowed himself to sink further into the chair and dozed.
Two hours later there was a sharp wrap on the door.
“It’s open, come in,” Igor called from the safety of the bathroom. The bedroom door eased open, one of the men from the earlier visit stepped cautiously into the room.
“Welcome again,” Igor called. “Please come in where I can see you.”
The second gunman from the earlier visit entered accompanied by a taller distinguished man. They did not appear to be armed and so Igor stepped from the bathroom.
“Please close the door!” The pistol held in his right hand, remained pointing at the floor. “You can’t be too careful can you?”
He scowled at the men from his earlier visit.
“So you wanted to speak to me. I’m here, what do you want?” the third man sai
d abruptly.
Igor pocketed the pistol. “Please sit down.” Igor pointed the man to a chair. “You two on the bed: hands in sight and no clever stuff,” he snapped at the bodyguards and turned back.
“It’s very simple really,” Igor sat in the chair opposite. “You, or at least someone in your organisation, has hijacked - and worse still, shot - one of my drivers. I cannot allow that to happen. Now I fully understand that your business is both large and powerful, but I’ll warrant that you do not deliberately invite trouble, neither do you welcome adverse publicity which is always bad for trade.”
The man facing him remained silent.
“I am also quite certain,” Igor continued, “that you can find plenty of business without bothering to hijack one of my trucks. Which leads me to be generous and conclude that those responsible are probably maverick operators who are known to you, might even be from within your own ranks, yes?” Igor paused.
The man facing him briefly gestured in silent agreement.
“So,” Igor continued unruffled, “If I get my truck and cargo back and if the driver lives and has no permanent disabilities, I will forget the whole matter.” Igor shrugged his shoulders. “If, however, that is not the case, I will expose the source of several of your more lucrative activities.” Igor sat back in his chair facing the so far silent man, “and I think you should know that I do know what I’m talking about!”
Igor Pulaski’s legendry reputation was widely known, with stories of his heroic adventures in Afghanistan grossly magnified with time, but together with his numerous more recent duals with the underworld in both Moscow and St Petersburg to back him up. The man sitting in front of him already had considerable respect for the bold young Russian and was genuinely impressed by Igor’s face-to-face self-confidence. The Italian relaxed.
“We have no reason to create unnecessary problems and yes we know where your vehicle is, though unfortunately some of the goods are missing. But I’m sure your insurance will be sufficient to cover them.” The man raised his eyes, the brief hint of a smile on his face vanished as he continued. “Your assessment of how this incident happened may or may not be correct; we will resolve that issue internally in our own way.”
The man raised his head indicating that there was nothing further to be said on that particular matter. “More importantly, I do have the authority to return the balance of your goods and can give you an assurance that, in so far as we have control of matters, it won’t happen again. As for the driver, we must pray that she fully recovers.”
The man leaned forward. “To that end, with your approval of course, we have arranged for her to be transferred by helicopter to a specialist unit, where I am confident she will have a better opportunity to recover from her ‘little accident?’” The man raised his eyebrows looking for understanding. “Are we in agreement?”
Igor stood up slipping the pistol back into his pocket and faced the man. “I definitely agree to the special treatment for my driver, the return of the truck and cargo would be a bonus as far as I am concerned.”
“Good” the man stood up, “it will all be organised immediately. But the other most important thing is that this arrangement must work both ways, and so no trespassing on our territory either!”
The man faced Igor without blinking and offered his hand to seal the bargain.
“I must have a contact name or number, to avoid any misunderstandings in future, yes?” Igor shook and held the firm hand.
“Agreed.”
For the first time his otherwise stony expression softened into a modest smile. “I am Sergio I will be your contact”.
Then just as quickly the stony expression returned as he gestured to one of the two bodyguards still sitting on the bed and commanded: “Give him a card.”
Sergio then turned and left without looking back.
The two bodyguards jumped up from the bed, one rummaged in his pocket and produced a smart business card and with his eyes averted passed it silently to Igor. Then, like a couple of spaniels at heel, they followed after their master.
***
Alex Scott telephoned Sir Adrian Jordan, the Boss, on his mobile; he was concerned to know if there was any information on that young man at the Archives department at GCHQ.
“We’ve had a good look at him,” the Boss started without preamble. “Name’s Gerald Rive; it’s rather interesting actually. He appears to be completely clean and perfect - almost too perfect; straight out of University, two years in the diplomatic corps, which could mean anything, then straight to MI5 as a clerk, then elevated to ‘Control of Archives’ when the ‘mushroom’ opened. Quite a meteoric rise by the old standards, but perhaps that’s the way it is today. I had a friend check him out at home and could find no evidence of a double life, appears to be heterosexual - in fact perfectly normal.”
“I know what you mean - sounds exactly like the perfect textbook security man, doesn’t he?” Alex repeated.
“OK, so let’s assume for a moment then that there is no human leak from inside there. How else could information be passed on?” the Boss challenged irritably.
“Hans may be on to something, he’s been working on some spurious signals he discovered when he was monitoring me inside the ‘Mushroom’. It’s still too soon to have any positive thoughts so I’ll call back and let you know if he comes up with anything.”
“I see, well thank you for that at least. I’ll wait for your call,” the Boss replied a little more understandingly.
Alex terminated the call thoughtfully and returned to their workshop in Sheppard’s Market, where Hans had been trying to make sense of the signal he had detected outside GCHQ.
“The signal I recorded was barely audible, even with our most sophisticated intensifier.” He pressed the earphone into his ear and strained trying to detect any identifying sound as he listened yet again to the recording.
“I have no positive evidence yet but my gut feeling tells me this microscopic transmission emanated from inside GCHQ itself.”
Hans spoke to Alex, but kept his eyes fixed on the array of dials in front of him. A kaleidoscope of activity danced among the various instruments while he tried repeatedly to refine the signal enough to interpret its message.
“If indeed there is one,” Hans mumbled. Then he looked up suddenly at Alex. “You do realise don’t you, that if this proves to be some kind of secure legitimate transmission and we access it, we will be violating the Nation’s most closely guarded secret and face a minimum of twenty years?” Hans smiled wickedly, emphasising the ‘twenty years’.
“The only advantage I can see from that would be twenty years food and board at Her Majesty’s expense!” Alex replied dryly, “also no mobile phones for ever bleeping wherever you go!”
Silence descended on the two men as they stared at the instruments. “You know that just gave me an idea.” Hans said suddenly. “I wonder if it is something really simple, like a mobile phone signal being compressed and zipped and then transmitted to a local station.”
“Simple? That’s simple?” Alex scoffed. “Bring back the quill pen I say.”
Hans switched his attention to another set of dials that he deftly adjusted as he strained to hear any new sound in the earpiece.
“Hey, look at this,” Hans enthused suddenly. “It certainly is a mobile phone type of signal and it seems to be being reversed through the GPS, the Global Satellite Positioning network.” Hans looked briefly at Alex as he explained the jargon.
“OK, I’m not completely dumb,” Alex replied pretending to be upset.
“Look here,” Hans ignored the remark. “We definitely have the signal route, now we may even be able to hear what was being said.”
He looked up triumphantly, “but first I will need to re-tune several of these gizmos before I can tell you that.”
Raising his bush
y eyebrows, Hans looked up at Alex. “Why don’t you go and do something useful, while I get on with it eh?”
“All right,” Alex conceded, “you carry on playing with your toys. I’ll go and do some real detective work!”
***
Several years earlier, at the same time as Igor Pulaski and his men were being demobilised from the ICBM plant north of Moscow, the KGB squad and the resident Political Commissar suffered a similar ignominious dissolution.
Unlike Igor’s group however, who had genuinely believed that they were guarding a ‘Technical Development’ factory, which they understood also included several types of secret prototype rockets, the Political Commissar and the KGB Commanding Officer on the other hand knew precisely what ‘other’ research was involved.
Tactical nuclear weapons have been considered for some time by all the larger nations as being impractical. Rather like the use of ‘Gas’ in the First Great War, they both had a habit of being counter productive because of their unreliability and the inability to control the effect of wind on the gas or radiation, which frequently blew back over friendly troops. In addition there was the risk, in the case of radiation, that the earth could be contaminated for millions of years.
The race was on, therefore, to produce a radiation-free or ‘clean’ nuclear weapon, in particular a miniature version, which could be contained within, say, a fifty metre-killing zone.
Hundreds of controlled experiments had been carried out, deep underground at secret Russian locations and well away from the prying eyes of American ‘Spy Satellites’.
Progress, however, had been slow, mainly because of inadequate funding and the lack of adequate back-up technology. Even more seriously, the programme to clean up after these experiments was almost nil.
When work at the Technical Development factory was eventually stopped and the scientists sent home, Igor and his men were to be replaced by regular army troops who were supposed to move in to guard the plant until higher political decisions were made.
The promised replacement guards, however, did not appear at the appointed time so Igor and his men dutifully waited for twenty-four hours. Then, in a surprise move, the Political Commissar and the KGB Commander assured Igor that they and the handful of their remaining men would cover the position until the replacements arrived, and they resolved the problem by instructing Igor and his men with a written order to leave immediately.
