The Bearpit

by Brian Freemantle

  On the upstairs level Proctor let the obviously impressed Galina and Petr move away from them, taking Levin back into the master bedroom and pulling aside the heavy drapes of the bed. There was a red button, set in a white surround. The American said: ‘It’ll never be necessary because this is a CIA safe property and the protection here makes Fort Knox look like the gingerbread house. But it’s a panic button. They’re on every floor: I’ll show you where…’ As he talked Proctor went across to the mullioned windows, rapping the glass hard. ‘Not just double glazed,’ he said dismissively. ‘This stuff is resistant up to the impact of an Armalite…’ He turned away, smiling. ‘Again, quite unnecessary. We want you to know how safe you are, Yevgennie.’

  ‘It’s reassuring,’ said the Russian.

  ‘The entire property is walled: you wouldn’t have seen that last night when you came in, but I’ll show you around later,’ went on the FBI man. ‘The wall is electronically sensored. In addition there are ground sensors: three separate arrangements, in fact. Absolutely undetectable: look just like blades of grass, believe me. There’s also television and video monitoring: three separate guardhouses, manned twenty-four hours a day. The video is infra-red. Operates at night like it’s noon on a summer’s day.’

  ‘Seems very safe,’ said Levin, knowing it was expected.

  ‘Nothing’s been forgotten,’ Proctor pressed on. ‘There’ll be ground guards, in addition to those in the watch houses. And household staff: a cook and a maid. Our people, of course: completely vetted.’

  ‘It’s going to be difficult to adjust,’ said Levin.

  Proctor went to speak and then stopped and Levin wondered if the man intended a remark about the difficulties of adjustment. Instead the American said: ‘Here for reassurance, really. Just until you settle in.’

  ‘Where are we?’ demanded Levin.

  Proctor hesitated, smiling, then said: That’s not important, Yevgennie. What’s important is your recognizing how highly we regard you. How safe you are.’

  So they didn’t trust him. Levin supposed it was naive for him to have expected trust, this soon. He’d estimated four hours’ driving and he’d watched the speedometer and knew they had obeyed the speed limit. They’d crossed the East River, not the Hudson: he was sure of that although the curtains had been drawn in the rear section of the car and the glass separating them from the driver had been smoked. Upstate New York? Or further?

  ‘This isn’t your permanent home, of course…’ resumed Proctor.

  ‘… A debriefing place,’ interrupted Levin.

  ‘Here for as long as it takes,’ picked up the American. ‘A tutor for Petr, until he’s ready for enrolment at a school. Any help Galina wants: language lessons, things like that.’

  ‘It seems very comprehensive,’ said Levin.

  ‘You’re not the first,’ reminded Proctor. ‘We’ve had a lot of practice. When the debriefing’s over there’ll be another house. Wherever you choose. New identities. A pension to live on.’

  Levin was uncertain whether to risk the question because there was a risk in being premature. Deciding it fitted naturally into the conversation, he said: ‘Pensions are for people who retire.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Proctor at once.

  Careful, thought Levin. Intentionally vague, he said: ‘I don’t know: I’ve just never thought of stopping work. I could get a job, I suppose? I don’t know what, but a job. Would that be possible once I’d completely assimilated?’

  ‘I imagine so,’ said Proctor, intentionally vague himself. ‘I’d have to talk it through with people.’

  Time to retreat, Levin recognized. He was the one who now smiled. He said: ‘We’re getting a little ahead of ourselves, aren’t we. What about immediately?’

  ‘Move about a bit,’ said Proctor reassuringly. ‘Get to know the place. We’re meeting Billy Bowden in a while. He’ll be taking you through things.’

  ‘Debriefing?’ ‘

  ‘He’s a nice guy.’ Proctor’s spectacles came off and went immediately back on again, in his strange mannerism.

  ‘What about us? You and I?’

  ‘From time to time. I was your case officer, don’t forget.’

  ‘You made me a promise, David.’

  ‘I haven’t forgotten. I’ll get on to the State Department.’

  ‘I must have Natalia here with us,’ insisted Levin.

  ‘As far as we are concerned she can come tomorrow,’ insisted Proctor. ‘That’s a decision for your people.’

  ‘I don’t think I could stand it without her. Certainly Galina couldn’t.’

  ‘I’ll do everything I can,’ promised Proctor. ‘My word.’ The American paused and then said: ‘What about Petr? That was kind of a strange outburst last night.’

  ‘I could hardly have prepared him for what was to happen, could

  I?’

  ‘I guess he’ll settle down,’ agreed Proctor.

  ‘I hope so,’ said Levin sincerely. Not enough attention had been given to how Petr might react.

  ‘Let’s take in the grounds,’ suggested Proctor.

  Obediently Levin followed the other man from the house, gazing intently around the moment he was outside. The house was white clapboard, dominating a rise with lawns sweeping away on every side to what appeared to be a fringe of completely encircling trees. The treeline was so thick it was impossible to detect the electrified wall or the guard houses about which Proctor had spoken. Far away to the left – north, south, east or west? – began a ripple of thickly forested promontories but that’s all there were, trees. No landmarks; carefully or more likely cleverly chosen, he accepted.

  Proctor ignored the sweeping drive, heading off with head bent in concentration across the grass to the right of the main entrance. He stooped suddenly and said: ‘There!’

  Levin followed the outstretched hand and saw the sensor. It protruded about four inches from the ground, about a quarter of an inch wide and coloured green. It looked as if the outer covering were plastic. Positively identified it was clearly false but otherwise it merged perfectly into the long tufted grass.

  ‘You can hear the worms fart on these things,’ guaranteed Proctor. He began walking further towards the trees but a car appeared from where the driveway made a left-hand curve and the American stopped. He said: ‘Billy’s early.’

  They cut diagonally back towards the house, arriving at the same time as the car. Levin saw that it was very dirty, the front and rear bumpers dented from careless parking: there was a further dent, long ignored and rusting, in the rear wing. The driver seemed to unfold from behind the wheel, a towering, heavy man.

  ‘Hi, you guys,’ he said.

  ‘Billy Bowden,’ identified Proctor.

  ‘Good to see you, Yevgennie,’ said Bowden, thrusting out a hair-matted hand: gingerish blond, like the hair that straggled almost to the collar of his checked shirt, open at the neck, without a tie. There was no jacket, either, and the left cuff of his washed-out jeans was caught up against the edge of his half-calf cowboy boots. The metal-strapped watch was very heavy and thick and calibrated, with a number of smaller dials and buttons, the timepiece of an outdoor man: or maybe someone who spent a lot of time underwater swimming.

  Practised casual, like the car was practised neglect, Levin decided. He said: ‘Hello.’

  Bowden made an expansive gesture to include the house and the grounds and said: ‘Great place, eh?’

  ‘You’ve debriefed here before then?’ said Levin. Bowden came back to him almost sharply.

  ‘Got on fine with the guy, too,’ confirmed Bowden. ‘Just like you and I are going to get on fine.’

  The friendship appeared genuine – genuine enough, anyway – but Levin knew it wasn’t sincere, not even from Proctor with whom he’d dealt for so long. A defector from an intelligence organization was always considered a traitor by members of another intelligence organization.

  Bowden confidently led the way back into the house, further showing
he knew it well. Proctor allowed Levin to follow directly behind and the Russian got the impression that Bowden was the superior ranking officer. Levin had assumed his debriefer to be FBI but wondered fleetingly if Bowden were CIA. Unlikely, he thought; the Moscow legend had always been that the rivalry between the CIA and FBI matched that which existed between the KGB and the GRU. The Moscow account could always be wrong, of course. Bowden went directly to what had been described as the den, standing legs astride in front of the fireplace. It was laid with logs but unlighted. He said: ‘Dave explained things to you?’

  The FBI would have maintained a case file upon him and it was logical Bowden would know everything in it, Levin accepted. He said: ‘Yes.’

  Bowden grinned, as broadly as he appeared to do everything else. ‘No positive ground rules, Yevgennie. We’ll just kick things around. Chat.’

  Levin considered the lie to be a stupid one. An interrogation had to be structured: it was basic tradecraft. If they were to talk one to one then everything was being recorded. He glanced idly around the room, wondering where the apparatus was concealed. He said: ‘I’ll take my guidance from you.’

  ‘Everything at your speed,’ insisted the man. ‘You feel like stopping, we stop. OK?’

  ‘OK,’ said the Russian.

  ‘You feel comfortable enough with English? Or would you prefer Russian?’

  So Bowden was bilingual. Levin supposed that was logical, too, but he hadn’t expected it. He said: ‘English is fine.’

  ‘You want to, you can change your mind any time,’ offered the man.

  ‘I’ll remember.’

  ‘And nothing today,’ said Bowden. ‘This is just getting to know each other.’

  ‘I think I should get going,’ said Proctor.

  ‘Don’t forget Natalia!’ demanded Levin urgently.

  ‘Trust me, Yevgennie,’ said the man.

  ‘We all know the importance of getting the girl across,’ said Bowden.

  The debriefer seemed to know everything, thought Levin. To Proctor he said: ‘When will we meet again?’

  Proctor looked briefly at the other American and then said: ‘How about a month?’

  ‘Too long,’ said Levin at once.

  ‘Nothing is going to happen quickly,’ said Proctor, using his spectacles like worry beads. ‘It’s going to take a lot of negotiation.’

  Levin nodded, accepting the fact. ‘Not longer than a month, even if there’s nothing positive.’

  ‘Definitely a month,’ guaranteed Proctor.

  The man seemed embarrassed at the moment of departure, as if he were unsure how to break the contact. Abruptly he put out his hand and, surprised, Levin took it. It was something they had never done before: but every previous encounter had been clandestine when neither had wanted to appear aware of the other.

  ‘Everything is going to work out fine, Yevgennie. Just fine,’ said Proctor at the door, in familiar reassurance.

  ‘He’s right, you know,’ said Bowden after the man had gone.

  ‘I’m trying to think so,’ said Levin.

  ‘There’s got to be one or two formalities,’ announced Bowden.

  ‘Formalities?’

  ‘You know what the business is like, Yevgennie. Everyone claiming their little bit of turf… the technical people want in.’

  ‘How?’ asked Levin, guessing the answer.

  ‘An independent check,’ said the American. ‘A polygraph.’

  The lie detector: so they didn’t trust him. Levin said: ‘After all I’ve done!’

  ‘Not my idea,’ insisted Bowden. ‘Don’t you think I haven’t told them it’s a stupid waste of time?’

  No, thought Levin. His reaction would be another test, he realized. He said: ‘Don’t worry about it. Of course I’ll take a lie-detector test.’

  They didn’t eat that evening in the dining room, agreeing without any discussion to a shared discomfort at the surroundings: even the kitchen eating area seemed overwhelmingly lavish. The uneasiness was heightened by having people cook and wait upon them: twice Galina half rose, instinctively moving to clear away or fetch something, then hurriedly sat again. The second time she actually blushed. The food – steak for the main course – was good and there was wine but none of them ate or drank very much. There was hardly any conversation, either. Petr did not speak throughout, not until the very end of the meal.

  Then he said: ‘What about Natalia?’

  ‘We’re getting her out,’ said Levin.

  The exaggeration was obvious and the boy seized upon it. ‘Getting her out? How? When?’

  ‘It’s being arranged.’

  ‘Who by?’

  ‘The Americans.’

  ‘Rubbish!’ rejected Petr. ‘The Americans can’t arrange that. And you know it.’

  ‘Respect your father!’ intruded Galina, thoughtless with the words.

  Petr seized that, too. ‘What’s there to respect about him any more?’

  ‘She’ll be got out,’ insisted Levin doggedly.

  ‘When?’ Petr repeated.

  ‘As soon as possible.’

  ‘You’re pitiful!’ spat out the boy.

  ‘You’ll understand, one day,’ said Levin, flushing at the cliche.

  ‘What do you imagine I am going to do?’

  ‘There is going to be a tutor. School later, when you’ve completely adjusted,’ said Levin.

  ‘Adjusted?’

  ‘Settled in.’

  ‘You think I’m going to stay here!’

  ‘Of course you are.’

  ‘You’re the defector, not me,’ said Petr, leaning across the table, his face contorted by contempt. ‘I’m Russian. And I’m going to stay Russian. Always.’

  Having initiated it, Vasili Malik had been excluded from any of the inquiry planning, and its timing worked against what he’d hoped to achieve. The official reaction to the thwarted Kabul operation had been immediate outrage. Which resulted in the commission – headed by KGB chairman Victor Chebrikov himself – being empanelled in just over twenty-four hours and the sittings being convened within three days, not the weeks which Malik had expected. He did not, either, have any investigatory role in the presented evidence. Nor sufficient evidence – beyond suspicion – to demand in the time available that the interrogation of Panchenko be extended by other examiners to the rest of the arrest squad that had gone that night to Agayans’ apartment with the security chief.

  Victor Ivanovich Kazin was censured for lax and careless bureaucracy and Lev Konstantinovich Panchenko was officially criticized for lax and careless policing.

  Malik, more convinced after than before the inquiry that he had been an intended victim of the Kabul operation, considered the outcome a travesty.

  The further findings – effusive praise for himself, for interceding as he had, and an official commendation for Yuri, for his part in preventing a disaster – did nothing to balance Malik’s dismayed fury. The major conclusion, absolute condemnation of the medically proven unstable (and clearly maverick) Igor Fedorovich Agayans, only worsened that fury.

  ‘A commendation!’ said Yuri, tasting the sound of the word in the car taking them from the inquiry direct to the dacha in the Lenin Hills, not to the Kutuzovsky apartment. The image of the dacha – and a Zil like that in which they were travelling – had been one of the younger man’s first reactions standing back there, listening to the praise accorded to him. When there was no reply Yuri believed his father had failed to hear him so he said: ‘I thought the verdicts were very good.’

  ‘They were absurd!’

  Yuri frowned sideways across the luxury limousine. ‘You were officially praised!’

  ‘They survived!’ said Malik bitterly, gazing straight ahead as the vehicle climbed from the sprawl of the city. ‘Escaped, both of them.’ Malik stopped talking, deep inside himself. He said nothing for several moments and then faintly, almost in private conversation, said: ‘Kazin was always good at avoiding responsibility for what he did.’


  Yuri remained gazing curiously across the car. ‘It sounds as if you’ve known him for a long time?’

  Malik appeared to become aware of his son, answering the stare and smiling, without humour. ‘Once my life depended upon him,’ Malik said suddenly. He humped the misshapen shoulder and said: ‘I would have died if he hadn’t got me to the field hospital…’

  ‘… You were in Stalingrad together?’

  Malik’s empty smile broadened. ‘I was too heavy, too big, for him to carry. He found a bicycle, an abandoned German machine, and folded me over it. The front wheel was buckled and apparently I fell off twice. Actually broke a rib, apart from this. He was in a direct line of Nazi fire for a long time. As long as thirty minutes, I was told later. He was awarded a medal: Defender of the Nation.’

  ‘So what…?’ started Yuri but his father shook his head, stopping him.

  ‘The siege wasn’t absolute at that stage,’ remembered Malik, the recollections coming piecemeal. ‘I could not be moved, of course: I had no value anyway. But he could… it wasn’t the KGB then: then we were both in the Eastern division of Beria’s NKGB. Kazin was flown out because Moscow thought Stalingrad was going to be overrun and Beria wanted to salvage as much of his intelligence personnel as he could.’

  ‘I still don’t understand…’ tried Yuri again but once more his father stopped him.

  Malik said: ‘There was a time when I actually wished he hadn’t bothered: that Kazin had let me die.’

  Back at the First Chief Directorate headquarters the man about whom they were talking stood at the window of his office, gazing out over the bee-swarming weekend traffic, still hardly able to rationalize his escape. There was only one central thought in Kazin’s mind: he’d got away with it! Censure, certainly, which was a further minus in his official file. But still an incredible escape, considering how badly against him it could have gone: all it would have needed was just one piece of incriminating documentary evidence from Agayans’ secretariat – which there hadn’t been – and now he would be in Lefortovo prison instead of back here in his own warm, protected quarters. Not the easy chess game he’d imagined it to be, accepted Kazin honestly. Nor a personal disaster, either. Today had been a setback, that’s all: a setback from which he could recover. And would recover. He had a promise to fulfil. And not just to himself; to someone else, as well.