Yuri yelled back to the little guard post. "Sir, comrade refuses orders to turn back."
An officer drinking tea and ogling a magazine filled with seminude women yelled back:
"Tell him you'll shoot."
"I did."
"Then shoot," said the officer.
"Please," said Yuri to the man with the sad brown eyes.
The man laughed.
With trembling hands Yuri raised the Kalishnikov and put it to the man's head. No matter what was said in basic training, every soldier knew many men never fired their rifles in combat. He had always suspected he would be one of those. In combat he could maybe get away with it. But here, if he didn't fire, it would mean being sent to Afghanistan for sure. It was either this poor fellow or himself. And the man didn't seem to be stopping.
Yuri leveled the gun at the sad brown eyes.
Better you than me, he thought. He hoped he wouldn't have to look at the body. He hoped that the blood would not spray too much. He hoped that he would someday be able to forget what he had done. But if he pulled the trigger at least there would be a someday. If he went to Afghanistan, there wouldn't be. Yuri felt his finger slick with sweat against the trigger.
And then his mother was talking to him. His saintly mother was standing right in front of him, talking ever so softly and reasonably, telling him to put down his gun and not shoot her.
"Mother, what are you doing here in Siberia?"
"Don't believe everything you hear or see. I'm here. What are you going to do, shoot your own mother?"
"No, never. "
"Put down the gun," said his mother.
But that was unnecessary. Yuri was already lowering the gun. And the man with the sad brown eyes was gone. "Mama, have you seen a little guy with brown eyes?"
"He went back to the village. Go relax."
Yuri looked down the road. It stretched a mile toward the village, with no hills or bushes where anyone could hide. The little fellow had disappeared. He looked behind him, to see if the little fellow had somehow snuck by. But that road was empty also. It was quiet and empty, and the still, chill night made clouds of every breath, and the man was not there. Only his gray-haired mother, hands gnarled from arthritis, waving to him as she passed the guard post. The officer ran out through the door and put his pistol to Yuri's mother's head. Yuri raised his rifle. This he could kill for. This he had to kill for.
He fired a dozen automatic rounds with his Kalishnikov, plastering the wooden guard post with pieces of the second lieutenant and the magazine he had been reading.
The next day at the board of inquiry, Yuri explained he couldn't help himself. He had a right to defend his mother. The lieutenant was going to kill her.
Strangely, every officer seemed to understand, even though Yuri admitted tearfully (because now he was sure he was going to be shot) that his mother had been dead for four years.
"All right. Don't worry. What did the man say to you? Remember everything," ordered the KGB commandant assigned to the village area.
"But I shot my commanding officer."
"Doesn't matter. What did Rabinowitz say?"
"His name was Rabinowitz, sir?"
"Yes. What did he say?"
"He said he wanted to be left alone."
"Anything else?"
"He said he was sure I wouldn't shoot him. He seemed happy to say the word no. He made such an awful big thing of it."
"Anything else?"
"That's all I remember. I had to shoot the lieutenant. Wouldn't you if your commander was going to kill your mother?"
"No. I'm KGB. But never mind about shooting your officer. What did your mother say?"
"She told me not to shoot."
"Anything else?"
"She said don't believe everything you see. And things like that."
"Did she say where she was going?"
"She's been dead four years," sobed Yuri.
"Never mind that. Did she say where she was going?"
"No. "
"She didn't mention anything about Israel?"
"Why would she? She's not-wasn't-a Jew."
"Yes. Of course," said the KGB commandant.
There was one advantage the commandant saw. They were already at the parapsychology village and the sergeant would not have to be sent here to relive his experiences perfectly. Rabinowitz might have said something that would lead them to him again, and then it was just a matter of giving Rabinowitz whatever he wanted. Heads were going to roll for this one and it was not going to be some poor little sergeant in the regular army.
Someone had lost Vassily Rabinowitz, and there would have to be some pretty good answers all the way to the Politburo.
The picture of the sad-eyed, middle-aged man was sent to every KGB unit in the Soviet Union and especially to border countries of the Eastern bloc. The instructions were strange. No one was to try to stop Vassily Rabinowitz. They were only to report his presence to Moscow, unless Rabinowitz was spotted near any border to the West. Then without talking to the man, without looking into his eyes, they were to shoot him.
The secret police of East Germany, Poland, Albania, and Rumania found the next message totally confusing. They were to report to Moscow the sighting by any guard at any post of anyone strange, such as a relative who had been dead for many years, or a close friend.
"Appearing where?" the satellite police asked.
"Anywhere they shouldn't," answered the Moscow KGB. There were questions, too, about how the dead could appear.
And the answer was that they really didn't but the guards would be sure they had.