Russian government¶
The Russian government is the set of officials, guards, doctors and soldiers around President Boris Yeltsin that first holds the Biz as a captive in Moscow and then, in The Radford Horrors, treats him as a trusted foreign adviser on the paranatural.
| Type | National government and military |
| Aliases | Yeltsin's people; Russian military; security forces; the Biz's captors |
| Leader | President Boris Yeltsin |
| Notable members | The Biz's rotating guards, a colonel who travels with the president, military doctors |
| Status | Active (as of Radford Horrors 04) |
| First appearance | Radford Horrors 01 |
Overview¶
The Biz has been held in Russia for months. His earlier captors, who kicked him and questioned him about Bill Clinton, are long gone, and the newer, much friendlier ones want to know only about aliens (Radford Horrors 01). He is confined to a room in the Hotel Metropol with a polite guard always present. See also the Biz's guards and the Hotel Metropol.
History¶
Radford Horrors 01¶
The Biz's guard cries at the telenovela Los ricos también lloran and eats the borscht the Biz rejected. A higher-ranking officer summons the Biz to the president's opera box, and he sits beside Yeltsin in the Metropol's opera house. Yeltsin explains that Soviet detectors spiked in the cosmic microwave background last year and triangulated to the Marblehead incident. He unwraps a broken, half-melted copy of the team's flashlight weapon, taken from a man in very dark, welding-style sunglasses (Radford Horrors 01). The Biz also explains skinwalkers to him, and Yeltsin compares them to Koschei the Deathless; see Skinwalkers.
Yeltsin states his central fear: "I have faith in my military officers, but I do not have faith that my military officers are my military officers." He says Russia is "developing a test," and he is meeting the Biz in person for that reason. He also asks about Andrew Howard and whether the Biz is a communist (Radford Horrors 01).
Radford Horrors 03¶
Before dawn a Russian officer, whom the guard recognizes as a colonel who works closely with the president and often travels with him, takes the Biz to the presidential convoy for a trip to an "unusual aircraft crash in Oryol Oblast." Yeltsin calls the Biz "Richard." The convoy is ambushed (see the convoy ambushers); the Biz saves the concussed president and a Russian helicopter flies both away (Radford Horrors 03).
Radford Horrors 04¶
The Biz wakes in a hospital room on an evacuated floor with four armed guards outside. A guard who watched him at the hotel escorts him to a sutured but gracious Yeltsin, who says he understands the Biz may have saved his life and that intelligence thinks the attack was "opportunistic. And fairly half-assed." The Biz is flown to the Oryol crash site, where the army has put a tent over a partly excavated triangular craft. Inside, doctors have the crash survivor tubed to a Russian soldier. Asked why he is here, the survivor says "Survey," then "Not aliens. The opposite of aliens," and finally "Servitors... need resources." The doctors warn that pushing him further is very risky, so Yeltsin ends the interrogation (Radford Horrors 04). See also Servitors.
Unresolved¶
The episodes do not reveal what Yeltsin's "test" for replaced officers is, what Russia does with the crash site, or why the president takes the Biz so far into his confidence.
Trivia¶
- Yeltsin calls the Biz "Richard" once, although the character is Dick Baxter; when a guard starts to do the same in the next episode, Andre corrects it to "Mr. Baxter" (Radford Horrors 03, Radford Horrors 04).
- Andre played real opera audio during the Yeltsin scene (Radford Horrors 01).