ivan. Go back to the dormitory with these men. You've had a very long day." To the guards, Gabovich hissed, "Take him to the Zulu facility immediately. No one is to speak with him-no one.

Luger seemed steady enough on his feet, so the two ex-Soviet guards began escorting him to the back exit and a waiting car outside which would take him to the security building, also in the compound. Luger looked downtrodden, as if the pain in his stomach was nothing compared to the hopelessness he felt as he thought of all the months of work that still lay ahead.

As they proceeded down the corridor, they noticed a Lithuanian Self-Defense Force officer, with a sergeant at his side, standing nearby watching them. "You. Come here," Gabovich ordered. The two soldiers walked over to him. "You are?"

"Major Alexei Kolginov, deputy commander, Iron Wolf Brigade headquarters," the officer replied. "This is Command Sergeant Major Surkov, Brigade NCOIC. I was-"

"Kolginov? Surkov? You are Russians?" General Gabovich asked with an expression of surprise and amusement.

Kolginov nodded.

"You are officers in a Lithuanian Boy Scout army. . .

"We are part of the Lithuanian Self-Defense Force," Kolginov asserted.

"Ah yes, the Iron Wolf Brigade," Gabovich said derisively. "Such a tough name for such a playschool army."

Kolginov let the insult roll off his back. "We are on a facilities inspection, checking for treaty compliance as part of the deactivation of this facility, when I noticed you taking this man out of the security conference room. He appears to be ill or disoriented. Is there a problem here? Is he all right?"

Gabovich made an expression of undisguised exasperation. The security problems here at the Fisikous Institute were becoming a joke.

When the facility, and Lithuania, belonged to the old USSR, security at the Fisikous Research Institute was handled by the MYD, the Soviet Troops of the Interior. From the MVD

troops stationed in Lithuania, a special detachment of highly trained troops was formed specifically to handle security here in Fisikous and in other critical Soviet offices in Vilnius.

That unit was called OMON, or Otriad Militisija Osobennoga Naznachenaia, meaning

"Special Purpose Military Detachment." Because they wore black berets to distinguish them from other MVD troops, they were called the Black Berets by many in Lithuania and in the West. They soon gained a terrible reputation as ruthless enforcers, and were charged with murdering many Lithuanian citizens, along with citizens of the other Baltic republics, before those countries declared their independence from the Soviet Union.

When Lithuania became independent in 1991, the Black Berets were supposedly disbanded. But they weren't. They still existed, in smaller numbers, in the most important Soviet facilities in the Baltic states. At the Fisikous Institute in Vilnius, they were called

"private Security employees" and placed under the command of Viktor Gabovich, who was no longer part of the KGB (since technically the KGB did not exist as of 1992) but was an officer of the Commonwealth of Independent States' Inter-Republican Council for Security, or MSB, charged with maintaining security for Commonwealth facilities in Lithuania during the transition period.