George Bartram - Under the Freeze

“Maxudov is a loner?”

“If he is one of us, he left the pack or was driven from it. That is Maxudov.”

“That’s an interesting idea.”

Tarp asked questions about plutonium and about submarines. Falomin had a very wide general knowledge and he seemed quite willing to talk. He was either very confident or very daring. The questions quickly became routine. When Tarp stopped to think, Falomin said, “Why did you ask me about the English admiral?”

“That’s my business.”

“I have another recollection of the name. He was adviser to the Argentine government when we sold it a submarine.”

“That wouldn’t seem to fall under your responsibility.”

“Oh, I know many things that don’t fall under my official responsibility. Every wolf in the pack does.”

“What else do you know about Pope-Ginna?”

“I may have a report on him somewhere.”

“I’d like to see it.”

“Only if the order comes from the director.”

“Why tell me about it, then?”

“To show you that I am a wolf.” Falomin unclasped his hands, took Tarp’s right arm in a powerful grip, and started to walk him up the long gallery. “I am not Maxudov. I am insulted that they think I could be, but I put up with these things; it is part of life. However, I am telling you I am not Maxudov, and I will not be made to feel guilty because I keep a lot of information to myself. Now, your time is up. I told the general secretary how much time I would give you, and your time is up. Leave me alone.”

They stopped at the door. Tarp put out his hand again, and this time Falomin took it. “You were wrong about me,” Tarp said.

“I would be very surprised if I was.”

“I am not a wolf. In Alaska the Eskimos dip a knife in blood and freeze the knife, hilt down, in the ice. A wolf comes along and begins to lick the blood; he cuts his tongue on the knife, and then he licks up his own blood, because it is so cold that he does not know he has cut himself. Soon, he cannot stand. Other wolves come along and eat him. While they are eating, the Eskimos shoot the wolves.” He looked at Falomin, unsmiling. “I am not a lone wolf. I am a lone Eskimo.”

“And Maxudov is a very smart wolf. I think he knows all those tricks.”

Beranyi was the last on the list. Tarp expected him to be the toughest, although he wondered really what he had gotten from any of them. All would deny being Maxudov to their graves. He could hope to keep pressure on them all, perhaps, and so force the one to do something revealing or stupid.

“Your next interview will come for you at five,” the round-faced Guards man told him.

“Like the ghost of Christmas yet to come.”

“What is that?”

“Charles Dickens. You don’t read the Christmas Carol ?”

“Charles Dickens, of course. The Cricket on the Hearth . It is a classic production of the Art Theatre. I took my daughter to see it.”

“In the Christmas Carol , a man waits for visitors he doesn’t really want to see. They keep coming at stated times. They’re more or less ghosts.”

“Ah.”

“My visitors are not ghosts.”

“No.” He laughed.

The last ones would take him somewhere to meet Beranyi. Saving the best for last . He wondered if it had been Beranyi’s insistence, or if they had drawn straws, or if there was some protocol at work he knew nothing of.

When he heard a car Tarp got up and began to dress. The days were warmer, but when dark came it was cold again. He put on the heavy overcoat, a wool scarf. “I still need gloves,” he said.

The Guards man snapped his fingers. “I knew I forgot something! Tomorrow, Comrade.”

“Maybe I won’t need them.” Tarp went out and found two men in the yard behind the old house. One was Oriental, probably Mongol; he looked distrustfully at Tarp. The other man looked like an American stage cop — beefy, middle-aged, red as if from drink. He looked tough and capable, the kind it would be better to run from than fight; with a ten-yard lead you could wear him out in a block, but if he ever caught you he’d commit murder.

“We were going to knock,” the big one said.

“1 saved you the trouble. Let’s go.”

They looked him over, then studied his identification. They produced their own. They were identified as guards attached permanently to Department V. Nice people .

“Let’s go,” he said again.

They were using yet another dark sedan that they had pulled up under the trees. There was a driver in front, and the two guards got in on each side of him in the back. Tarp suspected Beranyi of having chosen them for their looks in order to shake him before the interview began.

They drove with that disdain for ordinary traffic laws that often marks policemen. It was dusk. Lights were on everywhere. There were deep pools of slush along the roads, and people stepped back as they roared along, trying to avoid the ice water that splashed shoulder high. They would be standing there, trying to wipe the water and the dirty ice from their clothes, muttering about bigshots and Party favoritism; would they have understood if they had known he was American? Being good Soviet citizens, they probably would have the sense not to try to understand.

It was only when they passed the Dzerzhinsky statue that Tarp understood they were headed for KGB headquarters itself. He was surprised. Beranyi was proving to be the only one audacious enough or secure enough to meet him on home ground. The others had felt a diffidence about being seen where, presumably, they were most themselves.

The car turned into the wide entrance from the square and drove along between two buildings, turned again and went through a small parking lot in which Tarp could see the white blurs of signs reserving each space. The driver flashed the lights and a door opened upward, exactly like a suburban American garage door. Beyond it was a tunnel through part of an older building, and, at the far end, a courtyard that looked black in the near darkness. The driver spun the wheel and brought the car to a stop in a reserved space next to a gloomy and ancient doorway.

Tarp had not seen it before, but he knew what it was by instinct: the old Lubyanka Prison.

Going right to the source .

The four of them, two in front, one in back with Tarp, walked through the doorway and along a brick corridor where the four sets of feet gave off noises that rang in a way to jangle the nerves. They stopped at a doorway above which a red bulb glowed; when one man knocked, a grill opened, somebody said something. The door opened and a green bulb went on.

The driver stayed behind. Tarp and the two men who had ridden in the back with him crossed a metal grating as, behind them, the heavy steel door thudded shut. There were metal doors on each side now, then a metal stairway that seemed to plunge down into an open well in the building. They directed him downward.

I’ve bought it , Tarp thought.

Beranyi was proving even more audacious than he had guessed. Beranyi was going to take control.

The metal stairway led to a concrete floor at the bottom of a large open area two stories high. Doors opened from it at each level. High up were lights in factory shades, but their light was inadequate. Any light would have been inadequate.

The Mongol had a key to one of the doors.

Inside was a room with a tile floor and white tiles running up the walls to head height. In the center of the room was a round drain with a pierced metal cover, and the floor sloped slightly to it from all four walls.

The mongol went in. He beckoned to Tarp.

Tarp started to speak. “I—”

The beefy one hit him from behind between the shoulders, knocking the breath out of him and sending him forward and down. He caught himself, but, clumsy in the heavy overcoat, he stumbled; another blow put him inside the tiled room. The Mongol swung his right hand, in which Tarp glimpsed something long and dark; it struck his head with a thud like the closing of a door. It was a leather sap, weighted with bird shot to deliver a crushing blow without breaking the skin.