A-Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Somewhere between Berlin &; Dresden, Germany

"You should have taken his gun, Comrade," Papa muttered suddenly as
Mik sat on the lower right bunk mattress of the train cabin, Eva's head
in his lap. "At least we could have had something to protect ourselves
with."
"I'll remember that the next time you slit a man's throat in plain
sight," Mik answered sullenly. "He was the first person I've ever
killed; I'm hardly an experienced murderer."
"It doesn't take brains to kill somebody, much less steal a dead man's
possessions, Comrade-"
"Don't you think Eva's seen enough killing for tonight?"
"Don't you think we're going into dangerous territory, much too
dangerous for a little switchblade to protect the three of us?"
"Besides, Papa-"
"Don't call me that, Comrade-"
"I hate Lugers-"
"Well, cry me the Ural River-"
"Why can't we just bring our own guns if you're so nervous about
protecting ourselves-"
"Well, have fun inventing an alibi for that one. I can see it
now&;#8230;'Well, Mr. Stormtrooper, I just saw this Russian revolver
lying on the ground, and it looked really-'"
"Just because we bring our own firearms doesn't mean they have to see
them, Comrade. You're an intelligence officer, it's part of your job to
hide things-"
"You are an intelligence officer as well, and it is part of your job
to keep your head screwed on straight! It doesn't matter that it's your
first time, you should know that if you find a weapon on a dead man,
you take it and use it if necessary, especially if you are unarmed or,
in this case, without a firearm-"
"And then what? When-or if- we make it into Poland, what will the
civilians think of us, walking around with a Luger, huh?" For a moment,
there was silence. Papa took a deep breath, and smiled. He had always
loved to argue with people; it was his own way of further demonstrating
intellectual superiority in place of delegating physical
authority.
"I thought you would never say that, Comrade. If you didn't, we would
be arguing all night and miss our jump point."
"Da, Comrade. Wouldn't want to miss our jump point," Mik said. They
were not going into Dresden. About five kilometers from the Dresden
station, the trio would sneak out into one of the exits and jump out of
the train. From there, it would be but a few klicks to Poland, and
relative safety.
To some degree getting out of Poland would be more difficult than
getting out of Germany, even without cutting throats. About two kilcks
east of the border, a car rested on the side of a highway. The car
would take the party to Warsaw, wherupon they would catch the next
train to Riga, and then another car would be planted there. They would
then drive to Leningrad, and finally, the long train ride to Moscow.
Conservatively, the whole trip would take five or six days, and only if
miraculous weather had swept through Mother Russia while they were
gone.
Now Mik and Papa were fluent in Polish, but not enough to speak like
natives. Any tolls they had to clear, customs to legitimize, arguments
to settle, would take more time than needed. When in the car to Warsaw
they would need to light up the night and get to Warsaw as fast as
possible, maybe even by sunrise.
As for the car in Riga, it would be a matter of faith (or luck--faith
was a rather rarely used method of hope for Mik and Papa) whether it
would even be waiting there for them. They would get into Leningrad
very late and they would spend at least a day resting up for the trip
to Moscow, a trip of over 800 kilometers. Then it would be back to the
salt mines for Papa and Mik at the Kremlin. Comrade Colonel Zhorkov Sr.
would brief Stalin and his cronies on the mission, while Comrade
Lieutenant Zhorkov Jr. sipped down his morning coffee with a chaser of
vodka and shuffled paperwork all but useless to anything but the
Kremlin garbage disposals but eternally useful to Pravda.
Mik was made a public relations officer for the intelligence department
upon his promotion to Lieutenant. There was something of an irony here;
Mik, as far as his social skills were concerned, could have been
described as shy and very tacit. He also couldn't have given a damn
about what was going on in the rest of the world. He cared just as much
(or just as little) about the inner workings of his own office of
employment.
But for those shortcomings he still could have made Lenin proud with
his workmanship. Pravda called him once a week to aid them in putting
out the military surveys (he was the "defence ministry official" the
newspapers always went gaga about). He would always gladly gush through
the sieve granted to him by his censors and make sure the Soviet media
was told exactly what they and the Russian people wanted to hear:
Nothing wrong on this end, guys! Needless to say, Mik became one of the
priveliged few in the entire Union of Soviet Socialist Republics to own
a publicly produced paper shredder.
Something told him that he would have to suffer through the Monday
doldrums of too much work, too little sleep and not enough cigarettes
and coffee to sustain him. But he had another little booster drug he
could always depend on, and nobody knew about it but
him&;#8230;

He found out about it pretty much by total accident. About two years
back, his father sent him out on his first independent mission. It was
a trip out East, and a few hundred kilometers west of India, then a
"sphere of interest" for the Soviet Union. His objective included
visiting an opium farm, where a Indus River Valley Soviet sympathizer
was believed to operate out of. The man gave Mik a pack of cigarettes;
the weird thing about the pack was that a few of the cigarettes had a
different marking on them than all the other cigarettes.
"Just try it, my boy, I'm sure you'll enjoy it," The man said, giggling
as if he was trying to laugh off a hangover. Mik lit up, and all of a
sudden his entire world went upside down, did a backflip,
triple-lutzed, double-axled, and propped him flat on his back in a
madly psychedelic, almost out-of-body experience. To him, the world
looked the way one would look through a kaleidoscope, colors sweeping
along before his eyes.
Then, he began seeing reality, if not in a virtual way. He saw all of
his dreams come true: He saw himself making violent love to all of his
past love interests (and enjoying every second fully enjoyed by all
parties concerned) without even blinking at the moral implications of
his actions. He saw himself beating his enemies to a pulp, and then
performing the old-fashioned Russian ghulag, ripping out the lining of
their stomach with a wet towel, and smiling like a schoolboy all the
while. But these were not sad or depressing fantasies for Mik. At least
they were not as depressing as the next line of fantasies.
He saw the future. He saw people committing horrendous acts of
brutality on each other; he saw soldiers throwing grenades into loaded
barracks filled with sleeping prisoners, or pumping machine gun bullets
into little children, while other soldiers raped their mothers or older
sisters. He watched in horror as people&;#8230;no, they couldn't be
people, so emaciated, so sickly, so dead-looking&;#8230;whatever
they were, being guided into clammy, disease-ridden trucks. For God's
sake, a pothole could have meant the end of them&;#8230;
He saw leaders grinning with pleasure as they drove by these various
crimes of humanity. For a moment, the sun disappeared, and their faces
became visible--
Suddenly, his "eyesight" started to become flooded with dark, blood-red
light, and he woke up screaming on a cot made of bamboo and straw. He
never knew why, but for some reason, when he came back home to Moscow,
he had been given dozens of cartons of cigarettes, and he was, for all
intents and purposes, an opium addict.
Eventually, he had learned to at least control what went on during his
fantasies, but he still allowed himself to be educated by those other
hideous fantasies, for he was certain that he really had seen the
future, and that knowledge would at least help him live a better
life.
He only did one opium smoke per week; anymore would most likely affect
his work, but not that he cared any about that. As long as his father
still respected him and Red Army officers didn't storm into the office
building and drag him out kicking and screaming and perform the old
ghulag on him, everything would be fine in the world.
Mik never told anyone about his little vice, not even Papa. Mik feared
that if he found out, Papa would make sure he would be thrown out of
the safe haven of public relations and tossed onto the front lines of
the Red Army and the rather nasty dangers that came with that
particular profession. The only man who did know had been found in his
opium fields with his body slit from gullet to gizzard and his
genitals, his last meal, shoved in his mouth, about a year after their
meeting.

Mik looked down at Eva and stroked her blonde hair. He checked his
watch. 11:03, it read. He must have taken a little snooze himself. Papa
was still wide awake, sitting in the opposite bunk, hunched over like a
hawk. In another ten minutes or so, they would be jumping off the train
and beginning their long odyssey home.
He couldn't bar a rather irreverent thought from crossing his mind,
looking at Eva's pretty face lying flat on his lap. That would be fun,
eh, Mik? He laughed silently at the whole situation. No Eva, not in
front of your father's friend, Mik would insist, but would of course
oblige. After all, who (and in this case, what) could resist that
innocent yet oh, so decadent mouth? Papa then cocked an eyebrow as he
watched his son smiling like a serviced patron of his late business
partner's employees, and then chuckled as Eva woke up just as it seemed
Mik was reaching the height of enjoyment for the moment.
"You two woke up just in time," Papa said, grinning still, but for
reasons only a father and son can comprehend and well beyond Eva's
efforts to decipher. Mikhail still loved his son, and when needed (and
sometimes when not needed) he always preferred to voice it through
nonverbal gestures that fathers usually give to their sons during the
adolescent years when boys don't listen to their dads verbally and
their mothers in any way at all.
"We'll be leaving in a couple of minutes. When we get to the
Motherland, Eva, you'll need to keep a low profile for a while until
you can speak the language like a native-"
"It's all right," Eva answered. "Father taught me the language before
he&;#8230;died."
"He was a good man, and a fine friend," said Papa; he was an aide to
the General Secretary of the Bolshevik Party of the USSR, he knew how
to tell people what they wanted to hear. "He will always be remembered
in our intelligence community."
"Papa, do you have the file that he gave you?" Mik asked.
"Da, Comrade," Papa replied, and he looked at his watch, and gave a
deep sigh.
"Alright, Comrades. Let's get the hell out of this country."