_Freedom is a very dangerous thing indeed. It is so
catching--like a plague--even the doctors get it._
* * * * *
Colonel Ilya Simonov tooled his Zil aircushion convertible along the edge
of Red Square, turned right immediately beyond St. Basil's Cathedral,
crossed the Moscow River by the Moskvocetski Bridge and debouched into the
heavy, and largely automated traffic of Pyarnikskaya. At Dobryninskaya
Square he turned west to Gorki Park which he paralleled on Kaluga until he
reached the old baroque palace which housed the Ministry.
There were no flags, no signs, nothing to indicate the present nature of
the aged Czarist building.
He left the car at the curb, slamming its door behind him and walking
briskly to the entrance. Hard, handsome in the Slavic tradition,
dedicated, Ilya Simonov was young for his rank. A plainclothes man, idling
a hundred feet down the street, eyed him briefly then turned his attention
elsewhere. The two guards at the gate snapped to attention, their eyes
straight ahead. Colonel Simonov was in mufti and didn't answer the salute.
The inside of the old building was well known to him. He went along marble
halls which contained antique statuary and other relics of the past which,
for unknown reason, no one had ever bothered to remove. At the heavy door
which entered upon the office of his destination he came to a halt and
spoke briefly to the lieutenant at the desk there.
"The Minister is expecting me," Simonov clipped.
The lieutenant did the things receptionists do everywhere and looked up in
a moment to say, "Go right in, Colonel Simonov."
Minister Kliment Blagonravov looked up from his desk at Simonov's
entrance. He was a heavy-set man, heavy of face and he still affected the
shaven head, now rapidly disappearing among upper-echelons of the Party.
His jacket had been thrown over the back of a chair and his collar
loosened; even so there was a sheen of sweat on his face.
He looked up at his most trusted field man, said in the way of greeting,
"Ilya," and twisted in his swivel chair to a portable bar. He swung open
the door of the small refrigerator and emerged with a bottle of
Stolichnaya vodka. He plucked two three-ounce glasses from a shelf and
pulled the bottle's cork with his teeth. "Sit down, sit down, Ilya," he
grunted as he filled the glasses. "How was Magnitogorsk?"
Ilya Simonov secured his glass before seating himself in one of the room's
heavy leathern chairs. He sighed, relaxed, and said, "Terrible, I loath
those ultra-industrialized cities. I wonder if the Americans do any better
with Pittsburgh or the British with Birmingham."
"I know what you mean," the security head rumbled. "How did you make out
with you assignment, Ilya?"
Colonel Simonov frowned down into the colorlessness of the vodka before
dashing it back over his palate. "It's all in my report, Kliment." He was
the only man in the organization who called Blagonravov by his first name.
His chief grunted again and reached forward to refill the glass. "I'm sure
it is. Do you know how many reports go across this desk daily? And did you
know that Ilya Simonov is the most long-winded, as the Americans say, of
my some two hundred first-line operatives?"
The colonel shifted in his chair. "Sorry," he said. "I'll keep that in
mind."
His chief rumbled his sour version of a chuckle. "Nothing, nothing, Ilya.
I was jesting. However, give me a brief of your mission."
Ilya Simonov frowned again at his refilled vodka glass but didn't take it
up for a moment. "A routine matter," he said. "A dozen or so engineers and
technicians, two or three fairly high-ranking scientists, and three or
four of the local intelligentsia had formed some sort of informal club.
They were discussing national and international affairs."
Kliment Blagonravov's thin eyebrows went up but he waited for the other to
go on.
Ilya said impatiently, "It was the ordinary. They featured complete
freedom of opinion and expression in their weekly get-togethers. They
began by criticizing without extremism, local affairs, matters concerned
with their duties, that sort of thing. In the beginning, they even sent a
few letters of protest to the local press, signing the name of the club.
After their ideas went further out, they didn't dare do that, of course."
He took up his second drink and belted it back, not wanting to give it
time to lose its chill.
His chief filled in. "And they delved further and further into matters
that should be discussed only within the party--if even there--until they
arrived at what point?"
Colonel Simonov shrugged. "Until they finally got to the point of
discussing how best to overthrow the Soviet State and what socio-economic
system should follow it. The usual thing. I've run into possible two dozen
such outfits in the past five years."
His chief grunted and tossed back his own drink. "My dear Ilya," he
rumbled sourly, "I've _run into_, as you say, more than two hundred."
Simonov was taken back by the figure but he only looked at the other.