The most ridiculous affairs usually begin in the most tedious of places.
Basements, for instance, or smoky beer halls.
High-ranking officials, however, rarely possess an affinity for the underground.
There is no sunlight, no windows, the air is perennially damp, and above all, there persists a prejudice that prolonged stays in subterranean environments turn a man's countenance toward the sinister.
That prejudice is, by and large, an objective reality.
Confine anyone to a bunker or a basement office for a few days—forcing them to grapple with endless dossiers, tangled wiring, and malfunctioning teleprinters—and their expression will inevitably sour. While the citizens on the surface consume flowers, bread, and newspapers, the denizens of the deep survive on coffee, cheap tobacco, and profanity.
The joint situation room in the basement of the International Communist Party headquarters was the embodiment of this misery.
The walls were plastered with a chaotic mosaic: circuit diagrams connecting Victoria and Ursus, frequency tables, relay station layouts, power grid maps, and charts detailing the acronyms of so many departments that one would struggle to remember who belonged where.
Bundles of electrical cables slithered across the floor like vipers. On the desks lay cold coffee dregs, overturned ashtrays, and half-empty packets of dry rations.
Someone exhaled a heavy sigh.
A string of curses followed.
And as if mocking the collective exhaustion, a recorder in the center of the table repeated the same sound, over and over.
— "Tap-tap-tap-tap—"
A brief pause, then again.
— "Tap-tap-tap-tap—"
I listened to the noise, my chin resting in my hand.
Though we dressed it up in grandiloquent terms like 'enemy sabotage,' 'national conspiracy,' or 'clandestine military operation,' the reality was that everyone in this cellar was being driven to the brink of insanity by a stupid noise that could have been a woodpecker or a typewriter.
The recorder pulsed again.
— "Tap-tap-tap-tap—"
This time it was clearer. It sounded like someone rhythmically striking metal, or perhaps the gargantuan cogs of some distant, colossal machine finally meshing together.
I drummed my fingers on the table.
"Fine. Let's re-summarize."
Every eye in the room turned toward me.
"We suspect that a massive transmitter—or something of that nature—is consistently beaming high-power radio waves in a specific direction, effectively paralyzing long-range communication with the Ursus Republic. Correct?"
"Yes," Ernst replied.
"And we believe this isn't a mere technical failure, but deliberate use."
"Precisely."
"Now, I'm curious. What happens if we follow the official channels?"
Denis nearly choked on a suppressed laugh. Neurath sighed audibly. Abdul grimaced and leaned toward me.
"Comrade Chairman, you're joking, aren't you?"
"Regrettably, no. I'm asking for the sake of clarity."
Neurath spoke as if he had been waiting for the prompt. "If we file a formal request for cooperation with the National Communication Security Bureau, the paperwork must first pass through the Victoria Branch. Then the main headquarters, then the inter-departmental liaison office, then the Emergency Response Sub-committee, and finally, it must survive the review of the Joint Audit Board."
"The timeline?"
"Three days at the absolute fastest. Usually a week."
"And the probability of a leak before then?"
Neurath looked at me with chilling composure. "Nigh one hundred percent."
Abdul raised a hand. "The military is even faster. The moment that request hits the desk, every pub toilet in the city will know the details by sunset."
"What about the OGPU?"
Silence swallowed the room at my question.
It was a heavy, suffocating silence—the kind where everyone gauges who has the courage to speak first.
Finally, Abdul cleared his throat. "There... they'd be the last to get caught. Probably."
"Isn't that a good thing?"
"The trade-off is that once they are caught, you'll be shot in the back of the head before you even know who sold you out," Denis muttered.
Neurath added indifferently, "We might actually be safer in the heart of an enemy capital."
"At least with an enemy," I nodded, "you know who is trying to kill you."
Official procedures were dead. All that remained was one option: a path that wasn't exactly 'hidden,' but simply 'unseen' by those looking for standard subversion.
I rose slowly from my chair.
"Then we discard the procedures."
I placed my hand over the circuit map spread across the table. "From this moment on, only the essential personnel remain. The rest of you, return to your stations. Not a word of this leaves this room."
Though some looked anxious, no one protested. They filtered out one by one. The door clicked shut, and the situation room grew marginally quieter.
Though the rhythmic woodpecker sound from the recorder remained as insistent as ever.
Only myself, Abdul, Denis, Neurath, and Ernst were left.
"We need to gain access to that facility," I told them. "We cannot go as an official investigation team. We cannot go in the name of the International Communist Party. We cannot involve the military, and we cannot use the official Security Bureau routes. Under those constraints, what is left for a cover story?"
Ernst was the first to speak. "An itinerant propaganda troupe."
I stared at him for a long moment. "Are you truly serious?"
"Cultural agitation is vital during wartime. If we claim we're performing comfort shows for local facilities or reciting revolutionary poetry—"
Abdul chimed in, excitement already coloring his voice. "Oh, I can do that! I can sing, dance, act as an MC, play basic instruments—"
"Be quiet." I raised a palm to silence him.
Neurath spoke with a grave expression. "Does this mean the Comrade Chairman must wear jester's makeup?"
"If the Revolution requires me to play the jester, then so be it," I replied. "To be honest, I think I have a jovial enough face to be convincing."
A silence fell over the room. It was a distinctly unpleasant silence.
Abdul cleared his throat softly. "Well... let's not go that far."
"Why? Do you not find me entertaining?"
"That's not exactly the point..."
Ernst tapped the paper with his pen. "An art troupe won't work. The security clearance granted to such groups is too superficial."
Abdul exhaled a long breath of relief. What was it? Why did he look like he had just dodged a bullet? It was unsettling, but I decided to ignore it.
"Fine. Next idea."
Denis suggested cautiously, "How about an Emergency Repair Squad from the Power Bureau?"
Neurath's eyebrows twitched. "That ties into the reports of frequent power outages."
Ernst nodded. "The technical pretext is solid. A high-output transmitter would explain the massive fluctuations in the local grid."
Abdul pursed his lips. "The problem is the technical questioning. Won't we be exposed the moment they ask for specifics?"
Denis bristled. "I am a legitimate technician!"
"That's precisely the problem," I said. "You're the kind of man who explains ten things when someone asks one. Do you really want to be giving an engineering lecture in the middle of a covert op?"
"But accurate explanations are crucial!"
"In an infiltration, an 'inaccurate' face is more important."
Neurath offered a second option. "What about an Inspection Team from the Security Bureau? Entering under the guise of investigating the cause of the wireless interference."
Ernst immediately countered. "The internal codes and protocols would have to be flawless."
"The paperwork, I can handle," Neurath said coldly.
"The issue," I murmured, "is the face."
Abdul nodded vigorously. "Indeed. Communications bureaucrats dispatched from the Central Committee generally have much more punchable faces."
"What kind of metric is that?"
"An empirical one."
"And?"
Abdul looked at me with utter sincerity. "Comrade Chairman, you are exceptionally well-suited for that role."
This time, Neurath, Denis, and even Ernst nodded in unison.
I was briefly at a loss for words.
"It's the face that local site managers hate the most," Abdul explained. "Not quite high-ranking enough to be untouchable, but high enough to be an annoying meddler—the type of man who can make three people cry with a single memo."
"...Is that something you say to my face?"
"But is it not the truth? The Soviet Constitution the Comrade Chairman drafted guarantees the freedom of speech."
He wasn't wrong.
Eventually, after churning through several variations, we settled on a hybrid approach.
A Power Bureau maintenance crew on a blackout recovery mission. A wireless technician along for the ride to check for frequency anomalies. A field supervisor and special auditor sent from the Central Headquarters to oversee the process. And finally, a local administrative liaison and a driver.
"Perfect," I summarized. "The exact combination that local personnel would despise."
Neurath nodded. "Which makes it all the more natural."
Abdul smirked. "An infiltration where you're welcomed isn't an infiltration at all."
"That's a diplomatic reception," I added, prompting a few dry chuckles.
The division of labor was finalized quickly. I took the role of the special auditor. If the rank was too high, the facility director would never leave my side; too low, and I'd be ignored. I settled for a rank that was ambiguously high and incredibly tiresome. Precisely the position to make people want to stay away from me.
Abdul was the driver and field support for the Power Bureau. It wasn't even a disguise; it was practically his calling. Denis was a technical secretary for the Security Bureau's Victoria Branch—essentially his actual job. Neurath was the administrative secretary, handling the dossiers, permits, seals, and the bureaucratic nightmare of shifting liability.
Ernst, after expressing reservations, opted for back-end support. His face alone would have incited suspicion in a field environment.
The documentation process was even more farcical. Neurath hauled a typewriter, files, seals, carbon paper, and stacks of blank forms onto the desk. He looked almost gleeful.
Click. Clack. Tap.
I flipped through a few pages and asked, "Isn't this all forgery?"
Neurath paused and looked up, visibly offended. "It isn't forgery. It is 'administrative reconstruction.'"
"And what is the difference?"
"Forgery is creating something that shouldn't exist. Administrative reconstruction is preparing something that should exist but hasn't been written down yet."
Abdul marveled at the phrase. "Remarkable. It sounds so legal I'm almost convinced. Should we run it by the Supreme Soviet?"
Neurath continued without skipping a beat. "Reality's bureaucracy functions much the same way anyway. Let's move on."
The pile of papers grew: business travel orders, facility inspection requests, memos for inter-departmental cooperation on electrical anomalies, reasons for the technical wireless liaison, liaison notification forms, entry permits, and a sub-clause regarding field discretion in emergency situations. It was dizzying.
"The seals?" I asked.
Neurath opened a drawer containing several stamps. "Are they real?" Abdul asked.
Neurath replied serenely, "Half of them are real, and the other half are even more real than the originals."
I decided not to ask any further questions.
As the sun threatened to rise, I pulled the mood back to seriousness. "Do not forget our objective."
Three sets of eyes focused on me. "We are not just looking for a big transmitter. One: does the facility actually exist? Two: is it currently operational? Three: where is it drawing that level of power from? Four: who is guarding it? Five: who knows it's there but is pretending it doesn't exist?"
"We're looking at the people, not the machine," Abdul whispered.
"Exactly."
We changed our clothes. Bureau overalls, worn coats, field gloves, grimy toolboxes, leather briefcases, and signal testing equipment were distributed. Neurath already looked like a suffocating provincial clerk simply by holding a folder, and the moment Abdul put on his helmet, he looked like a driver with thirty years on the job.
The issue was me. Abdul scanned me up and down. "Comrade Chairman, please do not be angry."
"What?"
"You look like a man who was demoted from the capital."
I immediately frowned. Abdul tilted his head and added, "Ah, I don't mean you look unpleasant. I mean you look like a man with very high self-esteem."
Even Neurath's lip twitched. I adjusted my spectacles and grumbled, "I suppose I should be thankful that being punchable is a talent."
"It's perfect for the auditor role," Neurath said with utter sincerity. Which made me even more annoyed.
By dawn, everything was ready. The previously frantic basement grew still. Waiting in the headquarters' garage was a gray inspection van disguised as a Power Bureau vehicle. It looked utterly diligent and mind-numbingly boring—the perfect state-service vessel.
Abdul took the driver's seat. He checked his mirrors out of habit even before starting the ignition. The van slipped out of the party HQ into the slumbering city.
The nomadic city was half-awake. In the ambiguous hour between night and dawn, traffic and crime patrols were more frequent. The roads were shared by night-shift vans, early-morning delivery trucks, and suspicious government sedans.
Abdul spoke without taking his eyes off the road. "See that black sedan ahead of us?"
I looked. It was a well-maintained, sleek car.
"License plate ends in 17-3. Central People's Committee. It's a new model, but the maintenance is poor. That car actually does work."
"You can tell all that from a plate?"
"License plate, model, window tint, how much mud is on the front wheels, the length of the antenna, even the driver's posture. It all paints a picture."
"That's a lot for a 'picture.'"
Abdul shrugged. "Cars are more honest than human faces."
He gestured with his chin toward another vehicle. "Those two white Trabants are the Military Political Bureau."
"How so?"
"Civilian plates, but the suspension is bottomed out. There aren't two people in there—there are four or more. Plus, the windows are far too clean."
"You notice the strangest things."
"I have to if I want to keep eating."
A few moments later, a gray wagon passed. "That's STAVKA."
"License plates again?"
"No. That one I know because the driving is reckless. Cars carrying army officers always take corners like they're trying to tear the road apart. And they brake late. They think they command the pavement too."
Denis chuckled from the back. "What about that blue van over there?"
Abdul took a quick glance. "Actual civilian."
"How?"
"Look at how he's hesitating at this hour. He's clearly lost. Given the swaying, he might be driving drunk." Sure enough, the van wavered three times at the intersection before making a turn.
I watched the scenery blur by. "A wonderful nation. We can guess a man's employer just by his exhaust fumes."
Abdul let out a short laugh. "The Union is a generous place. Everyone has the freedom to speak, but everyone also enjoys the equal opportunity to be watched."
I didn't bother responding. The van cleared the city limits, leaving the nomadic platform and heading into the outskirts. Buildings shrank; the road widened. Morning mist crawled low over the asphalt, and transmission towers stood like sentinels in the distance.
We were heading toward Yellow Lake. A name I had only seen on maps was finally becoming a landscape.
At first, I thought it was a forest. Tall, dark lines reached up through the fog. Then I thought it was factory chimneys. In the dim dawn light, they were so massive they seemed like natural features of the earth.
But as the van rounded a hill, the silhouettes were neither forest nor chimneys.
It was a skeletal structure of steel, scraping the sky. It was so colossal that it defied initial comprehension. When the black lattice-work finally emerged from the shroud of fog, the inside of the van became unnervingly quiet.
Abdul whistled softly. Denis seemed to have forgotten how to breathe.
I remained silent for several seconds. No one could look at this and call it a 'normal' facility. To erect something of this scale while everyone pretended not to see it—the problem wasn't the machine. The problem was the state itself.
And I realized we had finally reached the edge of a very deep abyss.
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