At the time of the Prague Papers mission (1975), he was resident in the Kirlian
Institute, Alma-Ata, Kazakhstan, and ran a special group of psychics.
Tall, powerfully built and big-boned, he
was the antithesis of the common image of a scientist. He was a manipulative
man, without compassion.
He possessed a sallow complexion, a sickly
yellow; he blamed it on not getting the right food, even with all his
privileges. He had hooded eyes, coloured pale, yellowish brown and flaring
nostrils and a long nose. His hair was the shade and consistency of straw and always
untidy.
***
In the Kirlian Institute of Alma-Ata,
the capital of Kazakhstan, Professor Bublyk paced the control room. Through the
glass wall he could observe an adjoining room occupied by six men and four
women, all of them sitting at desks. He smiled on them, his best students: The
Group. They were all wearing headsets connected to an array of large cumbersome
computers and clinical monitors. The men wore drab uniform gray coveralls while
the women were dressed in clay-brown skirts and shirts.
Deep
crease-lines in his forehead betrayed his worry about next year’s
appropriations.
It
was annoying but every time they sent an inspection team, he had to recount the
history of mind control. As if the idiots understood even a fraction of what he
told them!
‘The history of
mind control began with our experiments carried out by Pavlov in the Thirties
to modify behavior,’ he would say. ‘While the salivating dog experiments were
the most well-known, they were merely the precursor.’
Indeed. The
precursor to more sinister work. Lenin made Pavlov a ‘guest’ at the Kremlin for
about three months until the scientist had completed a special report, relating
his research to human beings rather than dogs. Pavlov’s manuscript never left
the Kremlin and it laid the groundwork for NKVD brainwashing techniques such as
sleep deprivation, systematic beatings and verbal indoctrination. Brain damage,
Pavlovian conditioning, hypnosis, sensory stimulation, ‘black psychiatry’ and
‘mind cleansing’ were all employed to subvert the will of perceived enemies of
the state.
And as Bublyk
was at pains to point out, ‘the ultimate brainwashing tool is the actual
invasion of another person’s mind with yours.’ That was the motherland’s
version of the Holy Grail.
In
the Fifties, when Bublyk first entered para-psychological research, funds were
scarce, as most of the work was done without the Stalinists being aware of it.
Thankfully for him, the Stalinist taboo was lifted in the early Sixties, and he
finally saw funding at last become plentiful because both the KGB and the GRU
leaders hoped to harness psychic energy as another weapon in their arsenal.
Bublyk
explained with justified pride, ‘It was Russian sleep research that detected
the theta state of consciousness, which is found in dreaming sleep.’ This
seemed to be somehow linked to psychic awareness. If this theta state could be
augmented, they would have psychic spies – or even mind-assassins. To many of
his listeners it seemed far-fetched, but the potential from success, no matter
how remote, meant that rubles were diverted to this new branch of research.
The
Sixties were a golden time for him and those years promised much, with
experiments in submarines and in space, but deliverables were scarce. It was an
inexact science, prey to mood, to environment and doubtless planetary
influences for all Bublyk knew.
Now,
halfway through this new decade, all the pressures were building up and cracks
were appearing in the structure of the State. Yuri Andropov, the head of the
KGB, was asking awkward questions. He wanted results to combat the Americans.
Even members of the Politburo were becoming dissatisfied, though not within the
hearing of Brezhnev and his informers.
The
party tricks with cards were long gone. Psychical research had come a long way,
Bublyk mused, eyeing in particular Karel Yakunin, their star psychic. Yakunin’s
good looks and dark wavy hair transcended the drabness of his regulation
clothing.
Bublyk smiled,
recalling only last night when his mind roamed the dormitories and found
Yakunin bedding little Raisa, the flaxen-haired Estonian psychic now sitting at
the back of the room. Their coupling was against Bublyk’s regulations, as he
believed sexual activity drained the psychic forces – a credo shared by
oriental mystics. Yet he had not reported or disciplined them as he had to
admit to quite enjoying being a voyeur.
Now,
The Group was capable of distance viewing, of projecting thoughts into minds in
other lands or of detecting other people’s thoughts in enemy countries. It was
arduous work. Some of them suffered rapid weight-loss and heart-strain due to
the exertion. Last year, two adepts died. It was no accident that the theta
state was so named after the eighth letter of the Greek alphabet, suggesting a
sign of doom – thanatos, the ‘death’
sign on the ballots used in voting on a sentence of life or death in ancient
Greece.
And,
Bublyk reflected, they still had a lot to learn. The prospects were good, but
the funding committee wanted solid repeatable results, quantifiable answers.
Damned bean counters! If only the measuring apparatus was up to the task!
At
that moment, a buzzer jerked Bublyk out of his reverie. The light was on over
Yakunin’s name – he’d detected someone!
Bublyk
quickly scanned today’s roster and noted Yakunin was covering Czechoslovakia.
***
On November 26, The Prague Papers are released. This book is published by Crooked
Cat. It is based on a manuscript handed to me by an MI6 agent, Alan Swann. It
needed some knocking into shape, as it had been a collaborative effort by a
select group of agents, all intent on telling the story of Tana Standish,
psychic spy, whose career spanned 1965 to 1988. They asked that her story be
told as fiction.
As a result, the forthcoming novel The Prague Papers is the first adventure
to feature Tana Standish and is mainly set in Czechoslovakia in 1975.
Certain information was divulged in order
for me to write the book; yet some has been concealed to date. This is the
second secret file to be released ahead of the book. Others will follow.
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