End to Ordinary History

by Michael Murphy

“I know,” Baranov nodded. “They told me yesterday.”

  “Strelnikov has learned about my trip to Samarkand with Darwin Fall, and must be wondering.” Kirov stopped to see if anyone could hear them. “But Georgi, I have revelations!”

  Kirov reviewed his discoveries about Rozhnov’s trip to Project Elefant, Ramón’s possessions, and the experiments with the cosmonauts. Baranov shook his head in amazement.

  “No one has made the connection,” Kirov said. “Or if they have, they aren’t talking. The people who know that Marichuk and Doroshenko were doing telepathy experiments with Project Elefant haven’t heard about Ramón’s possessions. Only Rozhnov knows that Ramón saw an apparition like the cosmonauts’, and no one at Project Elefant knows about Rozhnov’s visions in Moscow. Communication between Project Elefant and the space agencies has broken down completely, it seems. The space-mission people are embarrassed about the telepathic experiments, and Latchev’s people don’t know about Marichuk’s visions.”

  “It will seem far-fetched. And beyond belief for many. Beyond belief!” Baranov gave a low whistle. “How can we present these facts and have them still believe us?”

  Kirov did not answer. A man was following them carrying a briefcase that contained a device through which their words could be heard at a distance. “It was beautiful in Samarkand,” he said, signaling Baranov that it was time for disinformation. “Fall will tell us about U.S. secret work in parapsychology. He knows what the CIA is doing and will help us with Boone and the Germans.”

  “You were smart to show him the sights.”

  “He will tell us everything. But it is not money he is after, only leads to our people. A few old monasteries keep him happy.”

  “It is a silly field,” Baranov said loudly enough to reach the device in the briefcase. “Does he believe in angels?”

  “If they appear to the right people. So I will make sure he does not learn about our cosmonauts! That would get back to the CIA.”

  Their follower had dropped back among the passersby. “But to answer your original question,” Kirov said, signaling their freedom to talk, “I don’t know how we will convince the skeptics. We can only suggest the connection. I can put some scientific language on it, the engineering formulas will help. But all this raises another puzzle.” He stopped and faced the river. “If Rozhnov saw Ramón and knew about his possessions, why didn’t he tell us? Do you think he’s told Strelnikov?”

  The man with the briefcase was approaching, and Kirov indicated to Baranov that it was time to end their conversation. “We will discuss the matter further,” he said, turning away abruptly. “I will see you tonight.”

  In Baranov’s apartment that night, Kirov examined a report from the Special Commission on Soviet Values of 1966. Though the document was entitled ‘A Review of Attitudes Among Soviet Youth,’ its subject matter ranged beyond the interests of young Russians to reactions among the Soviet people in general to the excitement of the Kosmicheskaya Epockha, as journalists were calling the new age of space. Pervading the lengthy report was the government’s worry about excitement engendered by space flight’s mystic overtones. One section contained summaries of conversations among Soviet citizens on space and ecstasy, on stories their parents had told of the wonders in heaven, on the similarities between religious scriptures and things the cosmonauts were saying about the universe. Reading these firsthand accounts, Kirov recognized the government’s alarm. Lined up like this, such sentiments and declarations seemed to show a turnaround in Soviet sensibilities, a religious awakening perhaps. But had the reactions to space flight been so profound? Did these files exaggerate it?

  “Who was responsible for these studies?” he asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Baranov said. “The preparations for the meeting are still a well-guarded secret.”

  “We must find out. The people responsible might be our enemies.”

  “Perhaps. But there is something more.” Baranov turned to the report’s concluding section. “Here is a proposal for institutes to explore the greater mysteries of the mind. It is sympathetic to the spiritual sentiments the Commission studied. Reading it, I remembered the rumor that there is another group like ours at the highest levels of the government.”

  “That is hard to believe. If there were, they would have reached us by now.”

  “But perhaps they have. Don’t you see? Maybe Rozhnov is one of them!”

  “Yes—Rozhnov!” Kirov whispered. “I felt something about him from the moment we met.”

  “What do our friends in Tashkent say about such a circle?”

  “Nothing. Nothing whatsoever. Umarov scoffs at the story. He says we are growing too suspicious. But what are you suggesting, Georgi? That Rozhnov made up the stories about his visions?”

  “Perhaps. Or else he had them and decided to keep silent about Ramón’s experiments.”

  “And leave it to us to make the connections! That might be how a highly placed circle would work. But he seemed so sincere when we talked. I saw no sign he was lying.”

  “One grows practiced in the art, especially when one rises so high.” Baranov strummed his fingers on the table. “Yes, they could be testing you and me. But who else might be involved?”

  Kirov thought a moment. “Sheik Muhammad Khan, vice-chairman of the Islamic Directorate in Tashkent,” he said at last. “I met him by chance this morning at the Academy, and he said a curious thing, something about ‘Tamerlane’s Angels.’ It sounded like a secret sign Umarov gives his students. He’s on our review committee. Was he trying to tell me something? Could he be linked with Rozhnov?”

  “I doubt it. The heads of the religious directorates are too tightly controlled.”

  “But a member of the Way has patience. Maybe the sheik has waited for years to make his move.” Kirov closed his eyes. “My grandfather had a phrase—‘Angels work in ignorance.’ If there is a highly placed circle sympathetic to our aims, we should let them lead us. That, after all, is what our work requires—that we leave the results to God and his friends.”

  “Perhaps.” Baranov sighed. “Though I have doubts about the sheik. Maybe a word will be passed.”

  “Perhaps it was passed,” Kirov said. “And I did not understand. When he gave our secret sign, he said, ‘Our people are increasing in number. One day the Lord will favor our fruitfulness.’ Was he saying they have a long-range plan to establish an independent Moslem state in Central Asia? Tatars, Kazakhs, Uzbeks, Turkmen are filling the army now. Someday they will outnumber the Slavs.”

  “But a pan-Islamic movement would not be sympathetic to our aims. Some factions in Islam will oppose us as surely as Kozin will. Militant Muslims do not like the Way of Hurqalya, and they are growing in number now. They do not like our promoting ethnic harmony and the study of other faiths. If the sheik is part of their conspiracy, he will not be our ally. We are lonely steersmen, Volodya. Events will tell whether Muhammad Khan is our ally or not.”

  25

  THE KGB WAS STILL uncertain about Fall’s purpose in coming to Russia, and they didn’t know what Kirov had told him about his intelligence work. Because the police knew so little about their relationship, Kozin could fill the void with stories that would compromise them. In consequence, Kirov decided, they would have to put their collaboration in the KGB records. During a walk through Gorky Park, he and Fall rehearsed a talk they would have in Fall’s hotel suite for Kozin’s microphones.

  When they met that night at the National Hotel, Fall pretended innocence. “But Sergei,” he asked, using Kirov’s alias, “what do you really do? It is hard to believe you’re an ordinary engineer.”

  Kirov was pleased at Fall’s acting ability. “You’re right,” he answered. “Engineering takes me into fields close to my religious interests, into paraphysics, psychoenergetics, parapsychology, psychotronics. That’s how I’m involved in the study I described, the study we want your help in. But let me put it simply. We would like to enlist you in our cause, to help our government
. I would like your book, your pamphlets, your knowledge of American parapsychology, to help us in our studies of the mind. I would like you to be an unpaid consultant to us. Consider it part of a scientific exchange.”

  “You want my book?” Fall asked. “How can you make use of something so technical?”

  “It will help us with our investigations of supernormality,” Kirov said. “It is a priceless document, of course, so I appreciate your reluctance to share it. The scriptures teach us, though, to throw our bread upon the waters. You will have the satisfaction of helping awaken our higher possibilities in the Soviet Union.”

  “What irony,” Fall said. “To have my work read here first. The KGB will see it before I interest a single publisher in the States!”

  “So you see,” Kirov smiled, “the competition between our systems can facilitate exploration of the mind!”

  Kirov winked at Fall. Even as Kozin cursed this gambit, he would have to admit how skilled he was at such recruitment. “And I would like you,” Kirov said, “to discuss your visit here with Atabet. Talk it over with your friends, then see what you will bring us.”

  Fall was winning immunity with each passing moment, Kirov thought, for KGB people besides Kozin would review this episode. But he wanted to do more than protect his friend. He wanted to produce an exchange that would be instructive to Fall in the future. He would demonstrate the blindness of people like Kozin to the subtleties of the spiritual life.

  For ten minutes they sat in silence. To Fall, the sounds of traffic in the streets below seemed like distant echoes of the zikhr. The bells of the Kremlin might have rung in the ancient mosque. It was amazing, he thought, how quickly this presence appeared when they practiced meditation together . . .

  “There is an old Sufi saying,” Kirov whispered, “that angels throng together on earth when they find this remembrance, wing against wing, until the highest are in heaven.”

  Fall nodded, then closed his eyes again to savor the richness he felt, the joy that attracted such angels.

  He has him hypnotized. Kirov imagined Kozin’s voice, its flat, contemptuous inflection filled with grudging admiration. The poor American doesn’t know what’s happening. The man is a master at this.

  So intense was the stillness he felt, that Fall did not move when Kirov stood up. He opened his eyes with difficulty.

  “It’s time for me to leave,” Kirov was saying. “Let’s talk about your book and research materials. You must bring them here yourself, because I will need your help in explaining them to my commission. I want you to bring them here two weeks from now.”

  Kirov listed the titles and authors of the studies he wanted, weaving a spell with his voice. “Can you remember them all?” he asked.

  “They are burnt in my brain. This kind of meditation gives me a photographic memory.”

  “Then I shall see you tomorrow. Let me know if you have trouble getting passage to the States. Our people in the San Francisco consulate will help you get return tickets to Moscow.”

  Their meeting had accomplished several things, Kirov thought as he left the hotel. Kozin’s men would bear witness to their collaboration; Fall would travel through Russia safely; and Fall would learn from this that one could speak with immunity about God and his angels in the midst of the strictest surveillance. So many results confirmed the Way’s surprising fruitfulness in action.

  Time was running short, however. Strelnikov’s deadline was less than three weeks away.

  26

  KOZIN’S SURVEILLANCE TEAMS operated from a headquarters outside Moscow. In his office there, Kozin reviewed the tapes of Fall’s meeting with Kirov in the National Hotel. He was both angered and impressed; there was no denying Kirov’s talent for hypnotizing a man on the spot. “No one else has this ability,” he told his assistants. “No wonder people compare him to Rasputin.”

  Listening to this effortless recruitment, Kozin decided to follow the American. With coercive hypnosis, results declined with distance from the hypnotist. Continuing surveillance of Fall might reveal a flaw in Kirov’s methods.

  The KGB had an effective residency in San Francisco. From it, Fall and his friends could be followed, and their phone calls tapped. But the operation would do more than check on Kirov’s methods. It might uncover additional CIA links to Lester Boone and Western parapsychology. Kirov hadn’t ordered such surveillance, Kozin believed, because he trusted Fall too much. The way the two men were becoming friends should make the KGB suspicious.

  27

  FOR THREE DAYS Atabet, Corinne Wilde, and Kazi Dama had reviewed Fall’s adventure with amazement. Like him, they believed Kirov had told the truth about his aims. Fall’s experience in the mosque and its extraordinary resemblance to Atabet’s own recent visions convinced them. The entire episode, beginning with Fall’s dreams about Kirov the previous November, was a strange and unexpected validation of their work.

  But sharing their work with the Soviet government seemed another matter. How might the military use Darwin’s book or Atabet’s understanding of bodily transformation? Would some secret lab try to apply their insights to the training of pilots and soldiers, Kazi asked. Psychic warfare had been tried in Tibet for centuries.

  “Nothing I’ve written is classified,” Fall said, holding up his catalogue. “The Greenwich Press papers on parapsychology are available to the public, and have found their way to the Soviets already. My book would be the same. Kirov’s practically memorized my summary of it.”

  It was the first of November, and the four friends were gathered in the kitchen of their Olema farmhouse. The painting of a winter sun stood beside the hearth. “I think you should give him your book,” said Atabet, gazing at the painting. “But we should also give copies to people like Gorski who could pass them around over there. None of our work should be controlled by a government body.”

  “But Kirov’s study is sponsored by their Academy of Sciences. He says the book would circulate among psychologists and medical men before it reached the army.”

  “Then let’s make sure,” said Atabet. “Give it to your other friends there. And we should think about publishing it here.”

  Kazi Dama had a troubled look. “Kirov is in danger,” he said. “I can feel it. His study has risen too high.”

  Silently, the four friends thought about the Russian. For each, he had become a vivid presence in the room.

  After a long silence, Atabet turned to Fall. “Darwin,” he said. “I’m still not certain how that mosaic resembles my painting. Would you tell me again how they’re alike?”

  Going to the painting, Fall ran his finger along the contours of Russian Hill. “This slope is almost identical. But the buildings are different in detail. This high-rise, for example, is almost the same as a minaret. These houses are brick huts. Yet the two produce the same overall impression. In both, the buildings suggest living cells. The composition’s the same, they both give a sense that the hill might be part of a human body, and they both have this same winter sun shining through the earth around it.”

  Atabet slumped in a chair. “It was eleven years ago,” he said. “In the winter of 1961. A phrase kept running through my mind—‘the sun within the sun.’ The light in Turner’s work obsessed me. Then I sat on my deck one day, looking at the city, when Russian Hill seemed upside down! It seemed the setting sun was rising. That’s how the image appeared.”

  He closed his eyes to remember the experience more deeply. In some way, it was connected to his realizations of these last two weeks. The Russian’s larger Earth, with its extra vistas and central density, was a powerful image of the world he might open into.

  But a shadow clouded his memory. “The moment I saw that sun, I thought of Hiroshima. I knew at once that sun could kill me.” He paused. “So Kirov says that the mosaic shows the end of ordinary history. Do you think they foresaw the bomb?”

  “In some symbolic way they might have,” Fall said. “They could have sensed the danger of the Light’s miscarriage t
hrough a wrong turn human culture might take. According to Kirov, the school that based itself there—whether it was shamanistic, Zoroastrian, or Islamic—always believed in the spiritual transformation of the body. They were clairvoyant about it, he says, even three thousand years ago. At the start of the Muslim era, they already talked about wrong turns people could take as they discovered the secrets of matter. Given so much insight, they might have had an intuition about the atomic bomb, though they wouldn’t have the details right. Kirov dates the icon to the Bronze Age.”

  Atabet didn’t answer, and Fall turned away exhausted. The power of Atabet’s realization, coming with this rush of events, had numbed him. Corinne, too, felt spent. To both of them now, as it had for Atabet, the painting seemed to throb with pain. What was it saying to them? According to Kirov, some of the prophecies had said that the sun would rise in the West because the ordinary earth was setting.

  As Atabet sat by the hearth, the painting seemed to split in two. On his eyelashes were spidery lights in which the winter sun divided. The association he felt to Hiroshima and the bomb was part of a larger web, he suddenly realized. There were a thousand more suns in the earth, like the eggs of a tormented mother, a thousand suns pressing in on him . . .

  He stood, balancing himself deliberately against this sudden recognition. Like a sleepwalker caught in a nightmare, he went to the kitchen table. Spread out before him were two maps of the USSR that Fall had used to trace his journey, and across them both small luminous points were flashing. “Darwin,” he whispered. “I’m having one of my spells. Will you come here?”

  Alarmed, Fall and Corinne stood by him while he bent over the table intently. “I can locate their atom bombs,” he said. “If I could see them all and prove it, wouldn’t that give Kirov more ammunition?”

  “What are you talking about?” Fall asked, placing a hand on his back.

  Atabet did not answer. Instead he touched the map where one of the lights was flashing. “Some of their missile sites are here,” he said. “They’re buried on some kind of island.”