The Night Watch

by Julian Dinsell

  Wolski was totally outclassed and knew it. His mind was reeling and the only thing he was certain of was that he needed time. Time to think, time to plan. Time to escape?

  “I ask you again, Professor, are you in touch with reality?”

  “I understand the reality of this situation.”

  “I take it then, that you agree to join us?”

  Wolski nodded.

  “Good. If things go well, there could be a Nobel Prize in this.”

  It was a measure of Wolski’s mental turmoil that he could not tell whether Golkov was serious or merely taunting him. The one thing that was certain was that Golkov had won.

  Briskly Golkov brought the meeting to a close. “Tomorrow, I shall brief you in detail.”

  He snapped the metal briefcase shut and picked up the postcard that Wolski had left on the desk.

  “Please keep the picture; think of it as a memento of our understanding.”

  Wolski could think of nothing to say in reply. He slid the postcard into his breast pocket and, head bowed, moved towards the door. In deep shock, he walked along the familiar echoing corridor, with its grand sweeping arches and lancet windows that poured shafts of light onto the marble and bronze statues of his predecessors. Junior staff greeted him with their usual respect. But his world had changed. He was frightened, very frightened, but the humiliation of being a prisoner in his own professional home was worse than the fear.

  *

  Sitting in the crowded tram at the end of the day, he was oblivious to his surroundings. The difficulty that he faced was much worse than a problem; problems have solutions. This was a dilemma; there were no answers, only alternatives and each of them offered the prospect of disaster.

  The tram rattled on and the crush of people became denser as home-going workers got on at the stops in the city centre.

  But Wolski wasn’t conscious of the pressure of bodies upon him. He struggled with the options. To warn the Night Watch would alert Golkov and bring about reprisals. Yet to let them continue would be an act of betrayal. The tram crossed the river, and the passengers began to thin out until Wolski was left almost alone in a haze of body odour and stale cigarette smoke. Eventually, the tram ground to a halt at Wolski’s stop.

  Who was Golkov? What power did he represent? Was there any way in which he might be stopped? There were no answers; the only fact Wolski was sure of was the threat to the Night Watch. About that, he had no doubt at all.

  He walked to the tall terraced house that had once belonged to an importer of French wine. Now it was divided into apartments. Wolski’s was on the second floor. He climbed the stone stairs, opened the door and turned on the lights.

  Inside, everything was the same, yet everything was changed. The once comfortable refuge filled with books and well-used furniture was now contaminated by nauseous anxiety and self-loathing. He turned out the lights. Sitting in the dark somehow made thinking easier. For a long time, he listened to the trams clattering by. Occasionally, a blue flash from the overhead power cables lit the room like lightning. The tide of commuters receded and in time was replaced by late-night revellers: ‘The Vodka Cosmonauts’, as everyone called them.

  Eventually, the street became quiet and for most of the silent hours of the night Wolski applied his mind to analysing the situation. There seemed only two possibilities. Either Golkov must have an informant within the Night Watch, or he had the meetings bugged. Either way, the damage had been done. A warning would achieve nothing; there was nowhere to escape to. He could not rid his mind of what Golkov had said about the postcard: ‘A memento of our understanding’. The implication that if he cooperated, the Night Watch would be protected, and that if he did not, it would be destroyed. In the darkness he could see them all clearly: Jakob with his fierce humour; Stefan, devoted to his wife and twin daughters; Ignace, who had such a keen eye for detail that it almost constituted a photographic memory; Arthur and his trail of adoring women; Krystian the linguist, and the many others. Alone in the dark, for the first time he realised who this unlikely collection of people really were; they were his only family and he loved every one of them. Silently, he wept. Never before had he been conscious of love for anyone.

  Sometime around four in the morning, his decision was made.

  He must tell them nothing. Even more painfully, he would have to find reasons to separate himself from them, in the hope that they would not become infected by whatever he himself was being contaminated with.

  It was not much, but it was the best he could do. As he thought long and bitterly about Golkov, the second realisation of the night came upon him. This was the first man he had ever truly hated.

  A shallow sleep crept up on him and with it came impulses of love and disgust that pursued each other through his semi-consciousness.

  By first light, he was gaunt-eyed and dry-mouthed.

  *

  He was at the Institute early for his meeting with Golkov. He first went to his own office and, on an impulse that he did not wholly understand, tidied the files on his desk and sat with arms folded waiting for the phone to ring. He did not have to wait long.

  It was a woman’s voice; Golkov had acquired a secretary. The uncertainty of the new power structure was obvious from the tone of her voice. “Professor, Doctor Golkov asks if you will please come to his office?”

  Golkov had installed himself in a large corner office, with windows on two sides. Previously the room had been inhabited by a group of statisticians. Wolski wondered where they had been banished to.

  The room looked strangely bare; there was none of the usual academic clutter, no untidy piles of papers, no books, nothing on the walls. Golkov had managed to acquire a large antique desk, the room’s only concession to status. A Japanese laptop computer on the desk was the most prominent article in the room. It was the first Wolski had seen in the Institute but he chose not to notice it, and without being invited took a seat across the desk from Golkov. From his expression, Golkov made it clear that he saw the manoeuvre for what it was and Wolski felt as if he’d been caught out in some childish misdeed.

  Golkov spoke with cold, formal courtesy. “Professor, we shall never be friends but perhaps we can avoid the barrenness of mutual contempt? What we are attempting here is too important for such trivialities.”

  Wolski ignored Golkov’s appeal. “If I am to be useful, I need to know more.”

  Golkov studied him for a moment and then began an explanation. “Consider the world of science. In the West, if research is not for military purposes, it is ruled almost entirely by commercial objectives. Capitalism demands a bottom line that shows a profit. Of course, vanity can also be a motive. If an obscure university in the USA wishes to become well known, it will establish a centre for the study of something or somebody ignored by everybody else. That will get the name of the institution into the papers and sometimes onto television – always good for fundraising. Don’t misunderstand me, Professor, while I may abhor capitalist motivation, I envy its success. We in the East, on the other hand, have always pursued research for political reasons, to strengthen the power of the state. And we were very effective at it. Let’s not forget our successes. The Soviet Union grew from a near mediaeval peasantry to a superpower in less than a single lifetime.”

  “But at what price?” Wolski was outraged. “Stalin killed twenty million of your people; more than Hitler. Moreover, he carved up my country with the Nazis.”

  Golkov was unmoved. “You may not approve of Comrade Stalin but you must recognise that he was a genius nevertheless. In a choice between tyranny and chaos, the Russian people will always choose tyranny. The Czar, who people in the West call ‘Ivan the Terrible’, every Russian schoolchild knows as ‘Ivan the Formidable’. You should remember that.”

  Wolski’s outrage emboldened him. This was the type of argument he had long ago believed would never again be necessary. “Are you saying you admire Stalin?”

  “I simply observe life as it is,” Golkov replied
. “The past is irrelevant. The Communist system is finished, exhausted. It has served its purpose and now it’s dead.”

  “Everyone knows that,” Wolski said for want of a better reply.

  Golkov ignored him. “The present system in Russia, the weakling orphaned child of Communism, will soon follow its parent to the grave.” Golkov seemed smug with the completeness of his vision.

  “What does this have to do with your being here at the Institute?” Wolski asked.

  “I explain these matters to you because your willing cooperation is more useful to us than mere compliance with our instructions,” Golkov replied.

  Wolski chose to ignore the point. “Nothing you have said explains what you’re trying to achieve,” he insisted.

  Golkov took time to choose his words. Eventually, he used only one. “Power.”

  Wolski looked quizzical; Golkov took this as a sign of interest.

  “Technology expresses power, it always has, from the flint axe to the forty thousand nuclear warheads which we and the Americans possess but have no idea what to do with. Until now, such technologies have always been deployed by one bloc to dominate another. The costs of doing things in this way are, of course, colossal. The spending match with the United States in weaponry destroyed the Soviet Union. The ideas of the Stone Age have lasted too long. Nuclear weapons, biological weapons, all of them belong to the past. Why, you may ask.” Golkov had a habit of answering his own questions. “I will tell you why. All such weapons are capable of destruction and it’s no longer necessary to break down castle walls. We do not need wasteful efforts of siege or destruction. We shall have a point of entry where there is no resistance.” For a moment he studied Wolski’s incomprehension. “I like to call it ‘the Mindgate’.”

  He delivered the phrase like someone unveiling a statue of a hero. Wolski found the total absurdity of the idea reassuring, and it showed.

  Golkov kept talking in a tone of cold calculation. “Your own visible disbelief is valuable. You don’t believe us, and in turn nobody will believe you, should you be foolish enough to think of sharing with others what I am about to tell you.”

  Wolski’s moment of lightness was extinguished and what he heard next made him sit still as stone.

  “I will come directly to the point,” Golkov said. “You are going to help us find out what makes humans act as they do. Our work on the electro-chemical components of the brain that govern behaviour is well advanced. Now we need to complete our understanding without delay and we have chosen you for the task.”

  Wolski was rigid; he sat looking at the blank wall to avoid eye contact with Golkov. His mind rang with a clamour of emotions; fear if Golkov was right, fear if he was mad.

  He spoke with difficulty. “Your objective is better addressed to a theologian than a research scientist.” It was his last act of open defiance and it appeared to be entirely lost on Golkov.

  “I will show you something,” Golkov said, as if speaking to a junior member of class.

  From behind the desk, he lifted the metal briefcase that Wolski had seen the day before. He dreaded what it might contain this time. The catches snapped open; Golkov took out a DVD and walked to the battered cupboard that once housed over-stuffed boxes of statisticians’ forms. He opened the door to reveal a disc player and television monitor. The screen slowly came to life.

  The image was a copy of a scratchy black and white film from some time in the silent movie era. Wolski quickly recognised the figure of Charlie Chaplin. The scene was a boxing match. Charlie, cheered on by the heroine, reluctantly entered the ring. His opponent, a villain of huge proportions, followed. Charlie managed to dodge a few blows but was on the ropes as the bell sounded. Between rounds, the heroine slapped a gas mask on the face of the big boxer. Unsteadily the camera tilted down to see ‘Laughing Gas’ crudely painted on the cylinder. The bell sounded again and the villain, for all his fury, could only laugh as he took clumsy swings at the dapper Charlie. The film was assembled into a continuous loop that repeated the comedy of the big man’s despairing struggle to maintain his aggression against the effects of the gas. Wolski was transfixed. It was one of the most sinister things he had ever seen.

  The shock on Wolski’s face made Golkov laugh. “Don’t be too literal, Professor, that’s the most common failing of the scientist. We don’t intend to conquer the world with laughing gas, it’s simply our little demonstration reel, a parable if you like. Control the mind of the enemy and you control his intentions and his abilities.”

  “And who is the enemy?” Wolski asked.

  Golkov put the disc back into the briefcase and snapped the catches shut. The sound was like a weapon being cocked.

  “The enemy is whoever we choose the enemy to be,” Golkov said with a sharpness that indicated the meeting was at an end.

  For Wolski, the situation had the character of a terrible dream. To be talking about ways of controlling the world in a dusty former office of statistics in the capital of an economically exhausted and technologically backward country was bizarre. But Golkov left no space for thinking.

  “The first members of the team arrive in the morning. We shall be using the East Wing.”

  Golkov picked up his briefcase and indicated that they should both leave the office.

  *

  The following morning, when Wolski got to the Institute, he was astonished to find builders bricking up the corridors that joined the East Wing to the rest of the building. In the early afternoon, armed guards in unidentifiable dark-blue uniforms appeared at the doors to the street and at the intersections between departments. A day later, groups of technicians arrived; each had a floor plan that identified the offices allocated to them. Golkov had done a thorough job. By the end of the week, Wolski was issued with a pass by a dour Russian clerk who sat in a corridor that was rapidly filling up with filing cabinets and racks of computer drives.

  To anyone used to Eastern European bureaucracies with their built-in lethargy and muddle, the speed and efficiency of the operation was breathtaking. Wolski wandered through the laboratories and lecture rooms that he knew so well and was mesmerised by the speed with which they were being transformed. In a matter of days, all the years of theft from the Institute were being repaid with interest.

  During the second week, a convoy of sealed trucks arrived. They drove straight into the courtyard of what had once been the stable block and were unloaded beneath a tarpaulin canopy that prevented anyone in the main building from seeing what they carried.

  As the crates were unpacked, against all his earlier impulses Wolski experienced a surge of excitement. For decades, research of most kinds in Eastern Europe had been held back by a US government ban on the export of computer equipment. Now Wolski stood before eighteen shrink-wrapped mainframe computers that appeared to have come directly from the manufacturer in California.

  “Our methods and their money.”

  Wolski was startled; Golkov had an unnerving ability to come upon him silently.

  Who are ‘they’ and who are ‘us’? Wolski wondered, but did not ask.

  The men who came with the computers were handpicked enthusiasts; hard-eyed and short-spoken. They seemed to have no interests beyond their machines and each other. As the novelty of their presence ebbed away, the most surprising thing was not the high-intensity Western-style operation that had arrived apparently from nowhere, but the speed at which the main body of the Institute forgot the East Wing and what was going on within it. The two staffs did not meet and curiosity in the face of a brick wall soon faded. It was not long before life adjusted to the new normality.

  Wolski anxiously waited to discover what was required of him. He kept a tiny hope alive. If he remained unobtrusive, perhaps he might be forgotten. Because frequent all-night working was anticipated, he was provided with a room to sleep in on the top floor in what had once been the servants’ quarters. He liked the pitched roof and the little dormer window that looked down upon a broad avenue. It was a view th
at held a strange fascination for him. He had a distinct childhood memory of this same avenue, lined with tall trees and ornate buildings as grand as the Institute itself. But the war had intervened and now the picture was different. The trees and the fine buildings were gone and the thoroughfare was flanked by ranks of crumbling workers’ flats in grey weather-stained concrete.

  Alone in his small room he wrestled with the painful dilemma of the Night Watch. Should he carry on attending the meetings as if nothing had happened? He dismissed the possibility, knowing that would contaminate them with the poison of Golkov. In the end, he decided, the only choice was between two kinds of betrayal: the dangerous treachery of pretending that nothing had happened, or the pretence that he was no longer a believer. He wrote a letter of resignation, the first one that the Night Watch had ever received. There were a few phone calls to which he responded in a deliberately offensive tone. He half believed that they would understand his tactics. But the people he was trying to protect were far too innocent to recognise the warning.

  *

  After a week of painful inactivity, Wolski was summoned to Golkov’s office. Across the large room, a long conference table had been set up. A dozen people sat round it; all of them were in their late twenties or early thirties. Golkov was at the far end. At first, Wolski assumed that those at the table were also Russian, yet in the buzz of conversation he was certain he heard fragments of English.