Andropov's Cuckoo E-Book

Owen Jones

• Herausgeber: Tektime
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 398

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

A dying man recounts the story of the most amazing person he has ever met, a brilliant, Soviet linguist whom he calls Youriko. It is a tale of love, daring-do, spies and danger set in Japan, Germany, Turkey, the USA, Canada and the UK, but mostly in the Soviet Union of the Seventies.
Two girls, born thousands of miles apart in Kazakhstan and Japan just after World War II, meet and are like peas in a pod. They also get on like sisters and keep n touch for the rest of their lives.
However, one wants to help her battle-scarred country and the other wants to leave hers for the West. They dream up a daring, dangerous plan to achieve both goals, which Andropov, the chief of the Soviet KGB, is told about. He dubs it Operation Youriko and it is set in motion, but does it have even the remotest chance of success?
Andropov’s Cuckoo is based on a ‘true story’ related to the author by one of the protagonists.

Leseprobe

Contents

ANDROPOV’S CUCKOO

DEDICATION

INSPIRATIONAL QUOTES

CONTENTS

1 WILLIAM DAVIES

2 YUI MIZUKI

3 NATALIA PETROVNA MYRSKII

4 SUMMER 1967

5 YURI VLADIMIROVITCH ANDROPOV

6 OPERATION YOURIKO

7 THE PLAN IS AFOOT

8 THE KGB

9 THE DAILY GRIND

10 THE HOLIDAY

11 LUBYANKA

12 GULAG ARCHIPELAGO

13 A NEW JOB

14 LENINGRAD 1978

15 MUSHY-BRAINED AND GOOEY-EYED

16 SOCHI, KRASNODARSKAYA KRAI

17 THE FULL BOTTLE

18 THE MULE TRAIN

19 THE LAST LEG

20 CHELTENHAM

21 EPILOGUE

AFTERWORD

DEAD CENTRE

1 SCHEHERAZADE’S BAGHDAD

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Other books by the same author:

ANDROPOV’S CUCKOO

A Story of Love, Intrigue and The KGB

by

Owen Jones

Copyright © March 14th, 2024 Owen Jones

Fuengirola, Spain.

The right of Owen Jones to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988. The moral right of the author has been asserted.

In this work of fiction, the characters and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or they are used entirely fictitiously. Some places may exist, but the events are completely fictitious.

Andropov’s Cuckoo

A Story of Love, Intrigue and The KGB

by Owen Jones

Published by Megan Publishing Services

https://meganthemisconception.com

Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be copied, re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Megan Publishing Services and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

DEDICATION

This edition is dedicated to my wife, Pranom Jones, for making my life as easy as she can – she does a great job of it.

Karma will repay everyone in just kind.

INSPIRATIONAL QUOTES

Believe not in anything simply because you have heard it,

Believe not in anything simply because it was spoken and rumoured by many,

Believe not in anything simply because it was found written in your religious texts,

Believe not in anything merely on the authority of teachers and elders,

Believe not in traditions because they have been handed down for generations,

But after observation and analysis, if anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, accept it and live up to it.

Gautama Buddha

––

Great Spirit, whose voice is on the wind, hear me.

Let me grow in strength and knowledge.

Make me ever behold the red and purple sunset.

May my hands respect the things you have given me.

Teach me the secrets hidden under every leaf and stone, as you have taught people for ages past.

Let me use my strength, not to be greater than my brother, but to fight my greatest enemy – myself.

Let me always come before you with clean hands and an open heart, that as my Earthly span fades like the sunset, my Spirit shall return to you without shame.

(Based on a traditional Sioux prayer)

––

“I do not seek to walk in the footsteps of the Wise People of old; I seek what they sought”.

Matsuo Basho

––

“Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go”.

Joshua 1:9

––

“Whatever misfortune befalls you [people], it is because of what your own hands have done-God forgives much-”

Quran 42:30

––

Myself when young did eagerly frequent

Doctor and Saint, and heard great Argument

About it and about; but oft-times

Came out, by the same Door as in I went.

Omar Khayyam

The Rubaiyat XXIX.

––

CONTENTS

1 William Davies

2 Yui Mizuki

3 Natalya Petrovna

4 Summer 1967

5 Yuri Vladimirovitch Andropov

6 Operation Youriko

7 The Plan is Afoot

8 The KGB

9 The Daily Grind

10 The Holiday

11 Lubyanka

12 Gulag Archipelago

13 A New Job

14 Leningrad 1978

15 Mushy-Brained and Gooey-Eyed

16 Sochi, Krasnodarskaya Krai

17 The Full Bottle

18 The Mule Train

19 The Last Leg

20 Cheltenham

21 Epilogue

22 Afterword

Dead Centre – Chapter One

About the Author

1 WILLIAM DAVIES

“He’s coming back, Peter!”

“Hang on to him!” ordered the cardiovascular surgeon as he quickly scanned the machines and monitors on the racks above the opposite side of the bed with a well-practised eye. “Don’t let him lose consciousness again, it might be the last time if we do.”

All the flashing, spiking and streaming lights on all the monitors were normalising, as were the beeps and buzzing sounds.

“Come on, William, don’t go to sleep on us now,” he urged his patient.

“I’m trying not to,” I heard myself saying in my head, but I couldn’t get my lips to voice my thoughts. In fact, for a while, I thought that I had died ten minutes before I heard the first voice speak. The only reason I had for doubting my demise was that I’m a Spiritualist, and I have always believed that friends and relatives waited on the Other Side to welcome the dying over. There had been no-one waiting for me… Not that I have many friends or relatives dead or alive, although there was one I knew I could count on.

I had to put myself into the doctors’ hands and trust in their ability. I wanted to give them a sign that I could hear them, so I tried to drum my fingers and wiggle my toes, but had no idea whether they were moving or not. I guessed not by the lack of reaction from the doctors and nurses who were obviously surrounding the bed trying to help me.

“His eyes are twitching, I think he’s trying to open them,” observed a female voice emotionally. Emboldened by such encouragement I tried harder, and, after a minute or so, I could see a kindly male face smiling down at me through a crack in my eyelids.

“Welcome back, William”, he said seeming to mean it, “we thought we’d lost you that time. Welcome back to the land of the living. I’m terribly sorry about this, Old Man, but I have to rush off now that you’re going to be all right, but these ladies and gentlemen are supremely competent and will take care of you just as well as I could. I’ll see you later”.

He whispered his instructions to the others and left.

It is strange, but when you have very little strength left, you can feel it ebbing or returning remarkably easily. In my case, I was getting stronger by the second. I don’t know what drugs they’ve given me, but they and the will to live are working wonders.

“We’ll keep you in tonight, William, but if the signs are good tomorrow, you can go back to your own bed. That’ll be nice, won’t it?”

I tried to nod and smile, but instead, I felt a tear run out of my left eye down over my temple and into my ear. I haven’t slept in my own bed for nearly three years, but I knew what she meant of course. She was just trying to be kind… upbeat, and I did appreciate it. It’s just that it’s funny what you think about when you realise that you might be drawing your last breaths.

I don’t consider myself religious, although I suppose others might. I believe simply in life after death, reincarnation and Karma. Therefore, death has never held any terrors for me, and life is only slightly preferable because it allows a wider range of experiences and more of them.

My last thoughts had not been about life or death or even meeting my Maker, they had been about the people I have loved, and especially the females, because I had always preferred theirs to male company. You could argue that that was my life flashing before my eyes, but it was a niche, edited version and it didn’t flash. It lingered in a languid, lavish, seductive fashion.

In fact, I don’t believe that that film of my life would have finished if I had died from the heart attack when I thought I might have. It would have carried on and I would have been without a body – the only change.

I have been a big, strong man all my adult life: over six feet and over sixteen stones, but fit and healthy with it. I have been ill and broken bones, but nothing has floored me for long. However, I fear that those days are at an end, because that was the second heart attack you just saw me recover from, and I am realistic enough to know, that I will probably not be able to ignore the third call to leave this Mortal Coil.

To be honest, I’m not all that sure that I would want to anyway. I am now seventy-one, living in an old people’s home in southern Spain and my wife and friends have all gone on before me. Don’t get me wrong, it is a very comfortable hospice, operated especially for English-speaking oldies like myself. It really is very nice, but it’s not home, as I am sure you can appreciate and the bed they referred to as my ‘own’, is not the one I shared with my wife until she died two years, three months and seventeen days ago.

Actually, she was rushed from our bed into hospital and died there without recovering consciousness. She didn’t survive her first heart attack. It’s a shame, I thought she would have… when the time came. I slept in a hotel after that for a while and then I moved into the hospice – God’s Waiting Room, we residents call it!

Anyway, I digress, but I’m afraid you will have to forgive me, dear reader, for it is true, an old man’s mind does wander. However, if you have the tenacity to stick with me to the end, I will tell you the story of a woman that I want the whole world to know.

Trying to tell the story of someone else is difficult, and in this case it is obscured by the mists of time and an old man’s power of recollection, but I will get there, I promise you that most sincerely

I am the eldest child in my family, of my generation in our family, I should say, three years older than my next sibling, so for a long time, I was like an only child. I was lucky though, because there were lots of children in the nearest five houses to ours and as luck would have it, eight of those nine children were girls. I loved them all in my preschool days as I had no sisters of my own… I have fond memories of playing Daddy to their Mummy at make-believe tea parties.

Most of them were years older than myself, so when they started school they found new friends and eventually, so did I. It was there that at the age of six I fell in love with a girl called Debbie. One day, after school, at the age of seven, we were sitting on the swings in the thunder, lightening and rain and hoped that a bolt of lightening would send us to a romantic death together. It didn’t, of course, all it got us was a telling-off from our parents.

Then there was Sally when we were nine. I used to stalk her and when she said that I was the third most handsome boy she knew, I was in Seventh Heaven. At fifteen there was Lesley, whom I loved from afar, but never ever spoke to, and so it went on until I was seventeen.

I will never forget those wonderful girls, our innocence and the great times we had, or I wanted to have, together.

Some things you cannot tell, even at seventy-one and fresh off your death bed, and other things you don’t want to tell because they are memories best savoured in private. I often wonder whether those early loves, for lovers they were not, remember me fondly too, but I will never know now and that is probably for the best. I can pretend that they do.

You see, I cannot ask them, because I have always moved around and never kept in touch. It is a reason for the lack of friends and close family. First, I went to university a hundred and fifty miles from home and then I joined the Diplomatic Service, which also involved travelling… but I am starting to get ahead of myself.

Between the ages of eighteen and twenty-three, the girls I was going out with started to become women, and that was even more exciting. I remember Janine, Glenys and Andrea… so many more friends and lovers alike. I dream about them all often, and in a way which is not disrespectful to my wife.

The nurse has come to put me to sleep… not like an old dog, you understand, more in the manner of a sick child, which I am frightened I am in danger of becoming. It is a reason for wanting to tell you my story soon. I will do my best to get on with it tomorrow.

∞

Muesli and fresh pineapple crowned with plain yoghurt for breakfast accompanied by a cup of weak herbal tea. I can’t tell which one from the flavour, but it is all very nice, if predictable. I am not going to be in a fit state for jogging for a while, so I need plenty of roughage. The tea is probably a mild laxative as well.

Anyway, I have become aware over night, that, if my story is going to be published one day, it needs to be written down or recorded. A Dictaphone would be the least strenuous on me, so I asked the nurse who brought my breakfast to arrange for the hospice staff to buy me one. She tried to get out of doing it by reminding me that I would be ‘going home’ within eight hours, so I could ask them myself.

I wasn’t having any of that though. ‘I haven’t forgotten I’m going back to the hospice today if I’m well enough!’ I told her. ‘Phone them to get me a Dictaphone as I asked, please!’ She went off in a huff, but at my age we are allowed to be a bit crotchety from time to time, it’s expected of us and one of the compensations for old age. You could call it a prize for surpassing the allotted three score years and ten.

When my plates are being cleared away by a different nurse, I ask about my Dictaphone again. Ten minutes later she phoned me back on my bedside phone to say that it was being taken care of. They are pretty obliging here, on the whole, and where I live too.

While we are waiting for them to take me ‘home’, where my Dictaphone should be waiting so that I can recount the story I have been promising you, I will fill in the time by telling you a little more about myself, but don’t worry, I will keep it brief. I do not want to bore you and the real story is not about me anyway. This is not an ego trip, as the dear old Hippies used to say.

I loved the Seventies, but was too young to enjoy the Sixties.

I was born the eldest child in Cardiff, South Wales, the UK to an industrious working-class family. My father was a carpenter when he finished his National Service, but soon had his own construction firm and he and my mother soon had a family of five boys too. We all grew up fit, strong and happy. Our parents were Spiritualists, and Dad took us to Church with him every Friday night when he did his healing to give my mother a well-deserved ‘night off’.

However, religion was never forced upon us. In fact, our schools were Church of Wales, cubs and scouts were Methodist and our closest aunty was Catholic. Religion was just not an issue in our family or neighbourhood. The first two things I can remember my mother saying are that she would die before she was forty-two and that I should become a diplomat. Both of which came true.

English was my mother language, but I learned Welsh from the age of six and then French, German, Latin, Dutch and Russian to fluency and a little Chinese and Spanish. The Diplomatic Service pays a bonus for every language you can speak, which was a big attraction for me. So was the promise of foreign travel, as I had travelled and studied abroad by the time I was fifteen. I was a confident traveller by eighteen.

I particularly liked to hitch-hike, but then all the young people did it back in those days and it was safer than it is now for some reason.

As a person, I tend to be a loner and a thinker, although I wouldn’t claim to come to more sensible conclusions than anyone else. However, I do try to, and that was one of the reasons they employed me in the Diplomatic Service. I had a great life in the Service, and lots of fun… but there I go again hijacking this story, bending it towards me and my life… Oh, yes, I forgot… we’re waiting for the Dictaphone before we can get onto the nitty-gritty, aren’t we?

I apologise for that, but I am as impatient as you must be. Honestly!

The journey from the hospital to the hospice was only a few kilometres, so didn’t take long in the large comfortable ambulance they provided. In fact, we left the hospital without warning at eleven a.m. and I was sitting in a large comfortable chair in the hospice grounds overlooking the beautiful marina in Marbella waiting for my lunch by noon.

Now, I realise that you have been waiting quite a while for me to get to the point of this book, I haven’t forgotten, although I can’t quite remember how long it’s been exactly, so when the nurse brought me my lunch, I asked about the machine again. She used her mobile to ring the desk, and assured me that it would be delivered within the hour. I smiled, thanked her and tucked into my boiled fish and salad, followed by yoghurt and tea again.

I like that sort of food, but I have always been easy to please in culinary matters as long as I’m not asked to eat junk food. In earlier days, I favoured Indian and then Thai food, but that is all but denied me now, as is cheese, my clear all-time favourite. I have always had a passion for cheese, fresh, crispy bread and red wine or beer, which are also very rare treats these days.

The food and the hour have both disappeared now, but the only change to my circumstances is that I feel sleepy. It’s the sea air probably. If they don’t bring me my new toy soon, I’ll be asleep again… dreaming about people from my youth, people perhaps long dead… Maybe, I should be as well, what useful purpose am I serving here? Eating and drinking and spending money, but to what end? Just to keep myself alive? No-one cares except the owners of the hospice, and that would soon stop if my money ran out, which it won’t… The dear old British government will see to that until I pop my clogs.

In a way though, I am being held back from my inevitable journey through yet another death and rebirth. I just can’t help thinking that my money would be better spent elsewhere. I’m drifting again, I sense it. I need to stay alive to tell you my story, which is not really my story because it is not about me, I know, I’ve told you that before, but I have known this story for most of my life. That’s why I’m keeping myself alive, not just for the sake of it.

If the truth be known, I am anxious to continue on to the next leg of my journey and have been for two years, seven months and fourteen days. I miss her so much, I could cry every time I think of her, tough old bastard that I think that I am… pretend that I am. Eventually, everyone believes the image and lets you get on with it… not realising that that’s the last thing you want them to do really. I’m just too scared to show my feelings, that’s the truth… but then most men are.

Well, it’s too late to change now… Maybe in the next life or the one after that. It’s a good job that infinity is so long, it gives you plenty of time to correct your failings and weaknesses and, Lord knows, I need it.

I’m getting a sudden, unexpected memory of Ricky, a boy from university. He was from Battersea and affected a Cockney accent. He tried to act like the cock of the walk, but asked me to take him for an Indian curry one night because he’d never had one and wanted to impress a girl who said it was her favourite food. He got so drunk on red wine and beer that he fell face down in his Chicken Madras blowing bubbles! Ha, ha, ha… Good old days. A waiter and I cleaned him up and I took him home to his girlfriend, who had a houseful of nude photos of herself taken by her female flatmate.

I can’t remember the flatmate’s name, but she was Jewish and took me to bed that night with more red wine. I feel bad that I can’t remember her name, but Maria or Marsha seems to fit the face I see in my head. Strange, I haven’t thought about those three people for almost fifty years.

Excuse me, I must have drifted off. There is a note protruding from under my saucer: ‘Your Dictaphone is at reception. Please ring and it will be brought out to you’. I am as happy for you as for myself, dear reader, because now I will be able to fulfil my promise and you will be able to assess whether what I have been saying is true or not. Just a moment, please, while I make a call.

“Here you are, William. I took the liberty of putting it on charge while you were asleep. Have fun with it”, said the girl who delivered it.

“Yes, thank you, I will,” I replied cheerily, but thought ‘What a saucy mare!’ Some of the younger ones treat us all as if we’re senile. It drives me mad. It is true that some of us are totally doolally tap, but not all… not yet.

I played with the Nokia, turning it over in my hands looking for familiar features. It was a simple one, just what I wanted… could be voice-activated too. I was no stranger to modern technology, but another sudden thought came into my mind. I have written thousands of reports, but never written a biography. Read many, yes, but not written one. I can’t think how to start. Really! This is most annoying. I, we, have been waiting for the recorder for twenty-four hours and now I still can’t start!

I picked up my saucer to finish my tea, and a warm breeze blew the note down the lawn. I realise that the story I want to tell, her story, could not have taken place unless other events had happened first… Well, in that case, since you have indulged me thus far, I will push you a little further and take you back to the very beginning, as far as I am humanly able. The real beginning of this story is in yet another country, which found itself in very trying circumstances almost a decade before even I was born.

The woman I really want to tell you about went by many names, but she was born Natalya in Soviet Kazakhstan, although we will have to start in Japan with the Mizuki family. I have pieced their story together over the decades from various case notes which I was able to uncover in my professional life as a diplomat, and from things that I was told and overheard. So, with my fully-functioning, brand-new Dictaphone, I will now tell you about the first performers in our drama, Yui Mizuki and her family and hope that I don’t receive that third curtain call before we get to the end.

2 YUI MIZUKI

Mr. Hiroto Mizuki was working in a reserved occupation in the Ministry of Finance as a middle-ranking official in Tokyo by day, and as part of the Home Defence by night. In 1944, when he was twenty-seven, he was in love with a colleague who worked down the corridor from his office and he vowed to make her his wife, if they survived the current American onslaught. Hiroto and his girlfriend, Suzume, were from a similar social class, both Shinto, both revered Emperor Hirohito as a god, and were both convinced that it was not possible for Japan to lose the war – the greatest war that Japan had ever waged.

The first signs that they might be wrong were the disappearance of young men from the streets of their beloved, ancient capital, Tokyo, and it’s merciless fire-bombing by the Americans. On the night of March 9th, 1945, almost 700,000 incendiary bombs were dropped, killing 100,000 people, injuring 110,000 more and destroying forty percent of the city in the inferno which spread rapidly through the largely paper and bamboo buildings.

Suzume’s faith started to crumble as her nerves shattered. After another bad night of bombing on July 20th, when a huge pumpkin bomb – a forerunner of the atomic bombs to come – was dropped near her parents’ home where she also lived, she implored Hiroto to take her away. At a meeting in her home on July 21st, she could take it no longer, she told him on her bended knees. If he did not take her away very soon, she would either have to go alone or ‘take the only other honourable way out’. Her parents gave them their blessing and a hurried Shinto wedding ceremony was arranged.

“But where can we go?” asked Hiroto. “I have no clear idea what is happening here in our own country, but I think that the south is safer – anywhere away from Tokyo, which they seem intent on bombing flat, along with everyone in it”. Hiroto sipped his tea, pretending to be giving the matter his undivided consideration, in order to instil confidence into his terrified young fiancée. However, he hadn’t a clue, he could see only one option.

“My father and mother have a comfortable farm in the south,” he mused, “we could go there… They’ve hardly seen any fighting at all”.

“That’s fantastic!” replied Suzume beaming admiration at him. “Where is it, do tell us?”

“Well, if the trains were running, it is only about twelve hours away…” he said smiling, enjoying teasing his bride to be, “and if we had a car, and petrol of course, it is about nine hours away, but there are none of those things any longer… So, if you really want to go, it will take twelve to fourteen days to walk there. Do you still want to go?”

“With you by my side, my love, I don’t care if it takes a month, but where is it?”

“Ten miles north of Hiroshima. It’s beautiful and so quiet!” he replied. “We’ll be safe there, and my parents will be happy for us to stay with them. Will you come with us, future mother-and father-in-law?”

The old man looked at his wife.

“No, son. You take care of our daughter and have many children. Our Fate, good or bad, lies with the Reigning Emperor and his capital. We will stay here. Anyway, we couldn’t walk to Hiroshima even if we wanted to, it’s much to arduous for us”.

“We’ll come to visit you after the war is over and the trains are running again”, Suzume’s mother comforted her.

They worked the following four days, and then called in sick to ensure that they would get another month’s salary each and to give them time to sell Hiroto’s unnecessary belongings, get married and take their leave of Suzume’s family. Then, dressed as peasants in baggy clothes, with dishevelled hair and packs containing food concealed in a change of clothing, they set off to join the throng of refugees heading south for a quieter life on the morning of Friday July 27th.

Life on the road was hard, they had money concealed about their persons and food in their bags, but most others did not. They felt terribly heartless sitting away from the others, denying starving children food, because if they gave any away, they too would be begging soon. It would not have been so bad if there were shops along the way, but the movement of people along that grim and dusty road had been so heavy and so relentless for so long, that there was nothing left, and food was already scarce as it was because of the blockades and the bombing. All that could be seen as far as the eye could see were derelict farm houses and ravaged fields. There was no livestock, it had already been eaten, sold or hidden as future collateral. In it’s own way, walking through the countryside was even as depressing as staying in Tokyo, except that the air was cleaner. Cleaner, but not sweeter.

One of the happiest moments of the day was ticking another twenty-four hours off, and the saddest moments were having to walk around the corpses of those who had died in their tracks. Often fights would break out for the deceased person’s possessions, even his or her clothes and the body would be left naked to rot in the road, or it would be kicked into a ditch alongside it, if it smelled too bad. It was summer and hot, so it didn’t take long for the flies and their baby maggots to start their gruesome work. They walked mostly at night because it was cooler, but that increased the risk of tripping over the rotting, dead bodies on the unlit roads. The smell of a putrid corpse was no warning as they were everywhere. They tried to keep reminding themselves that it was less than two weeks out of the rest of their lives together.

After eleven days on the road, they were near to Hiroshima.

“Come, Suzume, it’s eight o’clock, let’s have the last of our food. We can be at the farm in eight more hours. If we had a phone, we could tell Mum to expect us for tea. That would give her the shock of her life! Come on, let’s see if we can see the city from here”.

He helped her scramble up a small hillock by the roadside, and they sat down. She looked around to check whether anyone was watching before pulling a small parcel from under her clothing.

“We have a little rice from yesterday, my dear, and one last tin of fish. Can you see anything from over there?”

“No, not really… I’m not sure, the morning mist, you know? Come on, move over here, if the sun warms it up, it may clear soon and we may catch a glimpse”.

Suzume moved over to the south side of the top of the mound and they sat down. Hiroto looked at his watch.

“Hmm, eight ten, Dad’ll be shouting at the field hands now calling them lazy so-and-so’s and Mum will be cooking and cleaning and scolding the maid for her slovenliness. Some things never change, do they, dear, despite all the mayhem, life still goes on?”

She emptied the fish out over the rice and put the cloth on the grass between them

“Tuck in,” she said, “bon appétit…” as Hiroto took a tiny portion of fish and rice with his chopsticks, he heard his wife ask, “Look at that, Hiroto, whatever can it be? It’s very frightening”.

“What is it, my dear?” he asked looking up. His mouth dropped wide open as a huge cloud, the shape of a mushroom, but the size of a mountain grew before them. They instinctively hugged each other in fear just in time to miss the flash, but they could not escape the wind. First, the makeshift plate with it’s small offering of food was blown away, and then the couple were blown over backwards down the north slope of the mound. They rolled down into the smelly, fetid water of the irrigation ditch at the bottom near the road, but it probably saved their lives.

As they tumbled down they caught glimpses of their fellow travellers being blown about and knocked down like skittles. They were the lucky ones, bits of broken wood, bamboo poles and even small rocks were being fired at those still standing as if from a blunderbuss. They didn’t remain on their feet for long and all the time the wind sounded as if it were escaping from Hell itself, hot, fierce, strong and angry.

Then it was over… and an eerie silence reigned, for a moment, just long enough to pick up your head and wonder what had happened and look around at the devastation. Then the wind came back from where it had gone, but not all of it returned… it was less fierce, less hot and less angry, as if it were ashamed of the havoc it had wrought.

As the ringing in their ears eased, they could hear screams of pain and fear from people lying in the road or wandering along it aimless. Some were naked other were wearing rags. Many were wounded with poles or sticks poking out of them like Spanish bulls in a ring. Others were blind… many of them were blind, they were bumping into one another, falling into the ditches along the road and tripping over the bodies that were either too lifeless or too frightened to get up.

Suzume opened her eyes and screamed. She yanked her thumb from the thing she had been hanging on to for some kind of stability – the open mouth of a long-dead body. The corpses in the ditch had been revealed when the water was either blown away or evaporated, probably both. The other arm was around Hiroto, he scooped her up in his arms and took her to the top of the mound. Cautiously at first, but the tempest seemed to have passed. She was shivering, in danger going into shock, but there was nothing he could do except talk to her.

“Wha… wha… what kind of a Devil was that, Hiroto?” she stammered, her eyes as wide as saucers.

“I don’t know, my dear. Perhaps a munitions factory exploded – sabotage, bombing or an accident. Don’t worry about that now. Have a drink of water”. He took a flask from inside his robe and held it to her lips as she was trying to clean imaginary bits of rotten flesh from her thumb on the grass.

“Did you see what I had my hand in?”

“Try not think about it, my dearest”, he admonished tipping a few drops of water onto her thumb and drying it in his clothing. “Let’s take a little rest, then we’ll continue and get away from these sad, awful people”.

In fact, those who could stand up were already wandering off in all directions except theirs, but some just walked until they fell and stayed put, crying like babies.

An hour later, the road was pretty clear of southbound travellers, and the traffic from the south was starting to increase. Most of those walking, which was not many, were in the same sorry state that they had already seen, but there were a few cars and buses, few of which were still trying to avoid the people in the road whether they were dead or alive.

“Stay here, Suzume, I must find out what happened. Take this”, he said handing her his Home Defence Type 14, 8-shot Nambu semi-automatic pistol. I’ll remain within sight, I just want to stop a car and ask what that cloud was”.

“Please, don’t be long, I don’t like this place. The Kami are angry here and very powerful. Please hurry”.

“I will my dear, don’t worry, but I have to know… my parents… you understand?”

She did, and acknowledged that he had to leave her a while.

The vehicles heading north were not travelling quickly because of all the dead bodies on the road, some of which were badly mangled by the traffic with puddles of brains and intestines every few yards. However, nobody wanted to stop to talk to him either. Eventually, an army officer did stop and wound down his window, but held Hiroto at gun point.

He was a terrified young man, but he was not the officer he was pretending to be. He had an officer’s pistol, a Nambu just like his own, and a lieutenant’s cap on his head, but a private’s uniform.

“Don’t try anything”, he ordered, “I’m not afraid to use this, you know?”

“No, I’m sure you’re not. I won’t come any closer. I am unarmed and mean you no harm. I just need to know what just happened. My parents live down there…”

“I doubt that they do any longer, sir. Nobody’s alive down there… the whole of bloody Hiroshima has disappeared… there’s just miles and miles of nothing… nothing at all, just ash and wisps of smoke and dead bodies… even more than this!” he said waving his pistol at the road. This is a bloody children’s picnic compared to back there”.

“What was it? Did a munitions factory or an ammo depot go up?”

“I don’t know, I’ve never seen an exploding bomb make a cloud like that before or kill so many people. Whatever did that is fiendish, and so’s the person who made it”.

“Are you sure there’s nothing left?”

“Nothing at all for twenty miles outside the city, sir, now I have to be going. Good luck, sir!”

“Wait… wait, can my wife and I come with you. We live in Tokyo… we can give you money when we arrive at my wife’s parents’ house… We were coming down to visit my own parents who live… lived just outside Hiroshima”, he beckoned his wife to join him and she scrambled down the hill. “There doesn’t seem much point in going on now and we’ve been walking for ten or eleven days. Here she is, it would be a great comfort to her, if we could ride some of the way with you”.

“OK, hop in, but hurry I want to put all this as far behind me as quickly as I can. She’s got a full tank, so she should get us most of the way, although I’m not sure where I’m going yet, just as far from this madhouse as I can get”.

They got back to Tokyo on the 9th, just as it was announced that another, even larger atom bomb had been dropped on Nagasaki. Within a week Emperor Hirohito had capitulated and the rape, pillage and plundering of Japan began in earnest.

The Mizukis moved in with Suzume’s parents as Hiroto’s place was no more and a homeless family had squatted the ground. He didn’t have the heart to turn them away, when he had a real roof over his head. Then they returned to work on Monday 13th as if nothing had happened, but they only did that because of the money and the stability it gave them in their topsy-turvy lives. However, something had indeed changed and quite fundamentally so.

The Mizukis couldn’t believe how stupid they had been to put so much blind faith in their so-called god-king, and they never wanted to see a war again. They found themselves drawn to the Communist Party of Japan as much by the phrases it used, like: ‘Workers of the World Unite!’ as by the horror and the disappointment Hirohito’s folly had inflicted upon them, and the senseless atrocities that the American soldiers were committing every day.

Four years to the day after the end of the war in Japan, on August 14th, 1949, Suzume gave birth to a girl, whom they called Yui. They brought her up to behave like other Japanese girls, and her grandparents taught her Shinto, but her parents taught her Communist ethics, and showed her that the official explanation for events in the paper was never the only one, and often not even the correct one.

However, they kept all that ‘non-traditional’ Japanese side of their life secret, because the Mizukis had learned to trust no-one but their local Communist Party leaders. Life was very different in those early years after the war as the Mizuki family’s fortunes changed with MacArthur’s whims, though the CPJ looked after it’s own with donations from Mother Russia and the Mizukis held good jobs. They were doing far better than most.

They rewarded their political benefactors with snippets of information, which were sent back to Moscow.

In 1967, Yui was accepted into Tokyo university to study languages – English, Russian and Chinese – her favourite subjects and her father put her name down for a job at the Ministry. They had three years to amass enough money to pay the necessary bribe for the job, but they were not concerned about that. They only wanted her to be able to move to the Foreign Office with an option to sit the examinations for the Diplomatic Service.

Yui’s future was guaranteed, as long as she passed her finals at university. She never revealed her communist leanings, not to anyone ever. Her parents had instilled their own caution into her, and she had seen the wisdom of their strategy. Nevertheless, she attended some CPJ meetings as a member of the public and sometimes played Devil’s Advocate by asking awkward, predetermined questions of the leaders on the podium.

However, some of the higher members of the CPJ did know who she was and her parents continued to play an active, but secret rôle. Despite her privileged position, all that Yui really longed for was the day when she could take up a job, earn some really decent money to help her parents in any way they wanted, and get out of Japan to escape it’s stuffy traditions and old-fashioned ideas. She was a modern woman with ideas to match, so she felt stifled in her own country.

She had no real preferences, but the UK, Canada or the USA, would do for a start. Her upbringing and philosophy made her hate the rich elite of those countries as much as she hated those of her own, but also as a communist, she didn’t blame the ordinary working classes who lived there.

She had no idea how she could achieve that goal and still honour her parents, but joining the Ministry of Finance, switching to the Foreign Office and then applying for a position in the Diplomatic Service, was the nearest that she had been able to come up with so far, and what was more, her parents were willing to help her achieve her ambition.

Yui buckled down and took one hurdle at a time, but she was not happy.

3 NATALIA PETROVNA MYRSKII

During the Great Patriotic War of 1941 to 1945, when the main objective of the Soviet government was the repulsion of the German invasion on it’s western frontiers, Pyotr Ilich Myrskii was fighting the Japanese in Manchuria. This battle culminated in the defeat of the Japanese forces in the Soviet-Japanese War of 1945, which helped terminate World War II globally. He had little time off, but he did get home to Alma Ata, the then capital of the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic, to see his childhood sweetheart, Marina Antonova, once a year. Marina had had to curtail her degree in Japanese at the local university for the duration of the war to work in a munitions factory and she was also giving talks on Political Education to workers, locals, immigrants and migrants, at local factories, and to children at their schools.

Times were hard during the war and food was scarce, despite the number of farmers in the area, although Alma Ata and the province saw no war damage. The problems stemmed from a huge increase in the population. Many European Soviet citizens and much of Russia’s industry were relocated to Kazakhstan during the war, when Nazi armies threatened to capture all the European industrial centres of the western Soviet Union. Large groups of Crimean Tatars, Germans and Muslims from the North Caucasus region were deported to Kazakhstan, because it was feared that they would collaborate with the enemy, and about a million Poles from Eastern Poland, which was invaded by the Soviet Union in 1939, were deported to Kazakhstan. It is estimated that about half of them died there. However, the local people became famous for sharing their meagre food rations with the starving strangers and more than 52,000 residents of the city received the title ‘Gratitude for Your Self-Denying Labour’. Not only that, but forty-eight residents were granted the title of ‘Hero of The Soviet Union’.

When he was demobilised in 1945, Pyotr returned to his job at a local engineering company, but he had an idea to better himself by learning technical drawing at night school. He wanted to design widgets rather than make them. Meanwhile, Marina went back to university and they both resumed their courtship. One starry evening, they made a commitment to one another to get married when they had passed their final exams.

As a member of the Communist Party and a political activist, Marina often regaled Pyotr for his bourgeois desire to ‘improve himself’, because it implied that designing was superior to manufacturing which, she said, created class distinctions and strengthened divisions in society, for such was the Party line, although in private she supported his ambition. She had to play the Stalinist Game though, because everyone knew they were living in dangerous times. Everyone remembered the Great Purge just before the war when at least a million people had been executed and perhaps five million were ‘relocated’, many to the network of Gulags or forced labour camps.

Marina was a realist, she knew that these things happened, but she didn’t want them to happen to her, so she toed the Party line even with regard to her family and boyfriend.

One fine August weekday in 1948, after receiving notification that they had both passed their finals, they went down to the Registry Office in the city centre and tied the knot. Within a year, almost to the day, on August 14th they were blessed with a daughter, or at least they would have expressed it like that, if high-fliers in Soviet society had been allowed to believe in a God who could bless them.

Natalya Petrovna Myrskii was born, but even before she was twenty-four hours old, she was Natasha to her mother and Tasha to her father.

Marina was ambitious, cautious and faithful to the Party and she enjoyed the privileges that Party membership and her degree brought. In return, nothing was too much work for her, as long as it was the Party that asked her to do it. Consequently, Pyotr spent many nights playing with Tasha in front of the radio, while his wife was out with the activists spreading the latest words of Papa Stalin or Comrade Khrushchev, ‘The Father of The Thaw’.

At first he felt uncomfortable about accepting the privileges that Marina’s rank bestowed upon them, but as his own status in the firm rose, he too was granted extra food, extra drink and invitations to lavish dinners at the company’s expense, to which he could take his wife. He was receiving about six such invitations a year and Marina about twice that, but at least he felt as if he was paying some of his way. On such occasions and when they were working, the grandparents took it in turns to look after Natasha for the first five years, but when she was old enough, she was enrolled in Infants’ School – the best one the city had to offer, courtesy of the Party.

‘That was to be expected’, Marina assured Pyotr when he expressed doubts, ‘all the children of prominent Party officials attended the best schools, so that their parents could concentrate on their jobs without having to worry about their offsprings’ education’. Pyotr reluctantly accepted Marina’s excuse because he wanted the best for his daughter, but in private he still wondered how having the best food and drink helped Party officials do their jobs any better. He often thought of broaching the subject with Marina, but knew that she would have an answer.

She always had an answer for everything.