Pagans' Cult. The Russia Chronicles. An Underground Revolution.: The Russia Chronicles

By Andrew Anzur Clement

A murderous cult has emerged from the tunnels of Moscow's underground, seeking vengeance through a series of grisly killings. But revenge for what?

 

The police officer responsible for protecting the Second Subway is Agent Brezhov of the Federal Security Bureau. Assigned to track down trespassers at any cost, he leaves his two young sons at their mother's deathbed.

 

Now responsible for the care of his younger brother, Alexei is devastated by both his mother's death and his father's obsession with work. He clings to his mother's Slavic pagan faith in Svetovid, the four-headed god who sees all.

 

At school, Alexei befriends Kristina, an orphan who is being abused by her adoptive parents. Together, they begin to explore Moscow's hidden tunnels. They find allies among the Diggers of the Underground, a group devoted to uncovering the secrets of the Second Subway. They also encounter a band of homeless street children who live in the abandoned metro station beneath the Bolshoi Theater.

 

Bringing an unlikely sect together in the name of Svetovid, Alexei and Kristina set out to punish the families who have wronged them. They know they must risk everything to get justice for themselves and their siblings. Each of the conspirators will give their families one last chance to make amends. But is it too late?

 

As Agent Brezhov struggles to make sense of the bloody crime scenes and catch the perpetrators, Alexei prays to Svetovid that his father would look just a little closer to home.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Andrew Anzur Clement
• Release date: Apr 16, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201195946

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Author’s Note

This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner.

Any resemblance to actual public figures or institutions is not meant to reflect, in any way, their real conduct, character or reputation.

Prologue

From: Alexei ‘Svarog’ and Kristina ‘Lada’ Brezhov

Directors of the Federal Security Bureau

A note to the Russian people

Moscow, Russian Federation

October 2030.

Alexei

March 2003

Dad knocks on the door to my room. The window shades are up. I have my boom box playing rock, Russian stuff, not the Western pop that seems to have flooded the country lately. I am on my computer. I’m trying not to think about what’s coming.

Come in, Dad. I swallow, still looking at the computer screen, something about the afterlife beliefs of the Rodnovers. My mom was a believer. Not ‘was’, I correct myself, ‘is’.

Dad comes into my room. He makes a show of having to breathe through his mouth. When was the last time you opened a window in here, or cleaned? His cell phone is in the hand that he didn’t use to open the door.

What’s the news, Dad?

America, the UK and a few other Western powers just declared war on Saddam.

He doesn’t like to talk about Mom’s cancer. I went with him. I wanted to go with him. I always went to see her when the doctors gave her the latest bit of news, always bad. Always that they couldn’t solve anything. My brother, Sergei, didn’t go. Dad and I would always park him with the neighbor next door in our building, an older woman named Lili. Sergei is four, eight years younger than I am. He misses Mom.

It’s hard for my father to face, also. It’s hard for me.

"No Dad…not the news. How’s…?"

Dad looks at the phone in his hand. This is the end, Alexei. Your mother is dying. The doctor said that she has hours left. We’re going.

He means to the Kremlykova. The Central Clinical Hospital of all the Russias. Mom gets to stay there free. Dad is in the Federal Security Bureau. He deals with counterterrorism. He probably has a lot on his plate right now, with the news. No matter how many perks his job earns him, including this apartment and Mom’s right to stay at Kremlykova, she isn’t going to stay there for much longer. The breast cancer caught up with her. The supposedly best doctors in Russia couldn’t stop it.

I leave my room, slam the door behind me and follow my father. My little brother, Sergei, comes running out of his room. His unruly black hair hasn’t been cut since Mom went into the hospital. That’s been a while. He says that he misses her, like she is already dead. I’m not sure he knows what death is. Dad would say she is going to heaven. She, a Rodnover, would say she’s going to Svarog, the god of the sky, to the future. Probably, for Sergei, that makes it all the more confusing.

Daddy, what’s going on? asks my little brother.

Nothing, he answers. Mom is going to go away.

Dad isn’t crying. He came for every test, after he got her to agree to modern medical care. It apparently hasn’t worked. Now he’s not in tears, I guess for Sergei’s sake; I understand that.

I kneel down. I’m twelve, almost thirteen, older. I know what’s coming: the last moment that my dad and I are going to have with Mom. Dad leads Sergei and me out of our apartment’s front door. We ring the bell of Lili’s apartment. She sometimes watches Sergei, and used to watch me when I was younger. Lili doesn’t appear to be home.

Sergei, you’re going to have to come with us, Dad grumbles as we head for the dark wooden parquet stairs.

My brother nods.

Dad is still not crying.

When is Mommy coming home? Sergei asks.

Dad says nothing.

After a moment of silence I tell my brother, In the future.

The three of us leave our flat in Khamovniki District: Yefremova Ulica 19, Apartment 25. The third ring road cuts through our neighborhood and we get on it in my dad’s government-issued car, en route to the hospital, over the Moscow River, then left onto Kutuzovsky Avenue. Dad doesn’t talk. Neither do I. I glance back, craning my neck through the rearview mirror to make sure that Sergei is buckled in, in the back seat.

We get to the front entrance of the hospital. Dad parks the car. We go to the main entrance; my father hesitates. At first, I get it. This is a place I’ve been one time too many. Doctors do this sometimes, especially when they have bad news. Confidentiality with the patient is supposed to be a thing, but they ask the family to be present. Like that is supposed to help more than doctors could. The best hospital in Russia. My mother is dying in it.

Dad hems and haws outside. He gets a phone call.

In the Second Subway?

I look over at him. It’s like his own wife, the mother of his two kids—Sergei and me—isn’t dying. I put my arm around my little brother. He looks up at me, confused. For my father, it’s like her cancer doesn’t exist, all of a sudden. Like maybe doctors will cure her somehow.

You’re not sure who? the conversation goes on. I’m on my way, anyway.

What’s going on? I run my hand through my hair, black like Sergei’s but shorter. My father starts to walk away. Dad, what is going on?

Nothing. I have a possible security breach to investigate. Goddamn Underground Diggers. All of a sudden he’s very matter of fact. He walks back toward the car. I’d run after him, but I have Sergei. My eyes get wide.

But Mom…

He turns around and reaches into his pocket. It’s the first time it happens. He gives me a few hundred rubles, a couple of two hundreds and a one hundred. It has a picture of the Bolshoi Theater on the back and four horses pulling a chariot on the other side.

I met your mom at the Bolshoi. You two go be with her. You can buy something from a vending machine. He hurries away, leaving me standing there in the entrance to the hospital.

Dad, I yell after him. If she’s…she’s…

I have an emergency mission. He walks away.

Alexei, what’s happening? Sergei looks up at me.

Mom is having an emergency.

The end of her life, at least in this world. Dad leaves me and my brother there to attend to Mom, alone.

I take the five hundred rubles in my hand and head into the hospital. I’m asked if we need help. I tell them my mother’s name. That I am looking for her. I’m a minor. I have to tell them that my dad couldn’t be here right now. I know I can’t say that it’s because of a mission or crisis, or whatever, related to the Second Subway and possibly the Iraq War that whoever was on the other end of the line was ‘not sure’ about. I’ve never really heard of the Underground Diggers before.

I show my passport and they usher me and Sergei to the correct waiting room. It’s clinical. This isn’t where my mother would want to die. She’d regard death as just another part of life, but here she is, because she just had to fall for an FSB officer who is too much of a wuss to be here now, at the beginning of the future. Sergei is bored. He can’t read yet. He doesn’t understand what’s going on. We play tic-tac-toe on a few pages in the back of an old magazine.

I spend a couple hundred rubles on Pepsi and some chocolate bars. Comfort food, maybe. Boredom relief for Sergei. At least it keeps him from jumping up and down, disturbing other people in the waiting room, as long as he doesn’t have too much sugary caffeine-laden crap. Mom would have called the vending machine food, junk—no, she calls it junk. I wonder if Sergei realizes what is going on. Likely not, and that’s probably for the best. I ponder where my dad is, other than here. I don’t spend the last hundred-ruble bill.

Eventually the orderlies show me in. I know why. They can’t do anything. This is the end. I enter, Sergei’s hand in mine, hoping that somehow she will make a miraculous recovery.

Mom is in a hospital bed. I guess that goes without saying as she’s in the hospital. Her arms are thinner than I remember from when I was a child. I remember them being bigger when she held me. I still can’t shake the suspicion that the chemotherapy only made things worse; if this were the Middle Ages, they would probably have prescribed bloodletting and expected thanks. I sit by the bed in a swivel chair. She doesn’t ask about Dad. It’s not like she doesn’t care. She has figured it out. She’s barely conscious. I take her hands in mine. I hand off the hundred-ruble bill to Sergei. Go buy something, if you want.

Sergei stays right by my side. I don’t think that he knows what is going on. He knows it’s bad. He wants to be there, and he’s not going to shy away, even at age four.

Mom vaguely notices the money handoff. The Bolshoi, she wheezes.

I tighten my grip on Mom’s hands. Sergei hugs me tighter. Dad gave it to me, I tell her. Spending money. You know, for until you get better.

Mom disentangles her hands from mine. She still doesn’t ask about Dad. It’s not that they had a cold relationship, it was the opposite. She mumbles something about the banknote that I handed to Sergei. "Four horses. The four faces of Svetovid, united in one. Your dad never did get it, that it’s all connected. Things always