What to do about Katrina, Ep. I, Act I, sc. 23
The Suvorov Gambit
If you’ve just joined us, you are very welcome! But do you want to be a little postmodern and jump right in from this point, despite the old spectre of spoilers? You can if you wish, of course. Instead, if you want to start at the beginning (I am told it’s a very good place to start), then here’s my intro, and here is the very first instalment.
Previously on Katrina, day two of Katrina’s unhappy sojourn in this world began, with her still here. She was escorted back to the Embassy where she succeeded in annoying Tom. Tom then went to see Peter and got annoyed by him too. In the meantime, Katrina continued her metadata provocations by looking up a little revisionist history. Parallel worlds, remember…
In this instalment, in which matters will take a turn for the darker, Tom is going to confront her about her search history. Except he’s going to get a little more than he bargained for…
Katrina was reading about a Soviet defector calling himself Viktor Suvorov when Tom strode through the door. She looked up nonchalantly at him, calmly replaced the phone on the table then crossed her legs and leaned back.
“I wasn’t expecting to see you back so soon,” she said. “I’m sorry if I upset you.”
Tom ignored her remark. “Who were you looking up last night? The New Statesman and Girton?”
Katrina sighed and looked up at him seriously. And sadly, too, he noticed. She took another resigned breath. “Anna,” she said.
Tom looked questioningly at her. “You mean your wife, Anna?”
“Yes. She graduated from Girton in 1984 and then worked for the Statesman. It’s how we met.”
“So why didn’t you just look up her name?”
“Like with all the other people I looked up on the phone, you mean?” She didn’t say it accusingly.
“I’m not surprised you knew we were monitoring it. You told us as much.”
“Sure. And like I said, I really don’t mind. I have nothing to hide.”
“Except her?”
Katrina sighed again. “I didn’t look her up directly by name,” she said softly, “because I was scared of finding her.”
“What do you mean?”
“Because I would hate to think of her all alone in this world, that’s why. Having to live a life in your dystopia without me.”
“How do you know she doesn’t? You didn’t look her up.”
“If she was here, she’d have a similar life. Strong personalities are like that, whatever universe they’re in.”
“What if she has a different name? Different parents, different upbringing, and so on?”
“It’s possible, I suppose, but I don’t believe the Goddess would subject her to that fate. She doesn’t deserve it.”
Tom took an audible breath. “Ok. Tell you what, why don’t you look her up now?” He motioned to the phone on the table.
Katrina shook her head. “I’m not going to do that. I don’t want to know.” She crossed her arms as if to emphasise the point.
Tom held Katrina’s gaze for a few moments, then he suddenly picked up the phone. “Then I’ll do it.”
She didn’t try to stop him. She just watched his expression about to change. She denied him her inner smile.
Tom’s eyes visibly widened when he looked at the phone. He turned his gaze back to her. “Who is Viktor Suvorov?” It was more of an authoritative demand, than a question.
“Well,” Katrina said, unemotionally, “that answers my question.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’ve never heard of him, I take it?”
“Should I have?”
“If you had a decent education system, yes. I presume you studied World War Two in history class at school?”
“Of course I did.”
“But you’ve never heard of Viktor Suvorov? How about James Bacque? He wrote a book called Other Losses.”
He didn’t answer with words.
She knew already. Her eyes, looking up at him, beautiful and big and brown, like marbles, they were innocent. But old at the same time. Was that the point when he accepted, and had faith?
When he thought about it later, he could never tell. I don’t think he wanted to tell, in the end.
“Neither of them, then?” she smiled faintly up at him.
“Maybe you need to explain that?”
“Viktor Suvorov, which is a pseudonym, by the way. His real name is Vladimir Bogdanovich Rezun. GRU defector to the United Kingdom, 1978. I wouldn’t bother looking up your Willypedia entry, though. It leaves out the most important bit. Which is extremely telling, actually.”
“So why are you looking up a Soviet defector? You can understand that looks suspicious?”
“Of course. I thought you’d think so. Whether this was your idea or your superior’s, please let him know I think it was a mistake. In Game Theory terms you’ve just told me what level of suspicion you have of me, and what those suspicions are. Namely, that I’m some convoluted Russian plant, right?”
“I’m not answering that question.”
“Fine. In that case, tell me about Operation Barbarossa.”
Tom gave a short, somewhat incredulous laugh at the seeming non-sequitur.
“Humour me, Tom.”
“Hitler’s invasion of Russia. June 1941.”
“And?”
“And what?”
“Why did he order Operation Barbarossa?”
“Because he was an insane megalomaniac, by any chance?”
“That’s what they teach you in history class in this world, is it? Or was that just your particular posh boy school?”
“Is this another one of your conspiracy theories? Or are you just trying to wind me up?”
“Neither. Honestly. But if you’ve never heard of Viktor Suvorov, then this proves to me, beyond reasonable doubt, that you live in a post-truth dystopia, in which, if your Willypedia is anything to go by, probably all of your orthodox historians are responsible for maintaining.”
“Why don’t you stop talking in riddles and just explain what you mean?”
“The important bit which your online encyclopaedia of official narratives censored out was the real reason why Viktor, or Vladimir, to use his real name, defected to the West.”
“Which was?”
Katrina took a breath before telling him. “He had been granted access to classified files dating from Stalin’s time for a research project he was doing. What he found horrified him. Definitive proof that Stalin had amassed the largest attack force ever known and lined it up on Europe’s borders ready for a devastating invasion. In other words, everything he had been taught about the so-called Great Patriotic War was a lie. In intelligence services terms, that’s the kind of thing that makes a person turn, wouldn’t you say?”
Tom didn’t know what to say to that. Katrina half expected that. He just watched her as she continued. “I’m not trying to turn you, by the way,” she said, “genuinely. Although you won’t forget the fact that your country’s propaganda was also a lie. Once you’ve learned these truths, you can’t unlearn them. Hitler wasn’t an imperialist megalomaniac. Operation Barbarossa was a pre-emptive strike.”
“That doesn’t stop Hitler being Hitler.”
“I suppose you could argue that if you like, sure. But not with Barbarossa. I mean you have to resist revising your entire cultural identity don’t you, inseparable from history as it is?”
Tom sensed that Katrina had suddenly become terribly sad again, and as old as she said she was. She spoke slowly and solemnly. “It would’ve been a pincer movement,” she continued, “Stalin’s invasion. Viktor wrote a number of books all about it, based on the files he saw. The Chief Culprit is the one you should read. Tellingly it only gets a passing mention in the ‘pedia entry.”
Katrina was studying Tom’s microexpressions as she told all this truth to him. He just watched her as she spoke. He resisted. There was something about her that made him feel uncomfortable. It was, maybe, a mixture of enticing and repulsive. He didn’t want to listen, but couldn’t not listen. She was mesmerising.
And dangerous.
“The southern pincer cutting off the oil from the Black Sea,” she glared up at him as if she was forty-eight years’ old and infinitely wiser than he, “the northern raping its way through every town and village it encountered. Every field and every beach and every landing ground. Neither Germany nor anyone else would’ve stood a chance. Britain may have fought bravely, sure, but in the face of Stalin’s millions of cannon fodder swarming up the beaches of East Anglia the outcome would’ve been inevitable. You’d all be speaking Marx by now. America too most likely once Stalin got the bomb from all that German technology. That sounds like a Hell world to me. Your Purgatory is probably tame by comparison. My grandfather fought on the Eastern front, maybe I didn’t tell you that?”
Tom wanted to bow his head, but he tried not to. He tried not to think of his own grandparents. And what they did before the war. Shame is the most powerful emotion, he suddenly realised.
But then he forgot that epiphany. It wasn’t psychologically tolerable, after all.
“Along with millions of others,” she didn’t relent, she didn’t give respite, “from over a hundred other countries, fought with all their heart to protect their families and their homelands, to defend the whole of Europe from that hell. With their own lives if necessary. They were the good guys in that story. That’s how my world sees it, anyhow. Because it’s the truth. And that’s why the Russians in this world would never let me be their spy. And, if you’ve never heard of Viktor Suvorov, it’s how I know you live in a post-truth dystopia.”
Tom sighed. Psychological intolerability got the better of him. She noticed. Katrina shrugged. “You believe whatever makes you feel safe, Tom. Anna’s surname is Marten. Like the Doctor. Go and look it up in your database if you like. Just don’t tell me what you find. May I have my phone back now, please?”
The sadness in the look she gave him, like some kind of imploring feline caught out in a storm, would’ve melted his heart if he’d stayed there any longer. He passed the phone back to her, gently, and silently.
Then left the room, without saying another word.
Katrina watched him leave. And hoped no one else she knew in her world lived here anymore…
For the next instalment, in which Audrey is about to meet Katrina for the first time, click there…