The walk back from the nameless café was silent. The image of Elena shaking hands with the Dubai shark was burned into Rajendra's mind. It wasn't anger he felt; it was a cold, professional assessment. He had been outmaneuvered on her home ground. The lesson was clear: in Moscow, information and local muscle were more valuable than Void-Coins.
Back in Anya's apartment, the stark reality of the room mirrored his situation. He was a stranger in a collapsing empire, his best-laid plan in tatters.
Anya watched him as he stood by the small window, staring at the concrete wilderness. "You need a drink," she stated. "But not vodka. That is for fools and celebrating." She went to a small cabinet and pulled out a bottle. It was Georgian red wine, the label faded. "This is for thinking."
She poured two glasses of the deep, purple liquid. They sat at her small table. The wine was rough, tannic, but full of a stubborn, earthy life.
"So," Anya said, sipping. "Your woman has sold you out. She has chosen a powerful friend. What will you do? Go back to India with your tail between your legs?"
Rajendra took a long drink. The wine warmed a path down his throat. "No. I came here because the Soviet Union is a giant fire sale. Everything must go. I just picked the wrong item—and the wrong guide."
"Fire sale," Anya repeated the English term, a grim smile touching her lips. "A good description. So you are a bargain hunter. What is it you hunt? Not just diesel."
"Opportunity," he said, the wine loosening his tongue. "Your country is sitting on mountains of things the world wants. Oil, gas, minerals, timber, factories. But it is all locked in a system that is… suffocating. The bureaucracy is a corpse that won't stop twitching. The central planning is a joke. It's not an economy; it's a funeral procession."
Anya's eyes hardened, but not in offense. In recognition. "And you think you can do better? A foreigner?"
"I'm a merchant. I see waste, and I see profit. Your system creates waste on an epic scale. That means the profit, when it comes, will be epic too." He leaned forward. "Your army—you move things. You are a logistics coordinator. You know what I see? I see a military logistics network that could be the best supply chain in the world, lying unused, moving useless boxes from one rotting warehouse to another. It's a tragedy."
She swirled her wine, thoughtful. "We are an army. We defend the motherland. We are not a… delivery service for merchants."
"What are you defending now?" he asked quietly. "Empty shelves? Rotting potatoes? The right to stand in line for hours? The motherland is sick, Captain. You can't defend a patient by shooting the disease. You need medicine. Or a… transplant."
He was getting drunk. The wine and the frustration and the strange, intense company were mixing. The grand, dangerous ideas he usually kept locked down were bubbling up.
"A transplant?" she asked, her voice low.
"New blood. New ideas. You don't fix this by patching the old system. It's a corpse. You need something new built on the old bones." He gestured vaguely. "All these republics, all these regions… they're pulling away. They want to be free. But free to do what? To become poor, squabbling little countries, begging from the West? It's stupid."
"What is the alternative?" There was a sharp, curious edge to her voice now.
"Why break apart?" he said, the idea forming as he spoke, half-baked, grandiose. "Why not… expand?"
Anya laughed, a short, sharp sound. "Expand? We cannot feed ourselves. We cannot clothe ourselves. The Afghan war is bleeding us dry. Expand where? To the moon?"
"Not geographically," Rajendra said, his eyes gleaming in the dim light. "In concept. You have a union, yes? But it's a prison. The center commands, the regions obey. They hate it. So change the concept." He took another gulp of wine. "What if the center wasn't a commander… but a bank? A guarantor? What if Moscow wasn't a politburo of old men giving orders, but… an emperor."
The word hung in the air, absurd and electrifying.
"An emperor," Anya repeated, utterly still.
"Not a tsar. A symbol. A single, strong executive authority. An CEO of the empire. And below him, the republics… they become not slaves, but franchises. Kingdoms. Run by their own local bosses—kings, if you like. They keep their culture, their language. But they are part of the brand. The 'Soviet' brand is poisoned. So you create a new one. The 'Eurasian Collective' or something. Moscow provides the military shield, the currency, the central bank, the foreign policy. The local kingdoms handle their own farms, their own factories, their own business. They pay a tax to the center for protection and the common market."
He was rambling, painting a picture with broad, drunk strokes. But Anya wasn't laughing anymore. She was listening, her grey eyes fixed on him like laser points.
"You are talking about replacing communism with… feudalism. With a corporate structure."
"I'm talking about what works!" he said, slapping the table softly. "People understand kings. They understand profit. They don't understand five-year plans that produce no plan and no food. Your system has killed the human spirit. I'm talking about giving it a reason to live again. Ambition. Pride. Ownership."
"And who would be this… emperor?" she asked, her voice dangerously soft.
"Someone strong. Someone the military would follow. Someone who could cut the Gordian knot of the bureaucracy with a sword. A dictator, yes. But a benevolent one. A CEO-dictator whose success is measured not in party loyalty, but in GDP. In full shops. In satellites launched."
He fell back in his chair, the burst of energy leaving him. The room was silent save for the faint hiss of the radiator. He had just outlined a seditious, impossible fantasy to a Soviet army captain.
Anya finished her wine, poured herself another glass, and topped his up. She was quiet for a long time.
"You are a very dangerous man, Rajendra Shakuniya," she said finally. "Not because you are ruthless. But because you can see the hunger, and you are not afraid to name the meal."
She stood up and walked to the window, looking out at the empire in its death throes. "This idea… it is a fairy tale. The politburo, the KGB, the party apparatus… they are hydras. You cannot reason with them. You can only cut off all their heads at once."
"Then maybe it's time for a new kind of soldier," Rajendra said from the table, his voice slurry but clear. "Not one who follows orders, but one who sees the battlefield for what it is… and decides to redraw the map."
Anya turned from the window. She looked at him—the drunk, desperate Indian merchant spinning empires from wine and despair. She saw no KGB agent. No party spy. She saw only a wild, impractical opportunity.
"Get some sleep," she said, her tone unreadable. "Your head will hurt in the morning. And fairy tales always seem foolish in the daylight."
He stumbled to the sofa. As he lay down, the room spinning gently, his last conscious thought wasn't of Elena or diesel.
It was a single, blazing question that felt both insane and inevitable:
What if we just make it bigger? What if we make it unstoppable?