George Bartram - Under the Freeze

“What about the report?”

“It was accepted. It was approved. Between you and me, if I could write reports like that, I’d have a much larger office than I have.” Strisz mopped up yogurt and mushroom juice with dark bread. “Telyegin says you ought to get the Korilenko medal.”

“What’s the Korilenko medal?”

“They just created it. For service to the State in extraordinary circumstances.”

“I don’t collect medals. I thought Telyegin was in the hospital.”

“He’s out again. He was at the committee today. He’s like that, up and down.”

“Are they going to let me go?”

Strisz chewed the bread. He made a humming sound several times. “Mm. Mmm. Mmm.” He poured more vodka. “Andropov likes you,” he said.

“ Are they going to let me go ?”

“Well.” Strisz tossed down the vodka and then sat back, arms folded. “You have two choices. One, stay in Moscow, you will get the medal, this apartment, any job you want that doesn’t offend security. We would assist in making your personal life very pleasant — bring to Moscow the Cuban woman you met in Havana, for example — a boat and a beach house in summer, and so on. Or, two — you can leave in four hours on the Aeroflot to Berlin. From there, you would be on your own.”

Tarp looked at him very unpleasantly. “What about the other hundred and twenty-five thousand in gold?”

“As the plutonium has not been found, and Beranyi is still missing…” Strisz looked embarrassed. “The committee did not feel that, um, another payment was justified.”

“Until I find Beranyi and the plutonium?”

“No. I am very sorry, Tarp. Personally, I am humiliated. The case is closed. Whether you stay in Moscow or not.”

“They want to bury it.”

“Yes.”

Tarp’s face became ugly. “What are the rules if I go?”

“I do not understand.”

“When do I become a target?”

Strisz touched a fleck of mushroom with a finger. He lifted the finger to his mouth and licked it. “I do not know.” “Who’s taking over Department Five from Beranyi?”

Strisz’s mouth turned down as if he were going to cry. “Falomin.”

“Falomin!” Tarp shot to his feet. “They put a former suspect in charge of the death squad! Do you know how long I’ll last out there? I won’t get out of the East Berlin terminal!” He was shouting. Strisz looked as if he had been slapped. “ Mokrie dela !” Tarp cried. “It’s so wet you could swim in it!”

He reached the window in two strides and stood there staring down like a statue of one of the crazier saints staring down from a pedestal at the dark street three floors below. His face was contorted with anger, and on the sill his fists beat slowly. He heard Strisz push back his chair and cross the room to him. Strisz put a hand on his shoulder. “Stay in Moscow,” he said softly. He sounded sad, but his was not the sadness of a man who felt that his country had betrayed a friend; he was a loyal Communist, a tough administrator of an oppressive bureau, a pragmatist. His sadness came from a perception of friendship threatened. “Stay in Moscow. Tomorrow, the ceremony will be in a private reception room of the Kremlin. Take your medal. There will be two of you. It will be a great honor. These things never work out perfectly; only children think they will. You’re a man of the world. Life can be good here — it can ; Americans mock us, but Russia is a wonderful land! Join us. You can be just the same as if you were wealthy in the West.”

“It isn’t the same.” Tarp exhaled heavily and steam formed on a windowpane. “I have a place in Maine. Spring is coming.”

“Every man loves the ground he first got dirty on, eh?” Strisz patted Tarp’s shoulder. “There is a joke about that, but I won’t tell it. Ah, well. I knew you wouldn’t, you know. I’m sorry.” They looked at each other in the glass of the window, but it was so dark that the meeting of eyes was uncertain. “I will miss you.”

Tarp went on looking at the street. There were two men leaning on a car down there. If he went out, they would follow him. It would always be like that if he stayed. “Who else is getting the medal?” he said idly, trying to lower the temperature of the conversation.

Strisz chuckled. “The Penguin. Remember? He’s in your report.”

“I’d think he’d be contaminated from having worked with Mensenyi.”

“Well… there is that, yes. After he gets the medal, he’s going into the country for the weekend with some of Falomin’s people.”

It would always be like that, too. Weekend interrogations because you had the bad luck to get into the files of a loser. At another level, Tarp was thinking, Pope - Ginna’s in Moscow . What does that mean ?

“I want to see Andropov.” He had let his voice heat up again. It sounded imperious.

“That’s impossible.”

“Before I make this decision, I want to see Andropov.”

“But you can’t.” Strisz was truly shocked. “Nobody does,” he said lamely.

“One of the British spies who got busted last year testified that he’d had dinner with Andropov. It was a great honor, he said. I’m entitled to a great honor. Ten minutes is all I need.”

Strisz sagged. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“No. Not good enough.”

Strisz became a little angry at that himself.

“You’re a good man, Strisz,” Tarp said. “I like you. I think you’re my friend. But you’ve given up. That’s why you won’t go any higher in the service. It’s your sense of humor — you have too much good sense to be really ruthless. I don’t. I’m angry now and I’m making a demand. You must get me to see Andropov ! If you don’t, I will withdraw my report and I’ll write another that will show that Beranyi is not Maxudov. And you know what a mess that will make.”

Strisz unfolded his arms and wiped his face with a pocket handkerchief. “You are going to ruin everything,” he said bitterly.

“What is ‘everything’? It’s a fiction. Yes, I can ruin the fiction.” Tarp lowered his voice. “ You know we don’t have the truth yet. You know that Maxudov may still be in Moscow.”

“Andropov will be very angry.”

“I’ll take that chance.”

Strisz picked up his overcoat. He put it on slowly, as if he were an old man. He buttoned it with care and then picked up his hat. Only then did he look again at Tarp, and, shaking his head, he left the apartment.

There is an antechamber off the Great Hall of the People that is used by those going into the hall from the dignitaries’ end. In it are armchairs and a coatroom and, often, a bar. Beyond the antechamber is a very small room paneled in Circassian walnut and furnished in impeccable modern furniture from the factory at Kem, where Finnish craftsmen who were on the wrong side of the boundary when the Karelian A.S.S.R. was created make Scandinavian furniture for the new Socialist aristocracy. This room is used by the general secretary, as a certain room in St. Peter’s is used by the pope, for private rest before an important appearance.

It was in this room that Tarp waited. “The secretary-general will have four minutes only,” an intense, spectacled young man had said. He had seemed anguished by those four minutes, as if they had been cut out of his own flesh instead of Andropov’s appointment schedule. “You must wait here and not leave this room! You must be ready to speak instantly when he asks you! Do you understand?” Tarp had said yes and the young man had gone away, looking even less satisfied with the arrangement than when he had come in. Later, security men had examined both the room and Tarp. Later still, the door opened suddenly and Andropov’s tall figure filled the doorway. He glanced at Tarp, spoke to somebody outside too low to be heard, and came in. The door closed behind him as if he were a wizard who could control such things with spells.