George Bartram - Under the Freeze

“How are they to find out?”

“I don’t know — you tell me. It’s my guess it’ll take them less than twenty-four hours. Who knows you came to Cuba?”

“All of them. That is, all of them who are suspect, and a few more.”

“And they think you’re here investigating Beranyi? What does Beranyi think?”

“He suggested it. To clear his reputation, he said.”

“Gutsy. Supposing he told the truth, why does he worry about his reputation? Who’s he afraid of?”

“Andropov. Telyegin.”

“Eugen Telyegin?”

“ Da .”

“Old-time hard-liner. Friend of Lenin. Your patron — yes?”

“ Da .” Repin nodded, smoked, spat. “‘The Monster,’ the Germans called him after Stalingrad. Very good to me, always.” He looked at the ashen end of the cigar. “He has cancer. First the prostate, now the bowel.” He exhaled. “I would kill myself.”

“Is he still at work?”

Repin stared at the dying cigar. “‘Work is blood,’ he says. I saw him three days ago in Moscow. A skeleton. Three operations, then chemical therapy. Everything has been burned away. He is like a man in the gulag. Like a man in religious fanaticism. His work has become his faith.”

“Could he be the one? What’s the name — Maxudov?”

Repin’s head moved heavily back and forth, back and forth. “He is suspected, too. Yes. But is ironic, you see — even if he is not Maxudov, finding Maxudov kills him. Only fanaticism for finding the guilty one keeps him alive.”

“It’s his project?”

“He has Internal Investigation Division now. So, it has become his blood — his truth. And I will say to you, my friend, only Telyegin, only Telyegin , had courage to say, ‘This must be stopped! This traitor must be found!’” He struck a little lighter and a gas flame thrust up. Puffing out clouds of fragrant smoke that vanished on the wind, he said, “Maybe it is cancer that gives him that courage, having nothing to lose. But it was Telyegin that insisted, nobody else.”

“Then you do know what went on in the meeting in Moscow!”

“I know what I know.”

“You’re holding out on me.”

“Of course! But I hold out nothing that you need.”

Tarp brought the boat into the stream and took a reading, then throttled down. On the deck again, he put the rods out for fishing.

“How many people are involved?”

Repin sucked in smoke. “One. Maybe two or three small ones, like the submarine captain. Maybe some more very small ones. But only the one matters: Maxudov. The others are like criminals anywhere — one who sells black market vodka, the manager who steals butter from his dairy, the woman who steals coupons from the company book. Little ones are nothing. They are typical Russians, good workers of the Soviet state.” He laughed. “Good petty criminals. Good for making examples of.”

“Is that meant to sound disloyal?”

“The Party tells me that self-criticism is a virtue.” Repin braced his forearm between his thighs and leaned forward. “One man planned it all and one man did it all. It is a scheme so enormous that more than one man would never dare do it. A paradox, yes? But true. Trust Repin — I know. I know my Russia, I know my KGB. It is one man, giving out a little bribery here, a little patronage there, always to the small ones, who know so little that they cannot put things together. To one he says, ‘Fix this report so such and such a thing has never happened, and I promote you over your superior’; to another he says, ‘Change these figures so the different total is more to my liking, I see that your sister-in-law is not implicated when we prosecute that dissident she has been sleeping with.’ And each one he tells something good. ‘For the Party, Comrade,’ or ‘For the Central Committee, Comrade,’ or ‘So Dzerzhinsky Square will like your work, Comrade.’ And each one does it and is grateful and says, ‘Oh, thank you, Great One,’ as if they said, ‘Thank you for letting me kiss your bottom.’ That is how it was. I know. I know how these things are done. I know my Russia.”

“Do you know how to steal plutonium?”

Repin blew out the smoke. “I do not, but I could find out. The method is not important, I think; in Russia, anything can be stolen. How is not so important; why is important. What I cannot imagine is the why. Why steal all that plutonium? Suppose I am already a high official in the KGB. Why do I begin this dangerous affair — and carry it on for two years, maybe more? What do I mean to do? Start my own world war? Destroy a nation? Take my personal revenge on the Western warmongers? What?” To Tarp, his bewilderment seemed real.

“Money?” Tarp said.

“What money?” Repin bellowed. “What money? KGB has all the money they could want already. Even when I was KGB, I was only commander, Southeast Asia Sector, what more money did I want?”

Tarp twisted a wire leader-connector around itself and snipped it off. “Freedom?”

“KGB upper echelon have power, my friend. When a man has power, what does he want with freedom?”

Tarp dropped a baited lure into the swirl astern and watched it swing into position behind the boat. “More power, then? Plutonium would give a lot of power.”

Repin stood up, leaned against the fighting chair. “Maybe.” He did not sound convinced. “Maybe, for more power, yes.” Tarp headed for the ladder. “I want a list of everybody at Dzerzhinsky Square who’s suspect and who could have brought it off. Ages, positions, personalities — everything.”

“You want to know more about them than CIA does?”

“You knew I’d be asking for it; don’t try to kid me, Repin. They wouldn’t hire you as a pimp unless they thought you’d find a whore who’d ask the right questions.”

“I was given ‘discretion.’”

“Good. Use it.”

Tarp pulled himself up to the bridge and checked the instruments. The other boat was still three miles east, keeping a parallel course; now, however, there was a third craft on a heading that would bring the two together.

“Company coming,” Tarp said.

“Shall I get shotgun?”

“I hope it’s not that kind of company.”

“Just keep fishing.”

“This is fishing? I am not fishing; I am sitting.”

Repin was in the fighting chair; in front of him, a big rod rode in the gimbaled socket. It had been an hour since the baits had gone into the water, and they had taken two small dolphin and had thrown them back.

Tarp swung himself partway down into the cabin where he could see the Weatherby in the cubbyhole to his right. He took the loaded clip from a drawer, slammed it in, and checked the safety. After a moment’s thought, he took two steps down and grabbed the shotgun and took it up to the flying bridge, stowing it there in a scupper with a plastic tarp over it.

“Just keep fishing,” he said when he came down to the deck again. “Let me talk.” He trained the old binoculars on a bank of haze and waited for the new boat to emerge from it. The white glow of its bow wave was the first sign, like ice floating on the tropical blue of the water. Then the mass of the hull appeared above it, gray, seeming unnaturally high because of a trick of the atmosphere.

“Coast Guard.”

“What will they do?”

“They usually don’t bother me.” He did not add, But they don’t usually make contact with another boat that’s been shadowing me all morning , either . “You got any ID?”

“Nothing.”

“Naturally. All right, your name is Rubin. You’re from Scarsdale, New York. This is your first day down here and you left your wallet at your motel, whose name you’ve forgotten. You chartered me for the day. Got it?”