Moscow Machination

“Yes. She is being sent to Pyongyang as we speak… on a luxury train. That brat probably thinks a selfie with a Siberian is cool…”

The President lifted a finger to the waiting Otto and her guards to hang on a bit longer.

“Ok. Whats our move Sergey? Do we even want the tiger back?”

“Our Pyongyang envoy, Dimitroff is one of the best. We will let him play.”

“Alright, Sergey, keep me posted.”

* * *

Otto extended an arm into the fireplace and felt around. Then he did a little tap, tap causing the bottom to give away exposing a 3x3ft square shaft. The shaft was lined with a good looking iron ladder. Otto yielded left as Mika and the President took a look. It was just a black square hole. Nothing more to it.

“Are you sure this is the way to your bunker?” checked the President.

“Yes Madam President,” replied Otto, his enthusiasm rising by the tick.

“So who goes first?” asked Mika fearing the answer. Exploring underground caves in search of the ‘ultimate weapon’ wasn’t something he looked forward to.

“Me of course,” cried Otto. “I go in first. President next. Then the three of you.”

“Oh. Okay. That sounds fine. But let me just switch places with the President.” Suggested Mika.

“Mika, how long do you think we can be away, without raising alarms?”

“Madam, its 1.45 now. We clocked in at 12.30 so that should give us three, three and a half hours.”

An excited Anna Petrova clapped her hands, “Alright gentlemen let’s get this party started.”

Otto Fuchs, Mika the guard, President Petrova, the other guards Vlad and Marat all descended down the fireplace. Their mission: to find this weapon that Otto had been blathering about.

* * *

Fifty feet into the abyss, they hit a small landing. Upon further review it was just big room with no doors or windows. “In the old times we called this Rest Point 1. To catch your breath. Ten minutes, we move again,” said Otto.

“Otto we are fine. Let’s get going. I don’t have all day for your antics,” chided the President.

“Sure madam. Follow me to the eastern wall.” The group headed by Otto went to a bare white-ish wall. Otto felt up the wall and touched something. The wall slid away and exposed a shiny metal door with a vertical slit down the middle.

“Madam, I present to you…”

“An elevator?”

“Yes of course.”

As Otto depressed the down button, the elevator opened with a traditional chime. Like many of its contemporaries, it was shiny steel on the inside, no pansy mirrors, an emergency phone, and just two buttons on the panel that read ‘0’ and ‘1’. It was certified to carry twelve.

Otto hit ‘0’ and said “We should be out in four minutes.”

“Four minutes? How far does your rat hole go?” asked a petrified Vlad.

“Oh it’s pretty, pretty deep. But don’t worry, its air conditioned and we got entertainment too.”

“What kind?” asked the President.

As the elevator tumbled down, Jon Bon Jovi’s Livin’ on a Prayer began playing. But instead of playing the whole song, it kept repeating “… we are half way there…”

Four minutes later the piper and his followers exited into a dazzling underground metro station.

Trains whizzed in and out as busy crowds scurried along. “Jeez this don’t look like Moscow …” said Marat the guard.

“No,” confirmed Otto, who looked like the cat that barbecued canaries.

“So where are we?” asked the President.

Mika muttered something under his breath.

“Whats that Mika?” asked the President.

“It’s the D-6,” Mika hissed.

“No! D-6? Come on that’s an urban legend.”

Legend aka the CIA, had it that after the war, the paranoid Stalin had built a deeper and more extensive Metro system below the Moscow Metro. This purported Metro, the ‘D-6’ supposedly linked various ministries and key installations and doubled down as a mega bunker in case of a fallout with the West. Legend, again the CIA book of facts, suggested that Stalin’s orders had been carried out well beyond the initial scope.

Feigning curiosity, Otto shook his head smugly. He probably deserved another punch. Mika went into motion. Fist tightened. Elbow in line with Otto’s face. Pull back… and boom.

Instead of receiving the punch politely, Otto dodged the hurtling fist. As Mika’s knuckles, with an incredibly poor coefficient of drag, a lowly 0.5, searched for some skin, the butt of an AK 108 rifle with a better coefficient of drag (0.3), crashed into Mika’s skull.

The Police dudes patrolling this secret railway encircled the survivors. Marat and Vlad also met with rifle butts and collapsed like a sack of rotten cabbage.

President Petrova was more surprised than scared. There were still a ton of people milling around them.

“Hey what the fuck… I thought…” protested Petrova.

“Sorry for the inconvenience Madam. We still mean no harm to Russia or… you, the President. It’s just precautions,” announced an ebullient Otto. “Our guys will take care of your guards. Trust me it’s for their own good. They won’t be harmed…”

“Otto, I don’t trust your brutes…”

“Oh a small correction… they are your brutes.”

* * *

“Take me to this weapon.”

“Absolutely Madam, this way please.”