Robert Ludlum's The Utopia Experiment - By Kyle Mills Page 0,1

who had seen him off more than fifteen years ago. Her bowl-cut hair and puritan style of dress were unchanged, but now the skin hung loose from her chin and her eyes had trouble focusing.

“Hello Marta.”

The recognition came quickly, followed immediately by the fear he had been too consumed to anticipate. Dresner had no desire to inspire that in her and he suddenly felt ashamed. She had never been an evil woman. Just weak. And numb.

He brushed by her, the cold not dissipating at all as he passed in front of a broad staircase leading to the second floor. At its top, the orphans imprisoned there would be hiding in the shadows, just as he had every time an unexpected visitor came. They would be perfectly still, holding their breaths, telling themselves that this time it would be a long-lost parent or cousin or sibling. That it would be someone who would take them away.

He plunged into the darkness, avoiding scattered furniture by memory and starting quietly up the spiral stairs that wound their way up the tower. The door at the top was framed by gray light flickering from the gap around the jamb and he stood in front of it for a few moments, trying to separate the sensation of being there at that moment from being there before.

“What do you want?” he heard from the other side of the door. “You’ll get out of here if you know what’s good for you!”

Instead, Dresner reached for the knob and went through, feeling the warmth of the kerosene heater that they had all known about and dreamed of. At first, he ignored the bulky, half-dressed man on the sofa and looked around at the room illuminated by the glow of a small black-and-white television. He’d never been inside—none of them had—and their imaginations had built it into a palace of gold and jewels and candy. In reality, it was just another disintegrating relic of a Germany that no longer existed.

Finally, Dresner’s eyes fell on a cane in the corner, still black in places, worn down to bare wood in others. He wondered how much his own back was responsible for the polished gleam of it. And if the broken tip was a relic of the eight-year-old girl who had slipped away in her bed, a victim of a beating she’d received for knocking over an old lamp that had never worked.

“Who—” the man said, pushing himself to his feet with the same anger he’d had so many years ago, but not the same speed or vigor. Recognition wasn’t as quick as with Marta.

It was understandable. Dresner’s eyes, slightly magnified by thick glasses, were the only things that remained unchanged. The other researchers at the facility had been perplexed when he’d insisted on subjecting himself to many of the same protocols as the athletes they trained. He’d told them it was in the interest of science, but it was a lie. It had been entirely in the interest of this moment. His frail, half-starved body had been replaced with something more fitting for the occasion.

“Christian?” the man said, wet eyes widening as much as the half-empty bottle of vodka sitting on the table would allow.

Dresner nodded silently. Despite so many years planning for this day, he couldn’t remember what he was supposed to say.

“You’ve grown strong.” The man thumped his drooping chest. “I made you that way. I made you strong.”

For the first time, fear was clearly visible in him. And why not? He was just a broken-down soldier drinking himself to death in a forgotten orphanage. But Dresner had been embraced by the party. He was one of the generation who would show the world the superiority of communism and the Soviet system. He was the future and this old man was part of a distant, irrelevant past.

“Don’t worry,” Dresner said, walking to the corner where the cane leaned. “I’m not sending the Stasi for you.”

“With what your parents did…” the man stammered. “I had to make you ready for the world. To be able to resist the people who would be against you.” He paused for a moment and then quickly added. “For something that wasn’t your fault.”

“And is that what you’re still doing?” Dresner said, picking up the worn piece of wood. As with the playground outside, he remembered photographically the condition it had been in when he’d left, and now he ran his hand along every new scratch and gouge, every place where there had been