My brothers Keeper, an SI as the twin brother of Stalin (Reworked)

[OverseerEX]

These provisions were spearheaded almost entirely by Zinoviev's faction, extracted as the price of not blocking the measure outright, a face-saving concession that allowed the Left to claim it had tempered Jugashvili's excess

Click to shrink...

Comrade Zinoviev wants to be the new Tsar.

 

[Alenco98]

April 27, 1994
Amahoro Stadium
Kigali, Rwanda

Fabien Leclerc could no longer pinpoint when exactly he'd stopped feeling anything. Was it the first day? The tenth? Was it somewhere around the twentieth mutilated child's body, or had the number simply lost its meaning by then? He genuinely didn't know anymore, and some part of him had stopped trying to figure it out.

It didn't matter now. All that mattered was that somewhere in the distance a woman was screaming, and the screaming would not stop, not today, not this week, and probably not for the rest of his life, whether he made it out of this country or not. He already knew that much with total certainty.

He finished his patrol along the perimeter. Even from this distance he could smell the corpses, could see the smoke rising over the capital where the Interahamwe continued their work uninterrupted. He walked back into the stadium, moving past the crowds of refugees toward the makeshift command post at its center.

He reported to his immediate superior, an Indian officer named Sarkar. The report was the usual, patrol complete, nothing out of the ordinary, which by this point meant simply that there hadn't been a large organized militia sighting, only the routine scattering of gunmen taking potshots at whatever unlucky civilians tried to make the run for the stadium. And people still tried, every single day, against every possible sign that they shouldn't. Today had been no different. A family, a woman, several children, a man who was probably her husband, sprinting for the gates. Cut down before they made it. The children hacked apart in front of him. The woman dragged off screaming while her husband bled out on the pavement, alone, no one permitted to reach him.

He sat down, closed his eyes, and tried to breathe through it, searching for anything at all to occupy his mind. It didn't work. Even here, inside the relative safety of the compound, he could hear it, babies crying, children crying, men and women crying, all of it tangled together with the low murmur of conversation that never seemed to fully stop. One of his fellow peacekeepers, a Belgian named Geert had tried to take his own life a week earlier. Geert had been one of the lucky ones, he'd been cleared to rotate home. Leclerc doubted he'd survive the attempt a second time if it came to that.

He looked down at his rifle. At the barrel, specifically. He pictured it, the angle, the weight of it against his teeth, the pressure of his thumb on the trigger. He let the image sit there for a moment, turned it over, and then set it down, deliberately, the way you'd set down something you'd decided not to buy.

He listened instead. To what was happening outside.

He didn't deliberate long. A few seconds, maybe less. But something in him arrived at a strange, clean sort of clarity.

"Fuck this," he said, to nobody in particular.

He checked his rifle, then his kit, working out how many magazines he could carry without it looking deliberate. He walked to the storage area and pulled several off the shelf, loading up. Just checking my gear, restocking, the line ready in case anyone asked, though nobody did. Once he'd taken as much as he could carry without drawing attention, six magazines for the M16, he cinched his blue helmet down tight and started for the exit.

He stepped out and looked at the city for a long moment. He'd wait. The next civilian who made a run for the gates, he'd make damn sure they got through. And any Interahamwe fighter who tried to stop them would be met with return fire.

Selfish, definitely, he was fully aware he'd be putting the others in the stadium at risk right alongside himself, but given what had happened to those 10 Belgians at the start of all this he figured they'd probably come for them sooner rather than later, he might as well get it over with. If this was where it ended, he figured he might as well take a few of them down with him on the way out.

That was when he heard it. Faint at first, easy to miss. It took another minute or two before the sound resolved into something recognizable, aircraft engines. He scanned the sky and eventually found them: four, maybe five, high up, circling the city in slow, deliberate arcs.

Around him, other peacekeepers were craning their necks upward too. Rwanda was a warzone with no functioning air force or airline to speak of. Why were there planes?

One of them began descending, low, dangerously low, leveling out somewhere around fifteen hundred feet, maybe less. It banked toward the airport, it looked like a civilian airliner, and then, Leclerc saw shapes falling from it. Parachutes, blossoming open one after another.

"Are you seeing this?" he asked the peacekeeper next to him, a Tunisian named Marwan.

"I was about to ask you the same thing."

"What are those markings?" A third voice, Felix, Ghanaian, squinting up at the descending aircraft.

Marwan shielded his eyes and studied the fuselage. "That's Soviet," he said slowly. "Pan-Sov markings. I know that logo."

"What the fuck is going on?" Felix asked, to no one in particular.

Leclerc kept his eyes on the parachutes drifting down toward the airport. "I guess," he said, "we're about to find out." He shrugged and looked over at Marwan and Felix. "Do either of you have anyone back home?"

They exchanged a glance, something between concern and confusion. "Fabien," Marwan asked first, "is everything okay?"

"Is everything okay." He repeated it slowly, and then he was laughing, a short, ugly bark of a laugh that didn't reach anywhere near his eyes. He couldn't help it, the question was so absurd he almost admired it. "Do you hear yourself right now?" The laughter kept building, sharper each time. "How is anyone supposed to be okay in this hellhole?"

"Fabien." Felix's voice dropped, gentler now, careful. "You're scaring me man. What's happening?"

"I'll tell you exactly what's happening." He turned to face them both fully. "I watched Interahamwe hack children apart this morning. I watched them drag a woman off screaming while her husband bled out on the ground three meters away and nobody was allowed to help him. I'm losing my fucking mind, that's what's happening. And the next one I see, the next Interahamwe bastard I catch pulling that shit is getting a bullet in his fucking skull, and neither of you is going to talk me out of it." His voice cracked hard on the last word. He didn't feel guilty for shouting. If anything it felt like something finally letting go, pressure venting out through a crack that had been widening for days. He stood there breathing hard, looking out toward the smoke over the city, then back at them.

"I'm sorry," he added, quieter now, the edge gone out of his voice as fast as it had arrived. "I just can't keep doing this. And I'm not going to end up like Geert. I won't take that way out."

"Don't apologize." Marwan shook his head slowly. "You're not wrong about any of it. I'm tired honestly."

"Same here," Felix said, quiet.

Leclerc looked between them. "So we're in this together, then?"

"Might as well be," Felix said, eyes still fixed on the parachutes drifting down over the airport.

"I say we wait and see," Marwan said. "If those really are Soviet planes, you know Moscow's been backing Kagame and the RPF for years now. If it's really them, then they're here to end this."

"All the more reason to shoot back at every Interahamwe bastard we see," Leclerc said, something almost eager creeping into his voice now. "They'll be too busy dealing with the Russians to worry about us."

"We shouldn't be too hasty." Marwan shook his head. "Even if it is the Russians, there's still Interahamwe crawling all over this city."

"No, I'm with Fabien on this one." Felix tightened his grip on his rifle. "Marwan, go inside, let the others know what's happening in the sky. We'll hold watch out here."

"I'm still technically on shi-"

"Tell them I relieved you," Fabien cut in. "My shift's already over anyway, and I already told you both, I'm not saying things twice today."

"Whatever you say." Marwan turned and made his way back into the stadium, leaving the two of them alone at the perimeter. Fabien looked over at Felix.

"You actually think it's the Russians?"

"Honestly? At this point, I'm hoping it is."

Fabien laughed, a short, tired sound. "Who'd have thought we'd end up relieved to see Russians dropping out of the sky."

"Come on, I'm not Canadian like you. I didn't grow up watching Red Dawn or any of that shit." Felix shifted his weight, glancing skyward again. "You remember the story, about my village, the Soviet aid worker who built the school, taught there, taught my father to read?"

"You've told me that story a dozen times, Felix. He recommended your father for a scholarship, your father went to study in Moscow, now he's an MP back home with the Ghanaian Communist Party. Yes. I know."

"Exactly." He kept his eyes on the sky. "So it's h-"

A scream cut him off mid-sentence.

Fabien's rifle was up before he'd even fully processed the sound. A child, ten years old, maybe younger, sprinting toward them, blood soaked through his shirt, several men closing in behind him with machetes raised.

There was no hesitation. Fabien fired. The men dropped one after another until the street behind the boy was empty. The child staggered past them and collapsed just inside the perimeter, sobbing with the particular violence of someone whose body had finally been given permission to fall apart.

"Get him inside," Fabien told Felix. "I'll take responsibility for this."

"Are you su-"

"Just shut the fuck up and listen to me!" He swung his rifle back up, hearing more voices approaching from down the street. "Go! Now!"

Felix scooped the boy up and carried him back through the gate. Fabien turned back to the street and found another half-dozen men emerging from the smoke, roughly thirty meters out, machetes and clubs in hand, and even at that distance their fury was unmistakable.

"They attacked my men first!" he shouted in French. "Fall back now, or you will be shot!"

"Bullshit!" one of them screamed back. "We saw you! You shot them yourself! Hand over the inyenzi, not just the boy, all of them inside!"

"All of them! All of them!" The others took up the chant, advancing another few steps.

"Go to hell!" Fabien roared back in French, rifle leveled. "You see those planes up there?! You see those people coming out?! Those are Russians! You know exactly who they're backing! They are going to come for every last one of you bastards before this week is out, you have far bigger problems right now than one child!"

He held his rifle steady, and the Interahamwe in front of him hesitated, stopping mid-stride. "Not one step closer!" he screamed again in French.

But inside, the fire that had carried him this far was already draining out of him. The clean, brief catharsis of pulling the trigger minutes earlier had evaporated completely, replaced by something colder and far less certain. What if the men parachuting into the airport weren't Russian at all? What if this handful in front of him simply melted back and returned within the hour with fifty more, enough to overrun the perimeter and pour into the stadium behind him?

He forced the thought down almost as fast as it surfaced. There wasn't room for it. If he hesitated now, even for a second, even to think, everyone inside those walls would die, and he'd be the first one they reached. He put his finger on the trigger.

----------------

April 27, 1994
Polish Embassy
Kigali, Rwanda

Mikhaylo Syrsky leaned slightly out the window, cigarette between his fingers, while the radio behind him blared at full volume. Guns N' Roses, "Welcome to the Jungle." He'd never much cared for hard rock, his own taste ran toward the Italian ballads and disco they played on state television back home. Ricci e Poveri, Baltimora, that sort of thing. That was his kind of music his wife Elena had introduced him to, and he fell in love with that music.

Here though, it was practically a lifeline. A wall of sound between him and the screaming and gunfire drifting in from beyond the embassy walls.

The final notes of the track faded out, the volume dipping low for a few seconds, long enough for the screams outside to bleed back through, before Rammstein kicked in and the wall went back up. He took another pull on the cigarette and felt something in his chest unclench slightly.

He stepped back inside. The rest of the group, seven men total, were sprawled around the room in the same loose, waiting stillness he'd left them in. Anatoly Yudin, their sniper and designated driver, was playing cards with Iosif Chernenko. Iosif Smirnov sat in the corner scribbling in a diary. Vladimir Legachev and Taras Adamchuk were locked in an arm-wrestling match, forearms shaking. Ali Husseinov had the Quran open in his lap, he'd been reading it near constantly since this all started.

In the far corner, Hayk Maghrablian sat beside the Sony radio he'd hauled with him from home, absorbed in a book while it played Radio Orpheus, the classical channel. An odd pairing, classical music and heavy metal running in the same room, but classical was how the go signal would come through, and the rock was simply what kept everyone else sane in the meantime. They'd made their peace with the arrangement.

Mikhaylo walked out through the far door into the embassy garden, where a handful of the others were running a loose game of basketball on the cracked concrete court. He sat down near the sideline, lit a fresh cigarette off the dying end of the last one, and closed his eyes.

Three months. That's how long they'd been here. Before that, they'd been "volunteers" attached to the Internationalist Brigades, "advising" Kagame's forces. Though in reality they were from the GRU's Alpha Group, the only advising they'd done is point out targets to the RPF as they fought and advanced alongside them.

He checked his watch. 14:23. Afternoon. The killing always peaked around this hour, there was a rhythm to it, if you paid attention long enough, because the Interahamwe were still human underneath everything, and even men doing this kind of work still had to eat, drink, shit and piss. Midday was simply when the machinery ran hottest.

He thought, unbidden, of his grandfather's stories. The old man had claimed to be among the first Soviet soldiers into Auschwitz, had described things he swore would follow him to his grave. Mikhaylo was thirty-six years old, and it was only now, sitting in this garden with that particular smell drifting over the wall, that he finally understood exactly what his grandfather had meant.

He glanced at his watch again. 14:23, still. A swish of net, a scatter of cheers, the ball dropping clean through the hoop. It was in following the arc of the shot upward that he noticed it.

He stood and walked past the court to the edge of the garden, eyes fixed on the sky. Aircraft. Several of them, circling in a slow holding pattern. One was descending, low, dangerously low, four or five hundred meters by his rough estimate, hard to judge precisely, banking toward the airport. Then he caught the markings on the fuselage. Pan-Sov. Behind it, shapes began dropping free of the plane, parachutes blooming open one after another.

He turned and jogged back toward the court. "Look at the sky!" he shouted, pointing. Every head turned upward at once, and whatever ease had been in their faces a moment ago vanished instantly, replaced by something sharper and more focused. "Everyone check your gear. Now."

He went straight back inside to where he'd been smoking. Maghrablian was still by the radio, listening. Tchaikovsky, the 1812 Overture, nearing its final movement. It ended, and the next piece began. Swan Lake. The signal.

Maghrablian set his book down gently on the table and looked up at him. "How long?"

"Five minutes." Mikhaylo was already reaching for his own kit. "Gear ready, we leave in 5."

"Yes, sir." Maghrablian nodded and rose from his chair without another word.

The next five minutes dissolved into a flurry of gear checks and radio calls. He worked the phone, coordinating with the parallel teams embedded in the Bulgarian, German, Hungarian, Czech, and Slovak embassies.

That was the dangerous part, the Rwandan military almost certainly had the capability to intercept phone lines, and there was no way to know for certain who might be listening in on any given call. So he stuck to code, nothing more. "We're having a party Sunday, want to come?" Simple, boring, forgettable if anyone happened to be monitoring.

As the ranking officer, coordination fell to him. One by one, the other teams gave their confirmation. Green light across the board. Everyone was ready.

He gathered his own men once more in the briefing room. No visible military gear, weapons, ammunition, body armor, and helmets were all packed into ordinary gym bags, since anything more obvious would blow their cover instantly. Officially, they were embassy staff. Mikhaylo was listed as a gardener. Levon, a plumber. Taras, an electrician. Anatoly, additional security. None of them had been required to actually perform those jobs, but over the past three months, the pretense of work had become its own small mercy, something to occupy the hours between the screaming outside. That illusion was over now. The real work was starting.

"I'll keep this short," he said, and the room went quiet. "The signal came through from Moscow. We are to take Radio Mille Collines, shut down their transmission, and begin broadcasting our own in its place. Rules of engagement are simple, anything moving that isn't on the ground or surrendering is a hostile, and you shoot to kill. There is no margin for error here. If we fail, we die, all of us." He let that sit for a beat. "We split into four squads, eight men each, one van per squad with the equipment loaded. Whoever's in the driver and passenger seats was chosen because you speak French, we do not speak Russian until we're actively engaged, and we do not engage unless the Interahamwe manning the checkpoints refuse our....monetary contribution. Every driver should already know the route. Is that understood?"

"Sir, yes sir!" The response came in unison, sharp and immediate.

"One more reminder," he continued. "We take the north entrance. Our comrades from the Bulgarian embassy have the south, the Hungarians take the east, the Slovaks take the west. The Czech and German teams will spread out and reinforce wherever needed." He grabbed his own bag off the table. "That's everything. Let's move."

They filed out of the briefing room and toward the vans parked in the embassy compound. Mikhaylo climbed into the passenger seat of the lead van, Anatoly settling in behind the wheel.

"Ready?" Mikhaylo looked over at him.

"Yeah." Anatoly turned the key, and the engine started.

--------------------

April 27, 1994
Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines
Kigali, Rwanda

Moise Bizimungu's stomach burned as he pushed out the last of that morning's breakfast into the toilet bowl. His wife had made what she'd proudly called "a spicy Indian dish she saw on the television."

It had been delicious. He'd eaten every last bite of it. And now his stomach was demanding repayment in full. He braced, pushed once more, and felt what he hoped was the tail end of the whole ordeal finally give way. Somewhere below him came the soft plop of finality, followed by a splash of water against his backside, and he let out a long, grateful sigh. He made a mental note to ask Danielle not to cook that particular dish on his work mornings ever again. A man had to earn a living, after all, and this wasn't the way to do it.

As he reached for the toilet paper, he could hear it faintly through the walls, the occasional scream, a scattering of gunshots somewhere out in the city.

He didn't particularly hate Tutsis. Some of his closest friends were Tutsi. His own cousin, on his mother's side, was Tutsi. But he had a wife and two children to think about, and the radio station had been hiring a sound technician, and the pay was good. So he'd gone to Charles, a friend of his uncle's, and someone with real standing in the Interahamwe, and here he was. Employed. Comfortable.

The money was better than anything he'd ever earned at the old state radio station. He'd been working here since it started up back in July, and in that time he'd already bought himself a car, not one of those cheap Soviet Ladas everyone made do with, but a real one, a Toyota. A little more saved up, and he'd have enough to get his whole family out of the country entirely. All he had to do was keep his head down and not ask too many questions about what he was actually facilitating.

He wiped again, exhaling slowly. He didn't hate the Tutsis. Truthfully, he'd never spent much time thinking about them one way or another before all this started. He felt something for his cousin Alphonse, certainly, something close to guilt, if he let himself sit with it too long. But he had a family. A wife. Two children. He'd heard what happened to people who were caught helping the inyenzi, whispered stories that made his skin crawl. And even for Alphonse, even for blood, he wouldn't risk it. Not if it meant putting Danielle at risk, or Damien, or little Marcel. "No," he said quietly, shaking his head, wiping again. He couldn't let himself imagine what it would mean to be on the receiving end of what he heard about daily on this very radio station.

He already had it planned out. Wait this thing out. Earn as much as the job would pay while it still existed. Sell everything once the dust settled, and get his family somewhere far away from all of it.

He wiped several more times, forcing his mind toward gentler things, his wife's cooking, the way his kids ran at him the second he walked through the door each evening. On the final pass he checked and found himself clean, and that was when he heard it.

An explosion. Close. Not somewhere across the city, close, near enough that the building seemed to shudder faintly with it. Then gunfire, sustained and heavy, and screaming layered over the top of it.

A cold feeling crawled down his spine. Had Kagame's men actually reached the capital? He'd heard the rumors for weeks, that the Soviets were arming the RPF, sending advisors, volunteers, pushing hard toward Kigali, but Charles had always assured him the army was holding the line without any trouble. Was that a lie too? The same kind of lie they'd been telling everyone, over these same airwaves, about the Tutsis all along?

The gunfire outside had grown even more intense now, mixed with the heavier crack of explosives, closer, as though whoever was out there was systematically working their way through the building rather than simply passing by. As the seconds stretched, he began picking individual voices out of the chaos. French, but strange, accented in a way he'd never heard before. And then, underneath it, another language entirely.

Russian.

These were Soviets.

He stood, yanked his pants up, and closed the toilet lid without daring to flush it, some absurd fragment of his brain convinced the sound would draw attention. He climbed on top of the closed lid, pulling his knees up to his chest, making himself as small and invisible as the space allowed. He prayed. A Hail Mary, whispered fast and half-formed. Was this his punishment? He'd never taken up a weapon, never fired a single shot at anyone, but he knew, sitting there, that he wasn't innocent either. He'd known what this station broadcast every single day. He'd kept the equipment running.

Footsteps grew closer, methodical, sweeping room by room, each burst of gunfire and each scream marking their progress through the building. Closer. Then closer still. Then, unmistakably, right outside the bathroom door.

"Come out!" A voice, Russian-accented French, hard and flat. "We have grenades. Anyone not out in ten seconds will be engaged, we throw these in, and we shoot whoever's still breathing after. One... two..."

He came apart. This wasn't a bluff, he could hear that much in the voice. He said his Hail Mary one more time in a single rushed breath and screamed out somewhere around nine. "I'm here! I'm coming out!"

He opened the door slowly, hands rising on their own. "Hands where I can see them, out here, now!" the voice barked, and he obeyed, stepping into the hallway to find a man in plain civilian clothes holding what looked like a sniper rifle, another soldier behind him with grenades still clipped to his vest. "On your knees!"

He dropped, hands still raised. The one with the rifle glanced back at the man with the grenades, who clipped them back onto his belt and stepped forward instead, grabbing Moise by the arms and binding his wrists with something that felt like rope. A short exchange in Russian, and then he was hauled to his feet and marched forward, away from the bathroom.

They were walking him toward the broadcast room. Along the way he saw the bodies, men he'd worked beside for months, a few of the militia guards who'd manned the station's entrance. Elsewhere, Interahamwe fighters knelt with weapons discarded and hands raised, and the Soviets were shooting them anyway, laughing while they did it, a few Russian words repeated over and over that even Moise, with his handful of scraps of the language, recognized as curses.

They brought him into the broadcast room. Several other technicians were already there, kneeling, silent. The presenters were a different story, sobbing, pleading. Kantano, who'd been on air while Moise had been in the bathroom lay dead on the floor, several dark holes soaked through his shirt. Valérie and Froudald were still alive, whimpering, and it didn't last. One soldier said something short to another, who raised a pistol without ceremony and put a bullet in each of them. Their bodies folded to the floor in the same slack, boneless way.

That left Georges. The Belgian.

The soldiers seemed to hesitate over him, a brief, low exchange between several of them, eyes flicking back to Georges and away again. Moise understood the hesitation even without the language. It was one thing to execute Africans by the dozen. A European, even here, even now gave them pause.

It didn't last. The same soldier who'd shot Valérie and Froudald turned, unhurried, and shot Georges too, the body dropping the same way the others had. He said something else to the men around him, and they laughed, an easy unbothered laugh.

Then the soldier's eyes moved to Moise and the technicians still kneeling beside him.

A cold, absolute certainty settled into Moise's chest.

One of them, their leader, from the way the others deferred to him, stepped forward. "Who knows how to operate this radio?" His French carried the same heavy Russian accent as the man who'd taken him from the bathroom. "We need to make a broadcast." He turned and barked something to the remaining soldiers, and they scattered out of the room with their weapons, leaving only him and five armed men behind.

One of the women, Agathe, a sound technician Moise had worked alongside for months, began to sob, quietly at first, then breaking into full hysterics. The leader's expression tightened with irritation. He glanced at one of his men and gestured toward her. The soldier crossed the room without hurry and struck her across the head with the butt of his rifle, and she screamed, collapsing sideways.

"I'll ask once more," the leader said, unbothered. "Who can operate this radio? We are not playing games here. The Interahamwe outside are not coming to save any of you. So either someone helps us operate this equipment, or we begin killing every one of you every minute, starting with the woman my colleague Sergei has just disciplined." He drew a knife and pointed it lazily in Agathe's direction.

There was something in his eyes Moise recognized instantly, the same look he'd seen on Charles's face whenever the man talked about the rebels. Rage. Hatred. The flat certainty of someone who had already spilled blood today and wouldn't feel a second's hesitation spilling more. This wasn't posturing.

Moise stood, slowly. "I can operate it, sir." He hesitated. "But....."

"But what?"

"Will you actually let us go? All of us? Because you're not exactly inspiring confidence, given what just happened here." The words were out before he'd fully thought them through, and immediately he wondered if he'd just signed his own death warrant.

The leader let out a short laugh, said something to one of his men in Russian, and the others chuckled along with him. He let the silence stretch for what felt like half a minute before answering. "No need to worry yourself. You weren't on our list, and you surrendered without a fight. No harm will come to you."

It wasn't reassuring, not really, Moise had no way to know if the man was telling the truth. But it had bought him time, and right now, time was everything. "Get to work," the leader said.

It didn't take long. Moise and the other surviving technicians set everything up while AK barrels tracked their every movement across the room. Once the board was live, he confirmed it was ready. The leader sat down in Kantano's chair without a glance at the blood still pooled beneath it, waited for the broadcast to come back online, and pulled a folded script from his jacket.

He began speaking in Kinyarwanda, the words heavy and awkward in his mouth but perfectly clear. "This is Major Mikhaylo Syrsky of the Thälmann Battalion of the Internationalist Corps. We have seized this radio station and the airport, and are currently securing the city in the name of Paul Kagame and the RPF, all Interahamwe forces and members of the Rwandan Armed Forces are ordered to stand down immediately. Refusal will result in classification as an enemy combatant, and you will be shot on sight. I repeat: this is Major Mikhaylo Syrsky of the Thälmann Battalion, International Corps. We have seized this radio station and the airport, and are currently securing the city. All Interahamwe forces and members of the Rwandan Armed Forces are ordered to stand down immediately. Refusal will result in classification as an enemy combatant, and you will be shot on sight."

He switched to French and repeated the message word for word. When he finished, he looked over at Moise. "Record this. Set it to loop continuously." A pause. "Once that's done, you and the rest of your people are free to go."

Moise glanced at the crew around him, then back at Syrsky, and nodded. There wasn't really a choice, and both of them knew it.

As he reached for the equipment, one of the soldiers burst into the room, breathless, shouting something in Russian with real panic behind it. Mikhaylo's expression hardened instantly. He snapped a response back and waved the man off, sending him running back out the way he'd come.

Then he turned to Moise and the others, his tone almost conversational despite everything. "It seems you'll be staying with us a bit longer than planned. Your friends in the Interahamwe are surrounding the building as we speak." He said it flatly, without any particular concern for whose side that put him on. "Unless you'd like to end up caught in the crossfire, I'd suggest you stay put. Finish helping me record and loop this, once it's done, you and your people should find somewhere to hide. Wether you live or die is up to you."

Note: I watched Sometimes in April and felt compelled to write this. It's a good but depressing movie, reccomend it.

 

[iceknight90]

Love these glimpses into the post Mikhail Soviet Union and the state of the world.

Let's hope some starry eyed Korean kid waiting to get back home to his girlfriend isn't currently being parachuted into a hellish urban warzone in Rwanda.

 

[Alenco98]

For too long, we have naively assumed that we can contain the Soviet union, that perhaps we can negotiate a sort of compromise with them. But let me ask you, ladies and gentlemen of this party, can we truly negotiate with evil?

Frankly ladies and gentlemen, I do not think we can. For too long we have ignored the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire. Many will call my words inflammatory, that it'll only lead to even more aggressive rhetoric from the Soviets and spiral onwards. But I refuse to hold my tongue and only speak 10 or 20 years from now as the enemy is at the gates.

So I will accept the criticism, and I will not back down. The Soviet Union is not merely a rival superpower. It is an empire, an evil empire. It is a human meat grinder, a corrupt, violent government that seeks to export it's ideology under the guise of flowery words and rhetoric that disguises what they truly intend to export. And it is an empire that will not stop until every corner of the planet is communist.

So I call on Vice president Nixon who has just accepted our party's nomination, and on whoever gets the nomination on the democratic side to heed my words.

Excerpt from Governor Ronald Raegan's speech in the 1968 Republican National Convention

April 26, 1923
The Kremlin
Moscow, USSR

I sat in the dining room, no family this time, just me, Joe, and his friend Sergo. Stalin had gone all out for the occasion, a proper Georgian spread laid across the table: khachapuri, kharcho, chakapuli, more food than three men had any business finishing.

He'd always spoken highly of Sergo, told me more than once that the two of us would probably get along. Watching him during the Congress though, I didn't get what Sergo saw in my brother. Then again, I supposed I was the only person in this room who actually knew what Joe would eventually become. To everyone else, he was simply Joe, competent, unremarkable, a fairly ordinary party functionary among dozens of others. I saw something entirely different sitting across the table from me, and the longer I turned that thought over, the more it answered its own question.

"I've been meaning to introduce the two of you properly for some time now," Stalin said in Georgian, "but circumstances kept getting in the way. My brother's little expedition to Turkestan. The GPU. Party business, more recently." He glanced between us. "Mika, once again, this is Sergo Ordzhonikidze. Sergo, my brother, Mikheil Jugashvili."

"Comrade Jugashvili." Sergo extended a hand, warm and genuinely friendly. "An honor to finally meet you properly. Your brother speaks of you often, and your record speaks for itself besides. You made quite an impression at the Congress."

"Thank you, Comrade Ordzhonikidze." I shook his hand. "And not only for the compliment, for being a good friend to my brother as well. He mentioned you more than once in his letters while he was working the party circuit. Even back in Petrograd, he used to say you'd have been invaluable to us there." I reached for a bottle of Coca-Cola, poured a glass, and slid it across to him. "Coca-Cola? American import. Sweet, you might like it."

"American?" He eyed the glass with real curiosity. "How did you come by this?"

I smiled. "Confidential. State secret." He laughed at that.

"Your brother did mention you have an unusual sense of humor."

"I'm entirely serious, though." I poured a glass for myself and drank. "How I got it is genuinely classified. You'd have to take it up with Lenin or Dzerzhinsky directly. Let's just say the GPU does important work abroad these days."

"Mika." Stalin's tone carried a warning edge.

I chuckled and raised a hand in surrender. "Relax, brother. I won't say another word."

Joe settled into his seat and turned to Sergo. "You mentioned three others you wanted me to meet formally. Where are they?"

"On their way. Mikoyan and Lakoba are usually punctual. Kirov might run a little behind."

The two of them fell into conversation, Georgian party business, the ongoing debates from the Congress. I hadn't followed most of it closely, buried as I'd been in GPU affairs and the prohibition operation, but I understood the broad strokes well enough: Stalin and Sergo were pushing for rapid integration of Georgia into the Union, while the local Georgian Bolsheviks wanted a slower, more autonomous path. If I'd been forced to pick a side, I probably leaned toward the latter camp, but picking a fight with Joe over Georgian party politics wasn't a hill worth dying on, and frankly I had enough on my plate already. Let him handle Georgia. Not my problem, for now.

The door opened. Two men entered, both roughly Stalin's height. One had a full, well-groomed mustache and the unmistakable look of an Armenian, something in the bone structure I could pick out instantly after a childhood spent surrounded by Armenians in the Caucasus. The other had a thinner beard, softer features, eyes set a little deeper than most.

"Ah, Lakoba, Mikoyan, please, sit." Sergo waved them over, having switched to Russian. "Comrade Jugashvili, Comrade Stalin, comrades Nestor Lakoba and Anastas Mikoyan."

They approached the table and I stood to shake hands with both. "Comrades. A genuine pleasure, though I'll admit, Sergo's only told me you're reliable, without much else to go on. I'd like to actually get to know you both properly."

"Likewise, Comrade Jugashvili." Mikoyan shook my hand with a firm grip, his accent thick and unmistakably Armenian.

"A pleasure," Lakoba said, taking my hand next. Georgian, clearly, but something in the cadence of his speech caught my attention immediately, though I couldn't quite place what it was.

We sat, and Mikoyan and Lakoba began recounting their roles during the war. Mikoyan had narrowly survived a botched rescue attempt in Baku, trying to extract local Bolsheviks caught behind enemy lines, and had reportedly saved Sergo's life during the fighting there, which explained the closeness between them. Lakoba was quieter about his own record, though from what I gathered he'd been instrumental in securing Abkhazia for the Bolsheviks and effectively ran the region now in all but formal title.

What kept snagging my attention, though, was the way he spoke. Something about it nagged at me, familiar in a way I couldn't quite place, until, gradually, it clicked.

"Comrade Lakoba." I said it mid-conversation, while he was mid-sentence to Stalin. "Comrade Lakoba?" No response. That confirmed it. A few seconds later he finally turned toward me.

"Yes, Comrade Jugashvili?"

"You're hard of hearing. Am I right?"

The table went a touch tense due to that, Lakoba's discomfort was immediate, and Mikoyan, Stalin, and Sergo all shifted slightly in their seats. "Yes," Lakoba admitted after a moment. "It's a difficulty I manage as best I can."

"I can have hearing aids brought in from America," I said. "I've got contacts through Comintern channels who can arrange it. If you'd like, of course."

He looked genuinely thrown by that. "You would, genuinely? I don't misunderstand the offer, I simply don't understand it. Why?"

"Because you're clearly a trusted friend of Comrade Ordzhonikidze's. Sergo trusts my brother, my brother trusts me, and I'd imagine the four of us, or five, once Kirov shows up, will be working closely together going forward." I shrugged. "Consider it a gesture of goodwill. And frankly, it'll make conversation a great deal easier if you can actually hear what I'm saying instead of reading my lips across a dinner table."

Lakoba nodded slowly, something like genuine gratitude settling into his expression. "If that's truly the offer, then I accept it gladly, Comrade Jugashvili."

We kept talking a while longer, drifting toward more personal territory. Lakoba took the lead this time, I learned he was married to an Abkhazian woman named Sariya, and he produced a photograph of her that he carried with him, worn soft at the edges from handling. She was lovely, I had to admit, and something about her expression faintly reminded me of Maria. He described her as an exceptional hostess and insisted we should all come visit Abkhazia sometime.

I accepted readily. I hadn't been back to Georgia since Kato's death sent me to Petrograd and then eventually to Moscow, and I couldn't remember the last time I'd taken an actual vacation. Joe looked reluctant, predictably, but I pushed until he relented, though I made clear it would have to wait until later in the year given my schedule.

Then Kirov arrived.

Footsteps first, out in the corridor, followed by a brief exchange with the guards at the door. The door swung open and a younger man stepped through, a heavy bag slung over one shoulder, which he dropped unceremoniously to the floor the moment he crossed the threshold.

Sergo was on his feet immediately, crossing the room to embrace him. "Comrade Kirov." Lakoba followed, shaking his hand warmly. Sergo turned back to us. "Comrade Stalin, Comrade Jugashvili, allow me to present Comrade Sergei Mironovich Kirov."

Kirov came to me first, shaking my hand firmly, then Stalin's. I caught the flicker across Joe's face as it happened, a faint scowl, gone almost as fast as it appeared. Is he genuinely annoyed Kirov shook my hand first?

"A pleasure to meet you both," Kirov said. "My apologies for the delay, I was arranging a gift for the two of you." He gestured toward the bag, then knelt beside it, pulled out a knife, and sliced it open. What emerged, hauled out with some effort, was a rug, a full bearskin, brown, head and claws still attached. Stalin and Sergo both laughed at the sight of it. Privately, I thought it was fairly tacky, but I kept that opinion to myself. It was a gift, after all, and I wasn't about to insult the man five minutes into meeting him.

"You took it down yourself?" Stalin asked, clearly impressed.

"One shot." Kirov held up his trigger finger with a modest sort of pride.

"From how far?"

"Ten meters, give or take."

"You stood ten meters from that thing and fired once?" Stalin looked genuinely astonished, then turned to me. "Could you manage that?"

I shook my head without hesitation. "Honestly, I'd shit myself." That got a laugh out of the room. "There's a real difference between shooting a man who's shooting back, worst case, you die quickly. Miss with a bear however, it eats you alive, slowly, and you get to think about your mistake the whole time. I'll take the quick death thank you."

They all looked at me for a beat. I just shrugged. Another minor social misstep, probably, but it didn't seem worth losing sleep over.

"Come," Stalin said, waving Kirov toward the table. "Sit. There's plenty to eat."

Dinner ran long, hours slipping by while the drinks kept coming. Almost everyone, anyway, I stuck to Coca-Cola with the occasional glass of wine, which meant I was still reasonably sober by the time everyone had said their goodnights and gone. Just me and Stalin now, in the sitting room. He'd settled into the small couch with another glass of wine, and I was stretched out along the sofa across from him. Neither of us said much for a while, just sitting in the kind of comfortable quiet that only exists between people who've known each other their whole lives. Then he broke it.

"You offered Lakoba hearing aids."

I sat up slightly, looking over at him. "I did, yes."

"That's a strange thing to offer a man you'd just met."

"A man's gratitude can take you a long way, Joe."

"Gratitude is the disease of dogs." His words had gone a little loose around the edges, the wine finally settling in.

I laughed, this was Joe in what I privately called his cynical mode, a mood that had followed him since our seminary days and only ever surfaced properly once he'd had enough to drink. "Dogs?" I repeated, switching into Georgian, grinning. "More like cattle, wouldn't you say? You know what the yids say, goyim are cattle. And if the people are cattle, that makes you the herdsman." I stretched my arms behind my head. "And me, I suppose, your loyal little sheepdog."

Stalin actually laughed at that, a real laugh. I understood why, even if I found it a little grim underneath the humor, those old rumors from Gori, that our real father had been a Jewish merchant rather than Beso had always sent him into a rage as a boy. Apparently that particular wound had never fully closed even now. But if a little casual antisemitism kept him relaxed and talkative on an evening like this, I wasn't above indulging it. Survival first. Everything else was negotiable.

"But you know," I continued, settling back down onto the sofa, "sheepdogs don't live forever. Eventually they get old, or the owner walks them out behind the shed one day and puts a bullet in them." I stared up at the chandelier overhead. "Not that I'd particularly mind, if I'm honest." I closed my eyes for a moment. "Ever since Maria died, everything's felt a little gray. I'm not sad about it anymore, not the way I used to be. But there's still this, emptiness where she used to be. Elsa fills a lot of it. But even if you force something back into a space that's empty, it never quite sits the way it used to. It's just... a different shape filling the same hole." I opened my eyes and looked over at him directly. "If it ever comes to that, Joe — if you ever need to be rid of me, do me the courtesy of doing it yourself. Walk up, look me in the eye, and pull the trigger. And take care of my children when it's done." I held his gaze. "I trust you to do that much. I really do."

He said nothing for a long moment. He finished what was left in his glass, set it down, and stood up. "Get some sleep," he said. "You leave for Cuba tomorrow." He walked over and stood above me, looking down. "Don't botch this. Don't embarrass the party."

Then he was gone, the door clicking shut behind him.

Fucking coward, I thought, closing my eyes on the sofa alone. He could give me the truth about many things, but anything about his family and he shut down.

April 27, 1923
The Kremlin
Moscow, USSR

I woke early, as I always did, with Elsa still beside me. I held her a while before she stirred, taking my time with it, I'd need the memory of this. I'd be gone the better part of a month, possibly two. When she finally shifted and blinked awake, I leaned over and kissed her. "Morning, sleepyhead."

"You came to bed late last night."

"Joe introduced me to a few of his friends. Some Bolsheviks from the Caucasus, mostly." I yawned, nursing the dull ache still sitting behind my eyes from the wine.

"I'm guessing you were scheming with them already."

I glanced back at her, smiling. "Nothing yet. Just introductions. Perhaps something later."

"How comforting."

"What can I say." I shrugged. "Politics is a filthy business." I switched into English without quite meaning to. "Picture a container full of venomous creatures, snakes, scorpions, whatever you like. All packed together, no room to move. They tear each other apart until exactly one is left standing. The most vicious, the most poisonous of the lot survives. Once Lenin dies, that tearing begins in earnest."

"That's a very cynical way to put it." Something in her expression had shifted, not fear, but disappointment. That particular flavor of disappointment.

"Russian politics are vicious, Elsa. If Stalin loses, or if I do, you'll likely end up exiled at best. Shot, at worst. Trotsky wouldn't hesitate on that front, I promise you."

"He seemed venomous enough at the last Congress. You two clashed constantly."

"To be expected. The lines are already being drawn." I smiled faintly. "Who knows — maybe I'll be the one giving the order to have him killed someday."

"You actually mean to kill him?"

"I have to." I said it simply, without drama. "Even if I manage to bury him politically, strip him of every position he holds, the man is still a brilliant orator. He has his own gravity, his own charisma. Sooner or later, he has to die if Joe's rule is going to hold. Joe's probably arrived at the same conclusion already, even if neither of us has said it aloud yet."

She kept looking at me. Still no fear in her expression, just that same quiet disappointment I'd seen once before, in someone else, a long time ago. "I've told you already, Elsa," I said, moving closer and pulling her into my arms. "If you ever want to walk away from all of this, I won't hate you for it. I'd probably love you more for it." I tightened my hold slightly. "But you should understand, many more people are going to die by my hand, or on my orders, if you step back from this. There won't be a leash on me anymore."

She reached up and gently took my remaining hand off her, not unkindly. "You're traveling today. Or did you forget?"

"I did not." I got up and crossed to the wardrobe to dress. I no longer bothered stepping out of the room to change, I'd stopped doing that weeks ago, comfortable enough now to dress in front of her without a second thought, and she hadn't objected. Her own habit of leaving the room while I dressed had faded the same way, and I wasn't about to complain about that, she had a nice ass after all.

As I buttoned my shirt I glanced back at her, and my mind thought about her naked body of all things, I felt myself getting a little bricked up. I laughed quietly to myself at his quaint it all was.

"Something funny?" she asked.

"Nothing," I said. "Just remembered a joke."

"Is that right? What was it?"

"Maybe I'll tell you when I'm back."

"I should go." I crossed the room, kissed her once more before I left. "I'll be back within the month. Try not to get too lonely without me." I paused at the door. "And have the staff take the extra bed out of the room. We don't need it anymore."

I shut the door behind me and made my way out of the Kremlin. A car was already waiting. I got in, took one last look at the building as it pulled away, and settled back into the seat.

My mind drifted, unhelpfully, to the diary.

I couldn't destroy it as the information was too valuable so it was out of the question. I'd considered bringing it with me, just for a moment, before dismissing the idea entirely. My luggage was almost certainly going to be searched by Stalin's people at some point during this trip, if they found it, I'd have a great deal of explaining to do, none of it good. Better to leave it where it was, tucked into the false bottom of the drawer, exactly where it had sat undisturbed for years. I'd also planted a few decoy journals nearby, just in case anyone went digging.

Still, something about leaving it behind unsettled me more than I expected. I hadn't been separated from that book in years, hadn't ever let it get this far from reach. It felt, oddly, like a man letting go of a lifejacket and drifting out into open water. I exhaled slowly and told myself the countermeasures would hold. They had to.

April 29, 1923
The Kremlin
Moscow, USSR

Genrikh Yagoda stood watching as staff dismantled the extra bed in Comrade Jugashvili's room, carrying it out frame by frame, piece by piece.

While the bed came apart, his own men worked through the rest of the room with methodical thoroughness, every drawer, every corner, the space beneath the bed frame, the closet emptied and checked seam by seam. A dog moved along the baseboards, nose working the room in careful, overlapping passes.

Stalin's instructions had been unambiguous. Search the room. Thoroughly. I don't trust that Swedish woman, she's dangerous, she's corrupting Comrade Jugashvili. We need to be certain she isn't working for a foreign power, and that she hasn't turned him against us.

Yagoda stood in the corner and watched the room come apart methodically around him. One of his men was working through a chest of drawers, pulling each one out for closer inspection, when he stumbled slightly and dropped the drawer he was carrying.

He knelt to retrieve it, and stopped. He motioned to the man beside him without looking up. That was enough to pull Yagoda over as well.

"What is it?"

"The drawer," the man said, turning it over carefully in his hands. "It has a false bottom."

Yagoda gestured to the second man, who produced a knife and worked the blade carefully along the seam, prying it loose. Beneath it sat a book, a journal, matching the two others they'd already recovered from elsewhere in the room. Was this the one that mattered? The other journals had turned up in ordinary places, tucked beneath clothing, hidden under stacked books on the shelf. But a false bottom, deliberately built and concealed inside furniture, that was a different level of care entirely.

"Bring me all of them," Yagoda said.

His men laid the three recovered journals out side by side. He flipped each open to a random page. All written in a foreign language, unsurprising, given that Jugashvili was known to be fluent in English among several others, and a man handling sensitive state material had every reason to keep his private notes in a language most of his own countrymen couldn't read.

But the fourth journal, the one from the false bottom, looked different. Older. The binding worn soft at the corners in a way that spoke of years of actual handling, unlike the comparatively fresh condition of the other three.

"Decoys," Yagoda said quietly, almost to himself. He set the three aside and kept the fourth in hand. He turned to his men. "Put everything back exactly as you found it."

He looked down at the worn journal in his hands for a long moment, then turned and left the room, making his way toward Stalin's office.

 

[ReluctantCrusader]

So Yagoda had gotten ahold of the OTL journal. Also, could someone provide me context regarding Lakoba?

 

[bannerlord181]

Your mc kinda sucks, only reading this cause it's a historical si but he's still a slave to stalin for no good reason now he can't even keep his secret journal secret

 

[BuilderOne]

I wonder, what would Stalin think when he realized his brother has a (fully coded, I suppose) diary?

 

[OverseerEX]

I hate when the NPCs find out things they aren't supposed to. It brings the story down a lot.

Also a lot of repeating the "Joe, I want you to be the one to kill me", "I'm your closest family, Joe, remember what I've done for you Joe..."
It's basically every chapter, and it's not bringing anything to advance the story.

 

[Alenco98]

Excerpt from the Wikipedia page on the Rwandan genocide

In the 1980s, a group of 500 Rwandan refugees based in Uganda, led by Fred Rwigyema, fought alongside the Soviet-backed National Resistance Army (NRA) during the Ugandan Bush War, which culminated in Yoweri Museveni overthrowing Milton Obote. These soldiers remained within the Ugandan army following Museveni's inauguration as president, while simultaneously planning an invasion of Rwanda with support from the GRU. Much of the group's future leadership, including future President Paul Kagame, was subsequently sent to the Frunze Military Academy for training in the years following the Bush War.

In October 1990, Rwigyema, using Lumumba's Republic of the Congo as a staging ground, led a force of over 4,000 rebels and Soviet "volunteers" into Rwanda, seizing and fortifying the Virunga Mountains before advancing fifty kilometers under the banner of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF). France and Mobutu's Zaire subsequently deployed ground forces in support of the Rwandan government once it became clear that Soviet volunteers were embedded within the rebel ranks, halting the invasion and reducing the conflict to a stalemate.

Lumumba, observing that Mobutu's army had become tied down defending Rwanda, saw an opportunity to weaken and potentially eliminate his regional rival. He launched an invasion of Zaire's Shaba Province, initiating what became known as Shaba III and transforming Rwanda's civil war into a broader regional proxy conflict within the Cold War.

As the RPF's advance stalled and Rwandan resistance stiffened following the arrival of French military advisors and Zairean forces, Rwigyema, unwilling to expend his forces in a prolonged war of attrition, ordered a retreat back into the Virunga Mountains, fortifying his positions in an effort to draw the Rwandan army into pursuit.

The French responded with a sustained air campaign, striking the mountains with napalm, cluster munitions, incendiaries, and chemical weapons in an attempt to dislodge the RPF's positions. Rwigyema's troops, intimately familiar with the terrain and equipped with Soviet supplied gas masks, sheltered in cave systems that negated the effects of the chemical strikes. They subsequently emerged to establish defensive positions, minefields, and improvised fortifications, striking the Rwandan army in hit-and-run raids before withdrawing back into the mountains.

On February 8, 1991, the Rwandan army launched Operation Épée, a multi-front assault into the mountains. The original plan called for the deployment of almost the entire Rwandan army, thirty thousand men organized into thirty-two battalions. French advisors and the Rwandan cabinet however, unwilling to risk that scale of force and potentially trigger a collapse of the government should the operation fail, and mindful of the need to maintain a significant troop presence along the Congolese border to deter a Congolese invasion, persuaded President Habyarimana to scale the operation down to fifteen thousand men across sixteen battalions.

The strategy relied on French air support to push Rwigyema's forces toward Mount Karisimbi, where they would subsequently be encircled and destroyed. The advance moved through mountain trails obstructed by fallen trees, laced with improvised traps, and subjected to sustained fire from concealed positions in the surrounding hills and forest, rendering Rwandan armor and air support largely ineffective. Only the presence of French Foreign Legion personnel, serving nominally as advisors but functioning as de facto command down to the company and, in some cases, squad level, allowed the advance to progress as far as it did.

By February 27, the Rwandan army, having sustained significant casualties, had advanced as far as Mount Karisimbi. There, Rwigyema's forces struck decisively, emerging from concealed positions behind the advancing column while simultaneously charging down from the summit, trapping the army. The resulting Battle of Mount Karisimbi resulted in the loss of over 2,000 Rwandan troops, with roughly three-quarters of the army fighting its way out while the remainder were taken prisoner. Had French Foreign Legion officers not assumed direct command and ordered an immediate retreat, it is likely the entire force would have been annihilated.

Rwigyema's forces then pressed their advantage, capturing the city of Ruhengeri and resuming their advance toward Kigali. Rwigyema himself, however, was killed in a Rwandan airstrike on March 10, 1991, while personally leading a column toward the capital.

At the time, Paul Kagame was still completing a military training course at Frunze alongside a cohort of fellow RPF trainees. Upon receiving news of Rwigyema's death, the GRU immediately recalled Kagame and his cadre, informing them of the loss and returning them to Rwanda. The RPF was found in a state of near-total disarray upon Kagame's arrival, troop morale having collapsed in the wake of their commander's death, with only GRU and spetnatz volunteers and advisors, also serving as command down to the squad level preventing a complete collapse. Kagame's first act was to order a full withdrawal back into the Virunga Mountains, a maneuver he termed "temporary retrenchment."

Once resettled in the mountains, Kagame spent the following four months rebuilding the RPF, recruiting from Tutsi exile communities abroad as well as Hutu dissidents domestically, securing funding, and procuring weapons. The Soviet Union responded in kind, dispatching hundreds of additional volunteers and shipping arms into the region via the Congo and Uganda.

The Rwandan army used this lull in fighting to reorganize as well, receiving reinforcement from several battalions of French Foreign Legion troops and American Special Forces, along with additional weapons, supplies, financial assistance, and vehicles, effectively reconstituting and retraining an entire new army.

On July 8, 1991, the reconstituted RPF struck again, seizing Ruhengeri in a rapid assault before withdrawing from the city ahead of the arrival of reinforcements. From this point forward, the war would be waged primarily as a guerrilla conflict.

For roughly the following year and a half, guerrilla warfare continued across Rwanda. With half of the Rwandan army committed to the Congolese border out of concern over a potential Congolese invasion, and with Soviet strategic priorities now focused on parallel proxy conflicts in South Africa, the Congo, and Angola, the conflict settled into a rough equilibrium, with neither side capable of achieving a decisive breakthrough.

In June 1992, following the establishment of a multiparty government under combined American, and French pressure; and due to Soviet pressure to de-escalate the conflict, the RPF announced a ceasefire and entered into negotiations with the Rwandan government in Arusha, Tanzania. In early 1993, several extremist Hutu factions emerged and began organized campaigns of large-scale violence against the Tutsi population. In response, the RPF suspended peace talks and launched a major offensive in the north, seizing a substantial swath of territory and capturing and successfully holding Ruhengeri against a combined Rwandan, French, and Zairian counterattack

Peace negotiations eventually resumed in Arusha. The resulting Arusha Accords, signed in July 1993, granted the RPF representation within a Broad-Based Transitional Government (BBTG) as well as positions within the national army, with national elections scheduled to take place in June 1994.

June 2, 1923
Parque Maceo, Avenida del Malecón
Havana, Cuba

I sat back on a small bench in the park, one that looked out over the sea, letting the evening breeze move across my face. It was around six in the evening, the worst of the sun already sinking below the horizon, the brutal midday heat finally starting to loosen its grip. The whole thing was still something of a shock, honestly, going from Russia, where winters tried to kill you and summers were merely tolerable, to this. Constant, relentless tropical heat. For the first time in this life, I'd found myself showering more than once a day just to function; a genuinely mild day here meant only two showers instead of four, and today had been a four-shower day.

I'd landed in Havana two days earlier, after a journey that had tested my patience considerably. The Cheka had put together a full set of forged papers for the trip, Mikheil Jugashvili didn't exist for the duration of this trip. In his place was Ivan Berezev, a former White Army officer who'd finally decided to leave Russia behind for good. I'd traveled light: a suitcase of clothes, my papers, and roughly five thousand dollars, which went a considerable distance toward living comfortably in a city like this.

For security, I'd brought exactly one man, Boris Chekov, an old colleague from my police days in Petrograd, someone I'd personally recruited into the Cheka back when I was still building out the Petrograd branch from scratch. Stalin had pushed hard for a larger detail, but I'd talked him down, arguing that too visible a presence would draw exactly the kind of attention we couldn't afford. Instead, I'd suggested the Cheka simply keep eyes on me from a distance without direct contact. Stalin had eventually agreed, and by the time I left Moscow he'd informed me there would be roughly a dozen people quietly watching over the trip from the shadows.

Not that I minded, really. Aside from the small matter of meeting one of America's foremost organized crime figures, I wasn't doing anything remotely suspicious. I was, for all intents and purposes, on vacation. I'd already wired New York the moment I arrived, a telegram to Aleksander letting him know I was settled at the Hotel Sevilla, the finest hotel money could reasonably buy in Havana. The reply had come back promptly: Rothstein would arrive in three days.

Which left me a fair amount of time entirely to myself, and I intended to use every hour of it. After spending yesterday simply getting settled, I'd spent today taking in the city properly, wandering the length of the Malecón for hours, the sea breeze and salt air a constant companion. A real sea, this time. Not the grim gray churn of the Baltic or the Black Sea, but something genuinely tropical and alive. It reminded me, unexpectedly, of a trip to the Dominican Republic I'd taken after graduating high school with a group of friends, back in my old life, wading out half a kilometer from shore and still being able to see straight down through impossibly clear water. Nothing about the Baltic or Black Sea had ever come close to that.

I'd indulged in the food as well, arroz con pollo that practically fell apart on the fork, flan for dessert, croquetas, guava, tres leches, turrones. Even now, hours after an entire afternoon of walking, I could still feel my stomach protesting slightly against my belt.

None of that was really the point, though. What actually mattered, what genuinely made me feel like a free man for the first time in longer than I cared to admit, was simply being a stranger. I could walk down a street, glance around, stop someone and ask for directions, and receive nothing back but an ordinary, unguarded answer. No fear behind their eyes. No calculated deference. No silent calculation running behind their expression, trying to work out what I wanted from them or what they could extract from me. I was just a man on a street. It felt, oddly, like stepping back into my old life before my reincarnation, and back when I was just another cop in Petrograd with a family, long before anyone called me the hero of the revolution.

I sat with that thought for a while, staring out at the water as though the sea itself might offer some further insight. Maybe that's it, I thought. Maybe this was the actual mechanism behind Stalin, behind every tyrant who'd ever lived, the paranoia, the purges, all of it. They were trapped by their own reputation, imprisoned by their own power. They could never simply be ordinary again, because everyone around them was either terrified of them, quietly scheming against them, angling to extract something from them, or, more often than not, some combination of all three simultaneously. I turned the thought over, leaned back, closed my eyes. It was the only explanation that actually held together. I opened my eyes again and watched the crowd moving past me on the street none of them sparing me more than a passing half-glance. If any of them knew who I actually was, what I'd actually done, that glance would stretch into something else entirely. Fear, hatred, fascination, reverence, likely some combination of all four at once.

I stood from the bench, took one last look at the water, and started making my way back toward the hotel. Along the way I passed a shop, Bacardi, bottles of rum lined up neatly in the window. I thought of Joe for a moment, unbidden. He might actually like some of this.

I stepped inside. A young man behind the counter greeted me. "Hello, sir. How can I help you today?" His English was decent, though heavily accented.

"You can relax," I said, switching to Spanish. "I speak Spanish." It felt genuinely wonderful to say, I hadn't properly spoken the language since my last life, and though I'd kept reading it purely to maintain it, I hadn't actually used it in conversation until landing here. It felt like flexing a muscle I'd assumed had long since atrophied, only to find it snap back to life almost effortlessly.

"You have a very unusual accent, sir. Where are you from originally?"

"My father, God rest his soul, was Russian. My mother was Spanish."

"Ah, Russia." His expression darkened slightly. "Terrible business, that revolution and civil war. I heard they murdered the entire royal family, the wives, the children too. Monsters, all of them." There was real contempt in his voice.

"They did, yes." I nodded slowly. "I fought in the civil war myself." I let my sleeve fall back slightly, revealing the stump beneath. "A Bolshevik bullet tore through my arm. Very nearly killed me outright. Took an eye as well." I gestured toward the glass eye I'd fitted for the trip, no patch this time, far too recognizable a silhouette back home.

"My deepest condolences, sir." He studied me for a moment. "You served in the Great War as well, I take it?"

"I did." I nodded again. "Anatolia. Cavalry." I let out a small sigh. "I don't mean to dwell on lost causes though. I'm actually here to buy some rum, a gift for my brother. I think he might like it."

"Of course." He brightened, gesturing toward the shelves behind him. "What are you looking for?"

"The strongest thing you have."

"Right this way, sir."

April 30, 1923
The Kremlin
Moscow, USSR

Stalin worked late into the night as he usually did, he had to after all, who else could do the working of keeping the party together. He had been unable to focus today however, Yagoda had come in earlier in the afternoon, he had searched Mika's room as he ordered, not for any fault of his own, no, but for the Swedish woman. He never liked her, part of him hated her whenever he brooded deep enough. Not out of jealousy, he was above petty things like that, he liked to tell himself. She was making him soft, malleable, a report from Yagoda told him she had talked him out of executing several enemies of the people, having them sent to labor camps instead.

So he had her searched, now that Mika was away and unable to reign anyone in he finally had control. He had his room searched, looking for anything that could be of use against her, leverage perhaps. Instead….a diary. Not the woman's diary, but Mika's. Not just 1 diary no, 4 diaries, 3 hidden normally, and this one, under a false bottom, worn. Whatever Mika had stored in here, it must have been important.

Something dark stirred inside him, he thought about Malinovsky, was Mika plotting against him perhaps? Would he truly betray him? Why didn't he tell him about the diary? What sort of things did he have hidden. He wanted to know, but he had work to do, he could worry about this later, Mika was gone, he had plenty of time to read whatever he wrote. Yet as the day went on and he filled out more and more paperwork, his thoughts came towards that diary. And he found himself increasingly distracted.

He looked at the clock, a quarter past midnight, early, he usually worked until 2, sometimes 3 in the morning. He looked at the paperwork he'd gone through. And the diary again. He sat back for a moment, sighing. He took the diary, leaving the room, the guards stood at attention. "Have my secretary put the paperwork away, I'm sleeping early tonight."

"Yes comrade Stalin." They saluted. He took the notebook, making his way back to his room, he found Nadezdha sleeping soundly in bed. He took the diary, laying it on his lap. He opened it to the first page. English, that was the first thing he saw. Mika had taught him English during their time in Petrograd during the civil war. "Britain is the main world power. And America will be dominant after them." He told him. "You should learn it if you can. I can teach you."

He found it annoying, but it was useful. Though he still couldn't speak it well, he could read and write in English.

March 28, 1913

I bought this diary earlier in the day. A lot has happened to me recently, I feel like I'm standing on top of a fucking Nuclear bomb and I have no way to safely defuse it.

He frowned a little, a nuclear bomb? What the hell was that?

I had a great plan, the best fucking plan. I had enough money to get me, Maria, the kids, mama, and even Joe out of Russia. I was going to use it, open up a restaurant, invent McDonalds, sell burgers and make fucking money, I thought I was finally getting through to Joe, that he would abandon this whole bullshit with the Bolsheviks and leave.

And now I read his latest letter, and I find out he's Joseph fucking Stalin.

I'm fucked, fucked, not merely fucked, completely and utterly fucked.

I can't leave Russia anymore. How could I, when your twin, the person you grew up with, your best friend is going to be one of the worst mass murderers this century. A man who will give Hitler and Mao a run for his money.

He set the book down. He felt more confused than anything. Him? A mass murderer? Is that what he really thought of him? And that name, Hitler. He saw it in a report a few months back, after he returned. Then he remembered that conversation. "I heard you issued orders to our German branch. To monitor a particular figure there. Hitler, I believe?" He recalled having told him that.

"I did," he said. "He was the first name that came to mind. His party is structurally very similar to Mussolini's — same base instincts, same type of support. I wouldn't be surprised if he was running the country within a few years."

He looked at the date in the diary, 1913….Hitler…….he recalled that conversation. What was this? No..what was Mika?

He kept reading.

35 years, I thought after I died god was playing a funny joke on me by reincarnating me as the son of a fucking Georgian peasant. But as Stalin's brother? His twin? This isn't even funny, playing doom on nightmare is easier than this.

After I died? Doom? Nightmare mode? What the hell was this?

I need to write everything down, everything that's going to happen. Its been too long since AP world history and US history. I should have written it all down. But that's on me. I should begin here, its 1913, so in 1914 world war one is going to start. If I recall, the Archduke of Austria was shot, Austria declared war on Serbia, then Russia went after Austria, then Germany went after Russia, France went after Germany, then England jumps in, then America as well.

Russia drops out of the war in 1917, there's a revolution. A new government is set up. Then the Bolsheviks overthrow them later that year, Lenin comes into power. Then civil war begins in Russia and the Bolsheviks win eventually. I don't think my teacher went over it well.

I'm technically still a party member, I pay dues after all. If Stalin is with the party...maybe I can leverage it, make my way into the inner circle, affect policy. And maybe...maybe I can make the future Soviet Union a less shit place to live. Who knows, maybe it won't collapse in 1991 like in my timeline.

Timeline? 1991? Collapse? He closed the book for a moment, sighing. He closed his eyes for a moment, he tried to recall his memories. He was back in 1917, in Mika's apartment, he was writing something, it was shortly after Lenin returned, he was pestering him about a Pravda article he'd written. "Lenin wants to blow everything up. He's calling to overthrow the government." He was panicking that day, he remembered Mika's look, without any care in the world, not worried at all.

"We might as well back him," He had said in a casual tone.

"What the hell do you even know?" He had told him.

"I can see the future," he said casually, "The government falls. Lenin probably wins. Mind if I see it?"

He opened his eyes again, opening the diary. Reading that first page all over again. He knew…….he looked at the end of the first page. Who knows, maybe it won't collapse in 1991 like in my timeline.

Who knows, maybe it won't collapse in 1991 like in my timeline.

Who knows, maybe it won't collapse in 1991 like in my timeline.

Who knows, maybe it won't collapse in 1991 like in my timeline.

He thought about it over and over again, trying to explain it. Nothing added up, nothing. He thought about their time as kids, he recalled an incident they had as kids, an older child Eduard. The way he had hit him, the way he talked. He always protected him, even as a child, he always acted with a certainty in him.

Reincarnating me as the son of a Georgian peasant.

Reincarnating me as the son of a Georgian peasant.

Reincarnating me as the son of a Georgian peasant.

Reincarnating me as the son of a Georgian peasant.

He took a deep breath, the same phrase played over and over in his head. Then the other one.

Who knows, maybe it won't collapse in 1991 like in my timeline.

Who knows, maybe it won't collapse in 1991 like in my timeline.

Who knows, maybe it won't collapse in 1991 like in my timeline.

"He's from the future?" He whispered, almost afraid to say it. There was no other way to explain it, he couldn't, nothing else could. He turned the next page.

 

[Siryapsalot]

Welp it's not as bad as I expected though Jo is going to be confused before absolutely grilling Mika for every advantage he must secure.

 

[sports-information]

Welp it's not as bad as I expected though Jo is going to be confused before absolutely grilling Mika for every advantage he must secure.

Click to shrink...

Or he simply concludes that his brother is mad. Not likely, given all the foreshadowing we've gotten in the story, but possible.

 

[Tembu]

Looks like its time to drop this story. The original AI assisted crap was annoying so I held out for the rewrite. Now the rewrite exposes the self insert. Come on man. Name a story where the self insert is exposed and it's good. The readers like the feeling of sharing the secret with the insert. Once that's gone the story feels chaotic. The story already is annoying with the main character being the maid of honor to the the real protagonist, Stalin. Hope you somehow fix this. But any fix will probably be completely against tens of chapters of character development. Welp good luck.

 

[OverseerEX]

I too am of the opinion that exposing the reincarnation is a bad idea. Breaking the uniqueness of the main character has never worked well, at least I've never seen it working. It's why I don't read double SI stories, or things like that.

For the diary, I am surprised that he didn't write it in code that only he could understand. Like "1991 Collapse" instead of "The Soviet governement will collapse in 1991". It's not like he has to be a cryptographer and invent an entirely new code or something, he can just use scattered dates, initials, and things like that.

Anyway...

 

[Deathsea22]

99% of the stories I read, specifically SI stories that actually expose the SI for who they are never work out well after the fact. Maybe yours will be the 1% that can actually make it work? At least I dearly hope so.

 

[Chaoswind]

The only one getting a heads up is Stalin, so I don't see anyone else learning about it. The issue is what Stalin is going to do with the MC if the MC wrote a little too much about him in the book...

 

[Praevalidum]

Gotta be honest, I don't love the SI being exposed.

I enjoyed the balancing act and chemistry of Joe and Mika.
Now it's just that he'll either believe him or think he's insane. Either way doesn't interest me much.

 

[Alenco98]

The New York Times
November 9, 1947
Arab forces take Jerusalem

Soviet backed Offensive Deals Grave Blow to Ben-Gurion Government as Arab Armies Press Deeper Into Palestine

Arab League forces, operating with substantial Soviet support, captured the city of Jerusalem yesterday evening, dealing a severe blow to the government of Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion. Military sources report the assault was led by Colonel General Vasily Chuikov and involved combined-arms operations in which Egyptian armor and air units were, in practice, staffed and directed by Soviet personnel, with Soviet officers and non-commissioned officers embedded down to the squad level throughout the offensive.

The fall of Jerusalem, the symbolic capital of the fledgling Jewish state, comes as the Ben-Gurion government faces mounting pressure on multiple fronts, Egyptian forces continuing their northward push following the capture of Ashdod only last week, and Syrian forces advancing westward after breaking through the Galilee line barely two weeks ago. Analysts in Washington and London described the loss of Jerusalem as a potentially decisive turning point in the broader conflict.

In Washington, President Truman condemned the joint Arab-Soviet offensive in strong terms. Under mounting pressure from Congress, he announced an expansion of Lend-Lease support to the Jewish state, unveiling an unprecedented $150 million aid package. The President further announced an expansion of the American military advisory mission to Israel, citing what he described as "the need to counter communist expansion and aggression in the Middle East."

The Soviet Union, for its part, offered public congratulations to the Arab League on the capture of Jerusalem. Foreign Minister Molotov, addressing reporters in Moscow, stated plainly: "Whatever weapons and men the Americans send, we will send double. We oppose imperialist encroachment wherever it appears in the world, and we will fight against it as vigorously as we fought against Nazi Germany."

June 5, 1923
Hotel Sevilla
Havana, Cuba

I sat at the foot of the bed, waiting for the hour to come around. I'd rented out the rooftop restaurant at the Sevilla for the occasion, officially a private business meeting, and the hotel had asked no further questions once the money changed hands. I'd already wired New York with the time and place days earlier.

I glanced over at Boris. He was leaning toward the window, easing back the curtain with two fingers.

"What the hell are you doing?"

"Checking for anyone suspicious."

"We're in Havana, Boris. Nobody here knows who we are, except Rothstein, and he has no reason to put a bullet in either of us just yet." I shrugged. "But sure, keep doing it if it helps you sleep tonight."

"You actually trust this Rothstein character?"

"He's a criminal. Of course I don't trust him." I let that sit a beat. "But I trust his greed completely. We've made the man an obscene amount of money together already. After tonight, he's going to have more greed on his plate than he'll know what to do with."

"You've always had a gift for people. I still remember that whole business with the opium dens back in Petrograd."

I laughed despite myself. "Please, don't remind me. I still have nightmares."

I checked the clock, 6:45. Meeting started at seven sharp. "Let's head up. Fifteen minutes."

We left the room and made our way up the stairs to the rooftop. Exactly as arranged, the space was empty, reserved, quiet. I approached the staff. "Ivan Berezev. This is my associate, Boris Chekov. Room 243."

One of them stepped away briefly to confirm the reservation, then waved us through. We took a table near the center of the room. I'd come light, a pistol at my hip, a folder tucked inside my jacket. Tonight, I figured, was going to be something of an educational evening for Mr. Rothstein.

I checked the clock again. Seven, on the dot. A minute or two later I watched him step through the door, trailed by roughly half a dozen men, all of them settling into chairs across from me without a word.

"Mr. Rothstein." I extended my hand. "A genuine pleasure to finally meet the man in person. Mikheil Jugashvili."

"Pleasure's mine." He shook it, studying me with the frank curiosity of a man sizing up a business partner he'd only known through paperwork. "I've been looking forward to putting a face to the man who's made me an obscene amount of money."

"Likewise." I nodded. "Before we get into any of that, though, there's something I'd like you to see first. I'm reaching into my jacket now, slowly, so nobody's trigger finger gets excited. It's a folder, not a gun." I did exactly that, sliding it across the table toward him. "Open it. Look through everything inside, every last page. I don't want a single word out of you until you're finished."

He scowled at the request, clearly not thrilled about taking instructions at his own meeting, but he opened it anyway. He pulled out the first photograph and studied it, his expression souring almost immediately. More photographs followed. Newspaper clippings. He worked through the entire stack methodically, one piece at a time, until there was nothing left in the folder. When he finally looked up at me, his face had gone somewhere between disturbed and genuinely alarmed.

"What in God's name is this? Is this some kind of threat?"

"No." I shook my head. "A threat would be me telling you 'give me five thousand dollars or I put a bullet in you and your entire family.' What I'm doing right now is educating you about what I am, who you're doing business with. Given that I'm dealing with organized crime here, I think it's only fair you understand precisely what happens if that trust gets betrayed."

I stood, gathered the photographs and clippings back into the folder, and tucked it away. It was material from my Central Asian campaign — me personally shooting prisoners, overseeing executions, a small collection of press coverage that hadn't been especially flattering at the time. Men like Rothstein only ever responded to one currency, and it wasn't charm. "Now then," I continued, sitting back down. "I got your message. Prices are dropping across the city, and the other outfits want a slice of what I'm supplying you. Have I got that right?"

"That's right." He leaned back, exhaling. "The Italians especially, and the Irish right behind them — they've been leaning on my territory hard. Pissed off that booze prices are cratering because of what you're moving in. There've been threats against a few speakeasies tied to my operation. Honestly Mr. Jugashvili, this glut you've created has gone from a minor headache to a genuine problem."

"That's where you're wrong, Mr. Rothstein. You're thinking about this all wrong." I leaned forward slightly. "This isn't a problem. This is an opportunity. Not just for you, for every gang in New York City."

"How do you figure that?"

"You said it yourself, we've flooded the market and caused a glut with barely a year of operations running at partial capacity. My country is still rebuilding, Mr. Rothstein. Our production capacity for alcohol is only going to keep climbing from here. What you're calling a glut right now is a drop in the bucket. Eventually we will be able to ship you an entire ocean of alcohol, more than the americans could drink in a decade. That gives you real leverage. You can sell at a scale nobody else can touch, drive every competitor into the ground through sheer volume alone." I paused. "Or, you can do something considerably smarter."

"Something smarter."

"A federation." I sat back, letting the word land. "Picture this, every major organization at the table. The Jews, the blacks, the Italians, the Irish, whoever else has skin in this game. Everyone pools resources. You train soldiers together, trade intelligence, buy information as a collective rather than competing for it. You personally oversee operations, settle disputes between the different families before they turn into a bloodbath in the streets and draw heat from the cops. And behind all of it in the shadows is us. We supply the weapons. We supply the muscle if anyone needs convincing. And most importantly, we supply the product that keeps the entire machine running." I raised my remaining hand and shaped it into a rough pistol, thumb cocked back like a hammer. "With everyone under one roof, you're not running a gang anymore Mr. Rothstein. You're running a corporation. And any two-bit bootlegger or speakeasy owner stupid enough to try undercutting that arrangement—" I dropped my thumb. "Bang. Problem solved permanently, and nobody even has to ask twice."

I sat back and let the silence do some of the work for me, quietly grateful I'd burned through an entire season of Narcos in my old life and actually retained the basic architecture of how Guadalajara and Medellín had built their empires. Some knowledge, it turned out, traveled remarkably well across a hundred years and several thousand miles.

Rothstein sat with it for a moment, working through it visibly. "Mr. Jugashvili," he said finally, "I'll be honest, some version of this idea has crossed my mind before. Getting everyone into a room, sure I can manage that. Keeping them there? cooperating? That's another matter entirely." He paused. "The Italians especially. Some of them, like Maranzano's crowd and the Castellammarese flat out refuse to work with anyone who isn't Italian. Hell, half of them are skeptical of anyone who isn't specifically Sicilian."

"And?" I asked. "So kill them. I can have men handle it."

"Then every Italian family in the country turns on the federation before it's even formed."

"If it's you, the Irish, and the coloreds standing together backed by us, I'm fairly confident we could kill every last one of them. Their children too while we're at it, save everyone the trouble of them growing up with a grudge and a long memory."

That landed differently than I expected. He actually leaned back in his chair. "Mr. Jugashvili. I took you for a businessman. Not a butcher. Sounds like your time in the war back home has... reshaped your relationship with violence somewhat."

"Nonsense." I shrugged. "I'm a man of peace. I abhor violence, genuinely."

"Peace. I shudder to imagine what you'd look like if you were a man of war. The whole world would become a cemetery."

"That might become a reality given what's going to happen in Europe." I waved a hand. "But I digress, I was joking about the Italians. You're right that they'd be wary of an outsider proposing this. But they stand to lose considerably more by staying outside the federation than by joining it. I'm confident we can find an arrangement that works for everyone."

"I actually know someone inside one of the clans," Rothstein said. "Charles Luciano. Funny enough, he's a top aide under Masseria. They won't listen to an invitation from me directly, but Luciano could get them into a room."

"Problem solved." I smiled.

"Only one problem left." He held up a finger. "Here's what I need clarity on. You keep saying you'll supply muscle if someone needs convincing. What does that actually mean? Because if one of the Italian families decides to stop playing nice and I need them reminded of the arrangement, am I getting men who can't speak a word of English and draw a crowd wherever they walk? Or am I getting professionals?"

A second finger went up. "The product. How reliable is this supply chain while your country is still putting itself back together? Things are running smoothly now sure. But can you genuinely deliver an ocean of alcohol the way you're claiming? What happens the first time a shipment's delayed? Delays cost money. Delays cost credibility too, because if this federation actually gets off the ground, I'm the one making promises to buyers that I have to keep, regardless of whether your boats show up on schedule."

A third finger. "And the Soviet angle." He said it flatly, not hostile, but not softened either. "I'm a practical man Mr. Jugashvili. I don't care what flag's flying over the operation as long as the money's good and the arrangement holds. But I have to sell this to everyone else at that table. I need to know how we handle the optics, because your country doesn't exactly have a great reputation in this part of the world right now. Word gets out we're doing business with communists, the heat that comes down on all of us will make the Palmer Raids look like a picnic in Central Park." He pulled a cigarette from his jacket, lit it, drew hard, and studied me through the smoke. "I'm not saying no. Frankly, I'm already doing the math on what we'd make from this. I'm saying I need real answers before I say yes, because saying yes means staking my reputation, and potentially my life on it. And reputation in this business is worth a hell of a lot more than whatever is sitting in your ships."

I nodded, settling back into my own chair. "Mr. Rothstein, I understand every one of your concerns, truly. This is a business at the end of the day. An illegal one sure, but a business all the same, with the same fundamentals as any other." I held up a finger to match his. "On the muscle, since you'd be mediating between all these organizations, each of them would owe you operational expenses to cover the arrangement. Those expenses fund your own private muscle, more than enough to handle internal squabbles or outside rivals under normal circumstances. And if things ever spiral past that, we send our own people in. I can't give you operational specifics, that's classified at the state level, but I'll tell you this much, keep an eye on the papers, follow the Russian exile circles abroad. Quite a lot of them keep dying. Accidents. Falls. Unfortunate coincidences." I shrugged. "It's remarkably easy to arrange things when an entire state apparatus is backing the effort. Which again is why I offered earlier, if you really want, I can have the heads of the Maranzano and Castellammarese clans dead by the end of the summer. Personally I prefer the classic approach, a bullet to the back of the skull, theirs and their families both. But poison works beautifully too, and accidents are practically an art form if you have the right people."

That got his full attention. He nodded slowly. "As for the supply chain, don't lose sleep over it. That glut you're worried about exists precisely because we always ship extra. That surplus becomes your buffer, something to draw on if there's ever a short-term shortfall on your end." He leaned forward slightly. "The communist problem, as you put it, our company's officially registered out of Estonia. The alcohol crosses into Estonia first, the border guards are paid handsomely to look the other way, and everything's relabeled before it moves further. Chemical products. Rubbing alcohol. Communion wine. Whatever fits the manifest that week. We mix it in with legitimate exports, timber, furs, the usual; then we ship it out clean on paper. Our HQ is in Tallinn. Even if a shipment gets seized somewhere along the way, American authorities can't exactly stroll into Tallinn and start asking questions. And by the time they manage to get to our HQ, we'd already have relocated the entire operation somewhere else." I paused. "I can help mitigate the rest of that risk for you too if you're willing to listen."

"Mitigate how?"

"Here's the thing Mr. Rothstein. If I were the authorities looking to put you away, I wouldn't waste my time chasing bootlegging, murder, prostitution, any of that. You know what would actually put you behind bars? Tax evasion."

"Tax evasion?"

"Tax evasion." I nodded. "Forget worrying about the Italians or whichever gang's making noise this week. What should genuinely keep you up at night is a forensic accountant with a subpoena. So here's what you need to do when you get back to the states, lawyer up, properly, hire a good accountant, and start buying legitimate businesses. Restaurants, banks, cabarets, storefronts, hell, buy a few factories while you're at it. Actually operate them. Sell a real product through them. Then run the dirty money through those same books, and what comes out the other end is clean. Money laundering as I like to call it. You wash it, and it comes out clean on the other side."

He looked at me for a long moment, no suspicion left in his expression, no fear, not even the mild annoyance from earlier. Something closer to reverence, like a man who'd just watched fire get invented in front of him and was already working out what to build with it. "How long?" he asked slowly, "How long have you been planning all this?"

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you." I leaned back. "But I've got one more complaint, actually."

"A complaint?"

"Frankly, you're thinking far too small."

"Too small?"

"Far too small." I nodded. "New York's a city, sure, a big one. But don't you think you're capable of considerably more than that?"

"What exactly are you getting at?"

"I'm not talking about a city Mr. Rothstein. I'm talking about the entire fucking country. Boston, Miami, New Orleans, Detroit, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle. Bring in the Mexicans, the Blacks, the Italians, the Irish, the Chinese, your own people. Everyone, under one nationwide federation. A commission, if you like the sound of that better, all of it built on your backing. Instead of tens of millions a year, imagine tens of millions, no, maybe hundreds of millions a week."

He went quiet, took another long pull from the cigarette, and then started laughing. "I've met a lot of people in my life, Mr. Jugashvili. But you, you might be the single greediest son of a bitch I've ever sat across a table from. I came here to talk about calming things down in New York. Now you're talking about controlling every criminal organization in the country." He kept laughing. "I'm not laughing because it's stupid. I'm laughing because you actually have the resources behind you to make me pull it off. It's absurd, and it might actually work."

He sat back, the humor fading into something more focused. "Alright." Less hesitation now, real interest replacing it. "I can bring Chicago in, I know Torrio personally, he likes me, and Torrio has connections to a few of the others. Boston's Irish are going to be difficult, but I know people who know them, we can work our way in." He paused, more carefully this time. "The others though. The coloreds, the Mexicans, the Chinese." He chose the words slowly. "I don't know how you do things back in Russia. But here, even outside the South, there's real hesitation about mixing with colored folk in any kind of formal arrangement. I can get them into a room, sure. But getting the rest of the table to actually listen to them treat them as equal partners? That's going to take you personally standing there. Can you do that?"

"Mr. Rothstein." I met his eyes. "Boris here, my bodyguard, asked me before we came whether I trusted you. I was honest with him. I said no, I don't trust criminals, present company included. But I trust your greed completely, which is exactly why I sought you out. And since I trust your greed, I trust theirs just as much. So yes. I can do this. In fact, I'll be standing right there in the room with you when you bring everyone together."

"Then I'll start making calls the moment I'm back stateside. When and where do we meet?"

"Six months from now. Stockholm, Sweden. Neutral ground, if we all convene in Cuba again, it draws far too much attention, and frankly, I can't stand this heat much longer." I smiled. "I'll cover everyone's travel and accommodations personally. Best hotel in Stockholm, no expense spared. Once you've confirmed everyone's committed, let me know and I'll begin arrangements on my end."

"Stockholm." He repeated it slowly, turning it over. "Neutral ground. Nobody's city, nobody's turf, nobody's federal jurisdiction." He almost smiled. "Going to be cold as hell, though."

He reached into his jacket, pulled out a small notebook, flipped it open, and scrawled something down before tearing the page free and sliding it across. "My contact in New York, for logistics. Everything routes through him once you've got details locked in, hotel, travel, whatever needs moving or confirming stateside." He tucked the notebook away and stood. I rose with him. "Mr. Jugashvili." He extended his hand and I shook it. "I look forward to seeing you again."

"Likewise." The handshake broke, and he and his men made their way toward the door.

I sat back down, glancing at Boris. "Fuck," I said, switching over to Russian, letting my shoulders finally drop. "That was mentally exhausting." I stood again, stretching. "Well. We've still got five days left before the boat back leaves." I grinned. "I'm hitting the beach while I'm here. God knows I've earned it."

 

[Alenco98]

Every historical self insert I've read has never had the MC being exposed, I had always planned it from the start

 

[iceknight90]

He looked at me for a long moment, no suspicion left in his expression, no fear, not even the mild annoyance from earlier. Something closer to reverence, like a man who'd just watched fire get invented in front of him and was already working out what to build with it.

Click to shrink...

I absolutely love this. Mikhail has given them a technological leap in criminal enterprising.