The Orchestration

Chapter One

Chapter One

Cancer.

It has no boundaries, favors no ethnic group, and is a terrible way for a soldier to die.

Even before he swallowed the two pain pills, he knew this bout was going to be a bad one.

Flashing lights seemed to explode in his head as waves of nausea ebbed and flowed throughout his body, and the anguish became almost unbearable. Only one thought kept him going: after that night, the pain would be gone.

“It's time to go,” he said to his wife as he put on his jacket. Cool weather had returned to Moscow, and winter could not be too far away.

She didn't say anything as he picked up a box from the kitchen table and tucked it under his arm.

He looked at her and tried to smile through his agony, but she knew even that was painful for him, and fought to keep back her tears; what he was going through was hard enough, and she was careful not to do anything that would add to his misery. She would have plenty of time for tears when it was over.

Once outside the house, he checked his watch and began to walk a preplanned route that would eventually take him to his destination. His goal was a crowded train station where he would deliver his parcel to a waiting courier, but he had to do it without raising anyone's suspicion.

As he passed a small cafe, he glanced at one of the patrons who began to drink coffee from a white mug. It was the signal he hoped for: he was not being followed.

The man continued along his route, and thought once again about the ongoing events that had brought him to this point. While outwardly the world seemed to be in a period of relative calm, behind-the-scenes actions were moving it toward a confrontation of nations that would bring about the demise of the West if left unchallenged: another cold war was acceptable to him, but another shooting war wasn't.

Because of his position within the government, he knew two things: first, his country was the instigator behind the impending cataclysm; and second, he was the only person who would do anything to try to change the outcome. In order to accomplish his self-imposed mission, it was imperative that the package he carried get into the hands of its intended recipient in the United States.

It had taken time for him to establish a way to get the package out of the country, but he did it in a manner that made the courier believe he was delivering it at the behest of the KGB, an organization most Russian citizens did not turn down or acknowledge working for.

The box would be taken to an accommodation address where it would be readdressed and resent to other addresses until it reached its final destination; a man named John Darque. He had known Darque for only a short period of time, and that was after the American had him arrested for conducting espionage in Germany. He didn't know if Darque was in a position to do anything about the impending situation, but for some reason he felt he could trust the man with the information in the box. Besides, he didn't know anyone else he could turn to.

As he entered the congested train terminal, he spotted the man he had seen earlier at the cafe, and watched as the man folded a newspaper and tucked it under his left arm: he had so far avoided attracting the attention of any surveillance.

He smiled through his pain.

On a normal day, he would have chastised the people he knew were out there to identify people like him: a danger to the Russian Government. He didn't know all of them by face or name but he had trained many of them, and even though he had done nothing to attract any interest to himself, he expected them to somehow be able to determine who was or was not a threat. In their defense, he knew this was an impossible task, and he counted on that fact to help him complete his mission unhindered.

The courier was sitting where he was supposed to be, and he had a package in his lap that was quite similar in appearance to the one carried by the man who approached him. He noticed the look of pain in the standing man's face, but said nothing as he quickly switched the packages and continued walking at a leisurely pace.

The seated man waited for almost 15 minutes after the other man disappeared in the crowded station, and then boarded the train that would be the first leg of his journey to the United States. He wondered momentarily who the man with the painful expression on his face was, and why the KGB had picked him to deliver the package to the United States, but then thought it was best not to worry about such things, and settled into his seat.

The man with the pained expression on his face, KGB Colonel Nikolai Rolnikov, watched as the courier got on the train, and then headed back to his residence for what he knew would be the last time.

After entering the apartment he shared with his wife, Freya, he removed his jacket, took a bottle of vodka from a cabinet, and sat at the kitchen table. He appeared to be staring at a picture of Stalin hanging on the wall, but was actually recalling fond memories of the times he had spent with Freya and their daughter Heidi, who was now out on her own.

He picked up the bottle of pills on the table and read the label he had memorized long ago: take two tablets when needed for pain, but no more than six in a 24-hour period.

Smiling through his pain, he dumped the remaining 52 pills in the bottle into his hand and swallowed a few at a time with long drinks from a bottle of vodka. No one would ever know his death was for any reason other than to overcome his unremitting pain, and his treachery, or heroism, depending on how one looked at the situation, would never be known. His last conscious thought was to wonder if he had done the right thing with the box; his last sensation was to feel the pain ebbing from his body, and the last thing he heard was Freya's gentle sobbing coming from another room.