Operation Rod of Iron: AU fic

[JamesAPrattIII]

Monday evening near a tram stop in Moscow Natalia is waiting on one side of a street leading from it while Mikhail is on the other side. Then a man in a Black leather coat with a service cap with a red star on it gets off a tram car that just pulled up and starts walking down the sidewalk towards Natalia It's Medvedev. As he passes her she starts to follow him. She sticks her hand into a Russian army bread bag closes the distance between them. At close range she fires two shots into his back from a Browning pistol fitted with a improvised surpressor.  Medvedev staggers walks over to a lamppost to steady himself slips and falls on his back. Natalia continues to walk on when she gets to the next corner she turns and starts walking at a faster pace. meanwhile, a few people start to gather around Medvedev wondering what's wrong with him not hearing any shots. Someone notices some blood and they all flee. Natalia continues to walk at a fast pace down the sidewalk takes another turn and keeps walking she periodically makes a quick look behind her and keeps walking after walking about half a verst she stops at a street corner and waits a few minutes later Mikhail shows up and they both walk back to the refuge camp where they celebrate with by drinking a cup of tea and cooking and eating for them a fairly nice meal.
 Meanwhile after it got dark two men dragged Medvedevs body into a back ally and striped it.

[Nictionary]

October 17, 1919

   Mechislav Kozlovsky, chairman of the Little Sovnarkom, was sitting in his office, reviewing some financial paperwork, when the telephone rang.  “Is this Comrade Mechislav Yulievich Kozlovsky?” asked the voice on the other end. 
   “Yes,” replied Kozlovsky, nonplussed at the use of his full name.
   “And you are the husband of Ruta?”
   “Yes.”
   “And you are the father of Yanina and Cheslav?”
   “Yes,” Kozlovsky answered, growing unnerved.
   “And you work on the ground floor of the Senate Building?” the caller continued.
   “Y-yes,” Kozlovsky stammered, the hair on the back of his neck beginning to stand on end.  Whoever this was clearly was well-acquainted with most aspects of his life.
   “I would advise you against further involvement with the Party,” said the caller, before hanging up.
   The same day, Aleksandr Pravdin, Deputy People’s Commissar for Railways, received a similar call.  Again, the caller asked for him by his full name, then confirmed the names of his wife, children, and place of work before warning him to disassociate from the Bolshevik cause.


   Kozlovsky soon resigned, citing “reasons of health,” but Pravdin, while shaken, still felt secure enough to continue his duties.  A few nights afterward, however, he was jolted out of his complacency when he was awakened at home by the sound of breaking glass.  Making his way downstairs, he discovered the noise to have been caused by a brick thrown through his window.

   A few weeks later, Aleksey Mitrofanov, editor of Sovetsky Don, received an unexpected phone call.  “Comrade Aleksey Khristoforovich Mitrofanov?” asked the caller.
   “Who is this?” asked Mitrofanov
   “Are you the husband of Alexandra?” asked the caller, ignoring Mitrofanov.
   “Yes,” replied Mitrofanov.
   “And the father of Galina and Leonid?”
   “Yes.”
   “And your office is on the northwest corner of Strastnaya Ploshchad?”
   “Yes?” answered Mitrofanov.  “What do you want from me?”
   “I want you to resign from Party activity,” said the caller, before hanging up.
   Mitrofanov naively dismissed the call as a prank by one of his comrades.  Not long aferwards, however, he was at home one evening when he heard a battering on the front door.  But when he went to open it, only darkness answered, no one was there.  This was no joke.
   The Whites were trying to make it clear that — if they wanted to — they could wipe out anyone, anywhere.

[JamesAPrattIII]

Looks good!

Back to the story:
The Moscow morgue a body is laying on a table covered by a sheet in walks a man in a medical white coat followed by a tall woman wearing black leather coat over a sharply tailored officers uniform followed by a man in a suit wearing glasses. The man in the white coat pulls the sheet of the top half of the body.
Woman: It is comrade Medvedev
Man in suit: we found his body in an ally he had been striped naked and we did not know who he was. We have lots of murders these days.
Man in white coat turns body on side
Man in suit: He has been shot in the back twice. We have recovered the bullets and they look like 3 line bullets possibly from a Browning.
Woman: The Cheka is now in charge of this investigation. Do you have any witnesses?
Man in suit: No but we still looking for some.
Woman: All witnesses any other evidence are to be handed over to me as soon as possible.
Man in suit; Yes comrade
Woman: Now we at the cheka need to figure out how many hostages we need to shoot in reprisal.

(scene fades)

[TimM]

These are good additions, James.

[Nictionary]

December 5, 1919

   Even as Bylinkin’s teams were successfully eliminating Bolshevik targets, elsewhere things were going disastrously for the Whites.  In mid-October the Reds had broken through Kolchak’s lines, and by November his forces were in full retreat.  On November 12, Kolchak held a final meeting of Committee Ze.  The admiral had already given orders to prepare the evacuation of Omsk; he informed the committee’s members that they were being suspended, but that Operation Rod of Iron would continue.  Kolchak announced that he had already dispatched instructions to Denikin placing responsibility for the assassination campaign in his hands: specifically, Bylinkin and his teams would now be placed under the authority of the Intelligence Section of the Armed Forces of South Russia Commander-in-Chief Staff.  Miroshnichenko was instructed to make his way to Denikin’s lines and brief him on all aspects of the mission. 
   In the meantime, Bylinkin’s teams were continuing their work.  Victims nine and ten were two prominent Yekaterinburg Bolsheviks, Nikolai Partin and Vasily Levatnykh, who had participated in disposing of the Imperial Family’s remains; afterwards they had drunkenly boasted of molesting the Czarina's corpse.  Now, this morning, their actions finally caught up with them as a deafening explosion ripped through their De Dion-Bouton in Yekaterinburg’s city center.  Both were seriously injured and died from their wounds not long after the explosion.  But the Whites were still after bigger fish.
   Seventeen long months had passed since the execution of the Romanov family.  Seventeen months of kinetic White existence, on the backdrop of perpetual chaos.

[TimM]

How is this story coming?

[Nictionary]

I just had my last final yesterday, so I've actually resumed writing today.  The next installment will hopefully be posted within two weeks.  Sorry for the long hiatus.

[TimM]

That's okay.

[Nictionary]

Warning: profanity

December 20, 1919

   Since it happened at upper levels, the change in oversight of his mission barely affected him, but for the first time since they had set out from Perm in March, perhaps for the first time in his whole life, Yuryev became afraid. He could not recall ever having experienced the same feeling before.  Not in the army, not during the Great War, not while he was being trained, and not while he was working as an ordinary agent. Not even during the mission, until the middle of October.  Of course, he had always known what it was like to be tense or startled.  Or scared. But the feeling he began experiencing in October was entirely different.  It wasn’t a fleeting rush of adrenalin, a sensation of his heart beating in his throat for a few seconds, a sudden pang that would never outlast the immediate cause that gave rise to it. This new feeling was a quiet, low, nagging anxiety that would not leave him for days at a time, regardless of what he was doing.  He could be eating his chicken in a canteen and the feeling would still be there.
   Sometimes it was like a dull pain, sometimes like a solid lump. Fear.
   At first Yuryev actually thought it might be something he ate.
   When he recognized it as fear, and he soon did, he became resentful and ashamed. For a while he was mortified at the thought that the others might recognize it in him, and as far as Yuryev was concerned that would have been worse than anything. To counteract it he found himself saying, “Fellows, I’m scared,” and “Fellows, I’m worried,” at every turn.  This, of course, was braggadocio army-style, in the only form permissible, proclaiming courage by protesting the opposite too much. But he must have overdone it, because one day Zakhar said to him, very quietly, when they were alone:
   “I know. I’m pretty worried myself.”
   He spoke in a tone that caused Yuryev to stop pretending.
   “Oh shit,” he said. “You too? I wonder why.”
   But Zakhar only shook his head. They never talked about it again.
   Soon afterwards, the answer came to Yuryev in a flash.  Why it was affecting them now, after seven months, after five successful assassinations. The reason was very logical, very simple.
   Having done it, they were beginning to realize how little trouble it was to set up a hit. How easy it was for a few people, with some money and a little determination, to find and kill a man.  With impunity.  And if it was so easy for them, it would be equally easy for others.  If they could kill with such little trouble, they could be killed with just as little.  Without any doubt, someone would by now be out there, gunning for Yuryev and his partners. It made good sense for them to be afraid.
   It did not help matters that just then an incident occurred which, though totally insignificant, shook the partners’ nerves.  One Sunday morning around 1000 hours, in a safe house in Lipetsk, just as Yuryev and Zakhar were sitting over the remnants of their breakfast, there was a knock on the door—unusual, since visitors were supposed to ring the bell from the lobby—and, tiptoeing to the spy-hole, Yuryev could see two well-dressed strangers waiting in the hallway. With Zakhar covering him from the bedroom doorway, Yuryev turned the key in the lock, resting the ball of his foot against the lower part of the door.
   The strangers turned out to be postal inspectors, investigating some theft from the mail. Apparently the concierge had let them into the building, where they were going from door to door asking the tenants if any of them had any letters missing. “What a dangerous job,” said Zakhar wryly, after putting his Browning away.
   “For two nights after that, Yuryev had the greatest difficulty falling asleep.
   At the same time, Yuryev’s own character was such that all the things that might deter others—fear, opposition, difficulties, disapproval—would only serve to spur him on. Without knowing it, without ever dreaming of analyzing it in any way, he belonged to that very small minority of human beings who are fueled by adversity.  It was almost as if, because of some quirk of nature, the wiring in his brain had been reversed.  He would function as a car might if some prankster switched around the accelerator and the brake.  In a sense, being afraid would probably be the last thing to stop him.

[Nictionary]

And in spite of the many ways in which his partners might have been different from Yuryev—or from each other—this was clearly the one trait they shared.
   In November, out of the original twenty-five, they had fourteen targets left.  They could pick up no leads on the whereabouts of Yakov Yurovsky, Number one on the list.  Pyotr Yermakov, Number two on their list, was fighting with the Red Army on the Eastern Front. 
   Skimming down the list, none of the targets seemed reachable until they came to number eleven, a dirty, greasy, forty-three-year old former journalist named Sergey Chutskayev,  involved in choosing the Romanovs’ burial site, who was presently serving as deputy People’s Commissar for Finance.  In a sense, Chutskayev was a soft target, because he did not flaunt his links to the execution.  Throughout the autumn of 1919, Chutskayev lived in Moscow, in constant fear  that he was next on the Whites’ hit list.  He was right. 
   Chutskayev changed his daily routine regularly and took safety precautions, almost never showing up at the same place at the same time twice, and he preferred to spend his nights in the various apartments of his several different girlfriends—though, as Natalia was moved to remark, this last preference may have had nothing to do with security. He was also often accompanied by a bodyguard when he appeared in public.
   Because he travelled a lot, the timing and length of his stays in Moscow were difficult to pin down.  Throughout the month of November, Yuryev and his partners had been trying, without success, to track down the elusive Bolshevik official.  Unlike any of their previous targets, he might spend the night anywhere and it was impossible to predict where he would turn up during the day.  Or at what time.  The only solution was to keep him under constant surveillance, and whenever they happened to find him alone, day or night, if the time, place, and other circumstances seemed favorable, do the assassination at a moment’s notice.
   Provided that the wary and experienced revolutionary did not notice he was being followed and give them the slip.  Tracking him took dozens of White agents.  Chutskayev, in fact, managed to evade the O squad on numerous occasions, slipping into the Muscovite crowds and disappearing. But every man has a weak point that will ultimately give him away.
   The most constant thing about the elusive, wary Chutskayev was that everywhere he went he drove his black Panhard et Levassor 10CV with Muscovite license plates, registered in his name. He also had one place, on Malyy Kislovskiy Pereulok, which he visited more frequently than the others.
   Even so, Chutskayev always performed a perfunctory inspection of his Panhard before entering.  He checked the chassis for explosive devices and hand grenades, opened the hood, looked in the trunk and at the exhaust pipe before opening the car.  The O squad took note.  As a result, Yuryev and Zakhar decided to have Feliks prepare a pressure mine to put inside Chutskayev’s car, without excluding other possibilities.  Shooting was always a standby method of assassination—it required the least in terms of preparation—but it was also the most difficult to get away from, and it carried with it none of the “cleverness” Bylinkin had talked about.  Not to mince words, it involved less terror.  Yuryev also disliked shooting because of the emotional burden for the team. Though always unspoken, it was a factor. Plainly put, planting an explosive device and walking away was easier than facing a man from an arshin away and firing a series of bullets into his body. 
   The bomb Feliks prepared was essentially the same type as the one used in the assassination of Lisitsyn, but smaller and somewhat simpler.  Instead of six little bombs it used a single explosive unit of the fragmentation type.  The bomb would be placed under the car seat.  Because they didn’t want the Cheka to suspect the Intelligence Section, the bomb was deliberately made to look as if it was homemade, filled with heavy nuts and bolts and sharp scrap iron. The bomb was fitted with a heavy metal plate at the bottom so that it would blow up, not down, when pressure was placed on it.  When it was finished, Feliks brought it to show the rest of the team.  “There,” he said, placing it down on the table.
   “Mmm,” said Yuryev, reaching out to touch it.

[Nictionary]

Feliks slapped his hand away.  “Hey!  Hang on a moment.  Let me show you something.  Now I’ve been working on this for some time and frankly I think it’s rather … tasty.  It works on pressure.  We put it under the seat of his car.  He gets in, he sits on the seat, and, uh… and Mr. Chutskayev joins his ancestors, wherever they may be.”
   “What about the risk to bystanders?” asked Yuryev.
   “The device is large,” Feliks admitted, “but the blast will be concentrated in the center of the car, which will prevent pedestrians from being injured.  As for anyone who gets in with him, well, in this case we have no choice.”
   Chutskayev’s current favorite was a stenographer who lived in Bol’nichnyy Pereulok in the Meshchanskaya district.  Though the Panhard remained parked outside his girlfriend’s place all night on Friday, December 19, Yuryev was afraid that in the morning he would give the girl a lift and so did not want to risk planting the bomb. In fact, the girl left the apartment alone almost an hour and a half after Chutskayev who was gone from the house by 0600 hours.
   Interestingly enough, Chutskayev drove, his Panhard to within a block of where his girlfriend would later go to work, in the Tverskoy district.  It was a long drive from Bol’nichnyy Pereulok to Malyy Kislovskiy Pereulok, and it took Chutskayev nearly half an hour.  The time was approximately 0645 hours when he backed his car into one of the parking spots just outside the Musical-Drama School of the Moscow Philharmonic Society.
   Chutskayev got out.  Lazar followed him on foot.  Nikita drove the motorcycle on which they had been tailing Chutskayev’s Panhard around the corner, to where Feliks, Angelika, Mikhail and Natalia were waiting in a carriage.  Apparently Chutskayev was on his way to another girlfriend’s home about a block away.
   The A and Be squads were waiting in their carriage when Nikita pulled up next to them.  “Chutskayev’s black Panhard is parked around the corner, on the right,” he told them.  “He’s here.” 
   Within a few minutes, the carriage pulled up and double-parked in front of the Bolshevik’s car.  Mikhail and Feliks wore repairmen’s overalls.  Although there were one or two shops  on the opposite side of Malyy Kislovskiy Pereulok, pedestrian traffic was light at this hour in the morning, and in any case, the tall carriage standing in front of the car would hide it from the casual glances of passers-by. It was impossible to tell how soon Chutskayev would return, but he would be preceded by Lazar, who had been following him on foot, and this would give the A and Be squads enough time to get away.  The two women kept lookout from inside the carriage while the men worked.
   The type of bomb they were using would take almost no time to place under the driver’s seat. It was a self-contained unit, like a small parcel, with no timer to set and no wires to connect. Opening the Panhard’s door took no time at all, and Feliks was finished in under a minute.
   The explosive device was in place. It was not yet 0800 hours. Feliks and Mikhail got back into the carriage, and drove it to the corner of Malyy Kislovskiy Pereulok and Nizhniy Kislovskiy Pereulok, where Yuryev, Artemiy and Samuil had in the meantime managed to commandeer two parking places with one carriage.  Now they pulled ahead, and allowed the other carriage to ease in next to the curb behind them.
   Nearly three hours passed. It was 1045 hours.  No sign of Lazar or Chutskayev.  Then a large truck double-parked in the exact spot where the A and Be squads had stopped the carriage earlier, right in front of the booby-trapped Panhard. 
   “Oh, shit!” exclaimed Samuil.  “What do we do now?”
   There was nothing they could do about it—though Yuryev considered walking down the street and asking the truck driver under some pretext to pull fifteen arshins ahead.
   A few minutes later it did.
   But at almost the same time, a boy and a girl—university students judging by the books they were carrying—decided to have a conversation next to the Panhard.  The girl was actually leaning against the rear fender. They would move, of course, if Chutskayev“got into the car, but perhaps not far enough. A moment earlier Yuryev was hoping that the Bolshevik would show up quickly, and now he was hoping he would delay until the students had finished their conversation. “Come on, malysh,” he tried suggesting to the girl telepathically, “whatever he wants, say yes. Just move your ass.”  It worked, because the students began walking away.
   1100 hours.
   Lazar came sauntering down the street.
   Yuryev looked to Mikhail, sitting next to Feliks in their carriage, just to make sure he had seen the man.  Mikhail nodded.
   Chutskayev was performing his usual cursory checks.  Now he was opening the driver’s door.  He got in and hopped onto the seat.  His left foot was still on the ground outside when he was immediately swallowed by a ball of fire.  The explosion blew open the door of the Panhard.  It buckled the roof.  The force of the blast was so strong that many of the nuts and bolts went right through his body and peppered the roof of the car, leaving gaping exit wounds and tearing out through his shirt.
   It also made a very loud bang. Within seconds, the street was filled with people. Reportedly Chutskayev’s girlfriend, working in her nearby office, heard the explosion, although she did not know what it was.  Chutskayev was killed instantly.
   Within minutes of the explosion the militsiya and fire department arrived on the scene.  Firemen extinguished the blaze engulfing the car and collected Chutskayev’s remains—the force of the blast splattered shards of his flesh all over the vehicles parked nearby.  The victim was quickly identified.
   Parked less than forty sazhens away was another carriage.  It’s rear windows were covered with black tape.  Peering out through small slits were two very interested spectators: Bylinkin and Colonel Ryasnyansky.
   Yuryev and his partners did not leave Moscow until the first week in January.  They left, as usual, one by one.  Though the pressure in the pit of his stomach had not eased, Yuryev felt satisfied.  Even Cautious Zakhar conceded that the mission was going well. In eight months they had taken revenge on eleven Reds.  They had thirteen left on the list.

[TimM]

Nice to see this story back again.

[JamesAPrattIII]

Interesting, imaginative and mostly plausible. Some one this high up on the Bolshevik leadership would have had a driver/mechanic to drive him around and keep the car running. He would also have bodyguards and would go around armed. I think Bolshevik/Communist high ups until 1935 could go around openly armed. Keeping an early automobile running pre WW II you almost had to be a driver and a mechanic.

[Nictionary]

Was carrying weapons in public banned after 1935

[JamesAPrattIII]

Yes I believe they were. This is from a bio of Stalin by Montefiore.

Other comments:
It looks like yuryev is having problems. not surprising based on what he has been through.

The CV on a French care is I believe for tax purposes.

From "Go Spy The land" G Hill

In Bolshevik Russia the have for each block of homes a Dvornik or Yard porter. No one stays in a house with out him being informed and getting the pass ports of lodgers to take to the local commissartiat for registration

In buildings their were the housing committees who spy on the building and issue ration cards.

I believe Paul Dukes in his books mentions the same problems.

I would say during this period 1919 the system may not have been as efficient as in later Communist times. So I don't think the Whites would have been able to operate that many agents in Moscow.

As for running people off from the car where they planted the bomb. I don't think they would do it. It's just too risky. They might have one man watch the car from a distance and walk off when the bomb went off. However he does run the risk of being spotted by some one who gives his description to the Cheka.