“It is pretty unbelievable in reality so that maybe not as hard as you think. At this point we do not want to even get them thinking down the same path as the real solution. Possibly something like the enigma machine or some rudimentary computation device to throw them once again off the obvious path that they have ignored could be used. We will give them so many clues that they will not know which ones are pertinent.
Sergo is so concerned that they will discover the truth yet he will not tell anyone how to defeat the system he is using. He claims it is very simple but no one else seems to know what he
is thinking and how to effectively counter it. We do have to plan on there being someone in what remains of the capitalist world who can think like Sergo. It would be foolish for us to think otherwise.
So far it has been a common fault of the Amerikosi who seem to think that they have invented everything and no one else can match their accomplishments. It is to our advantage to keep them thinking this way.”
“Da, you are correct Konstantin. We must keep using the power of maskirovka for a few more months until we are totally caught up to the Amerikosi and Limeys. Their sense of superiority is a great advantage to us because it blinds them to the real possibilities of a communist system. It is to our advantage to keep them thinking we are the blunt, dumb instrument of Stalin who only know the hammer and sickle and couldn’t possibly equal them in the sciences. The longer they believe that trope, the longer the time we have to defeat them.
“When we finally are “allowed” to use the system for its original purpose, we will not have to worry about the NATO boats anymore. There is no reason that the system cannot be placed on the German V2 rocket as well. At a distance of 320 km it will far out range those guns that have kept us from the coasts. They will no longer be able to supply islands like Britain or bring their tanks from across the seas. What good will their factories be if they cannot land machines or provide the fuel to run them. If we stop their navies we will stop them from invading the motherland and our new jets will meet them in the skies. We just needed the time to breath after our destruction of the Nazi pigs. We are now ready to once again defend ourselves.
First we have to push the Amerikosi farther away from our oil fields, further away from our homes, further away from our families. Maybe then they will leave us alone. We need to conquer the Turk and then drive them out of the Mediterranean. We need to close both ends of that sea. We need to destroy the Suez Canal and take Gibraltar from the British but first we need to take the airfields from the Turks and expand the perimeter. Then our planes must keep us safe while we rebuild once again.“
The Fisherman was out on the lake as always catching the species of trout that only lived in this body of water. The waves were only a couple of inches without any white caps and the sun was shining bright and clear, which was unusual for this time of year. It was about 20 degrees Celsius and just a beautiful fall day to be out fishing. The Fisherman appreciated the weather but he would have been out all day anyway. He was floating on a pristine lake in Armenia, Lake Sevan to be exact, and today he was being disturbed.
Frequently now the capitalist bombers passed over a couple of times a week but they were so high and there was nothing to bomb here, that it was only the noise they made that was out of the ordinary. He had gotten used to them as had the fish he was certain.
He was floating just a mile off the coast from the old monastery when he heard the first of what was to be hundreds of trucks. The monastery had been closed for many decades but the buildings were still upright and strong. The ghosts of the warrior monks who defended the land for centuries keep most away.
These trucks were of a newer model and different make than the few he has seen in his life and they were full of soldiers; soldiers of the Red Army who looked to be on their way to a major battle and not just an excursion into the hinterlands of the USSR. This would be an unusual invasion route into the Turkish lands he mused. I guess if you want to catch an enemy unaware you do the unusual. Yet here they were and he was sure that they would try and catch his fish.
Lake Sevan was 78 km long and 58 wide and he had rowed every inch of it. He had heard that it was 95 meters deep as well placing it as one of the largest lakes in the world and it was located 1900 meters high surrounded by mountains. All in all it was one of the most beautiful places on earth but the Fisherman knew no other so to him it was just home. He fished to live and lived to fish, selling his catch to another who came to him in a powerboat and bought what he could not eat. Most of the time he was paid in kind and that is what he preferred. Salt, thread, cloth, line, hooks, all things he needed to survive and to keep his boat afloat and his small sail patched. He was being taken advantage of by the men in the power boat but he did not care of even knew this was the case.
He probably did not even own the land his shack was on but no one knew who did so by default he did. If you found an empty piece of land, you lived there and it was then it was yours until you died and someone else came along. Men like him did not have families. He did come from a family he recalled but was on his own since the age of 10. A fire or pillaging band of bandits had taken his family as far as he could remember which was not much about that time. A modern clinical diagnosis would be “repressed memory” and be concerned. He just never thought about it and lived to fish instead.
What was happening on shore became annoying as well as alarming. The trucks were disgorging hundreds of soldiers near the Monastery. I suppose it was a natural draw for someone not from the area. That was the annoying part. The alarming part was that other trucks were headed for his hut. Most of what he owned was in the boat with him including all he needed to survive but he remembered he left his good knife, extra fishing line, his winter store of fish and the painting in there. It would set him back a full moons worth of extra fish to replace them by trading with the men in the powerboat and who knew when he would be able to catch enough to replace his winter stores.
The book was where he found it wrapped in cloth and wedged very safely between two boulders. No one would find it and if they did it was not very appealing. That’s partially why he just kept it hidden. He could not read and the few illustrations were of the “Ascending Jesus” and were not very well done in his mind. He had seen a photograph once and was much impressed with that but not with this admittedly old book full of scribbles and squiggly lines and bad hand drawn pictures that didn’t even look as real as the photograph he had seen when the men in the powerboat had shown it to him.
He hated to fish on the ice. He has seen too many fall in when you were too hungry in the spring to take precautions on the thin ice. He had seen too many mistakes made by relatively smart men.
He could only assume that the soldiers were on their way to fight the Turks. There was certainly nothing else to fight here. He did not know who he pitied more, the soldiers who were about to die in a foreign land or himself who would go hungry this winter. Luckily he knew of another hut that he could claim. It’s occupant had died the last moon. He had already staked a claim on it using the tried and true methods of the area but it was on the other side and farther away from his favorite fishing spot. He would have to spend twice the amount of energy getting there and back and during the winter the lake did not always freeze all the way over so he might have to go to his other less fertile fishing spots.
He began to curse the soldiers. Maybe if he killed a couple over the next few nights they would leave. No… they would try and hunt him down. They would not succeed but that would make him use up much needed supplies and who knows they just might get in a lucky shot and wound him. He was not afraid of dying but he was afraid of being shot and waiting to die while in pain.