Staretz Encounter: a New Age Thriller

Delving into thelabyrinthine quagmire known as the paranormal, Staretz Encounter is the storyabout news reporter, Rudy Styne, from New York City, and his Eurasiancounterpart, Dr. Imo Bern, a neuroscientist from a secret parapsychology laboratoryin Siberia. The Soviet Union has collapsed, Eurasia is in turmoil. A right-wingextremist, Petar Bonzovalivitch, has come to the fore. Marshalling a cadre ofpsionic soldiers whose brains have been rewired, Bonzovalivitch launches aclandestine operation to topple the West and restore the empire that was onceRussia. His head of psi-ops is black magician Dr. Georgi Boshtov, ex-KGB agentand grand-nephew of Gregori Rasputin. Their target for capture is Egyptiansuperpsychic Abdullah Manu. A controversialcelebrity, Manu's psychic feats have splintered the scientific community. Fromthe point of the view of the media, Manu is passed off as a charlatan, and theparapsychologists who study him, like NYU physics professor Jay Ketchembach,are billed as pseudoscientists. Rudy Styne,reporter for Modern Times, wakes up one morning to a foreboding dream whichcomes true later in the day. Having never had a psychic experience before, thereporter decides to research the topic for an article for the magazine. At thesame time, he also begins to uncover Petar Bonzovalivitch's nefarious plan andalso interview Professor Ketchembach and Abdullah Manu. Eventually, Rudy andhis girlfriend, Chessie Barnsworth, meet up with heartsick scientist, Imo Bern,at an international conference on psychotronics. Bern, who was performing thebrain operations necessary for the creation of the legion of human cyborgs,tries to defect and pass his knowledge to the West as Rudy attempts to persuadean all too skeptical news community that Bonzovalivitch is more than anoutrageous buffoon. As the storyprogresses, Rudy visits psychic researchers and an avatar in search forultimate truths, only to return to New York to find his local guru, ProfessorKetchembach, murdered. Georgi Bosht