"Then what are the cigarettes doing in your pocket? Why are your fingers stained with nicotine?" asked Vassily.
"My Lord. You're right. What have you done to me, you bastard?" said the man, who had come in with a cigarette in his mouth, hacking away, explaining how he had tried everything and couldn't quit. Johnny had to quiet him down, but Vassily learned it wasn't what you did for a person but what they thought you did for them.
For the next patient the first thing he did was to convince the obese woman she was going through an exotic experience of hypnotism. And this time, the important message was not that she would no longer overeat. Not that she did not want to overeat, but that she was getting her money's worth.
"This is the best hypnotic experience of your life and you will come to me twice a week for the next fifteen years," said Vassily. "And you will pay me ninety dollars for a mere fifty minutes of my time even though you will have to imagine any improvement in your life, because there's going to be none."
The woman left and recommended fifteen friends, all of whom agreed Vassily was just as good as their psychiatrists. In fact he functioned just like one.
And Vassily had another trick up his sleeve. He learned to give fifty minutes in thirty seconds' time. All they had to do was believe they were getting that much time.
The line stretched out of his office right to the elevator every day. He was making fortunes. But he was spending fortunes, too. There were the lawyers he had to hire because Johnny Bangossa defended him a little too well.
There were tax advisers he had to get because he was making so much money. And he realized Johnny could not do it all. Johnny had to sleep from time to time. So Vassily had to get other bodyguards and of course he got the toughest men that money and great hypnotism could buy.
And he had to have somebody to order them around. So in came a second in command. Within a very short time, Vassily Rabinowitz, formerly of Dulsk, Russia, formerly of the parapsychology village in Siberia, was running one of the most powerful crime families in the country, but he couldn't support them all with just hypnotism. No matter how profitable that was, he had to let them earn their money at what they knew-narcotics, extortion, hijacking, and sundry other things.
It was a horror, except something began to stir in the heart of Vassily Rabinowitz, and it would ultimately threaten the entire world.
A portion of his mind that had never been used was being called on now. He had to organize his deadly people, and he found he liked it. It was much better than hypnotism, which he could do with no effort at alclass="underline" this was a challenge.
And so what had started as a way to be safe from muggers now became a game of war. And it was just the nightmare that Russian planners had always feared. Because here was a man who, once he looked in someone's eyes, owned that person, could get him to do virtually anything. What would happen, asked the Russian strategic planners, if he got into the game of international conflicts? He could go from one small state to another, and all he had to do was have one meeting with an enemy or one with a general. He could turn the whole world around.
That was the real reason they had never used him against enemies. They never wanted him to get a taste of war. There was nothing closer to war than the manipulation of racketeer armies.
But Russia did not yet know this had happened. They were only out to find out where he was. And they found out only by accident, an accident that accomplished what their entire alerted espionage network failed to do, pinpoint exactly where Vassily Rabinowitz was.
Natasha Krupskaya, the wife of a Russian consul who had been assigned to America for the last ten years, decided at last that weighing 192 pounds might be a fine thing in Minsk, Pinsk, or Podolsk, but not on Fifth Avenue. Americans had started to make fun of Russian figures on television. And since she also had a face like the back end of a tractor, she decided she had to do something to avoid ridicule. But dieting was hard. She would find herself at the end of the day craving a roll slathered with butter. Dieting in America was impossible. Not only was there wonderful food, but it was for everyone. And not only was it for everyone, but television advertisements created by geniuses enticed everyone to eat. In Russia the best minds went into making missiles hit targets; in America the finest minds went into making people buy things. And when they made you want to eat food, no one from Minsk, Pinsk, or Podolsk could resist.
Natasha needed help, and when she heard of the greatest hypnotist in the world, she decided to try him. She waited in line, hearing people come out saying the strangest things, like:
"That was the best fifty minutes I ever spent in my life. "
"That fifty minutes went like three seconds."
"That fifty minutes was grueling."
What was strange about all this was that they had been inside the office for less than thirty seconds.
A big hairy man sat in front of the inner office. He made sure a younger man got the money. The younger man had very curly hair and the wife of the consul could see he carried a gun. The receptionist, a very pretty blond, called him Rocco.
The woman found herself pushed through into the inner office and there she saw an old friend. She was about to say hello when she was out of the office feeling drained from fifty hard minutes working on her weight problem.
But in her case, she recognized someone she had seen just the year before in a visit to Russia. She had been privileged to use Vassily Rabinowitz in the parapsychology village where he had solved a sexual problem for her.
Natasha had been having difficulty enjoying an orgasm. More specifically, she couldn't get one at all. Her, husband had the nasty habit of being a world-record premature ejaculator. If she smiled lasciviously he was through. And so was she.
Ordinarily the man would have sought treatment. But he was a ranking member of the Communist party and she was not. Therefore it was her problem, not his, and therefore she went to see this wonderful man who had cured another wife of the same problem. He had helped her to understand that she could have an instant orgasm as soon as her husband wanted to make love.
It worked beautifully. Natasha could even honestly tell her husband he was a great lover.
"Next time, wait until I take off my pants," he had said proudly.
But here in New York she had recognized Vassily Rabinowitz and she wanted to ask what he was doing there. Unfortunately, no one was going to get through those thugs. So she mentioned this strange occurrence to her husband, seeing a Russian citizen do business in America.
"Has he become a spy for us?" she asked.
"Vassily?" said her husband.
"I saw him today. Practicing on Fifth Avenue. I went to lose weight."
"Vassily!"
"Yes. I remember him from the parapsychology village."
"This is fantastic!" said her husband. He notified the head KGB officer in the consulate, who practically fell out of his chair. He refused to let the consul leave, demanded that Natasha come into his office immediately, and grilled her for twenty minutes before he sent an urgent message back to Moscow. The man Moscow was looking for was right here in New York City on Fifth Avenue and they had the address.
The response was even more urgent. "Do nothing."
In Moscow, there was jubilation. This time, though, they would not be sending some KGB officer, or KGB troops.
This time Boris Matesev himself would go into America, as he had before, and with his special force snatch Vassily Rabinowitz and bring him back to Russia where he belonged. Maybe kill him just to be safe. It didn't matter. The nightmare was coming to a close.
Matesev was a thin man by Russian standards, more German-looking, with an aquiline nose and blond hair. He was also very neat. He had been waiting for word to go back into America for many days now.