War with Russia

Vronsky re-shouldered the daysack, strode toward her and enfolded her in a passionate-looking embrace; to anyone watching, two lovers greeting after an absence. However, his voice was brisk and matter of fact as he murmured in her ear. “You’re exactly on time, Anna… We’ll head for Moloney’s now. That’ll give me time to brief you before we meet them.”

Vronsky placed an arm loosely, but proprietorially, around Brezhneva’s shoulders and steered her past the entrance of the Riga Technical University, up Ratslaukums, and then they were amid the elegant art deco buildings and weathered, green copper church spires of the old city of Riga. They continued toward Riharda Vagnera Street and Moloney’s Bar.

“What news from Ukraine?” Vronsky asked. He had been in Riga for a week, since the kidnapping of the American army trainers.

“Total success, Anatoly Nikolayevich,” murmured Brezhneva, pulling Vronsky’s arm more closely around her shoulders. “The land bridge is being opened up to Crimea. Ukraine has been dismembered.”

“Excellent,” replied Vronsky. “That’ll distract the West from what we’re planning here.” Then quickly, as they walked toward Moloney’s Bar, he briefed her on how a major demonstration against the Latvian government was being planned in two days’ time, after weeks of increasing tension between Latvians and their “non-citizens”—ethnic, Russian-speaking Latvians, many of whom had lived there for generations, but were not permitted Latvian citizenship and were therefore not citizens of the European Union either.

A massed crowd of non-citizens, whipped up by the barrage of propaganda and misinformation broadcast into Russian-speaking Latvian homes from Kremlin-controlled TV, would assemble and march to the Soviet-built Monument of Freedom, erected to mark Latvia’s purported “liberation” from fascism by the “fraternal forces” of the Soviet Union in May 1945. It would end with speeches and the laying of flowers.

However, since arriving in Riga, Vronsky had been preparing the ground for inciting violence by infiltrating the demonstration with extreme nationalist elements of the Latvian Russian Union, the political party representing Latvian ethnic Russians. In addition, there was an active Latvian “non-citizens” militia, set up and trained by Spetsnaz undercover operatives, also directed by Vronsky. This was the self-styled “Russkiy Narodov Zashchita Sila” (Russian Peoples’ Protection Force—or RNZS). The RNZS would play a key role in controlling the demonstration or, more to the point, ensuring it got out of control.

“After that,” Vronsky mused, “anti-Russian feelings are so high among the Latvian nationalists that anything could happen… But first we have to meet the two guys who are leading the demo. They’re at Moloney’s Bar.”

“Is that a safe place to meet?” questioned Brezhneva.

“It’ll be full of British stag parties. No one has a chance of overhearing us.”

“Stag parties?” she asked.

“Groups of young British men celebrating an impending marriage by getting drunk and shagging as many women as they can afford. Decadent—”

“Westerners,” Brezhneva interrupted, with a smile.

Vronsky smiled back despite himself.

As Vronsky had predicted, Moloney’s was full of raucous, sweating Brits determined to enjoy the Latvian beer and attempting to chase Latvian girls—with little success. Later they would end up at the Nightclub Monroe, or the Relax Center Glamour, where their Euros would guarantee what they had come for.

Vronsky pushed through the crowd to a table in the corner where Vladimir Petrov and Sergei Zadonov, leaders of the planned demonstration, were already sitting, tall glasses of golden Labietis beer in front of them. They too ordered food and beer and then talked through the arrangements for the next day, the raucous cacophony of competing languages, delivered at full volume and overlaid with the music from the band in the corner of the bar, drowning out what they were saying.

Vronsky did not see anyone watching the two Russian-Latvian activists, but that did not mean they were not being observed right now. Back in Russia, he would certainly have any subversives, like these two, under close surveillance and nobody had ever said that the Constitution Protection Bureau, the Latvian domestic intelligence service, was anything other than highly efficient. But efficient or not, nobody was going to listen in on them here. Vronsky was even struggling to make himself heard.

When he was happy with their plans, Vronsky reached into his daysack and handed over a large, padded envelope stuffed with cash to Petrov, who moved to look inside it.

“Not now!” Vronsky snapped. “You never know who might be watching.”

Petrov, duly chastened, put it in his briefcase.

“Right, time for you to go,” Vronsky said, dismissing them. “But there’s plenty more of that. If you get this right. Understood?”

Both Russian speakers nodded their agreement and left.