Look Into My Eyes
( The Destroyer - 67 )
Warren Murphy
Richard Sapir
Destroyer 67: Look Into My Eyes
By Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir
Chapter 1
It was better than being in Afghanistan. In Afghanistan the bandits would shoot you from ambush, or if they captured you, they would cut you into pieces very slowly. Sometimes their women did it with their cooking tools.
Sometimes the officers would throw you under the treads of a tank if they thought you might desert. Afghanistan was where you died horribly.
And so Sergeant Yuri Gorov did not find duty in Siberia a burden, nor did he question his strange orders. He was to allow no one, under any circumstances, to leave the small town he and his division surrounded. He was to beg first and then to plead with anyone trying to leave, and if that failed, he was to call an officer, and if that did not work, he was to shoot the person, making sure the person did not leave alive.
Shooting escaping prisoners was not strange. What was strange was that supposedly no one in the village was a prisoner. Even stranger was the notion that anyone might want to escape.
Yuri and his platoon had driven into the village once to dig a sewer for one of the residents. For Siberia, it was a very nice village, and one house was particularly nice. The house was two stories high, and only one family lived in it. There were three color television sets. Wondrous American and Japanese appliances filled the kitchen. Carpets from Persia, and lamps from Germany, and wall switches that turned on the lights every time. And the rooms were the size of several apartments combined.
There was red meat in the refrigerator and fruits from all over the world, and whiskey, wine, and cognac in a little closet.
And toilets, with soft seats, that flushed every time, and ceilings that had no cracks in them. It was a marvel of a house, and every house in the village seemed to be almost as glorious.
Officers noticed the men dawdling in the house instead of just using the toilets, and ordered the house off limits. But everyone had seen the enormous luxury of this house and sensed the grandeur of this village.
It was heaven on earth. And under no circumstances were the soldiers posted outside the village to let anyone leave alive.
To this end, four soldiers were posted outside for every person inside. One of the old-timers of the division claimed the people inside did witchcraft. But a recruit pointed out he had seen high-ranking KGB officers and scientists enter. He knew they were scientists because one stopped to talk to him once. The KGB and scientists certainly would not countenance witchcraft.
But a recruit from Moscow said he thought he knew what this village did. Back home in Moscow he would sometimes meet visitors from the West who asked him about Russia's parapsychology experiments.
"What is parapsychology?" asked Yuri. He had never heard of such a thing, and neither had the others in the barracks.
"We are supposed to be famous for it, according to this American woman I met."
"Did you sleep with her?" a corporal asked of the Moscow recruit.
"Shhh," said the others.
"Let him talk," said Yuri Gorov.
"She told me," said the Moscow recruit, "that we have done more experiments in parapsychology than anyone else on earth. There are books on some of our experiments printed openly in the West, and there is a center for it here in Siberia. I think this village is the center."
"But what is this parapsychology?" asked Yuri.
"Seeing things that aren't there. Like halos over people's heads. Or having their minds go back into past lives. Witchcraft things."
"No wonder they would keep a thing like that secret. Assuming, of course, they were doing those things."
"Everything with the human mind that you can imagine is done there. Mind reading, mind bending, everything."
"I don't believe it," said Yuri. "We would not do such things. "
"I bet someone is reading your mind right now."
"If that were so, the KGB would use it already."
"I bet they do, but they only use it on important people," said the recruit.
"Nonsense," said Yuri. "Those things don't exist."
"Have you ever had a message and known who it was from before you got it? Have you ever had a feeling that something bad was going to happen before it happened? Have you ever known you were going to win something before you won it?"
"Those are just hunches," said Yuri.
"Those are the parts of your mind that parapsychology deals with," said the Moscow recruit. "And that village we surround is filled with people who experiment in such things. I'm right."
"I'd rather know if you slept with the American woman."
"Of course I did," said the Moscow recruit.
"Is it true that they do strange things?" asked another. As in all barracks, sex was always a major interest.
"Yes, they enjoy it," said the Moscow recruit. Everyone laughed.
And then one night, when a gentle chill enveloped the rich land, a man in an expensive Western suit came walking up the road from the village muttering to himself. He was about five-foot-seven and walked in a splay-foot fashion, as though he couldn't care less where his feet went. He was muttering something quite furiously.
"Excuse me, sir," said Sergeant Gorov. "You can't come through here."
The man ignored him.
"Left alone. Left alone. I want to be left alone," said the man. He had soft, woeful brown eyes and a collapsed bag of a face that looked as though he was perpetually tasting something unpleasant. He wore gold-rimmed eyeglasses.
"Sir, you must stop," said Yuri. He stepped in front of the shorter man.
The man tried to walk through him, then with the physical contact realized where he was.
"You can't go any farther," said Yuri. "It's not allowed. "
"Nothing is allowed," said the man. "It never is. Nothing."
"I cannot let you pass."
"You cannot. He cannot. She cannot. Everybody cannot. What is the matter?" said the man, raising his arms toward the dark Siberian sky.
"You'll have to turn around."
"And what if I told you no? The simple, beautiful, exquisite word no. That single syllable that comes off the tongue like sunshine in a winter hell."
"Look, mister. I don't want to shoot you. Please go back," said Yuri.
"Don't worry, you're not going to shoot me. Don't make such a big deal already," said the man. He put his hands in his pockets. He did not turn around.
Yuri yelled back to the little guard post. "Sir, comrade refuses orders to turn back."
An officer drinking tea and ogling a magazine filled with seminude women yelled back:
"Tell him you'll shoot."
"I did."
"Then shoot," said the officer.
"Please," said Yuri to the man with the sad brown eyes.
The man laughed.
With trembling hands Yuri raised the Kalishnikov and put it to the man's head. No matter what was said in basic training, every soldier knew many men never fired their rifles in combat. He had always suspected he would be one of those. In combat he could maybe get away with it. But here, if he didn't fire, it would mean being sent to Afghanistan for sure. It was either this poor fellow or himself. And the man didn't seem to be stopping.
Yuri leveled the gun at the sad brown eyes.
Better you than me, he thought. He hoped he wouldn't have to look at the body. He hoped that the blood would not spray too much. He hoped that he would someday be able to forget what he had done. But if he pulled the trigger at least there would be a someday. If he went to Afghanistan, there wouldn't be. Yuri felt
his finger slick with sweat against the trigger.
And then his mother was talking to him. His saintly mother was standing right in front of him, talking ever so softly and reasonably, telling him to put down his gun and not shoot her.
"Mother, what are you doing here in Siberia?"
"Don't believe everything you hear or see. I'm here. What are you going to do, shoot your own mother?"
"No, never. "
"Put down the gun," said his mother.
But that was unnecessary. Yuri was already lowering the gun. And the man with the sad brown eyes was gone. "Mama, have you seen a little guy with brown eyes?"
"He went back to the village. Go relax."
Yuri looked down the road. It stretched a mile toward the village, with no hills or bushes where anyone could hide. The little fellow had disappeared. He looked behind him, to see if the little fellow had somehow snuck by. But that road was empty also. It was quiet and empty, and the still, chill night made clouds of every breath, and the man was not there. Only his gray-haired mother, hands gnarled from arthritis, waving to him as she passed the guard post. The officer ran out through the door and put his pistol to Yuri's mother's head. Yuri raised his rifle. This he could kill for. This he had to kill for.
He fired a dozen automatic rounds with his Kalishnikov, plastering the wooden guard post with pieces of the second lieutenant and the magazine he had been reading.
The next day at the board of inquiry, Yuri explained he couldn't help himself. He had a right to defend his mother. The lieutenant was going to kill her.
Strangely, every officer seemed to understand, even though Yuri admitted tearfully (because now he was sure he was going to be shot) that his mother had been dead for four years.
"All right. Don't worry. What did the man say to you? Remember everything," ordered the KGB commandant assigned to the village area.
"But I shot my commanding officer."
"Doesn't matter. What did Rabinowitz say?"
"His name was Rabinowitz, sir?"
"Yes. What did he say?"
"He said he wanted to be left alone."
"Anything else?"
"He said he was sure I wouldn't shoot him. He seemed happy to say the word no. He made such an awful big thing of it."
"Anything else?"
"That's all I remember. I had to shoot the lieutenant. Wouldn't you if your commander was going to kill your mother?"
"No. I'm KGB. But never mind about shooting your officer. What did your mother say?"
"She told me not to shoot."
"Anything else?"
"She said don't believe everything you see. And things like that."
"Did she say where she was going?"
"She's been dead four years," sobed Yuri.
"Never mind that. Did she say where she was going?"
"No. "
"She didn't mention anything about Israel?"
"Why would she? She's not-wasn't-a Jew."
"Yes. Of course," said the KGB commandant.
There was one advantage the commandant saw. They were already at the parapsychology village and the sergeant would not have to be sent here to relive his experiences perfectly. Rabinowitz might have said something that would lead them to him again, and then it was just a matter of giving Rabinowitz whatever he wanted. Heads were going to roll for this one and it was not going to be some poor little sergeant in the regular army.
Someone had lost Vassily Rabinowitz, and there would have to be some pretty good answers all the way to the Politburo.
The picture of the sad-eyed, middle-aged man was sent to every KGB unit in the Soviet Union and especially to border countries of the Eastern bloc. The instructions were strange. No one was to try to stop Vassily Rabinowitz. They were only to report his presence to Moscow, unless Rabinowitz was spotted near any border to the West. Then without talking to the man, without looking into his eyes, they were to shoot him.
The secret police of East Germany, Poland, Albania, and Rumania found the next message totally confusing. They were to report to Moscow the sighting by any guard at any post of anyone strange, such as a relative who had been dead for many years, or a close friend.
"Appearing where?" the satellite police asked.
"Anywhere they shouldn't," answered the Moscow KGB. There were questions, too, about how the dead could appear.
And the answer was that they really didn't but the guards would be sure they had.
In Moscow, a Rabinowitz desk was set up. It had three functions. First to get him back, and second to find out who had failed to give him what he wanted. The third objective was to get him what he wanted.
Even as it tracked Rabinowitz's route away from the parapsychology village, the inquiry revealed a problem that should have been worked out.
The officer assigned personally to Rabinowitz, who knew his life was at stake, explained it.
"When he wanted women, we gave him women. We gave him blond women and dark-eyed women. We gave him African women and South American women. We gave him women from the Middle East and women from the Middle West. Kurds and Koreans did we supply," came the statement.
"And what was his reaction?"
"He said we never came up with the right one."
"And who was the right one?"
"The one we hadn't come up with."
Rabinowitz had been given a catalog from Neiman-Marcus, a great American department store, and told to mark off the items he wanted and they would be delivered. Exotic foodstuffs, hams and smoked salmon and tropical fruits by the barrel, rotted in his basement. Military priority for any item destined for Rabinowitz had been declared in four major defense command zones. In a world of luxury, Rabinowitz had lived in the highest luxury.
Every morning, noon, and evening someone from the KGB command came to his home or laboratory to ask him what he wanted. And when they weren't doing that, generals and commissars were phoning him personally to ask if they could do favors for him. He had lots of friends in high places, people who needed him and would not take his loss lightly.
Even though the KGB commandant of that village could prove beyond any doubt he had given Rabinowitz everything a human being could want, someone was going to have to pay. And the price would be death.
In growing horror, Moscow command tracked the route of the strange incidents, from east to west.
A conductor on a train headed west through Kazan, south of Moscow, was demanding a traveling pass when he realized he was talking to his pet dog. He reported this strange incident when he got home to Kuybyshev because there he found his pet had been at home all the time. Therefore he was suffering some form of mental breakdown; therefore he was due a vacation. The conductor was surprised that it was not the hospital board that examined him but the KGB.
In Kiev, an Aeroflot stewardess confessed she had allowed her favorite uncle onto the airplane without a ticket. She confessed her deed because she was sure she was going crazy; she had seated the favorite uncle twice on the same flight, both in the luxurious rear cabin and in the crammed front seats. She had walked back and forth three times to confirm that he was sitting in both seats.
The uncle who got off in Warsaw was the one she would have bet was the real one. But when the one she thought was the impostor went to bed with her aunt, she was sure she was going crazy.
And then from a bus in Prague, the Rabinowitz desk got their first breakthrough.
A passenger was asking questions about Berlin. This was not unusual, except a fight occurred on the bus where several people tried to take care of him, thinking he was a close relative. Then the bus driver suffered a migraine headache. He told all the passengers they would have to wait half an hour or so while he wished he were dead; then the migraine would pass.
But the passenger with the multiple family ties went to the front of the bus, spoke to the driver, and the driver drove off singing, his headache gone. Of course the driver changed his route to drive further west, closer to Berlin. But no one minde
d. After all, who would deny such a small thing to his closest relative?
By the time Rabinowitz reached Berlin, the city with the wall to keep in all the people of the East who might want to leave the liberated and progressive countries for the decadent West, fourteen specially selected KGB units were waiting for him. The East German guards were dismissed from their posts and Russians stood five deep, guns at the ready.
But these were not just any Russians or any KGB officers. Every one of them had been carefully selected to be willing to shoot his closest relative if that relative tried to make it to the West.
"Let us warn you, you will only think you are shooting your mother and your brother and your favorite pet. Your mind will not be your own. Don't trust it. What you will shoot is the greatest danger that could befall Russia. Of course, if that greatest danger chooses to go back home, give him anything he wants. Anything. If he wants to ride on your back all the way to Moscow, get on your hands and knees."
"Hello, Vassily," said the deputy commander of the KGB at the access point the Americans called Checkpoint Charlie. A tired man of five-foot-seven with sad brown eyes trudged wearily to the last gate to the West. Backing up the deputy commander were enough ruthless, vicious men to clean out half of Berlin. He didn't know if they frightened Rabinowitz but they certainly terrified him.
The deputy commander, Krirnenko, was in his seventies and had risen so high not because of ruthlessness, usually a requirement for the policemen of a police state, but because of his exceptional judgment. Krimenko had been given this job personally by the premier.
"I want him back. And if we don't get him back, no one else can have him. He's got to be with us, or dead."
"I understand. I've used him myself."
"I am not talking about personal things. I am talking about international things. I am talking about our survival as a nation. We cannot let the West get its hands on him."
"I understand that too," Krimenko had said.
And what he wanted now most of all at this bridge between East and West, where exchanges of spies took place, was a little reasoning talk with Vassily Rabinowitz.
And he did something quite shrewd. He pretended a greater weakness than he really had. Because Rabinowitz had no way of knowing his special talents and powers might be of no use at this bridge, that even if he succeeded in what he did so well, he would still be dead if he tried to leave.
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