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High anxiety and great expectations had him tossing and turning all night. Captain Mikhail Khalatsyn was going to meet General Yakov today to be given his special assignment. His mind was like a fish bowl where nerves swam and darted every which way. Pandemonium was the undercurrent that ruled his waters. No sleep for him meant none for his wife, either.
Every time he rolled from his back onto his side, he felt Valeria shift her sleep position, too. He felt awful that he was keeping her awake.
When his biological clock told him it was five a.m., instead of waking her to have breakfast with him, Mikhail quietly slipped out of bed and went into the bathroom. His Spetsnaz training kicked in and he shaved and washed up in near silence. In the kitchen, he made himself a cup of coffee. Then he gave his brown shoes a fresh polish. They shined as bright as army boots ready for inspection. After all, the GRU was not the army even though it was. He put on his finest light blue suit, imported from England, and black and gray striped tie.
As soon as Mikhail entered the Academy, his father had taken him to a store that sold fine, imported Western clothing.
“You’re going to be a diplomat now, Mishe, no longer a soldier. My gift to you will be a new wardrobe suitable for your new position.”
Then he slipped out of the apartment without waking Valeria or the children.
Mikhail knew that this day might mean an enormous benefit to his career. To be given a special assignment from the commandant — things like that just did not happen. And there was no doubt in his mind that these orders had come from higher up on the chain of command: from that mysterious group of powerful people who had taken a special interest in him.
Because he had failed the dead drop test, Mikhail wondered if he’d thought too highly of his own abilities. What if he also failed this task, whatever it was? Would he be assigned to an army intelligence unit and be sent back to Afghanistan?
More than a possibility, a fact; thus to fail was not an option.
***
SEVEN A.M. AT THE ACADEMY: in one hour Mikhail would have the honor of meeting the Commandant, Colonel-General, Sergey Yakov; after which all those annoying anxieties swimming in his head would be netted and flushed down the toilet; finally he’d have answers. He decided to stop at the GRU’s five-star restaurant for a solid breakfast. The waiter came to the table and took his order of steak, eggs and potatoes. Instead of coffee — he was already hyper enough — Mikhail ordered fresh juice squeezed from oranges imported from Cuba.
Combat stress was something he’d found ways to deal with. But this new kind of pressure affected him in a new way. Yoga helped but only to a point. This morning, Mikhail coped by letting his appetite slip into overdrive. A big man, he had seen other big men eat their feelings and put on enormous weight. Thus a new worry was born. Without the constant PT and lousy army food would he turn into a blimp? Mikhail disdained fat people, he had always associated excess lard with Americans and their cravings for heaping helpings of junk food. When the waiter placed his order on the table, he decided to skip the potatoes and hit the gym before he went home tonight.
He sat alone, but not for long. Two classmates came over to the table and sat down shoulder to shoulder opposite him. “May we join you, Comrade Khalatsyn?” the first one said in Russian.
“Looks like you already have, comrades,” Mikhail replied coolly, also in Russian.
He’d had very little dealings with either of them, both being ranked near the bottom of the class. The first had red hair and his entire being was proof positive that GRU had a preference for simple peasants. The other had dark hair and dark eyes that marked him as a citizen of one of the Soviet Union’s Asian republics. Both were about the same age as Mikhail, a few centimeters inches shorter, and were hard men like the Chekka thugs he’d easily dispatched a week ago. But these two were also Spetsnaz like him; therefore, in a physical confrontation Mikhail might come out the loser. Never again would he allow himself be overburdened by overconfidence. Quite clearly they had deliberately come to him, and no doubt GRU had arranged a small test. It didn’t take long for Mikhail to spot the spotters who would be grading this incident.
Mikhail replied with a smirk and, “To what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?” he said, effortlessly switching to English.
“You will pardon us not addressing you in English, comrade, but our English is not as good as yours,” said Comrade Red Hair.
“Then I shall be happy to help you practice. If you wish to converse with me, comrades, then we speak English.”
“Rumors, there are rumors that our black Russian comrade will have meeted with the General Yakov,” said Comrade Asian. “I tell everyone is very big mistake.”
“Your English assaults my ears, comrades,” said Mikhail in Russian. “No wonder you two are at the bottom of our class.”
“Insult us if you wish,” said the Asian, “but let us ask you this: why would Comrade General Yakov meet with recruit Comrade Khalatsyn?”
“Let me clarify for you, comrades. Secrecy is highly regarded here at the Academy. Certainly anyone found circulating rumors will find themselves in” — switching back to English — “deep shit. I wish you good afternoon, comrades.”
Grasping the subtext of the Mikhail’s English idiom if not its exact text, the two recruits got up and left.
Mikhail quietly finished his breakfast. As for those two, given their uncouth demeanors, the U.S.S.R. would be far better served by attaching them to army intelligence units rather than posting them to an overseas embassy.
A nervous Mikhail stood outside the office of the commandant of the Military-Diplomatic Academy, Colonel-General Yakov. Then he squared his shoulders, inhaled deeply — Ommm... — and tapped on the door.
An angry voice inside bellowed in perfect English, “Who let a bird fly into our halls! Must be bird because Spetsnaz do not peck on glass!”
The door was part glass (the upper half) and part wood (everything else), so Mikhail pounded a huge palm against the door frame. “Sir! It is Comrade Mikhail Khalatsyn! I have been told to report to you for special instructions. Sir!”
“Much better, come in. We have no birds here at the Academy, only men.”
Thought Mikhail: And MICE and elephants. He erased that smirk from his face before he dared enter.
The commandant’s mood swung from harsh to neutral. He invited Mikhail to take a seat at his expansive, busy desk; busy with reports that looked to Mikhail to be stacked in a haphazard of disorganized piles. Getting to the point immediately, the General asked Mikhail to tell him everything he knew about puppets.
Grinning, “And please don’t tell me they dance on the end of strings, Khalatsyn.”
“Colonel-General, we are forbidden to even say the word. It is a state secret, sir.
“You have my permission to speak freely, comrade.”
“Sir, in Spetsnaz puppets serve us in special training.”
Yakov’s stare remained fixed on Mikhail as he reached and pulled out exactly the right file from exactly the right stack. He opened to a page and skimmed it.
“It says here in your military jacket that you once killed a puppet.”
“Yes sir. It was part of a training exercise. I was ordered to kill the puppet.”
“Did you hesitate, Comrade Khalatsyn?”
“At first, yes sir. But I did as ordered, Comrade General.”
“And you always follow orders, am I correct, comrade?” said Yakov. A brief pause, then, “You know, that in softer Western countries what you did is considered murder?”
“Comrade General, it is not for me to question orders, sir. I was being prepared for war. War is killing and taking the life of a puppet is meant to harden us. We Spetsnaz are the Red Army’s elite killers.”
The General said, “Before I give you this assignment, one you will find distasteful, I need to know that you will carry it out without question.”
“I will, Comrade General. In Afghanistan I was ordered to carry out many things I found abhorrent.” Kill her or leave her. “Never once did I fail in my duty as a soldier in the Red Army.”
“I know, Khalatsyn. Your military record has been exceptional; so are your grades here at the Academy. Congratulations on your recent one hundred percent scores. You come highly recommended for this particular assignment. Now... Tell me about incident with puppet.”
***
A MISTY RAIN FELL ON a gloomy day in an even gloomier place: the Hatsavita Mountain Training Center located in southern Russia. The sky could weep all it wanted, but looking back, Mikhail shed no tears because of what had happened on that day. As he would explain today to General Yakov, learning to inflict pain, injury and death upon another human being with neither hesitation nor remorse made for good Spetsnaz.
Mikhail was part of a group of recruits that had been formed up in a semicircle with their instructor in the middle. Mikhail wondered if the instructor had deliberately selected this muddy field to handicap the recruits. They were all young and strong and agile. The mud would disadvantage their mobility. The puppets they expected to fight today were poor specimens and could use whatever little advantage the mud offered.
“Bring out the puppet!” the instructor called to a squat building with bars on the windows. Its metal façade was streaked with grime and no doubt filthy inside. A pigpen where the puppets were kept was a freezing place in winter and an oven in summer.
A large, unkempt man in handcuffs and with frightened, feral eyes walked between two guards. He was uncuffed, handed a club, and shoved into the middle of the semicircle. There was nothing sickly or weak about this man. Pounding this particular puppet into mulch would not be easy.
“This criminal is about to do his duty to the state,” the instructor announced. “Who would like to take this animal on? Who would like to rid our beloved Fatherland of this garbage?”
All the recruits raised their hands.
Smiling, “Now that’s what I like to see.” Without pausing, he pointed: “You there, Black Russian. He’s all yours.”
Unarmed but confident, Mikhail stepped into the semicircle.
Grinning, “You are to kill him, Comrade Khalatsyn. That is if you can.” Then to the puppet: “Hear that, puppet? This man wants to kill you. The only way for you to survive is to kill him first. Think you can?”
As Mikhail and all Spetsnaz trainees knew a puppet was not a doll that danced on a string. A puppet was a man, a dangerous man, a convicted criminal who had been condemned to death. One of his Spetsnaz instructors had explained the use of puppets this way:
“Imagine, comrades, that you have been ordered to slit the throats of sleeping enemy soldiers. Do you hesitate out of compassion, charity or humanity? Or perhaps because you have never killed before? If you do hesitate, you might not only lose your own life, but far worse put the lives of many other Soviet soldiers and the mission at risk.”
Hence, to teach their troops to rise above their humanity and compassion, Spetsnaz turned to puppetry. The KGB called their live training dummies “gladiators”, its predecessor the NVKD had called them “volunteers”, and the Red Army’s three independent counterintelligence organizations (SMERSH, an acronym which meant “death to spies”) called them “Robinsons”.
Mikhail was well aware that in the old days of the KGB, NVKD and SMERSH, there were plenty of puppets to go around. But by the 1970s, there just weren’t enough death sentences imposed; therefore, there were never enough puppets to go around. To compound the problem, the U.S.S.R.’s entire nuclear weapons program could not run without puppets. Nuclear deterrence took priority over all else; therefore, what few puppets Spetsnaz received had to last well past an expiration date.
Mikhail had trained using puppets before. He was allowed to beat them into bloody pulps, which he always enjoyed doing, but he was forbidden to break their bones or disable them in any way. That was why he was surprised when ordered to kill this one. Today, Mikhail faced the biggest challenge in his young military career: kill or be killed in a real fight.
The instructor raised his arm and put a whistle to his lips, but before he could blow, fear drove the puppet into a rage, and he lunged towards Mikhail swinging the club fiercely.
The instructor gave a snide aside to the recruits: “I didn’t say go, but these animals never listen.”
The man had the good sense to use short, downward strikes rather than wide swings from side to side. This made Mikhail’s task of evasion more difficult. All buttons on the puppet’s survival console flashed red. Much shorter than Mikhail, he swung at the Black Russian’s shoulders. Despite the mud — Mikhail wore boots while the puppet was barefoot — Mikhail avoided the blows as he awaited an opening. Other recruits cheered, raising Spetsnaz war whoops.
The puppet began to tire. Mikhail closed with him, but the puppet’s fatigue was a feint. He struck again, and Mikhail received a blow to the side of his left arm. He clutched his arm and fell onto his right side; then he rolled onto his back. The puppet’s face contorted into mad glee as he raised the club about to crush Mikhail’s skull. But the Black Russian’s topple was also a feint. He had received only a glancing blow; he’d felt more pain from a paper cut. As the puppet straddled him about to joyfully deliver a fatal blow and thus prolong his miserable life, Mikhail kicked up and caught the puppet in the crotch. Lifted off the ground and thrown onto his side, the puppet lay in a fetal position coughing up his agony. Mikhail sprang to his feet, grabbed the puppet by the arm and dislocated the man’s shoulder.
Crack!
The recruits jeered the puppet and gave him a thumbs-down. With the puppet crippled and no longer a threat, Mikhail hesitated. He looked to the instructor.
“You have crippled this useless turd,” said the instructor, “congratulations, comrade. Since he is no longer any use to us, you may as well kill him. Do not be quick about it, either. Let him suffer many, many blows. Break every bone in his fucking body.”
Mikhail rolled the puppet onto his back with his foot. He raised the club aiming for one of the puppet’s kneecaps. The man’s eyes begged for mercy. Mikhail hesitated a second time.
“Comrade Instructor. Let me give him a quick death, sir.”
“No, Comrade!” barked the instructor. “You have your orders!” Then he took a slier approach: “Perhaps you’re not Spetsnaz material?” To the recruits, “None of you have ever killed before. But you are here to be Spetsnaz, the killer elite of the Red Army. Elite killers kill, comrades!”
Mikhail finally raised his arm to strike the first of many blows. He could not hide the look of disgust on his face, like he was about to ingest a bowl of creepy crawlies.
Suddenly the instructor grabbed hold and stopped him. “No, no, Khalatsyn! You’re attitude is all wrong.” The instructor put his boot on the puppet’s throat and pressed down. The man grabbed onto the foot with his only good hand. He squirmed and choked and gasped for air.
“I want you to enjoy killing this man, Comrade Khalatsyn. I want you to take pleasure in every strike as you pound him into ground Polish sausage... Yes, Khalatsyn, the man is a foreigner, a Pollack who deserves no pity.”
Mikhail’s eyes desperately searched the instructor’s face for a reason to despise this helpless miserable heap.
Calmly, “Do you have children, comrade?” asked the instructor.
“Yes sir, a two-year-old son and two young nephews.”
“You love them, no?”
“Of course, sir! Very much!”
“Do you love all Russian children, even those you don’t know?”
“Sir! It is my duty as a soldier in the Peoples’ Army to protect all our children!”
The instructor pointed down at the puppet. “This animal should have been executed for his crime. Instead, the state has sent him to us to use as we please. He has been convicted of raping and murdering a child. His own stepson! The child was Russian.” To the recruits, “Does he really deserve our mercy, comrades?”
“HELL NO, SIR!” they shouted back.
Mikhail allowed a murderous hatred to grip his heart like a tight fist. The puppet’s torso was fully exposed. Mikhail jumped up and brought his full weight down onto the puppet’s belly. Vomit, bile and blood exploded out of the man’s mouth.
The recruits cheered, “Black Russian! Black Russian! Black Russian!”
The instructor patted Mikhail on the back. “Well done, Khalatsyn.”
Someone tossed him a towel, and Mikhail wiped the puppet’s gore off of himself.
They all watched as the puppet slowly went into shock, and then died.
Later, Mikhail asked the instructor why this particular puppet had been disposed of so quickly. “He looked in fairly good shape, Comrade Instructor, not at all like our usual sparring partners.”
“Because, Comrade Khalatsyn, like you, I also hate child murderers. You are top of this class, so I gave you the honor of killing him.”
Sincerely, “Thank you, sir.”
***
GENERAL YAKOV ASKED, “Any regrets for what you did, Comrade Khalatsyn?”
“None whatsoever, sir, I would happily do it again. Perverts like him should never have been born.”
“Puppets are not just play toys for Spetsnaz,” said Yakov. “They serve the state in many capacities. Is state secret of course, we would not want the West to know how we deal with our hardened criminals.”
Mikhail flared, “It’s none of their bloody business! Pardon me, sir.”
The General smiled. “Well said, comrade; therefore, puppets must remain a state secret, no?” Then Yakov took out another file folder from another pile.
Although Mikhail had never met with or even seen a general before, he wondered how someone could attain such high rank while appearing to be so disorganized.
“Michael... May I call you Michael, comrade?”
“Of course, sir.”
“It has come to GRU’s attention that a man at one of our top secret military complexes has been speaking openly about puppets.”
“A traitor, sir?
“We think so. But before we can bring charges, we must have proof. That will be your job, Michael. You will gain the man’s confidence, and then gather evidence so we can bring him to justice. This assignment is your final examination. You must succeed. The stakes are quite high for you — an overseas posting that is not Afghanistan — but they’re even higher for GRU. Traitors must be dealt with internally. We do not want KGB interfering in our matters.”
“Of course, sir; I loathe the Friends of the People.”
“We all do, Michael,” said Yakov. “Succeed and you will have my unending gratitude and enduring friendship.”
Mikhail beamed. “I shall not fail you, Comrade General.”
“Good. My aide waits outside. He will take you to a secret room. A file will be on the desk. You will read it, but you are not to take notes. And the file must not leave the room. Commit everything to memory.”
“Yes sir”
“There is a photo of the suspect inside. That you may keep. This code, specific only to you, will unlock the door: MK03291948. Can you remember that?”
“Of course, sir; that is how the Americans write my birthday.”
The General smiled. “Now get going, the code will expire in twenty minutes. You will have three hours to read the file.”
As Mikhail stood to take his leave, the General added, “One more thing, Michael. That incident in the restaurant, congratulations, you handled yourself quite well. While we are not squeamish when it comes to violence, in GRU violence has its proper time and proper place. We can’t have our officers throwing chairs around in first-class restaurants.”
“Thank you, sir. News travels fast.”
“But of course, Michael,” the General replied, grinning. “We swim in an aquarium.” Then the General’s grin turned into a broad smile. “You already knew it was a test, didn’t you?”
“Yes sir.”
“Don’t judge your classmates too harshly. They were simply carrying out special orders. They praised your wit and self-control.”
“They also performed their task excellently, sir. As the Americans say, They had me going for awhile.”
“I shall be happy to tell them that. We all play for the same team. We are all Spetsnaz. We are blood brothers.”
Although his face remained expressionless, there was a spring in his step as Mikhail followed the General’s aide to a special elevator. The aide keyed in a code and the doors opened. In deference, the aide let him enter first.
“Thank you, comrade,” Mikhail said in Russian. “Where are we going?”
“To the very bottom of the Aquarium, Comrade Captain,” the aide replied in Russian.
After getting out of the elevator, they followed a circuitous path of rights and lefts. The aide led Mikhail to a closed, unmarked door. He opened it, and then closed it behind Mikhail when he entered. Up against a side wall was a small desk and a metal folding chair. On the desk was a lamp, an ashtray and a manila file folder. Mikhail sat at the desk, eagerly opened the file, and began to read. With each page turned, his eyes widened, his face reddened, and his breathing quickened — anger was building in him not anticipation. When he finally got to a page with the suspect’s photo clipped to the upper left-hand corner, he felt as if a heavy weight had dropped onto his chest; he could hardly breathe. Then blood surged under extremely high pressure into his head causing his face to flush red.
In the photo another black Russian named Mikhail Katkov smiled back at him. Katkov’s father was an ethnic Russian who had married a woman from Angola. Katkov was a scientist as were both his parents. Because his maternal line came straight out of Africa this other Mikhail was quite dark.
So I guess the only thing special about me is my skin color. Bastards!
No matter how hard he tried to prove himself, when other Russians looked at him all they saw was a black man. For Mikhail to continue to have a seat on the GRU express train, he would first have to run over another black Russian. He gritted his teeth at the transparency of his superiors’ logic:
Yes, of course Katkov will spill his guts to you because you are black like him.
After he finished reading, he left the file on the desk, put the photo in his briefcase, and snapped it shut. Then he pounded on the door.
“I am finished,” he said.
General Yakov had been right about one thing: this would indeed be a most unpleasant task.