those it was trying to impress.
A dissident recanting his dissidency! What comic literature did the young fanatics in the VKR read? Where were the older and wiser heads when fools came up with such schemes?
When Vasili had heard of the plan, he had laughed, actually
laughed.
The objective was to mount a brief but strong campaign against Zionist accusations, to show people in the West that not all Jews thought alike in Soviet Russia.
The Jewish writer had become something of a minor cause in the American press—the New York press, to be specific. He had been among those who had spoken to a visiting senator in search of votes 8,000 miles away from a constituency. But race notwithstanding, he simply was not a good writer, and, in fact, something of an embarrassment to his co-religionists.
Not only was the writer the wrong choice for such an exercise, but for reasons intrinsic to another operation it was imperative that he be permitted to leave Russia. He was a blind trade-off for the senator in New York. The senator had been led to believe it was his acquaintanceship with an attaché at the consulate that had caused Sovietimmigration to issue a visa; the senator would make capital out of the incident and a small hook would exist where one had not existed before. Enough hooks and an awkward relationship would suddenly exist between the senator and “acquaintances” within the Soviet power structure; it could be useful. The Jew had to leave Moscow tonight. In three days the senator had scheduled a welcoming news conference at Kennedy Airport.
But the young aggressive thinkers at the VKR were adamant. The writer would be detained, brought to the Lubyanka, and the process of transformation would commence. No one outside the VKR was to be told of the operation; success depended upon sudden disappearance, total secrecy. Chemicals were to have been administered until the subject was ready for a different sort of news conference. One in which he revealed that Israeli terrorists had threatened him with reprisals against relatives in Tel Aviv if he did not follow their instructions and cry publicly to be able to leave Russia.
The scheme was preposterous and Vasili had said as much to his contact at the VKR, but was told confidentially that not even the extraordinary Taleniekov could interfere with Group Nine, Vodennaya Kontra Rozvedka. And what in the name of all the discredited Tzars was Group Nine?
It was the
new
Group Nine, his friend had explained. It was the successor to the infamous Section Nine, KGB. Smert Shpiononam. That division of Soviet intelligence devoted exclusively to the breaking of men’s minds and wills through extortion, torture and that most terrible of methods—killing loved ones in front of loved ones.
Killing was nothing strange to Vasili Taleniekov, but that kind of killing turned his stomach. The
threat
of such killing was often useful, but not the act itself. The State did not require it, and only sadists demanded it. If there was truly a successor to Smert Shpiononam, then he would let it know with whom it had to contend within the larger sphere of KGB. Specifically, one “extraordinary Taleniekov.” They would learn not to contradict a man who had spent twenty-five years roaming all of Europe in the cause of the State.
Twenty-five years. It had been a quarter of a centurysince a twenty-one-year-old student with a gift for languages had been taken out of his classes at the Leningrad University and sent to Moscow for three years of intensive training. It was training the likes of which the son of introspective Socialist teachers could barely believe. He had been plucked out of a quiet home where books and music were the staples, and set down in a world of conspiracy and violence, where ciphers, codes, and physical abuse were the main ingredients. Where all forms of surveillance and sabotage, espionage and the taking of life—not murder; murder was a term that had no application—were the
A dissident recanting his dissidency! What comic literature did the young fanatics in the VKR read? Where were the older and wiser heads when fools came up with such schemes?
When Vasili had heard of the plan, he had laughed, actually
laughed.
The objective was to mount a brief but strong campaign against Zionist accusations, to show people in the West that not all Jews thought alike in Soviet Russia.
The Jewish writer had become something of a minor cause in the American press—the New York press, to be specific. He had been among those who had spoken to a visiting senator in search of votes 8,000 miles away from a constituency. But race notwithstanding, he simply was not a good writer, and, in fact, something of an embarrassment to his co-religionists.
Not only was the writer the wrong choice for such an exercise, but for reasons intrinsic to another operation it was imperative that he be permitted to leave Russia. He was a blind trade-off for the senator in New York. The senator had been led to believe it was his acquaintanceship with an attaché at the consulate that had caused Sovietimmigration to issue a visa; the senator would make capital out of the incident and a small hook would exist where one had not existed before. Enough hooks and an awkward relationship would suddenly exist between the senator and “acquaintances” within the Soviet power structure; it could be useful. The Jew had to leave Moscow tonight. In three days the senator had scheduled a welcoming news conference at Kennedy Airport.
But the young aggressive thinkers at the VKR were adamant. The writer would be detained, brought to the Lubyanka, and the process of transformation would commence. No one outside the VKR was to be told of the operation; success depended upon sudden disappearance, total secrecy. Chemicals were to have been administered until the subject was ready for a different sort of news conference. One in which he revealed that Israeli terrorists had threatened him with reprisals against relatives in Tel Aviv if he did not follow their instructions and cry publicly to be able to leave Russia.
The scheme was preposterous and Vasili had said as much to his contact at the VKR, but was told confidentially that not even the extraordinary Taleniekov could interfere with Group Nine, Vodennaya Kontra Rozvedka. And what in the name of all the discredited Tzars was Group Nine?
It was the
new
Group Nine, his friend had explained. It was the successor to the infamous Section Nine, KGB. Smert Shpiononam. That division of Soviet intelligence devoted exclusively to the breaking of men’s minds and wills through extortion, torture and that most terrible of methods—killing loved ones in front of loved ones.
Killing was nothing strange to Vasili Taleniekov, but that kind of killing turned his stomach. The
threat
of such killing was often useful, but not the act itself. The State did not require it, and only sadists demanded it. If there was truly a successor to Smert Shpiononam, then he would let it know with whom it had to contend within the larger sphere of KGB. Specifically, one “extraordinary Taleniekov.” They would learn not to contradict a man who had spent twenty-five years roaming all of Europe in the cause of the State.
Twenty-five years. It had been a quarter of a centurysince a twenty-one-year-old student with a gift for languages had been taken out of his classes at the Leningrad University and sent to Moscow for three years of intensive training. It was training the likes of which the son of introspective Socialist teachers could barely believe. He had been plucked out of a quiet home where books and music were the staples, and set down in a world of conspiracy and violence, where ciphers, codes, and physical abuse were the main ingredients. Where all forms of surveillance and sabotage, espionage and the taking of life—not murder; murder was a term that had no application—were the
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