By Chris Emejuru
Overview of the novel
An Englishman of Ukrainian father, and a secret Ukrainian freedom fighter of fanatical convictions, battles to draw world attention to the Soviet suppression of nationalists in its republic of Ukraine. The first plot sees him successfully make contact with an escaped Ukrainian nationalist who was rescued nearly dead on a raft near the coast of Turkey. He then goes to Ukraine, meets up with the other nationalists and—with others—helps them procure hardware for an operation targeted at showing that the Russians were not invincible, the assassination of the KGB chief. This operation goes smoothly and the assassination is carried out. But the next operation, to give a news conference in Israel to shame Russia by announcing the assassination, does not quite succeed.
Two Jewish-Ukrainian men successfully hijack a Russian plane forcing it to land in Germany. Another set of men led by the same Englishman hijack a brand new oil tanker laden with 1 million tons of crude oil in the North Sea. They threaten to spill the crude and murder the crew with bomb explosions unless the two men held in Berlin were allowed unfettered passage to Israel. Then the real drama and anxiety begins.
The president of the US has to make a decision when the Russians declare they won’t sign a nuclear disarmament treaty just negotiated if the terrorists’ demands were met and the two men were allowed to get to Israel. The Russians want to save face without explaining things to the US president, although the US president does discover their dilemma. The alternatives the US president has to consider each would lead to deaths: Give in to the terrorists, and war with Russia—or at least more military spending—would be imminent. Give in to Russia, and the tanker would be destroyed with oil spills affecting England and several European nations.
Eventually a tricky solution is adopted. The oil tanker hijackers are made to think their demands would be met. The two men are allowed to Israel. But they were secretly drugged with poison capsules that would release the poison into their blood after several hours, leading to instant death. The tanker hijackers are fooled, and once they see their compatriots safely arrive in Israel they bade goodbye to the tanker, and make to escape. But neither they nor their Jewish colleagues live to see the end of the day. The Russians are happy and the Americans too.
An interesting twist to the plot: The British agent Munro realized at the end that the Russian woman he fell in love with in the past, that he met again in the present and thought he was running with the code name of Nightingale, obtaining through her top secret information about meetings of the Politburo for passage to the West, had been in actual fact running him and controlled directly by the Russian leader who had used her as his only avenue for getting across to the American leader the true position of the ongoing fight in the Russian leadership, between those that wanted war and he that wanted peace.
Selected Quotes
Drake’s whispered start of introduction to the rescued castaway: ‘Shche ne vmerla Ukraina.’ … The words mean, literally, ‘Ukraine is not dead’ but a looser translation would be, ‘Ukraine lives on’. They are the first words of the Ukrainian national anthem, banned by the Russian masters, and would be instantly recognizable by a nationally conscious Ukrainian.Prologue, page 13
An echo of the present accusations of Fulanization or islamization agenda in Nigeria: In the fourteen republics ruled by the Russian Republic are several score identifiable non-Russian nations, and the biggest and perhaps the most nationally conscious is the Ukraine. By 1982 the Great Russian state numbered only 120 millions out of the 250; the next most populous and richest with 70 millions was Ukraine, which was one reason why under tsars and Politburo the Ukraine had always been singled out for special attention and particularly ruthless Russification.Page 16
One of the resources available to the US President, the Condor satellites: Flying higher than anything before, using cameras of a sophistication that could show close-up a human fingernail from two hundred miles, through fog, rain, hail, snow, cloud and night, the Condors were the latest and the best. … The satellites were travelling at over 40,000 land miles per hour; the globe was spinning with the hours, tilting with the seasons. The computations and permutations were astronomical, but the computers solved them. By 1980 the US President had twenty-four-hour access to every square inch of the world’s surface at the touch of a button by simultaneous transmission.Chapter 1, page 24
A survey of the non-Russians at the Politburo table, a measure of things to come or already here in Nigeria?: There were the three non-Russians … from Vilnius, Lithuania; … from Tbilisi; and … an oriental and born a Moslem. The presence of each was a sop to the minorities, but in fact each had paid the price to be there. Each had been first party secretary for his republic… Each had overlorded programmes of vigorous repression against their fellow nationals, crushing dissidents, nationalists, poets, writers, artists, intelligentsia and workers who had even hinted at a less than one hundred per cent acceptance of the rule of Great Russia over them. Each could not go back without the protection of Moscow…Chapter 2, page 59
The suppression of a workers protest in Novocherkassk in 1962 brings to mind the massacre on October 20, 2020 at Lekki tollgate, Lagos, of #EndSARS protesters, as well as in the South East and other places: The response of Moscow was massive. Every single line, every road, every telephone, every track in and out of Novocherkassk was sealed. The city became a vacuum, so the news should not leak out. Two divisions of KGB special troops had to be drafted to finish off the affair and mop up the rioters. There were eighty-six civilians shot down in the streets, over three hundred wounded. None ever returned home, none were buried locally. Not only the wounded, but every single member of every family of a dead or wounded man, woman or child, was deported to the camps of Gulag, lest they persist in asking after their relatives and thus keeping memory of the affair alive. Every trace was wiped out…Page 61-62
Corrupt public officials did not only start and flourish in Nigeria, Ghana and other African countries, as some would want us to believe. See how lethal weapons used for the assassination of the KGB chief were smuggled into Soviet Ukraine through the seaport of Odessa: The whole port area of Odessa is cordoned off from the city and its citizens by a high chain fence, topped with barbed wire and arc lights.… Astride the entrance gate is a long, narrow shed, with one door inside the port area and one on the outside. The party from the [boat] entered the first door with Constantine in charge. There was a long counter, attended by one customs man, and a passport desk attended by an immigration officer and a militiaman. All three looked scruffy and exceptionally bored. Constantine approached the customs man and dumped his shoulder-bag on the counter. The official opened it and extracted a bottle of whisky. Constantine gestured that it was a present from one to the other. The customs man managed a friendly nod and placed the bottle beneath his table.… Constantine clasped a brawny arm round Drake and pointed to him. ‘Droog’ he said and beamed widely. The customs man nodded that he understood the newcomer was the Greek carpenter’s friend and should be recognized as such. Drake smiled broadly. He stood back, eyeing the customs man as an outfitter eyes a customer. Then he stepped forward, slipped off the sheepskin coat and held it out, indicating that he and the customs man were about the same size. The official did not bother to try it on; it was a fine coat, worth a month’s salary at least. He smiled his acknowledgement, placed the coat under the table and waved the entire party through.…
Just after eight that evening Drake came through with his first consignment. He saluted jovially at the customs man, who waved him on and called to his colleague at the passport desk. The immigration man handed out a shore pass in exchange for his passport, jerked his chin towards the open door to the city of Odessa and Drake was through.Chapter 7, page 165-67
The Ukrainian freedom fighter’s speech, after hijacking the tanker carrying one million tons of crude: ‘… But for years my land, my people, have been occupied, persecuted, imprisoned, killed. And no one cared a shit. Now I threaten to kill one single man, or hit Western Europe in the pocket, and you’ll see what they do. Suddenly it’s a disaster. But for me, the slavery of my land, that is the disaster.’Chapter 12, page 273
It seems freedom fighters won’t be taken seriously unless they do terrible things. Hear the discussion by the gathering of brains in the UK in response to the hijacking of the tanker: ‘… The only ones who fit into that category are those of the Jewish Defense League. But so far they just demonstrate and throw things. In our files we haven’t had Jews threatening to blow people to pieces to free their friends…’Chapter 13, page 301
Talk about politicians and hypocrisy: Adam Munro looked across at [the American President] with no sympathy. In his time he had learned that, in principle, politicians have little enough objection to loss of life, provided that they personally cannot be seen publicly to have had anything to do with it.Chapter 17, page 401
Talk about Russians’ patriotism and the indivisibility of the then Soviet Union. Hear the hero terrorist leader: ‘Damn and blast their patriotism,’ he shouted, rising to his feet. ‘I am sick and tired of hearing Western writers and liberals go on and on about this so-called marvellous Russian patriotism.… What kind of patriotism is it that can only feed on the destruction of other people’s love of homeland? What about my patriotism… What about Georgians, Armenians, Lithuanians, Estonians, Latvians? Are they not allowed any patriotism? Must it all be sublimated to this endless and sickening love of Russia?… I hate their bloody patriotism. It is mere chauvinism and always has been, since Peter and Ivan. It can only exist through conquest and slavery of other surrounding nations.… One day, maybe not too long from now, the Russian empire will begin to crack. One day soon, the Romanians will exercise their patriotism, and the Poles and Czechs. Followed by the Germans and Hungarians. And the Balts and Ukrainians, the Georgians and Armenians. The Russian empire will crack and crumble, the way the Roman and British empires cracked, because at last the arrogance of their mandarins became insufferable…’Page 409-410
How the two Ukrainian Jews that assassinated the head of the KGB were eventually silenced by British agent Munro, to avert looming world war that would be started by the Russians should their action be made public, is what Munro told the American President they called “the Devil’s Alternative”. Pretending to be a doctor to examine them in their separate jail cells, he forcefully got them to inhale a drug and under its mesmerizing influence, to willingly swallow a capsule, a delayed-action poisonous capsule, before they were taken to Israel as demanded by their friends threatening to blow up a tanker. As explained to a perplexed Jewish leader by an aide: ‘It is possible to design and make a capsule like this. It has two halves; one is threaded so that it screws into the other half just before it is swallowed.… One half of the capsule is of a ceramic substance, immune both to the acidic effects of the gastric juices of the human stomach, and to the effects of the much stronger acid inside it. And strong enough not to be broken by the muscles of the throat when it is swallowed.… The other half is of a plastic compound, tough enough to withstand the digestive juices, but not enough to resist the acid. In the second portion lies the cyanide. Between the two is a copper membrane. The two halves are screwed together; the acid begins to burn away at the copper wafer. The capsule is swallowed. Several hours later, depending on the thickness of the copper, the acid burns through.… When the acid penetrates the copper membrane, it quickly cuts through the plastic of the second chamber, and the cyanide floods out into the body system. I believe it can be extended up to ten ours, by which time the indigestible capsule has reached the lower bowel. Once the poison is out, the blood absorbs it quickly and carries it to the heart.’Chapter 20, page 454-455