The Link (38 page)

“What the researchers are seeing here,” Madame Bekhtereva explains, “is a bio-electrical exchange between cells. By painstakingly logging these interactions, we have been able to trace the intricate patterns of information received by the brain and directed to appropriate ‘command centers’ where it is either stored for future use or used immediately for decision-making or emotional response.

“In the last twenty years,” she says, “we have pinpointed and explored more than two thousand separate zones in the brain each of which serves a different purpose. We can, for example, trace a single word from the time it is picked up by the ear to where it triggers the proper response in the brain.”

“Can you do that now?” asks Teddie.

“If you wish,” she says. “You have a word?”

“Parapsychology,” says Teddie.

Peter throws a furious glance at him as does Cathy; Ludmilla winces. Madame Bekhtereva’s reaction is as advertised.

“Parapsychology is not a word we speak here,” she says icily. “Parapsychology is not a science, it is a guessing game. If so-called ESP is ever verified—which I doubt—it will be through advanced physiological means, not conjectural shots in the dark.”

“Damn it, Teddie, this has got to stop!” says Peter in an angry whisper. They are having a confrontational meeting in a corner of the hotel bar. “We are here as guests! What are you trying to do, get us thrown out of the country before we see what we came for?”

“How much do you have to see before the bulb goes on in your head?” snarls Teddie. “These people are trying to develop a power to dominate by psychic means! If I can describe a deserted Nike base in Florida, they can describe a working missile base in Wyoming! If I can alter the functioning of a magnetometer in a sealed vault, they can alter the functioning of a defense system device inside a mountain!”

“You honestly believe that’s what they have in mind?” demands Peter.

“When have governments invested in anything that was not motivated by a greed for domination?” Teddie says.

“Doesn’t that include our government too, Teddie?” Robert asks.

“I am not talking about our government,” Teddie retorts. “I am talking about the government of the country we are in.”

He makes a scornful noise, seeing their expressions. “Don’t believe it then,” he says. “The Devil is never happier than when people do not believe he exists.”

“Does Russia represent the Devil now?” asks Peter coldly.

Teddie about to answer in kind when his gaze shifts across the room. His instant smile is belied by the deadly coldness in his eyes. “Oh, well, see who’s here,” he says. “Our old friends Professor Vitroslava and his dear wife Lydia. What a
dazzling
coincidence.”

Robert and Cathy are in bed together. They have made love and she lies against him, her left arm across his chest, his arms around her.

They discuss Teddie’s behavior and Peter’s mounting anger with it. Peter knows that the Russians are keeping an eye on them, she says; he’s not naïve. But he recognizes and appreciates—as she does—that the Russians are also being very generous with their time and information. Whatever their motivation may or may not be (Teddie is convinced that he’s the reason they have been allowed in) they are, so far, seeing and learning things of “immense interest” to them. “Are we?” Robert asks. She looks taken back. “Of course we are.” “You are anyway.”

“What does that mean?” she asks quietly.

He shrugs. “Well, you believe that ESP is strictly physiological. Everything they say verifies that belief.”

“Does that mean it’s wrong?” she asks a little tightly. “It means that I’m not having my beliefs verified,” he says. “I didn’t know you
had
beliefs about psi,” she counters. “I thought that, with you, it was strictly ‘no opinion’.” “Not any more,” he answers. “All right, what is it you believe then?”

“It’s more what I don’t believe,” he says. “I don’t believe it’s all strictly physiological. I think there’s more involved. Something bigger.” She sighs. “I think that what we’re seeing is pretty damn big,” she says.

“I know,” he replies.

After a while, she starts to rub the back of her head. “What is it?” he asks.

“Nothing.” “Sweetheart, what?”

She tells him that she has a headache. Robert does not go into the ramifications of that; whether she got it in reaction to their difference of opinion. He touches the back of her head. “Here?” he asks.

She nods, wincing.

He starts to massage her head gently. At first, she tries to stop him. Then she lies quietly, a strange expression beginning on her face. He continues to rub her head with his fingers.

“Do you feel warmth?” he asks, curious.

“Yes,” she answers softly.

In a few minutes, she pushes up on an elbow and looks at him oddly. “It’s
gone,”
she says.

He starts to smile in pleasure, then his face goes blank and he closes his eyes with a sound of pain.

“What is it?” she asks anxiously.

He manages a smile. “What a healer I am,” she says. “I’ve got the headache now.”

“Oh, sweetheart.” She holds him against her breasts. “I’m so sorry.”

She strokes his hair. “So many different powers are coming to you,” she says. “What are they all leading up to?”

“Good question,” Robert murmurs. “Got an opinion?” he hisses. “Better still, got an aspirin?”

“We’ve have had a stroke of good fortune,” Ludmilla tells them as she joins them in the hotel dining room the following morning.

“We could use one,” Teddie mutters, in a state of dark depression.

“Tofik Dadashev is performing in Leningrad tonight,” Ludmilla says. “And we are also going to meet him this morning at a local police station for a demonstration.”

When they exit the hotel to the car, Teddie pushes in beside Ludmilla before they can stop him and “hogs” her attention all the way to the police station, speaking to her (in Russian) in a soft, insinuating voice. Peter’s and Cathy’s expressions are hard, Robert’s is disturbed. Only he senses the great internal stress of the small man.

At the police station, they come upon Tofik Dadashev just sitting down at a table with forty-five photographs of male criminals. He is about to attempt to pick out the mugshots of three of them being held in prison at the moment.

Dadashev looks at the policemen in the room. “Do any of these men know who they are?” he asks.

“Of course,” he is told.

“Simple then,” says Dadashev. He looks at the photographs and at each of the policemen. Quickly, he picks out three photographs. “These,” he says casually.

The policemen applaud.

Teddie steps forward and leans over the table, pointing to a fourth photograph. “And this one is being brought in right now,” he tells them in Russian.

They look at him, startled, then laugh, assuming it’s a joke. Teddie shrugs.

Dadashev, a man in his late thirties, his personality also like that of de Vries—high-keyed and theatrical—looks at Teddie apathetically, then, after meeting the group, tells them how his family realized that he was “terrifically psychic” even before he knew it himself.

We see the incident dramatized. Dadashev is living with his uncle and grandmother. “I had a terrible sweet tooth,” says Ludmilla translating for Dadashev. “So much so that my uncle and grandmother always hid the candy in the house.”

Dadashev, a small boy, walks around the house with his grandmother, asking her where the candy is. She says she won’t tell him. He stares at her, then moves quickly to the hiding place and starts to eat the candy.

“All I had to do was stare at either of them,” Dadashev says, Ludmilla still translating. “Then I could walk to exactly where the candy had been carefully concealed.

“Later, I used my powerful mental ability to take myself and my friends to movie shows,” he continues.

We see him, in his boyhood, approaching a ticket taker in a movie theatre, a group of friends with him. He starts to talk to her, staring into her eyes.

“As I spoke to her—about the weather, the price of food, anything at all—I would place in her mind the thought that it would be nice to give us youngsters a break and let us in for free,” says Ludmilla’s voice speaking for Dadashev.

As he speaks to the woman, he gestures furtively to his friends and, one by one, they walk past the woman into the theatre, she nods approvingly to each. All his friends inside, Dadashev salutes her with a cheerful, “Thank you. Have a nice day,” and saunters into the movie himself.

“Not once were we ever stopped!” he tells them in the police station. “I was in complete control of the ticket taker’s mind!”

As they leave the station, Teddie nudges Robert and points to a man being brought into the station by an officer.

It is the one Teddie picked out from the photographs.

Robert starts to say something about it but Teddie restrains him. “It would only bruise his giant ego,” he mutters.

At a local coffee house, the anecdotes of Dadashev continue, translated by Ludmilla as we see them dramatized.

“When I was in the tenth grade, I gave more proof of my amazing power,” Dadashev says.

We see the young boy in a hot, stuffy classroom, listening to a woman teacher drone on about Russian literature. CAMERA MOVES IN SLOWLY ON the boy.

“The teacher grated on my nerves. She was so precise, so self-assured, so exact in her delivery,” says Dadashev’s voice.

A mischievous expression takes over the boy’s face.

“I began to send her a mental message. Get confused.
Confused.”

We see the monotonous drone of the matronly teacher start to change. She begins to stutter, becomes upset, stutters more.

“She could not even finish a sentence!” crows Dadashev (through Ludmilla) at the coffee house.

The group smiles politely except for Teddie.

“Another fascinating incident,” continues Dadashev, “took place when I was an adolescent.”

“You are still an adolescent,” mutters Teddie.

“Beg your pardon?” Dadashev asks in Russian.

“Nothing, I was thinking aloud,” Teddie tells him back in Russian. Ludmilla, who clearly thinks that Dadashev is a total wonder, gives Teddie a mildly reproachful look.

“To continue,” says Dadashev (Ludmilla), “one of the few places adolescent boys could go in my city, which was Baku, was the local billiard hall.”

We see Dadashev at fourteen, watching a man play pool.

“One day a newcomer came into the hall and, as I watched him, I saw that he was a hustler, that he could win when he chose.

“I decided to punish him and waited until a game came up in which the stakes were very high.”

We see the game. Young Tofik stares at the hustler. The man misses his shot, looking startled. On his next turn, Dadashev stares at him again. Again, the man misses. He looks nervous, unable to understand how he could miss. He begins to come unglued and loses badly.

“I had my private vengeance on this man!” says Dadashev, laughing, in the coffee house. “I scared him silly!”

“Most commendable,” Teddie says. He looks at Ludmilla. “Translate,” he tells her.

Later, in the limousine, Ludmilla speaks in defense of Dadashev.

“He is, perhaps, the least bit self-aggrandized,” she begins.