“VADIM,” THE FRÄULEIN said. They were just inside the tree line now, looking out over the beach and into the bay. They’d opened up the flotation sacks to find Western luggage that contained their gear. They’d used their saperkas, the sharpened entrenching tools they all carried, to dig a pit for the sacks and dry suits, but they hadn’t buried them yet. Vadim, Skull, Princess and New Boy had stood guard armed with suppressed Stechkin pistols, whilst the Fräulein had gone through the gear. “I don’t like it.” She had moved up to where Vadim was standing in the shadow of a tree.
“What?” Vadim asked. They were still speaking Russian; without further information it was a little hard to decide what else to do.
“We’ve got our weapons, plus webbing to carry it all. That’s about it.”
“The RPGs?”
“RPGs, grenades for the launchers, hand grenades, even Skull’s old three-oh-three, all of it.”
“Radio?” Not that he was sure what he would do with one.
The Fräulein shook her head. “No radio, no night vision and no body armour.” That got his attention. “But all the ammunition in the world. There’s one other thing.” She pulled at her jumper and her jeans. “Western clothes, but no Western weapons. Easier to fit in, easier to find parts and ammunition for.” In the East German Army, the Fräulein had been part of a special divisionary battalion, training on US equipment captured by the NVA in Vietnam. In the event of a conflict with the Western powers, their job would have been to drive over the border into West Germany, infiltrate NATO lines and wreak havoc. “It looks like we’ve been equipped for a fast, dirty op, not a long-term infiltration.”
He nodded. Even in the darkness he could see the concern on her face. It felt like the jaws of a bear trap closing around them.
“Okay, keep the gear stowed, we carry concealed weapons only: knives, sidearms. Make sure everyone has their suppressors on.” The Fräulein nodded.
Birdsong. People froze, or moved into cover. Suddenly everyone had a Stechkin in their hand. There was no sign of Skull.
“Hello, is there anyone the – !” The sentence was cut off by a frightened squeal, and Vadim heard something hit the ground. He hoped Skull hadn’t killed the speaker. There was a reason why Gulag hadn’t been on guard. Vadim signalled for New Boy to follow him and for the rest of them to remain on watch around the gear. At least they knew for sure where they were. The speaker had called out in English, with a pronounced American accent.
Vadim and New Boy, pistols at the ready, advanced through the trees towards where the voice had come from. They found Skull lying on a path leading into the woods, both legs and one arm wrapped around a stranger and a NRS-2 survival knife held to the man’s throat. New Boy kept watch as Vadim knelt down next to Skull and his captive, his suppressed Stechkin levelled at the man’s face. He nodded to Skull, who loosened his grip enough for his captive to speak.
“You guys are Spetsnaz, right?” He had floppy blond hair and a build that looked like he spent some time in a gym. Even in the darkness, Vadim could make out the tan, which seemed out of place at this time of year, on what he assumed was America’s East Coast. He wore a thick coat over a ridiculously coloured suit that looked too large for him, and a grotesquely colourful shirt open at the neck. “My name’s Eugene. I’m your contact. I’ve never been asked to do anything like this before, it’s very cool.”
He was clearly an idiot. Skull looked at him questioningly. Vadim was going to let the sniper kill him if he didn’t use the contact phrase in the very near future. “Oh, shit, yeah! ‘Alexander’.”
“Nevsky,” Vadim answered and didn’t shoot Eugene in the face.
0438 EST, 16th November 1987
New York City, New York State
AFTER THE CONTACT phrase, they had thoroughly checked ‘Eugene’s’ identity: his birth mark, fillings, questions about his cover. Vadim had the feeling Eugene wasn’t an American who had been turned; he seemed to be trying too hard to be American, particularly with his ridiculous, over-sized clothes. He was pretty sure the man was a KGB infiltrator, probably trained at their mocked-up American town just outside Vinnytsia in the Ukraine.
A dirt path through the woods took them to a muddy track with a minibus parked on it. Eugene had got out of breath walking over the hills and Vadim had to stop him from smoking or using a torch. They put the luggage containing their gear onto the minibus’s roof rack, which wasn’t ideal. They had buried the drysuits, their fins and the flotation sacks back on the beach. With Eugene driving and all eight of them in the minibus, Vadim felt very conspicuous travelling the deserted roads at this time of the morning. Surely they would be screamingly obvious to any militia, or any members of America’s state security apparatus.
They drove past dachas that Vadim assumed could only belong to the most powerful people in America. Then into suburbs where the houses still looked huge and luxurious compared to Soviet state housing. He could feel the squad struggling to maintain their situational awareness as they stared around themselves. The streets steadily became more and more built-up: leafy suburbs gave way to town houses, and in the distance he could see well-lit skyscrapers rise up into the sky. The city seemed to glow. Despite himself, Vadim was transfixed; and he didn’t think he was the only one. Even Eugene, who had kept up a steady stream of nonsense in English since they had climbed into the minibus, had gone quiet.
“New York fucking City, baby,” he told Vadim. Vadim continued ignoring the annoying man.
They crossed a river, glittering lights reflected in the water. Then they were into the city proper. Vadim wasn’t quite sure what to think. Maybe he had spent too much time in the field in places like Afghanistan, Nicaragua, Angola and Vietnam, but even Moscow didn’t compare to New York. The skyscrapers were causing a weird sort of vertigo. He understood that America was a new country, but even so, New York appeared to be from the future, something from one of Stanislaw Lem’s fantasies. He caught glimpses of entire streets that seemed made of light, like some commercialised tawdry heaven. The skyscrapers were tall towers, fortress-like, the home to dark characters from a fairy tale; but at street level the cracks in the capitalist system were apparent. Rubbish-strewn roads, graffiti-covered concrete, broken glass refracting blinking streetlights, the poor made to sleep in the streets, wild dogs and rats picking at the garbage. There were pornographic cinemas and sex shops, prostitutes and drug dealers operating openly from the alleys and the kerbs. So much flesh on show, despite the rain and the cold, but there was little that was ‘sexy’ about the prostitutes. They looked cold and miserable, used and exploited by their petty bourgeois masters.
Vadim craned his neck, trying to look up at the towers on either side of the wet street as the minibus splashed through garbage-clogged puddles. There were clearly two very different worlds in this bizarre and alien city. He wondered what it took to get up into the towers. What kinds of crimes did one have to commit? Wonder and disgust warred within him as he tried to work out how he felt about this bizarre place.
It doesn’t matter what you think of the place, you have a job to do, a decision to make, he thought.