‘The situation in Moscow hangs in the balance as darkness descends on the capital. Lines of troops loyal to the Russian President ring the Interior Ministry behind me, having retreated from one pitched battle with demonstrators after another in bloody street fighting during the afternoon. The whereabouts of the Interior Minister and his top lieutenants is as yet unknown, although sources at the Duma — the lower house of the Russian parliament — indicate that he has fled to the Ural mountains east of the city.’
‘Okay,’ Woody said. He checked some readings. ‘Batteries are almost gone.’
‘And those are your last ones?’
‘Yep.’ He looked up. ‘Okay, now’s where we’ll splice in the scenes of the shit we got caught in on the bridge and over by the embassy. Voice over, voice over, voice over. Now,’ he lowered his eye to the camera, and he again repeated the countdown. Woody was milking every ounce of juice out of his precious batteries he could. Normally he’d just start taping and Kate would begin when she was ready. Kate tried to nail the next part of the report on her first try.
‘In scenes reminiscent of 1917, angry mobs have taken to the streets while most ordinary Russians cower behind locked doors. We spoke of the fighting in Moscow with one family earlier today.’
Woody rolled his index finger in the air. They would splice the interview in right there.
‘Concerns such as those expressed by the Semyonovs,’ Kate continued without missing a beat, ‘ must be on the minds of most Russians as night falls on a city of eleven million lit only by the fires of overturned vehicles and by the first torches, which I can see now, carried by the crowd on the street below.’ Kate squinted at the sight of the approaching group, who held torches high above their heads. They wore black, from head to toe.
‘Woody,’ Kate said, pointing at the large group of black-clad men who pushed their way down the crowded street toward the Interior Ministry. Woody swung the camera toward the approaching phalanx and rolled his finger to keep her talking.
‘There appears to be a group of Anarchist “Black Shirts” approaching. That is what they have come to be known as because of their distinctive black shirts and leather jackets. Each time a group of men such as this has arrived, the scene has erupted in violence. Each time the Black Shirts have attacked the police, the police have retreated. This time, however, there is no retreat for the beleaguered Russian security troops. This time their backs are literally to the wall of their headquarters building.’
Kate backhanded Woody and he glanced at her without moving his head away from the camera. She pointed for him to get a shot at the lines of police toward which the Black Shirts pressed. He complied, but then returned to the shot now just below their balcony. In the long shadows cast by the buildings, the flickering torchlight would be dramatic. Kate let Woody get the shot he wanted. He had roamed the earth for twenty years to cover wars and famines and civil unrest, and she trusted that he knew what he was doing.
A dark orange light on the top of the camera began to blink. ‘The Black Shirts are headed straight for the ministry building now, and the crowd has begun to stir. Many of the demonstrators who have been here for some time are starting to take cover, and the general disturbance seems to have passed right into the lines of the police, who are looking around and craning their necks to see into the crowd they face. I don’t think they’ve spotted the Black Shirts yet, but it’s just a matter of seconds before…’
There was a beep and then a clicking sound as the tape mechanism shut down.
‘Shit!’ Woody said. He lowered the camera and slapped the Jamaican reefer decal on its side with his hand. ‘I can’t fuckin’ believe this, man!’ Kate’s eyes were trained on the now scurrying demonstrators, who had opened up a path for the Black Shirts. The ‘thonk’ of tear-gas canisters lobbed into the Black Shirts presaged the choking gas to come.
Ripping bursts of machine-gun fire broke open the night. Woody and Kate lowered themselves onto the floor of the balcony. Popping sounds filled the air. Kate watched the growing confusion as police began to fall. Most of the rest threw their shields and truncheons down and ran. The flashing muzzles came not from the police, but from the Black Shirts who charged their lines.
Shots rang out from the upper windows of the ministry building. But the disciplined Black Shirts surged through the front entrance. Gunfire rose from floor to floor as Kate and Woody watched. By the time an explosion blew out the top-floor windows, the glass landed in a tinkling rain on empty streets.
It was then that Kate realized what had just happened. There were no police, no security troops, no sign of the army. There was no more government to speak of left in Moscow. There was a complete absence of power. An end to all social order. Anarchy.
President Marshall watched the television screens in the underground Situation Room. Around him sat his National Security Council — the Vice President, the Secretaries of Defense and State, General Dekker, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Directors of the CIA and National Security Agency.
‘Is the mysterious Valentin Kartsev behind the Anarchist violence that’s sweeping the world?’ reported NBC correspondent Kate Dunn. ‘As Russia slides toward its third day of chaos, signs increasingly point to the growing power of one man — Valentin Kartsev, former professor of political science, former KGB general, Russian millionaire, mafioso kingpin, and chief Anarchist ideologean.
President Marshall and his senior national security advisors sat transfixed by the images. Solid masses of black-shirted men standing shoulder-to-shoulder in closed ranks and rushing toward their objective. Crowds of people running in great swirls of motion this way and that as swaths fell before orange bursts of flame from automatic weapons. The smoke from explosions soon obscured the picture, and after the report concluded the screen cut to color test bars.
‘That was the unedited, raw feed off the satellite from Moscow,’ the Director of the NSA said. ‘We’ve got some other feeds from around Russia if you’d like, Mr President, but this one is the first that purports to have some sort of inside information from the anarchist movement.’
‘Where did that reporter get her info on this guy Kartsev?’ Marshall asked.
‘We talked to her producers in New York. They said she got an anonymous phone call on her cell phone — her second tip in as many days.’
‘So,’ Marshall said, ‘is this man Kartsev behind it all?’
The Director of the CIA leaned forward. His shoulders hunched as he rested his elbows heavily on the conference table. ‘Things are such a mess over there right now, Mr President, it’s hard to say. The real player is the army, which our sources say could enter the fray full force any time now. The problem, however, is that the same fissures that run through society run through the military as well. That raises some obvious risks.’
‘What would happen if the army split?’ Marshall asked. ‘What are we looking at?’
Heads turned from one to another. There was a reluctance to take a position. Finally, Secretary of State Jensen ventured a response. ‘I think the consensus, Tom, is that things will get worse before they get better.’
Marshall exploded. ‘Jesus Christ, I know they’ll get worse if there’s a Goddamned civil war in Russia!’
‘What I mean,’ Jensen said, ‘is that… that the situation won’t improve much before November. There’s real pressure building in the EC for some sort of action. The Europeans are scrambling for alternate sources of energy. With Siberian gas off the market, oil’s up to fifty-five dollars a barrel.’