Deep Cover (23 page)

“You want me to soften him?”

“No. Let him sweat a while—leave him alone until I'm ready for him. It'll shake him up.”

“He ain't the only one that's shaken up.”

“I want you to comb the place to make sure he hasn't got a partner,” Belsky said, and returned to the patio.

He pulled the chair forward and sat down. The interruption had given them time to absorb the impact of what he had told them. They were in the first stages of digestion now. Winslow and his wife had slid their rattan chairs close together and, remarkably, they were holding hands. Adele Conrad watched Belsky with a curiously impassive face and he couldn't tell if she had really accepted it all and made peace with herself or was simply in a mild stage of shock. Major Conrad was nodding his head rhythmically as if he had said something to himself and was agreeing with it. Ramsey Douglass was staring down the plunge of Nicole's neckline where her unsupported breasts quivered when she turned to face Belsky.

He had reduced them initially by forcing them to submit to a degrading bodily search. Naked, his mouth and anus probed, a man lost some of his defiance. Belsky had rocked them with the blunt announcement of their mission and had made them feel smaller by refusing to divulge answers to their questions. Now they had had time to regain some of their balance but they were still unsettled and it was time to hit them hard so that there would be no question of their obedience henceforth. It was a simple problem of discipline: the cruelty which he now inflicted was of no emotional consequence to Belsky.

He removed the thick manila envelope from his pocket and placed the stack of postcard-size photos on the wicker table by his chair. He gave the group time to speculate about the photos while he spoke to them:

“When you came here you'd spent an exhaustive year learning the lessons of protective coloration—you were taught how to be Americans. But at the same time you were, and you are, Russians. You signed an oath in which you pledged secrecy and eternal obedience. You were advised that every year you spent outside the Soviet Union in KGB employ would count as two years toward your retirement and of course that means you are eligible for retirement now at any time when you return to the Soviet Union. You'll be eligible for all the benefits of consumer priorities, respected status, preferential housing selection.

“I mention all this simply to remind you that there are worse things than returning to the Soviet Union and the privileges that will accrue to you in recompense for the loyal service you have done Mother Russia.”

Ramsey Douglass spoke without bothering to pry his lips apart. “We're a little old for a recruiter's pep talk, don't you think?”

Belsky's face hardened. “What we require of each of you now is a total sense of loyal duty. There'll be no time for you to stop and debate whether what you are doing is right or wrong. What you must live by is a fundamental obedience.

“I'll remind you that Moscow keeps hostages on each of
you to discourage your defection. We can always imprison these hostages in the interests of national security. I suggest the possibility of seven years' coal mining on a penal squad in a
taiga
, or ten years in the Potma labor camp. But we also recognize that hostages are not always effective levers of persuasion. After twenty years we can't be certain all of you still hold your Russian families in such close regard that you'd do anything to avoid jeopardizing them. After all, you haven't seen or heard from these people for half your lifetimes. Douglass has a son he hasn't seen since the boy was eight months old—how much can he mean to you now, Douglass?”

“He's my son.” Douglass' expression was hot and unforgiving and again he spoke without moving his lips. “If you're suggesting I don't care about him—”

“I'm saying it's possible. You understand why I can't depend on your assurances.

“Perhaps some of you feel you don't need to be bound by any oath you signed half a lifetime ago. Perhaps you feel you're out of our reach. We understand that. We understand the superficial attractiveness of the decadent bourgeois life and we don't expect you to realize you may have become unwitting tools of a system in which men exploit other men and the workers have been conditioned to lick the boot that kicks them.

“You all know in a general sense that the penalty for deviationist crimes is severe. But we're not interested in penalizing the guilty. We're interested in making sure no one is tempted toward guilt. The only fish that get caught are the ones that have their mouths open. You people will keep your mouths shut, and I'm going to show you why.”

He pointed to Nick Conrad and beckoned with his finger and when Conrad dragged himself out of his chair Belsky handed him the packet of photographs. “Examine those closely if you will and pass them around.”

The blood drained from Conrad's face when he looked at the first picture; he backed toward his chair, moving like a mechanism. Adele took part of the stack from him and passed them out, and Belsky spoke abruptly—this time in Russian:

“The remains you are looking at are those of the members of a cell of Illegals who were seeded into Bonn in 1962. Three years ago they formed a secret compact and resolved to refuse activation. In the event of pressure they agreed to defect to the Allied authorities rather than submit to recall to Russia. They considered themselves safe since West Germany is the most anti-Communist and well-policed state in Europe. They counted on the efficiency of German security to protect them.

“KGB has a number of mobile disciplinary squads, one of which is commanded by a Mongolian known as Tircar whose work you see in these photographs. As you see most of them have been systematically dismembered beginning with the digital extremities. The punishment was inflicted gradually over a period of ten or twelve days—perhaps you can see the evidence of that in the profuse extent of the bleeding. If they had been killed first and then hacked up there wouldn't have been so much blood away from the remains—once the heart stops pumping the blood stops spurting. The order of events has been worked out by Tircar and his people. First the children of the Illegals are assembled within view of their parents. The female children are impaled with bottles which are then smashed. The male children's genitals are removed and stuffed into their mouths. Adolescent girls are raped with spiked dildos until they shriek for death. The parents are forced to watch this and when the children die Tircar turns his attentions upon the elders.”

He stood up and walked from place to place collecting the photographs. He put the pictures away without looking at them. “You find this inconceivable but I remind you that all acts which further history and socialism are moral acts. In Moscow we have great confidence in you; we're quite sure this kind of measure won't be required in your case. But if it proves necessary Tircar and his Mongolians can be brought into this city within forty-eight hours. I won't belabor it any further.”

Nicole said very dryly, “You ought to apologize to the Party for your negative thinking, Comrade.”

“I hope you're right,” he answered gravely; he was demonstrating the seriousness of his purposeful melodrama.

He turned to Douglass. “You're the cell leader. I don't need to know every step you take in carrying out your mission, but you'll have to inform me of all details which require the cooperation of people outside your own cell. You'll have to work out the rest of the details among yourselves and I don't need to remind you we haven't time for endless mental masturbation and debate. You know how to reach me. That's all for the moment—you'll leave by twos, at intervals.”

Gus Craig sat tensely with one shoulder raised. When Belsky entered the room Craig stirred, ready to bounce out of the chair, but Belsky's eyes jammed him back down in his seat.

Craig's upper jaw poked forward so that his mouth had a gopher appearance; his undershot chin receded to the skinny neck and made his Adam's apple look like a second chin. His eyes kept dancing from spot to spot as if to make a moving target that would be hard to hit. Belsky judged he had probably been hit hard and often.

“All right,” Belsky said. “Push him.”

Torrio pocketed his gun and went around behind the prisoner's chair and held him down by the arms while Hathaway struck him with a scientifically wielded blackjack. Hathaway worked with a nice precision on that exact spot at the point of the shoulder where the nerves run shallowly over the bone. Hathaway paralyzed Craig's main joints effortlessly, and Craig exhaled with a long slumping sag of disappointment and disillusion. Belsky heard him utter a monosyllabic curse. Torrio lifted him to his feet and Hathaway searched him brutally, jabbing with knees and elbows and the heels of his palms. Agony pulled at Craig's mouth; he thrust his jaw forward to bite at his upper lip in order to keep from crying out. Hathaway, imbecilically calm, grabbed the front of his shirt and pulled his face down onto the desk. Craig's teeth clicked; his jaw sagged; his eyes rolled up. Belsky could see him going under, losing focus; he made a signal and Hathaway stepped back; Craig slipped to the floor in a slow ungainly
pirouette and lay on his back, belly rising and falling with his breath.

Belsky stepped forward and stood looking down at Craig and when the eyes blinked and stayed open he said, “Who are you working for?”

“You ain't going to make me talk.”

“They always say that. You know you're going to talk, Craig. Don't make us crack you.”

“You bloodless bastard. Stick it up your ass.”

Torrio held Craig's hand out on the floor and Hathaway stepped on the fingers with methodical brutality. “I can break every bone in your hand. That what you want?”

Craig's eyes showed his distress. “No. Let me up.”

They picked him up and put him in the chair. Trembling violently, he sat hunched, the hurt hand pinched between his squeezed-together knees. His mouth worked.

“The name,” Hathaway said. “Who you're working for.”

“The CIA.”

Hathaway made an exasperated sound.

“That's the truth.”

Belsky said, “I rather doubt you'd recognize the truth if it kicked you in the teeth.”

Hathaway said, “Now you want to try again or do we put you back on the floor and step on that hand again?”

Craig rubbed his knuckles. His whole body was unsteady. Hathaway said, “Get it done or get off the pot, Craig.”

Belsky said, “He takes a mulish delight in prolonging this. If he had any courage at least he'd have the dignity to be willing to die without wasting anyone's time.”

Craig simpered. “You ain't going to kill anybody.”

Hathaway was indifferent. “Why not? It'd be just another funeral nobody'd go to.”

“It'll just be an entry in a file someplace,” Torrio said. “Where they make out the compensation check to your widow.”

“He's not married,” Hathaway said.

“Then he ain't got anybody at all to grieve for him.”

Belsky said, “Aleksandr Bakst. Forty-one years old, born in
the Tadzhik SSR. Recruited into KGB from the Polotsk petrochemical plant where you were a security guard. You finished training at Amergrad in 1955 and came here the same year.”

Hathaway said, “I knew him from back there but he's not in our cell and we're not supposed to recognize them out loud.”

“In this case it hardly matters since he won't leave this house alive,” Belsky said. “I suggest we walk him into the bathroom and see how well he breathes under water. Drown him in the toilet bowl but space it properly so that he goes up and down for a long time, choking, wanting air.”

There was always a weak point and he had found Craig's—water. Craig took it badly. He dragged his uninjured left hand down across his face and began to shake. His eyes became lacquered with horror and Belsky gave him ample time to construct a vivid picture before they walked Craig into the bathroom. Only then did Craig break the ugly silence, in a high-pitched voice that twanged. “What do I get out of it if I do tell you?”

“Of course we can't let you go. You see that.”

Craig swallowed. Belsky said, “If we have to dig for it you go into the toilet. If you turn the bag up and shake it out for us we'll make it fast and easy and you won't feel it.”

“I guess that just ain't good enough,” Craig said. Aimlessly his left hand stirred toward his shirt pocket and plucked out a pack of cigarettes. Hathaway batted the pack out of his hand and then gave him one of his own cigarettes.

Craig said resentfully, “My cigarettes ain't poisoned. I can't stand these menthol things.”

“Yeah,” Torrio said gravely. “They might give you cancer.” He cupped his fingers to examine his nails.

Belsky said, “You're a licensed private detective and you were hired to make a tape of our meeting. The people who set it up had to know about the meeting. I can think of only two men who knew about it and didn't attend. Therefore all I need to do is kill both of them to insure our safety—so you see we don't need your information vitally. It will only be corroboration and it might save one man's life.”

Hathaway was bouncing the heavy leather-covered blackjack in his open palm. Craig looked at that and at the lidded toilet bowl. Saliva ran out of the corner of his mouth and he said, “All right.”

Hathaway said, “That's more like it.”

“He called you Aleksandr Bakst,” Belsky said, “and he spoke the names of your parents by way of identifying himself. He said he had orders from Moscow and you had to tape these proceedings for him.”

Now the hate shone through Craig's fear. “If you already know the answers why push me around?”

“Because I want to know which one called you.”

“Maybe I didn't catch his name.”

“Put him in the toilet,” Belsky said and began to turn away.