George Bartram - Under the Freeze

“Yes. Terrible row. Yes.”

“How did they settle it?”

“They settled it by His Holiness telling them what the position was to be, that’s how they settled it! He was a splendid leader, Pope-Ginna. Men liked him. I always liked him, as much as a rating can like an admiral. But he could be a holy terror, too. What we heard was that he’d called the navigation officers of every ship in his force for a conference — and indeed, we had ’em coming over in the breeches buoy, murderous thing to do in those seas — and a fellow who had been there taking notes said he took everybody’s dead reckoning estimate and compared them all and then told them what the position was, as coming from the flagship. They could like it or lump it — meaning they could file official protest to the flag log if they wanted. You can imagine how many takers they had. Actually, I believe there were hearings after we returned to Port Stanley, but the real row was over. His Holiness had his way, I believe — as was only right and proper, of course.”

“And did you have to go through the ice again after you sank the Homburg ?”

Gossens stared at him. His eyes were as round as his mouth. “Yes, as a matter of fact, we did. It was very peculiar.”

“As if you’d been in a lake of open water surrounded by the ice.”

“Yes. That’s just what it was like. But that’s fanciful.”

Tarp smiled and rose to go. “Well, writers are fanciful people. Thank you so much.”

Gossens had been delighted for the company, but now he was glad to see Tarp go, because he was tired. Age had come down to that paradox for him.

“Enjoy your tea, Mr. Rockefeller?” Barnwell said as he drove them away from the town.

“As a matter of fact, I did.”

“I bloody near froze my ass off. Never gave a thought to me, I suppose.”

“You could have gone to a pub.”

“I did go to a pub! Christ, you didn’t even notice I was gone! It’s lovely to be a negligible human being, believe me, just lovely! Christ, you’re a specimen.” He pounded the wheel. “How was the old poop?”

“As a matter of fact, he wanted to ask you in.”

“Yeah, see? See? There are some genuine human beings left in the world! Not that I ever meet them, naturally. Or work for any of them!” His eyes met Tarp’s in the rearview mirror. Tarp said nothing, making Barnwell’s mood even worse.

“Drop me at Gatwick,” he said as they came to the highway.

“Oh, very good, my lord.”

“And take the car back wherever you got it.”

“Oh, thank you, my lord!”

He flew out of Gatwick on a shuttle to Lille and, instead of going on to the farm, spent the night there. Deep fatigue had settled over him on the flight, and with it the depression that makes all things seem pointless. He wanted to believe that what he was doing was worthwhile, and so he sought sleep.

He picked up a car in Lille in the morning and drove down toward the coast with nothing in his belly but black coffee. He was no more hopeful than he had been the night before. He knew it was time to go to Moscow, and he felt as if he were holding nothing in his hands but strands like the slime of fish, which slipped through and broke and were gone.

He left the car at the gate and walked up the stony road. One of the security guards was standing by a copse of trees seventy yards away and waved languidly, but there was no other greeting. Tarp went to the kitchen and found fresh-baked bread and some of the cheese; he ate the bread and cheese standing by a window set up high in the kitchen wall. Therese came in and watched him, more as if he were some domesticated animal she had been set to watch than a human being. Without looking at her he said, “Has the other woman come?”

“The beautiful one?” she said without envy.

“I suppose.”

“Yes. She is upstairs.” Her canine eyes watched him as he finished the food and drank a cup of bitter coffee that she put down for him. He went by her and up the stairs, noticing that Repin’s room was empty and that the fourth room had belongings scattered all over it, clothes and medical instruments and stupid popular magazines, all the signs of the nurse’s occupation. Juana’s door was closed, and he knocked and then went in, finding her in the high, rather old hospital bed, with an IV bottle hanging in a rack beside her. The nurse was sitting in a chair with one of the mindless magazines. “Leave us,” Tarp said; she started to resist but he said it again in the same inflexible tone and she left them.

Tarp looked at Juana. Her left eye was covered with a bandage that should have looked rakish but that looked dangerous because it suggested that so much of her head was injured; her left arm was taped up against her lower ribs, and the long gash along the shoulder was heavily bandaged, with a tube coming from it to drain the worst of the wound. Her short-cropped punk-rock hairdo stood up above her bandage like a cockerel’s tail.

“I didn’t betray you,” she said quietly.

“I never thought you did.”

“Of course you did.” She didn’t open her mouth very far. He saw that she had lost a tooth in front. “Somebody betrayed me,” she murmured.

“Who?”

“Somebody who wanted to kill us. Don’t you think?” He sat down on the bed on her right side and held her hand. She did not respond much. “It was awful,” she said. “All those people.”

“You saved me,” he said. He was not sure it was true, but it was true enough. He breathed heavily. “Why did you come?”

“I love you.”

“You hardly know me.”

“I know.” She turned her face to the left; her right shoulder made an effort to shrug.

“Did you have a message for me?”

“Of course!” In her anger, she turned back to face him.

“What was it?”

She looked away again. “I am not really Cuban.”

“I know.”

“You do? Yes, of course. I forget things now. The doctor says that will pass. My father is Spanish. My mother is African. I grew up in Moscow. When I was sixteen, they said they wanted to send me to a special school; it would help my father, they said. He was in the camps then. For revisionism. I went to the school and became a technician in intelligence; then I was recruited for fieldwork. My father was home by then. They sent me to Havana, which Moscow does not trust very much.”

“I know.”

“I report to a man named Sandor.” She rolled her head back to look at him. “You are not KGB, are you?”

“No.”

“You lied to me. Lied and lied. For a long time I didn’t believe you. Then, in the safe house in Havana, I believed you. Now I don’t believe you.”

“I’m not KGB. I’m not anything. I’m working for the man you saw me bow to at the ballet. He is working for Andropov.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“No.”

She breathed in and out. “But I love you. I reported to a man named Sandor. He reports through channels to the Eleventh Department of the First Directorate — that is—”

“I know.”

“All right, you know. Kepel reports that way, too. That means that there are two channels reporting the same thing to Moscow, so there is a way of cross-checking. I was trying to find out about plutonium, as you asked me. Back when I believed you.” She stroked his hand with two fingers, then pulled them away. “I had sometimes a — relationship with a scientist at the academy.” She twisted her head so that she could look up at him. She searched his face for a response. “You’re a stone, aren’t you?” she said bitterly.

“What did you find out from your scientist?”

She waited, gave the one-shouldered shrug again. “A woman who ran errands for Sandor came to me and told me she knew something I ought to know. She said that she had been ordered from Moscow to help me with the plutonium investigation. I said I didn’t know what she meant. She said, ‘You know, your tall friend in the KGB.’ So I let her talk. I knew she was a fake. Or thought I did. She told me that two submarines had docked in Cuba and unloaded plutonium at the small base near Guantanamo.”