第25章 第二十章「苏维埃篇」信息与陷阱（2/2）

他一天剩下的时间都在计划，接下来的几天也是如此。计划不会结束，只需要等待东欧的叛徒掉进陷阱。

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As Tregubova walked out the door, she heard a clicking sound. The door slammed shut and locked. Tregubova screamed, \"Alex! Please, let me out!\"

No response.

Tregubova looked around the room. There was no door. The walls were made of stone. There was no way to escape.

She screamed, \"Help!\" The walls reverberated with her screams.

Then, silence.

As time passed, the stone walls grew old. They cracked. They crumbled. Water leaked in and carved deep grooves along the walls. The ceiling rusted and collapsed.

***

Romanov stood by the bed staring at Tregubova who was having nightmares in bed. She cried, \"Alex, please, let me out!\"

\"I have no more strength.\" Romanov said. \"I have no more tears.\"

She could hear the sounds of crying. She saw the boy. \"Alex, please, tell me what to do!\"

\"I\u0027ll show you.\" Romanov walked up to She and reached for her. She grabbed her own throat. \"Alex, please, no!\"

his released his grip. Tregubova sucked in her breath. Her body convulsed. She awoke screaming. She looked around. The bedroom was dark. She screamed, \"Alex, get in here!\"

\"I\u0027ve been trying.\" Romanov sighed. \"Calm down and look at me.\" Tregubova sat up and stared into Romanov\u0027s eyes. Her screams died in her throat. \"Calm down.\" Romanov said. \"It\u0027s just a dream.\"

\"It wasn\u0027t a dream.\" Tregubova said.

\"Yes it was. You have to believe in something. Otherwise, what\u0027s the point of living?\"

\"But that wasn\u0027t...\" Tregubova\u0027s voice cracked. \"Don\u0027t abandon me! Please! I can\u0027t hold out!\"

\"I\u0027m not.\" Romanov stood up. \"I\u0027m going to get you out of here, but I need you to do something for me first.\" Tregubova looked at him.

\"What?\"

\"I need you to write down everything you know about this house. It\u0027s going to be important later.\"

\"No...\"

\"You have no choice.\"

\"Don\u0027t leave me...\"

\"I\u0027ll be back. I promise.\"

Tregubova looked at her hands. They were thin and white. She had no food, no water, and no hope.

\"Fine.\" She said. \"What should I write?\"

* * *

\"You\u0027re not going to leave me,\" Tregubova said. \"You promised.\" Romanov didn\u0027t respond. He looked away.

\"Start recording.\"

Tregubova picked up a pen and stared at the faxed intelligence information, the wiretap reports sent by the KGB and her agents in aggregate, which she needed to sort through.

\"Where are you going?\"

\"I\u0027ll be back. If I don\u0027t come back, go to the police. Tell them what happened. Tell them about the documents.\"

\"What documents?\"

\"Everything. The documents, the reports, the photos. Everything.\"

\"You can\u0027t leave me!\" Tregubova cried.

\"I\u0027ll be back.\" Romanov turned and walked out the door.

Tregubova stared at the door. She looked at the information. It was all there. She had nothing to lose.

She picked up the phone and dialed the Russian number.

***

11 Lubyanka Square, Moscow

Inside the large, brightly lit, federal building, the walls were covered with dark, glossy photographs, many of them old, others new.

The first thing that you noticed was how much younger everyone looked.

The photographs covered a wall that was far longer than any other part of the wall, the part that was not covered with photographs.

The second thing you noticed were the glass bricks that covered the long, flat wall.

The glass bricks had a dark liquid inside them.

The light from the square beyond the window did not penetrate the glass bricks.

Romanov nodded, and Major General Vladimir Medvedev, who now runs the Kremlin guard, accompanied him to a cell.

He opened the door and gestured for Romanov to enter.

The two men walked inside.

The cell was small and dark. There were no windows. The only way in or out was the door.

Romanov walked in, and Aliyev, the former First Secretary of Azerbaijan, got up from the mattress to stare at him. \"Romanov, you transferred me to this makeshift cell just to meet?\"

\"Yes.\"

\"This is bullshit.\"

\"No, this is the new Russia, comrade.\"

\"Bullshit. I\u0027m an experienced politician. I know how this game works.\"

\"I know you\u0027re smart, that\u0027s why you\u0027re here.\" Romanov sat across from him on the mattress and said, \"Our conversation tonight will not be recorded.\"

\"Ah, good.\"

Aliyev stared at Romanov. \"So, tell me what the fuck is going on.\"

\"A group of patriots want to create a more perfect union. It\u0027s a long story.\"

\"I don\u0027t recall granting you permission to speak.\"

\"Aliyev, are you really going to taunt like a barbarian or have a good conversation?\"

\"I\u0027d rather not be in a cell with a fascist who is trying to take over the government.\"

\"That\u0027s not a very nice thing to say.\"

\"No, but it\u0027s a damn fact.\" Aliyev sat back down on the mattress. \"What else is new?\"

\"That\u0027s new.\"

\"What do you want, Romanov? I thought we were on the same side.\"

\"When?\" Romanov stared at his white hair and smiled, \"I want to expand the power of the Soviet, and a local Azerbaijani powerhouse like you might not be here?\"

\"When did you need me?\"

\"I need you now. I need you more than I need some asshole who is only good at being a martyr.\"

\"I\u0027m not your comrade.\"

\"I know.\" Romanov looked at his hands. \"I know I\u0027m not your comrade. What I need from you is information. Tell me what you know.\"

\"I don\u0027t know much. There was an old KGB agent named Karloff who was arrested in Afghanistan. He joined the Afghan Mujahideen with the CIA, and he was also an Azerbaijani. He was the CIA man in charge of the Azerbaijani national separatist organization. That\u0027s all I know.\"

\"What\u0027s his last name?\"

\"Karloff.\"

\"Thank you, and one other thing, I intend to put the Naka region under the central government of the Soviet Union.\"

\"No.\"

\"Yes.\" Romanov nodded.

Aliyev\u0027s eyes widened.

\"I\u0027m not going to let you ruin everything that we\u0027ve worked for.\"

Romanov\u0027s voice was cold, and his stare was hard. He sat up and leaned toward Aliyev. \"Do you want to die here, or do you want to live in a better world?\"

\"You can\u0027t do that! Turn this territory into Armenian territory!\"

\"Yes, I can. Do you want to live in a world with no nation that you call home? Where everyone is a stranger? No, you don\u0027t want that. So, tell me, do you want to live in a new world or not?\"

Aliyev\u0027s eyes narrowed. \"You will fail, Romanov.\"

\"I know it, it\u0027s already doomed. When Lenin died in 1924, his last wish to be buried next to his mother in Petrograd was not fulfilled, and his body was laid to rest in Red Square, thus pioneering the preservation of the remains of important leaders in socialist countries, when Stalin resumed his personal cult and the tradition of St. Calvary as the new tsar...\"

The veins bulged in Aliyev\u0027s forehead, and he got up from the mattress. \"I\u0027ll tell you this though. We\u0027re not going to let some Soviet puppet dictate what\u0027s going to happen to the country.\"

\"We\u0027re past that, comrade. The Soviet Union is over, and a new world order will take place. It\u0027s going to be decided by who has the most power, not by some political party.\"

\"What\u0027s the difference?\"

\"I am not one of those cowards who are incompetent and need to concede to the people, much less a bureaucrat who needs to gain prestige from dead people.\" Romanov stood up and said, \"What else do you have to say?\"

\"I\u0027m not your comrade.\"

\"I know you\u0027re not. That\u0027s why we\u0027re having this conversation. Now, I\u0027ll leave you be.\" Romanov stepped away from the cell and continued on his way.

The fate of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was already sealed when Stalin granted privileges to the bureaucrats and raised the butcher\u0027s knife against them, and when the vanguard communist-style party vulgarized itself into a religion, it would eventually split and perish like a religion.

The same fate awaited the old Bolshevik party when it lost its will to fight. As the Soviet Union fell apart in 1991, the remnants of the once great party disintegrated into a million pieces.

It is reasonable that when it turns its back on the people it will eventually be turned by the people, but unfortunately the people did not kill the Soviet bureaucracy along with it in 1991, and worse still, Yeltsin came to power.

As a result, the people of Russia elected as president a man who openly boasted of increasing personal corruption and was only kept in office by the grace of a disintegrating superpower.

What does the future hold for Russia?

The collapse of the Soviet Union left behind a power vacuum that has yet to be filled. The country has witnessed an outbreak of violence, and the economy is in tatters.

The root of this question is whether human social systems can develop in spite of historical traditions and cultural habits?

The proletariat and the bourgeoisie are divided by economy, the ruling class and the ruled class are divided by politics, and there is no necessary connection between them. A ruling group can have people of both proletarian and bourgeois origins.

The working class is necessarily influenced and limited by bourgeois ideology. The vanguard came to defend the working class ideology, so who would defend the vanguard?

At that time the Soviet Union was using propaganda that blamed all the problems of society on the laziness, absenteeism, and alcoholism of the Soviet people to cover up the problems of the system. To cover up the fact that the country had fallen into the hands of the revisionists. The Slavic intellectuals of the former Soviet Union spread the ideas of Great Russianism throughout Russia, which by this time had become the Red Russian Empire and no longer the motherland of the proletariat of the world, and the consequences of nationalism were obvious for a country with a high national consciousness with a group of fifteen constituent states.

The foundation of Stalinism is Leninism, and one can certainly blame those who died under the Stalinist building. But to deny Stalin would be to deny Lenin, and then accuse Lenin of establishing the Cheka, suppressing the rich peasants, etc. Gorbachev openly to \"Lenin not Stalin\" from the end of the democratic faction to reveal the truth of Lenin\u0027s \"evil\" the Soviet Union will not be able to maintain stability.

Of course, with the shift to a free market economy, citizens were free to choose to die or not to die, just as women in Eastern Europe were free to choose to become prostitutes in Western Europe or in their own countries after the Eastern European upheaval, and men were free to choose to die or join the mob.

Even the most ardent defenders of a Communist ideal will admit that the system is no longer capable of delivering the goods.

The point is that no country can be completely isolated from the international market through a closed economy with internal circulation. That\u0027s the main reason why the Soviet bloc collapsed in the first place: their command economy was simply too inefficient. This has led to economic stagnation and lagging world technology. Even without turning to market-oriented reforms, a harbor for economic exchange with international markets is needed.

Of course, the new government under Yeltsin was not exactly amicable in nature to the working class, and many of the reforms it enacted were decidedly in its favor.

The dissolution of the Soviet Union is still being viewed through a variety of positions. For the fifteen nation-states that included Russia after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Soviet Union was certainly the criminal colonizer, but there were always those who saw the Soviet Union as Russia. Most notably, the 1932 Soviet Holodomor was viewed by Ukrainian nationalists as a Soviet genocide against Ukraine or Kazakhstan...However, the 1932 Soviet Holodomor covered Ukraine, South Russia, and Kazakhstan.

And before that, Lenin\u0027s implementation of the New Economic Policy led to a wave of Russian withdrawal from the All-Union Communist Party and Ukrainianization, while Stalin was only a statist. There is always a misconception that Stalin, a Georgian, was also a Russian nationalist. Stalin, as a Georgian and a communist, only used and suppressed Russian nationalism to maintain his rule, otherwise Mikhail Ivanovich Rodionov (1905-1050) would not have been shot on nationalistic grounds.

There are only two kinds of primitive capital accumulation for industrialization. One, the exploitation of colonies. Two, the exploitation of national peasants. The former is more likely to fight nationalism and expand the space for survival. The latter is easier to fight class struggle.

The results of the Soviet Union\u0027s First Five-Year Plan for industrialization were still very successful. In 1930, the construction of some 1,500 industrial complexes began, 50 of which absorbed almost half of the total investment. Many huge transport and industrial structures were created: the Turkic-Siberian railroad, the Dnepr River hydroelectric power station, Magnitogorsk, metallurgical plants in Lipetsk and Chelyabinsk, Novokuznetsk, Norilsk, and the Ural heavy machine building plant, as well as tractor plants in Stalingrad, Chelyabinsk, Kharkov, the Ural rolling stock plant, the Gorkovsky automobile plant, the Likhachev plant. Unfortunately, too much industrial development and too much agricultural seizure led to the Holodomor.

As to why the results of the wrong industrialization policy, the misrepresentation of the targets and the forced grain collection by the Ukrainian bureaucracy are attributed to the Soviet genocide narrative against Ukraine, while in South Russia and Kazakhstan, which also suffered from famine, there is almost no such narrative from the national point of view?

It is not to deny the atrocities that are firmly documented, but in the case of Ukraine, it is a political interpretation of an economic problem, not a principled rejection that can be easily explained from a Marxist perspective.

There are of course those who will deny the existence of the famine altogether, claiming that the figures are exaggerated and that the losses during the Holodomor are a result of military conflict with the Polish army, not the result of a man-made famine.

One should always be wary of such simplistic justifications, or what is perceived to be such.

One should pursue history itself, rather than using a variety of positions and perspectives to reach one\u0027s desired conclusion, which would only create the Texas shooter effect.

From the ashes of the old Soviet Union, a second, far more vibrant communist movement arose.

Much of this is that the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union (which some Americans call a revolution and believe where no one was killed or injured...) was unsuccessful, compared to the October Revolution of 1917, when the Soviet bureaucracy and military were as inactive as the Provisional Government of 1917 was with its political parties, and Yeltsin and the pro-Yeltsin liberals and nationalists, and socialists (interestingly, many at the time did not consider support for Yeltsin as equivalent to opposition to socialism) were actively involved or acted quickly. The end result was, of course, a victory for Yeltsin.

Only, Yeltsin was not about any democratization or making a better life for people. Thus, while he carried out the de-communization and abolition of the socialist system, he worked with the elites of the former Soviet Union to dismember the Soviet Union and then with the oligarchs who put on the capitalist suits after taking off the socialist veneer and established the presidential system. Of course, the rewards were great, and even after his retirement he lived in a state-owned luxury villa outside Moscow, with a full complement of cooks, guards, doctors, a police car to get in and out, and access to a government plane. After his retirement, he traveled abroad 8 to 10 times a year, all paid for by the state. His descendants are still among the elite class of the Russian Federation.

But the economic consequences of the dissolution of the Soviet Union were dire. Not only did it result in widespread poverty and unemployment, it also led to the near-collapse of the banking system. The Russian financial press is rife with articles about the \"New Economic Crisis,\" even though it has been more than 30 years since the fall of the Iron Curtain.

The matter of the collapse of the Soviet Union is certainly a good thing if you are a civilian in the capitalist camp, especially if you are an American.

For the people of the former Soviet Union, the dissolution of the Soviet Union was a catastrophe, and indeed one of the worst things to happen in their long history of state-sponsored oppression, exploitation, and genocide.

For most of them, it meant the end of the certainties of a planned economy in which everything was provided for everyone, and the beginning of a more atomized existence in which the individual was responsible for providing for his or her own needs, which usually meant struggling alongside the rest of the community against the odds of a brutal, unjust, and unforgiving market.

***

Tregubova yawned and put down the summary analysis report in her hand.

\"Too dry. I need some fresh air. Let\u0027s go for a walk in the park,\" she said, not looking up.

\"First let me see the information intelligence report.\" Romanov took the report over to view it and said, \"I hope I did everything right.\"

\"I have no doubt about that,\" Tregubova said.

\"Then why do I feel like I\u0027ve been beaten with a club?\"

\"No need to exaggerate,\" Tregubova said.

\"I\u0027m not exaggerating. I\u0027ve studied all the records and I know how to assess information. But we have to be able to trust each other.\" Romanov sighed and said, \"I have been given so much information that I can\u0027t tell what is true? What is a lie?\"

\"Don\u0027t beat yourself up over it. Sometimes we have to guess. We\u0027re trying to build a better world, and guess what? In this world, guess what most people want? More lies.\"

\"I suppose. So how can we trust a summary intelligence report when we can\u0027t trust the source?\"

\"We can\u0027t. That\u0027s the sad reality.\"

This is the paradox, that the Soviet hierarchy was precisely over-intelligent rather than under-intelligent, and that these problems had already arisen under Andropov, whose secret research work had predicted more than thirty possible future directions for the Soviet Union afterwards, the collapse of the Soviet Union being one of them.

As for the intelligence agencies, four agencies, the International Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the KGB, the Military Intelligence Agency, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, were able to issue their own intelligence documents to the General Secretary, Politburo members, and members of the Central Committee. And the Central Committee also had its intelligence agencies to judge, as opposed to the ordinary people who had no intelligence and information, but instead the Central Committee had so much information that it could not judge correctly.

\"We cannot judge correctly what may happen, and even as rulers we cannot control the course of history.\" Romanov said with an expressionless face.

\"History always gets the last word,\" Tregubova said, amused.

\"History will judge us.\"

\"If you say so. So what are we going to do about this situation?\"

\"To establish an information intelligence unit to analyze social information and international intelligence and predict future developments and give solutions.\"

\"Good idea. Who will we get to run it?\"

\"You will run it,\" Romanov said.

Tregubova blinked in confusion. \"Me?\"

\"Yes. We need someone who isn\u0027t afraid to make hard decisions, someone who doesn\u0027t mind taking risks, and someone who is not afraid of controversy. We need a man like you, Comrade Tregubova.\"

Tregubova raised her eyebrows. She leaned back in her chair. \"Why me?\"

\"I trust that you will not mislead me, and more importantly, that you will simply gather all the information to analyze and predict any outcome that is fairly likely.\" Romanov said as he stared at the report, the content of which had not changed much from what Andropov had seen, still predicting that the Soviet Union would experience a serious crisis and possible disintegration in the early twenty-first century.

Tregubova studied Romanov\u0027s expression and said, \"You are a very strange man, Comrade Romanov. How can you be so sure of me?\"

\"Maybe it\u0027s love?\"

Tregubova smiled. \"Maybe. Is love a factor in your decision?\"

\"Of course.\"

\"Well, I do love you. Do you love me?\"

\"Yes,\" Romanov said. \"Stop it, go for a walk in the park and then go see a movie?\"

\"Sounds good to me. I hope you will like the movie.\"

\"We\u0027ll see.\"

Tregubova got up from her seat. She stretched, and said, \"Come on.\"

They left the room, heading to the park. It was a breezeless day, the sky being clear and blue. The park was large and uncluttered, the sort of place that the Soviets were fond of creating. They walked along the pathways, admiring the pristine rows of pristine trees.

\"How many people were killed by the Red Army during the defense of the nation?\" Tregubova asked.

\"Many, the Black Army, the White Guard and the Green Army have resisted, and it would be better to keep those names in the General Administration of Archives.\" Romanov asked. \"What is the name of the movie you want to see?\"

\"Wings of Desire.\"

\"I have never heard this story. What is it?\"

Tregubova smiled. \"It\u0027s an art film. You will like it. It\u0027s a little strange, though. Tell me, do you believe in God?\"

\"Of course not.\"

\"How about ghosts?\"

\"I\u0027m not sure.\"

\"Do you think there\u0027s a heaven?\"

\"No.\"

Tregubova smiled. \"Good. Neither do I.\"

\"There is no paradise of illusions, a better world can only be created by ourselves. The Committee on Economic Planning and Development is thinking about the implementation of a seven-hour workday into the twenty-first century, and perhaps by 2020 the Soviet Union will be able to adopt a four-day workday or a six-hour workday.\"

\"I think you overestimate the working class.\"

\"Maybe. I don\u0027t think it\u0027s wise to underestimate them. At the very least, we should make people\u0027s lives better, and our inability to supply goods is only a matter of productivity capacity, not a planned economic system of production relations. We should not refuse to let working hours shorten and labor productivity rise in order to prevent costs from rising and profits from falling. Working people are capable of a great deal when they are motivated, and when they have the leisure to do so.\"

\"How can you be so sure of this?\"

\"If you worked 12 hours a day or even 16 hours like you did in the nineteenth century under capitalist exploitation without unions and democratic socialists, would you have the time and energy to learn and create art to satisfy the value of self-actualization?\"

\"Probably not.\"

\"The value and potential for human existence is never going to be fully realized by simply working more hours.\"

\"What exactly are you getting at?\"

\"The point is, in a fully industrialized society, what leisure time we have is filled with the products that capitalism creates. Leisure time is for the benefit of the individual, not one big mass of people. When we work, we create, if only for a short period of time, the materials for our own products. That is the role of work. When we don\u0027t work, we create for others. When others don\u0027t create, we go without. This is the cycle of creation.\"

\"So, are you suggesting that we implement a system where we create more for others?\"

\"Yes and no, we should create a collective altruistic way of life, think of a form of society where there is no currency with all the goods of life distributed on demand.\" Romanov shook her hand and smiled, a smile of genuine belief, not hypocrisy. \"With that, we can all achieve a state of true freedom, a world without want and need.\"

\"Sounds like an utopia.\"

\"An achievable utopia, now, that we can\u0027t achieve is a relationship of productivity rather than an inability to achieve, and it certainly wouldn\u0027t be there if people didn\u0027t go for it. It\u0027s just that egoism can get in our way and put people in a prisoner\u0027s dilemma of pursuing the best option for the individual.\" Romanov paused and said, \"But as long as the productivity keeps developing, there will be a day when it will be realized. Just as if one day the production and maintenance of goods is completely unmanned and automated, then the time will come when production relations and social distribution will inevitably be based on need, or else we will be in unemployment and economic captivity. This will not be changed by the will of man.\"

\"So, automation and robotics would help us toward a utopia?\"

\"It\u0027s possible, or some other social formation. But surely just as capitalism eliminated feudalism, so the new social form will eliminate capitalism. The new generation of humanity at that time might discuss new topics, and socialism and capitalism would be eliminated just as Christianity was once opposed to Islam.\"

\"So, you believe in the need for a system of social organization that works for people.\"

\"Yes, but it\u0027s not going to be created by people doing what they want. It will be created with constraints and it will be created by people who want something different. It will be created to fulfill human needs and desires, not merely to satisfy them.\"

\"That\u0027s a tall order, comrade.\"

\"Yes, it is. Let\u0027s sit on a bench by the river. I have a few minutes before my next meeting. We can go over our plans for the day. If you have any creative ideas, I\u0027m sure you\u0027ll share them so we can all benefit from them.\"

Tregubova walked along the embankment, her hands in her pocket, staring out into the water. Romanov sat down and stretched out his legs, leaning back and closing his eyes for a moment.

\"The world we live in is like an immense machine,\" Romanov said. \"And like any machine, it has to have checks and balances. We are the humans, and we are the engineers. We have certain responsibilities and we need to fulfill them or the machine won\u0027t work. The problem is, people don\u0027t necessarily like having the engineers make the decisions. They prefer to think they\u0027re the ones making the decisions, even if that isn\u0027t the case. I think that\u0027s what\u0027s happened with the working class. They\u0027ve lost their ability to decide the course of their lives. They\u0027ve become subjects instead of citizens. They\u0027ve given up the power to choose, and now they\u0027re angry about it. We can\u0027t give up on them. The question is how do we motivate people to want to choose the better options?\"

\"Do you think they\u0027ll choose the better options if we tell them the consequences?\"

\"Yes, I do.\"

Tregubova thought carefully and said, \"Why do you say that the stagnation of the Soviet planned economy was isolated from the trade of the economic regional blocs of the capitalist camp? It was the result of the Iron Curtain isolation caused by the United States together with us in the Soviet Union.\"

\"Yes, but propaganda has us attributing the cause all to Stalin\u0027s belief that an economic crisis would erupt in the capitalist market and the Soviet economy was allowed to circulate internally, all because the capitalist camp\u0027s trade blockade of us could garner support and xenophobia. These were for propaganda purposes, just as the communist parties in other countries used Khrushchev\u0027s secret reports with a dead Stalin to get out of Soviet control. Although before that they participated in de-Stalinization.\"

\"I think you are being overly cynical. Stalin was a tyrant, and he used the political system...\"

\"He doesn\u0027t matter, the dead are more useful than the living. Just like Lenin, what matters is propaganda and popular support, just as liberals opposed Lenin and Stalin, not against them but against communism. After all, massacres and military repression have been done by every government. Would anyone use the Irish famine, the Washington tragedy in the US, or the Ottoman genocide of Armenians to accuse against?\"

\"Well, no one\u0027s using the Armenian genocide...\"

\"Right, so the point is that we control propaganda, and propaganda is what controls public memory. Only historians need real history, people can only see blood and tears from real history.\" Romanov said after a moment of silence, \"We won\u0027t cover up history, it\u0027s just better to let the archives be declassified fifty years later.\"

\"But doesn\u0027t that make it easier for people to justify...\"

\"Do you want people to know how much you have in a Swiss bank?\" Romanov stared at her expressionlessly and said, \"How much?\"

\"Um...\" She looked down.

\"How much?\" he asked again.

\"Well, let\u0027s just say that if there was an inheritance or trust that you wanted to escape, you\u0027d want to avoid the bureaucracy...\"

Romanov leaned forward and stared at her.

\"Okay, $30 million.\"

She nodded.

\"I\u0027ll get the money transferred to an offshore account.\"

\"Oh, I didn\u0027t want to...\" She started to say, but then stopped.

\"Of course you didn\u0027t,\" Romanov said, \"You want the money there? Have my money in your bank account?\"

\"Well...\"

\"You have it in your account or not?\"

\"Well yeah, but...\"

\"Offshore bank account details,\" Romanov said, \"Or you can spend the rest of your life doing hard labor in Siberia.\"

\"Fine...\" She relented, \"The money\u0027s in a Swiss account.\"

Romanov said, \"You always like to struggle with such small things, come on, let\u0027s go back to the villa and watch a movie.\"

She took his arm and walked back out onto the embankment.

Romanov looked to the sky, thinking. Then he got up, stretched, and walked along the embankment, thinking.

\"When you get home, transfer the money to my offshore account and your money will be in it.\"

\"Yes,\" she said, turning around to walk back home.

She took his arm again and they walked along the embankment. They walked for a long time in silence.

When they reached the road back to the city, she said, \"We\u0027re being watched.\"

\"By whom?\"

\"I don\u0027t know.\"

\"Well, let\u0027s find out,\" Romanov said.

Beyond Romanov\u0027s guard vehicles, several civilian vehicles followed close behind. The group drove down the road, followed by two vehicles from the airport.

\"Do you think they\u0027re following us?\" she asked.

\"Yes,\" Romanov said, \"KGB? Or the Interior Ministry?\"

\"Hard to say,\" he said, \"The Ministry of Intelligence has a habit of putting their own people in to spy on each other.\"

\"Then shouldn\u0027t we increase our speed?\" she asked.

\"No, that means we found them.\" Romanov closed his eyes and said, \"Stay awake and keep moving as normal.\"

\"Okay,\" she said, pulling her coat tighter.

The cars trailed behind for a little longer, then all fell in close proximity. There was a sudden burst of flashing blue and red lights as the police cars began to pull up alongside them.

\"There\u0027s the police,\" she said.

police who was leading the group, drew his pistol and said, \"Stay calm. Pull over, it\u0027s only a routine check.\"

The driver, a young man in his twenties, stopped the car.

\"Step out of the vehicle, hands on the vehicle.\"

He did so, though he kept his hands in his pockets. His hands were shaking, and he kept glancing in the direction of the police cars.

\"Search the vehicle.\"

***

\"Perhaps, the KGB has too much power.\" Romanov tried her out.

\"I\u0027m not arguing that, but how do you think they found us?\"

\"I think they\u0027re incompetent.\" He smiled. \"That\u0027s why we\u0027re going to take things over.\"

\"What do you mean?\"

\"What I mean is, I\u0027m going to take the lead. You do what I say without questions.\"

\"Okay...\" She said, taken aback.

Romanov smiled and said, \"I have to go to Eastern Europe next week to cut off the black hand of the American agitators.\"

\"I\u0027m coming with you.\"

\"I\u0027d like that,\" he said.

She sat quietly for a moment, then said, \"Okay.\"

\"Good.\" He nodded and said, \"Hopefully I can take care of the traitors, as well as keep the people in peace.\"

\"Hopefully,\" she said.

\"Okay,\" he said, \"Let\u0027s go home.\"

The two men walked back to his limousine.

He got back into the car and took the driver\u0027s seat, she got in the other side and sat next to him. The car drove off. They headed back toward his estate.

\"What do you think?\" he asked, turning to her.

\"But you\u0027re coming with me anyway.\"

\"That I\u0027m out of my mind to be doing this,\" she said.

\"Good,\" he said, smiling. \"Will you help me?\"

\"Yes,\" she said.

\"Then let\u0027s get down to it.\"

He spent the rest of the day planning, and the next several days as well. The plan will not end, just wait for the traitors in Eastern Europe to fall into the trap.