Consequences Unforeseen

Beneath the Kremlin - May 9th 1991

Beneath the Kremlin – May 9th 1991

The sun rose quickly and high over the Kremlin on Thursday May 9th 1991. It was one of those spectacular, clearest of clear days unique to Moscow. The gold spires of the Christian Kremlin Churches glistened and sparkled sending the slanted beams downwards into Red Square itself. The square was crowded with bustling tourists making noise with their chatter and cameras working overtime. Russian soldiers marched in fine form past the admiring crowds seemingly oblivious to the ‘Oohs and Aahs’ of the crowd. For these people the entire experience was one they would never forget. Moscow can be charming in the sunshine. But it has a darker side which is by far the more prevalent.

Far below all this beauty and splendor, Douglas, though blind to it all, had the vision of these Moscow trappings fixed in his mind. He too had played tourist here on occasions too many to contemplate. But he knew the crowds to be a wonderful distraction to any covert work going on in their midst.

He woke several times in the night to see Aleksandra watching him from the chaise longue on the opposite side of the chamber. Watching actually did not do justice to the total focus of her gaze. It reminded him of how his Afghan hound Hussain would lay guard over him in the desert.

When he woke two hours earlier, at what would have been first light, he was unsurprised that she was nowhere to be seen, but he decided to explore the extent of these larger than life chambers.

His hunt concluded, he decided to go into the listening room to see for himself exactly what the set up was. He saw that every screen in the room was active and the microphone deep in the walls of the Directorate above was active and transmitting the chatter of the secretaries setting up the conference room in preparation for the main event of the day.

He thought the right thing to do was to practice a little for when the time came to eavesdrop on the Kremlin masters, so he played around with the settings on the computer which controlled clarity of sound and the removal of non essential line noise or static. In reality he just loved the technology and couldn’t wait to get his hands on it.

“Yanayev’s an arrogant prick,” he heard one girl say and she continued, ‘He’s always trying to touch me up, and when I don’t let him he says he’ll have me removed.”

“So, do you let him?’ A second staff member asked, this one a man. “He never tries to touch me up,” he continued, “And if he did, I’d let him.” They all had a good laugh at this, and even Douglas couldn’t resist a chuckle.

He was so focused on his fiddling about that her voice in his headset gave him a jolt and her full figure appeared on the next computer monitor along the desk.

‘What the fuck are you doing?” She asked. “Listening in to girl talk and getting off on it are you?” And she too had a chuckle.

He could see her clearly standing on the balcony of one of the rooms of the Hotel Baltschug Kempinski Moscow. He knew it well because it was a slightly up market tourist hotel which the KGB deemed to ignore because it seemed just a bit too obvious for espionage use.

They had staff officers there as well, but they were so relaxed and boozed up all the time that ineffective was best used to describe their capability. In reality Moscow over the past ten years had become a den of corruption, decadence and inefficiency.

Aleksandra continued, “On the monitor you are now so obviously admiring me on, you are going to be able to see our guests arriving very clearly indeed. They will be recorded for your future use and wired to you directly later.” She paused seemingly in thought before continuing, “Meantime, to show you once again how clear this will all be and to reinforce what you missed last night, feast your eyes once more.