REVOLUTION

By MACK REYNOLDS

Illustrated by Gardner

Preface ... For some forty years critics of the U.S.S.R. have been desiring, predicting, not to mention praying for, its collapse. For twenty of these years the author of this story has vaguely wondered what would replace the collapsed Soviet system. A return to Czarism? Oh, come now! Capitalism as we know it today in the advanced Western countries? It would seem difficult after almost half a century of State ownership and control of the means of production, distribution, communications, education, science. Then what? The question became increasingly interesting following recent visits not only to Moscow and Leningrad but also to various other capital cities of the Soviet complex. A controversial subject? Indeed it is. You can't get much more controversial than this in the world today. But this is science fiction, and here we go.

Paul Koslov nodded briefly once or twice as he made his way through the forest of desks. Behind him he caught snatches of tittering voices in whisper.

"... That's him ... The Chief's hatchetman ... Know what they call him in Central America, a pistola, that means ... About Iraq ... And that time in Egypt ... Did you notice his eyes ... How would you like to date him ... That's him. I was at a cocktail party once when he was there. Shivery ... cold-blooded—"

Paul Koslov grinned inwardly. He hadn't asked for the reputation but it isn't everyone who is a legend before thirty-five. What was it Newsweek had called him? "The T. E. Lawrence of the Cold War." The trouble was it wasn't something you could turn off. It had its shortcomings when you found time for some personal life.

He reached the Chief's office, rapped with a knuckle and pushed his way through.

The Chief and a male secretary, who was taking dictation, looked up. The secretary frowned, evidently taken aback by the cavalier entrance, but the Chief said, "Hello, Paul, come on in. Didn't expect you quite so soon." And to the secretary, "Dickens, that's all."

When Dickens was gone the Chief scowled at his trouble-shooter. "Paul, you're bad for discipline around here. Can't you even knock before you enter? How is Nicaragua?"

Paul Koslov slumped into a leather easy-chair and scowled. "I did knock. Most of it's in my report. Nicaragua is ... tranquil. It'll stay tranquil for a while, too. There isn't so much as a parlor pink—"

"And Lopez—?"

Paul said slowly, "Last time I saw Raul was in a swamp near Lake Managua. The very last time."

The Chief said hurriedly, "Don't give me the details. I leave details up to you."

"I know," Paul said flatly.

His superior drew a pound can of Sir Walter Raleigh across the desk, selected a briar from a pipe rack and while he was packing in tobacco said, "Paul, do you know what day it is—and what year?"

"It's Tuesday. And 1965."

The bureau chief looked at his disk calendar. "Um-m-m. Today the Seven Year Plan is completed."

Paul snorted.

The Chief said mildly, "Successfully. For all practical purposes, the U.S.S.R. has surpassed us in gross national product."

"That's not the way I understand it."

"Then you make the mistake of believing our propaganda. That's always a mistake, believing your own propaganda. Worse than believing the other man's."

"Our steel capacity is a third again as much as theirs."

Paul said, "In the movement they call you Georgi, and you're top man in the Leningrad area."

Shvernik's hand came up from under the desk and he pointed a heavy military revolver at his visitor. "Who are you?" he repeated.

Paul ignored the gun. "Someone who knows that you are Georgi," he said "I'm from America. Is there any chance of anybody intruding?"

"Yes, one of my colleagues. Or perhaps a secretary."

"Then I suggest we go to a bar, or some place, for a drink or a cup of coffee or whatever the current Russian equivalent might be."

Shvernik looked at him searchingly. "Yes," he said finally. "There's a place down the street." He began to stick the gun in his waistband, changed his mind and put it back into the desk drawer.

It was by no means the last trip that Paul Koslov was to make to his underground contacts, nor the last visit to the dacha at Petrodvorets.

In fact, the dacha became the meeting center of the Russian underground with their liaison agent from the West. Through it funneled the problems involved in the logistics of the thing. Spotted through the rest of the vast stretches of the country, Paul had his local agents, American, British, French, West German. But this was the center.

The Mikoyan Camera made a great success in the States. And little wonder. Unknown to the Soviets, the advertising campaign that sold it cost several times the income from the sales. All they saw were the continued orders, the repeated visits of Mr. John Smith to Leningrad on buying trips. Leonid Shvernik was even given a promotion on the strength of his so ably cracking the American market. Ana Furtseva was automatically assigned to Paul as interpreter-guide whenever he appeared in the Soviet Union's second capital.

In fact, when he made his "tourist" jaunts to the Black Sea region, to the Urals, to Turkestan, to Siberia, he was able to have her assigned to the whole trip with him. It gave a tremendous advantage in his work with the other branches of the underground.

No, it wasn't a feeling of exclusion. Paul Koslov was stretched out on the bed of his king-size Astoria Hotel room, his hands behind his head and staring up at the ceiling. He recapitulated the events of the past months from the time he'd entered the Chief's office in Washington until last night at the dacha with Leonid and Ana.

The whole thing.

And over and over again.

There was a line of worry on his forehead.

He swung his feet to the floor and approached the closet. He selected his most poorly pressed pair of pants, and a coat that mismatched it. He checked the charge in his .38 Noiseless, and replaced the weapon under his left arm. He removed his partial bridge, remembering as he did so how he had lost the teeth in a street fight with some Commie union organizers in Panama, and replaced the porcelain bridge with a typically Russian gleaming steel one. He stuffed a cap into his back pocket, a pair of steel rimmed glasses into an inner pocket, and left the room.

He hurried through the lobby, past the Intourist desk, thankful that it was a slow time of day for tourist activity.

"My point is this. When you gave me this assignment, you told me I was in the position of the German who engineered bringing Lenin up to Petrograd to start the Bolsheviks rolling. Are you sure that the opposite isn't true? Are you sure it isn't Maugham's job I should have? Let me tell you, Chief, these boys I'm working with now are sharp, they've got more on the ball than these Commie bureaucrats running the country have a dozen times over.

"Chief, this is the decision that has to be made in the next couple of days. Just who do we want eliminated? Are you sure you don't want me to tip off the KGB to this whole conspiracy?"

THE END