Short Fiction Mack Reynolds (best ereader for pdf and epub .txt) 📖

how best to overthrow the Soviet State and what socioeconomic 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.

Blagonravov said, “What did you do about it?”

“Several of them were popular locally. In view of Comrade Zverev’s recent pronouncements of increased freedom of press and speech, I thought it best not to make a public display. Instead, I took measures to charge individual members with inefficiency in their work, with corruption or graft, or with other crimes having nothing to do with the reality of the situation. Six or seven in all were imprisoned, others demoted. Ten or twelve I had switched to other cities, principally into more backward areas in the virgin lands.”

“And the ringleaders?” the security head asked.

“There were two of them, one a research chemist of some prominence, the other a steel plane manager. They were both, ah, unfortunately killed in an automobile accident while under the influence of drink.”

“I see,” Blagonravov nodded. “So actually the whole rat’s nest was stamped out without attention being brought to it so far as the Magnitogorsk public is concerned.” He nodded heavily again. “You can almost always be depended upon to do the right thing, Ilya. If you weren’t so confoundedly good a field man, I’d make you my deputy.”

Which was exactly what Simonov would have hated, but he said nothing.

“One thing,” his chief said. “The origin of this, ah, club which turned into a tiny underground all of its own. Did you detect the finger of the West, stirring up trouble?”

“No.” Simonov shook his head. “If such was the case, the agents involved were more clever than I’d ordinarily give either America or Common Europe credit for. I could be wrong, of course.”

“Perhaps,” the police head growled. He eyed the bottle before him but made no motion toward it. He wiped the palm of his right hand back over his bald pate, in unconscious irritation. “But there is something at work that we are not getting at.” Blagonravov seemed to change subjects. “You can speak Czech, so I understand.”

“That’s right. My mother was from Bratislava. My father met her there during the Hitler war.”

“And you know Czechoslovakia?”

“I’ve spent several vacations in the Tatras at such resorts as Tatranski Lomnica since the country’s been made such a tourist center of the satellites.” Ilya Simonov didn’t understand this trend of the conversation.

“You have some knowledge of automobiles, too?”

Simonov shrugged. “I’ve driven all my life.”

His chief rumbled thoughtfully, “Time isn’t of essence. You can take a quick course at the Moskvich plant. A week or two would give you all the background you need.”

Ilya laughed easily. “I seem to have missed something. Have my shortcomings caught up with me? Am I to be demoted to automobile mechanic?”

Kliment Blagonravov became definite. “You are being given the most important assignment of your career, Ilya. This rot, this ever growing ferment against the Party, must be cut out, liquidated. It seems to fester worse among the middle echelons of⁠ ⁠… what did that Yugoslavian Djilas call us?⁠ ⁠… the New Class. Why? That’s what we must know.”

He sat farther back in his chair and his heavy lips made a mout. “Why, Ilya?” he repeated. “After more than half a century the Party has attained all its goals. Lenin’s millennium is here; the end for which Stalin purged ten millions and more, is reached; the sacrifices demanded by Khrushchev in the Seven-Year Plans have finally paid off, as the Yankees say. Our gross national product, our per capita production, our standard of living, is the highest in the world. Sacrifices are no longer necessary.”

There had been an almost whining note in his voice. But now he broke it off. He poured them still another drink. “At any rate, Ilya, I was with Frol Zverev this morning. Number One is incensed. It seems that in the Azerbaijan Republic, for one example, that even the Komsomols were circulating among themselves various proscribed books and pamphlets. Comrade Zverev instructed me to concentrate on discovering the reason for this disease.”

Colonel Simonov scowled. “What’s this got to do with Czechoslovakia⁠—and automobiles?”

The security head waggled a fat finger at him. “What we’ve been doing, thus far, is dashing forth upon hearing of a new conflagration and stamping it out. Obviously, that’s no answer. We must find who is behind it. How it begins. Why it begins. That’s your job?”

“Why Czechoslovakia?”

“You’re unknown as a security agent there, for one thing. You will go to Prague and become manager of the Moskvich automobile distribution agency. No one, not even the Czech unit of our ministry will be aware of your identity. You will play it by ear, as the Americans say.”

“To whom do I report?”

“Only to me, until the task is completed. When it is, you will return to Moscow and report fully.” A grimace twisted Blagonravov’s face. “If I am still here. Number One is truly incensed, Ilya.”

There had been some more. Kliment Blagonravov had evidently chosen Prague, the capital of Czechoslovakia, as the seat of operations in a suspicion that the wave of unrest spreading insidiously throughout the Soviet Complex owed its origins to the West. Thus far, there had been no evidence of this but the suspicion refused to die. If not the West, then who? The Cold War was long over but the battle for men’s minds continued even in peace.

Ideally, Ilya Simonov was to infiltrate whatever Czech groups might be active in the illicit movement and then, if he discovered there was a higher organization, a center of the movement, he was to attempt to become a part of it. If possible he was to rise in the organisation to as high a point as he could.

Blagonravov, Minister of the Chrezvychainaya Komissiya,