"Do you have it? I have been waiting for hours!" said a tall man, so enveloped in his dark robe that only a close observer would have seen that his grey, grey eyes shone forth in a terrible light, reflected from the moon. As he walked over, he spoke again in his clinical, distant manner. "I feared the Germans had killed you, Boris. That would have delayed us badly."
"Yes... the bombs are all here, as am I," responded Boris, as he dropped a brown duffel bag. "You should not have worried, Ivanovich. No one shoots a small man."
Ivanovich bent over to grab the bag that had been so casually tossed down. A careful listener might have thought he heard a whisper: "There is a first for everything... my friend."
Rising, Ivanovich once again spoke, saying "What news do you have of Him?"
Boris lit a cigarrette. Smoke wafts from his mouth, and the light from the red tip gives his face a mischevious, almost devilish look.
"Lenin is-"
"Do not tarnish His name with your foul tongue," screamed Ivanovich, recoiling in disgust from the smoke. "You dirty son of a Polack! Just answer my question, and then tell me when He will make His return?"
Boris stared at the irate Ivanovich for a long, lonely while. He took in the look of devotion, the longing that made itself plain on the face of this dedicated Bolshevik, this fervent fanatic who so dearly awaited the return of his beloved leader. And for what? The icy stare? The heartless countenance? He knew that Lenin would sacrifice them both without a qualm for the sake of the Revolution... and what terrified him most was that there were men like Ivanovich, hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, who would willingly die at Lenin's whim. Who would kill for him without a thought. He shivered... but these were not new thoughts... they had become old friends of his. Like a remembered terror of childhood, they would sometime bring back bittersweet memories of better times. His thoughts turned to the time when he had been a friend of Lenin, before Lenin had become so worshipped, so legendary. Before he had lost his touch with real-
"Will you answer me, you damnable idiot?! Or shall I shoot you down like a dog?" Ivanovich drew and levelled his pistol, sighting down the barrel. "I am no German slave, no Tsarist toy. I will not miss." Ivanovich's brutal stare could penetrate the heart of a rock with its fearful might. "Shooting you would be a pleasure, something I could remember to warm me on cold nights. Answer me, insolent dog! When is the Great Visionary returning?!"
It was now Boris's turn to stare him down, disdaining even to acknowledge the pistol levelled at his breast.
"I brave the trenches, the guns, the endless bombardments... and you expect me to piss myself at the sight of some sorry coward holding a pistol? Your beloved master swears he will be here within two months. The Germans will send him to you with a train full of pamphlets and ammunition and guards. You are to use these bombs to blow the Tzar to hell."
He spat at the ground vehemently, then looked up at Ivanovich, whose face was again transfigured with an unholy joy.
"We will save the people! The Tzar will die! Socialism, the salvation of Russia, of Europe, of the Earth, will be first born into the world, into Riga, before this year is out! I am sorry, my friend, for threatening you! The news you bring is worth all the insolence that lies within your horri-"
"Damn you, and may the Devil take your Revolution! I go to my brothers on the front; they are not cowardly snakes, who wait till night to creep out and do their vile work. Go to hell, and take your damned Len-"
A pistol shot rang out, louder than the roar of a cannon in the deep silence of the meadow. Boris dropped, gasping, to the verdant grasses, staring, shocked, into the steely eyes of Ivanovich. As he writhed, silently screaming for air with a throat that was overflowing with blood, slowly slipping into the dark, still looking up into the eyes of the chuckling Ivanovich, he heard the last thing he would ever hear, "It truly was a pleasure seeing you, Boris... now go home..."
!
um... I guess I'm not needed here anymore 
