Rising Read online

  RISING

  by

  FENEK SOLÈRE

  Counter-Currents Publishing Ltd.

  San Francisco

  2017

  Copyright © 2017 by Counter-Currents Publishing

  All rights reserved

  Cover design by Kevin Slaughter

  Cover Image: Yevgeny Vuchetich, The Motherland Calls,

  Volgograd, Russia

  Adapted from https://www.flickr.com/photos/jakuza/6111636957/

  under Creative Commons License

  Published in the United States by

  COUNTER-CURRENTS PUBLISHING LTD.

  P.O. Box 22638

  San Francisco, CA 94122

  USA

  http://www.counter-currents.com/

  Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-940933-29-0

  Paperback ISBN: 978-1-940933-30-6

  E-book ISBN: 978-1-940933-31-3

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Solère, Fenek, 1972-author.

  Title: Rising / by Fenek Solère.

  Description: San Francisco : Counter-Currents Publishing Ltd., [2016]

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016008873 (print) | LCCN 2016020765 (ebook) | ISBN 9781940933290 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781940933306 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781940933313 (e-book) | ISBN 9781940933313 (E-book)

  Subjects: LCSH: British--Russia (Federation)--Fiction. | Political fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3619.O43253 R57 2016 (print) | LCC PS3619.O43253 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6--dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016008873

  To EM—

  for the good times and the bad,

  for they were always memorable

  1.

  ‘Seatbelts, please’, announced the pilot as BA879N smashed through a plate glass sky. ‘We’ll be landing at Pulkovo in five minutes.’ Professor Tom Hunter felt a rush of anticipation as the plane glided over the Gulf of Finland, cutting across Krasnoe Selo, bearing down on a city that Hitler once decided ‘to level, make uninhabitable, and relieve us of the necessity of having to feed the population through the winter.’

  From his window seat, the much-maligned Thomas Hunter, PhD of London squinted at a chequerboard of flooded fields through electrostatic twilight. A vast empty land, the Ulyanka, slashed by railway lines, stretched tight and taught like bowstrings ready to fire. Highways edged by gas pipes, tall residential blocks, and belching chimney stacks tarnished a beautiful Baltic sunset. Sitting targets, he surmised, for the militant sects now harassing the Motherland.

  Ears popped as the 747 went into freefall, wings wafting down through air pockets, drifting on water vapour, wheels locking in place with the gratifying grind of hydraulics. Reports of the Great Migration and the Third Chechen War were still fresh in his mind as the lights of the control tower came into view. They hung like a necklace of septic pustules around the tattered Federation flag, luminous orange circles intersected by the insect silhouettes of ground staff running back and forth, shadow people from an Orwellian novel.

  When tyres hit tarmac, the sudden sparking jolt tested his seatbelt. Half-hearted applause rang out. The superstitious Slavs thanked God and the flight-deck for a safe landing. A voice crackled over the intercom, asking restless passengers to remain seated until the ground crew were in position. Predictably, everyone ignored the advice, scrambling for hand luggage, throwing open overhead lockers, blocking the aisle with bulky hips and bulging bags of duty free. The ping of SMS messages sang in breast pockets.

  Claustrophobic moments followed, then the doors opened, allowing a ghostly mist to enter the dimly-lit cabin. People shuffled forward, disembarking onto the docked platform. When the Professor descended the rattling steps, a strong gust caught his flapping coat, black moleskin billowing, until he gathered it in and buttoned it under his chin. Tom surveyed the burnt ochre skyline as he crossed the runway’s metalled surface. The airport had suffered rocket attacks by insurgents. Walls were pock-marked from small-arms fire. News of the almost daily terror attacks on Russian civilians angered him. Muslim militia roaming along the banks of the Kamenka River near Suzdal had nailed a ten-year-old virgin, cruciform style, to the golden door of the Cathedral of the Nativity. Rumours that the Tartar population of Sviyazhsk in Ingushetia were drowning Whites in the Kuybyshev reservoir had now been verified by independent sources.

  His eyes cruised over the news channels on his hand-held:

  The American President is assassinated when his motorcade comes under sustained attack from an armed resistance group in Denver, Colorado;

  Mass riots continue across the United States with hundreds dying in shootouts in ethnically mixed cities from New Orleans to Baltimore;

  A state of emergency is declared and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is nominated to lead a coalition government in an attempt to unite citizens behind the New America Foundation;

  Russian ground assets deployed around Hama and Homs are over-run by American-backed Syrian rebels supported by Wahhabist forces using TOW anti-tank weapons, firing air-to-ground missiles at low flying Sukhoi SU-30’s operating over Latakia;

  Israeli forces clash with Russian army contingents around Tel al-Harah in the Golan Heights;

  George Soros addresses a NATO-led summit in Bucharest involving leaders from the Baltic and Central European states, including Lithuania’s President Dalia Grybauskaitė, Latvia’s Raimonds Vējonis, Hungary’s Janos Áder, and Poland’s Andrzej Duda, insisting that Russia ceases its aggressive and expansionist behaviour or face the threat of military confrontation;

  The evacuation of Russian military forces from the Bassel al-Assad airbase in Syria coincides with Israeli airstrikes on the Bushehr nuclear power plant in Iran;

  The EU enforces oil sanctions, and the Swedish-based Preem company, owned by Mohammed H Al-Amoudi and Poland’s PKN Orlen refineries begin purchasing cheap Saudi crude oil;

  President Putin faces a vote of no confidence in the State Duma and is impeached. The Chairman of the Russian Central Bank is placed under arrest;

  A snap election returns the Eurasian Party to power, but the government soon fractures along ethnic lines, with the Asian wing joining the Coalition for Renewal led by Issur Babel;

  A further election results in President Babel’s Coalition movement winning office and the new incumbent taking up residence in Ryad 1, before submitting the following nominations to lead the Federation Council , the Upper House of Parliament, the Constitutional Court, the Supreme Arbitration Court and the post of Prosecutor General of Russia, respectively: Mendel Abelev, Boris Abras, Grinda Azel, Raisa Feldman, and Isak Shapiro;

  Alexander Dugin evades arrest and is safe-housed by the emerging European Resistance in Prague;

  Federal compensation for wrongful prosecution are considered for a range of individuals, including Leonid Nevzlin, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Vladimir Duvdov, and Michail Brodno, all of whom were involved in the Yukos scandal and, with the exception of Khodorkovsky, were thought to be residing in Israel;

  President Babel’s first legislative act is to pass an edict to suspend the State Duma pending its support for his more liberal approach to foreign policy, internal security, and immigration;

  Yeltsin family members publicly endorse President Babel’s reforms from the steps of their Gorki 9 residence;

  Putin is held under house arrest at Novo-Ogaryovo;

  The Pyotr Velikiy battle cruiser is scuppered in Sadya Bay;

  Two new Borei-class SSBN submarines undergoing sea trials near Spitsbergen are surrendered to a NATO flotilla operating out of Bodo.

  He felt the wind pull at his hair, eyes registering the cityscape, witnessing scenes reminiscent of Dmitry Glukhovsky’s futuristic fiction Metro 2033. A stewardess appeared like a genie smothered in smog, blue scarf w
hipping in a rotor’s tail-wind. She was pointing to a ramshackle bus, something the Wehrmacht might have deserted at the end of their nine-hundred-day siege. Insects dotted a mud-splattered chassis. A militia man with a GSh-18 automatic waved the passengers on, climbing aboard, reaching for the leather straps dangling like NKVD ropes from the stained roof. With a clunky churn the engine ground into gear, dragging the potbellied pig one hundred metres across the runway. Gasping and choking, steam spraying from a perforated radiator, the lumbering beast came to a hissing halt just short of the gulag-grey terminal.

  Carried by the momentum of the crowd through the arrivals lounge, the dissident academic waited in line behind nursing mothers, snub-nosed businessmen, and self-conscious tourists, his mind computing second thoughts about having made the trip. Flat screens showed live images of a bombing in Ufa, a city in the distant Ural Mountains: eviscerated skin threading bloody snow. It seemed the Wahhabist-inspired International Army of the Mujahideen were claiming responsibility for the attack which had killed thirteen people and injured a further twenty four at a supermarket complex in the Tsyurupy district. Dr Hunter knew the city to be a key industrial and transport hub on the confluence of the Ufa and Belaya rivers. A prime location for rebel Bashkirs to cut the Trans-Siberia railway line and the M5 Ural and M7 Volga motorways. Obsessively checking the entry dates etched into his visa, he rode the escalator towards passport control. His mind focussed on the conference he was due to speak at, only too aware that his arrival may not be welcomed by certain political circles, particularly after the recent elections and the demonstrations that followed the plebiscites. Initially, voters had returned the more nationalist Eurasian Party to power in the State Duma, but within weeks the ideological split between the Rus- and Turkic-centric wings had rendered it dysfunctional. Alexander Dugin became a scapegoat, with the majority of political commentators arguing that ‘realpolitik’ demanded the new President’s acquiescence to the realities of the international situation:

  The signing of the Gdansk Charter by which Russia agreed to find a political rather than a military response to what was now being termed ‘the Great Migration’ of Chinese, Turkic, and Muslim peoples into its living space;

  The EU and the US deploy missile systems in Poland and the Czech Republic in advance of sending peacekeeping forces into Western Ukraine;

  The Russian Duma introduces a third wave of sweeping austerity measures as a result of the ongoing financial crisis that had begun in 2014;

  An analysis estimates that two-thirds of Russians live on the poverty line; every winter they die off in their thousands as the temperatures drop outside their crumbling apartment blocks;

  $300m wiped off investments in a single 24-hour period and a 30 percent depreciation of the rouble against a basket of currencies.

  Social disintegration seemed inevitable as wave upon wave of immigrants overwhelmed cities, towns, and local communities between Vorkuta and Saratov. Compounding this there was continuing evidence that the European Union, the US government, and various NGOs were still pouring money into so-called democratic groups to further destabilise the country. Adding insult to injury, Pussy Riot’s Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina had been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. This was followed rapidly by worldwide coverage of the publication of Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s proposed new constitution for Russia and his tumultuous reception at Ben Gurion airport, where he was welcomed with open arms by the leader of the Knesset.

  Despite recent outrages against native Russians in South Ossetia and Grozny, it was clear that the anti-Russian narrative in the Western press, starting with the sabre-rattling after the downing of a Malaysian passenger flight over Torez, was not going to slacken. Alleged atrocities by the 108th and 5th Motor Rifle Divisions and the 860th Separate Motor Rifle Regiment in Surgut and Salekhard were being investigated by Commissioners from the UN’s War Crimes Tribunal. Media frenzy followed the retaliatory cluster bombing by Russian SU-24 fighters against bandformirovaniya, literally bandit formations, roaming the countryside ethnically cleansing the land of Whites to create new Muslim settlements in Dombaj, Sukhumi, and Elista. Further accusations of human rights abuses from Magadan in the east to Tver in the west were broadcast on CNN, the BBC, and Al Jazeera. The signs were ominous: Parnas, the liberal grouping, and larger-than-life characters like Navalny, Dobrokhotov, and Kozlovsky were being portrayed as heroes. Chechen warlords like Aslan Maskhadov, Abdul Halim Sadulayev, and Dokka Umarov were spoken of in reverential terms. The Russian GDP had fallen for the seventh year in succession and OPEC continued to pump the market with petroleum, keeping prices low. Meanwhile, the United Russia Party had collapsed in the wake of yet another financial scandal, forcing Vladimir Putin, Father of the Nation, freshly released from house arrest, to step down from public life.

  Soon after Putin’s enforced retirement, Kazakhstan had withdrawn from the Customs Union with Russia and Belarus, joining with the fundamentalist Mohammedans aligned with the Council of God based in Mecca. Russia, already expelled from the World Trade Organization at the insistence of the Israeli Prime Minister and a coalition of international business leaders, was now essentially blackmailed into becoming a signatory to the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, effectively allowing the seizure of Russian assets in lieu of unpaid debts. Within days of the WTO announcement, the UN had imposed food and trade embargoes in response to the Kremlin’s continued opposition to its humanitarian missions in eastern Ukraine. All economic indices showed Russia to be in an economic crisis far deeper than it had faced in the last decade of the twentieth century. Taking advantage of Moscow’s geopolitical weakness, Brussels had forced a revision to the 2010 delineation of the Norwegian-Russian Arctic Maritime border, giving the EU greater access to the oil and gas fields on the sea bed. The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe began stating openly that it would fund Alexei Navalny’s Progress Party as reports of irregularities at 50 percent of polling stations during the last elections emerged.

  Tom felt nervous as he strode towards the winking light signalling his turn at the immigration desk. He was not sure what kind of reception he would receive. The world was changed now. He was thinking of all those old clichés, like Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin, or being dragged off by stern-faced men in crumpled suits for questioning. It was very clear that Professor Hunter was no Harry Palmer. He had read Len Deighton and Le Carr é, and his first experience of Russian bureaucracy played right into Western preconceptions. Brutal formica faces reflected on the shiny tabletops. There was a plethora of forms that needed to be completed in triplicate, stamped, and sanctioned. The former Eastern Bloc still seemed to be living in the shadow of the Wall. An Iron Curtain separated the new breed of capitalists from Homo Sovieticus.

  Given clearance, he made his way to baggage handling, past keen-eyed security and customs staff, out to a lemon-lit foyer where circulating conveyor belts chugged consumptively, spewing shrink-wrapped luggage close to the taxi ranks. There were all sorts of bemused and confused people milling around. He saw the excited and tired meeting of relatives and friends. There was patrolling militia in high-vis jackets, Kalashnikovs looped lazily over their shoulders, gun barrels pointing at chipped floor tiles. Outbound passengers wandered about, faces scanning electronic screens, watching the intermittent updates for connections. Long-separated couples rushed to embrace. Frosty fathers returning from business trips gave guilty gifts to their children in full view of beaming babushkas overwhelmed with emotion at the sight of their daughters re-united with their errant husbands before the winter ice storms set in.

  Tom’s attention was caught by a news-flash about a gun attack in Omsk. He gripped his brown leather case and meandered after a Karelian couple walking towards the ‘to the city’ sign. Standing on the cracked pavement of the concourse, he realised there would be no welcoming committee from his contacts in the Borean Alliance. He had not really expected one. Not even vocal protests from Black Bloc youths waving a ‘Go
home British Fascist’ banner. Controversy had followed him ever since his work on the Septentrion Project antagonised the Antifa mobsters. They had disrupted his lectures and burned his books after he came out as an outspoken supporter of the British guerrillas fighting alongside the French Resistance against the newly-imposed Eurabist Regime in Paris. At the same time, his warnings about the North African Federation of Muslim Nations fomenting civil unrest in Central Asia had not been overlooked. He received unpleasant calls in the middle of the night and death threats from crazed zealots operating out of ghettos in the north of England.

  Tom had long harboured the suspicion that because the Slavs had escaped most of the corrosive influence of political correctness, they would act as a catalyst for a White revolution. For years following the murder of a Russian boy whilst defending his girlfriend from molestation by immigrants in the Moscow district of Biryulovo, thousands of marchers had come out on the streets, carrying Romanov flags on National Unity Day, screaming ‘Rossiia est sviataia Rus!’ The war in Donbass and the clarion call to Muslims in Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Abkhazia, Kazakhstan, and Dagestan to join their brothers in a jihad had polarised communities from Novgorod to Tomsk. There was a real threat to internal stability now that the Russian army had been pushed back over the Terek River in Chechnya, and both the European Union and the United Nations were set to recognise the Free Republic of Ichkeria.

  Radical forces, predominantly made up of disgruntled and poorly-educated Balkars, Abkhaz, North Caucasians, Tartars, Bashkias, and fundamentalist Turks were being joined by Arabs and Africans fighting under the banners of the Al-Nusra Front, Hizb-ut-Tahrir, Akromiya, Gulen, Tovba, Azerbaijani Jamaat, and Al Shabaab. The bazaars of Argun, Ashgabat, Baku, and Osh were filled with military hardware supplied by the oil-rich Gulf states. Armies of young Muslims in camouflage jackets, fired up by hysterical rhetoric about killing the kuffar, were being trained in the Ferghana and Rasht valleys.