George Bartram - Under the Freeze

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STORE FOR FUTURE ACCESS MY CODE BLACK SUN: ALL REFS LAST THIRTY MONTHS COVERT MOVEMENT PLUTONIUM

DITTO SUBMARINES SWEDISH WATERS, USSR PROVENANCE

DITTO SUBMARINES USSR PROVENANCE NEW LOCATIONS

DITTO SUBMARINE MOVEMENTS CARIBBEAN AND SOUTH ATLANTIC, USSR PROVENANCE.

I’m fishing , he told himself. I’m asking the machine to do my thinking for me . With an impatient gesture he turned the machine off. Better to cut bait .

Repin was awake and staring at the water as if it, too, were an eye that might give up an answer if only he could probe beneath it.

“Ready for some action?” Tarp said.

“Good. Yes.”

“What happens if I get to Cuba?”

“Cuban navy patrol will meet us. I give you radio signal to transmit. Is all arranged. I go aboard, you return to Florida.”

“Just like that. Cute.”

The other boat was still on the radar. The Coast Guard vessel had joined it some hours earlier but had disappeared. Now, Tarp tapped the glass over the little green brightness. “They’re going to have to do something soon.”

“Because of me?”

“And me.” He tapped the glass again. “The Coast Guard made contact with them, probably to drop off somebody who went aboard earlier — one of the two guys on the boat, probably a photographer. Getting pictures of you. Very exciting for him. Probably had to use a fast shutter speed because his hands were shaking — never had a KGB major-general so close before.”

“What will they do?”

“Try to pick us up.”

“Bad business.”

“Probably.”

“When?”

“Before dark, if they have any sense.” He switched to a wider sweep, and a scattering of other bright spots appeared. Most of them were to the north, closer to Florida; three were ahead of them; two were to their left. Tarp tapped one of them. “I think that’s a friend of theirs. The other one’s a commercial fisherman, judging from the course. Out of one of the west Florida ports.” His finger came down the line of boats closer in to Florida. “Coast Guard is one of these. That’s a fast mother of a boat. Can be here right quick.”

He switched to a still wider sweep. The boats became almost indistinguishable stars in a green sky full of static. “Cruise liner,” Tarp muttered, pointing to a bright blip out in the Gulf. “Oil tankers.”

“Why do we not run to Cuba?”

“We probably wouldn’t make it, and if we did, all the wrong people would know about it, and even if it worked, I’d be busted when I came back.”

He studied the screen again. He switched it back to its smallest sweep. The other boat seemed a little closer now but a little to the southwest, as if it meant to come up on him on a curve. Tarp stared at the bright dot as if he were looking through it at the boat itself. “They’ve got a coded radar,” he said carefully. “So they show up on the Coast Guard and the other boat as a special signal — a friendly. We don’t.” He folded his arms and stared at the screen. “They can call in air cover if they need it. We’re about fifty miles from the Cuban coast. Very iffy if the Coast Guard try to follow us in. Aircraft’s a different matter. As for the other boats…”

The sun was starting down. There would be two hours until darkness.

Tarp touched the ignition and the big engine throbbed; water gurgled throatily at the stern.

“Well?” Repin said anxiously.

“Diversion.”

He put on enough speed to maintain headway and then began to turn toward Florida.

“I’ll bring in the fishing gear and then we’ll eat. We may need it.”

He pulled in the big rigs and threw the baits over and stowed the rods in their upright holsters, like knights’ lances at the ready, and then he went below. He put out salad, and he cooked steaks cut from the iced fish, and he opened a bottle of crisp Alsatian white from the refrigerator. There was more of the thick bread and, after it, mangoes and coffee and more whiskey.

“Well?” Repin said when they had eaten hurriedly.

“Right.”

Tarp shut the engine down. The sky was lavender above them and a deep, gun-metal blue straight ahead. On the western horizon, a single cloud hid the setting sun and was rimmed with copper by it; on each side, the sky spread out in brilliant orange. Tarp opened the engine hatch and scattered tools around it; he poured a can of oil over the stern and watched it spread and stain the hull. He took black grease from the engine and smeared it over his hands and forearms. “You’re still Mr. Rubin of Scarsdale. Lie down.”

“I am tired?”

“You just had a heart attack. Or maybe a sunstroke.”

He climbed up on the bridge and flipped the radio to the general channel. “This is Scipio out of Boca Chica calling any boat with medical personnel. I got a medical emergency here. Man of seventy, maybe more, he’s down on the deck unconscious. Could be his heart. I’ve tried mouth to mouth and pressure and I got a pulse, but not much. Position follows.” He guessed at his position. There was only one boat that he wanted to answer the call, anyway. Irresponsible , Tarp . Crying wolf .

“So lie down,” he called down to Repin.

The tough old Russian tossed his straw hat to the deck and grudgingly sat, then lay flat on the deck. It was getting dark, yet he was very clear to Tarp, and the colors of the knit shirt seemed remarkably intense. “You like theatricals?” Repin said.

“If they get you off my hands, yes.” He moved to the ladder but stayed where he could watch the radar. “If those are Agency people, they have several choices. They can come in now, or they can hold off and take a chance you really are sick and may die. If I’m a liar, they’ve done right to lie off; if I’m telling the truth, they’re SOL. If they’re from your side, they’ve got only one choice, and that’s to get here just as fast as they can, because somebody else is bound to pick up that call.”

Repin crossed his hands over his chest. “If it is CIA, I go to prison, da ?”

“They’ll probably trade you for some college professor got arrested for drunk driving in Tashkent. What are they going to get you on? You’re in international waters; you haven’t even got a gun. They’d put you up at one of their cushy places in suburban Virginia, then they’d send you home.”

Repin raised his head. “I do not want to be taken by your CIA!”

“Neither do I. They’re as big assholes as your KGB.” He watched the green dot on the screen, brighter now in the gathering darkness. “We’ll find out which they are real soon. They’re coming.”

He jumped down to the deck and bent over Repin, reaching forward to pull up the knit shirt as if he were skinning the old torso; Repin flinched and put his hands up. “I want you to look as if I’ve been going over you. Lie still and close your eyes.” The eyes closed, then opened. Tarp looked into them, seeing only hardness now. “Can you hurt a man from that position?” he said.

“I can kill a man from this position.”

“That won’t be necessary. Or even advisable. Just wait for me to make the move.”

Tarp bent over the fish box and took out the little .22, which he laid next to the engine hatch with an oily rag over it. When he straightened, the other boat was coming toward them fast.

“Play dead, Repin.”

He knelt over the Russian, who had made himself go limp and who was breathing in shallow gasps that sounded convincingly stricken. Repin had watched many men die, Tarp recalled; too, he had had major surgery the year before. He had probably rehearsed it all in his mind many times, like saying that if he had Telyegin’s cancer he would kill himself. More theatricals .