End to Ordinary History

by Michael Murphy

  A guard led Fall out to Marx Prospekt and showed him the way to the National Hotel. A light snow fell. He buttoned his overcoat and hurried down the street as if he might be chased. Conceivably, the police were not finished with him yet.

  He reached the hotel ten minutes later and went up the stairs to his room. Would he be under surveillance now? The old lady who signed in the guests on his floor smiled winsomely, showing no sign that she regarded him with suspicion. With genuine warmth, she asked if he wanted some tea.

  While he lay on his bed, the lady brought in a samovar. Shaking a motherly finger at him, she went into the bathroom and turned on the bathwater taps. When she returned to the bedroom she pretended to shiver. “Too cold,” she said in heavily accented English. “Hot bath now!”

  He poured a cup of tea and drank it, reviewing his ordeal. His arrest had been a setup, he knew, but for what purpose? Had Kirov gotten into trouble?

  The memory of the Lubyanka filled him with disgust. The bath would help wash it away. He undressed and got into the long claw-footed Victorian tub, stretching out to full length. Closing his eyes, he let the heat sink in. But instead of relaxing, he started to shake. First fear, then anger rose in him. Sitting up, he swore out loud. When he got back to the States he would make formal complaints to the CIA, the State Department, and his senators.

  He got out of the bathtub and dressed in clean clothes. But as he looked through his dresser drawers, he saw that his room had been searched. Some of his books and papers were missing; both his suitcases had been repacked. He tried to compose himself. He had to think of a way to see Kirov before he left.

  As if to answer his thought, Kirov’s voice called out. “Darwin,” he said as he entered, “we don’t have very much time. I want you to listen carefully.”

  He stood by the floor lamp, unshaven and haggard. “Sit down,” Fall said with alarm. “Are you in trouble?”

  Kirov sat in a chair facing him. “I know about your arrest. But we can talk freely now. This room is no longer bugged.” He hesitated, for it was hard to frame his next remarks. “You are leaving tomorrow,” he said with an expression of shame. “This is the last time I will see you. I must tell you how to reach Umarov and other members of our school. First, however, let me tell you exactly what my work has been. You must hear every part of it.”

  Listening to Kirov now, Fall remembered him greeting his friends in the mosque. He thought of his face at the zikhr and his presence in the Well of Light. That this brave and selfless figure, bearing witness to a power and love all humans were meant to enjoy, should be justifying his life with this look of embarrassment filled him with both sadness and rage.

  Kirov appeared to be asking forgiveness. “I did not seek this life,” he said. “It seemed I was led to it by a special destiny. I had to protect our school and work for this land’s rebirth.”

  “But it isn’t over,” Fall said. “Russia’s spiritual awakening is just getting started.”

  “My projects are finished, though. Now they will stop the Academy study and forget about the space-capsule crash. Our study has caused a scandal.” He bent forward, his face in his hands. “Tonight I feel as I did in Prague, that this time of my life is over. If our dreams are to be realized, they must emerge in the light of day—not in secret studies by the State Police.

  “Our two nations owe the world their collaboration,” Kirov said. “The things we love cannot flourish until the Soviet Union and America are partners. I see that clearly now. Everything falters—agriculture, industry, science, the Way—as long as we fight one another. You must work for that. You must work for the joining of our nations in every way you can.” He handed Fall a scrap of paper bearing Umarov’s address. “You must write to Misha. He will tell you about people in the States who know about our school.”

  “But what will happen to you?”

  “No one knows.” Kirov looked at the floor. “The whole thing’s still in chaos.”

  “But can’t you escape?”

  “No. They are following me. A man is waiting in the hall. They don’t know what to do yet.” He closed his eyes to restrain his emotion. “But here,” he said, taking a book from his coat. “It is a collection of Pushkin’s poems. I have sealed something in it, my account of Ali Shirazi with a study of angels and the Mind that you and your friends might find useful. I try to join some science with the Way of Hurqalya. That is where many discoveries wait, I think, where the old and new worlds meet.”

  He stood, his face trembling with grief.

  “We will help you,” Fall insisted. “I can’t leave you here like this.”

  “There has been guidance so far,” Kirov said. “Even though our projects have failed. The next step will make itself known to us.”

  They embraced, then Kirov shook himself free and left. Fall started to follow, but a figure came down the corridor trailing Kirov closely. Fall stepped back in the room. Struggling with his emotions, he went onto the balcony. The Kremlin shone in the floodlit snow, and beyond it St. Basil’s Cathedral.

  With tears in his eyes, Fall watched the street below hoping for a last glimpse of his friend. A moment later, Kirov left the hotel flanked by men in overcoats. It appeared he was under arrest. As Fall watched with grief and anger, the three figures got into a car and drove away.

  35

  LEONID BREZHNEV RODE TO his apartment in Kutuzovsky Prospekt. It had been a trying day. He gave his assistant a glass of vodka from the bar built into the rear of his Zils limousine, then drank a glass himself.

  “These stories!” he said. “Where do you think they come from?” His assistant, a young man from the Party Secretariat who would be available for emergency duty that night, did not answer. To render any opinion about such a delicate matter could get him into trouble: better to sip his vodka like the General Secretary and shake his head with disgust.

  “But who started them?” Brezhnev swore out loud. “They damage Strelnikov’s standing and the reputation of the Academy. And they are totally absurd. This episode with the American was uncalled for. Have they released him yet?”

  Again the assistant shrugged. For the last two hours he had relayed messages between the Foreign Ministry and the U.S. Embassy in an effort to clarify Fall’s arrest. “They were not ready to release him the last time we talked,” he sighed. “They thought his books were filled with codes.”

  “It is all connected to those stories about Muslim plots,” Brezhnev snorted. “They are making an international incident out of someone’s delusions. Even our television people are complaining. Do you know what that is about?”

  “The American was going to appear on a television show with Soviet scientists.” Brezhnev’s assistant sounded exhausted. “They were going to film the show tomorrow.”

  The long black car turned toward the entrance of the building, stopping beside two militiamen ready to escort Brezhnev inside. “When we get upstairs, tell Strelnikov to come here at once,” Brezhnev told his assistant. “I want to hear his account of this Kirov commission.” Then he hurried past his guards and rode the elevator to his floor. But as he stepped into the corridor, a stranger came out of the shadows. “I’m here to save your life!” the man whispered. “Your enemies are staging a coup!”

  Two bodyguards grabbed the stranger’s arms, pulling him back down the hallway. Brezhnev watched with horror. “Help search him!” he said to his assistant. “See if he has a gun!”

  “Ivan Strelnikov and Vladimir Kirov!” the struggling figure shouted. “They are your enemies!”

  “Who are you?” shouted one of the guards.

  “Yakov Kozin. You have seen me. I work in the Committee for State Security!”

  “He is a surveillance expert,” said Brezhnev’s assistant. “I recognize him now.”

  The General Secretary stood transfixed as Kozin went down on his knees. “Comrade Brezhnev,” he pleaded, “I must tell you what they are planning. It has been my job to find out. I have information you can check!”


  “Bring him in,” Brezhnev said with anger. “Let us hear what he has to say. It may be the quickest way to find the source of these rumors.”

  Shivering with a fear that threatened to erase his will and coherence, Kozin was led into Brezhnev’s rooms. Once inside, the two bodyguards searched him carefully, then kept his arms pinned to his side. A third guard had come in from the hallway. “Tell us what the plot consists of!” the assistant demanded. “Strelnikov will answer your charges.”

  “Vladimir Kirov!” Kozin gasped. “Remember that name—Vladimir Kirov. You must not forget it. And Rozhnov, Alexander Rozhnov. And the sheik Muhammad Khan! They are all in it together!”

  “I have heard those names all afternoon,” Brezhnev said fiercely. “But tell us what they are doing. These stories are insane!”

  “They are plotting a takeover,” said the desperate figure. “The Academy study of the mind is their front. They are all in league with Muslim groups. Remember ‘Tamerlane’s Angels.’ That is a name to watch. Tamerlane’s Angels! It is one of their passwords . . .”

  “But how can such a group take over the government?” Brezhnev demanded. “They don’t have a single tank. Or any votes on the Politburo!”

  Kozin saw the General Secretary’s growing impatience and realized that his time was short. “Strelnikov can read your mind!” he whispered. “And so can Vladimir Kirov. They all know what you think.”

  “They sound like supermen,” a resonant voice said. “What other powers do they have?”

  Kozin turned to see Strelnikov standing behind him. Shocked, he backed away into one of the guards.

  Strelnikov was the calmest person in the room. Brezhnev paced up and down, fingering his jacket nervously, then turned to study Kozin. Kozin, meanwhile, tried to return Strelnikov’s gaze.

  “This is the source of the rumors,” Strelnikov said to Brezhnev. “He has started them all.” He looked with menace at Kozin. “Your people in Department Ten have told us all about it. They think you have gone crazy.”

  Kozin was incapable now of strategic thinking. “Yes, I have done this alone!” he gasped. “No one else has the strength or knowledge. But that does not make me wrong. You know that, comrade, don’t you?”

  “Take him away!” said Brezhnev gruffly. “The man is a lunatic!”

  The bodyguards hauled the protesting figure toward the door. But with a burst of manic energy, Kozin loosed himself and headed for Strelnikov. One of the guards tackled him, banging his head on the floor. A second jumped on his back. Together, they carried the unconscious figure out into the hall.

  Pacing up and down, Brezhnev spoke with nervous gestures. “Strelnikov, we cannot have this. I blame it all on that study. It has raised a hundred rumors about the Academy and has damaged your reputation. It has ruined Vladimir Kirov and embarrassed the State Committee for Science and Technology. It’s as if you had all taken whores to the Kremlin and had an orgy in Georgievsky Hall! Finally some people cannot stand it, and like this Kozin, they will snap. For the Academy to study apparitions in such secrecy, with a committee headed by a famous espionage agent, is not a good idea. People are joking that the CIA put drugs in our vodka!”

  For the first time Brezhnev saw the humor of it. “Let’s have a cognac,” he growled. “And agree to call off the study. The Committee for State Security will have to decide what to do with Vladimir Kirov.”

  “I never wanted that study,” said Strelnikov. “I warned everyone about it the day it was conceived.”

  “Da!” The General Secretary grinned with bearish good humor. “Let us leave the mysteries of the soul to our priests and poets! The rest of us can find illumination enough with good cognac like this!”

  36

  WAKING FROM HIS NIGHTMARE, Strelnikov sat straight up. Though the room was dark, he could see from the clock at his side that it was six-thirty. He had slept for less than five hours. He tried to calm himself, but the dream was too upsetting. He could not dispel a sense that his mind would vanish in the light he had seen. Its radiance still threatened to overwhelm him.

  Throwing the covers back abruptly, he got out of bed, washed his face, and dressed. To his relief, there were sounds of dishes rattling and the smell of coffee. His maid was already up.

  Sitting in his kitchen, Strelnikov felt the dream receding. With a sigh of gratitude, he buttered the toast on his plate and drank a cup of coffee. The warmth of the stove had never been more welcome.

  Turning to his maid, Strelnikov asked if she dreamt. A sturdy, intelligent woman of sixty, she seemed to have wisdom in these matters.

  “Ah, dreams!” she said. “People talk to me sometimes in them and tell me surprising things.”

  “Is that right!” Strelnikov studied her face. “What kinds of things do they tell you?”

  The woman bit her lower lip as if to suppress a smile. “Sometimes sad things, sometimes naughty. Sometimes they foretell the future.”

  “Foretell the future?” Strelnikov asked. “Tell me one like that.”

  The lady looked at the ceiling. “There’s one I’ll never forget,” she said, refilling Strelnikov’s cup. “In it, a stranger gave me a necklace, then two days later a relative died and left me her favorite jewels. They looked exactly like the necklace in the dream.”

  As she spoke, Strelnikov remembered that in his dream Kirov had told his story about the endless net of jewels. In it, each diamond reflected all the others.

  “It’s a necklace I wear at dinners here,” she said. “You must have seen it.”

  “I don’t remember, but I’m often preoccupied. Next time I want you to show me. And you have naughty dreams? I didn’t think you’d have dreams like that, Marina.”

  “Sometimes,” she said with a blush. “Once I dreamt I was a spy.”

  “A spy? And what were you doing?”

  “Watching everyone, and having a marvelous time! I could go anywhere I wanted. And everyone was watching me as if they knew all my secrets. Every person in the dream was a spy. There was something naughty about it.”

  Strelnikov sat back thunderstruck. There had been something like that in his dream, a sense that everyone secretly knew one another.

  Strelnikov emptied his cup. “I will look for that necklace,” he said politely. “We will have to talk about this more.”

  In his spacious front room Strelnikov telephoned his driver. Then he paced back and forth to control the anxiety his talk with Marina had triggered. There seemed no way to suppress his dream. . . .

  It had started with someone whispering a line from Rozhnov’s book, “everyone is given a way without knowing the destination,” as there began a thorough review of his scientific work. Watching a long faded movie of his past, he had carefully re-examined his development of coherent light. He had stood for what seemed an eternity, puzzling over each turn his work had taken, over each idea, each invention, until the horror of the dream had finally dawned on him. Suddenly he saw that his mind was the same laser light he had worked so long to perfect. It was as well-defined, as pure, as hard and focused. To his horror, he was trapped in a single beam that bounced from mirror to mirror in a machine he had invented. He was trapped in a brilliant labyrinth that turned on itself forever.

  Strelnikov tried to remember: had he gotten up from his dream in the dark, his arms paralyzed, before he fell back exhausted? He wasn’t sure, because all he could recall now was a sense that Kirov had come to his rescue. Kirov had entered the labyrinth to show him that every mirror was a luminous face. Instead of mirrors, there were faces everywhere that seemed to know and support his every thought and feeling. For an exhilarating moment he saw that each person he faced was a unique and marvelous entity within a single radiant light, every one reflecting and somehow embracing the others. All of it was brimming with a joy and power that could annihilate him.

  Standing by a table for support, Strelnikov cursed his inability to control these extravagant thoughts. His weakness must come from the strain of these
last four weeks and the trauma of Kozin’s scandal. To restore his confidence, he remembered his talk with Brezhnev the evening before. The General Secretary’s quick dismissal of Kozin’s charges had been a great confirmation, a gesture of trust that would serve him for years to come. Brezhnev had even told him that his work on lasers deserved more state support. Remembering their talk, Strelnikov felt his strength returning. His position in the Academy, his status in Soviet science, were more solid than ever now. In a few weeks the Kirov episode would be largely forgotten.

  By the time his driver arrived, Strelnikov was almost back to normal, and ten minutes after that, seated in his limousine, he felt completely restored. With a sense of relief, he decided to destroy all the files of the space-capsule crash. When he reached the Praesidium, he would eliminate every trace of Kirov’s commission.

  As the day wore on, Strelnikov erased sign after sign of the scandal. He threw Rozhnov’s book away, and ordered the removal of every document Kirov had used to support his study. The UFO report, Fall’s book, the tapes of the capsule incident. Atabet’s maps were sent to the KGB center in Dzerzhinsky Square. By five o’clock that afternoon, no remnant of Kirov’s investigation remained in the Academy files.

  Kozin, meanwhile, was sent to a well-guarded spa in Georgia, Baranov was assigned to a lab in Minsk, and Kirov was given leave in Tashkent until the KGB decided how his compromised talents might be used in the future. All this was accomplished while Strelnikov’s dreams sealed over. Whatever truths they might have delivered were erased just as surely as Kozin’s unfounded stories.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  BUT THE STORY IS not over. In the ten years since these events, several Americans have joined with Soviet citizens to explore those vast uncharted territories the Soviets have taken to calling “our hidden human reserves.” Their ventures include a comparative study of exceptional capacities that appear in various cultures, an analysis of ancient and modern disciplines for personal growth and illumination, and some projects to demonstrate the promise of their findings.