Liberation Movements

Peter

His walk north from the Sultan Inn was long and overly strenuous, his suitcase catching knees and earning him quick, dark looks. So, despite his desire for anonymity, he flagged a taxi at a crowded intersection and settled into the hot backseat.

“Alo,” said the driver.

“The Hotel Erboy.”

Peter had been in the Ministry since 1968, brought in by the moderately legendary Colonel Brano Oleksy Sev. Stories went around about the peculiar small man who usually chose not to speak but instead leveled his piercing gaze on you until the nervousness shook you to pieces. Colonel Sev had arrived at the apartment and mistaken him for the other man- Comrade Private Stanislav Klym? In his shock, Peter had said, Yes?

After that first week of security interrogations and the final uncovering of his true identity, Peter-now Ludvik Mas-spent a year training in those barracks outside Dibrivka, the “secret school” where the techniques of intelligence and subterfuge were reduced to dry lesson plans.

He left the school fit and clearheaded and bursting with the desire to please, so he worked hard for two years at the menial intelligence jobs handed out to the lower ranks. Pick up this man. Camp out in this room and keep the audiotape recording. Take this package to there. Destroy these documents.

He’d followed his orders well up until December 1971. In the Ministry headquarters on Yalta Boulevard he’d taken a bulky file downstairs to the incinerator, but on the way stepped into a bathroom. He closed himself into a stall and began to read.

Why should he not share in the state’s secrets?

The file began with an overview of the history of the USSR’s studies into “psychotronics,” beginning with Bernard Bernardovich Kazhinsky’s Tblisi experiments into telepathy, which led, in 1922, to an address on “human thought-electricity” to the All-Russian Congress of the Association of Naturalists. Later, Leonid L. Vasiliev took up the mantle, focusing on the use of mental suggestion in his 1962 book, Biological Radio Communication. And in 1966, sixty Russian researchers were brought to Academgorodok, or Science City, on the Ob River in western Siberia, to work in the Institute of Automation and Electrometry’s Special Department Number 8. Because of a lack of results, the entire department was closed in 1969.

This historical summary had been used to justify the continued use of the research institute in Rokosyn. Since 1967, scientists there had been attempting to harness “psi particles,” which could potentially allow global communication among special Ministry officers, without the need of hazardous radio transmitters.

But the Rokosyn project, the final document told him, was being scrapped.

As Peter slipped the pages into the incinerator’s fire, a plan was already forming.

The Hotel Erboy was filled with American tourists sagging on padded chairs and fanning themselves with wrinkled maps. Like its facade, the lobby was modern, with wood paneling and inset lamps above the front desk. Peter handed his passport to an amiable clerk. “A room, please.”

“Of course” said the clerk in English, looking at the document. “Mister Ree — zahrd Knopek.”

“Ryzsard Knopek.”

“Of course,” said the clerk, making a note of this. “And you will find breakfast downstairs in our Pasazade Restaurant from seven until ten thirty in the morning. Free, of course, of charge.”

In his narrow room, he waited for the international operator to connect him. It took a while, but finally a woman’s voice said, “Importation Register, First District.”

“Hello, Regina. This is Ludvik. Is the Comrade Lieutenant General available?”

“Just a moment,” she said coolly. Regina Haliniak, at the Yalta front desk, had never liked him.

The line clicked, then buzzed twice before he heard the Lieutenant General’s booming greeting. “Ludvik, you old bastard! How’s the weather down there?”

“Hot, comrade.”

“Do you have good news for me?”

“Everything will be cleaned up by tomorrow afternoon.”

“Excellent, Ludvik. I knew I could depend on you.”

Peter nodded self-consciously into the receiver, as if the Lieutenant General were there to see. “I only had a question.”

“Shoot.”

“Has someone else arrived here in the last day or so?”

“Besides the obvious pair, you mean?”

“Exactly.”

The Lieutenant General paused, humming. “Not that I know of. Brano!”

Through the hiss of the line he heard Brano Sev’s weak voice in the Lieutenant General’s office. Yes?

“Comrade Sev’s there with you?”

“Did you want to speak with him?”

“No.”

The Lieutenant General’s voice lowered as he asked Brano Sev if he knew of any new operatives in Istanbul. “He’s shaking his head, Ludvik. Comrade Sev’s a man of few words.”

“Yes. I know.”

He could hear the Lieutenant General’s uh huh, uh huh in answer to something Brano was saying. Then: “We’ll double-check here and get back to you if we learn something. Where will you be?”

“The Hotel Erboy,” said Peter. “It’s where the others are.”

“You’ll be under Knopek again?”

“Yes, comrade.”

Peter hung up and stretched out on the bed, closing his eyes. While he trusted the Lieutenant General, he didn’t like the fact that his original mentor, Brano Sev, was there. He and Brano were not enemies, per se, but nor were they friends at this point. Friends often grow apart over the space of weeks or months for a variety of reasons; yet with Brano he knew the exact day and hour, the precise reason.

18 April 1972. One o’clock.

At Peter’s request, they met at their usual bench in Victory Park, beside the statue to the dead of all wars, the bronze soldier on a boulder, his rifle lying across his knees. Peter said he had an idea.

“So Comrade Junior Lieutenant Mas has an idea.”

Peter ignored the tone. “A method for uncovering imperialist spies.”

“Go on.”

“Well, the Russians had Special Department Number 8, and we had the Rokosyn clinic. To study the potential use of psychokinesis. It was recently closed down.”

Brano Sev looked at him. “I hope you’re not suggesting we use mystics to give us the names of enemy agents.”

“Not at all, Comrade Colonel. What I’m suggesting is that we reopen the Rokosyn project, which will, ostensibly, continue investigating paranormal phenomena.”

“Why?”

“Bear with me, Comrade Colonel. Please.”

Brano Sev folded his hands in his lap.

“On paper, the clinic would keep up the pretense of this work. Our mental homes are full of people who believe they have special abilities, and they would be brought to that remote mountain facility.”

“To be studied?”

“No, Comrade Colonel. They would simply be cared for in the same manner they’re cared for now. No actual research would be conducted.”

“You realize,” said Brano Sev, “that you’re making less and less sense as you continue.”

“This is where my reasoning lies: The program would be given the highest level of security clearance.”

“Yes?”

“However, we would sometimes allow pieces of information to slip out-about a major parapsychology program that’s achieving great success. This, in turn, will pique the interests of the imperialists. They will mobilize their embedded agents, and perhaps send new ones. But because we control the outflow of information, we will be able to identify and track foreign agents in our midst.”

Peter waited as Brano Sev scratched a mole on his cheek, then inhaled deeply through his nose. “Interesting, Comrade Mas. Very interesting.”

Peter felt himself flushing with pleasure.

“But…”

“Yes?”

Brano Sev adjusted himself on the bench, watching a woman with high heels pass. “In theory, this is a fine idea. Admirable, actually. But, practically, I can see problems.”

“Such as?”

“Well, one problem is resources. The workers running this laboratory will have to be taken from the ranks of the Ministry. That’s the only way we can be confident of their discretion. How many do you think?”

“Five, maybe six.”

“Okay. These Ministry agents will care for some number of patients. Twenty?”

Peter shrugged, then nodded.

“So the Ministry pays for the lives of twenty mental patients and loses five or six trusted agents from the field. For an operation that has a life of one year-two years at most. You understand?”

Peter didn’t. “I saw this as going on for much longer than that.”

In an uncommon sign of affection, Brano patted Peter’s knee. “If we set up a situation whereby we release teaspoons of information periodically, the agents we’re tracking will over time acquire enough information to have the entire picture. One way to delay this moment is to release contradictory information, but at that point their superiors will notice this, and the project will be exposed as a fraud.”

Peter squinted at him, taking this in. Then he understood. “I’m sorry, Comrade Colonel. I didn’t explain well enough. Each individual agent will not be able to collect more than a few pieces of information, because as soon as he’s identified, we will liquidate him. All the West will know is that there is a secret program so important to us that whenever an enemy agent pursues it, he disappears.”

Brano Sev stared at him, unblinking. “So the purpose of this operation is to execute foreign agents.”

“Yes, Comrade Colonel. Exactly.”

Brano Sev watched another passing woman as he chewed the inside of his cheek. “Comrade Mas. While I appreciate your initiative, it’s clear that you’re living with a fundamental misunderstanding of what we do. Intelligence work is precisely what it says-it’s about intelligence. We are not murderers. You may have heard stories during your time with us of operations that ended with the killing of a foreign agent. This happens. But make no mistake-the killing of an enemy agent is seldom the purpose of an operation. When it is, it means the decision has been carefully deliberated over, and all other options have been deemed insufficient.” He paused, frowning. “You see, Comrade Mas, the purpose is not to kill the opposition; the purpose is to defeat him. This is not yet a war of attrition. When it becomes that, you’ll know, because there will be mushroom clouds on the horizon.”

They sat in silence, the flush on Peter’s face meaning something entirely different than it had moments before. “Comrade Colonel, I-”

“No,” said Brano Sev. “I don’t want to hear any more about it. And I don’t want anyone else to hear about it. You understand?”