End to Ordinary History

by Michael Murphy

  8

  SUNLIGHT STREAMED THROUGH a window as Fall rose from his bed. Bill Morton was calling from the hallway. Moving carefully, Fall stood to let him in. “I hear you tied one on last night.” The intelligence man smiled broadly.

  Apologizing for his appearance, Fall went into the bathroom. The face in the mirror was pale and splotchy. “Anything suspicious happen?” Morton asked from the bedroom. “They didn’t roll you, did they?”

  “What an evening!” Fall groaned. “But it didn’t last long, I tell you. That vodka sneaked up on me fast. That Russian was a strange one, though, real strange. Christ! I can barely remember what we were talking about. I must’ve passed out cold.”

  “Did they try to find out much about you?”

  “Their friend was interested in something I published. He seemed to be fascinated with it.” Fall paused, remembering the way the Russian had pointed to the brochure cover. “He’s a strange guy, that Aitmatov.”

  “What was his name? Did you say Aitmatov?”

  “Yes. Do you know him?”

  “No, but someone by that name left a message for you this morning. With a number.”

  “You’re kidding! It must be him. Well, I’ll be damned!”

  “What was your impression of Magyar and Hus?” Morton stood in the bathroom door. “We haven’t been able to trace them.”

  “I got drunk too fast to tell,” Fall said, coming into the bedroom. “Maybe they’re part of some occult underground group. Maybe Aitmatov’s one of the members. I’m sorry, Morton.” He shook his head ruefully. “Maybe I’ve been imagining things. They all seemed harmless last night.”

  “So you’re not worried now about the KGB?”

  “No, I don’t think so. Magyar’s probably working for Army intelligence with his psychotronics, just like he says. Aitmatov is probably part of his circle. And Hus? God, I don’t know. He could be watching Magyar, but maybe he’s part of their circle too. God knows, they’ve got to keep their mysticism hidden. The poor bastards, forced to sneak around like that.”

  “Did you talk about Lester Boone?”

  “No. His name didn’t come up. But everything happened so fast.”

  “Why don’t you see what the Russian wants?” Morton said, moving to the door. “Then let me know what you’re doing. I want to talk to you some more about Boone.”

  When Fall dialed the number Kirov had left, a man answered in Czech, then switched to broken English. “Yes, there is an Aitmatov here,” he said. “Will you wait, please?”

  He came back on the line. “Are you there? Aitmatov is coming. Please wait.” The Russian’s voice came on. “Fall, are you there?” he asked softly.

  “Sixty percent. I’m sorry about last night.”

  “We have a saying in Russian,” Kirov’s voice came closer. “On svoy paren vdosku, ‘a trustworthy man can get drunk with his friends.’ But I would like to see you today. There is more to talk about.”

  There was velvet in his voice, and urgency. “I’d like to,” Fall said. “Is Magyar coming?”

  “No. Let’s talk alone. Is lunch good for you? I know a restaurant in the Malá Strana.” They agreed on a time and the Russian gave him directions. As he hung up, Fall felt an unexpected excitement. There was something strangely attractive about this Aitmatov, a combination of intelligence and urgency that promised an interesting meeting.

  Below the walls of Prague Castle stands the Malá Strana, a maze of buildings and crooked streets dating from the seventeenth century. Crossing the Charles Bridge into its labyrinth, Fall found the square that the Russian had described. In an alley above it he found the wooden sign: deus est spiritus. Above the words two figures faced a tiny tree growing from a well. Following Kirov’s instructions, he continued up a shadowed passageway between buildings that looked like apartments. Another sign appeared: Zlatá Studné, Czech for “golden well.” This was the restaurant he was looking for.

  A waitress led him to a balcony from which diners looked out on the red-tiled roofs of the Malá Strana. Mr. Aitmatov would be here in a moment, she said. He had reserved this seat with a view.

  Fall’s curiosity about the Russian had grown. Was he carrying a message from Soviet dissidents? Did he belong to a religious underground? Or was he part of the loosely formed network that included Magyar and Boone? When he had held Atabet’s painting in his outstretched hand, it was as if he was displaying a jewel, turning it slowly to show its various facets. Had the gesture been some kind of signal?

  Several minutes passed while Fall’s fantasies about the Russian faded into the city’s golden vista. Then he saw him coming through the entrance to the balcony, dressed in a gray windbreaker jacket and slacks. He approached the table with the same anonymity that he had displayed the night before. The plainness of his manner and dress made a striking contrast with the richly textured voice on the phone.

  Not until the waitress had taken their orders did the Russian look Fall in the face. When he did another contrast appeared. Up close, his blue eyes were remarkably iridescent, with an intensity that would be hard to forget. Fall guessed that he avoided eye contact with people he wanted to keep his distance from.

  For a while they talked about the restaurant. The Russian liked its prospect overlooking the Moldau and the red rooftops of the Malá Strana. The name was charming, too, he said: “Golden Well” had an alchemical reference.

  “What brings you to Prague?” Fall asked.

  “A factory they’re building here. I am a consulting engineer. It is boring work.”

  “Have you been to the States? Your English has an American inflection.”

  “Yes, America.” Kirov smiled wistfully. “I don’t have permission to go there. It is one of my sadnesses. You see, I chose my accent for the time I could. Learning English at our language institutes, one must choose the American or the British inflection.”

  “You have mastered it,” Fall said. “You sound like you were born in California.”

  “I listened to tapes of Americans for hours,” Kirov said, looking away toward the river. “But it has been a wasted effort. Someday, perhaps I will visit your country. I would like to see San Francisco and visit the Greenwich Press!” He looked Fall in the face. “But I have a confession to make. After looking through your catalogue I thought you might work for U.S. intelligence. I see I was mistaken.”

  The waitress brought them wine, and Kirov lifted his glass. “Let us dissolve our suspicions,” he said. “After your performance last night I could see I was greatly mistaken.”

  “But what made you think that? My report on Soviet parapsychology?”

  “No, your brochure. I imagined that its cover was a signal to someone here about your work. That cover—you know it contains a remarkable coincidence. Remarkable. It is almost identical to a mosaic hidden in a mosque near Samarkand. Did you know that?”

  “No, I didn’t. Jacob Atabet, the man who painted it, must’ve seen a reproduction of it.”

  “No,” Kirov said. “It has never been photographed. The mosque was closed by the government in 1939, and no one had photographed it before then. I wondered if some Soviet dissident had taken a picture of it. Someone, perhaps, from a dissident Islamic group in Central Asia.”

  “But are you sure the two paintings are identical? When did you see the mosque last?”

  “Many years ago. But one does not forget it. According to legend, it shows an important prophecy. Do you think that someone told Atabet about it?”

  Aitmatov was like Gorski’s Moscow friends, Fall thought, grasping for hidden connections. It was one of the bizarre effects of Soviet religious suppression. But ridiculing his suspicions would not help. “No,” he said quietly. “It’s impossible. Atabet did the painting on his own. But you know a curious thing? Last night, at the Press Club, there was a moment when I thought the painting showed the secret of my work.”

  “Are there words for the secret?” Kirov smiled.

  “I really can’t remember. B
ut there seemed to be things I hadn’t realized.” He paused, startled by a sudden recognition. “There were Japanese faces looking into the sun. The sun in the painting looked like an atom bomb. But yes! It seemed for a moment that our research might undo the bomb. Finding the body’s secret would begin to remove the threat of nuclear warfare!” For a moment they were silent while Fall searched for connections to this grandiose thought.

  “Is there something in your work about atomic physics?” Kirov asked. “It is hard to see the connection.”

  “You read the catalogue. There’s nothing about physics in it. No, it must’ve been the vodka.”

  “Your work might undo the bomb,” Kirov murmured. “That’s interesting. Because I was going to ask you a question that bothers me. In the description of your book, there is no mention of a world to support the transformed body you seek. Such a body, if I understand you, would have a new relation to time and space, a new power to ease the shock upon the world it inhabits. It would need the sort of secret space that certain mystics speak of.”

  “Secret space?”

  “The Earth of Hurqalya. Have you heard the phrase?”

  “No,” Fall said. “What mystics use it?”

  “It is an expression they use in the mosque where that mosaic is buried. It means the larger Earth that contains this planet, connecting us to the larger life of the universe. Only it can support the power of angels.”

  Suddenly and irrationally, it seemed to Fall that he had known this Russian for years. He seemed to remember their discussing this very subject . . . .

  “Perhaps your thought last night was connected,” Kirov said, “to a subconscious idea that in this larger Earth a balance can be made between our supernormal energies and their perverse expression through the Bomb.”

  Fall looked away from the table in an effort to grasp the thought. “A larger Earth?” he asked. “Do you mean something beyond the electromagnetic spectrum?”

  “I mean something beyond all the spectra our science has named. It is the Earth we would grow into if our bodies developed in the way your book suggests. The Earth of Hurqalya is the wider, freer atmosphere such a body, such a life would require.”

  Before Fall could reply, the waitress brought them bowls of dumpling soup. “But maybe the day is too lovely for these difficult matters,” Kirov said. “These dumplings are the best in Prague.”

  As they ate, Fall felt divided. Aitmatov seemed sophisticated about the interior life. He would like to tell him about his work with Atabet, but there might be dangers in such a disclosure, given the man’s friendship with Magyar. “For the ancient Greeks,” he said, “the body was in the soul. The Earth of Hurqalya sounds like soul in that conception.”

  “The Greek psyche was like the larger Earth,” Kirov said without looking up. “But the Greek philosophers didn’t have a way that was strong enough to enter Hurqalya directly.”

  “If it isn’t psyche then, is it equivalent to the One, or Atman or Brahman? Is it our spiritual source?”

  “I think you know the answer to that.” Kirov carefully split a dumpling with a fork and spoon. “Our Source is everywhere, but transcends time and space. The larger Earth has extension, even more than this universe. And duration. It comes from the Source, like every moment and location.”

  Fall was startled by the Russian’s grasp of these ideas. He must have studied philosophy for years or practiced some mystical path.

  “But you might like to hear one of the prophecies concerning that mosaic.” Kirov sat back from the table. “An old Iranian legend says that a sun would rise in the west. That was what the picture showed. And, the legend continued, there would be a way through which that backward rising sun could be brought to its true Orient. You have never heard that?”

  Fall shook his head emphatically.

  “You have never read it in a Sufi book? Neither you nor Atabet?”

  “But Atabet’s painting,” Fall protested, “there must be dozens like it. All it shows is an ordinary sun rising through the hills of San Francisco.”

  “Then let me ask you this. Your experiment with Gorski. Did you know that elefant is the code name for the largest Soviet project in parapsychology?”

  Sophisticated as he might be, Aitmatov was slightly paranoid, Fall thought, to make these bizarre connections. He felt a surge of sympathy for him. “I promise you I never knew that,” he said. “And neither did Gorski. We talked for days about what the Soviet military might be doing, and he didn’t know a thing.”

  “Well,” the Russian whispered. “You see how suspicious one can get.” A light perspiration had broken out along his upper lip, and he wiped it away with his napkin. “But here,” he said, lifting his glass. “To your health. I see you are sipping today!”

  On his way to the restaurant Fall had vowed to stay sober through this meeting. But he drank anyway. Aitmatov was wound tight, he thought, and maybe their drinking together would help ease his tension.

  The waitress brought their entree. “You really seem to know your philosophy,” Fall said. “Have you studied the ancient Greeks?”

  “A little. It is one of my hobbies, like parapsychology, and like the American language. But look!” he said abruptly. “One reason I wanted to see you was this.” He took his Greenwich Press catalogue from a jacket pocket and laid it between them. “I am fascinated by this Atabet. I would guess he’s a gifted clairvoyant, that he is extremely vigorous for a man so sensitive, that he is passing through a spiritual crisis. Am I right?”

  “You sound clairvoyant yourself! How do you see all that?”

  Kirov pointed to the catalogue’s worn cover. “This sun. It is breaking loose inside the world, like an atom bomb perhaps. He has painted it from experience. That is how I see his spiritual crisis, a crisis that has lasted for years. But the sun is contained by the strong composition of the work, the muscularity of it. That suggests his physical vigor. And these little buildings resemble living cells. The image comes from his clairvoyance, in this case, a clairvoyance turned to his own body.”

  Fall put down his fork. The accuracy of the Russian’s analysis was amazing. Aitmatov had seen more about Atabet in the painting than he had.

  “My work takes me to Central Asia,” Kirov went on. “To places where people still study these things. Many people in the Soviet Union would be interested in Atabet.”

  Kirov sipped from his wine glass. For a moment he seemed distracted.

  “It’s impressive what you see in this painting,” Fall said. “What do you know about bodily clairvoyance?”

  “You are the one to tell me,” Kirov said. “Atabet seems to be the master.”

  “It’s hard to talk about him. His experience is very strange.”

  “It is embarrassing, I know,” Kirov said with a look of understanding. “Our culture does not prepare us for these mysteries.”

  “Your understanding is remarkable!” Fall said. “I would like to tell you more about him.”

  “And I would like to hear. It is a privilege to learn about someone with his gifts.”

  “You see . . .” Fall hesitated. “His clairvoyance takes some crazy turns. Sometimes he sees with symbols, sometimes directly. When he sees into the body, his own or mine or yours, he might see animals or human faces. Or cells and organs as they look in a medical book. When it happens, it’s not very pleasant. And to make matters worse, his seeing brings up powers.” He paused. “They’re harder to explain than his clairvoyance.”

  “It is amusing, isn’t it?” Kirov smiled. “How hard it is to talk about these matters. But you must continue. The cat is struggling to get out of the bag!”

  “It is struggling! You’re right.” Fall laughed, glancing around to see if anyone was listening. “The changes he goes through don’t last very long. You might see a light around him or a change in the texture of his skin. There have even been times when he seemed to disappear! Disappear physically, for a split second, like he’s passing to some other vibrancy.”
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  “And how long has all this been happening?”

  “He was born with these gifts, I think. But he’s had to find a way to integrate them. We have a Tibetan friend who’s helped, and my scholarly work.” Fall paused. “And we think there might be people in Russia like us. That’s the reason I’ve studied Soviet parapsychology.”

  “In that school in Central Asia,” Kirov said quietly, “you would find support for your work. They say, for example, that there are degrees of translation into the larger Earth. At first, only part of the body crosses, the surface of the skin or the eyes or the brain. That is the reason, perhaps, why Atabet seems to disappear. It takes many years to translate the body, even for a second. And there are different kinds of crossing over. Some cross only through perception, seeing into the Earth beyond, while others alter their elements completely. But this is not the place to talk. Unfortunately, someone is watching us.”

  Startled, Fall sat back.

  “It’s all right,” Kirov said casually. “Please don’t look around.”

  A woman in her forties, seated at an adjoining table, was listening to their conversation. “We will pay the bill,” Kirov said, “and I will phone you when I find a safe place to meet. Can I reach you at the embassy?”

  Fall nodded and signaled the waitress. Waiting for the bill, they finished their wine in silence.” When we meet next,” Kirov stood, “I would like to hear about your work in detail. Then I will tell you how it compares to the understanding of that school in Central Asia. You will hear from me tonight.”

  They walked casually out of the restaurant and down the alley into the Malá Strana. No one followed them. “Until later then,” Kirov said, disappearing into a crowd of passersby.

  9

  ON THE EDGE OF Old Prague there was a house for KGB agents in which Kirov kept a special room. On his bed there, a newly pressed shirt and several European newspapers were laid out in the way he liked. These were the only personal favors the man in charge of the house could do for him, given Kirov’s ascetic habits, but they were done with ritual care. For Kirov was a legend to his peers. His role in the KGB espionage triumph at Orly Field in 1963, and his survival of torture by the French police, brought him uncommon respect. Most KGB men agreed that the Orly Field coup would not have succeeded without his efforts. Kirov’s work of recent years, moreover, had added stature to his reputation. Few other intelligence people had created a new field of espionage all their own. And yet, his special role in the Scientific and Technical Directorate placed him apart: no one else made an entire career of watching Western parapsychology and altered-states research, and his reports could not be easily assimilated into the KGB’s normal channels of information gathering. For these reasons, he was free from the controls placed on most agents abroad. Though his superiors in Moscow had begun to question his erratic travels, they seldom queried agents in the field about him. Consequently, no one in this house watched him closely enough to perceive his growing despair or suspect his thoughts of defection.