“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…”
