The Main Enemy Milton Bearden (read full novel .txt) 📖

Shebarshin put all registered documents on one side—they should be given to his assistants. Records of Kryuchkov’s orders, drafts, and rough notes came next. They should all go immediately into the incinerator. But some documents—for instance, an anonymous paper sourced to one of the new “democrats,” which reported in detail on Russian President Boris Yeltsin—could not, he decided, be entrusted to anyone. Shebarshin tore the document himself into small pieces and flushed them down the toilet.

When he finished, Shebarshin checked his safe again and decided that should any new authority become interested in the contents of the safe of the chief of the First Chief Directorate, the man propelled into the KGB’s top ranks by Vladimir Kryuchkov, they would find a box with personal documents and a pistol with sixteen rounds. Nothing more.

The pistol was carefully cleaned and oiled, the clip inserted, but no round chambered. The Makarov, Shebarshin thought as he looked at his service automatic, is a simple, dependable item whose mass fits nicely into the palm of one’s hand. The lead content of a single round of ammunition was the equivalent of a person’s life, any life, whether worthy or pitiful.

After he had finished reordering his safe, he heard the old Vietnamese clock outside his door strike nine, and as if on cue, the duty officer appeared. Everything was in order, the officer reported, there were no incidents, either in Moscow or abroad. The foreign intelligence service had hunkered down again.

First Chief Directorate Headquarters, Yasenevo, 0900 Hours, Thursday, August 22, 1991

The leadership telephone on the table by his desk rang insistently. Shebarshin lifted the receiver cautiously, knowing the system was limited to some thirty top officials in the USSR, including the head of the First Directorate. He wondered who might be at the other end.

A woman’s voice came across the line. “Leonid Vladimirovich? This is the office of Gorbachev. Mikhail Sergeyevich asks that you be at this office at twelve o’clock.”

Hesitant, Shebarshin asked a question that might not have been necessary a week earlier: “Where is that?”

The woman, without any hint of surprise, said politely, “Third floor, the Council of Ministers Building in the Kremlin. The Walnut Room.”

“Fine, I’ll be there,” Shebarshin said, and then hung up, thinking there must have been some new turn of events.

Shebarshin decided to move from Yasenevo to Lubyanka in order to be closer to the Kremlin, so as not to be late for his appointment with Gorbachev. As he was driven into central Moscow, he found the city completely calm, no crowds, no flags, no excited faces in the streets. As his car pulled into Dzerzhinsky Square, the landmark toy store, Children’s World, opposite the KGB’s Lubyanka headquarters was thronged with people as usual. Children’s World and Lubyanka, both looking out on the same square, had always fueled Moscow humor, but today there was little room for it. There was a crowd around the statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky, standing tall in front of the Lubyanka. The pedestal of the memorial was defaced with crudely written slogans, including “Down with the KGB.” The same letters also appeared on the facade of the KGB buildings—even, oddly, English slogans such as “Fuck this KGB!” It is all for the benefit of the international press, Shebarshin thought with irritation, whose cameras are capturing every twist in our fate.

Shebarshin was angered by what he saw, thinking that these new slogans were probably written by the same small people who scribbled their dirty little jokes on the walls of public toilets. They have now turned to politics, he mused, shrugging. The thought was not a calming one.

The Kremlin, 1145 Hours, Thursday, August 22, 1991

Identity documents were being carefully checked at the Kremlin’s Borovitsky gate; the number of guards was greater than usual, and they were serious and alert. Shebarshin saw two huge Zils parked at the entrance and spotted the chairman of the general staff, General Moiseyev, heading toward the Walnut Room, which had already begun to fill with somber, serious-looking men. The two men greeted each other briefly but were unable to speak before Gorbachev entered the room. After shaking a few hands, the President drew Shebarshin into an adjoining room.

The conversation was brief and animated. “What was Kryuchkov after?” Gorbachev asked. “What orders were given to the KGB? Did Grushko know about the coup?”

Shebarshin felt uncomfortable with his answers; it was as if they were some sort of confession. He had bumped into Viktor Grushko, who was now the senior KGB official after Kryuchkov’s arrest. He’d seen the fear in his eyes when he’d told him he had been called in to meet Gorbachev.

Shebarshin would also feel disappointed with himself, but only later, because his intense dislike of Gorbachev had somehow disappeared when he was face-to-face with him. When he described his meeting with Kryuchkov on August 19, Gorbachev exclaimed, “That bastard! I believed him more than anyone else, him and Yazov. You know that.”

Shebarshin nodded in assent. When he was asked again by Gorbachev whether Viktor Grushko had been part of the plot, he said, “I don’t know. Perhaps he knew about it.” Shebarshin wondered momentarily why the President seemed so certain that he himself hadn’t been involved in the plot. But the grilling continued.

“Who is your border guard chief?”

“Ilya Yakovlevich Kalinichenko,” Shebarshin answered.

“The way they surrounded me, stood guard over me,” the President mused, “the order was given to fire should anyone attempt to get through.”

Shebarshin tried to say something in defense of Kalinichenko, a man he considered incapable of evil. But the President ignored him.

Then Gorbachev said he was appointing Shebarshin temporary Chairman of the KGB. “Go now and assemble the deputy chiefs and advise them of this decision,” he ordered. “And issue the order for your colleagues to prepare reports on their actions during August 19 to 21. Send them personally to me in a sealed envelope.”

As he returned to the Walnut Room, the brand-new KGB chairman, instead of suspicion, found symbolic handshakes and friendly, warm smiles. Just in