The day the trial
of Brezhnev's son-in-law on charges of corruption opened in Moscow, Yegor Kuzmich
Tverdolobov, an employee of Aeroflot in Washington DC, came to the cafe on the ground
floor of the Watergate Complex to have his habitual screwdriver and savoury blintzes for
lunch. He liked the place partly because the FBI, knowing the popularity of the place with
the international clientele, had thoughtfully supplied it with a few Russian-speaking
waitresses, and partly because the blintzes were so good.
Looking at this
portly and relaxed figure few would have guessed that Yegor Kuzmich was actually a major
in the GRU, the Russian military intelligence. His cover was the position of life jacket
maintenance man with Aeroflot's Washington ground staff. His codename was Wink, due to his
occasionally disconcerting habit of winking rapidly when confronting a stranger for the
first time.
Wink had been in
a foul mood ever since he heard the news of the trial on the Russian Service of the BBC.
The country was going to the dogs. What next? Soon, they'd start digging corpses out of
their graves, just like in that awful movie Repentance, and putting them on trial.
He was pleased
when an old colleague, a CIA agent codenamed Scrubber, joined him at his table. Scrubber's
duty was to tidy over jobs botched by his organisation in Central America. Wink's job was
gathering technical and military information pertaining to the US Air Force.
Their respective
specialisations were so narrow and so far removed from each other that, like
non-competitive organisms in an ecological niche, they felt safe with each other. Over the
years, they'd got used to occasionally having their own mini-summits over a glass of vodka
or a martini.
"Yes, this
perestroika modernism has certainly gone too far," opened Scrubber, noticing his
friend's dejected mien. "Before you say glasnost twice, they start cutting our
funding in Congress, now that the old Evil Empire is no longer there to scare the voters.
We might go the way of the Star Wars - big bang, no bucks."
"Yeah,"
agreed Wink in a downcast tone. "You Americans should have listened to the warnings
Henry and Dick were putting out in the papers early in the piece, saying that this whole
reform caper is just another communist ploy. The Cold War has become the Cuddles War, and
we are its last casualties. Now it may be too late to redress the damage."
For a while, they
ruminated on the possibility of finding another enemy that would satisfy the fears of
their respective electorates and the prejudices of their leaderships. They both eliminated
China as a possibility. It was too important a market and labour pool to waste.
Japan - you
couldn't even think about having agents in Japan - the expense alone would be prohibitive.
Australia was too small, besides, you could find all the state secrets you ever wanted in
the newspapers there.
There was little
choice, they both agreed finally. For the time being, America and the Soviet Union were
still by far the most natural enemies. And they now needed each other more than ever.
"You know,"
said Wink, "things are getting so bad at home, they are thinking about allowing kids
with computers to talk to their counterparts abroad. Now any whiz-bang kid could get, in
one hour, more sensitive information by tapping into your networks than I could ever hope
to gather in a year. I can't even type, let alone work one of those machines."
"Yeah,"
echoed Scrubber. "We are getting so hamstrung by the Congress that we hardly get an
opportunity to do any work, let alone botch things up. Soon, I'll be out of my job,
scrubbing dogs', not intelligence, messes off the streets."
"But surely,
we could do something to avert the danger?" implored Wink.
Scrubber sipped
at his martini silently for a while. Wink waited respectfully, conscious of his friend's
superior deductive skills.
Suddenly,
Scrubber hit himself on the head. "I think I have it," he shouted.
"What?
What?" begged Wink.
" Remember Socrates? And the Reichstag fire? What you have to come up with a
boogeyman you can turn into a scapegoat. Something that will turn the majority of the gullible
populace and the conservative forces, once and for all, against the forces of
perestroika."
Wink was all
ears. He was not too sure about Socrates, but he knew about the phoney Reichstag fire in
Germany in the thirties and the subsequent trial of the supposed culprit. That has surely
worked, otherwise Hitler would not have come to power so easily.
As for scapegoats
- well, Scrubber did not have to teach him anything about finding, and punishing,
scapegoats. Wink went through a pretty tough school himself in his time.
"Tell
me," Scrubber continued, "What are the most emotional issues in
Russia
today? Is it not the fear of change, the xenophobia, and the struggle between the young
and the old?"
"I guess
that pretty well sums it up," conceded Wink.
"Well,
then you have to find some prominent reformer, accuse him of attempts to
corrupt the innocent Russian youth, and link him with some sinister foreign
or émigré elements. I think that will he as sure a recipe for success as
the one that that got Socrates drinking his hemlock cocktail with
friends".
"You mean we
have to stage a Sokratsky-type trial to stop the perestroika in its tracks and to balance
out the assault on the conservatives?"
"You've got
it, Wink. Yes, the Sokratsky trial, I like the sound of that. A big reversal of
Russian
policies will also help us here to keep Bush
in the White House - and
the good old times of cold, or at least moderately frigid, war would resume."
" There'll be plenty of work for all of us to do. They say you cannot turn
the clock of history back, but you sure can throw a darn good monkey wrench into its
works."
" I like the
idea," Wink said, after some consideration.
"I
knew you
would," said Scrubber, getting ready to leave. "You know where to find me if you
need any help, don't you?"
" Sure thing," said Wink, winking at him heartily for the first time in
months.
After Scrubber
left, Wink called the waitress and ordered himself another screwdriver and a triple
portion of blintzes with caviar. Real caviar.
Two months later
the Sokratsky trial opened in Moscow amid growing nationalist unrest and clamour for more
and faster reforms.
It was the
biggest show trial in Russia's history and it became the rallying point for conservatives
threatened by change and investigations of corruption.
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