"Cold War"
by Dave Garrison
"The liberty each man hath to use his own power for the preservation of his own nature, that is to say, of life." - Thomas Hobbes
Sometime in the mid-1980’s…
Yhakov strolled casually down the street towards the Green Dragon. It’s funny, he thought, How I needed to come to America to get a liking for Chinese food. I love this country. Yhakov had been born in Stalingrad and moved to San Francisco two years ago after his passport was finally approved. He was of average height and nominally overweight, the continuity of his short, thick beard broken often by his unusually wide smile. His out-of-style clothing was somehow at home on his body, fitting his jovial personality.
This Chinese restaurant was one of his favorites. He liked the owner, Lando Wong, and made it a point to say hi whenever he came, his greeting usually returned with a broad grin. He also liked the food; it had a certain zingy taste that was unique. Today however he decided that before going in, he would go down to the newsstand and get a magazine. He passed the restaurant and hurried across the street where he purchased a copy of Mad Magazine from the vendor, stopping briefly in the window of a pawnshop to look at a TV that had been put on display.
FBI Special Agent Ayndrew Rand watched the Russian walk past the café and then across the street, where he paused in front of the window on his return. He pointed the man out to Special Agent-in-charge Sam Richards who immediately initiated the capture plan into action.
Interesting, this guy ain’t bad. Richards thought. Using a storefront as a mirror to scope out an area was a pretty decent maneuver and usually very effective. Richards could tell he was dealing with a professional. He was here to monitor and catch a Russian KGB Agent who was scheduled to pick up a dead drop from the bathroom that had been left by a recently discovered Russian mole. Goddamm Russians, he thought.
As Yhakov entered the restaurant he flashed a broad smile at two Chinese women who were gawking at him, eliciting their giggles as he passed. Seeing Lando, Yhakov said in halting English “Hello Lando my friend, how’re you doing? I am very good.”
Oh damn, he’s back, Lando thought as he saw Yhakov walk in, falling back on the ancient Russo-Chinese history of mistrust and mutual hatred, he returned the Russian’s enthusiastic greeting with a broad smile. Dew neh loh moh on all Russians, he thought – “Shit on all Russians”. Doesn’t this bastard know that he isn’t welcome here? “What will-ah you have today sah?” Bastard.
“I will have the usual my friend.”
Lando shouted back in Cantonese, “Make the usual for our bastard Russian friend, Yhakov.”
The cook obediently prepared some sweet and sour chicken and egg rolls. The icing on the cake however was the rice, which he urinated in and strained, a special treat that they added just for Yhakov, to give the meal that extra zing. Dew neh loh moh on all Russians, he thought. The frying process boiled off most of the urine, but the insult was still there.
Several minutes later the food was brought out and Yhakov ate happily, finishing every last bite. After the meal he walked back to the bathroom to relieve himself.
“Get ready, he is going for the drop, we’ll get him when he comes out,” Richards said to his agents, who had strategically positioned themselves around the room. The Russian’s American contact had left some microfilm hidden in the bathroom. The FBI did not know where it was, but they figured that there was no use in looking, seeing as how the Russian agent would retrieve it for them anyways. Several minutes later, the Russian emerged from the bathroom.
Yhakov was whistling as he walked out and sat down in his chair. As he reached for his beer, three men descended on him, restraining his hands and legs. A man wearing a casual business suit spoke…
“You’ve been caught you filthy spy,” Richards said as he stood over Yhakov, sneering with his hand on the butt of his previously hidden gun.
“Spy!?” Yhakov looked around nervously, tears welling up in his eyes, “I’m not spy, I am American! I love this country, see!” He nodded to his wallet, which was sitting on the table. It was one of those cheap ones that can be bought for a few dollars in the park from a street vendor. On it, in red, white and blue, it said “I [heart] America.”
“Don’t give me that load of commie bullshit you red faggot,” Richards said. Yhakov’s protests were muffled and silenced as a chloroform soaked rag was compressed on his mouth and nose.
Lando shook his head as he watched the sting go down. I knew it, he thought.
Down the street, KGB Agent Vladimir Andreyevski watched as the FBI agents carried Yhakov out and placed him in a van that had driven up. Rand came through nicely, he thought. Agent Rand informed Vladimir several days earlier that the FBI was onto him. For security reasons, every Russian that entered the country was suspect and subsequently constantly under FBI surveillance. So it was quite easy to find another Russian, get used to his habits, and plan the drop accordingly. Yhakov had been an easy target for framing. He did not have any friends, was naïve, and a creature of habit. Vladimir had arranged for the drop to be at the Green Dragon, and Rand knew to finger Yhakov as “the one” when he entered. Then Vladimir would simply pick up the drop after the FBI agents vacated with the innocent Russian. This was all going just as planned, he thought, which was rare for any clandestine operation. Something ALWAYS went wrong; it was all really a matter of luck.
Vladimir waited an hour after the van left and entered the restaurant, going straight to the bathroom, where he found the micro-film that had been left hidden in a shit covered toilet tank. Placing it in a container, he ingested orally it and left the restaurant nonchalantly, his nondescript features adequate camouflage from standing out.
Happy to have successfully completed another operation, Vladimir exited the restaurant contentedly; thinking of the vodka that was waiting for him back at his apartment. Feeling jovial and invincible because of his success, he did not notice the truck speeding down the street.
It was one of those things that’s never accounted for. Unthinkable. Spies think of themselves as invincible, a tier above everyone. So Vladimir’s careless step into the road was not something that was in any contingency plan, and as the truck hit him his carefully planned mission unraveled.
* * *
Yhakov awoke naked, on the floor of a in a brightly lit, sterile room. The only break in the white walls was the door and an air-conditioning vent on the ceiling. A toilet sat in the corner and there was a plate of cold food on the floor by the door. How long have I been here, he thought. He thought back to the restaurant. Was that a dream? If so, then why was he here? He remembered that he was accused of spying…but why he could not fathom. I love America! He thought. He had never even so much as jaywalked, let alone spied!
Several hours later, although exactly how long Yhakov didn’t know, the door to his cell was opened and he was dragged into another room. He was sat in a chair, and Agent Richards entered.
“Name and rank!” Richards demanded.
“I…I am Yhakov Smir—”
Richards cut him off, “I know what it says on your ID, asshole. And that is not what I asked you! What is your name and your rank in the KGB?!”
“KGB! I am not in the KGB,” Yhakov sobbed, “I am—”
“I don’t want to hear more lies!” Richards blared, and then lowered his voice, “The sooner we get through this, the sooner this can end. You’re only making this harder.”
“But I am no spy, I…” He trailed off.
“Where is the microfilm?” Richards asked, “We searched your clothes and couldn’t find it.”
“Microfilm? What is Microfi—?”
Richards nodded at two men standing in the back of the room, who grabbed Yhakov, thrusting him out of the chair and onto a table. “If you are going to make us, we can do this the hard way.”
Yhakov tried to answer but his fear would not let him speak. He looked in horror as one of the man brought out a crowbar.
“We know that you ingested it, and since you are being so uncooperative, we will just have to get it the hard way.”
The man with the crowbar inserted the flat end into Yhakov’s anus and the Russian yelled out, not out of pain, but out of anticipation and fright. “Stop! Stop!” He wailed. “What do you want me to say!?” The men removed the crowbar, completing the interrogation bluff that could break even the toughest spy.
“Aww, so you are a spy!” Richards said, confident the answers he would get would be the truth. He dismissed his backup with a nod as Yhakov answered.
“Yes!”
“KGB?”
“Yes.” He sobbed, lying just to pacify the barbaric agent.
“Name?”
“Yhakov Smirnoff.”
“So you are using your real name as cover. Rank?”
Yhakov shook his head.
“So you are a bureaucrat—” he stopped as another agent opened the door.
“Phone call for you sir.”
“Can’t you see that I am in the middle of—”
The messenger cut off his growl, a perplexed look on his face as he noticed the naked Russian curled up and sobbing on the floor, “He says its urgent sir, it’s the hospital.”
Richards grumbled as he left and walked upstairs.
“Agent Richards, who is this?” He demanded through the phone.
“Hello, my name is Doctor Civis, I contacted the FBI and they transferred me to you. We have a patient here with something quite unusual in his stomach.”
“What would that be?”
“Well his name is Vladimir Andreyevski, he is a Soviet diplomat. He was hit by a truck earlier today in Chinatown. I think you need to come down here and take a look sir.”
“Why? What was in his stomach”, Richards asked, his curiosity growing.
“With all due respect, I think you need to come down here.”
“Ok, I’ll be there.” Richards hung the phone up and looked up at Rand, who was standing in the doorway. “I need you to finish this round with our red friend, and then return him to his holding cell.”
“Yes, sir. Something happen sir?”
“Yes, maybe…kind of…I’m not sure Andy. I’ll call you.”
Rand returned to the cell where Yhakov was. “Hello Jackoff.”
Yhakov continued to lay on the ground, moaning, a pool of urine collecting around his naked waist.
“I know the truth. I know that you’re not a spy.”
Yhakov stopped wailing and raised his head.
“Yes, oh yes. You are what is called a patsy. Do you know what a patsy is, Jackoff?” Rand asked.
Yhakov laid there, afraid to move.
“A patsy is someone who takes a fall on behalf of another. I know you’re not a spy. The real spy picked up the microfilm after we arrested you. I know you are innocent of this crime, but the thing is…I don’t care. You’re Russian, a red Commie bastard, and you deserve to die.” The hypocrisy of his position as a double agent for these very “commie bastards” had never occurred to him. After all, the easiest lies were ones told for self-justification.
“Please! Please! I love America! Don’t kill me, I send money back to my relatives in Russia, it is how they survive.” Yhakov was on his knees, “please, let me live. I won’t tell a soul what you have told me.”
“Oh, I am not going to kill you, what do you think I am? A barbarian?” Rand smiled, “No, I won’t stoop to your level. I am only going to…how shall I put it…change your perspective.” He pulled his gun out.
“Wha…what are you going to do?” Yhakov asked, fearing the answer and wishing with all his soul that he could be home watching wheel of fortune and eating Chinese take-out.
Agent Rand sneered as he raised the gun over his head, a large sneer dominating his face.
Yhakov cowered in the corner.
“Now, Jackoff, you can’t expect me just to let you go and infect America with your Commie ideas and godless ideology.” He brought the gun down into the side of the petrified Russian’s face and Yhakov went limp.
* * *
“You developed them?” Richards asked Doctor Civis in disbelief. The thing that had been found in the stomach of the man was some microfilm. Richards was particularly interested in this because of where the man had been hit: in the street in front of the Green Dragon Restaurant, shortly after Yhakov’s arrest. They had just come from the room where a comatose Vladimir Andreyevski was being held.
The Doctor had led Richards into a dimly lit photo lab. “Why do you have a photo lab?” Richards asked.
“Back when x-raying was a much more primitive science, we used this to develop the exposures. With the coming of bigger and better technology, this room became outdated, but alas, some of the doctors and nurses here are amateur photographers.” He gestured toward several dozen prints that were hanging from a line.
Richards began examining them, their contents including all sorts of
top-secret material, from nuclear weapons secrets to information on coups that
the government has initiated in various third-world countries.
Bottom, line, this stuff was explosive.
Shit, he thought,
if this was the agent, who do we have
back at headquarters?
“Has anybody else seen these besides you doctor?” He turned around just as a middle-aged woman walked out of the darkness.
“I have,” she said.
“You’ll have to excuse me, this is Heather Davee, she is a nurse here and the one who developed the film.”
She smiled wryly. “Well, these seem to be important secrets, agent…”
“Agent Richards, and yes they are.”
“They would be worth a lot to the right buyer, or reporter for that matter. I found some explosive stuff in there.”
“Heather! What are you doing?” the doctor looked at her, horrified. “That would be treason, what the hell is wrong with you?”
“You sound surprised. Don’t sit here and act like you haven’t thought of the same thing Doctor, I mean, perhaps even Agent Richards would like to form a profitable partnership—”
Richards did not wait for this argument to be played out. He drew his gun and before the hapless woman knew what had happened, her head was tapped by two rounds from the standard issue sidearm. Doctor Civis, horrified and instantly cowering on his knees before the agent, was quickly added to the executioner’s list of victims, his body falling in a pile next to Heather’s.
What I do to serve my country,
Richards thought, I should get a medal for
this. Its us on the front lines
that do the dirty work, what needs to be done to prevent the red virus, yes,
communism is a virus, from infecting the world with its enslaving principles,
steeling freedom. It’s us, the
ones on the front lines that are the only thing keeping the commie queers from infecting
the world, it’s us that are preserving freedom.
Those people that get in our way deserve to die.
Fucking people…don’t know when they are in over their heads, don’t
know that we are here for their
protection, and that when they get in the way that they are endangering an
entire country. Fucking people.
Now to get back and figure out the mess with this Russian we got in interrogation. He thought while placing the negatives and pictures into an envelope and locking the door as he left.
* * *
Agent Rand looked up as Richards entered the room. “Hey Sam.”
“Hey, can I talk to you outside?” he asked, glancing down at Yhakov curled up in the corner, lying in a pool of blood and urine. What’s he been doing? Richards thought.
Rand followed Richards outside. “What’s up?”
“What the hell have you been doing in there?”
“What do you mean, he’s a fucking spy? I was getting info—”
“NO! The spy is at the hospital right now in a coma. He was hit by a truck outside the Green Dragon and they found this in his stomach,” he waived the envelope in the air. “Microfilm! Now you were the one that fingered Yhakov, why did you think it was him?”
Because I wanted to throw you off the real spy’s scent, you twit, he didn’t say. “It must have been a mistake, Sam…”
“Well this is a—”
Rand didn’t let him finish the sentence, cracking the side of
Richards’ skull with the butt of his pistol, catching him off-guard and
sending him crashing to the floor. I guess this is the end of this,
its time to get out.
He walked over to the closet and grabbed Yhakov’s clothing. As he reentered the interrogation room, the Russian had propped himself up against the wall and was mumbling, “But I love America, I love this country, but…”
“Put these on, faggot. You’re coming with me.” Rand tossed the clothes at the Russian.
Yhakov, terrified of the FBI agent, quickly donned the clothing, his shirt inside out. Rand grabbed him and pulled him close. “We’re going to leave here quietly.” He growled.
“Wh-where are w-we g-g-going?” Yhakov stuttered.
“Never mind that. You don’t need to know.” Rand had the look of a madman, an animal trapped. His stone face could not hide his eyes, which were a window into his panicked and utterly distraught soul. Any sense of rationality in Rand had been transformed into pure panic; the agent’s training the only thing keeping him from utterly breaking down.
They began their way out of the building casually, Rand’s gun trained discretely on Yhakov. It was Sunday and there weren’t many people around in the bureau and so they weren’t confronted by any loitering agents. The unconcerned doorman barely looked up from his magazine as they passed. Making it outside, Rand pushed Yhakov into the back seat of his car and got in.
Just as he was pulling out of the parking lot, Rand saw Richards run out of the front door, his gun drawn. Several rounds impacted his back window, the bulletproof glass keeping it form shattering. Ran stepped on the gas and almost immediately, Richards was in his car and fishtailing out onto the road in pursuit.
Yhakov lay petrified in the back seat of the car. He could feel his weight shift as Rand negotiated the turns at breakneck speed and heard, the melted rubber from the tires filling his nostrils. He faded in and out of awareness; quickly awakened as he heard several gunshots and a loud pop and the car began sliding and spinning out of control.
Yes, Richards thought as he set
his gun down on the passenger seat, I got
his tire.
Shit, Rand thought, he got my tire. As the car made an immediate involuntary lane change because of the blown tire, Rand overcorrected and it went into a spin. It hit the curb flipped on its side, crashing straight through a fence and toppling down a hill, breaching the wall of a nearby structure.
* * *
Yhakov awoke with face smashed against the top of the wrecked car. He pushed himself up, thankful that there was nothing seriously wrong, only some cuts and bruises added to his already ravaged body. He forced the door open and climbed out, noticing that Rand was missing as well and the building that the car had crashed into was some sort of empty animal pen. He crept along the perimeter of the building as quietly as he could, trying to control the noise level of his heavy breaths.
Trying to get a bearing on his location, Yhakov rested up against a wall and looked around. Several hundred yards away he saw a sign that read “The Estate of Nature: The San Francisco Zoo.” Further examination of the building that he was resting against revealed it to be a Lion’s pen. His fear almost overwhelmed him as he thought back to gypsy shows he would watch as a boy where the ferocious beasts would show their viciousness to cheering crowds of salivating onlookers intently hoping for bloodshed. The building was empty…oh God please help me! His thoughts screamed in frustration. How did I get pulled into this? I never broke the law, I tried to live a good life…is it so bad to want for the American Dream?
Rand came around the corner and observed the Russian resting against the wall, gripped in fear. Richards had followed Rand into the zoo and since it had been a game of cat and mouse. Rand’s only concern was to get rid of the Russian, a true “plague on society”. He raised his gun and aimed and pulled the trigger, dropping the Russian with one shot. Headshot at ten yards, he thought proudly, admiring his training.
What he didn’t see was the Lion behind a building thirty yards away, feeding on his latest victim, Sam Richards, whom he had viciously attacked several minutes earlier, using the hunting skills that had been repressed for so long, the freedom unshackling his natural instincts.
The sound of the gunshot interested him though.
He lifted his bloody nose out of the gored chest of who was once Agent
Richards, but now unrecognizable, a scream frozen on his mutilated face.
He prowled silently and with great stealth, his silence his greatest
ally, driven by his instincts. I
wish I had a giraffe, the Lion thought, they
taste better.
Rand stood sneering over the body of Yhakov. In the end I won because I was better, I was able to do what it takes to survive, and that is what matters, right? Survival. He chuckled at the Russian’s naivety.
As he chuckled the Lion locked its jaws around his throat, the look of surprise on his face genuine, as he had been unaware of the Lion. And he died, an animal killed by another animal, his humanity lost long before his life.
###