Chapter 116:

Chapter 116:

Chapter 116

“Proceed.”

“Yes, Comrade Secretary!”

A small dacha (villa) near Moscow was filled with people who could be considered the top brass of the Soviet political and military circles.

As I gave the order, the agents saluted crisply and dispersed to their positions.

The people who stayed behind either smiled or cheered quietly.

They had also been waiting for this moment eagerly.

“Well... It’s inevitable, isn’t it?”

“Yes. How can a person...”

They all nodded in agreement with my words.

Of course, I also felt a pang of guilt inside.

“Let’s just wait and see.”

Soon, the room was filled with a savory, fragrant, and salty smell.

The agents opened the door and entered with dignified steps, carrying heavy trays one by one.

“Mm... Oh... Ah... Yes...”

This old body needed a strict diet control, weight loss, exercise, and health care to live well for another day.

But sometimes, humans needed some pleasure.

The pleasure of chicken.

I picked up a hot and crispy chicken leg that had just been fried and bit into it.

The oily and salty taste and the juice burst into my mouth with a pop!

“Mmm...!”

The politicians also reached for the chicken hastily.

They were old enough to have eaten their fill, but they fought over certain parts or ate messily with their hands covered in grease.

They showed all kinds of disgraceful behavior, but God would forgive them. Amen.

“How is the development of ‘that’ going?”

“Huh? Which one are you talking about... Ah!”

Beria was momentarily flustered by my sudden question, then exclaimed as if he realized something. But he quickly glanced around.

“Comrade Secretary, if you want to talk about ‘that’, wouldn’t it be better to go somewhere with fewer people?”

“What?”

“Ahem... It’s a secret after all...”

He tore off a chicken leg like a vulture and grabbed another one, earning Kalinin’s resentful gaze. Beria whispered to me.

“No, not that ‘that’! The other ‘that’! Chef?”

“Oh... Ah... If you mean the seasoning sauce, it will be ready soon.”

“Very good. This fried chicken is good, but wouldn’t it be delicious if we coated it with seasoning sauce? What do you think?”

Everyone nodded sincerely, as if they couldn’t be more sincere.

Of course, they couldn’t answer properly because their mouths were full of chicken.

“Kalinin, you should take the lead in spreading this new cuisine. This project will be a good way to show the excellence of Soviet culture to the Soviet and world people. Even if they are anti-communists, once they taste it...”

“Mumble mumble... Of course! Comrade Secretary.”

The name of this project led by Kalinin was Kalinin Fried Chicken.

Under this brand name, we planned to launch a franchise business from the United States.

He diligently tore off the chicken, which was made according to the recipe of KFC’s hot crispy chicken.

But everyone else just laughed along.

I also felt a bit tipsy after drinking a few glasses. I had to drink some alcohol to eat greasy chicken, right? That was my excuse. Maybe I drank more than I thought.

“...Dad, I’m going in now.”

“Huh? Ah... Svetlana.”

In the midst of the noisy party, I suddenly heard someone calling me and turned around in surprise.

‘My’ daughter. Svetlana looked at me with a tired face. I knew she was there because I brought her with me for dinner at the dacha for the convenience of security...

This kind of place must have been boring for a fifteen-year-old girl. It was nothing fun for her to see old men drinking and talking and making a mess.

She wore a plain dress and fiddled with a notebook that she held in both hands.

She looked nervous. If only her brothers were here, or her mother.

But they all left. Only the young girl and the ‘man of steel’ father remained.

Whether he was a college student in his twenties who had no girlfriend, let alone children, or a cunning politician in his sixties who had the largest country in the world in his hands, he didn’t know how to deal with this situation properly.

“Just... go ahead.”

She nodded. Svetlana bowed her head and walked away silently, clutching her notebook to her chest.

What was in that notebook? I was curious, but I couldn’t bring myself to ask her to hand it over. I just stared at the back of her head.

Beria, who leaned against the wall and observed the people with an interested look, walked over to me with his bulky body and whispered.

“Is there any problem, Comrade Secretary? Svetlana seems to be having a hard time mentally...”

“Do you think so too?”

Beria nodded cautiously. He knew well about the ‘rumors’ that his enemies spread about him.

That he liked young children.

That rumor persisted despite his attempts to trace the source with the NKVD. Who wouldn’t be wary of him as a father with a daughter?

“Hmm... Maybe it’s because she doesn’t have any friends her age. The Kremlin is not a good place for girls.”

“...”

“If you need, I can arrange some children who can be her friends. Wouldn’t it help if she had one or two of them by her side?”

He spoke with a very careful and thoughtful voice, as if he was worried about me and Svetlana.

One of the reasons why Beria gained Stalin’s trust in real history was similar to this.

He was the head of the Georgian branch of the Soviet Communist Party and took care of Stalin’s old mother Keke (Ekaterina Geladze, nickname Keke).

He impressed Moscow by taking care of Stalin’s ‘weak spot’, his mother, with zeal and passion.

He eventually became the top man of the Soviet intelligence agency by seizing the opportunity of the Great Purge.

“...Do you have any candidates?”

“I will look into it and report to you, Comrade Secretary.”

I nodded and he smiled slyly. He switched from a thoughtful attitude to a cheerful and obedient subordinate.

“By the way, Comrade Secretary. The song you mentioned is very popular! Wasn’t Comrade Budenny’s dance very interesting?”

“Hahaha, yes. It was funny.”

“Yes, yes. Especially using Comrade Budenny’s usual image to dress up like a Khan of Mongolia was very witty.”

His tongue was slick as if it was greased. He balanced between a crafty traitor and a loyal dog to me.

“By the way, how about using that for propaganda?”

“Propaganda? You mean propaganda?”

“Yes. Since the German bastards are very afraid of our cavalry, we can use the image of the cavalry...”

He kept talking after that, but I couldn’t understand him well as I got more drunk. But he was competent enough to do well on his own.

No one could match his competence, even if they didn’t know him.

“You do your best. I should go in soon.”