“Why do you care anyway?” Voroshilov asked. Molotov’s hands clutched the assassination weapon that Trotsky had given him. “It is a honour to cover the retreat and regrouping of the great man who…”
“He had all our best generals shot,” Molotov snapped. He brought out the weapon, secure in the knowledge that Voroshilov wouldn’t recognise it for what it was. “He only spared you because you were clearly no threat to anyone…”
“I’m the supreme commander of the 1st Guards,” Voroshilov snapped. “Comrade Molotov…”
“Oh shut up,” Molotov said, suddenly reaching the end of his tether. The weapon made a single phut noise as it fired a burst of tiny bullets into Voroshilov’s face. For a long chilling moment, Voroshilov’s hands scrabbled for the machine pistol, but then he fell over. Molotov picked up the machine pistol, set it to single-shot, and shot Voroshilov again, just to make certain.
“Sir, I…”
Molotov turned as the guard burst in. “We are going to end this in a way that doesn’t involve us all dying,” he said, and hoped that he was telling the truth. Voroshilov’s command radio was in front of him; he picked it up and issued orders.
“Sir, what’s happening?” The guard asked. He sounded plaintive. “Why are you…?”
“We’re surrendering,” Molotov said flatly. He watched as the NKVD guards laid down their weapons, to have them collected by Irina and Sergi. “We’re going to put an end to all of this.”
“He’s fled,” Trotsky said grimly. Irina and Sergi had searched the Kremlin from top to bottom once the NKVD guards had surrendered; they had only found the link to the underground. He wished he could say that he had been surprised, but Stalin had always had a question mark hanging over his conduct during the Civil War. That little detail had been forgotten by the Communist historians, who had given Stalin the decisive role in every event from before his own birth right up to the current nuclear program.
Natasha nodded. “Perhaps for the best,” she said. “If he’d remained here, he might have managed to put up a fight.”
Trotsky nodded. It was a good point, he supposed; Stalin would have fought like a cornered rat. “So… what happened at Radio Moscow?”
“We got the transmitters intact,” Natasha said. “You can make your recording now.”
Trotsky nodded again, feeling his years pressing down on him. He was old; older than even Natasha appeared. He’d been supposed to have died three years ago; that had been a shock, even to him.
“Have the recorder brought in now,” he said, and waited until Irina brought in the recorder. She had played a vital role in inciting the population to come out onto the streets, making another bid for justice and fairness, and had led them to the Kremlin. She smiled at him and he smiled back. If he’d been a few years younger, he might have tried to…
He shook his head. Like Natasha, Irina was more than she seemed. The bubbly student was so… unreal, even for the strangest university in Moscow, and he was certain that Irina had skills that no one else ever knew about – until it was too late.
“There,” Irina said. “You may speak when ready.”
Trotsky took a breath. Stalin had rarely spoken to the entire country; Lenin had only done it once, as far as Trotsky recalled. Radio had been in its infancy during the Revolution – the first Revolution – and it had been Stalin’s regime that had spread thousands of bulky radios around, just to ensure that everyone got their daily dose of propaganda. Who knew; if the people didn’t hear the soothing lies of Radio Moscow, they might start believing the dreadful rumours?
He spoke in careful basic Russian. “People of Russia,” he said. “My name is Leon Trotsky.” He allowed a note of humour to slip into his voice. “I imagine that you will have heard of me.”
He sobered. This was too important for little jokes. “The regime of the criminal Stalin is over,” he said. “For the moment, a provisional government will run the country until democratic elections can be held, hopefully in six months. During that time, we ask you to be patient; it will take time to rebuild enough to hold the elections, ensure food supplies and demobilise most of the army. We will seek a truce with the British and Americans, against whom Stalin flung thousands of our young men, a truce that will ensure that we have the time to rebuild and become strong once again.”
He sensed Natasha’s concern, but ignored it. “Now… I must speak to those who enforced the rules of Stalin,” he said. “Those of you who guarded the gulags, who enforced impossible production values, those who forced men in to fight and shot them for ill-timed words. This is your once chance to walk away with your lives. Surrender – now – to our people, and you will be allowed to live. Resist – and you will perish. Release your prisoners, surrender to them, and you will be permitted to leave.”
He sighed to himself. He knew that most of them would not listen, or they would be murdered by their own people. It didn’t matter. “Thank you for listening,” he said. “Please tune in again tomorrow for an update.”
Irina turned off the recorder. Trotsky sat down and put his head in his hands. “Are they going to listen?” She asked. “Will they even care?”
“It’s hard to be certain,” Trotsky admitted, remembering embarrassing times in peasant villages. “They will give us a chance, yes, but not a very big one. Once we start moving the captured forces from Iran – those that agreed to work for us – into the country, we can clean up the NKVD units, those that refuse to surrender or dissolve.” He sighed. “Irina, it’s going to be very difficult indeed; it could take months before the country is working again.”
“We have to secure the nuclear and biological plants,” Natasha said. Trotsky nodded; he knew better than to believe that the British would let them go. Hanover had promised him nuclear power plants, but not plants that would produce bomb material. Trotsky privately agreed; there was too much risk of someone else taking control to allow the plants to continue to exist. Later, perhaps…
“Have you got a list of them?” Natasha asked. “We have to move quickly.”
“Here,” Molotov said. The former foreign minister sighed. “And now… what are you going to do with me?”
Trotsky grinned. “Vice President?” He asked. His new constitution prohibited the Vice President from running for President himself. He took the list of research cities. “German plants as well?” Molotov nodded. “What was Stalin thinking?”
Irina shrugged. “Forget that,” she said, sounding more the teenager than ever. Her face, so un-Russian in attitude, if not appearance, crinkled. “Where the hell is he now?”
The giant railway junction and station, three miles outside Moscow, which had held thousands of the new, standardised rolling stock, was in ruins. Somehow – Gregor Pantovich had no idea how – it had been bombed; the blast had shattered the entire station. With the NKVD’s sudden disappearance from the site, the Zeks who had been lucky enough to draw the job of loading countless trains – and had survived the experience of having the station bombed – were milling around, wondering what to do. They were miles from their homes – many of them were Poles or Russians from the Far East – and they had no idea of where to go. The handful that had lived in Moscow had headed towards the city at once.
Gregor felt his stomach rumble and eyed some of the Poles. If they had been the fat capitalists Radio Moscow had branded them, he might have tried to eat them, but they were as thin and scrawny as the rest of the Zeks. They were all hungry, they urgently needed food, but there was none to be found.