The Soviet Comeback by Jamie Smith (best ereader for academics TXT) 📕

“You are leaving?” she said, her eyes wide now.

“It breaks my heart to leave you Milena, but sometimes you have to leave in order to get the joy of a return,” he said with forced smile. “Sleep now, and be kind to the nurses.”

“The nurses scare me,” she said. “There are so many people here, Niki.”

“How wonderful to have so many different people to talk to” he said with a smile. “I hear you have made friends with another child here.”

“Yes… there is one boy who is nice to me.”

“Enjoy getting to know your friend as much as you can. Now close those sleepy eyes and return to your dreams, little sister,” he whispered, brushing her brow.

Milena’s eyes drooped and with a small smile she drifted back off, not stirring as Nikita slipped quietly out of the door.

Outside two men in uniform waited, and saluted him. “You do not need to salute,” he said, waving a hand. He often forgot that as a KGB field agent he held the military rank of captain.

“You are a captain of the Soviet Army, and the Black Russian, sir, a title that alone commands respect,” one of them said earnestly, a young man with blond hair and a dimpled chin.

Stunned, Nikita said nothing and saluted back, before following them both out to the helipad, a circle kept clear of ice and snow on the roof of the low concrete building.

Waiting was a helicopter which would transfer him to the mainland before the journey back to Moscow. As the helicopter set off into the swirling winds and snow, Nikita peeled off the bandages around his head, and the padding over his eye. He moved his eyelid tentatively. It felt fragile but mended. He turned his eyes to the waiting steel grey seas, peaking and foaming beneath them, unreadable as he drifted into thoughts of loss.

***

It was the next day that he arrived back in Moscow. With no apartment and no Denisov there to greet him, he pulled up the collar of his long black coat, and undid the flaps on the fur-lined ushanka perched on his head so that his ears were covered and warm. It rubbed uncomfortably on his head wound, but was better than the alternative.

It was snowing again, and the cold was bitter as he walked the streets of the old town with purpose. The cobbles were dusted with snow and his black boots clicked on them as he strode through the city that held so many shadows of memories for him.

He passed a bar with large Cyrillic lettering reading Ladya Beer Bar, above the red flag of the hammer and sickle. After pausing, he decided to enter. The bar was grimy and dingy, but busy, with many patrons escaping the bitter winter chill to celebrate the turn of a new year. Grateful to the crowd and heavy smoke for granting some anonymity, he approached the bar and slowly removed the hat.

“Da?” asked the barmaid, eyeing him with the suspicion and disdain he could always rely on in Russia.

He looked longingly at the bottles hanging under optics at the bar. Multiple different vodkas sat there, along with beer taps, but none of the range he had become used to back in Virginia. Nikita rolled his shoulders and flexed his neck, noticing that the lack of choice did not remove the temptation.

“Odin Baikal pozhaluysta,” he said coolly, attracting only further disdain from the barmaid.

She pulled up a dusty glass bottle of Baikal, the Soviets’ answer to Coca Cola and placed it heavily down in front of her. Throwing down some roubles, Nikita said, “Happy New Year,” before turning his back on the bar. Bars open to the public were still fairly new in the USSR, and budgets hadn’t yet stretched to chairs. Instead, the crowds gathered around standing tables. Tonight though, the bar was so full there was barely any standing area left. Nikita navigated his way to a small empty space by the far wall and sipped the sickly soft drink, trying to convince himself it was whiskey, while glancing idly around the room. In one hand he held the bullet he had always saved for Klitchkov from way back in Kamchatka and stared down at it. Just a piece of metal that he had spent too long thinking about. Under the fold of his coat, he pushed the bullet into the chamber of his Colt 1911. Time to let go, he thought to himself with a sigh.

Appearing to gaze down at his drink, he could see in his periphery a group of men eyeing him angrily. One of them walked to the bar, and after speaking to the barmaid, walked behind the bar and walked down a short corridor. Moments later he reappeared, looking anywhere but at Nikita. When he returned to his crew, they all immediately stopped looking at him, other than snatching the occasional covert glance.

The hairs on the back of Nikita’s neck tingled with anticipation. Somehow his KGB training had instilled a sixth sense in him for when trouble was upon him. He slowly finished his drink then with a sigh, braced himself for the freezing streets once more, wishing he could be back in Cuba, being looked after by the kindly Mrs Shapova and enjoying sunsets from his luxury suite.

When he opened the doors, he was hit hard in the face by a blast of freezing air and snowflakes but set his shoulders and moved back out into the dark streets, alert and aware.

He was only thirty yards from the bar when he heard the tell-tale increase in noise rise and fade as the door opened and was swiftly closed, and he quickened his pace. He turned from the main street, lined by the imperious examples of Russian Revival architecture that had blossomed during the nineteenth century.