The president shook his head. "He did not tell me that. I heard this from our agent in Alaska. She is on her way back here even as we speak. She has assured me that they are more capable than any army."
Pavel Zatsyrko did not ask who this mysterious woman was. Apparently she was very highly placed, for she did not come under his jurisdiction at the SVR.
"Let us hope so," Zatsyrko said seriously. "For if Zhirinsky truly does have a nuclear bomb and uses it within the United States, the anarchists who roam Russia's streets will become the least of our problems."
The president didn't seem to hear. Tiny fingers drummed the wooden table.
"The two former presidents are still here in the Kremlin?" he asked suddenly.
"They could not leave if they wanted to," Zatsyrko said. "Their cars would not be able to get past the mobs."
"Bring them here," the president insisted. "And have them bring their bodyguards with them." His voice grew soft, his gaze distant. "If she is correct, the worst for me may come if the American agents somehow manage to succeed."
BEHIND HIS DESK in the Fairbanks city hall, Vladimir Zhirinsky took his hand from the phone.
Framed in the window at his back was the fluttering hammer and sickle of the Sovyetskii Soyuz. The flag waved proudly over Zhirinskygrad's cold night streets. The ultranationalist smiled into the camera.
"And ...cut," Zhirinsky ordered.
Across the room, an aide lowered the video camera he'd taken from the home of a Fairbanks real-estate agent.
"We must record every moment of this," Zhirinsky insisted. He smoothed out his mustache with two quick strokes of his index finger.
With fussing hands he picked up the pen from his desk and began to make grand sweeps across the clean, top sheet of a yellow legal pad.
"Um, Comrade Skachkov phoned a few minutes ago," the aide said nervously. He held the camera protectively to his chest. "He is still looking for the American spies."
Zhirinsky noted the quaver in the man's voice. His pen froze in place as he raised his dark eyes. "Is there something wrong?" he asked suspiciously.
The man with the camera thought of what Skachkov had told him. About all the dead soldiers at the airport and the fact that every one of their helicopters had been destroyed. He also thought of what Zhirinsky had done to Ivan Kerbabaev.
The nervous young man worked only part-time two days a week in the ultranationalist's Moscow office. And if his boss was willing to bite the nose off a full-timer, he dared not imagine what Zhirinsky might do to him.
"No, no," he said, smiling sickly. "Nothing more. But perhaps you should deliver your speech now instead of waiting until midnight. By all accounts, the people are ready. You have inspired them with your actions here. There is no reason why the revolution needs to wait any longer. We can leave for Russia as soon as you are done."
"Nonsense," Zhirinsky said. "We have all the time in the world." He tapped his pen to his chin as he licked the bristles of his bushy mustache. "What rhymes with 'invade Afghanistan'? Ah, yes."
Sticking his chin deep into his uppermost medals that adorned his jangling chest, he got back to work. With a feeling of deep dread, the man with the camera backed quietly from the room.
Chapter 31
Ivan Kerbabaev's eyes were clamped tightly shut. With one hand he clasped the door handle. With the other he gripped firmly on to the front of the rear seat. "Hurry," Ivan begged.
"I will try not to cause any pain."
"I am already in pain," Ivan said, his voice quavering.
Ivan sucked in a gust of injured air at the sudden tearing at his face. Opening his eyes, he saw nothing between them but a tiny nub of white bone. The spot where his nose should have been felt wet and open. Ivan made a few pitiful sobbing moans.
On the back seat next to him, the Russian soldier who had just removed the bandages winced.
Blood bubbles percolated out of exposed nasal cavities. A strand of cartilage hung from the tip of the triangular bone. The discolored flesh around the wound was curling inward. Teeth marks were visible on the skin.
The soldier forced an encouraging smile. "It does not look so bad," he said.
Ivan had just caught a glimpse of his deformed face in the rearview mirror.
"Oh, God," Zhirinsky's aide wailed pathetically.
"Maybe you should see a doctor," the soldier suggested.
"There are no doctors," Ivan moaned. "That bristle-faced lunatic has banished them all from town." The soldier stiffened. Comrade Kerbabaev's words were troubling. They would need to be reported. Careful to remain without expression, the young soldier rolled down the window. He threw the bloody bandages out into the street. A cold wind grabbed the gauze, blowing it away. Rolling up the window, he reached to the floor of the car where he began fussing with a small case Ivan had liberated from the downtown dentist's office.
"Aren't you ready yet?" Ivan begged after what seemed like an eternity. "I am in agony."
"I am all set. Do not move."
Ivan opened his eyes just a crack. He saw the needle closing in. With a groan he squeezed his eyes shut. The soldier held him by the side of the head with one hand while he slipped the needle in. Ivan felt a tiny prick near the bone of what had been his nose. When the needle came back out a moment later, Ivan's shoulders sagged.
It would take a moment for the novocaine to take effect. Ivan kept his eyes closed as the soldier applied fresh gauze.
"When the new revolution comes, Russia will once more have the best doctors in the world," the soldier said as he bit off a strip of masking tape he'd stolen from the health-and-beauty-aids section of the local Sam's Club. "They will fix you up."
"Russia never had good doctors," Ivan moaned. "My father went to a clinic to have an ingrown toenail removed and they cut off his foot. He died of gangrene. The only doctors that might have been able to do anything at all for me were chased away by the crazy man in whose belly my nose now rots."
The soldier's eyes grew flat at the treasonous words. "State doctors are the best," he insisted dully.
"There is no state," Ivan spit. "There is a small city in the middle of nowhere. No matter what the madman thinks, the Americans will not wait forever." He leaned back against the seat. "My only hope is that they take pity on me for what the crazy man has done to me."
The soldier applied a final piece of tape, stowing the dispenser in the case with the novocaine and needles.
"If that is your attitude, why did you participate in this glorious crusade?" he sniffed.
Ivan opened his eyes. He could see by his body language that the soldier was displeased. Good. Maybe he'd report him. At this point Ivan didn't even care.
"I am scared to death of that lunatic, that is why," Ivan said morosely, shutting his eyes once more. The novocaine was blessedly starting to take effect. "When I answered his newspaper ad, I did not know better. I had heard the stories about him, but I didn't believe them. After that it was too late. Did you ever try quitting a job when your boss is certifiably insane? Every day I tried to, and every day I saw visions of him slamming my head in the filing cabinet or pushing me down the elevator shaft. I knew I should have taken that job as second-shift manager at the Moscow McDonald's."
For a brief instant Ivan felt a shiver of cold. He assumed the soldier who had driven him here had rolled the window down to throw something else out into the street. Opening his eyes lazily, he was met with a fresh shock.
When he saw that the face looking back at him was no longer that of the young soldier, Ivan jumped so hard he banged his head against the roof.
"Kto dyela?" he winced, dropping back to his seat. "Speakie the English," demanded Remo Williams. Remo now sat in the back seat across from the Russian. Looking around, Ivan saw no sign of the soldier who had been tending to his wound.