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

had a situation report stating that the crowds building in central Moscow were becoming more brazen and that it might not take much to spark a real riot. The most volatile crowds seemed to be forming up at the Lubyanka, and many seemed to be spurred on by that old Russian standby, free-flowing vodka. In short, fear had changed sides.

Dzerzhinsky Square, 2130 Hours, Thursday, August 22, 1991

The crowd of some twenty thousand packed into Dzerzhinsky Square cheered the prospect of toppling the statue of “Iron” Felix. All over Moscow, crowds had been pulling down the bronze testaments to Bolshevism and hauling them off to a temporary graveyard next to the Tretyakov Gallery. Now it was Dzerzhinsky’s turn.

Under the watchful eye of the Russian militia, the Moscow city government had assumed charge of the operation, and it had taken most of Saturday to find a crane big enough for the task. As the crane eased into position next to the statue, the crowd began to sing a song about Magadan, the western Siberian city most famously known for its role as a key part of Stalin’s disposal system—the Gulag. Sergei Stankevich, the young deputy mayor of Moscow, leaned into the microphone to lead the chorus. Stankevich was a poor conductor, and the singing was ragged, but the crowd seemed unwilling to abandon the mournful lyrics.

Inside the Lubyanka, looking out on the square from behind a fifth-floor window, Leonid Shebarshin stood back in the shadows. He watched the crane by the statue, the volunteer “executioner” climbing atop Dzerzhinsky’s shoulders, encircling the neck and torso of the first head of the Soviet secret intelligence service with the crane’s iron cable. The “executioner” straightened up, hitched up his falling pants, and gestured with his hand. “Ready! Proceed with the hanging.”

He is probably a rigger, Shebarshin thought. Naturally, Moscow Deputy Mayor Sergei Stankevich himself couldn’t put on the noose. No, there were always those who gave orders and those who followed them.

Finally, the statue lifted off its pedestal, and the symbol of repression that had towered over the square since 1926 was laid on its side. In a few more days, it would be hauled off to the field near Gorky Park to join the corpses of Lenin that had already begun piling up in the makeshift graveyard.

Few in the crowd seemed to notice the letters and logo emblazoned across the counterweight of the giant crane—KRUPP. But David Rolph’s officer in the crowd at Dzerzhinsky Square brought his camera up at just that moment and snapped the picture he’d been waiting most of the day to get.

Only after the photographs were developed overnight would the irony of a German crane lifting the bronze statue of Dzerzhinsky become the subject of whispers. Many would later opine that some sort of historical irony had just played itself out—that Dzerzhinsky’s statue, itself thought to be cast from the bronze barrels of Krupp cannon forged for wars long since past, was finally hauled off its perch by a crane built by the same German conglomerate.

An exhausted Leonid Shebarshin returned to his dacha in the early hours of the morning. His wife, Nina, was waiting for him, worried. She had heard about his appointment. “Do you think it’s for long?” she asked.

“I think it will be for just a few days,” he answered.

Moments later, Shebarshin fell into a deep sleep, his last thought not to forget to ask the Rezidents the next day about the state of mind of their personal staffs and, more important, of their intelligence agents. It was essential that the helpers be reassured.

The Lubyanka, 0300 Hours, Friday, August 23, 1991

Dzerzhinsky Square was deserted three hours after midnight when a small group of KGB officers, unaccustomed to looking over their own shoulders, furtively made their way through the clutter and trash littering the square to the fallen statue of their founder. In dark paint they printed out the words on the pedestal that Iron Felix would carry with him into his uncertain future:

DEAR FELIX, WE ARE SORRY THAT

WE COULDN’T SAVE YOU

BUT YOU WILL REMAIN WITH US.

Then they disappeared into the night.

Moscow, 0600 Hours, Friday, August 23, 1991

Shebarshin woke with a start. For a few moments he wasn’t sure it hadn’t all been a bad dream—the emergency committee, Kryuchkov’s arrest, Dzerzhinsky’s “execution.” The events of the previous day seemed like fragments of a film—the meeting with Gorbachev, the investigators in Kryuchkov’s office, it was all a disjointed jumble.

Awake now, he wondered what the day would bring. He knew trouble would be coming. But he also knew that the new democrats would eventually realize that no government can rule without state security. Unfortunately, in the exuberance of victory, in vengeful celebration, they would not think of the future. Yes, there would be trouble, and soon, he decided.

Two hours later he was back at Lubyanka, already caught in a struggle with tradition. An acting chief was never supposed to sit in the office of the Chairman of the KGB. It was not just a matter of appropriate reticence, but one of deep Russian superstition. To sit in a chair prematurely would frighten off success. But Shebarshin decided that the drama of the situation demanded he dispense with tradition and ignore superstition. He took over at Kryuchkov’s desk.

The Chairman’s office was huge, somber, and now free of any lingering trace of its previous occupant. Kryuchkov had been a man indifferent to his surroundings; he simply did not notice them. All he’d needed was a well-lit desk, his telephones, and any kind of ballpoint pen, no matter how cheap. The pens stood fanlike in a tumbler. As soon as he sat down, Shebarshin was assaulted by a flood of calls on the bank of nearby telephones: internal calls from the special Kremlin phones, calls on the supreme command link, and calls on lines he simply could not identify. He decided to switch the telephones to his assistants, leaving only the leadership and supreme command phones to himself.

The