George Bartram - Under the Freeze

“Don’t you ever sleep?” she said.

“Of course.”

“I felt you awake.”

“You did not; you were sleeping like a rock.”

“I was awake a lot.”

The rectangle of the window was a warm gray. He could make out the shape of the armoire, the black hole of the door.

“What are we going to do now?” she said.

“It’s very complicated.”

“Tell me about Moscow.”

“Not just now.” He stroked her arm. “Laforet is coming today. We’re all going to talk. Plan.”

“Repin, too?”

“Of course. You got along with Repin?”

“Oh, yes.” He could tell from her voice that she was smiling. “He makes up wonderful compliments, did you know that? He is a great flatterer. Of women, I mean.”

“Did he try to get you into bed?”

“No, he told me I was only for looking at. He is sleeping with Therese.”

“What about the old man — Therese’s stepfather?”

“The old man is gone. Repin broke his arm.” She raised herself so she could look at him in the dim light. “At least that is what Therese and I think. Repin was out in the field and the old man went after him with a pick — you know, for working in the earth? — and they went behind the hill, and then the old man came back without the pick, and his arm was broken. So the guards took him away. Now Therese sleeps in Repin’s room.”

Tarp thought about Therese, who seemed to have been handed from one man to the other like something won in a contest. “What does Therese say?”

“She says she is going back to the Soviet Union with Repin.”

Tarp’s mind begin to work forward toward what must be done next. He was surprised, then, when he heard her voice, for he had forgotten her. “I have been thinking,” she was saying. “Are you listening?”

“Of course.”

“I had time to think, these weeks. I love you, and part of me wants that to be my whole life. But… I cannot be that indulgent. Can I? I have a responsibility. I am healed now, strong again. I must work.”

“You want to go back to Cuba?”

She was silent for a while. “I don’t want to leave you. But I must do my work in the world. Does that sound stupid?”

“No. Laforet will send you back, I think. Or — you can work with us.”

“Us. Who is us? I cannot work against my conscience, against my beliefs. I believe in socialism.”

“I think you can work with us and still believe. Until this business is over. Then…” He kissed her shoulder.

“I know, I know.”

At six-thirty he heard Therese moving in the kitchen. He pulled on clothes and went down. She was building up the fire. Her face looked fuller, he thought. She pointed her chin toward a coffeepot. “That’s from last night. He likes his coffee fresh in the morning.”

“And his bread?” He touched the coffeepot, found it hot, reached for a cup.

“Of course.”

“We will have two visitors this morning.”

“From Paris?”

“Never mind from where. They will be here all day; one of them may spend the night. Make sure there’s enough food.”

“I was going to make cassoulet. For those types who guard us, too.” She drew herself up straight. She was wearing only a knee-length white slip; her feet were bare, big, heavily marked with calluses and broken nails. Her tiny breasts did not even show behind the fabric of the slip. She seemed confident now. “I can go to the village and buy more food if you give me money.”

“All right. One of the visitors is bringing wine.” He poured a second cup of coffee for Juana. “Are you happy with him?”

“He is good to me.” She threw a small chunk of wood into the range and dropped the lid with a clang, then stood quite straight again, hands on hips. “I want to go with him back to his country. Can you fix that?”

“You know where he’s from?”

“Of course.”

“It’s a hard country.”

“Wherever I have been, it’s a hard country.”

He picked up the two cups of coffee, looked at her. “I’ll see what I can do.”

At midmorning he heard the helicopter come in from the southeast and pass near the farmyard to land at the other house. Ten minutes later a Citroen sedan came swaying up the rutted road with one of the French security men at the wheel; behind it came a new Renault with several American Secret Service men. Tarp breathed deeply of the air, which was warmer and earthier than the air of Moscow; he took several steps forward and met them as they got out of the car.

“I brought the wine,” Laforet said, and he started to instruct the guard about the handling of the cases. He turned back to Tarp. “You don’t mind?”

“Not at all. You two are getting along, are you?”

“Just great, just great.” “Mr. Smith” clapped Tarp on the arm. “He plays a mean game of tennis. Beat the pants off me. I’ve got a return match at golf if we ever get on a course.” He went back and spoke to the Secret Service men, and their car backed down the road fifty yards and then they fanned out to surround the house.

Laforet came to Tarp and said in a low voice, “It looks all right. I think both sides will cooperate.”

“Good. The ship?”

“I think it’s arranged. He thinks it is.”

They settled in the central room of the tumbledown house — Laforet, the former president, Tarp, Repin, and Juana. Therese was sent to the other house and the guards waited outside, French and Americans ringing the house, each group with its own communications, distrustful.

Laforet said, with the authority that comes from chairing hundreds of committees, “Who will start?”

“I will,” Tarp said. The former president seemed to make no objection. “What language?” Tarp said.

They settled on Spanish.

“Does everybody know everybody?”

“I believe I know Mr. Smith from somewhere,” Repin said wickedly.

“Maybe we know some of the same people,” the former president said. He was not much amused.

“Professional acquaintances, no doubt,” Repin said.

Tarp cut them off. Without prologue, he told them what had happened in Moscow.

“Beranyi is still missing,” he said when he was done. “He hasn’t turned up in any reports reaching the intelligence services. Therefore, we still don’t know for sure who Maxudov is and we still don’t have the stolen plutonium. However, we do have some other things. All that Moscow cares about now is a clean case. But some other things have come up. They center on a man named Pope-Ginna. He’s English, resident in Argentina. He commanded a British ship in World War Two, and he’s connected with the Argentine purchase of a submarine from the Soviet Union, with Juaquin Schneider in Buenos Aires, and with the KGB as a go-between during the Falklands war.”

Repin interrupted. “What is the connection with Maxudov, please?”

“Maxudov stole plutonium in the Soviet Union and sent it out by submarine. He sent it somewhere for a reason. I don’t think we paid enough attention to the reason. It wasn’t a oneway arrangement, I believe; it was an exchange. A barter, a sale.”

“For money?” Repin said.

“No, not money. Something else.”

“What?”

“I don’t know yet. But Pope-Ginna, I think, was the means of payment. What we call a ‘bag man’ in American politics.”

“You think he took something into the Soviet Union every time he went there?”

“I’m not sure that it was every time. But there were four trips that came very soon after the first four thefts, and I think those were payoffs, yes.” He glanced at Laforet. “Jules is checking to see if he went to London on the same trips. We think there’s a London connection.”

“To do what?”