Sunday, May 4, 1975, Dagastan

     The black ZIL threw up a rooster tail of dust as it sped along the winding dirt track that passed for a road. 

     The sun was a semi-circle of dull orange, handing in a dead gray sky behind the jagged peaks of the mountains to the west, casting elongated purple shadows over the bleak and desolate landscape. 

     There were few trees; a few stunted saplings, gnarled and twisted by the wind, hunched over the parched earth like ancient gnomes, their roots penetrating deep into the earth in search of the rare underground pool of water. Here and there, small flocks of sheep that had spent the day grazing on the rough grass that was scattered about the dry ground were being driven back to the cabins made of blackened logs, to be lodged in pens attached to them, pens made of the same misshapen logs. The rest of the livestock, one or two skinny cows, maybe a pig or two, and some chickens, ducks, and rabbits, would already be in the back room of the little four-room hut which they shared with the farmer’s family. The family, except for the farmer and perhaps his oldest sons, would already be huddled in the central room, around the clay oven for warmth, for even in early May, the night air was cold. 

     The three men in the ZIL, though, paid no attention to any of this. The driver kept his eyes on the road ahead, ready to brake should a flock of sheep suddenly appear. Seated in the back were two men, each on his own side of the scuffed leather seat, back against the door, speaking quietly. 

     “Are you sure this is a wise thing to do, Vasily?” the younger of the two, a clean-shaven man in his mid-twenties, wearing a gray suit and a white shirt that was open at the collar. 

     His companion was in his late forties. He had a high forehead, with his hairline somewhere near to crown of his skull, jet black hair combed straight back and down. Piercing brown eyes sat on either side of a thin nose that hung like a hawk’s beak over thin lips set in a neatly trimmed moustache and pointed goatee. Vasily Shermov looked like Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, and was proud of the resemblance, even taking to wearing dark suits like the Russian Communist leader. He laughed, harsh and guttural, spraying spittle across the seat. 

     “There is nothing to worry about, Pyotr,” he said.  “My cousin, Dmitri, will certainly approve of what I’m doing.” 

     “And, if he does not approve?” 

     The question hung in the air like a threat. Shermov didn’t need to answer; both he and his young assistant, Pyotr Ksolvi, knew the answer to that question; they would simply be made to disappear, to vanish from the face of the earth as if they’d never existed. Shermov’s cousin, Dmitri Kovasc, was the First Secretary and head of the Central Committee of the Dagastan Soviet, and concurrently, head of the dreaded Dagastani Secret Service. He’d been merely the chief intelligence officer for ten years until he’d engineered the overthrow and murder of the former First Secretary and assumed that position as well. 

     Dmitri, Shermov knew, did not tolerate opposition or failure, and he had only one response to either; a response that was final and fatal.