George Bartram - Under the Freeze

“Yes.”

“Well…” The blubber lips quivered. “See here, you don’t seem to be a stupid man. Nor unsophisticated. Tell me the truth. Do you know who Maxudov is?”

Tarp removed the hand from his arm. “I may want to talk to you again in a few days.”

“Yes, but see here…” He pulled at Tarp’s sleeve. “This can’t be easy for you. I understand that. You have to forgive my outbursts; I’m a man of short temper. It comes of having principles. Innocent men are often like that. But see here… a man like you, what happens to you when this is over? I understand the foreign mentality. I mean, I know what ambition is in the West. In Moscow, a man of your stature would be wealthy. You deserve that — eh? Here you are, working in the highest, the very highest echelons of the service, who knows, maybe even the Presidium is consulting with you. And what will your reward be? You maybe ought to be giving some thought to your own future, do you follow me? After this is over, maybe?”

Tarp pushed the hand away roughly this time. “Not interested.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Not interested. You know what that means — Comrade.”

It had been a clumsy attempt at a bribe. Maybe it had been an intentionally clumsy one, so that later Mensenyi could deny that he had meant it. He would say that he had been laying a trap, and in fact he probably was. “Already above his proper level,” Andropov had said, and he had been right. Tarp thought of the stupid people all over the world who had risen too high in intelligence because of political shrewdness or luck or influence. They made it much more dangerous than it already was.

They walked back toward the cars, Mensenyi keeping a couple of yards’ distance between them. Still, when they were fifty feet from the road and at the bottom of a steep bank leading up to it, he came closer. “See here,” he said, “there’s no reason why you would say anything to implicate me.”

“No?”

“I’ve been cooperative. Let me make a gesture to prove how cooperative I am. I’ll tell you who Penguin is.” Tarp was a step or two up the bank and so was looking down at him. The broad, sweaty face was turned up in appeal. “It’s an Englishman. His name is Pope-Ginna. That’s classified.”

“I’ll make a note of it.”

Josef Falomin waited for him at the end of a long baroque gallery in a museum of second-rate paintings. The building looked like a minor palace that the Bolsheviks had overlooked; closed until after World War Two, it had been used to house some of the overflow from other museums as Moscow modernized itself. There was an elderly guard at the gallery entrance and, across an echoing and domed corridor, an Oriental group with an Intourist guide. Otherwise the building seemed as deserted as if its owners had just been grabbed and shot by the Reds.

A hard-faced young Mongol was standing next to Falomin. Falomin was in his sixties, big-chested, stolid, ruddy as if he ate too much and took long walks to make up for it. He had watched Tarp as he had come down the long gallery under half-naked Renaissance goddesses and leering satyrs, between overstuffed sofas and panels made gaudy with too much gilt. Falomin, his hands crossed in front of him, looked as immovable as a tank. When Tarp was close, the young man, who was standing in profile to Tarp, held out a hand toward him, palm up. “This is the American,” he said.

Falomin stood on ceremony . A formal introduction , no less . “I am Tarp.”

“This is Comrade Falomin.”

Tarp held out his hand, which was ignored.

“I will now leave you,” the young man said. His shoes clacked on the marble floor long after he had turned into the corridor.

“Would you like to sit?” Tarp said.

“No.”

“You know why I am here.”

“Of course. I have a file on you.”

Tarp waited. Falomin spoke with the flat voice of a man controlling an anger. It was a humiliation for him to go through this — above all for him, who ran the department that terrorized the rest of the KGB, the diplomatic corps, and every Soviet citizen who left the frontiers.

“You are the head of Special Service Two?”

“You know I am.”

“You were in London during World War Two?”

“Yes.”

“Would you tell me about it?”

“I was a file clerk in the military liaison office. I maintained certain connections. Those were very disorganized days.”

“You ran a network?”

“I was too young. I was a file clerk.”

“But you ran agents in London.”

“I had certain foreigners I kept contact with.”

“Who?”

“I am sure it is in my file. The foreign so-called freedom fighters who had taken refuge in London — the Poles, the Yugoslavs, the French.”

“Did you have contact with an Englishman named Pope-Ginna?”

“I had no contact with the English.” Tarp thought he had scored, however; for the first time there was an edge to Falomin’s voice.

“Did you know Pope-Ginna?”

“No.”

“But you had heard of him.”

“Perhaps. I have some recollection of the name.”

“In what connection?”

“A naval victory, I think. In a very cold place, I do remember that. Colder even than this tomb.” He looked at the gallery with distaste. “It amused me at the time. The English were astonished by stories of the ice. To a Russian it seemed commonplace.”

“I thought you had no contact with the English.”

“In the newspapers, I meant.”

“What you meant was, your English mistress was astonished.”

Falomin stared at him. He blinked. It was like seeing a rock blink, “it is in my file, I suppose,” he said slowly.

“You had a child in England, in fact.”

“It is in the file.”

“Have you ever seen her?”

“I have not left the Soviet Union since I returned in 1946.”

“Isn’t that odd, for a man who controls a worldwide department?”

“I don’t find it odd.”

Tarp was wearing a Russian overcoat, but he had no gloves. He had to keep his hands in the thick pockets, and even then his hands were cold. Outside, the sun was shining, but the museum was frigid. “You know what I am looking for,” he said.

“Naturally.”

“You are the perfect candidate for Maxudov, on paper. You have access to every embassy, every Soviet traveler. You have the organization to cover up a complex operation inside the Soviet Union.”

Falomin still looked like a rock. “What motive have I?” he asked in the same flat voice.

“I wish I knew.”

“Perhaps you would like to suggest some romance about my daughter in England. Or perhaps her mother — love, let us say. Is that what you want to suggest?”

“No.”

“No.” Falomin looked smug. “In fact, all that has been thoroughly checked. Yes? My old mistress has been dead for eleven years; my daughter married a professor and went to Australia in 1967. There is no romance. What is my motive, then?”

“Power.”

Falomin looked contemptuous. “Don’t talk about things you cannot possibly understand. It is a very American habit. You do not understand power. I respect you — I know your background, and I respect you — but I know that you are not a creature of the pack. You are a lone wolf. The creature alone does not understand power. Except his own power, and perhaps in that! envy you, for I have no chance at that. But real power is found only in the pack. Not alone. I am a wolf, too. We are all wolves here. When a wolf gets old or sick, the other wolves turn on him and eat him. Every wolf I eat increases my own power. Until one day I will be eaten. But do not tell me that I have made myself Maxudov in order to increase my power. Maxudov is outside the pack, like you.”