Our Man on the Hill

By Matthew Kresal

His name is one of the most infamous in American politics. In the early 1950s, Senator Joe McCarthy was a force of terror, sparing no one in his hunt for Soviet agents within the US government. Yet, on a journey from a park bench in New York City to the fields of rural Wisconsin and into the halls of power in Washington, his incredible rise to power is part of the most audacious gambit in the annals of Soviet espionage. When McCarthy targets his master's opponents, however, secrets will be revealed and the stakes raised, where the winner takes all.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sea Lion Press
• Release date: Nov 7, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223356240

Book preview

Chapter One

The priest looked out of place among those in uniform. He was a tall, thin figure, but not one in ill-health – though if he had been, it would have explained his presence at a military hospital late one evening.

Father? A nurse said from behind the reception desk. The priest offered a smile and a look between a pair of glasses. Are you here to see a patient?

To take his confession, the figure in black confirmed. I’m here to see the senator.

There was a subtle change in the nurse’s demeanor after that. Nothing was said, of course, but the moves she took became sluggish as she lifted the clipboard for him to sign in as a visitor to Bethesda Naval Hospital. Even the smile she offered before picking up a phone to summon someone to take him to the senator faltered after a moment. Though she wouldn’t say it to his face, the priest felt sure she was happy to see the back of him.

Bethesda was like all hospitals: it was stark, bleak even, which was in contrast to its striking exterior. The priest noted the fact, though he did not mind it. He was not here to admire its architecture, after all.

A door opened, and he wandered in. An attractive dark-haired woman in her early thirties sat by the bed. Beautiful, but visibly worn down by events. The priest took notice of her, offering a comforting smile. It fit the role he’d assumed for the night.

Thank you for coming, Father. She smiled as she stood up with aching slowness. She held out a hand which he shook. I’m Jean, the senator’s wife.

Thank you for calling me, ma’am. The priest said nothing else, a silence settling in the air between them. The woman turned to look over her shoulder, at the unspeaking third figure in the room.

I’ll leave you two to it. She said, before turning toward the priest. Would you like a coffee or anything first?

No, thank you, Mrs. McCarthy. The priest looked toward the figure lying in the hospital bed. Bless you for watching over him.

He’s my husband, Father, she said, as if that was enough explanation. She turned back to him and squeezed his hand before leaning down to kiss his forehead. She looked to the priest again before leaving. Thank you.

Once she had gone, the priest settled into the chair she had vacated. He considered Senator Joe McCarthy, lying there prone on the bed in front of him. He was pale, sickly looking, yet had a bloated face and stomach from too many drinks. So here he was, on the brink of shaking off this mortal coil.

The senator’s eyes opened. They looked blankly at the priest, registering his presence, but showing no sign of recognition. The man in black offered another comforting smile.

Hello, my son. The priest smiled and patted the dying man’s forearm. McCarthy coughed roughly, raising his weak hands to make the sign of the cross.

Forgive me, Father, the once mighty man said quietly, for I have sinned.

What sins do you wish to confess to me, my son?

McCarthy let out a cough, then a sigh. The priest watched as the eyes traveled with him, staring toward the ceiling. He said nothing for a moment, only for a loud, deep breath to fill the room.

That I have, since 1946, been in the employ of the Soviet Union as their willing agent in the United States.

Chapter Two

The city groaned in the gathering dark. It had been less than a month ago that Douglas MacArthur had sailed into Tokyo Bay, proudly presiding over the Japanese surrender. Even so, New York City was beginning to come back to life, even as the first leaves of autumn signalled that change was in the air. The couple meeting in Central Park that day, too, were playing their part in the turning of seasons. Theirs, however, was a political one.

Half of the couple arrived late. She was a tall, dark-haired American woman in her later thirties named Elizabeth Bentley. In her youth, she had become a graduate of Vassar and Columbia University, been employed as a sometime teacher and librarian and had, until recently, worked as the vice-president of a small shipping company that operated out of the city docks.

The other half of the couple was a foreign-looking gentleman. For a city that, even in wartime, was among the busiest metropolises in the world, this was not unusual – even less so, given the immigrant nature of the city. He had the look of an Eastern European, with features carved out by generations of rugged conditions and the experience of serving within one of the most paranoid governments humanity had yet conceived. To Elizabeth Bentley, this man would be known simply by the name Al.

Al was not happy with what he saw. He had met Bentley before, always taking care before doing so. Her reputation had proceeded her; he knew, of course, of her situation. A situation that he, like his superiors many thousands of miles away, initially thought she had only likely arrived at because his predecessor had also been her lover. Upon this earlier meeting, he discovered this estimate to be incorrect as he had found an intelligent and thoughtful individual before him.

On this afternoon, she was anything but. The woman who came to him had a tired, haggard look to her. Her lover had died two years before and she still grieved for him, making her, perhaps, a bird with her wing down, to quote an expression he had heard somewhere before. That was no excuse for the dishevelled figure that swayed back and forth with every step as she approached. He took a subtle sniff of her as she sat down on the bench next to him and confirmed his suspicion.

Alcohol. She is drunk.

I bring news of Helen, Al said quietly without quiet looking at Bentley. He knew the proper exchange would be for her to tell him I heard she was in the hospital, to which he would reply in turn Yes, it’s her heart. That was the agreed exchange. What he received instead was delivered with thinly-disguised contempt.

Can we cut the bullshit, Al?

Al shot the woman a sideways glance of disapproval. He had hoped it would have some effect upon her, at least draw an apology from her. Her uncaring expression proved that was too much to hope for. He let out a heavy sigh.

I shall come to the point then. We have grown deeply concerned about you.

Bentley let out a mocking laugh. By ‘we’, I assume you mean your bosses in Moscow?

The volume of her voice was loud enough that it seemed to echo across the park. Al noticed a couple of heads turn in their direction with quizzical, concerned looks. Perhaps they had picked up her words or merely had taken notice of their volume. Whichever the case, it was not welcome.

He turned to her, perhaps as lovers might when quarrelling in public. It was the impression he wanted to give to others around them, if only to lose the unwelcome attention. From the corner of his left eye he noticed the heads look away, one couple shaking their heads before locking their arms again.

This meeting can be adjourned, if you so wish.

Do it and you’ll never see me again.

Her tone was biting, threatening even. Al gave a nod and slid his back up against the wooden bench. It seemed that all the reports he had received from his operatives were true after all. He decided to take a different approach with the woman next to him.

Whatever you may choose to believe, he began in a tone of polite concern, it is actually your fellow comrades who are concerned for you.

Is that so? She interrupted him and shook her head. What are they worried about? That I will expose them to the whole damn world?

"That’s one way to put it, umnitsa. Al used her cryptonym in an attempt both to show solidarity and to remind her of the work that they were involved in. She seemed to relax marginally at this, and he chose to continue. We are all very much aware of the vital work you have done for us in previous years alongside Zvuk-"

Jacob. Bentley interrupted him, turning where she sat the instant she had finished saying the name. "His name was Jacob. Not Zvuk. Do you even know what that word means?"

Al nodded. Bentley closed her eyes and her head dropped, as if she could no longer support it. Her chin rested on the top of her chest before she took a sharp intake of air and looked back up at him with sad eyes.

He told me it meant ‘sound’ in Russian. In contrast with her earlier outburst, she spoke almost in a whisper. Al considered placing a comforting hand on her shoulder or, at least, making some gesture of sympathy. He made none, however.

I am aware of the relationship between you. Such entanglements are to be expected, one supposes. Especially when one is asked to live away from one’s own country for so long.

I knew him for six months as ‘Timmy’. Can you believe that? Al could. He knew the story by now from the files he had been given when he had replaced Jacob Golos as the head of the Soviet intelligence station in New York City.  His instinct was to let her tell her own version of events to him. Perhaps that was as much a human feeling as an instinct that training had taught him.

It took her perhaps a quarter of an hour, but he listened. He sat there quietly on the bench, his back beginning to feel stiff. She gave  a brief account of the affair, how it had all begun from her first meeting with Golos on a street corner after a Communist Party meeting here in New York, their deepening relationship and how, when she had become unemployed like so many of her countrymen due to what the capitalists euphemistically termed an economic depression, he had trained her in his profession. She had stood by him as lover, confidante, and courier right up until the day a heart attack had claimed him in this land far from his birth.

You have my sympathies. It was all he had to offer once she finished her story. "Zvuk was a great hero to the revolution-"

Then it’s a shame he wasn’t recognized as such! She spat the words out with a snake’s venom. Al remained calm, sensing that what Bentley wanted to engage in some kind of debate with him. Instead, he worked to placate her.

You yourself were recognized for your work, I do believe.

I was awarded the Order of the Red Banner. Her tone for the first time lacked a mean spirit behind it. Al looked at her and presented as soft a smile as he could.

I believe, from what I have been told, that we have taken other steps to help you. We attempted to find you a new lover after you complained about a lack of ‘male companionship’ in your life.

Al’s tone was non-judgmental, a skill he had acquired as a necessity in this line of work.  The American obsession with sexual liaisons was something that had frustrated both the New York station and his superiors in Moscow. To reveal that fact would be counter-productive to his purpose here.

I left him months ago, she told him. Her eyes had that glazed look that came with consuming too much alcohol, a numbness behind the eyes. Yet that wasn’t what troubled Al as he watched her. Her eyes had stayed looking at the ground in front of her, the entire time.

Have you found a new lover? He watched for her reply until a smile crept across her face. She gave a heavy sigh, closed her eyes again, and nodded limply. Tell me about him.

Why? Bentley did not open her eyes as she spoke. Do you have reason to suspect a man you don’t even know?

Perhaps not, Al replied calmly, turning his gaze momentarily on the ducks in the nearby pond. I suspect you have reason to.

You already know. Her tone made it unclear if she was asking him that as a question or stating it as a fact. It was Al’s turn not to look, instead keeping his gaze upon the fowl as they swam. He waited until she let out another embittered laugh and then looked at her. She looked back, her eyes filled with a pained expression he had seen all too often in the years before. He felt numb at that moment, knowing that the American woman had already answered her own question without him having to say a word.

He says he’s former Coast Guard, she blurted out without warning. I suspect that might well just be cover for what he really does.

You think he is FBI? Bentley nodded in the affirmative. Al paused for a moment and then nodded slowly. End the relationship immediately.

Bentley stared at him unblinking. He repeated the sentence again and put his hands in his lap, expecting an affirmative nod from her. She said and did nothing, merely continuing to stare for an uncomfortably time at the Russian. Finally, he reached the point of taking the blatantly obvious course of action.

"Question, umnitsa?"

No.

Then is there something else of which I need to be made aware? His tone was stoic, serious even. He could be threatening if the situation called for it, but that was an option only taken when all others were exhausted.

Perhaps Bentley sensed this. She remained silent but finally blinked. There had been something unnatural in that stare, something Al had sensed but had not been able to comprehend. He could not shake off that uneasy feeling even as she stood up. Her thin body wavered as she tried to steady herself. She took a step, finally, away from Al, but which she seemed to take with great reluctance.

You know, Al, she said with her back to him, the flat delivery of her words not blunting the impact of what she saying to him, Jacob dying was the only thing that stopped him from making the most important decision of his life.

Al raised an inquiring eyebrow. What decision would that have been?

She turned to face him. Those glazed eyes of hers had suddenly found a new spark which made them burn. Al had seen it many times before, in both men and women. It was a strength made out of weakness, a demon that only this particular vice of choice could bring out. In that moment he understood her drunkenness for what it was.

To turn his back on all of you. The gangsters running things in Moscow from Uncle Joe down-

Our leader- He began to say, but Bentley would not give him the luxury to speak more than those two words. She had become a geyser, and this was her moment to spew forth onto the world around her.

-to those damn foreigners who are running the party here. The ones who preach about making things better here but sit like puppies at your feet.  He was sick of it all and I, too, have grown sick of it.

Al said nothing. He merely cocked his head to one side and offered a comforting, even understanding look. He had heard it so many times before, from those who had lost faith in the revolution. Here he was, in the heart of a great American city, listening to this. He wanted to say something to her, words that would give her back the faith that grief had so unfairly taken from her.

I don’t want your sympathy. Her words took him by surprise. Have I been that transparent?

May I ask something of you? Al stood up, walked slowly over to her and stood at her side, looking into those still-smouldering eyes. Please do not do anything rash until we meet again. Say, November, perhaps?

She closed her eyes and nodded. I can agree to that.

Good. Until next time, then?

With that, the pair parted company. Both agent and head of station followed usual protocol for their respective post-meeting routes out of the park, to make certain that any potential FBI surveillance had not picked them up again. All throughout his journey back to the consulate, the Soviet spy chief was unable to shake off the feeling that there was more than Bentley had said. That in spite of her outburst to him, or perhaps even as a result of it, she would do something rash.

She had become a liability. Nothing more, nothing less. She could not run agents and, thanks to her now-dead lover, she perhaps knew more about the Soviet Union’s operations inside the United States than even the Station Chief did. It was a worrying thought for a man who, just a few years earlier, had helped to take down Joseph Stalin’s greatest enemy, Leon Trotsky. Surely if that greatest nemesis of the revolution could be taken down, anyone could be removed.

He hurriedly prepared his report for Moscow, including the suggestion that Bentley be liquidated. He advised doing this in the near future, highlighting the threat she posed. Yet even as he wrote it, he knew better than to assume his fears and suggestions would be acted upon. The things that made her a threat to him would make her insignificant in their eyes. After all, individuals mattered little in the grand scheme of Marxist history.

#

Months later, he received confirmation of his fears. It was another of the Soviet agents in the United States, an Englishman known by the cryptonym Stanley, that revealed what had happened. His suggestions had not been acted upon and what had been feared had become reality.

Some weeks after their meeting, Bentley made the final step on her path to a new allegiance. The journey that had taken a woman born and raised in the United States to become one of Soviet intelligence’s most important couriers in the country, and the lover of their New York station chief, had brought her full circle. She had spoken to the FBI, made them aware of her disillusionment with the cause she and her lover had served for so long, and made them privy to the operations she was aware of.

As he left the United States for the last time in the closing month of 1945, the man known to Elizabeth Bentley as Al could not help but feel reflective as the American coast faded over the horizon. He had spent a little over a year in the country but had overseen some of the most important operations the Soviets would ever carry out against their new enemy. Yet Anatoly Veniaminovich Gorsky had also set in motion a larger operation that would come to shape the country he was leaving behind in the years to come.

Chapter Three

As Gorsky was on the ship back to his native land, Soviet operations in the United States had reached an all-time low. Elizabeth Bentley’s knowledge, gained not only through being the lover of a former station chief but through her years as his courier, had left their operations completely exposed. With so much potentially revealed, drastic measures would have to be taken.

The first step was known by the euphemistic term ‘conservation’. What the Soviet hoped to ‘conserve’ would have been substituted elsewhere by the term ‘quarantine’. Agents were separated from their handlers, some having been told that they would cease work all together. For some this was not unwelcome news; the uneasy wartime alliance, between the American eagle and British lion on one side and the Russian bear on the other, began to crumble at the same time that Bentley’s patience had. The common cause that had led a number of American and British citizens at various levels of government to work with the Soviets, that of defeating European fascism, had come and gone. That ideological drive had been robbed of the vital lifeblood that had driven it. Perhaps Bentley’s defection had merely hastened the inevitable, but that view was spoken of only in whispers during the winter of 1946 in Moscow.

Then came the question of just how much had been known by Bentley. An inquiry had begun, with members of the service delving as deep into the archive as they could. They scoured through the folders, documents, and messages like rodents collecting nuts. At times they felt like just such rodents, living in a dark existence with little daylight and only meagre amounts of substance. They ran but went nowhere, sifting instead through the remains of the Golden Age that had faded away almost in an instant.

It was a painstaking effort that stretched well into the year. Eventually their work finished; reports were drafted, re-written, and submitted. The final toll from the Bentley affair, along with some others who had changed their allegiances in her wake, was ascertained. The results were damning, catastrophic even. Given the sheer width and breadth of the knowledge they had come to believe Bentley had, virtually the entirety of their efforts for nearly a decade could now be known to American counter-intelligence agents.

The blow, though bad, was not fatally so. The Soviet Union had, after all, faced down the Nazis when they had marched all the way to the gates of Moscow. Twenty million lives had been lost in the Great Patriotic War, but those millions who had survived the onslaught had a stronger country to show for their efforts. The nation’s intelligence services would be much the same.

It too had survived much in its relatively short history. In the less than three decades since the October Revolution of 1917 and Lenin himself establishing a secret police force, there had been not a single agency but eight. It had gone by various names and representative shields, from the Cheka to the NKVD. By 1946, it had been changed once more to the MGB, the Ministry of State Security.

The agency’s First Directorate was tasked with foreign espionage activities and was headed by none other than the man who had last spoken on that park bench with Bentley. In a different time, Gorsky would have been interrogated and shot within a short time of his return to Moscow. Perhaps it was a sign of changing times in the Soviet Union, he considered. More likely, he decided, was that the war had left too few capable intelligence offices and he been promoted as a result.

As soon as the archive section had concluded their reports, a limited number of copies were made available to members of Gorsky’s section. Additional copies of the report were sent to the Director General of the MGB, Viktor Abakumov, as well as to the Minister above him, Lavrentiy Beria.

Abakumov had become head of the MGB after the earlier NKVD had been merged with the agency he had formerly headed. That agency had been the infamous SMERSH, its name being a contraction of Smiert Spionon, or ‘Death To Spies’. In his time as head of SMERSH, Abakumov had made certain that the agency lived up to its name. Rumor had it that the man himself personally tortured suspected traitors, inflicting massive amounts of pain and misery until he at last extracted confessions from them.

Beria, the minister above him, was the former head of the NKVD who had overseen the Golden Age of Soviet espionage. He had been given the position of Deputy Prime Minister and Curator of the Organs of State Security, allowing him oversight still of the merged agencies. There were whispers in the corridors that Stalin himself had once introduced Beria to American President Roosevelt as the Soviet equivalent of the Nazi Himmler; there was certainly a physical resemblance between the two men, each with their thin hair, prominent cheekbones, and rounded glasses. That both men were also sadists was something of a given when it was realized that he had been one of the few Stalin had managed not to have shot yet, perhaps because he was the one doing the shooting.

Gorsky, Abakumov and Beria all met to discuss the report’s findings on a warm day in the late spring. Getting all three men to be in the same place had proven a tricky operation in its own right, given the respective nature and scope of their work. Yet the meeting finally took place – and with significant results.

#

When can we once more begin operations on the American mainland? It had been Abakumov who had broached the subject once the initial briefing had finished. Surely enough time has passed that this agent-

Traitor, Beria interrupted, an angry, thin smile on his face as he leaned back in his chair. Let us call this harlot what she is, gentlemen.

This traitor then, the MGB head continued as if nothing had happened, her information would now be outdated. Even more so thanks to the ‘conservation’ efforts that Colonel Gorsky himself put into place?

We have already begun the process of establishing new cryptonyms for our agents, Gorsky offered, rather meekly. "There is the problem of those whose identities she has already exposed to the Americans.

There is a further complication, Gorsky continued, flipping through the folder on the table in front of him. Our ‘conservation’ period has led to us losing contact with our agents involved with Enormous.

It was Beria’s turn to look surprised. He leaned forwards, the look in his beady eyes going from surprise to something more stern. Civilians might have found it threatening, but Gorsky had seen enough of Beria to know it was largely a front meant to draw out confessions, not unlike how the old church would elicit confessions out of sinners. Beria wanted not to forgive or offer absolution, but information. The chief of the First Directorate was happy to oblige that request.

Both Charles and Mlad have yet to be located. Indeed, Charles did not make his rounds before leaving for England and Mlad is no longer at the New Mexico site.

‘Charles’ and ‘Mlad’ refereed to two men working inside the American atomic bomb project – a project which had met with considerable success for their former ally the previous summer. The work of these agents, along with that of a number of others in lower positions, had allowed them to make considerable progress in a short period of time.

That is unfortunate, Beria finally muttered. His face relaxed and he gave a quick nod. We should make our efforts to reconnect with them a priority.

Efforts are already under way Minister, Gorsky replied curtly. We do seem to have a lack of people to carry out all of these tasks. I humbly request resources be allocated for it.

What about reconnecting with additional contacts? Abakumov joined in, perhaps sensing where the conversation would go next. This traitor surely did not know them all.

Once more, Comrade Director, that is down to an issue of manpower.

Indeed, as the conversation continued, the issue of manpower raised its head again and again. It was so frequently brought up, like a housewife fussing to her spouse over some marital strife, that eventually Beria’s face took on an expression of annoyed continuance.

I understand the need for people. I am, after all, the agency’s former director. He paused to take a sip of water before finishing the thought. I will speak with Stalin myself to see what might be done.

A grateful Gorsky gave a respectful nod. Beria accepted this and the annoyance seemed to wither away in that instant, as if washed down with the water. Abakumov cleared his throat and sat forward.

Assuming that such resources can be found, I am curious to know what it is that my head of the First Directorate shall do with them. A sceptical look formed across his face, lines appearing on his forehead as he spoke in a most dismissive tone. Or does the Colonel merely intend to call upon the specters of past successes?

Such things are not possible. Gorsky refused to rise to the General’s bait. Though he was notionally his boss, it was Beria to whom he made his pitch., It meant, to use an American expression, going over his boss’ head.

You have just said that we need to contact old agents when possible, Abakumov persisted. It was Beria, though, who held up a silencing hand towards the director’s thick face. In that moment, Gorsky knew he had Beria’s attention.

We may indeed be able to build upon connections made under previous leadership, the Colonel indicated of Beria’s years leading the NKVD. "However, I noticed a trend during my time in America. Those whom he regarded as our comrades were becoming less and less easy to recruit.

Changing Western attitudes towards the motherland has meant that many of those we once had influence upon to call to arms are no longer willing or able to aid us. The other two men listened, though they both took to sipping water or flipping through pages of the report to look at relevant information, especially to look at the previous operations Gorsky would reference.

You suggest that we attempt to find new ‘mercenary’ contacts? Abakumov’s tone of scepticism was still apparent. He smiled mockingly, as he had to so many of those he had tortured in years past. Paid agents are the worst kind of agents, in my experience.

SMERSH acted to assassinate and deal with traitors, not to gather intelligence, as I recall, Beria interjected, to the consternation of the former SMERSH leader. Beria had made a strong generalization of just what they had done, but one that seemed not to upset its former director too much. Then again, Abakumov had learned to hide certain secrets well; Gorsky was in doubt that there would be words exchanged at a later point between the two. For now, however, Beria continued speaking.

I will agree with Director Abakumov that our use of ‘mercenary contacts’, as he deemed it, has not always brought us the greatest of successes in past. Beria paused to remove his glasses and clean them with the end of his neck tie. After all, he continued once he had restored them to their proper place, we paid this particular Congressman around a thousand dollars a month for years without much useful information or influence to show for our money.

A bad investment, as the capitalists would say! Abakumov quipped loudly; a great fart of laughter came forth from him which seemed to fill every corner of the room. It was only after the laughter had echoed off the wooden furnishings that the MFB head noticed that no one else was laughing and ceased. He acted as though nothing had occurred, despite the incredulous look from his underling and the disapproving state from his superior.

It is true that this particular member of the American Congress proved to be less and ideal for our purposes. I refer you to the fact we later referenced him, perhaps appropriately, by the name of ‘Crook’. This comment drew chuckles from all involved. Gortsky felt himself relax, thankful that the peasant foolishness of Abakumov had not destroyed the mood. He smiled and continued as planned.

‘Crook’ promised us influence and entry into the highest level of political thinking. In principle, to employ such an agent was not a bad notion.

The execution was perhaps less than successful, Beria added in agreement. There was a hint of bitterness to his remark, which was perhaps understandable; he had been the director of the NKVD as the time of the employment of ‘Crook’. Beria seemed to linger on this thought briefly, saying nothing aloud but perhaps staring into the unseen past. He blinked, looked to the Colonel, and seemed back to normal. What is it you suggest then? Surely you do not mean to reactivate this man’s service?

No sir, Gorsky assured with polite but firm tones. For one thing, ‘Crook’ is no longer a member of the Congress. He is currently engaged in an effort to become a member of the Supreme Court of the state of New York.

Seems a demotion rather than a promotion, Abakumov observed, in a manner quiet by his standards, as surely his former position was the higher one?

I cannot fathom his reasons, I must confess. Gorsky felt being honest was a risk worth taking. It was the truth, something which could be dangerous in this realm, yet both men seemed to appreciate his candour. It was Beria who raised the next question.

What is it you suggest then, Colonel Gorsky?

Gorsky felt a warmth come over him. He had not been certain he would reach this point, but was grateful that he’d been able to. He buried that feeling as deep as he could, suppressing with it the smile he wanted to show like an actor might when performing comedy upon the stage. He focused on the task at hand.

I ask you gentlemen to turn to the very back of the report in front of you. Like a chess player,