When COMPASS did speak, it was to delve into what he sensed to be the stirring undercurrent of shifting politics rippling below the surface of Moscow’s otherwise settled aplomb. Separatist groupings of hitherto forbidden alien theories were building up in the labyrinthine maze of minds that constituted the Politburo’s far-reaching fingers of power. But so far this did not appear to be calling for increased policing and subsequent purging. Far less disturbed was the KGB, since it could gain valuable intelligence by measured observation and treatment of the festering open wound with more finality than that of the insidious build-up of rogue cells in the malignant tumour growing beneath the skin. Proper surveillance mounted on this rising wave of subversive thinking was the required means of
