End to Ordinary History

by Michael Murphy

  Atabet was worried about the trip. There was a chance it might raise suspicions in the CIA about Fall’s dealings with Boone and the Czechs. Yet the pull he felt toward Kirov was inescapable. His fascination with the Russian spy had lasted for more than nine months, and he was now convinced that Kirov was behind the bugging of their house. “The CIA might wonder,” he said, “but finally I think you should do it. Magyar will think you’re after research for your book. You’ll be telling the truth, after all, when you say that.”

  “You don’t think Magyar will know that Boone’s paying my bill?” Fall asked. “It would be bad if they thought I was being paid, even indirectly, by the CIA.”

  “Have Boone make out a check to the Greenwich Press. He can claim the money was spent to pay for more Russian translations. It’s all out in front about his wanting you to meet his friends there. And you can share our suspicions about him, though you’d better not tell them about that secret lab. If your telling them got back to Boone, we would be in trouble. He’s not the kind of man we want for an enemy.”

  “That settles it,” Fall said. “What have we got to lose? Boone will pay my way, and what if the CIA wonders? We’re not doing anything illegal.”

  Neither Atabet nor Kazi Dama answered. In spite of Fall’s confidence, they felt a vague apprehension. It was conceivable that a KGB officer in Prague, suspecting Fall to be a CIA man, might hold him for interrogation. And there was no telling what Kirov would do.

  But Fall had made up his mind. “Let’s go home,” he said. “In the morning we’ll all feel braver.”

  6

  IN THE DISTANCE, Prague Castle rose above the Moldau as if it might be a passageway out of this lovely but poisonous ambience. Sitting so splendidly in this valley, Fall thought, under thermal inversions that trapped its smoke for days, the city dazzled you in a golden suffocation. No wonder it gave rise to so many dreams of transcendence. The Golem-magic of Rabbi Lev, the Great Work of the alchemists, and now the psychic research of Stefan Magyar were part of a long, sustained effort to rise out of this stifling air toward the beauty that Prague always promised. Fall remembered the way Franz Kafka had voiced this contradiction: to him “this dear mother had claws.”

  Magyar embodied the city’s paradoxical forces. His loneliness and secret enthusiasms, his idealism in the midst of disasters, his fascination with the transmutation of the body were more comprehensible when you understood Prague’s haunting effect. This city was the encircling net of golden dreams a poet once had called her, and Magyar was fatefully trapped.

  The Communist regime only sweetened his conflicts—Fall had seen that in 1969. He recalled their raucous trip to Brno with four other disaffected Czechs, the five of them still celebrating the freedoms of the previous year. Though they had lost out in the Soviet suppression of the Dub?ek regime, they still had hopes for another Prague Spring. Magyar had gone to work for Czechoslovakian army intelligence because it would sponsor his psychotronic research, but he had regaled Fall with his plans for converting his superiors to a belief in the soul. His friends worked for government agencies, clinics, or schools while pursuing their mystical interests in secret. It was an ancient tradition in Central Europe, they said, living dangerously, and during their five days together they introduced Fall to other members of their circle—including a group of twenty dowsers in Brno and friends in Bratislava who practiced forms of white magic. Socialist oppression only heightened their metaphysical drama. The tight golden circle of the city dramatized the whole world’s plight, they said, forcing them toward a marvelous transcendence.

  Fall remembered Magyar’s boast that he and his friends would wear down their suppressors because they “stood on a more durable truth” than Soviet-style socialism. They had all lifted their glasses to that. But he wondered if the State had won out. Would the man he saw be the Magyar he remembered?

  Fall found Magyar’s house, the same one he had lived in before, and knocked on its tall, black door. There were footsteps inside, then the sound of locks being opened. With a nervous smile, Magyar said his colleague was waiting upstairs.

  He was not the man that Fall remembered. Magyar was thirty pounds lighter, and his once cheerful face had lost its rosy complexion. His six-foot frame was bent and his big green eyes looked hollow. At the top of the stairs, a short, husky man stood waiting. “Darwin Fall,” said Magyar, “this is Edvard Hus. Mr. Hus is an expert on psychotronics and came here especially to meet you.”

  In contrast to Magyar, Hus seemed completely at ease. He gestured toward an armchair as if he were the master of the house.

  “Are you well?” Magyar asked, his hands fluttering nervously. “How is the Greenwich Press?”

  “I’ve sold the Press,” said Fall, “to work full time on my book and research. That allows me to come here, to see what you are doing!”

  Magyar turned to Hus. “You see! I told you what an admirer he is of our psychotronics. Darwin, Edvard here is an expert in these things. Perhaps the new owners of the Press will want to publish his papers!”

  “No,” Hus frowned. “My work in these fields is modest. Stefan, you get too excited.”

  Magyar forced a smile, but Fall could see he was easily intimidated by his colleague. Was Hus here to watch them for Czech intelligence?

  “Are you a parapsychologist?” Fall asked.

  “I am engineer,” Hus said impassively. “For building projects here in Prague. Psychotronics is my hobby.”

  Fall sensed that he was lying. “Have you written anything?” he asked. “The Greenwich Press will be publishing another collection of East European and Soviet papers in parapsychology. Maybe they could publish some of yours.”

  “Please.” Hus made a chopping motion with his hand. “My papers are too boring. Full of numbers and diagrams. You don’t want them.”

  “He is too modest.” Magyar waved his hands expansively. “Edvard has designed some machines like Pavlita’s. They are the best we have.”

  “No,” Hus said firmly, his small eyes narrowing. “Stefan, that is enough.”

  Covering his embarrassment, Magyar offered Fall a drink.

  “No, thanks,” Fall said, masking the sadness he felt for his friend. “I just had lunch. Did Lester Boone write about my coming? He’s interested in the things you’re doing. When he heard I was coming, he wanted me to bring his greetings.”

  “I have his letter.” Magyar wiped his hands with a handkerchief. “He is eager for news of our work, and insists we give you everything we have. I am afraid he is used to ordering people around! It must be nice to have someone so rich in parapsychology. We hear he has a big lab.”

  “I saw it about four weeks ago,” Fall said. “He has two or three people and said they’re running on a forty-thousand-dollar budget. It’s not as big as I expected, but I’m amazed at how interested he’s gotten.”

  “A real student.” Magyar glanced at Hus. “You know he comes here once a year to see us. It makes our intelligence people nervous, having an American weapons maker look at our psychotronic machines. But in the interest of science we share everything that is not military.” He smiled unctuously. “Our government allows us that freedom.”

  In 1969, Fall thought, Magyar had been cynical about government censorship of his work. He must be talking now for Hus’s benefit.

  “Yes,” Hus said. “They let him come and look around. It shows the free exchange that is possible between our countries.”

  “Who else will you see on this trip?” Magyar asked, moving closer to Fall. “Georgi Latko and Stanislaus Kocek?”

  “I haven’t called them yet, but I’d like to. Are they in town?”

  “I think so,” Magyar answered. “We will have to see. But tell us about your new work.”

  They talked for fifteen minutes more, Fall and Magyar holding back the sensitive items they had shared during their previous visit. Fall guessed that Magyar would not mention Kirov as long as Hus was present.

  “But enough!” Fall
said, signaling an end to their talk. “I’m meeting some American friends for dinner. Stefan, can we meet tomorrow?”

  “Good!” said Magyar. “Call me tonight when your plans are set and we will make a time.”

  Hus rose impassively to say good-bye, then stood at the top of the stairwell watching Magyar show Fall out. “Next time we’ll talk longer,” Magyar said. “I know a restaurant you will like.” He hesitated, as if he wanted to say something more, then waved nervously and closed the door.

  Later that afternoon Hus and Magyar sat in their Army Intelligence office discussing Boone’s recommendation that they arrange a meeting between Kirov and Fall. Hus hadn’t revealed Boone’s other message, though, in which he had expressed suspicions about Magyar.

  “He wants to know the reasons for Kirov’s fascination with Fall and his friends,” Hus said, pretending dismay. “He says we might want to arrest Fall, then have you arrange his release to establish yourself as his friend. He is an unpredictable man, this Boone. Sometimes I wonder whose side he’s on.”

  “He is on the American side,” Magyar said without emotion. “He thinks he is using the KGB to help his psychic research. Loaning that Argentine boy to Project Elefant was a transparent move. He thinks he has penetrated the Soviets’ secret work in parapsychology.”

  Magyar’s vacant look pleased Hus. Lying to Fall was part of a process that had numbed his conscience step by step over the last three years. Being a connoisseur of such changes, Hus knew that Magyar would do what he wanted. “Kirov will call at seven,” he said. “What do you think he will say?”

  “He will ask us whether Fall knows about our connection with him,” Magyar answered with a flat inflection. “He may already know the answer of course, but he will test us. Beyond that, I don’t know. This is a strange affair.”

  Hus nodded his agreement. There was something in this situation that was hard to calculate. No one in their office knew why the Russian master spy had spent so much time abroad these last twelve months or why the KGB had started so many rumors to take Western intelligence off his track. Hus himself had been ordered to plant a story with the CIA that Kirov had been called back to Moscow in disgrace. Only the most important KGB operation would warrant such disinformation, so Hus wondered why Kirov had spent so much time and effort tracking Fall and his friends. Their Washington informants had told them that Fall did not work for the U.S. government. He had published reports of Soviet parapsychology, but the information they contained could be found in all sorts of journals. His importance to Kirov was a mystery.

  Magyar, however, had a clue to Kirov’s thinking, an item he had kept to himself. He thought of the questions Kirov had asked during their meeting two months before: How did Fall carry himself? What did he laugh at? What was his complexion like? Then Kirov had done an astonishing thing. With complete gravity he had asked whether Fall possessed “a true enlightenment.” When Magyar asked what he meant, Kirov had gently rebuked him. Was Fall odukhotvoryonniy?—the question was as simple as that. Erleuchtung, he had said, giving the German word; and moksha, the Sanskrit term for liberation. Magyar had studied these things enough to know what Kirov was asking, but he could only give a vague reply, saying finally that Fall’s theories were stronger than his practice of the mystical life.

  The exchange was still perplexing. Had Kirov dropped a veil for him, revealing his understanding of the soul? Had their conversation been a test? There were rumors, after all, that the Russian master spy was an initiate of the Mysteries. Remembering the incident now, Magyar guessed what Kirov would say. They could not touch Fall until Kirov met the man himself. Magyar would arrange the meeting. What would happen after that, however, was hard to predict.

  As he crossed the lobby of the Akron hotel, Fall was stopped by a man dressed in jeans and a turtleneck sweater. Would he like to change American dollars for Czech korunas at the black market rate? Fall waved him away, but the stranger followed him into the elevator. Abruptly it stopped between floors. They could exchange money now, the man said, placing a hand on Fall’s shoulder. It was apparent he worked with the elevator attendant. Intimidated, Fall took out his wallet and exchanged a twenty-dollar bill; then the elevator went up to his floor. He stepped out into the hall slightly shaken.

  Maids had rearranged his desk, and he looked for his book of addresses. His hands trembled as he looked for the telephone numbers of Kocek and Latko. The unexpected encounter had triggered a fear he could not account for.

  He copied the two numbers on a slip of paper and sat down to calm himself. Had the money exchange been a deliberate setup? If the Czechoslovakian police took him into custody, Magyar might not protect him. He put the address book in a jacket pocket. Maybe the room had been bugged. It suddenly occurred to him that Hus had placed him under surveillance.

  As he and Hus waited for Kirov’s call, Magyar felt a growing anxiety. He was willing to betray his friend, willing to comply with his torture, conceivably—but for what? For the cause of psychotronics? Was that the reason for these deceits? How had it all begun? When had he taken the first step into this world of lies and betrayals?

  “You are brooding,” Hus murmured. “What are you thinking, Stefan?”

  “That I have so little time to study philosophy,” he answered listlessly. “We are so busy, I haven’t opened a book for months.”

  “Is that all?” Hus asked. “Does capturing Fall upset you?”

  “If Kirov wants it, it must be necessary. Who am I to say? We are not that close, after all.” They sat in the shadows for a half-hour more, Hus occasionally breaking the silence with a question, while Magyar felt a growing helplessness. Then a red light went on below the telephone and Hus picked up the receiver. “Yes, office 123,” he said to the special operator. “Magyar’s here. No one else is in the office. Yes, the lines are closed.” Then he sat in silence waiting for connections on the KGB line to Vienna.

  Kirov came on the phone and Hus took notes as they talked. Magyar leaned forward to listen, his heart beating rapidly.

  “Yes,” Hus said at last. “I understand. You want to meet him yourself, under normal circumstances. We will arrange a meeting at the Press Club. Just Magyar, you, and me.”

  The voice in the receiver continued, too faintly for Magyar to hear. Hus nodded and wrote down a message, then quietly said good-bye as the phone’s red light went out. “You will ask Mr. Fall,” he told Magyar, “to meet us tomorrow night. Kirov will join us at the Press Club, but you will say that he is a Soviet engineer with an amateur interest in psychical self-regulation. Under no circumstances is Fall to be arrested. I don’t know what this means. Your American friend must be very important.”

  Magyar turned away to hide his relief. “I will call him now,” he said, pretending weariness. “None of this makes sense.”

  Fall left the Alcron Hotel and walked casually toward Wenceslaus Square. At a corner he stopped and looked back for the man who had followed him from the lobby. Having established the fact that he was being watched, he set out briskly for the United States Embassy in the Malá Strana. The people there might give him a better sense of the risks he was running.

  Forty-five minutes later, Fall explained his situation to William Morton, the embassy’s chief intelligence officer. A CIA career man in his fifties, Morton had a thin, unlined face and close-cropped hair that made him look younger to Fall. “So you know Lester Boone,” he said with a faint Boston accent. “And you’ve published some of his work in parapsychology?”

  “Yes,” Fall answered. “He likes to keep track of psychic research over here. That’s why he paid for my trip.”

  “Let’s see if I’ve got this right.” Morton put on a pair of steel-rimmed glasses to review the notes he had made. “You think that Edvard Hus is having you followed because Czech intelligence suspects you’re working for the CIA, possibly in concert with Boone. And you think they might’ve set you up in case they want to compromise you.”

  Fall nodded.

 
“Okay.” Morton studied his notes. “Tell me how you got involved with Boone and these people in Prague.”

  Fall described his 1969 trip to Prague and Russia, and his meetings with Lester Boone. There were two reasons for this second trip, he said: to learn about Czech parapsychology, and to track down rumors about Vladimir Kirov.

  “Vladimir Kirov?” Morton asked. “That’s the second time this week I’ve heard his name. What do you know about him?”

  “Rumors mainly.” Fall chose his words carefully. “Some people say he’s the Soviets’ leading parapsychologist. In Moscow, there were all kinds of stories about him: that he got the Soviet government interested in psychic research, that he’s a KGB hero, that he’s a double agent, even. A CIA man in Washington told me he’d won the Order of Lenin.”

  “And you’re here looking for him?” Morton frowned. “That doesn’t sound very smart.”

  “After seeing the change in Magyar today, I agree.” Fall let Morton see his embarrassment. “I don’t think the Czechs are going to lead me to Kirov now.”

  “They can’t,” Morton said gravely. “Kirov’s been hauled back to Moscow. Seems he’s in trouble with the KGB bosses. We’ve heard that from two sources here. You’d better check him off your program, because it looks like he won’t be around for a while.”

  Stunned by the revelation, Fall did not answer.

  “We’ve been tracking him,” Morton continued, “ever since his meeting with Boone. The Agency’s worried about them. Do you know what they talked about?”

  “Just what Boone told me.” Fall made a helpless gesture to cover the shock he felt at this news about Kirov. “He said Kirov’s after military secrets, and uses parapsychology as a front to approach Westerners. They didn’t trade any secrets or make any deals. I think Boone told me the truth about the meeting, though I wouldn’t swear to it. I don’t know him very well.”