The man had used another human being like a whip. Everyone saw it.
"He used him like a whip," said someone in the darkness.
"No," said someone else.
"Slow it down. You'll see. He used him like a whip. I swear."
The picture stopped on the screen, and whirred back. "Who is it? Who is that man? Was this trick photography?"
The picture started again. A single man advancing into three. The three had knives. The single man had no weapon.
The pictures themselves seemed extraordinarily smooth. Everyone in the audience had seen pictures like that. If a top athlete were going to perform internationally, the coaches were allowed to use one very valuable half-hour of that film. It was for shooting at ten times the number of frames per second of ordinary motion pictures. While it couldn't stop a bullet, it could catch the bullet's blur going across a screen.
"Do I have to watch again?" A voice in the darkness.
"Either all watch this or we watch our cities being destroyed, our farms becoming barren, and a slaughter that none of us who live benefiting from socialism will survive." An older voice in the dark projection room.
"It is so bloody." The first voice.
"Why not soldiers? Why do we have to see these pictures? Don't we have commandos? Judo experts?" There was silence before the film was run again. The room had a certain pressure to it, as though the very air had been squeezed in. It was not easy to breathe. It smelled of fresh linoleum and old cigarettes. There were no windows, and none of the men were even sure what part of Moscow they were in, much less which building. They had been told that no one and nothing other than they were needed. They had been taken from all over the socialist bloc and brought here to watch these films.
They were all surprised, therefore, when they were given secret information.
"No military man, no KGB expert, has been able to identify what we see here. None."
"When were these pictures shot?"
"Two days ago."
"Are you sure they are real? You know they might have gotten some Western wrestlers or gymnasts and faked all this. You know that Western technology can do wonders."
"It was photographed in Hanoi. And I was right next to the photographer. I saw it all with my own eyes."
"I am sorry, sir."
"No. Nothing to he sorry for. You are here because we don't know what this is. Nobody else who has seen these pictures can explain it. Ask any questions you wish."
"I can only speak for myself, but I have never killed anyone. I am an athletic coach, a gymnast. I recognize other leaders of our socialist sports world here. Running coaches. Weight-lifting coaches. Swimming coaches. What are we doing here? Why us? is the question I now ask."
"Because no one else has figured out what we are looking at. It is not tai kwan do, or judo, or ninja, or karate, or any of the hand-fighting techniques we are familiar with. We don't know. You know the human body. Tell us what you see."
"I see what I have never seen before."
"Look again." The picture began to roll once more and the long man took the knife wielder and, grabbing a wrist, used him like a whip, the feet being the snapping points. It could have been a ballet, the man moved with such grace, if the deaths were not so stunningly real and final.
Once the coaches knew that they were not responsible for understanding the moves, they could see small things they recognized.
"Look at the balance," said the gymnastics coach. "Beautiful. You can teach that and teach that and maybe one in a thousand learns it. But never like that."
"The concentration," noted the weight-lifting coach. "Timing," said the instructor who had broken the West's dominance of the pole vault.
Someone asked if it were a machine. The answer was no. Machines had that kind of force, but never the calculating ability to make judgments.
"He looks as though he is hardly moving. Beautiful. Beautiful." This from a skating coach. "You know that he has got the magnificent ability to know where everything is at all times."
Now the mood had been reversed. Admiration replaced horror. Some of the coaches had to restrain themselves from applauding.
Then one of them noticed something peculiar. "Look at the mouth."
"Right. Look at the mouth."
"It's puckered."
"It might be the breathing. There might be some special method of breathing that unlocks this all."
"Do the sound. Can you get a high resolution for the sound?"
"We already have," said the man beside the projection machine, and turned on the lights. He was the KGB general with the smooth face and rosebuds lips. The new general's pips glistened on his shoulders.
"Gentlemen," said General Ivan Ivanovich, sporting a new medal for combat. "The puckered lips were whistling. The tune was created by Walt Disney, an American cartoon company. It was for their cartoon picture Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The tune was a happy little melody called 'Whistle While You Work.' "
There was a deathly silence in the room as every man was reminded that they had been watching someone so very casually kill fifteen men. But one of the coaches was not deterred by the carnage. He asked for a copy of the film to use as a teaching instrument for his athletes. He did not even get an answer from the general. Another coach provided it.
"There is no one in the world we know of who could learn what we saw today."
Even better than swearing the coaches to secrecy, something that relied on their characters, young General Ivanovich had them shipped to a lush countryside dacha to wait for a few days or weeks or months, but hopefully not years. In brief, he imprisoned them.
Then he faced Zemyatin. The old man lived alone in a little Moscow apartment one could not tell was for the privileged. He had become almost friendly with the young bureaucrat who had tasted his first experience of combat. And if the young bureaucrat could forget his fear, he was even growing to like the Great One, who would just as soon have a high officer shot as light a cigarette.
When he returned from Hanoi with a tale of how the blood faces, the best killers Russia had been saving, were slaughtered like sheep, Ivanovich had been given those general's pips he had longed for. He had been told that his mission was a success, and for the first time he realized the freedom this old man offered. He was not looking to blame people. He was not looking to claim credit or escape disaster. He was looking to protect Russia.
And Ivanovich had done just that. The mission was twofold. And entirely different from the disaster in London. In London they had merely lost men. But here, they had learned something, according to the dictum of the old field marshal. You assumed the enemy was perfect until he showed you otherwise.
If the blood faces had eliminated the American agent, all well and good. But if they failed, then Ivanovich's mission with the film and the recorders was to let the man show them how they might kill him.
But even with the field marshal's praises for Ivanovich, the young general felt a bit apprehensive as he rang the doorbell. They had not yet, despite all the films and analysis, found the man's weakness.
A man roughly Zemyatin's age answered the door. He had a big pistol stuck in his floppy trousers. He had not shaved, and smelled of old vodka.
"He's having supper," said the man. Despite his age, General Ivanovich was sure that the pistol would be used more accurately and more often than any glistening automatic in a shined holster on the belt of a smart young officer.
"Who is it?" came the voice from inside.
"The boychik with the cutesy lips."
"Tell General Ivanovich to come in."