The making of bombs, where safety and selectivity were not factors, was relatively simple. The main explosive would be a comparatively stable substance, like dynamite or gelignite, which could then be fitted with a small detonator—a tiny amount of very unstable explosive often of the nitric or sulphuric acid family—which could be set off by anything from percussion to a small amount of weak electric current. It could be activated mechanically by, for instance, an alarm clock.
The next day, one of the Raduga agents broke in again and examined the lamp. He lifted it and wrote down on a notepad the model serial number. He placed the lamp on the pad; he outlined the lamp’s base, then measured its height with his fingers and made marks on the pad corresponding to this measurement.
May 27, a Tuesday, found Robert and Zinoviy in the safe house with a lamp identical to the model in Kabanov’s apartment. The rest of the team gathered round to watch, as the two explosives experts put the finishing touches to their bomb.
“So, we fit the gelignite in here like this,” Robert explained. “And I hope that’s enough.”
Yuryev looked nervously at the device.
“Don’t worry, it’s not connected yet,” Robert reassured him.
As Robert explained the plan, the bomb was installed in the base of the lamp in front of them, which would then be switched with the lamp in Kabanov’s apartment. When Kabanov turned on the lamp, the current would travel not to the light bulb, but to a detonator, which would set off the chunk of gelignite in the base of the lamp. “And… good-bye, Kabanov,” he concluded.
Yuryev thought the device, as described, was almost accident-proof. Almost. “Zero risk,” he reminded Robert.
Robert shrugged. There was no such thing as absolute zero risk. His device would reduce the risk to as near zero as possible; but if even this was too much risk for Yuryev, they would have to think of an entirely different way.
“All right,” said Yuryev, after a little hesitation. “Make sure you don’t make it so big we kill everybody in the whole damn building.”
“I have a different problem,” Robert said. “I’ll have to make sure it’ll pack enough punch for the Bolshevik standing right next to it. There isn’t much room in this lamp.”
The bomb looked very light, as Yuryev held it in his hand. Hardly enough to harm a man, except Yuryev remembered seeing the damage a zolotnik of gelignite could cause inside a letter bomb. “Let’s hope it works,” Yuryev said as he handed the box back to Robert.
That same day the team split up into two new safe houses.
Now, finally, today, shortly after Kabanov left for work, the two Raduga operatives picked the lock on his apartment one last time, allowing Robert and Zinoviy, who were dressed as telephone repairmen, to enter with the bomb lamp, which they carried in a valise. Robert estimated that the work might take twenty to thirty minutes, less rather than more. Yuryev, Feliks, and Angelika waited outside the building, which was usually quiet late in the morning, to warn Robert and Zinoviy if Kabanov should return home unexpectedly. In the event, Feliks and Angelika would engage him in conversation until Yuryev could get the others out of the apartment.
Inside, Robert unplugged the lamp and replaced it with the bomb, while Zinoviy stood gingerly behind him holding the valise. “I hope you know what you’re doing,” he said, as Robert worked. After they had finished, they checked that everything was in place before leaving the apartment. They left no sign of their presence. Once they were outside, the two Raduga operatives replaced the lock, before they and the explosives experts parted ways and left via separate exits.
For about fifteen minutes, Yuryev, Feliks and Angelika had stood alone on Mozdokskaya Ulitsa. Yuryev wished he had brought some chewing gum.
Then, almost before there could have been time to pick the lock, Robert and Zinoviy came strolling back across the street.
“You’re joking,” Yuryev said. “All set?”
“Well, I don’t know,” Robert replied. “I guess we’ll find out tonight.”
The O squad’s surveillance of the apartment continued for the rest of the day. At 1630 hours, Artemiy, Lazar, and Samuil took up their posts in the tarantass, parked about 85 sazhens away; Nikita on horseback, standing a little closer to the main entrance; and Andrei at a kiosk on the next corner, browsing through what few magazines there were. The latter were acting as guards. In a command room not far away, Bylinkin, Miroshnichenko, and several staff officers from headquarters waited. A few minutes after 0515 hours, Kabanov returned home. The O squad’s job now was to watch to make sure everything went according to plan. If nothing happened, Robert and Zinoviy would break in again the next day to adjust the bomb.
A little after 2230 hours, the sound of a dull explosion crackled in the still Astrakhan night. Boom! Yuryev could see a sudden shimmering of the air along the front wall as if a little shiver had run through the entire building. And he could see a criss-cross pattern of thousands of cracks appearing in one of the large windowpanes that the percussive force had shattered. The glass seemed to bulge outwards, but it held. A few passers-by stopped and looked up.
Someone was opening the French windows on a second-floor balcony, coming out and first glancing down into the street, then craning round trying to look up at the windows above him.
They had done it.
They had done it again.
The following morning they were not so sure, sitting in one of the safe houses, looking at the late editions of the papers. Kabanov was still alive. Hurt badly, without any doubt, but it was impossible for them to tell from the reports whether or not he would survive. Artemiy was flipping through a magazine. Yuryev was grinding herbs in a pestle, preparing lunch. It was silent when Zakhar walked in. “He’s at Aleksandro-Mariinskaya Bolnitsa,” he reported. “I don’t know how badly we hurt him, they aren’t saying.”
“Another four hundred thousand rubles, more or less, to eliminate number two,” said Lazar.
“If he’s been eliminated,” said Artemiy. “We should stick with guns.”
“No one notices a shooting,” said Yuryev. “Bombs accomplish a double objective: eliminating targets, and terrifying the Reds.”
“That only works when the bombs work,” Artemiy returned.
Kabanov had been critically wounded, the apartment blown apart. He had remained conscious long enough to tell astonished Astrakhan detectives what had happened. He had been taken to Aleksandro-Mariinskaya Bolnitsa on Ulitsa Tatishcheva - the other hospital, Bolnitsa Skoroi Meditsinsko Pomoshchi, had been a little closer, but the ambulance had probably been pointed the other way. The authorities were baffled by the source of the explosion and mentioned “sabotage” as only one, remote possibility. Yuryev was not unduly concerned; even if Kabanov should survive, they had taken him out of action for a long time, perhaps forever.
The team spent two more nights in their Astrakhan safe houses, before leaving the city by separate routes. At that point, as far as they knew, Kabanov was still alive.
