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«Well, he said that… in general, our little guy is not doing too well in school…»
«Oh, is that it?!»
«…but on the other hand,» the father continued, «he’s so good at football! A genius! Antonio wants to put him on the senior school team for city competitions. You remember how he was bullied like a little chicken a year ago because he couldn’t put two movements together with the ball in gym class. And now…»
«…And now our boy has surpassed himself by kicking a stupid ball around the street!» She said with disappointment, «We need him to spend more time on the important subjects, yet you continue to indulge him…»
«Don’t you worry so much, Dalma? Everything will be alright. Our boy will fulfill his dream. You’ll see – he’ll become a hero of Argentina!»
Dalma grunted, while Diego went on, fascinated, despite the sarcasm in the look of his wife. «We, the working people always need football! It makes us free! It elevates our mood, provides food for an evening of chatter with a glass of wine. By the way, let me open a bottle for dinner! It’s better than grumbling and frowning all the time. And all the sciences will eventually come to Diego with time. He’ll learn to read and write.»
«It would also be good if he at least learned how to count so he doesn’t end up like his father, who has nothing in his pockets to count. Yes, and you’re babbling about football like at some rally… «Football makes us free!’… you bore me to sleep!»
«Alright, alright, I’ll talk to him,» Diego gave in, seeing where Dalma was going.
At this point, little Diego stumbled clumsily through door. He was a sturdy and of short height for his ten years of age, covered in dust and with eyes glowing. His left hand firmly pressed a black ball against himself.
«Papa, papa! Mama! Five – three! We killed them!» Diego was raging with pride.
«But you said, up until the first goal…» His mother frowned with displeasure. «I warmed your dinner twice!»
«Yes, I rolled them a fourth, and then, while thinking to leave or not, I sent a fifth to the right. And then, Aunt Samantha turned off the light in her window… I couldn’t see my ball, so we had to go home.»
«And who scored the first three, son?» his father asked with a sly smile.
«Also me, papa. Who else?»
Dalma seemed to have replaced her anger with compassion, going into the kitchen and warming the dinner for a third time. The father patted Diego’s curly head and leaned to his ear, quietly, conspiratorially whispering: «Central striker Diego Gonzalez, while mama is busy with dinner, I have something for you.»
Slipping through the dark corridor past the door into the kitchen where his mother rattled dishes and cursed as she dispersed the smoke from the stove, they entered Diego’s small room, full of hanging pictures with covers of sports magazines. The father closed the door and said, «Maybe it’s time you stopped kicking around,» he started from afar, «this filthy, old, black ball, of dark Mexican origins?»
«But pa-a-apa…» Diego cringed at the thought of being deprived of his single favorite preoccupation.
«Don’t even start,» the father went on in a deliberately strict manner.
«But why? I promise that I will do my homework on time. I won’t ever skip school. I promise! I promise! I promise!» Big tears flowed down his face.
«Oh, I never knew that you could cry!» The father chuckled, «Alright, don’t howl, I just wanted to say that you’ve played enough with this prehistoric ball, Diego. Why don’t you look under your bed? I think there is something waiting for you now for four hours!»
Diego gave his father a suspicious glance and crawled under the bed, from where a moment later came out a hysterical cry of joy.
«Olé! Olé! Olé!Olé-é-é-é! Thank you, papa!»
Like a brisk snake, he crawled out from under the bed and his trembling hands lay a brand-new football, covered in shiny black and white hexagons.
«It’s real! Leather! The guys will be so pleased. Maybe our team will even be allowed to play on a real field now!»
The father, still pretending to have a stern face, said, «But you must promise your mother and I that this will not harm your schooling! Especially – mathematics.»
«Of course, papa,» Diego was barely listening to him as he swept into the kitchen, «Mama, ma-a-a-ma-a-a, look what I have! Papa gave me this, a ball from real leather!»
«I hope you won’t have any more problems at school, understand?» The mother tried to sound resolute, «Now go wash your hands, you little monkey… with so-o-o-ap!»
«Yes, mama, I promise!»
«What’s the matter with your hand?» She grabbed Diego’s wrist, as he was about to slip by. Dried blood protruded along the edges of the dark plaster glued over his entire left palm. «Your sore has still not healed? Tomorrow we go to the doctor – my uncle Savigna. What is this… three weeks have passed, but the cut has not healed! You’ll catch an infection! How are you going to play without your hands?»
«But I play using my legs,» responded the central striker with an infectious boyish laugh as he headed to bathe.
There, left alone, and furtively glancing at the door, Diego grimaced as he ripped the dirty plaster. Then, his face turned pale and serious as he washed the wound in the cold running tap water and, raising his hand closer to the face, studying it carefully. Indeed, the wound began to tighten. The boy dabbed it with a piece of toilet paper, which quickly turned into a faint pink colour. Diego quivered his hand, brushing a momentary stupor, and pasted the plaster back into place. Then with both hands he «combed» his rough curls, showed himself his pink tongue in the mirror and to his mother’s «Di-e-e-ego!» he shouted back: «I’m coming, ma-a-a!»
CHAPTER 4
To: Head of Intelligence Directorate, General Staff of the Red Army, General I.I. Ilichev
From: Head of Second Chief Directorate, Anglo-American Residence, Lieutenant K.M. Litvinov
November 27, 1942
OPERATIONAL REPORT
Comrade General,
Our U.S. resident «Rockwood» revealed that the object of our interest was present during the so-called Baltimore Experiment. It is established that the agency «Nixon, Kraft and Locksmith,» presented by Mr. Morgan, had a contract with the U.S. military for the supply of sensitive equipment. On the day of the experiment, Mr. Tesla was secretly brought by the secret service agency «Tangerine» to the port of Baltimore from New York on a five-seat plane (reg. no. 685-AS).
The Baltimore Experiment (for your reference)
According to our data, the U.S. military attempted to build a ship invisible to the enemy’s radar and magnetic mines. Using the calculations derived by Mr. Einstein, the destroyer «Aldridge» was installed with special generators. To our knowledge, the project attracted Mr. Tesla’s attention. His participation in the experiment was highly confidential. The reason that the participation of Mr. Tesla was given the highest degree of secrecy confirms our hypothesis that Mr. Tesla used an unknown mechanism of his own invention in the experiment. In addition, we know that an elevated degree of activity of the Abwehr, the German counterintelligence agency, was directed not at the outcome of the experiment, but at the object that Mr. Tesla brought aboard the destroyer.
During the test conducted on Oct. 28, 1942 in dock no. 4 of the Baltimore port, two events happened. First, the ship, surrounded by powerful electromagnetic field discharges, not only disappeared from the radar screen, but literally vanished in the truest sense of the word in a green cloud. Second, after some time, the «Aldridge» reappeared in another place, by the exit into the waters near dock no. 12. In the opinion of doctors, the crew on board was completely distraught,
Our agents interviewed all possible witnesses to the experiment. In particular (for a bribe of 465 dollars), we received the most interesting testimony from senior sailor Mr. Ramirez Allende from the transport ship «Andrew Furuseth,» a vessel that was part of the control group of the Baltimore experiment. Mr. Allende personally saw how the «Aldridge» melted in a strange, greenish glow to a buzzing sound surrounding the destroyer’s force field. Other witnesses indicated that immediately after the discovery of the ship, Special Forces were thrown on board to block all approaches to the ship and all exits on board. Soon after, a speedboat brought a man (Mr. Allende’s photograph identifies the man with exact certainty as Mr. Tesla). The man was immediately escorted to the bridge, from which he returned shortly. He was carrying a metal suitcase in his hands. While descending back into the high-speed boat, according to Mr. Allende, the man (Mr. Tesla) suddenly exclaimed «Oh, shit!» as if from a burn and let his bag out of his hands, throwing it aside. The bag opened and a small ball rolled onto the deck – this object radiated a striking green glow, like a fire welding. The glow lasted for several seconds, and then stopped. Gunmen accompanying Mr. Tesla put the ball away in the metal box. A trace of burnt wood was clearly visible on the deck of the ship.
The most interesting item in Allende’s testimony to our agent was the description of the effects of the experiment. Some incredible things have been happening to the men that returned «from nowhere.» They seemed to have fallen out of the real course of time (the term «frozen» was used). There were cases of spontaneous combustion. Two of the «frozen» men suddenly ignited and burned for eighteen days. Despite all efforts, rescuers in the hospital were unable to stop the burning of the bodies. There were also other oddities – for example, one of the sailors of the «Aldridge» disappeared forever, having passed straight through the wall of his apartment in front of his wife and child. We cannot confirm these accounts, as it is likely that Mr. Allende exaggerated some of his testimony to receive more money.
According to agent «Rockwood,» the U.S. Navy leadership denies the Baltimore Experiment, claiming that nothing of such nature occurred in Baltimore this year. However, we found documents showing that Mr. Einstein has been in the employ of the U.S. Navy Department in Washington D.C. this year. We have copies of the leaflets with the calculations made by hand by Mr. Einstein, who has a very distinctive handwriting. (The copies are translated and forwarded to the Second Division of the GRU[4 - The Main Intelligence Directorate of the Soviet Army General Staff]).
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Dr. Carl Laysler (one of the physicists on this project) has been in our employ since receiving the assignment. Dr. Laysler, according to our information, told a closed Congressional hearing on the case that U.S. military scientists planned to make a warship invisible to radar. A powerful electronic device was installed on board this ship. This device was able to produce energy, the power of which was enough to supply electricity to a small-sized city.
We have a verbatim transcript of his explanation:
…The experiment is remarkable, but terribly dangerous. It has too much influence on the people involved in it. The experiment used magnetic generators, the so-called «de-magnetizers,» which worked at resonant frequencies and created a powerful field around the ship. In practice, this could give a temporary withdrawal from our dimension and might mean a spatial breakthrough, if only it was possible to keep the process under control!
Curiously, Dr. Laysler has never seen this device. However, he believes that it would have taken up at least one-third of the vessel’s area. Nonetheless, he did not see a single loading of large-scale electrical equipment take place on board.
The intent of the experiment was for a strong electromagnetic field around the ship to serve as a screen for radar beams. Dr. Laysler was located on the shore to watch, record, and monitor the experiment. When the device was running, the ship disappeared. Sometime later, it reappeared with all sailors on board dead. Some of their corpses turned into steel – the material from which the ship was made. During our conversation, Dr. Laysler was very upset and it was evident that the sick old man still feels responsibility and guilt for the deaths of the seamen on board the «Aldridge.» Laysler and his colleagues on the experiment consider that they «sent the ship to a different time, with the vessel breaking up into molecules, and in the inverse process there was a partial replacement of organic molecules of human bodies by metal atoms…»
We have proposed a theory that Mr. Tesla may have participated in the project as a possible owner of the device, but Dr. Laysler categorically denied this. According to Dr. Laysler, the military did not inform the team of scientists involved in the project of who manufactured the device.
One week after the experiment, the «Aldridge» was put into reserve by the U.S. Navy. The logbooks of the «Aldridge» disappeared. To our knowledge, they are in the ownership of the 7th Operational Department of the CIA.
Lt. Col. K.M. Litvinov
***
DECREE
Immediately start operat… actions, …clarifying… …details of the Baltim… Expe… t. Confirm… facts and agents at our disposal… …rmation associated with the activit… ola Tesla in the… …military …rces of the U.S. to the exper…
Report …personally, daily.
Ilichev
CHAPTER 5
45° 31» 48» N
9° 5» 37» E
Milan, Italy
May 1991
The traffic jam seemed endless. Even considering that it was in one of the most beautiful cities in Europe, in the capital of Italian and world fashion, sitting in the car in this sticky, hot, polluted air did not bring much pleasure.
Soli
La pelle come un vestito
Soli
Mangiando un panino in due
Io e te
Soli
Le briciole nel letto
Soli
Ma stretti un po’ di più
Solo io solo tu
The melodic song playing from the broken car radio, performed by a hoarse-voiced man and a bevy of beauties, did not brighten the trip either. Choking in the old Fiat of God knows what colour and year, with coffee and red wine stains as well as something unknown and repulsive on the formerly-velvet backseat, Rodion Karlovich Teichrib concluded that he was going to be late for his flight. Even in the best-case scenario, if at the behest of all the sleeping saints in Milan the highway to Malpensa Airport will immediately clear up, he still would not make it for Alitalia flight 560 to Moscow. This meant that his colleague, translator and assistant, Sergei Tikholapov, who had left to the airport two hours ago, will have to fly to Moscow alone.
The Twenty-Ninth Symposium of the European Society of Historians, held as always under the patronage of the Royal Historical Society of the United Kingdom, was traditionally held in the old European cities like London, Amsterdam, Brussels, and Lisbon. In late spring of 1991, that city was Milan.
Not yet an old man at fifty-four years of age and part of the so-called «new wave» of the perestroika era, Professor Rodion Karlovich Teichrib had early-grizzled curly hair and large eyes under similarly large and thick horn-rimmed spectacles. Among the students of the Moscow State University’s Faculty of History he went by the respectable nickname of «Doctor Zhivago.» The Faculty of History of the Moscow State University was the leader of the subject area in the Soviet Union, known for exhaustingly covering both geographical and chronological historical reality, and in fact – all human history. A dozen departments and a few hundred faculty members, including Rodion Karlovich, taught history in a fundamental way, with its own school and traditions. Even the study of the history of the Communist Party introduced in the thirties did not affect the quality of education. Repression of the professorial staff in these years only partially affected the university. The school remained a School.
Rodion Karlovich taught in two departments – history and art of archeology and ethnology as well as ancient fine arts. His «Doctor Zhivago» persona was complemented by the fact that he carried all his documents, books, and notebooks in an old doctor’s bag, which he inherited from his grandfather through his father. Such was the professorial dynasty of the «bag-carriers.»
The «Vesnin Brothers,» responsible for producing this daily necessity of a doctor as well as other suitcases and attributes for wealthy travelers in the early nineteenth century, did not spare the finest pigskins in the creation of their products, being such a benign manufacturer. The brown sides of the bag, obliterated by a century of wear and tear, had about a dozen small holes covered by bronze studs. So, with tight enclosure and long-term storage, the contents of the travelling bag did not dampen or suffocate. The lock made by «Vesnin Brothers» was so strong and shrewd that it would be envied by any modern travel lock. However, its key came only in one copy. The professor once tried to order a duplicate – as if it were possible! Upon seeing the manufacturer brand, no master took the task. «Hold on to it like the apple of an eye, but if you lose it, the sides of the bag will have to be cut open, ruining such a fine product!» But even this would be hard to do because the sides of the doctor’s travelling bag were reinforced with whalebone. That’s why Rodion Karlovich only took the key with him when he went on business trips, which had been recently becoming more often. Even when handing his bag over at check-in counters, he did not bother to have it wrapped around by plastic to protect it from the baggage handlers of Sheremetyevo Airport that were known for their autopsies of expensive suitcases arriving from capitalist countries. Firstly, this type of travelling bag did not look as polished as most of his fellow travelers’, and secondly, breaking it open would need too much force. The rest of the time, during lectures and hours spent in the dilapidated Lenin library, the key awaited the professor in the bachelor two-bedroom apartment that he shared with his mother, not far from the Kropotkinskaya metro station.
Smiling and showing large teeth, the lenses of his glasses gleaming, Rodion Karlovich talked in a quiet, but firm, tone of voice, forcing the audience to stop whispering and carefully delve into his lectures. As a relatively young, extremely well-read, and «new» -thinking teacher, he did not suffer from a lack of attention from his students. Many of them idolized him and sometimes even escaped from other classes to listen to the «advanced» lectures of Dr. Zhivago.
In the midst of perestroika, a new wave of contacts was made with foreign universities interested in promoting «progressive thinking» in the USSR, which became increasingly popular in the West (from matryoshka dolls and Paul McCartney’s «Back in the USSR» to nuclear technology), opening more doors to the young professors of the land of the Soviets. This allowed Rodion Karlovich to visit six countries in the past three years alone. Previously, one could only dream of such trips, not to mention the expenses covered by host nations.
And here he was, sitting in the Milanese taxi on the road to the airport, with a wandering smile, recalling a conversation about him in a small pizzeria on Via Cappellini with his young colleague and translator, Sergei Tikholapov. Rodion Karlovich caught himself thinking that he was continuing to test his knowledge of the amazing object that he acquired for ten lire. Actually, it only cost him a payment for a bus ride with a half-blind Italian rag-picker, whom he named «Giuseppe Blue-nose» in his mind.
Here is what happened. Having successfully broken away from the «tourist group» (or rather, from the delegation of professors and lecturers from the countries of the former socialist bloc and the elderly guide, a Jewish immigrant, who seemingly spoke in all the languages of the world), and chuckling to himself that this whole episode crudely reminded him of a scene from the 1960s Soviet comedy The Diamond Arm, professor Rodion Karlovich slipped into the shadows of the small and prosperous Via Plinio. A couple of times, he covered his tracks by entering small souvenir shops, sorting in his pockets for coins given to him as subsistence by the Committee of Assistance to Eastern European Nations. Finally, he found himself at the corner of that same Via Plinio and Piazza Lima.
It’d be nice to study the outskirts of Milan too, as not only do its palaces make Milan beautiful, but its people too, thought Rodion Karlovich, looking around and squinting at the bright sun-lit street, or else I might as well spend my whole trip in classrooms and at conferences. It was at this moment that he felt some sort of hollow ringing in his head, which after a moment turned into a dull ache in the left brow. He stopped and firmly pressed the palm of his hand to his brow, then rubbed his temple. However, the pain was not only not gone, but it intensified. He even put his head in his hands, remembering how Heinrich Muller taught Stirlitz[5 - A fictional Soviet spy operating undercover in Nazi Germany.] to deal with migraines in the classic film Seventeen Moments of Spring.
What the hell? Removing his glasses, he gave a tired and bewildered look at the suddenly deserted street. At a bus stop not far away, sat a lonely old man in a plaid flannel shirt, a blue velvet waistcoat and a worn-out cap, with his tanned hands peacefully resting on his knees.
Rodion Karlovich slowly approached this elderly man of small stature and a narrow face with a long, bluish nose, and without even thinking how to explain himself he knocked on his own forehead with two fingers and, wincing, asked: «Pharmacy, where is farmacia? Analgene… head – testa… testa boo-boo very much – testa malate! Devil may break a leg of this damn Italian!» The old man, as if expecting this question, got up from the plastic bench and promptly waved his dry blotchy hand, inviting Rodion Karlovich into a shabby, impossibly dusty city bus that pulled to the curb out of nowhere.
Ostensibly hypnotized, the professor entered the empty salon and collapsed next to the old man in the seat behind the driver. Bus no. 64W immediately started moving, grunting out exhaust with displeasure. The driver turned to the old man, looked into his eyes, and shook his head – «This one?» Blue-nose nodded his head.
CHAPTER 6
55° 45» 11» N
37° 38» 26» E
Moscow, Russian Federation
September 7, 1994
«This one?»
«What do I know?»
«This guy isn’t quite dead yet…»
«Aha! They don’t want dead ones. Remember the last one? They finally let him go…»
«Yeah, let him go… into the Moscow River.»
The two square-headed and thick-necked thugs, dressed in expensive suits of the latest fashion, stopped at the corner of Podkolokolny and Malo Ivanovo alleys. With undisguised contempt, they were looking intensely at a dry, bony, dirty man. He sat with his back to a water pipe, pursing his thin legs. The tricot was torn at his knees. Dirty, swollen, dressed in rags, he was begging passersby for something in his incoherent, tongue-tied speech. But the passersby only hurriedly ran past him, some bouncing off to the side for fear of catching some tuberculosis, pediculosis, or «even something worse.»
One of the suits drew a pair of white latex gloves from his pocket, busily pulled them on his hairy hands, and pushed the elbow of his associate, quietly muttering, «Alright, we take this one. We’ve been shaking down alleyways for two hours. And I’m hungry like a dog! If he won’t be the right one, then the hell with him – the river will wash him away like the others…»
«Wait, I’ll put a cover on the seat… God forbid that son a bitch will stink up my car.» He turned and quickly headed to the man standing not far from the black Jeep.
Meanwhile, the first suit sat down in front of beggar and shook his bony shoulder. The hobo raised his eyelids heavily and with his bright blue, unreflective eyes looked at the stranger. He was not too old. Rather, it was impossible to tell his age without ridding his face of the stubble he had grown over many days, washing the dirt off him, and feeding him properly. He was probably still in his thirties.
«I’m not well, brother,» he rasped through dry, parched, blue lips, «I can’t breathe… my pipes are burning!»
«Well, that’s fixable, chap. How do we call you, miserable?» asked the suit deliberately in a good-natured and merry tone.
«I’m Oleg. Oleg Pervushin.»
«Here’s what, Oleg Pervushin, look here, brother – I’m going to patch you up for a little case. At my cottage. It’s not for nothing, you hear! I’ll get your pipes cleaned and feed you and get you dressed, bro. The whole deal!» He smiled wryly and depicted a graceful movement with his white-gloved fingers. Then, still smiling, he pulled from his jacket pocket a 250-mL bottle of «Moskovskaya» vodka, pulled off the silver cap, and placed the warm bottle into the trembling hand of Oleg Pervushin. As if long expecting such a turn of events, Oleg took three big gulps in exactly three seconds, consuming the entire contents of the bottle, making his saviour whistle with admiration. Gently burping, Oleg again leaned back against the drainpipe. After a few long moments, his cheeks began to show colour, his breathing leveled off, and he opened his eyes to look at the stranger in full consciousness.
«Well, what do you want, dear,» said Oleg with a little drawl, «Take me, lock, stock and barrel. If you like, I’ll plow your land, and dig up a well, and cut down trees for a sauna, and…»
«No, no, Oleshka,» interrupted his companion, «I want you to, well, work as a watchman for me. You know how many scums there are around now, climbing in windows, stealing, and they can even burn you. Well, maybe, you can be a courier for our office. You know, bring this, take that…»
«What, the post doesn’t work?»
