Kaiju Agonistes

October, 1954

The meeting is ad hoc, a fraction of the presidium. No minutes are kept. The ministers speak through a smokescreen. The tips of their cigarettes glow like airport landing lights in a heavy fog, and there is murmuring and whispering around the table even after the briefing begins.

“…bringing the total to six confirmed sinkings in two days. One American submarine, one American destroyer, two Japanese fishing vessels, and two cargo ships.”

“Comrade Minister of Defense, this is…with all due respect—”

“A waste of your valuable time, Comrade Minister of the Maritime Fleet? You would counsel disinterest?”

“Not at all.” No need to be so fucking arch, you goatee-stroking dramatist, thinks the Minister of the Maritime Fleet. “The situation should be monitored, comrade, but the phenomenon is located in the American Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands. There seems to be no present risk to our assets.”

“This risk moves, comrade.”

“Comrades.” The Minister of Medium Machine Building is hoarse, his voice cracking like frost on a windowpane. “However severe these…incidents are, I hope I might be forgiven my skepticism that the cause is a sea monster!”

“Vyacheslav Aleksandrovich.” The voice of the new speaker is cultured, pleasant. Its owner could use it to curdle milk. All the whispering stops when the chairman of the new Committee for State Security speaks, and he continues: “Imagine your skepticism if someone had told you thirty years ago that an entire city might be destroyed by a single bomb. These days you build them.”

Dutiful chuckles around the room. Beria has been ten kilograms of black grit in a communal grave for nearly a year, but glad-handing the Lubyanka man remains a quality-of-life reflex.

“The American navy has photographs of the creature,” says State Security. “Reuters has film from the deck of one of the cargo ships. First Directorate is still working on securing a copy, but we are confident this footage exists.”

“Or we’re meant to be confident that it exists,” says Medium Machine Building.

“Yes, thank you, comrade, I do recall certain briefings on the fundamentals of disinformation, somewhere in my school days.” If it is possible to light a cigarette with dangerous languor, the chairman of the KGB now does this, perhaps using some kind of sorcery.

The Minister of the Maritime Fleet nervously sucks his own cigarette, tastes the smoke of a dozen others. Someone in the room smokes Gauloises. He wishes he knew who to ask for a favor.

“It is most curious, is it not,” says Defense, “that each of these attacks has taken place in daylight and somehow left behind a significant number of survivors. This beast that can outswim a destroyer and tear open a steel hull always attacks at a pace just sufficiently relaxed to allow men to abandon ship.”

“If these incidents are a fabrication, eyewitness accounts would be essential to that fabrication!” says Medium Machine Building.

“Have you any idea what a pain in the balls prepared witnesses are?” State Security jabs the smoky air. “Every one of them needs ideological clearance, briefing, rehearsal, follow-up scrutiny. Don’t get me started. Using hundreds of them would be madness. Our comrade Minister of Defense is correct to point out that this beast seems to want to show itself to witnesses. The witnesses are genuine.”

“But it could—”

“Comrade Minister of Medium Machine Building, if these were the bad old days, now would be the point at which I note that Siberia is lovely at this time of your life. Fortunately we have all recently stumbled into a more forgiving world. Also, I brought something with me that settles the issue.”

There is a series of rustling, swishing noises as aides flick documents onto the table before each minister. The men must have sonar, to operate so precisely in this haze.

“Two hours ago,” says State Security, “the American resident in Moscow made contact with the offices of both the First Secretary and the Minister of Foreign Affairs. You have his letter there. The President of the United States urgently demands formal clarification that this ‘anomalous entity’ didn’t hatch out of an egg from any basket of ours. ‘Anomalous entity,’ his words, on the diplomatic record. This would invite a historic humiliation for the Americans if they did not have absolute confidence this thing is real.”

“I still worry that Eisenhower has moved from bourbon to antifreeze.” The Minister of Communications speaks for the first time. “If we had a sea monster under our control, why would we use it to sink fishing boats in Micronesia?”

“Because proving its soundness of function would damage their narrative of global preeminence. And create the implication it might be sent somewhere more interesting,” says Defense. “Pearl Harbor, for instance. Or Chesapeake Bay.”

“Very well, comrades,” sniffs Communications. “Assuming it was an act of deliberate genius on our part to recruit the Loch Ness Monster and send it to eat palm trees, that’s still immaterial, because we don’t actually have a sea monster, do we?”

Defense and State Security are both silent.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” says Communications.

“My people didn’t make a sea monster,” blurts the goggle-eyed old stick from the State Committee for the Introduction of New Technologies. “We don’t even have an applicable basis in theory! So who did? Comrade Lysenko?”

Not bloody likely, thinks the Minister of the Maritime Fleet. If the aquatic beast is alive, that’s sufficient disproof of Lysenko’s involvement. This is not the sort of opinion one shares; he takes a long drag on his cigarette, as though forcing the thought back into the depths of his skull, away from the daylight into which it must never stray.

“Comrades,” says Defense. He uses a familiar, grandfatherly tone of voice that implies a train is leaving the station and everyone present is expected aboard. “Let us not get hung up on the question of whether or not we possess a…sea monster. Of course we don’t. The real issue is, now that sea monsters are a recognized factor, the current strategic calculus does not allow the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics to fully disavow the possibility that it possesses or could some day possess a…sea monster.”

“So we merely claim the beast is ours,” says the New Technologies man. “As an act of military and scientific intimidation?”

“Jesus,” says State Security. “You must come to my office to play cards sometime. Bring a lot of money. Be sensible, comrade.”

“We would be very excited to get our hands on a current-generation American atomic device,” says Defense. “We are less interested in receiving several hundred at once. So no, we will not be claiming any direct responsibility for sinking their fucking warships.”

“Also, if we claimed we had a monster, our fraternal socialist comrades in North Korea would claim they had a bigger one,” says Foreign Affairs. “Yap yap yap, those bastards.”

“So…we disavow responsibility for this specific entity,” says the Minister of the Maritime Fleet, slowly, believing he gets the idea. “Yet simultaneously imply that its existence is no surprise to us…and we may already be experimenting with the deployment of a similar…asset?”

“Precisely,” says State Security. “To be ominous yet unverifiable. That is living the dream, comrades.”

“And what will the Micronesians or the Japanese think about all this?” says Communications.

“You know, I’ve been here for some time, and I’ve never noticed a Ministry for Apologizing to the Japanese anywhere in this complex,” says Defense.

“Who took this decision?” insists Communications.

“The Soviet people, comrade, in their usual fashion.”

“No, I specifically mean—where are comrades Khrushchev and Malenkov in all of this?”

“Opening one another’s mail,” says State Security. “Sending me requests to open the other’s mail. Casting hexes at each other. I don’t know, the usual shit. They’re happy, comrade, and you should be happy for them. They’ve been consulted. They love being consulted.”

“Comrades, I have no desire to be an obstructionist,” lies Communications. “I am merely concerned we could talk ourselves into looking like real assholes if the Americans make some fresh discovery about this thing that casts our statements into doubt!”

“I can acknowledge some justice in your worries, Comrade Minister of Communications,” says State Security. “However, we will only be inviting the Americans to leap to a conclusion. Our purpose, as ever, is to instill as much doubt as possible in the American decision-making process.”

“Comrades,” says the New Technologies man, hesitantly, “should it not also be our purpose to determine the true origin point of this anomalous entity, for cultural and scientific reasons?”

“So long as it continues to express a preference for assets of the capitalist bloc in its dining habits, its true origin is irrelevant. Thank you, comrades.” The Minister of Defense pushes back his chair with an ear-piercing scrape. “I believe that covers everything. Additional directives will be issued as circumstances require. This unrecorded meeting related to matters of special importance to the state did not take place.”

“Remember, Siberia is lovely at this time of your life,” says State Security with a grin.

The Minister of the Maritime Fleet has just decided he might make it out of the room alive when, in the press of wide-eyed slump-shouldered men trying to squeeze out the door, he feels the hand of State Security take him softly by the elbow.

“Comrade Minister,” the man says in a low voice, “we note that you have already used informal channels to reroute some of our far east shipping even further away from the apparent danger zone. You are to be congratulated for your discretion. You should prepare additional instructions to this effect. Expand the zone of exclusion by two hundred nautical miles on all sides, indefinitely, and effect this change with the same degree of subtlety.”

“I…uh, of course. I serve the Soviet Union, comrade.” Some of the sudden chill in his bowels goes away. Some. “Do you, uh, really think we can convince the Americans that Marxism-Leninism might have a live dinosaur on its payroll?”

The Chairman of the Committee for State Security raises one eyebrow, a pale brown scruff imbued with concentrated promise of dread. Then he smiles and waves a hand at the other departing ministers.

“As if it’s entirely without precedent?”