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

who can blend, a man who can do what is necessary. I want to know what the smug son of a bitch President Callahan, is thinking before he thinks it. I want him to fear us once more. If we are to go down, then we shall go down fighting.”

Viktor smiled broadly, the cracks in his face betraying his face’s unfamiliarity with the expression.

“It seems I may have misjudged you, sir. I believe Colonel Klitchkov has been training just the man for your problem.”

“A novice?” the general secretary exclaimed. “You can do better than that, comrade.”

“Ah but, sir, this is no ordinary novice. They call this one the Black Russian.”

Petrenko’s eyes widened in surprise, and he swallowed heavily. “The rumours are true then? It’s an impressive name, but he’ll need more than that for the mission to be successful.”

Nodding, Viktor replied, “He has been in training for five years solid. At Leningrad and Kiev.”

The general secretary exhaled deeply, his eyes widening slightly. “Jesus. Five years with Denisov, and at that Leningrad hellhole to boot? He must be tough.”

“Denisov says he’s the best he has ever seen, and quite lethal. As I understand it, he has already endured more than most of our men do in their entire careers, and he is still little more than a boy.”

“How do we know that he can be trusted?”

“Well, sir, I believe that Klitchkov has taken certain… ah… measures, regarding the young man’s family.”

“That wily old fox Klitchkov. A lunatic bastard, but a cunning one.”

“Indeed, sir. I understand he is field ready.”

“I would hope so after five years of our finest training. Very good. See it done.”

He poured himself another vodka and threw it down. “Who’d have thought, old friend. Blacks, fighting for the motherland. Stalin would turn in his grave.”

Viktor’s face was impassive. “Just as long as he stays there.”

Petrenko laughed and filled their glasses once again.

CHAPTER 3

KGB MILITARY SCHOOL, NEAR KIEV, UKRAINE, USSR.

Nikita opened his eyes. It was still dark outside but he had learned to wake before anyone else; it avoided any unpleasant surprises. Despite being instantly alert, he struggled to throw off the dark thoughts of his dreams. Memories of the past five years blended into one another: the underwater knife fights, the firearms training in the northern forest, the naked ice-water swimming, hunting bears in Kamchatka. Hunting western sympathisers in Leningrad. A nightmare for some, adolescence for Nikita Allochka.

He shook his head to clear it of thoughts of the past. He filled the chipped enamel basin in his room with ice-cold water and then plunged his head in. His senses screamed, and the adrenaline emptied his mind of memories.

He began an intense routine of press-ups, lunges and pull-ups — four sets of twenty reps without pause. He was stripped totally naked and his finely-honed muscles visibly strained, accentuating the scars across his body. The knife wounds on his arms, a coarse bullet wound on his thigh — reminders of the brutal world he had chosen to enter five years ago, and the brutal colleagues he must now call brothers. Tovarishches. Comrades. With every press-up, sit-up, pull-up or lunge, he recited American accents and phrasing. Sit-ups saw him speaking a monologue in a southern drawl, pull-ups practising verb tenses while getting his mouth around the relaxed Californian SoCal accent, while the more neutral American tones of Virginia with a slight southern bent came while doing core planks. Barely uttering a gasp from his exertions, he moved seamlessly from one accent to the next, as he had trained himself to be able to do through his gruelling years with the KGB - after repeatedly failing the language tests early in his time as a trainee. He intended to survive, and that meant perfecting every area demanded of him and more.

After giving himself a cold-water shower and dressing in his standard issue uniform, he heard footsteps coming down the corridor. He stood facing the door and readied himself. He was prepared. It opened and the summons arrived.

***

Nikita’s face told the story of one much older than his twenty-one years, and betrayed the pain he had endured. Sitting at a table in the whitewashed box room with leads connected to his temples, a woman dressed in a nurse’s outfit busied herself around him, wiring him up to the lie detector before him. He looked down and noticed that his hands trembled silently. Deep breath, Nikita, you have trained for this, he repeated to himself in the confines of his mind.

Lean and muscular with a shaven head, Nikita sat opposite a man he didn’t recognise. As he stared at him, unblinking, with dead eyes, Nikita’s hands became completely still, like a tightly wound tiger, bunched and ready to pounce.

“I will be your instructor in this exercise. Answer my questions truthfully and briefly,” said the stranger. He had blond hair combed into a fierce side parting, a thin moustache and thick glasses that enlarged already bulbous eyes.

“Is your name Nikita Allochka?”

“Niet,” Nikita replied.

The signals on the lie detector remained absolutely still.

“Then what is your name?”

“Nathan Martins.”

Again, the needle barely flickered on the detector.

“Where are you from, Nathan?”

“Daytona Beach, Florida.”

The signal remained flat.

“And what do you do in your spare time?”

“You mean aside from killing enemies of the state?” Nikita asked with a faintly raised eyebrow.

“This is not a game, Allochka!”

“You mean Martins?” Nikita said, smiling coldly. He sighed. “I like to surf, eat quarter pounders with extra cheese, and have a beer with the guys,” he added in a flawless Floridian accent.

The needle remained still.

Behind the one-way glass, Colonel Klitchkov and other officials watched Nikita’s test. Klitchkov was smiling.

A middle-aged man in a lab coat was almost trembling with excitement. “I’ve never seen anything like it. He is totally emotionless,” he