“Did you ever read the reports?”
“Always. I was instructed to withhold it if I deemed the material contrary to the interests of the Netherlands.”
“When did Sigmund, er, Pavel, first report he knew something about Anton Perov?”
Koos thought. “February tenth. It was part of the regular handoff.”
“So Amsterdam knows where Anton is,” said Victor.
“No. Pavel gave almost no information about your brother — just what the American already told you. He was very nervous. Pavel was the only one who knew the truth. When he died, I’m afraid you lost your only source of that information.”
“Besides Pavel’s original source,” said Victor.
Koos shrugged.
Victor thought a minute. “So the information about Anton — what little there was — was included in the February report.”
“Not ‘in,’” said Koos. “‘With.’ The regular reports were databases. Rather dull, I’m afraid. The bit about your brother was part of what we call an SAR, ‘Special Action Request.’ In it, Pavel asked for someone to make contact with him under the code name ‘Sigmund.’”
“Which would have signaled to him the matter was related to Anton Perov.”
“Right.”
“What is in a typical monthly report?”
“Information he had gathered that he wanted to get safely to the West,” said Koos. “Names of new prisoners, new treatment techniques, evidence against various doctors and nurses.”
“Were specific asylums mentioned?”
“It wouldn’t be much good without them. Pavel was a fanatic about details.”
They skirted a puddle and continued along the path.
“Where did he get his information?”
“Recently released inmates, mostly. He tracked them down and interviewed them, interrogated them was more like it.” Koos chuckled. “He was as bad as the KGB.”
“How many people did he interview in a month?”
“It varied. Sometimes none, other times more than a dozen.”
Victor thought about that. “It stands to reason then that Pavel learned about Anton during one of the interviews he conducted during January and early February,” said Victor.
Koos nodded. “Probably.”
“And this same interview, presumably, would have produced other facts — other facts that would have been included in the notebooks he gave you on February tenth.”
“Yes.”
“So Anton is probably in one of the asylums mentioned in those notebooks.”
“Unless the information about Anton was the only thing worth reporting from that interview.”
“I will have to risk that,” said Victor.
Koos thought a minute and then shook his head. “Nice try, but it won’t work. Even if you’re right, I could never give you the notebooks. They contain the names of sources to whom Pavel promised confidentiality.”
“I don’t need the notebooks,” said Victor. “I only need the list of asylums mentioned in them.”
Koos nodded. “I’ll pass the request to Amsterdam.”
At that moment, two men came around a corner toward them. Victor’s stomach sank. With a sick feeling, Victor realized that they had been talking too loudly — in English, no less. The two men came closer, seeming to pay no attention to Victor and Koos. They were dressed in muddy peasant coats. They looked like builders who had just left a construction site. The top of a vodka bottle poked out of one of their pockets. As they passed, Victor braced himself. He imagined their hands grabbing his arm and throwing him to the ground. Their knees would stab his spine as they slapped on the cuffs. Then the march off to Lubyanka, a show trial, then Siberia, or perhaps a psychiatric hospital . . .
The men passed. Their voices faded.
Victor thought of Oksana and Anton, who had lived with fear like that for three years. No wonder Oksana had been so upset the previous evening.
Koos went on, and for the first time his voice betrayed some impatience. “The next dip-pouch goes out on Thursday, so I can’t get back to you sooner than one week from today.”
“I understand. How shall I contact you?”
“You won’t. We’ll contact you. What’s your home phone number?”
Victor gave it to him, adding, “It’s probably bugged.”
“We’ll use the code name ‘Yuri Nikolayevich.’ Just pretend it’s a wrong number. Then meet me here — with your Fanta bottle — the next day at this time.”
Victor nodded.
Koos squinted at him. “You using a pay phone?”
“The first call was from my office, as I told you. This morning’s call was from a pay phone.”
“Near your flat?”
“Yes.”
Koos shook his head. “Never use the nearest pay phone to your house.”
Victor nodded. “There’s one other favor, I’d like to ask,” said Victor.
Koos looked at his watch. “What?”
“Katherine Sears, the American who carried Pavel’s message to me, has disappeared in Moscow.”
Koos’s eyes narrowed. “Yes, I know. I told them she would get Pavel killed, damn her.”
Victor stopped walking. “What did you say?”
“Before I gave her the codes, I warned — ”
“Yousent her to Moscow?” Victor said, astounded.
“Of course.” Koos looked puzzled. “Wait a minute . . . you didn’t know that?”
“No.”
“But then, how did you get my name?”
“From a KGB agent.”
Koos paled. “What!”
Victor told him about Tarasov.
“My god. Why didn’t you tell me? I just assumed Katherine had given you my code name before her disappearance. Do you know what this means? This man Tarasov must be holding her somewhere. He got my name from her under interrogation, and then gave it to you.”
A chill ran up Victor’s spine. It made sense.
“I wonder what else she told them.” Koos thought a moment. “This changes everything.”
“What do you mean?”
“It means I’ll be on the next plane to Amsterdam. My cover is blown.”
“But what about the list? You promised to help.”
“That’s impossible now.”
“But my brother! Katherine! You can’t just abandon them!”
Koos peered into the forest anxiously. “The KGB could be watching us now. I can’t understand how we can be together now if the KGB knows about me, unless . . .”
“Unless what?”
He glared at Victor. “Unless you’re cooperating with them.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“This meeting is over.”
“Please, you have to believe me . . .”
The Dutchman turned and walked away, stabbing his umbrella at the ground as he went. Victor watched him disappear around the bend, then found a bench a few steps away and sat down. He looked at the Fanta bottle in his hand and took a swig. The spring water was cool and tasted good.
The meeting had been a disaster. The Dutch now believed he was cooperating with the KGB. He couldn’t count on their help. Victor was on his own without a plan.
Victor finished drinking and inspected the empty bottle. He shook his head. The old-timers were wrong about the healing powers of the spring of St. George.
He felt terrible.
23
Three days later, Konstantin Tarasov’s plane set down at Yakutsk airport in Eastern Siberia. It was three-thirty in the afternoon, and the day was already moving toward dusk. Tarasov was irritable. Fifteen hours in overcrowded airplanes and filthy airport lounges had taken its toll on his nerves. Making matters worse, he had left his last pack of cigarettes on a table in a lounge in Novosibirsk — four long hours ago.
The plane taxied to a stop, and Tarasov jumped to his feet. He squeezed past slower-moving passengers and was the first to make it to the top of the ladder. The Arctic cold hi
t him like a splash of water. He blinked and his eyelashes clung together. His nose hairs froze, which caused him to sneeze. He pulled his coat around him and descended the stairs. A bus pulled up, its tires crunching the hard-packed snow like styrofoam. He scrambled aboard the bus.
A few minutes later, Tarasov was in the airport. A small man with brown skin, a flat face and Asian eyes came up to him.
“Comrade major Konstantin Tarasov?” the man asked.
“Give me a cigarette,” said Tarasov.
“I don’t smoke.”
“Jesus Christ.”
The man frowned. “You want to buy cigarettes? There’s a kiosk here in the airport.”
“Let’s go.”
He led Tarasov across the terminal, which had not a scrap of furniture, just a huge schedule board (broken) on one wall and a clock so high up he would have needed binoculars to read it. The place looked like an airplane hangar.
They reached a Plexiglas-enclosed kiosk. Tarasov knocked on the scratched glass and peered between the items against the window. Nobody was home.
“It seems to be closed,” said the man.
“Lord, what a dump,” Tarasov muttered.
“Excuse me?”
Tarasov pushed at the kiosk’s window, and it slid open a few inches. Watching his hand through the glass, he navigated his fingers toward a pack of Astras — cheap Moldavian tobacco, but if he didn’t have a cigarette soon he would be smoking the feathers in his parka. He snared the Astras and tore open the pack.
“Uh, comrade,” said his guide. “There’s no smoking in the airport terminal.”
Tarasov shook a cigarette from the pack, put it between his lips and lit it with a match. He inhaled deeply once, twice, three times.
“It’s been four hours since my last cigarette,” Tarasov said. “That’s the longest I’ve gone without a smoke since I was seven.”
“You started smoking when you were seven?”
Tarasov put the cigarette back in his mouth and studied the man for the first time. “What’s your name?”
“Serafat Isyuking,” he said. “Welcome to Yakutsk.”
“Serafat, huh. That a Yakut name?”
“Well, yes,” he replied. “I’m Yakut.” He cleared his throat. “We have a car waiting. Shall we go?”
They made their way to a black Volga and were soon driving across a landscape of ice and snow. Wooden shacks appeared from time to time like alien spacecraft on an uninhabitable planet. The structures sank unevenly into the permafrost, giving everything a run-down appearance. Yakutia was the epitome of what people imagine Siberia to be — snow, Arctic cold, tundra, frozen rivers, Eskimos, reindeer and prison camps. Yakutsk was the capital of this sprawling swatch of tundra the size of Western Europe. Tarasov had never been to Siberia, and he took it in with the romantic fascination of a city boy in the frontier.
He thought about the stub-nose man. It was hard to believe anything that happened here could touch the nerve-center of the Kremlin. Who was the stub-nose man? What did he have to do with Secretary Podolok?
“You got a call from Moscow this morning,” said Serafat. “Someone named Leo Yakunin. He wants you to call him.”
Tarasov nodded and lit another cigarette. The car reached the city limits of Yakutsk, and romantic Siberia was transformed abruptly into a Soviet slum — concrete apartment blocks, empty shops and a large central square dominated by two government buildings, one for the legislature, the other for the security organs. It was to the second one Tarasov expected he would be going, but the car sped past.
“Where are we going?”
“The hotel.”
“Why?”
“I thought you would want to check in, wash up, maybe have a rest — ”
“Do I stink?”
“No. But after your long flight — ”
“Who’s the head of the center?”
“Colonel Novikov.”
“Take me to him.”
Serafat shrugged, and he and the driver spoke for a minute in a strange language. The driver did a U-turn headed back to the central square.
“Was that Yakut you were speaking just now?” asked Tarasov.
“Yes.”
“Don’t speak it around me again, okay?”
“Yes, comrade.”
“And let’s stop for cigarettes,” said Tarasov. “These damn Astras are going to give me lung cancer.”
Colonel Alexei Novikov was a big bear of a Yakut with a round, ruddy face and hair the color of coal dust.
“Welcome to Yakutsk,” he growled and offered Tarasov a fat hand.
Tarasov sat in a chair in front of Novikov’s desk. Portraits of Lenin and Konstantin Chernenko hung on the wall behind him. Tarasov spotted an ashtray and promptly produced a pack of cigarettes. He offered a smoke to Novikov. Tarasov lit both men’s cigarettes.
Novikov inhaled and said, “Moscow warned us of your arrival, comrade. I trust you were received well at the airport.”
“Yes, thank you.”
“Your aide was mysterious about your purpose.”
“A precaution,” said Tarasov. “I’m here on an investigation.”
“Is that so? What kind of an investigation?”
“Unofficial.”
Novikov nodded. “I see.”
“I was hoping I could count on your cooperation,” said Tarasov. “I’m trying to find out about a man who escaped from exile last summer.”
Novikov leaned back in his chair. “Stub-nose man, right? Killed trying to cross into Norway?”
Tarasov’s mouth fell open. “How — ”
“I went through all this last month with the other guys.”
“What other guys?”
“Two boys from the Leningrad branch. Border troops. They were following up on the shooting. Perfectly routine.”
“Do you recall their names?”
“Can’t say that I do. I may have it written down somewhere. I can check it out for you.”
“What did they look like?”
“One guy was huge — I’m talking polar-bear huge, if you know what I mean — and you have to be pretty big to make that impression on me. The other one was more average. He had Mongol eyes. I’d say there was some Tatar blood in him.”
“What can you tell me about the stub-nose man?” asked Tarasov.
Novikov shrugged. “His name was Stepan Bragin. He came out of the camps, Leslog-7, I believe. It burned to the ground in 1978 and they distributed the inmates between Leslog-9 and Leslog-11. But there still wasn’t enough room, so they furloughed some of the inmates to exile in Oimyakon. It wasn’t like they could shoot them: Those days are behind us, thank god. Anyway, Bragin was one of the lucky ones.”
“Oimyakon?”
“It’s a village in the region of the same name. It’s about two hours’ flight east of here. Only way in is by helicopter, or jeep from Ust-Nera, that’s the regional capital for Oimyakon. It’s all in the file, if you want to see it.”
“I do.”
Novikov pushed a button on his desk and asked a woman at the other end to bring the file. “It will take a few minutes,” said Novikov.
They contemplated each other for a moment. Novikov said, “You have come a long way for a file, comrade.”
“Perhaps I have,” said Tarasov. “How did Stepan Bragin escape, anyway?”
“That’s a big mystery,” said Novikov. “Thereis no way out of Oimyakon, except by air. Jeep is theoretically possible, but only in the winter when the roads are frozen. Bragin disappeared in May, and besides, where would he have gotten a jeep? It’s not like he could just walk out of there.”
“Why not?”
Novikov laughed, a big, roaring, belly laugh.
“If you had ever been to Oimyakon, you wouldn’t ask that,” said Novikov.
They began to chat. Novikov said the KGB’s main job in Yakutia was combating corruption. The gold and diamond mines were so rich, he said, “they would have made a thief out of Lenin.” The
remark gave Tarasov a start. In Stalin’s time, it would have earned him atenner — ten years in the camps — if not a bullet in the back of the head.
“You know what bothers us about you Lubyanka folks,” said Novikov at one point. “You send people to our home as punishment.”
Tarasov laughed. No one in Moscow dared talk so irreverently. Novikov had the relaxed speech of someone who lived very far from the yoke of Moscow. Tarasov liked the big Yakut.
There was a knock on the door, and a young Yakut girl came in. She looked distressed. “I can’t find it.”
“It’s there,” said Novikov. “Look again.”
“I’ve already looked three times.”
“Blast,” said Novikov, shooting an embarrassed glance in Tarasov’s direction. “You’ve misfiled it. Go back and find it.”
“Don’t waste her time,” said Tarasov. “They took it.”
“Who took it?”
“The border troops — only they weren’t border troops. They pulled the same trick in Leningrad. That’s why I had to come here.”
“Bastards,” said Novikov. “They have some nerve . . .”
“Is there a copy of that file anywhere else?”
“There might be something in Ust-Nera,” said Novikov. “But the Leningrad agents went there too.”
“Can you check it out?”
“I’ll get right on it,” he said snatching up the phone.
“Call me at my hotel.”
Tarasov got back into the car with Serafat. They drove on, passing schools, a hospital, a gigantic statue of Lenin, a World War II monument and a large university. Everything was coated by a glimmering layer of ice like a fairy-tale village. On the streets, Tarasov saw some Russian nationals, but most of the people had the Eskimo faces of Yakuts. Despite the trappings of modern life, Yakutsk retained the spirit of a frontier town, though Tarasov was hard pressed to identify from where the impression sprung. Maybe it was the pipes that ran above ground, maybe it was the lack of signal lights, but most likely it was from the people themselves, who, like Novikov, radiated an openness, aglasnost. It suggested freedom.
Tarasov checked into the hotel and threw his bag onto the bed. He ordered a call to Moscow and was informed the call would be ready in an hour and a half. He lay down on the bed to think. The next thing he knew the phone was ringing. He answered, trying not to sound groggy. It was Novikov.
The Forbidden Zone Page 24