In the Shadow of Mordor Read online

  By Michael R. Davidson

  Harry's Rules

  Eye for an Eye

  Incubus

  The Incubus Vendetta

  The Inquisitor and the Maiden

  Retribution

  Krystal

  By Kseniya Kirillova

  A Rehearsal of Life

  (Репетиция Жизни)

  IN THE SHADOW OF MORDOR

  (Под сенью Мордора)

  In the Shadow of Mordor

  Copyright © 2016

  Michael R. Davidson & Kseniya Kirillova

  All rights reserved. No parts of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.

  MRD Enterprises, Inc.

  PO BOX 1000

  Mount Jackson, VA 22842-1000

  [email protected]

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2016918565

  ISBN 978-0-692-80520-6

  Cover by Damonza

  Russian-English Translation and editing by Michael R. Davidson

  In the development of this novel the authors were inspired in part by actual events that have been amply reported in the press and literature.

  Having made this clarification it is important to emphasize that this is a work of fiction and the situations described, as well as the characters and their actions are imaginary.

  Michael R. Davidson is a former officer of the Central Intelligence Agency, and having reviewed the manuscript, as required by law, the CIA requires the following disclaimer:

  “All statements of act, opinion, or analysis expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official positions or views of the CIA or any other US Government agency. Nothing in the contents should be construed as asserting or implying US Government authentication of information or Agency endorsement of the author’s views. This material has been reviewed by the CIA to prevent the disclosure of classified information.”

  CONTENTS

  FORWARD

  In The Shadow of Mordor

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  About the Author

  FORWARD

  Not being able to go home to your own country, to see your parents, to bury your loved ones or just visit their graves – these are probably the smallest of sacrifices today’s dissident exiles must bear. This is especially true for those who actively come out against the war the Kremlin unleashed against Ukraine. Some people sacrificed their freedom simply for posting opposing views of the war in social media. The reality is that everyone, every day is forced to endure brutality, slander, persecution and more.

  In this book we created a collective image of the Russian dissident. There is some exaggeration for dramatic effect - not every non-conforming journalist is murdered, although the journalistic profession in Russia has truly become dangerous. This is hardly a new situation. In Russia today, just as it has been in Russia throughout the centuries, particularly in the last century, the lives of the very best people are deliberately destroyed.

  However, the purpose of our book is not simply to depict the inequities of life. Life is and always has been basically unfair. Fortunately, people who have “experienced Russia” are cynical enough to have a good laugh at quests for justice. Natives of the former USSR learned a long time ago to substitute the word “price” for the word “injustice.”

  All of these injustices are simply the price one pays to have a clear conscience. It’s the fee you must pay for the moral right to consider yourself NOT a scoundrel. And the price is exactly as much as you have paid, and not a gram less. That’s how it has to be; you can't accomplish anything otherwise.

  This is the essence of the chronic age-old curse of Russia. The Kremlin’s crimes impose on the most ordinary people – not the military or civil servants, but simply common people – a choice between extremes: between a feat of bravery and an act of depravity. The pathological demands of this criminal regime pull into its orbit as many ordinary people as possible, drawing them into mutually assured participation in terrible acts and leaving little opportunity to avoid the bad choice. For some categories of people – soldiers, officials, journalists, human rights activists, teachers, judges, etc., there is no choice at all.

  In a country where a feat of bravery is required NOT to become an accomplice to a morally repugnant act, a third option is often unavailable. People are forced to perform brave and sacrificial acts, not to become heroes, but to avoid complicity in pervasive collective crimes, simply because “they couldn’t do anything else.”

  How do you explain to a resident of a civilized western country that a government can drive ordinary people into the most inconceivable and unacceptable of situations, demanding that they approve of the most savage criminal acts, while stigmatizing disapproval and dissent itself as a crime, where you are deemed a criminal for simply clicking “like” on a social media page? And those people for whom a clear conscience outweighs fear or hypocritical conformity are forced to sacrifice everything – their security, their homeland, and their freedom–just to escape an overall “presumption of guilt,” to rid themselves of their portion of the guilt that surrounds them and with which they find it impossible to live. Not because they dreamed of heroic deeds, but just to be able to keep living with a clear conscience. For this, they at times must pay an exorbitantly high price.

  It is truly horrifying that from time immemorial Russia has forced her citizens (both her own and others) to pay too high a price for things that usually cost less in normal countries. The price of victory in World War II was a sea of soldiers’ blood, ineptly used as cannon fodder, and then another sea of blood and sweat from those who managed to return from German captivity only to be sent to the GULAG - all to calm the paranoid fears of an arrogant “leader.” And so invalids are sent to Valaam1 so they won’t be eyesores for the “leader.” The price for the industrial surge: millions dead from hunger, tortured and exhausted from hard labor in the camps, where even children and teenagers were made to work. Stiffened corpses in the frozen tundra. The suffocating train cars filled with people of different nationalities, such as the Crimean Tatars, who di
ed before reaching their place of deportation. That is the “price” paid for the Soviet Union whose collapse has been called “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe."

  And that’s precisely the price that Russia is now making Ukraine pay. The price for freedom, for moving toward Europe, is war. Tanks, BUKs, grad missiles, mortars attacks on residential homes, destroyed Debaltseve, strikes on Mariupol, torture in the cellars of occupied Donetsk. That’s the price people are paying for their desire to choose their own path, their own vector of development, their own identity. Not a gram less.

  We are driven again and again into choosing between extremes: freedom or war, heroism or depravity. And the 10-15% of Russians who turn out not to have adapted to life in the swamp of ubiquitous depravity are involuntarily forced to become heroes. Although all they really wanted at the start was one thing: the opportunity to live a normal life. Yet, stubbornly, it turns out that not a single generation in Russia has been afforded such a luxury.

  I’ve written before that Russians love to rebuke the West for being so “delicate,” arguing with examples of the great heroism of the Russian people. Without disputing these examples, I want to remind our compatriots: this is not something to boast about. A normal society doesn’t have to give birth to heroes. Heroism is born in conditions of trauma, repression, betrayal, and cowardice. It’s tempered in persecution, crystallized in torture. It learns to love and to fight not by virtue of these conditions, but in resisting them. A feat of bravery is an indicator of an unhealthy society, the terrible conditions prevailing in it, the extremely high level of baseness. Heroism is the exceptional situation, and a true hero is not some superman fighter, but rather the hero starts out a traumatized, crippled individual. The personal example that he sets is one of pain and hardship, a sacrifice that is the fate of few.

  Troubadours who get carried away with Romanticism forget that heroism is an extreme condition for the individual, and one does not survive without its scars.

  There is a controversial saying that in some ways is very appropriate: “Heroes are needed in the moment of danger; the rest of the time, they are dangerous.” To paraphrase it, we can say: “Heroes are needed in times of misfortune; the rest of the time, they are unfortunate.” A feat is always a rupture, and often payment for someone else’s baseness and wrongdoing. This is what destroys a person’s ability to live a normal life.

  And looking at the current state of Russian society, one can’t help but pose the question: what sort of example will all this leave behind for future generations? After all, 85% [Putin’s approval rating], that’s an example of cowardice, conformity, a bizarre mixture of indifference, delusion, and in some cases, conscious depravity. And the remaining 15% – this is again an example of the maimed, the poisoned, the traumatized survivors of loss and actions for which they clearly were not prepared. They just could not do anything else. Once again we find ourselves unable to set the standard norm, the example of the golden mean, the model of the life of a normal person in a normal society. Again we have not been allowed to develop a normal life because exceedingly brutal conditions have been set before us, requiring an inevitable choice between extremes.

  The same problem faced by Russian dissidents now confronts Ukraine: how to survive the loss, the pain, the tragedy of war and build a normal society, how to switch from a regime of constant struggle to one that builds a future. After all, this is where our long-term victory is: Not simply to survive, or to endure sacrifice, but to learn to live with this experience. To love, to create, not to forget about our own lives. And most importantly – to be happy. Otherwise, the exorbitant price we had to pay will have been in vain.

  Kseniya Kirillova

  2016

  * * *

  1 … disabled veterans, whose continuing need for more support was unwelcome evidence of the Soviet state's inability or unwillingness to adequately provide for all citizens' needs. During the late 1940s and 1950s disabled veterans were dispersed from Moscow and other large cities for forced resettlement in remote areas. According to Fieseler (2006:51), kolkhoz supervisors in rural areas, in order to shed inefficient disabled workers, sometimes turned them in as "parasites;" such workers were then deported, presumably to labor camps. Penal camps were established in the Soviet Union for disabled prisoners and disabled veterans of the Russian Civil War and the two World Wars. The most infamous of these is the Spasskaya labor colony near Karaganda, Kazakhstan, to which 15,000 disabled prisoners were sent in the late 1940s and early 1950s (Solzhenitsyn 1985). Similarly, disabled veterans of the Second World War were secretly exiled from Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) and Leningrad oblast' to the Valaam archipelago, in the Republic of Karelia (Russian Federation). Valaam and the fate of those veterans are still shrouded in mystery (Fefelov 1986:51-57).

  This book is dedicated to the brave Russian dissidents who face daily persecution, imprisonment, and even death. Their battle is freedom's battle, and they carry the torch for us all.

  In The Shadow of Mordor

  Michael R. Davidson

  &

  Kseniya Kirillova

  ©2016

  The wood plank floor of the old house was rough against her cheek as she slowly, painfully regained consciousness. Her limbs were stiff with cold, and she remembered snow so heavy that even the old four-wheel drive truck struggled to climb the narrow road that wound upward to wherever she was now.

  Her two captors were getting loud and probably drunk in an adjoining room. They spoke Russian, although with a distinct Kavkaz accent. Their choking laughter turned to howls, like ravaging wolves, and her heart rose to her throat. She recognized one word "девочка," girl.

  Her wrists and ankles were bound. It was strange that she hadn't noticed at first, but the shock of coming to in such primitive surroundings and the raucous voices of the men who had snatched her from her apartment must have numbed her reactions – that and the cold. It must be near freezing in the room and several degrees colder where she lay on the floor.

  The journey to this place had been a long one, both in terms of time and distance, and experience, too. She supposed it must have started that day so long ago in Moscow when they broke into Golovina's apartment.

  "Once to every man and nation,

  Comes the moment to decide,

  In the strife of truth with falsehood,

  for the good or evil side."

  James Russel Lowell

  CHAPTER 1

  Frantic barking shattered the silence from somewhere in the semi-darkness ahead. Olga Vladimirovna Polyanskaya pasted herself against the wall with a half-desperate glance over her shoulder toward the brightly lit hallway and the raised voices behind her. Vovchik was arguing loudly with the people in the other room, and Pasha was jamming the video recorder in their faces as he peppered the American diplomat with questions.

  She slipped farther down the dark corridor looking for any object she might use against the dog when a dirty little mongrel about the size of a cat sprang from the open door of the office. It regarded Olga with bulging eyes half hidden under shaggy hair with that mixture of stupidity and vulgarity common in lapdogs. Without warning it started bouncing and barking without moving toward her.

  "Scat!" she hissed as she sidled into the room. It took only a moment to locate the switch, and bright light spilled over the narrow space of the office. The entire room was lined with metal racks with neat rows of shelves containing cardboard folders. The folders held decades-old, dog-eared documents with names, black and white photos and other excerpts from peoples' lives typed tersely into the spaces of forms.

  Olga selected a file at random and began to untie the ribbon, but the shriveled cardboard crumbled under her fingers to reveal a stack of photocopies of court decisions and yellowed newspaper clippings. "27 OCTOBER 1937, RED ARMY SOLDIERS VIKULOV AND GRIGORIEV WHILE SERVING IN THEIR UNIT CONDUCTED COUNTER-REVOLUTIONARY AND SLANDEROUS AGITATION DIRECTED AGAINST THE POLICIES OF THE PARTY AND GOVERNMENT CONCERNING WORKERS' LIVING
CONDITIONS. THEY ATTEMPTED TO DISCREDIT THE STALINIST CONSTITUTION AND THE INVESTIGATIVE ORGANS OF THE RED ARMY. IN ADDITION, VIKULOV SPOKE OUT IN FAVOR OF ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE WHO EARLIER WORKED AT KRASNOYARSK STATION …"

  This wasn't what she was after.

  She grabbed another clipping but it, too, concerned times long past. "THE SUPREME COURT OF THE USSR PRONOUNCED ITS JUST VERDICT AGAINST A GANG OF HEINOUS CRIMINALS, TRAITORS TO THE MOTHERLAND. THE SENTENCE OF THE SOVIET COURT SERVES AS A WARNING TO THOSE WHO SHARPEN THEIR SWORDS AGAINST OUR MIGHTY SOCIALIST MOTHERLAND. THERE IS AND WILL NEVER BE MERCY FOR THE ENEMIES OF THE SOVIET PEOPLE AND THE ENEMIES OF SOCIALISM. MAY THIS NOW AND FOREVER BE A REMINDER FOR THE CAPITALIST BARBARIANS. LIKE AN ENDURING WALL, WE RALLY AROUND COMRADE STALIN AND HIS FAITHFUL COMPANIONS."

  She was wasting precious time. Olga withdrew a camera from her bag and snapped quick shots of the shelves, one after another, hoping the lens would pick out something overlooked in her rushed search. At the rear of the office she spotted a desk with a new computer. Beside it was a printer that still smelled of recent use. Like a hunter who spots his prey after a long pursuit, she rushed to the desk and rifled through the papers, her heart beating a tattoo. She couldn't believe her luck. "REPORT TO THE AMERICAN FOUNDATION FOR THE CURRENT QUARTER" was right there in her hands in black and white.

  The barking from the hallway reached a crescendo, drowning out even the cries of the old woman. Olga turned from the report to the open office door suddenly wishing Pasha were there with his video recorder. Where was he? Forget the damned American.

  She called out for him and tried to calm the dog, which at last fell silent. Instead of Pasha a tall, thin old lady with a wrinkled face appeared in the doorway. She affected an aristocratic bearing and spoke antiquated Russian in a high voice. The old fashioned clothing and manners seemed ridiculous, like an old Shapoklyak cartoon.

  This was the granddaughter of hereditary Russian nobility, Marya Fedorovna Golovina. When her parents were sent to the camps to die, a great aunt took her in. But in 1968 while still a 20-year-old student she was arrested "for anti-Soviet propaganda and agitation." Ten years in the Gulag followed, and she returned to find herself in the midst of Soviet end of times stagnation, disgraced and needed by no one.