Dresden, East Germany, November 9th 1989

As the Berlin wall fell, Vladimir Rasputin tossed another stack of files into the burn barrel. The heft of the stack caused the fire to dance, sending embers of charred paper floating away like fireflies. The great Soviet Union, if it could still be called great, was fracturing. Though the orders had not yet come, the KGB officer was sure that the Kremlin would soon order his return to Leningrad.

“Such an unspeakable shame to waste all this information, Comrade,” Ivan Chekov said as he strolled up and lifted his hands to the fire, warming them.

“It is,” Rasputin said. In truth, he had committed the files to memory months prior. Memorizing words on paper took no more effort for Rasputin than it took most people to remember to put shoes on before going out in a blizzard.

Rasputin stoked his hatred of the Americans and their former cowboy President who had sparked these fires now burning throughout the satellite states of the motherland. He forced himself to admit that the covert operations leading to the undermining of the Soviet Union had been clever and resourceful. Rasputin fantasized that it was the kind of patient, long-term plan that he would have conceived to take down the Americans.

The dream of tearing down the enemies of the west now seemed out of reach to the middle-aged, undistinguished and insignificant intelligence officer. Embers again sprang forth from the fire as Chekov tossed another stack of papers into the barrel. Rasputin considered that his best days and those of the Soviet Union would soon vanish, like the wisps of paper billowing from the fire.

Twenty-seven years prior, when Rasputin was a boy of ten, he’d been beaten, almost to the point of death, by older boys at School No. 193. From that moment, he vowed to never let himself be vulnerable again. In addition to training in judo and sambo, the youth began collecting information on his classmates. He discovered their weaknesses and fetishes, their shortcomings and fears.

Of all the kompromat he gathered over his years in school, he found the most effective to be the embarrassing bits; the bits that caused shame in the subjects. These secrets were the pure, refined gold for which Rasputin searched with earnest. The mere whisper of such knowledge was enough to cause trembling in the most malicious of bullies and to keep even the schoolmasters in pocket.

After law school, Rasputin found that the leaders in the Kremlin were wise to such attempts to rise within the ranks. He found himself on the western front of the cold war among the tangled webs of the Stasi and a half dozen other intelligence agencies competing for the information and power with which to climb the Soviet ranks.

Shaking off the momentary sting of the current losses to the west, Rasputin began to grasp the opportunity afforded by the coming chaos within the Soviet Union. This was an opportunity to rise among the thieves who had pushed him down, stomping his ambition like those school bullies all those years before. He smiled. This would be the easy part. He understood how to navigate this system provided there was enough chaos giving him the dark fissures in which to work.

The final goal, revenge against the Americans, would be more difficult. Their system of government seemed impenetrable. The system was built to weed out such potential infiltration. Rasputin considered that what would be needed would be a useless human being. A public, well-known person but one so flawed as to be an easy target for kompromat.

“Who would one use to infiltrate the American government?” Rasputin asked without realizing his question was spoken aloud.

“It would take a mosquito,” Chekov said.

“Mosquito?” Rasputin asked.

“Eagles will not hunt for mosquitoes,” Chekov said.

“Yes,” Rasputin said, recalling the meaning of old Russian proverb. In his clumsy way, Chekov had stumbled over a tiny grain of truth on a seashore of sandy subterfuge. The American intelligence agencies would not look long at a useless person. A noisy, pest of a human could be the perfect useful idiot.

As he picked up another stack of files to commit to the fire, Rasputin flipped through the documents filed away in his memory. What angle could be used to attract a useful idiot for his purposes. Women? Wealth? Both? Then, halting his mental search, he recalled a newspaper clipping about an American real estate kingpin married to a model from the Soviet puppet state of Czechoslovakia.

Rasputin understood that it would be difficult getting information out of the Soviet satellite state now because the uprising there was equal to the East German insurgents’ efforts. Despite the efforts to obtain such kompromat, he realized the efforts could be well-rewarded. Bugle, he thought, remembering the name of the American, Yes, a loudmouthed, opinionated moron will serve me well. Rasputin smiled as he tossed another stack of papers on the fire.

Next Chapter: Origin of Sorrows