Former CIA Agent Boris Korczak current affairs blog

Freeze! From the unpublished book – The Dark Side of the Sun
by: Boris S.Korczak

Militiaman Kurotchkin was sitting on a boulder, looking at his hand and could not believe his eyes.

The skin on his right hand, where he touched one of the bodies, was frostbitten and peeling off.

It hurt badly.

It felt like as if he put it in a bowl of boiling water, only it was not hot it was terribly cold.
All he had done was touched the girl’s hand.
No, he did not try to take her watch, – he thought, just in case someone might get the idea.
Sure, it was a nice Zorki watch, but he, Kurotchkin, would never ever steal from the dead.
He simply tried to see if she is dead just like all the other youngsters in the tent.
She was dead, very dead indeed, and frozen stiff just like a piece of dry ice.

Kurotchkin lit the cigarette with his left hand and spat.
Kakoy chort ? – What a hell?
From behind, he heard the tractor climbing up the stony path pulling a two-wheel platform with some hay on it.
He could hear the bop…bop…bop of its engine and thought for a second that the muffler should be changed.
He watched as the tractor drove around the tent with the bodies and stopped when it made a perfect circle.
The loaders using burlap pieces to cover their hands started loading the bodies on a cart. There were nine bodies total.
The bodies were stiff and covered with frost that made them look ridiculous in the hot summer sun.

Their young faces and bodies were covered with a fine frost mesh, and looked almost unreal.
When the last body was put on the cart, the driver crossed himself in spite of the presence of the militiaman and started the tractor.
Kurotchkin got off his boulder and joined the others in Gaz terrain vehicle.

All his comrades heard the sonic boom the previous night and had seen the eerie light in the night sky, that lasted for a few seconds but they did not dare to say a word to each other.

I am not stupid to talk about it either – thought Kurotchkin and put his frostbitten hand gently on his lap.
The small Soviet made Gaz bounced on the potholes and the grimace on Kurotchkin’ s face was showing that he suffered.
Watch it, you son of a bitch- he barked at the driver.
Go and fuck yourself. – murmured the driver in turn.
What did you say?—Kurotchkin said in his official tone of voice.
Nothing, Comrade Kurotchkin, just nothing.

The jeep slowed down and drove down the hill avoiding larger potholes.
They all knew that something unusual had happened and they did not dare to associate the incident with the military outpost a few vyorsts behind the mountain ridge.
They drove in silence all the way down to the village.
One could take them for dead as well, if not for the driver turning his wheel and Kurotchkin nursing his frostbitten hand.
Once they were down the mountain, the Gaz passed the tractor and drove to Kulturnyi Dom .

There was a little crowd of children, some old women and a few starichki, (old men), around the huge transport helicopter, MI-8 HIP that brought also some troops and medics, who began examining the bodies.
The soldiers loaded quickly the dead bodies onto a chopper, and the helicopter took off.
Its large five-blade rotor created a dust storm that kept hanging above the houses before settling down.
A bunch of soldiers stayed behind and sealed off the area where Odzhorkidze found the dead students.
An hour later, in Chelyabinsk military airport, the bodies were put on big Tupolev plane, and flown to Moscow.

People in the village were shaking their heads, not being able to understand what had happened to nine young students, who arrived a few days ago.
They were from different Universities; some from Leningrad, some from Moscow and some from Kiev.
The same day they went to the mountains and made a camp.
Three of them came the next day to buy some bread and milk and now all were all dead, frozen right in the middle of summer.
Militiaman Kurotchkin gathered the villagers and said in his official voice, – I do not want you comrades to talk or even think about it,
Prosto nye lzya , – simply do not.

He did not have to repeat it twice. They knew that they must not, if the authority said so.
Next morning a military GAZ came with two plain clothed men and asked for Odzhorkidze. They put him in a car and drove away, but first collected a few dead foxes and squirrels and put them in a sack.
Odzhorkidze, an old Georgian who found the bodies, never came back to the village again.
A week later Kurotchkin and two of his deputies left the village under escort and went to Chelyabinsk never to come back again.
New militiamen were brought in.
A week later the tractor driver, who transported the bodies got drunk and fell over the cliff together with his tractor and died on the spot.

Some women collecting dead wood branches found him in the early morning hours with a broken neck, next to his overturned tractor.
Somebody claimed later that there was a bullet hole in his forehead. What nonsense, why would anybody shoot the tractorist?
After that, the life in the little village returned to normal and no other tragic events happened.
The soldiers left after burning all the grass around the former student camp with flamethrowers.

The students’ bodies arrived in Moscow six hours later. A truck marked appropriately, Myaso transported the bodies to the institute for forensic studies. The corps temperature was still below freezing mark in spite of the fact that the plane that carried them did not have any refrigeration capability.
Later they were incinerated together with their clothing, jewelry and documents.

At the old Khodinsk military airport, a few miles from Moscow, behind thirty-foot walls, on the second floor of an inconspicuous looking building.
They started the meeting at six in the morning and proceeded through the late evening.

There were a couple of men from Cosmic Intelligence Directorate responsible for work at GRU’s own research stations and labs.
They were arriving to the gates of Khodinsk building next to the airport, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible. Only sixty of them were summoned and all sixty came.
They were asked to take their coats off and were thoroughly searched by the guards.
They all knew one thing. Something unusual had happened and Piotr Ivanovich Ivashutin is going to address the issues.
They sat there in the meeting hall not knowing what to expect.
Colonel General Piotr Ivashutin came in took his place and tapped the microphone with his finger. The speakers gave a whining sound so the microphones worked.

Ivashutin cleared his throat and started:
Comrades; for some time our scientists were working to design a device that could dramatically change the balance of power.
Allow me to elaborate on a new weapon that we gave a name ZARYA.
This device will secure our domination of the world and make the attack of Americans against us obsolete.
The lecture was long and boring to the audience; an hour later he finished, came to Zarubin and poked him in the chest.
I want to talk to you in private.

They both walked along the corridor and disappeared behind the padded door at the end. The red light above the door came on and it stayed on for many hours.
No one beside them knew what was discussed, and only a few guards that watched the building overheard some of the sentences through an open window.
It was the voice of Ivashutin who said – We got the weapon that works, and you comrade will make sure it works well. We will get the Yanks off the sky.
Zarubin closed his brief case and drove home in his Moskvich to pack his suitcase.
It was his time to go.