In the Company of Spies

by Stephen Barlay

  “No. I mean yes. I wanted to ask you about Helm. I mean, if you knew where he was.”

  “I don’t. And that’s exactly why I’m calling. I’ve just come back from London, where somebody mentioned that Rust might have been there.”

  “He was. And for all I know, he might still be there.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He called me. He said he must see me urgently in New York. I couldn’t go, but promised to send a couple of guys to meet him at Idlewild.”

  “Guys? A couple of guys?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “And?”

  “We arranged he’d meet them at the Hertz desk. He never turned up. That’s all.”

  “But your two guys were there.”

  “Do I have to repeat everything? Is this a bad line or something?”

  “No. Sorry.”

  “Who told you about Helm in London?”

  “Er, I think … ”

  “Don’t bullshit me, Jake, of course you remember.”

  “Yeah. Sir Charles, I think.”

  “Okay, I’ll put through a call to him. Call me back later if you like.”

  Schramm hung up and told Charles what Repson had said. “Will London tell him where you are?”

  “No, they’ll take a message so that I could ring him back. Which is good. Keeps us in touch with him. Rust may contact him again.”

  “He may. Or he may already be with his brother in Washington.”

  “You think Repson lied to you?”

  “I don’t know. He sounded odd. Tense. But it could be anything. Maybe it’s only that I called at the wrong moment. Perhaps he was just screwing the delectable Anna.”

  Sunday, September 30

  Brezhnev’s visit to Tito leads to frequent embraces and spate of speculation: Can Khrushchev contain internal opposition and rivals’ aspirations? McNamara announces: U.S. and Allied aircraft armed with nuclear weapons are on stand-by near East German frontier to guarantee Berlin access. Mississippi University riots: 400 U.S. Marshals and 3,000 Federal troops enforce registration of First Negro student; two men killed, 70 injured, 150 arrested. Two Soviet diplomats are made personae non grata: they were caught buying U.S. Naval documents from American sailor in roadside restaurant in Larchmont, N.Y.

  *

  THE PITCH AND VOLUME OF THE AUDIO BATTERING KEPT changing. It never gave Rust’s ears a chance to adjust and seek refuge in numbness. The first time the colic threatened to burst his guts, he fought it off. Then the spasmodic griping pain grew in intensity and frequency. Let me go to the john, he thought he said, but could not be sure. Then his mind escaped from the pain in a pipedream about glorious bursts of diarrhea. He was not even sure when the floodgates had broken down for the first time. His clothes absorbed some of the foul liquid, but he knew he lay in a growing pool. He sat up and shook his head violently, but the earphone strap held. He knew he shouldn’t have done that. He knew from experience that his punishment would be prompt and cruelly measured to cause maximum pain without permanent damage. And there it was: the volume increased and made him cry out like a baby. Baby! Baby! Toddlers taunting. Was it just hallucination? His urine flowed freely. The pool grew yet again. And then he threw up. The nausea was only the cause. The stench and helpless humiliation were the trigger. He was wailing, at least he thought he was. Vomit erupted again and again. The high pitch once more. That was the worst. “The art is to know when to admit defeat.” What was that? Who said that? It came from a distant and improbable past when somebody’s remark would have seemed like crazy speculation. In total exhaustion, he threw himself back, knocking his head hard against the floor. Sinking, sinking, fainting or falling asleep — it made no difference at last. His mouth popped open. “Schramm, Schramm said it. Cutting your losses could be your first step toward recovery. Good old Schramm … ramm … am … ammeter … Monsieur Ampère … Rust, you’re not paying attention. What have you done, Helm? You know you mustn’t do things like that — you must tell Mummy when you want to go out. And when the plops, and when the plops, and when the plops go marching out … ”

  Something burned his tongue. No, no. It’s ice. Melting. Flooding his throat. He had to fight off drowning. And that woke him up, returning him to a world of pain.

  He was convinced this had been going on for weeks. And then it would be too late to admit defeat. But he might be mistaken. The whole thing might have lasted no more than minutes. When it would be too soon to cut his losses. They would not believe him.

  Mann returned to the room to take over from George. He was tired and hated the sewer air of the room. “Shall we give it a try?”

  George shrugged his shoulders. Thirty hours of the “treatment” was not bad for starters, but it was no more than that. Except that time was pressing them.

  “Okay. Cut it off.”

  The sudden silence brought a new type of pain, but that was gone soon. Rust fell asleep. For a few seconds only. The fear of a restart woke him up. But sleep overcame fear and imagination. For a few seconds.

  “Okay, let’s start again.”

  *

  “You’re the most rotten interrogator I’ve ever had,” Schramm grumbled but did not object. For the past twenty-four hours, he and Charles had taken it in turns to question the other on his knowledge of Rust. By now they had established a likely behavior profile — what Rust would or would not do in various situations, due to background, character and experience.

  “Never mind, dear boy, let’s just start again. You were largely responsible for his original training.”

  “It was too short. He’d have long forgotten most of it.”

  “Not the original instructions. That’s when you’re the keenest. So you remember all the futile and the trivial, everything you’d call, no doubt, bullshitting.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Fifteen love, Jake.”

  “What?”

  “I mean I’m winning. You said what I guessed you would. And I still remember my first instructor, a right old Colonel Blimp, saying, ‘When you think you’re followed, you must start whistling, because men whistling in the street are not only ill-mannered louts but eminently carefree, too.’ Not the sort of stuff you’d expect me to memorize, right?”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “Thank you. But never mind. Let’s see what the great stuff you taught Rust was.”

  “I can’t remember.”

  “Try, Jake, try. You wouldn’t change your ways of thinking. The basic attitudes. Now suppose I’m a new recruit. And you want me to hide something. What would you suggest?”

  “I don’t know. Depends what you want to hide.”

  “A plastic bag, for instance.”

  “Give it to somebody you trust. Failing that, find an outsider. Somebody with no axe to grind.”

  “An air hostess?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “She might think you’re smuggling.”

  “Then a passenger. Find an accessible hiding place. Make use of obvious facilities.”

  “What facilities?” Charles pounced.

  “Anything natural in the circumstances.”

  Forty minutes later they stood at the airport Lost Property office, another forty minutes later they managed to convince the stickler in charge that Schramm must inspect the plastic bag “lost” on Rust’s flight. The unaddressed postcard to Hal made Schramm laugh. “Yeah, yeah, it’s the trick I taught him, all right.”

  One bar of soap, one blank notepad, one pair of sunglasses, souvenir matches, half a bottle of scotch, one multilingual dictionary, one razor, one pen. It had to be the razor, the pen, the matches or the dictionary.

  “If it’s the pen or the razor, we’ll know in five minutes. If it’s the matches, it won’t take long to find a microdot or two. But if it’s the dictionary, you can start swearing now,” concluded Charles. “Next summer we may still be at it.”

  They took the pen
and the razor apart. Neither yielded any clues. Schramm slipped a miniature bleeper into the razor. Anybody carrying it could be followed with a receiver from even a few blocks away. Two men were stationed to watch the office and a third was inside, helping at the counter. The expert Schramm called in could not hold out high hopes for quick results. Charles was right: the search might take ages. Their best hope was to wait and watch for Rust. He would have to come and claim his bag.

  *

  It hurt when George removed the tape, and Rust’s eyes took ages to adjust to the light even though the room was in semi-darkness. He moved his head. It caused thunder in his ears. He knew that the earphones were off, yet he kept feeling the pressure of the metal strap. He saw that Mann was saying something but he couldn’t figure out what. Painful whining and thudding floated around inside his skull, bouncing back and forth, hammering and grinding the bones. “Water,” he whispered. He would have never believed that he was shouting.

  George’s face came into focus. “Say please.” The mouth conveyed the words through exaggerated articulation.

  “Please!” He still thought he was whispering.

  George brought in some water and held it a couple of feet above Rust, who tried to sit up. It was an enormous effort. His entire body felt like jelly. The almost continuous diarrhea had drained away all his strength. He tried to push himself up by the back of his head. It was no good. It only made painful echoes worse. George reached down, grabbed his collar and pulled him up. He gaped like a fish, and George laughed as he poured the water too fast for him to swallow. Half the water just flowed down his face. The other half began to run through him by the time George let go of his collar, allowing him to fall back with a thump. The exercise made him dizzy. If only he could sleep a little. He closed his eyes. The whole world was in a mad swirl.

  The next time he saw George’s face he knew he had slept a little. Something like five minutes or two days. “Sit up,” a mouth seemed to say. Rust tried to obey. His hands felt free. He heaved, and almost fell off the bed to where, apparently, he had been moved. Together with his sense of time, his balance must have gone. He grew conscious of the stench. It was sickening. George propped him up with a couple of cushions but had to push him, eventually, into the corner, for Rust was unable to maintain a vertical position without help.

  Mann began to ask questions. Rust had to rely mostly on lip-reading. From time to time, the questions had to be written down for him. When he answered, he was incapable of regulating his voice.

  “You’re lying, of course,” said Mann. He did not seem angry. He had expected nothing else at this stage.

  Rust protested meekly. No, it was true, they had given him no proof, but it would come to him in Florida. And it was true that he had gone to Russia because of the magazine assignment. And … He stopped. If Ell was behind Mann, and if Ell was a traitor, he would probably contact Schramm and enlist his help. Because Schramm knew Rust well, because Schramm might guess how his former pupil’s mind worked, because Schramm might be able to figure out how and where some evidence could be hidden. In which case it would be a waste to suffer anymore trying to protect that damned plastic bag. Which would leave Rust with only two aims in his remaining brief life expectancy: to minimize Anna’s suffering and protect Yelena.

  Mann was looking at the Tom Craig passport. “Where did you get this?”

  “In London.”

  “Liar.”

  “All right, in Moscow.”

  “That’s better. What happened to the other one?”

  “Will you make a deal?” Rust asked.

  “What deal?”

  “I’ll tell you the answer and you let Mrs. Repson go. She knows nothing about all this.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  “You let her go first.”

  “Are you trying to dictate to me, Mr. Rust? Are you really?”

  “No.”

  “Then tell me. What happened to the Foster passport?” Mann knew the name. He might know a lot more. Was Yelena in trouble? “You see, I told you the truth the first time. I got the Craig passport in London. I swapped it for the Foster papers.”

  “Then why did you kill McGregor?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Somebody did.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “The question is why. You needed his passport to go to London?”

  “Yes, but I didn’t kill him.”

  “Tell me about that cabby.”

  “What cabby?”

  “The woman, of course.”

  “I never mentioned a woman.”

  “I know. I’m only trying to make it easier for you. There was that woman cabby, don’t you remember?”

  “Oh yes, you’re right. Some soccer fanatic.”

  “Which team?”

  “Locomotiv? Dynamo? I don’t know.”

  “Was she driving when you left Moscow?”

  “No.”

  “Who was?”

  “The man.”

  “What was his name?”

  “Florian.”

  “But she was there, too.”

  “No. I mean yes. I’m not sure.”

  “You think some music through earphones could refresh your memory?”

  “No. I remember now. She was there. Yes, she sat with me in the back.”

  “The back of what?”

  “The cab, of course. With all the football pictures.”

  “The cab with the pictures. Aha. And who gave the orders?”

  “He did.”

  “And she obeyed without questions?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Then why would he kill her?”

  “Kill her?”

  “That’s what I asked.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “It was quite a vicious murder.”

  “Can’t be.”

  “Why not? Was he in love with her?”

  “No.”

  “Perhaps he was her husband.”

  “Her husband was dead.”

  “Rust, you’re still lying to me.”

  George grinned and walked over to the suitcase. He slowly lifted out the lid of the Plexiglass box and stirred the contents with a stick. “Come on, Fidel, you may go for walkies. Or play with the gentleman, eh? Would you like that?”

  “No, George, Mr. Rust doesn’t want to play just now. Probably he’s hungry. And thirsty. Look after him, George, he’s our guest. And then perhaps a little music, Mr. Rust?” Even the sight of food was enough to make Rust’s stomach turn. But he decided he must eat. Force it down if necessary. And drink, drink, even if they put more of that dreadful laxative in it. While Mann helped him to drink, George reset the tape, then returned with the earphones.

  Monday, October 1

  The Russian ambassador reassures Kennedy that no offensive weapons have been sent to Cuba. “Berlin wall is sign of weakness,” says Chancellor Adenauer. Dean Rusk entertains Foreign Minister Gromyko on 28th floor of Waldorf; chicken Marie Antoinette serves friendship and detente; Laos is discussed, Cuba is not.

  *

  THE KREMLIN’S UNDERGROUND WAR ROOM SEEMED EERIE and deserted. Six generals, clustered around the large map of Cuba, tried to look not too hot or embarrassed under the strong spotlight as they answered the endless questions put to them by the single silhouette occupying one plush seat among rows and rows of empty armchairs.

  “No, Comrade Nikita Sergeyevich, nobody’s trying to sabotage the preparations.” “Yes, Comrade Nikita Sergeyevich, the guilty ones will be found and made to account for the dreadful delay.” “Yes, Comrade Nikita Sergeyevich, everything’s being done to restore momentum and salvage as much as possible of the original schedule.” “No, Comrade Nikita Sergeyevich, there’s no doubt anymore that by the middle of the month, we’ll have our Cuban-based nuclear-strike capability. The only question is whether Kennedy will be willing to use force or accept some sort of comprom
ise.”

  Khrushchev smiled but did not bother to answer. He knew what the Kennedy attitude would be. He knew for sure.

  *

  The way Rust’s hands and feet were tied allowed him to throw himself around when the noise or the colic hurt too much. In the evening he fell off the bed, which infuriated George, who had to move a filthy sheet of plastic and kick and push him onto it once again.

  Mann slept through the early part of the night. George amused himself poking with a stick at Fidel in the box. By midnight he began to feel the effect of his long stretch on duty. His eyelids grew heavy. Rust had been twitching and twisting quite a bit, but by now, he was almost worn out to the point where no painful noise or diarrhea could keep him awake all the time.

  “Are you resting, George? Are you feeling charitable toward him?” Mann had returned very quietly, and his sharp voice startled George.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “He seems to be sleeping.”

  George reached for the volume knob. “That’ll wake him.”

  Rust reacted violently.

  “Turn it off,” said Mann. “Remove the earphones, peel the tape off his eyes, untie his feet and get him back on the bed.”

  “It’ll make me puke.” George tore off the tape. This time it took Rust even longer to adjust to light and silence. Exhaustion and fear fought to control his body. Exhaustion kept winning. He fell asleep again and again.

  “Go on, George, puke,” said Mann. “It’ll keep you awake.”

  George’s angry prodding and rough handling woke up Rust for seconds. Mann placed the Plexiglas box on a low coffee table. Rust could see nothing inside it but bark and withered leaves. Mann put on the thick gardening gloves and reached into the box. He shouted, “George!” The tall man turned. “Catch!” George went white and ducked. Mann laughed heartily. It was a good joke. He had nothing in his gloved hands.

  Rust’s mouth was so parched that he had to struggle to open it and ask for water. George gave him some bourbon. Rust drank, coughed, felt renewed pain gripping his bowels, thought, What a waste of good bourbon, and fell asleep. When he woke up again, he was seated on the bed. He was naked from the waist down, his head was surrounded by cushions, his hands and feet were spread-eagled and tied with rope and wire to the bed. Castration! The fright forced his tormented eyes to scan the room in search of sharp instruments. He saw none. Mann came into his field of vision. “Can you hear me?” Mann asked. There was no reaction. He stepped closer and faced Rust. He articulated slowly and clearly. “Can you understand me?” Rust nodded.