"I love you." His sobs were audible. ........................................................................ .......................... A WALK THROUGH THE NIGHT THERE'S NO WAY YOU COULD POSSIBLY DESCRIBE THIS. One foot after the other. Rock walls rising black on either side, a chasm of stars. The road like a gray snake winding through cold air. Night. WHEN YOU'RE READING A BOOK..... YOU'RE ALWAYS SAFE INSIDE YOUR MIND. THERE ARE WALLS AND WARMTH AROUND YOU. THERE'S NO WAY YOU CAN FEEL EXPOSED, LIKE THIS. The sound of shoes on pavement. A chill sweat. THIS WEAKNESS. IT PUTS YOU IN A DIFFERENT WORLD, MAKES YOUR MIND FEEL.....STRETCHED. This weakness. It puts you in a different world, makes your mind feel. . . stretched. Convulsed stride and a kind of shudder. DAMN. WHY AM I ALWAYS EXPOSED LIKE THIS? ALL THOSE YEARS, DON'T THEY MEAN ANYTHING? Hunger and cold. MAYBE I COULD WRITE A STORY..... WOULD THAT MAKE IT ANY BETTER? A sound to my right. The same fear again. YOU CAN'T KNOW UNTIL YOU'VE FELT THESE THINGS. I ALWAYS THOUGHT I WAS GOING SOMEWHERE. NOWHERE BUT THIS ROAD. Another shudder from the cold. Chills again. DAMN IT. DAMN IT! "Save your strength." I'VE STILL GOT A LONG WAY TO GO. ........................................................................ ................... KGB Images sifted through his subconscious as he slept, and his mind put a story to them. * A villa just outside Berlin, in the narrow strip of West Germany surrounded by the communist East. A beautiful dark-eyed Russian woman, a defector, lived here beneath the shelter of trees. She was not alone here. Other defectors. . .no, patriots. Bulgarians, Poles and others, who loathed their totalitarian masters and the brutality, without freedom, under which their peoples were forced to live, and work away their lives, like ants. Former high-ranking members of the government, military, and intelligence branches of the Eastern bloc and the Soviet Union. KGB. Here they lived in close communion, despite the danger, working sometimes with the West, sometimes without it, according to their skills, to undermine the iron grip of the communist leadership, to encourage and protect dissidents, and to publish their work both home and abroad. As well as other goals that were more immediately humane.