Moscow Machination

The Chinese Premier was horrified. “Cat graves…? No, no… are your men digging them up right now? Please stop! Just leave them alone Hu.”

“No Sir. We would never dig up a cat cemetery” Hu Gong winked as he pulled out a second whisky flask.

“You carry two flasks?”

“This is my Sunday flask.”

“Sweet. Continue.”

“Ok, when these allegations about Petrova being a cat lady surfaced, someone in the Kremlin or the FSB, decided to spin it, you know what I mean?”

“Yes I am perfectly aware of ‘spinning’ news.”

“They spun it from ‘Crazy Cat Lady’ to ‘Big Cat Lady’. You see?”

“No.”

“Well they made a huge fuss and put out a news conference saying she believed in preserving Russia’s great cats, particularly the almost extinct, Siberian Tiger.”

“Siberian Tigers? Ah… like a gay beard… I see… nice,” the Premier seemed to get it.

“Yes so… now she is no longer a crazy cat lady, but a preserver of Russia, a conserver of wildlife. Plus now, everybody has forgotten her catty past. She also has these cool pictures to prove it.”

“Interesting. Maybe we should do something similar for me?”

“You? Really?” Hu Gong looked the Premier from top to toe. There wasn’t much.

“Yeah, I’m getting tired of the dragon and the panda. One is imaginary and other eats shoots. Not manly enough. Not powerful enough. Find me something almost extinct in China… it has to be manly though.”

“Well, why don’t you ask your diaper wearing interns to do that?”

“Yes, good idea. I will tell my assistant… wow… I think this was a seminal move in Russian policy… and when my interns find a worthy Chinese beast, it will be ours too.”

“Semen? Yeah we could steal some tiger semen… cross it with a Chinese Panda or lemur or something… very direct… I already like it.”

“NO. STOP. Just no. Where do you… how do you…”

“Okay. Ok. Carry on… you were saying something about policy.”

Premier Xiannian shook his head before continuing, “Yeah, by identifying herself with the Siberian Tiger, Petrova is also changing the Russian image, the brand… from the slow brooding bear to an agile cunning tiger. So the next time the Wall Street Journal or Calamity News wants to ‘cry bear’ they gotta, cry tiger. You see?”

Gong couldn’t care less. This was political bs. He enjoyed the simpler stuff… digging up dirt, creating plans, putting out hits in a brand new country… he still had East Timor and Faroe Islands on his bucket list…, blackmailing politburo members on behalf of other politburo members, that kind of stuff. Not sprucing up images.

The President finally stopped talking, “… Ok Hu, the more you reveal, the more I like your plan… whatever it is. Please proceed.”

“Premier, a couple of months ago, to prove her love for tigers, Anna actually released four grown Siberian Tigers into their natural habitat… And that natural habitat happens to lie in Far Eastern Russia… particularly the Primorsky Krai… which is?”

“Which is what we are looking at right now… the Russia we are seeing is Primorsky Krai.”

Hu Gong flashed his yellow teeth at his Premier Xiannian. Muhahaha.

The premier trained his binoculars on the Russian side. “God HU, don’t tell me we are going to grab the tigers.”

The international border between Russia and China was less than 800 meters from the Fangchun Tower.

“Sort off yes.”

“God I would love to have some Tiger Teriyaki right about now. I will send her a picture of me savoring it. That will show her the difference between Chinese and Japanese cooking… Making a deal with the Japanese? What the fuck was she thinking?”

“Women huh?”

“Even then. What the fuck was she thinking?”

“Or like I said before, she probably fell off her cycle.”

“Stop. Please. Enough with your theories on cycles. Just when I think you aren’t a complete…”

“… a complete…? Go on.”

Premier Xiannian sighed. “Nothing. Whats our next move?”

“Well, over the last week my team has been spying this area. Of the four tigers released, a female codenamed Zoya, has been spotted here. According to my men, she comes to the Trans-Siberian rail line twenty to thirty minutes after the dried fish passes by. Can you guess why?”

“Eat fish?”

“Good, you aren’t a complete… ah never mind…”

“We are even. Carry on.”

“As you can imagine these old Russian bogies don’t seal well and the fish tend to fall out. So our Zoya… or their Zoya, comes out when the coast is clear and goes for the easy pickings.”

“But don’t tigers eat gazelles and other living things. I thought they liked to hunt. Not decayed fish.”

“I don’t know about that. I think Zoya has a good taste, even great. Those dried fish can be sublime.”

“Ah. Again with the dried fish. Fine, I will try your fish when I get back to Beijing.”

“Muhahaha. Muhahaha. Muhahaha,” the intelligence head guffawed with evil earnest.

After a few more minutes, Hu Gong plodded again, “I was kidding. Tigers don’t like dead fish. It’s just that these were urban Moscow tigers. All pampered and soft. They never learnt to hunt.”