George Bartram: Under the Freeze

Repin scowled. “Rubin is Jewish name?”

“Probably.”

“I do not like being a Jew.”

“Role-playing teaches tolerance, they say.”

The Coast Guard boat grew larger. He recognized it now. It had been seized on a drug raid a few years earlier and had made its way through the courts to the GSA and then to the Coast Guard. It was fast and fully adequate for ocean travel. It had been given a gun forward and two light machine guns aft and a tower of electronic gear.

When it came in close it throttled down, and Tarp, the binoculars still in his hands, waved. A sailor by the rail waved back languidly, and in the wheelhouse somebody wearing sunglasses lifted a hand partway to his shoulder.

“Name and home port?” a voice blasted over the speakers. Tarp picked up his bullhorn and said, “ Scipio , Boca Chica. It’s me, Tarp.”

“How’re you doin’, Tarp?”

“Good. Is it Lieutenant Martin?”

“Doing some fishing?”

“Charter. One customer.”

“Doing any good?”

“Baby dolphin.”

“You staying on this heading?”

“For a while.”

“What then?”

“Maybe put out a chum line and drift.”

The dark glasses looked at him. The lieutenant was holding a microphone in his right hand, like an apple he was ready to eat. “How long you staying out?”

“Maybe all night.”

Tarp’s eyes were raking the Coast Guard boat, looking for an explanation for this long conversation. There was a flicker of movement among some equipment cases near the rail, and he thought he had found his explanation — somebody with a camera.

“Gotta go, Tarp.”

“See you.”

“Good fishing!”

The big gray boat shuddered, swung away, then got up on its step and roared back toward the bank of mist that was moving slowly toward them. Tarp’s boat rocked a little in its wake.

“So?” Repin said.

“They’re on to you.”

“Is impossible.”

“You’ve got a leak already. They were waiting for you.”

“Is impossible. U.S. Coast Guard?”

“Probably fed through some double into CIA and then down here. The two yo-yos in the other boat are probably Agency. Your Maxudov probably figured the easiest way to get rid of you was tip you to the perfidious Yankees.”

“So what do we do?”

“We fish, just like I told the man. They’re not sure yet, or they wouldn’t be horsing around taking pictures. They’ll try to get a confirmation, then they’ll come in like gangbusters.”

They took three more fish, one of them good, and Tarp gutted it and iced it down and rebaited. Repin asked no more questions. They were drifting southwest now, with Cuba far to their left and Florida behind them to the right. Three miles back, almost in their track, the other boat kept pace. There were fishing boats spread around them for twenty miles now, but Tarp was certain that the one behind him was the same one, and the same boat that the Coast Guard had had a rendezvous with.

Tarp got food for them. He cut thick, dark bread into big chunks and sliced quarter-inch slabs from a crumbly, honey-colored cheese, and he set out Dijon mustard and bottles of bitter English ale. Repin grinned at him around a mouthful of the food; Tarp nodded and made a fist and held it up like a gesture of triumph. Repin took great joy in food, as he took great joy in women and in victory. He emptied one bottle of the ale by holding it an inch above his open lips and letting it splash down into his pouting old mouth, laughing as he gulped it down, delighted that some of it ran down his chin and darkened the despised knit shirt.

“Good!” He slapped his powerful belly. “ Good food, Tarp!”

“Better than I’d get in the gulag, ha?”

“Sometimes, you are not very funny, my friend.”

“No, sometimes I’m not.” Tarp sipped his ale. “But we need to remember who we are, you and I.”

Repin tapped the faded khaki fabric on Tarp’s left knee. “You have done your crimes in your time, my friend.” His accent seemed thicker, his voice hoarse, the words slow, as if the emotion that clogged them were as painful as an emotion like love or grief. “I have done my crimes. I share in the gulag and that other excrement, yes. But you have the villages in Viet Nam. You share in Chile. All that.” He sat back. His blue eyes looked like windows into Arctic sky, as if his old face had been pierced so that it was possible to look through into the ice of his curious morality. “We are not judges. We are policemen. We do what we have to do.”

The executioner’s creed . “We do what we choose to do.”

“So, I am worse than you because I choose the KGB?”

“I didn’t say you were worse. I said we had to remember who we are.”

“Ah. It is your guilt you want to remind me of. How very American!” He laughed.

“This is a stupid conversation.”

“I did not start it.”

“Want another beer?”

“No. Whiskey.”

Tarp brought up the Scotch and coffee and then he made Repin write down the names of the people who were suspected of being Maxudov. Repin had given up objecting and did it meekly enough; Tarp realized that he enjoyed doing it — giving away at last a fraction of all the secrets that had clogged his head for a lifetime. Repin whistled while he wrote, sipping the Laphroaig, licking crumbs of cheese from a finger. When the list was done, he sat back sleepily and smiled; Tarp went below and uncovered a computer terminal and a scrambler that were hidden behind a bulkhead. He typed:

ACCESS: FILTER BLACK SUN NINER SEVEN.

PREP: SEARCH MODE.

SEARCH: LIST.

ANDROPOV YURI/ BERANYI MIKHAIL/ TELYEGIN EUGEN/ STRISZ FEODOR/ FALOMIN JOSEF/ GALUSHA GEORGII/ MENSENYI KONSTANTIN/ END.

INSERT: DATA.

DATA:

He followed with a digest of what Repin had told him. The information would go to a program of his own design that was stored in a vast computer near Boston, in which he rented time; mostly the computer was used by large corporations and think tanks. He communicated with it by a scrambled telephone line, transmitted in this case from his boat to his shore phone by radio. The request for a search would go to his own banks as well as to those of three large computer services that were often as well informed as the government was and that were a good deal more discreet.

He looked at the terminal, glanced out the hatch at the drowsing Repin, and then typed:

SEARCH MODE.

SEARCH: NAME.

REPIN VLADIMIR PETROVICH AKA CODE NINOTCHKA.

DESIGNATE: CURRENT LOCATION AND MISSION.

The machine hardly paused. Letters spread across the screen from left to right:

REPIN VLADIMIR AKA CODE NINOTCHKA DEPARTED USSR AEROFLOT 1783 DEST HAVANA 3/27/ MISSION OVERSIGHT REGIONAL BALLET TROUPE ON OFFICIAL VISIT TO HAVANA FESTIVAL OF ANTINUCLEAR NATIONS FOR WORLD PEACE/ ARRIVED HAVANA 3/27 10:27 LOCAL/ RUMORED LOVER OF SYLVA TATANOVA ARTISTIC MANAGER KOMI ASSR BALLET/ REPIN RETIRED KGB 1977 BUT ATTENTION/ STILL RUMORED ACTIVE/ ATTENTION/ REPORTED TULA 3/21 AT KGB SAFE HOUSE/ ATTENTION/ ANDROPOV, YURI REPORTED PRESENT SAME LOCATION SAME DAY ALSO QUOTE UPPER ECHELON KGB LEADERSHIP END QUOTE DETAILS NOT GIVEN/ ATTENTION/ KGB REPORTED UNDERGOING MAJOR SHIFT OF UNKNOWN NATURE AS REFLECTED IN REPORTS LONDON, PARIS, WASHINGTON, TOKYO, TEL AVIV ETC/ QUERY IF DETAILS WANTED/ END.

Tarp told it, HOLD DETAILS.

The screen went blank.

Well , Repin checks out , he thought. But then he would ; if he was going to lie to me , he’d lay the groundwork .

He stared into the blue rectangle of the computer screen. It was temping to believe that it was the outer eye of a mind playful and intelligent that waited only for the right question. He knew better. It was only a blue screen. Unlike Repin’s eyes, it did not give insight to another world.