Chapter 1705: Chapter 1684: The Summoning Order

Saint Petersburg.

Tarta opened his eyes, sat up from the bed, and reached out to the bedside to grab a bottle of wine, but the weight in his hand told him the bottle was already empty. So he casually tossed the bottle aside, yawned, and looked at the sun outside the window.

After sitting drowsily for a while, Tarta jumped out of bed and casually threw on a coat that smelled foul. Feeling that it was time to wash the clothes, he took off the coat he had put on, tossed it onto the sofa, and picked up a short-sleeved T-shirt. However, upon finding the T-shirt smelled even worse, he sighed and retrieved the coat he had discarded, putting it back on.

Walking through the litter of glass bottles and trash, Tarta left his apartment and stepped onto the sunlit street, heading toward the nearest convenience store.

After purchasing four bottles of vodka and two large loaves of bread, Tarta began his way home. He stopped when he passed the newsstand at the street corner.

He placed his items by his feet, picked up a labor newspaper, quickly scanned the advertisement section, folded the newspaper back and put it in its place, picked up his items, and started walking again, leisurely.

The vendor was not surprised by this; the old man dressed in dirty, stinking clothes, always reeked of alcohol, came to peruse the newspaper almost daily. However, he never lingered too long, so the vendor let him be. He was just an old, solitary drunk anyway; if he wanted to read, let him read. Perhaps one day he’d freeze to death on the street after drinking too much one winter night.

This time was different, though. After the old drunk had walked away, he soon returned. Looking puzzled, he picked up that same newspaper and looked again more carefully.

Finally, Tarta rolled up the newspaper, handed over one hundred rubles to the vendor, and said softly, “One labor newspaper.”

Utterly astonished, the vendor took the hundred ruble bill. This old drunk had been mooching his newspaper for eleven years, showing up as reliably as rain as long as he set up his stall, yet now he wanted to pay for one.

Shocked by this, the vendor held the hundred ruble bill. Turning on his heel, Tarta began to walk away, prompting the vendor to shout, “You’re leaving your stuff! And your change!”

“No need; it’s all yours.”

Hastily tossing out these words, Tarta started walking faster until he broke into a run.

He ran back to his place that could well be called a junkyard, opened the door, and wondered for the first time how he had lived in such an environment for over a decade. He kicked aside the trash on the floor, made his way to the bedroom, and tossed everything on the bed to one side, then pulled the mattress aside until he pulled out a large box from beneath it.

After struggling to get the box out, seeing the layer of dust covering it, Tarta suddenly began to cry, his tears falling onto the dusty box, creating muddy spots.

Tarta opened the box; it was filled with guns—long guns, short guns, silencers, bullets. After fondling each of the six guns in the box one by one, Tarta closed the box again.

“The stuff is still here, and I’m still alive.”

Muttering to himself, Tarta firmly nodded and said with resolve, “Then make the call, let’s set off!”

As Tarta made up his mind to depart, outside Voronezh, Glewatov was preparing to have lunch on his farm.

Glewatov didn’t look like a farmer, but his wife was a typical farm woman. She was obese and strong, able to handle household tasks and farm chores alike, and when she nagged, it was particularly tiresome.

“The harvester needs repairs; you should have someone fix it. You can’t wait until the harvest to have it repaired; by then it’ll be too late. Olya! Don’t spill the soup on the table!”

Glewatov married late, so his kids were relatively young compared to his age.

After wiping the soup off the table for his youngest daughter, Glewatov continued to sip his soup, listening to his wife’s nagging.

“Your son always wants to go to the big city; he doesn’t want to stay here. But his studies aren’t good. What can he do in the big city? You need to rein him in! You can’t let him loaf around all day!”

Glewatov remained silent until he heard the sound of a car outside, and soon, their son, who his wife described as idle, had returned.

“Dad, your newspaper.”

Glewatov lived outside the city, where there were no newspapers for sale. But his son went to school in the city, so he could bring the newspaper after school. Today, however, his son returned earlier.

Flipping open the newspaper, Glewatov’s spoon fell, landing in his bowl of soup.

“I’m leaving.”

He said to his wife and two children, who were still chattering away, and when he realized he didn’t have their attention, Glewatov raised his voice and loudly said, “I’m leaving. I might come back, or I might not.”

Moscow, in a large supermarket, dressed impeccably and exuding an elegant elder’s demeanor, Rostotsky sidestepped to avoid a staff member pushing a cart, and a chocolate bar had already slipped into his sleeve.

Rostotsky liked to take things right under surveillance cameras. Although he didn’t like being a supermarket thief, it was lunchtime, so he had to prepare lunch for himself.

As he passed by the shelves with alcohol, Rostotsky picked up and looked at several brands but, dissatisfied, put them back. Then he went to the vegetable section, selected a fresh cucumber, and subsequently picked a nice apple and a sausage.

Finally, Rostotsky walked to the checkout counter, placed down a pack of gum, and smiled, “Checking out, how much?”

After paying for the pack of gum, Rostotsky left the supermarket, glanced around, and started walking toward a newsstand. As he brushed past a man, he swiftly extracted the long wallet from the man’s back pocket.

Quickly opening the wallet and pulling out a ten ruble bill, Rostotsky called out loudly to the man walking briskly away, “Hey, hey, stop, young man, this seems like you dropped it, right?”

The young man called to stop halted his steps, looked at Rostotsky with a puzzled expression, then noticed his wallet, and gratefully said, “Oh, thank you, I’m really grateful to you, this is indeed my wallet.”

With a serious expression, Rostotsky said, “Be careful, don’t put it in your back pocket again, it’s easy to fall out and also easy to be stolen. I just picked it up, check if anything’s missing.”

After returning the wallet to the young man who was deeply grateful to him, Rostotsky walked to the newsstand, took out the ten ruble note, and loudly said, “One copy of Labor Daily.”

With his left hand holding the newspaper and his right hand handing over the money, beneath the newspaper was still hidden a magazine popular among adults; Rostotsky always liked playing such little tricks.

Rostotsky came to a park, found an empty bench, and sat down. He spread out the newspaper, magically extracting items and placing them on the spread-out newspaper.

An apple, an orange, a piece of chocolate, a cucumber, some black bread, a bottle of vodka, a small can of caviar, a small piece of sausage, all just enough to constitute Rostotsky’s lunch.

While having lunch, Rostotsky was enjoying his magazine, and when he finished lunch, he wrapped up the trash in the newspaper’s front page and threw it all into the trash bin.

He never looked at news when reading the newspaper; he only looked at advertisements.

When Rostotsky saw the advertisements, he first froze, then holding the newspaper, he began to cry.

After crying for a while, Rostotsky took out his phone and dialed the number on the newspaper. With someone answering the call, he still spoke with a sob in his voice, “Hello, I’m the Magician, who are you, why did you issue the gathering order, why issue it now, why didn’t you issue the gathering order earlier? The thief is dead, he’s dead; he’s been waiting for someone to summon him, but he’s already dead!”

Chuchikov City, in a headquarters base of the Russian Military Intelligence Directorate, also known as GRU, Lebyazhef left his dorm as usual, heading to the cafeteria to prepare his lunch.

GRU was almost unaffected in the disintegration of the Soviet Union and Lebyazhef, having come here from the very first day of the Soviet Union’s breakup, remained here to this day.

Lebyazhef no longer held any position in GRU, but everyone who saw him, mainly officers, would stand at attention and salute him, respectfully saying “Hello, Instructor,” except for those new recruits, who were curious why this always stern-looking, gray-haired old man preferred eating in the soldiers’ mess.

Lebyazhef just didn’t like going to the officer mess; he preferred the soldiers’ mess.

Although he no longer held any position and had reached retirement age, Lebyazhef still had a dorm in this base. He was the only one allowed to wear civilian clothes, the only one able to come and go freely without any approval, be it for dining in whichever mess he wanted, it was his choice.

After finishing lunch, Lebyazhef went to the reading room because it contained the newspaper he wanted to read.

When Lebyazhef saw the newspaper and found that advertisement, he reflected for a long time, a very long time.

Finally, Lebyazhef stood up, put the newspaper back in its place, and instead of returning to his officer’s dorm as usual, he headed toward the entrance of the base.

Lebyazhef encountered a few people along the way, nodding at each officer who saluted him, then continued calmly walking toward the gate.

Without saying anything to anyone, without needing to report to anyone, Lebyazhef slowly walked out of the heavily guarded base.