End to Ordinary History

by Michael Murphy

  Kozin’s name had never appeared on the list, yet he wouldn’t storm into a meeting like this without some legitimate authorization. “Has anyone seen a committee list with Kozin’s name?” Kirov asked.

  No one said they had. “Has there been a mistake?” Kirov asked the secretary.

  The thin, ascetic figure took a sheet of paper from his briefcase. “There is no mention of Comrade Kozin here,” he said, passing it around.

  “Then we have two lists!” Kozin said, his hands shaking. “Does anyone have an explanation?”

  Everyone at the table masked his reaction except Alexeyev and the sheik. “Internal surveillance is not my specialty,” Alexeyev said with a resonant voice. “You should talk to the people in those departments.”

  Taken aback at this hint of ridicule, Kozin glowered at the anthropologist.

  “Have you something to bring to this meeting?” asked the sheik, almost in a whisper. “Are you responsible for some of these reports?”

  “I am responsible for Comrade Kirov’s surveillance.” Kozin brought himself under control. “The Committee for State Security has assigned me to this project.”

  Kozin’s mad strategy was suddenly apparent to Kirov. By storming in like this, he would plant just enough doubts in the minds of the committee members to influence their recommendations.

  “I think he should take a seat,” Kirov said quietly. “The question of his membership can be settled later. It seems he has something to contribute.”

  Everyone at the table was embarrassed by Kozin’s behavior. It might be possible, Kirov thought, to reveal his instability. “You come at a propitious time,” he said, while Kozin took a seat. “I was about to show the American’s maps of our missile locations.” He held up Strelnikov’s note again. “This is a confirmation from Ivan Strelnikov that these documents have been reviewed in his office. Such a note seemed necessary because they are so hard to believe.” He passed the statement to Alexeyev while Kozin looked on with contempt.

  Spreading Atabet’s maps on the table, Kirov felt his confidence rising. The American’s extraordinary gifts, so evident in Kozin’s films, seemed instruments of the same power that ruled his life, a power that was working even now to overcome every resistance. Atabet’s maps confirmed his sense that these events were somehow destined . . .

  “But who are these Americans?” Alexeyev asked. “Is this something they do all the time?”

  “Darwin Fall is in Moscow,” Kirov said. “He is in contact with people all over the world interested in parapsychology and hidden reserves. He is also an important scholar and has contributed his unpublished work to our commission. But these maps were totally unexpected. He gave them to me at the National Hotel just two days ago, under the cameras of our surveillance people. Strelnikov’s office reviewed them, because they identify most of our intercontinental missile sites, and some we are only planning. The circles with dotted lines represent silos we haven’t built yet. They are not on the satellite pictures, but Atabet found them out!”

  “I smell disinformation,” Karpov sighed. “This could be a CIA job. Perhaps they are using these people.”

  “No,” Kirov said. “Though that is the most plausible theory. By happy circumstance—or rather by the foresight of Comrade Kozin—we have followed Fall and his friends in California. Some of Kozin’s people filmed the American making his guesses. That is why there is such alarm. We have seen them do this and have it all on film!”

  “Does American intelligence know we have these maps?” Strugatsky asked.

  “We aren’t sure yet, but our people in Washington are trying to find out. In spite of our surveillance in California, we don’t know what Fall and his friends have told their government. They seem more intent to share their work with us.”

  “Are you sure about these dotted circles?” the senior psychologist asked with dismay.

  “You have Strelnikov’s note,” Kirov answered. “He says that almost every one identifies a site on the planning boards.”

  “But this is impossible!” The psychologist looked to Karpov. “The Americans must have a spy in our military.”

  “You think they would tell us, then?” Alexeyev said with contempt. “That is a stupid remark.”

  “But these ‘guesses’!” The psychologist was visibly upset. “Where do you propose they come from? I don’t understand this at all.”

  “Neither do I,” said Kirov. “That is why we have proposed more study of these matters. No one yet has given an adequate explanation of clairvoyance. Conventional science cannot comprehend it.”

  “You are right,” said Alexeyev. “Though I have nothing so dramatic as this, I have seen Siberian shamans do things I can’t explain. I, for one, will second your proposal.”

  “Let me look at this confirmation.” Karpov took Strelnikov’s note. “Astonishing. Simply astonishing!” The disinformation expert started walking back and forth across the room.

  The others stood around the maps, while the senior psychologist examined Strelnikov’s note. Kozin sat back in silence. Alexeyev’s bass voice sounded above the rest: “Yes, I will second your proposals! These events are extraordinary!”

  Kozin stood abruptly. “This is insane!” he shouted, slamming a fist on the table. “I cannot believe what I am seeing, giving credence to such superstition. This committee is a farce!”

  “But we have made no findings,” Alexeyev said. “We have not written a thing. This is our very first meeting.”

  Kozin looked at the anthropologist with contempt, then turned to Muhammad Khan. “I suppose you agree with all this,” he said.

  The sheik wagged his head enigmatically, his face and gestures conveying more innuendoes than Kirov could comprehend. The psychologists were plainly embarrassed by the surveillance man’s behavior. Kirov guessed that they would mention his outburst in their reports, with an unfavorable opinion of his character. Everything seemed to be working in his favor.

  “Comrade Kozin is partly right,” said the sheik. “Perhaps we are getting too excited.”

  Everyone was looking at the maps, but they turned to the old man. A force in his wavering voice commanded their attention.

  One by one, the group returned to their seats. Only Kozin remained standing, his arms folded in a gesture of defiance.

  When the group was seated, the sheik began to speak. “Kirov,” he said, “I want to commend you for introducing these difficult subjects so boldly. I fear two things, however. You know as well as I the dangers of religious enthusiasm. It has been the greatest danger to the Way.” He paused, as if waiting for acknowledgment.

  Startled that he had mentioned the Way so openly, Kirov glanced around the table. The secretary wasn’t recording the sheik’s remarks.

  “If your proposals were suddenly made public”—the sheik paused for effect—“there would be just this sort of enthusiasm. We saw that in the 1960s both here and in the West. Our people are inflamed by ideas and give way to impulse easily. So we must be careful to make this knowledge public by degree. We must proceed with care. I presume you will recommend that.”

  Kirov nodded, uncertain as to what the sheik was driving at. “I have not thought about timetables,” he said. “The studies I propose will take decades.”

  “Good,” the old man said. “But there is a second thing. We have seen your evidence. The American’s guesses about our atomic weapons—if they’re as accurate as Strelnikov says—show how effective these powers can be. But here is the difficulty. They could be used by our dissidents! We have seen the success of Project Elefant, however limited, and success in places you have not had time to mention. What would prevent our malcontents from using these powers against our leaders?”

  Surprised by these remarks, Kirov wondered what the sheik intended. Was the wily old man concealing his role in the meeting?

  “Through the entire history of Islam,” the old man continued, “there have been groups that practiced sorcery. For every angelic circle, there was
a demonic one. It could happen again. That is what we see, after all, at Project Elefant. They have cursed one gulag after another, according to these reports. What is to prevent someone from doing the same thing to our leaders?”

  Kirov did not answer. If he argued against the old man’s admonitions, he might weaken his case that these powers could be effective. “So we should go slowly,” Muhammad Khan said, his gaze moving down the table.

  Kirov followed his glance. Alexeyev seemed reflective, Kozin contemptuous, and the psychologists dismayed by these remarks. But Karpov and Strugatsky agreed with Muhammad Khan’s warning. Kirov suppressed his anger. Had the old man weakened their support?

  “We must take infinite care,” said Muhammad Khan, “because we are playing with powers we don’t understand. That is what Comrade Kozin is trying to tell us.”

  “I have no special knowledge,” Kozin said with annoyance.

  “But your surveillance teams are the best we have.” The old man smiled warmly. “Without them it would be harder to believe this evidence. You have seen the dangers in religious cabals.”

  “There are cabals,” Kozin whispered, “at this very table! I am afraid we are witnessing one now.”

  Kirov felt sudden fear. Did Kozin know something he wasn’t telling?

  “You know what I’m saying,” Kozin said, walking away from the table. “I think we are surrounded by Tamerlane’s Angels!”

  The secretary leaned forward and asked him to repeat the remark. “Tamerlane’s Angels!” Kozin whispered. “Comrade Kirov will explain what I mean.”

  “I do not know what you mean,” said Kirov. “You will have to do the explaining.”

  “You don’t know what it means?” Kozin looked to the sheik. “Then why has our representative from Islam used the phrase so frequently? And why has he referred to ‘the Way’? They are not telling us everything they know. ‘Tamerlane’s Angels’ is a password used by secret groups in Central Asia that Kirov and Sheik Khan belong to.”

  “It is the name of a group that was disbanded ten years ago.” The sheik looked around at the others. “Have I been using the phrase as Kozin says? Do any of you remember?”

  Kozin looked at the secretary. “Examine the transcripts,” he said. “Sheik Khan has used the phrase in a very peculiar way.”

  The secretary thumbed through his pad. “I will look,” he said. “But it will take a moment.”

  The group sat in silence while the secretary searched his notes. Was the ascetic-looking figure another secret ally, Kirov wondered, remembering there would be no tapes. “Does anyone remember our using the phrase?” Kirov asked. “I have no idea what Comrade Kozin is trying to tell us.”

  No one remembered, it seemed.

  “You remember,” Kozin answered. “And you do.” He looked at the sheik. “And I think you know, too.” He nodded toward Alexeyev.

  “Me?” Alexeyev exploded. “This is outrageous! Are you accusing me of something?”

  “And I remember what?” asked the sheik serenely. Kozin refused to go further. He folded his arms to suggest that he had revealed the entire cabal.

  “If you don’t tell us what you mean,” Alexeyev fumed, “I will demand a hearing.”

  Kozin had missed the mark in regard to Alexeyev, Kirov saw. But what did he know about Muhammad Khan? “So you think we form a cabal?” the sheik said with an ironic twinkle. “I don’t think you really believe that.”

  “But, Comrade Kozin,” Kirov said, “since you’ve raised this issue with such vehemence, I think you should tell us what our cabal consists of. What are we supposed to be doing?”

  “You know perfectly well,” the sallow figure answered, his arms folded defiantly.

  “If you don’t want to explain your remarks,” Kirov said, “we will continue.”

  Kozin shrugged, as if the proceedings were compromised now. “The matter I am referring to,” he said, “will emerge as these meetings go on. But there is another thing. My assistants are preparing a report to explain Cosmonaut Marichuk’s apparition in more sensible terms. It appears that the man was homosexual. His ‘angel’ was Doroshenko.”

  “That is absurd!” Strugatsky exclaimed. “We have questioned every one of his friends and coworkers, and that never came out.”

  “I have examined your studies of him,” Kozin said. “Perhaps you should look at them again.”

  “I have studied them carefully.” The even-tempered space scientist regained his composure. “If you are referring to his admission of adolescent homosexual feelings, you have a very slim case. It is a long way from a few fleeting urges twenty years ago to panics and apparitions.”

  “Comrade Kozin’s report should make interesting reading.” Boris Alexeyev shook his head with amusement. “I did not realize that the Committee for State Security had advanced so far in its study of human motivation.”

  “We shall let the Praesidium decide when I present my report.” Kozin fixed his gaze on a portrait of Lenin above the conference table. “I refuse to say any more.”

  “Then we will proceed,” Kirov said. “Unless there are other objections.”

  Glances were traded around the table. Karpov and Strugatsky were angry at Kozin, and both the psychologists embarrassed, but everyone nodded for Kirov to continue. He finished his summaries and introduced the proposals he would make to the Academy while Kozin looked on with contempt. Kirov guessed that the others now believed the surveillance man to be imbalanced.

  His presentation done, Kirov adjourned the meeting. Kozin stood in a corner, watching suspiciously as everyone left the room. He must be suffering some kind of breakdown, Kirov thought.

  But for whom was Muhammad Khan working? His admonitions might have weakened Strugatsky’s and Karpov’s support. And how would Strelnikov react to this preliminary meeting? It was not a good sign that so many complexities had appeared in a group whose dynamics were fundamentally helpful to him.

  30

  WAKING, IVAN STRELNIKOV FELT a strange elation. The yellow chair at the foot of his bed, the old wooden chest of drawers, the curtains waving by the window pulsed with energy. Everything seemed filled with the buoyancy his dream had produced.

  Rising carefully, as if any sudden movement might disturb his pleasure, he stood beside his bed. In his dream he had discovered a magnificent stone—a piece of quartz, perhaps, or a giant uncut diamond—and had carried it up a passageway into an emerald hall. There, a single ray of laser light had streamed into the stone, forming a brilliant rainbow.

  Standing naked before his bathroom mirror, Strelnikov examined his face. It seemed the face of a stranger—the prominent cheekbones, well-formed jaw looked too fixed and heroic to be his own. The cool, gray eyes did not convey the fullness he felt. Alarmed, he stood back. The man in the reflection was not him—his essential self did not have these boundaries. Washing his face, he remembered another part of the dream . . .

  Vladimir Kirov had come to his office at the Academy to help him remember the secret of his experience in the emerald hall. Then, to Strelnikov’s amazement, Kirov had turned into a panther and led him out to the street. Now, washing his hands, Strelnikov realized the dream had been erotic. Quickly he rinsed his mouth and shaved, shaking in the cold. The soft, gray hair on his muscular chest stood erect, he shivered so badly.

  In five minutes he dressed and called his driver, forcing all memory of the dream aside. He wouldn’t have coffee this morning, he decided. A limousine ride would ease his agitation.

  Monday through Friday, the driver came on duty at 7:30 and could reach Strelnikov’s apartment a few moments after being called. This morning the call came before 7:30, but the driver had been up early. At 7:35 Strelnikov rode in his long black Chaika toward Leninskii Prospekt.

  Snow had fallen in the night, producing a radiance in the streets around him. “It’s early,” he told the driver. “Drive past the Kremlin before you go to the Academy.”

  The driver slowed the limousine and Strelnikov leaned back
for the view. But as he settled into the cushioned seat, he remembered his dream again.

  Strelnikov took pride in facing upsetting truths. In the dream there had been something almost sexual. Kirov’s handsome figure had become a panther, and Strelnikov had willingly ridden it. Riding in this limousine, he felt the way he had felt on the panther’s back: there was the same pleasure-filled surrender, the same sense of being carried through the morning darkness toward a splendid place. He looked at the snow-covered sidewalk, brilliant in the silvery light of the towering streetlamps, and gazed up at the gold-leafed cupolas above the Kremlin wall. The view was dazzling, and charged with energy. It held layer upon layer of the past joined in one enormous moment. Feudal, czarist, revolutionary pageantry hovered in the air. The city was unfolding like his dream, he thought—carrying the past toward a marvelous future.

  Strelnikov could not remember an experience like this. He wondered if its significance would unfold as the day proceeded.

  Patiently, Kirov waited outside an office in the KGB Center on Dzerzhinsky Square. Two KGB officers, Konstantin Smyslov and Fyodor Karel, had been chosen by Directorate T to review Kozin’s charges. Inside, they examined their files on Kirov and Muhammad Khan. “There is no real record of the sheik until he was forty,” said Smyslov, a large, craggy-faced Russian in his fifties. “We don’t know what he did until 1937. It simply says he was a farmer near Tashkent.”

  Fyodor Karel made a sour expression. Neither man was satisfied with the records of Muslims on the religious boards; there were always such gaps in their past. “He is a good soldier, it seems,” Karel sighed. “Without him, we wouldn’t have uncovered this subversive group—this Tamerlane’s Angels.”

  Karel, the smaller of the two, was a KGB veteran who had risen to power under Stalin. “Tamerlane’s Angels . . .” He shrugged. “Kozin must be confused. Doesn’t he say that Kirov and Muhammad Khan belong to it? Or is there another group with that name?”

  Smyslov shook his head. The affairs of Islam’s sects had always confused him. “Maybe several groups,” he said. “The tomb of Tamerlane is one of their important shrines.” He turned to their secretary sitting across the room. “Record all this,” he said, “even if the sheik says something Uzbek.”