George Bartram - Under the Freeze

He asked for a Russian dictionary. His colloquial Russian was not up to the confusions of official jargon.

The agent named Penguin was mentioned in Mensenyi’s files. In each case the code name was blacked out by one of the censors, but he could tell from context who was meant. He was able to learn, for example, that he had been active in the Argentine acquisition of a Whiskey-class submarine in Murmansk, refitted for polar research. There were other references that showed a blacked-out agent in Murmansk and Moscow during the period when Maxudov had been most active. It was this information, he believed, that Mensenyi had held but not understood. Somehow, Beranyi must have puzzled it out — and then killed Mensenyi.

And now Beranyi is out there looking for Pope - Ginna . But he did not mention that idea in his report.

“I’d like a typist,” he told Strisz.

“Of course.” Strisz looked at him quizzically. “A pretty one? I mean — do you want a woman? You know what I mean. A woman ?”

Tarp thought of Juana. “No,” he said.

“We have some very sexy typists.”

“Save them for the leadership.”

He got a heavily censored transcript of the interrogations of the submarine captain who had been caught by the Swedes. Many of the pages had more black than white on them and were almost illegible. There was testimony of the crew, too. Tarp read it all and found only one statement of some interest, that of a sailor who had been on a previous mission with the same captain to the South Atlantic.

“No, there was nothing unusual. Maybe one thing. Tubes four and eight, that happened before, treating them different. With Captain (name deleted), yes. No, there was no radioactivity I ever heard about. We never check for that on the (deleted) boats. We were a night maneuver in Operation (deleted) and we blew air out of tubes four and eight. No, not in the (deleted) or in (deleted) waters. No, we were south of Station (deleted). Tubes four and eight. Yes, only air. Yes, that is a funny thing.”

Not in the what ? Not in the Baltic ? Not in Swedish waters ? Maybe south of the rendezvous station in the South Atlantic ?

“The committee believes Beranyi is in Sweden.”

“What committee is that?”

“The Committee on Inter-Departmental Unity.” Strisz looked sheepish. “Those of us who began all this, plus the general secretaires deputy, plus some people from Investigation.”

“Ah, the Committee for the Protection of Hens.”

“What?”

“The committee the foxes always form. Never mind. Why would Beranyi be in Sweden?”

“Because that is where we think the plutonium went.”

“Why?”

“Because that is where the submarine went aground.”

“And what would the Swedes do with plutonium?”

“Make bombs.”

“The Swedes have trouble even getting nuclear power plants past their people. The nuclear freeze is very strong in Sweden.”

“The committee believes that is a front.”

“And what are the Swedes going to do with the bombs? Attack Denmark?”

“Sell them. Israel, South Africa, Brazil.”

“Israel and South Africa can make their own bombs, and Brazil has made its own weapons-grade plutonium in a lab. Which Sweden could also do, if it chose. The money the Swedes might get for nuclear bombs is peanuts to what they can get for conventional industrial production. The idea is crazy.”

“Not if the leadership accepts it.” Strisz cleared his throat. “Anyway, there is a strong feeling against the Swedes just now. They are so smug, you know?”

In nine days he had the report done. He was much less outspoken about the Swedish theory than he had been to Strisz, and he left open the possibility that the plutonium had gone to Cuba or farther south. The typist packed up her metal table and her copy of an IBM electric and went away; the censors departed. For two days Tarp paced back and forth in the hot little apartment. He read Gogol, did exercises, cooked for himself from the lavish stock of foods that had been supplied to him. He ran twice a day.

Late on the second day the censor returned. With her was not the same KGB overseer, but a gray-haired man in a worn raincoat who was not even introduced.

“I have another file,” the woman said. “You must sign.”

“I’ve finished my report.”

“I was told that you were to see it. It was on a different requisition number, you know.”

The man watched him write his signature, and then the two of them waited. “We must take it back,” the woman said.

“Ah.” He opened the file. There were only two pieces of paper in it — one, in his own handwriting, the list of names he had asked to have checked against the German World War Two records; he had forgotten it. The other was a computer printout in a very open dot-matrix format.

FAHNER, GUSTAV. BIOCHEMIST, DIRECTOR, INSTITUTE FOR SCIENTIFIC ADVANCEMENT. SPECIALTY: GENETIC RESEARCH. PRINCIPAL AUTHOR OF THE NOTORIOUS ‘SUPER-GENE THEORY’ OF CAUCASIAN SUPERIORITY. PREWAR RESEARCH IN MENDELIAN DISTRIBUTION NOTEWORTHY. BELIEVED RESPONSIBLE FOR EXPERIMENTATION ON LIVING FETUSES, 1943-44, DRESDEN GYNECOLOGICAL HOSPITAL BUT RECORDS DESTROYED. KILLED, 1944, PRINZ VON HOMBURG.

There were other names, but nothing in the details about them seemed relevant. Separate from the list of those supplied to him by Mrs. Bentham was a single name that he had added himself.

BECKER, NAZDIA. b. MISKOLC, HUNGARY 1927. d. BUCHENWALD, 1943.

“Thank you,” he said to the woman. He handed her the file. “You must sign again.”

“Of course.”

“You made no notes?”

“As I said, my report is completed.”

She and the man went away. Tarp began pacing around the apartment again. How many Hungarian Nazdia Beckers could there be ? It isn’t a Hungarian name , so there can I have been many .

Late on the third day Strisz came to the apartment. He had been staying away, perhaps to get his own work done, perhaps to be discreetly out of the picture if the leadership rejected the report. He seemed elated.

“Your report has been accepted!”

“Good.” Tarp was cooking rice with canned mushrooms and fresh yogurt, and steamed cabbage with sesame seeds. “I’m going to eat. Would you join me?”

“It smells good!” Strisz threw his coat over a chair and rubbed his hands together. “It smells delicious, in fact. What is it?”

Tarp told him. Strisz stopped rubbing his hands together. “How can you eat like that? Where is the meat?”

“Meat is for capitalists.”

“Meat is for men!” Strisz picked at the rice, then began to eat it and the cabbage with some interest. “Not bad.” Tarp poured vodka for him and set out coarse black pepper. Strisz shook pepper into a glass and poured in vodka. “Very good, in fact.” He drank off the vodka.

“About the report,” Tarp said.

“Yes? Is there bread? Ah, there — yes, good! The report?”

“What did they say?”

“You live very well here, Tarp. Very well. You are comfortable, yes?”

“Comfortable, yes. It seems contradictory to have canned mushrooms when I know they’re not available in the stores.”

“That is a privilege. A perquisite. Because you are an honored guest.”

“Because I’m a temporary member of the upper class in this classless society, you mean. What about the report?”

Strisz swallowed and had to clear his throat. His eyes were shiny with tears because he had swallowed too much at one time. “How would you like to go on living in this apartment as an honored guest of the people?”

“Not much. Do I have a choice?”

“Of course!”