Time of the Octopus: Based on the True Story of Whistleblower Edward Snowden

10:12 P.M._

“Mr. Kold, I’m sorry, I need to interrupt you,” the Lawyer made a helpless gesture of apology. “I’ve had an urgent message about you…”

“What is it?” Kold said after a small pause, tightening his lips, and turning his eyes to stare at a point in the distance.

The Lawyer paused his phone, took out a tablet from his briefcase and logged into his email.

“The source whose name I can’t tell you, writes that forces interested in your extradition to the USA have intervened in the decision on you. The scales are not inclined in our favour…”

“I was ready for this turn of events,” Kold said firmly. “But it’s all in God’s hands.”

“Don’t you regret you casting your lot with Russia?” the Lawyer switched off the phone. “You had other options…”

Kold rubbed his chin, and unexpectedly smiled.

“Would you like to have supper? I’ll order pizza and salad.”

“Thanks, I am full, though to keep you company I won’t refuse a couple of sandwiches. But you didn’t answer my question.”

“One minute…

Kold picked up the internal phone and dictated the order, but the Lawyer could see that all this time he was considering his answer, and pushed him:

“By the way, several countries in Latin America wanted to accept you and grant a shelter directly?”

Kold hung up and nodded.

“Yes, actually, the way Cassandzhi was supported by Ecuador gave me the first hope that everything will turn out ok. I was wanting to tell you about it, but those people appeared… Are you ready to listen? “

The Lawyer inclined his head, turned on the phone again and laid it on the table near a bottle.

“Well,” Kold took a half-full whiskey glass, shook it in his hand then set it down again. “Then I will continue. Time is moving. It’s already nearly eleven, and I would like to get to the end of my story by three o’clock, telling everything in order…”

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“That Pincher, he was abnormal. Now, after some time, I am absolutely convinced of it. He didn’t just have pathological interests, but pathological tendencies. He needed to spoil, befoul, vulgarize and pervert everything he touched.

I remember, during one performance called ‘Stewart Little has breakfast in heaven’ he put thirty live white mice in a big empty aquarium, then climbed inside himself and began to squash them with his legs, at the same time noisily reading aloud the description of the posthumous destiny of some unfortunate princess by the name of de Lamballe who was torn to pieces by a mad crowd at the time of the Great French revolution:

‘That hapless body was dragged through all Paris. Her mutilated genitals were sliced off with a sabre like a military trophy and set up on a pike. And the crowd, jubilant and drunk with blood, carried her severed head with its flying hair and her ripped out heart on pikes too, like army standards. The procession made its way to the Temple, the prison where they had imprisoned Queen Marie Antoinette, the dearest girlfriend of the torn-to-pieces princess.’

When almost all the mice had been crushed to death, and Pincher’s legs were soaked red with blood, he ordered Frisbee to pour some gasoline from a canister into the aquarium. While all this was happening, Pincher continued to read the description of the appalling punishment of this time:

‘The first slash of the sabre sliced the hood from her head, letting the long blond hair scatter on her shoulders. The second slash sliced through her forehead to the eye, and the gushing blood instantly filled her dress and hair. Fainting, she began to settle to the ground. But the crowd wanted the show to go on. She was forced to rise and walk over the corpses. She fell again. Perhaps she was still alive, so a woman called Sharla decided to snuff her out for good, and walloped her with a cudgel. And, as if it had waited for its moment, the crowd now furiously attacked the body, slashing with sabres and piercing with pikes until it turned into a bloody, shapeless stump. The violence and gore made the crowd dizzy, it seemed, for there was no limit. The butcher’s helper, a boy known as Donkey, bent down over a corpse and cut the head off with a huge butcher’s knife.’

Then at a sign from Pincher, Bach lit the gasoline and the surviving mice began to squeak desperately, burning alive, but their squeaking was drowned out by Pincher’s voice:

‘The pen cannot describe in detail the execution of Madame de Lamballe. She was tormented in the most terrible way for eight hours. With her breasts torn off and her teeth pulled, she was kept conscious for two hours by all means, so that she could better feel her death.

Waving their terrible trophies, the cortege went on their way. The corpse was dragged along pavements by ropes tied to the legs, first to the Parisian residence of the princess, then to Temple where the royal family was imprisoned. One eyewitnesses describes that cortege as follows:

Some villain bore on the point of a pike the head with blonde hair matted with blood. A second, following him, had in one hand the blood-dripping heart of the victim, and in the other her guts, which he wound around his wrist. The monster boasted that today at supper he would treat himself with the heart of the princess de Lamballe!

Two men dragged the legs of the naked and beheaded corpse of the princess de Lamballe with the stomach ripped to the breast. The procession stopped in front of the Temple. The mutilated body was set upon a shaky scaffold, as if trying to give it a respectable look. All this was done with such composure and efficiency that it begged the question: were these people in their right minds? To the right of me, one of the leaders swung the pike with the head of madam de Lamballe on it from side to side, and on each swing her long hair touched my face. To the left, another, even more awful, with a huge knife in a hand, pressed to his breast the guts of the victim. They were followed by the coal miner of huge height bearing on the point of a pike shreds of a shirt impregnated by blood and dirt.

A barber was quickly found to arrange the princess suitably for an appearance in front of the queen. He had to wash the hair matted with blood, comb it and powder it as demanded by court etiquette. The cheeks were rouged in the fashion of that time: ‘At least now Antoinette will be able to recognize her.’

Coming up to the Temple, the crowd demanded that the royal family come to the window. They couldn’t wait for Marie Antoinette to look at what remained of her beloved girlfriend. The young officer of the municipal guard sent this request to the King. Hearing it, Marie Antoinette fainted, and the crowd raged, demanding the head of the Queen. Then the cortege went to the Palais Royal to show the corpse of the princess to the Duc d’Orleans, her brother-in-law. Around seven o’clock in the evening the crowd were finally tired and drained of emotion and got rid of the body by throwing it into a ditch close to a building under construction near Châtelet. At sunrise, the body of the princess was buried at last in the Cemetery of Foundlings.’

I don’t remember that during this or other performances (and there were some even more disgusting!) anyone in the audience or any of the participants felt bad. No, there were those who crashed out, vomited or went bananas, but that’s because of various drugs for ‘consciousness expansion.’

Before I became acquainted with the garagers, I knew almost nothing about modern art. Actually, not almost – I didn’t know anything at all! Pictures, sculptures, painting, graphics – all these were totally unfamiliar to me…”