“Is that meant to sound disloyal?”
“The Party tells me that self-criticism is a virtue.” Repin braced his forearm between his thighs and leaned forward. “One man planned it all and one man did it all. It is a scheme so enormous that more than one man would never dare do it. A paradox, yes? But true. Trust Repin — I know. I know my Russia, I know my KGB. It is one man, giving out a little bribery here, a little patronage there, always to the small ones, who know so little that they cannot put things together. To one he says, ‘Fix this report so such and such a thing has never happened, and I promote you over your superior’; to another he says, ‘Change these figures so the different total is more to my liking, I see that your sister-in-law is not implicated when we prosecute that dissident she has been sleeping with.’ And each one he tells something good. ‘For the Party, Comrade,’ or ‘For the Central Committee, Comrade,’ or ‘So Dzerzhinsky Square will like your work, Comrade.’ And each one does it and is grateful and says, ‘Oh, thank you, Great One,’ as if they said, ‘Thank you for letting me kiss your bottom.’ That is how it was. I know. I know how these things are done. I know my Russia.”
“Do you know how to steal plutonium?”
Repin blew out the smoke. “I do not, but I could find out. The method is not important, I think; in Russia, anything can be stolen. How is not so important; why is important. What I cannot imagine is the why. Why steal all that plutonium? Suppose I am already a high official in the KGB. Why do I begin this dangerous affair — and carry it on for two years, maybe more? What do I mean to do? Start my own world war? Destroy a nation? Take my personal revenge on the Western warmongers? What?” To Tarp, his bewilderment seemed real.
“Money?” Tarp said.
“What money?” Repin bellowed. “What money? KGB has all the money they could want already. Even when I was KGB, I was only commander, Southeast Asia Sector, what more money did I want?”
Tarp twisted a wire leader-connector around itself and snipped it off. “Freedom?”
“KGB upper echelon have power, my friend. When a man has power, what does he want with freedom?”
Tarp dropped a baited lure into the swirl astern and watched it swing into position behind the boat. “More power, then? Plutonium would give a lot of power.”
Repin stood up, leaned against the fighting chair. “Maybe.” He did not sound convinced. “Maybe, for more power, yes.” Tarp headed for the ladder. “I want a list of everybody at Dzerzhinsky Square who’s suspect and who could have brought it off. Ages, positions, personalities — everything.”
“You want to know more about them than CIA does?”
“You knew I’d be asking for it; don’t try to kid me, Repin. They wouldn’t hire you as a pimp unless they thought you’d find a whore who’d ask the right questions.”
“I was given ‘discretion.’”
“Good. Use it.”
Tarp pulled himself up to the bridge and checked the instruments. The other boat was still three miles east, keeping a parallel course; now, however, there was a third craft on a heading that would bring the two together.
“Company coming,” Tarp said.
“Shall I get shotgun?”
“I hope it’s not that kind of company.”
Chapter 3
“Just keep fishing.”
“This is fishing? I am not fishing; I am sitting.”
Repin was in the fighting chair; in front of him, a big rod rode in the gimbaled socket. It had been an hour since the baits had gone into the water, and they had taken two small dolphin and had thrown them back.
Tarp swung himself partway down into the cabin where he could see the Weatherby in the cubbyhole to his right. He took the loaded clip from a drawer, slammed it in, and checked the safety. After a moment’s thought, he took two steps down and grabbed the shotgun and took it up to the flying bridge, stowing it there in a scupper with a plastic tarp over it.
“Just keep fishing,” he said when he came down to the deck again. “Let me talk.” He trained the old binoculars on a bank of haze and waited for the new boat to emerge from it. The white glow of its bow wave was the first sign, like ice floating on the tropical blue of the water. Then the mass of the hull appeared above it, gray, seeming unnaturally high because of a trick of the atmosphere.
“Coast Guard.”
“What will they do?”
“They usually don’t bother me.” He did not add, But they don’t usually make contact with another boat that’s been shadowing me all morning, either. “You got any ID?”
“Nothing.”
“Naturally. All right, your name is Rubin. You’re from Scarsdale, New York. This is your first day down here and you left your wallet at your motel, whose name you’ve forgotten. You chartered me for the day. Got it?”
Repin scowled. “Rubin is Jewish name?”
“Probably.”
“I do not like being a Jew.”
“Role-playing teaches tolerance, they say.”
The Coast Guard boat grew larger. He recognized it now. It had been seized on a drug raid a few years earlier and had made its way through the courts to the GSA and then to the Coast Guard. It was fast and fully adequate for ocean travel. It had been given a gun forward and two light machine guns aft and a tower of electronic gear.
When it came in close it throttled down, and Tarp, the binoculars still in his hands, waved. A sailor by the rail waved back languidly, and in the wheelhouse somebody wearing sunglasses lifted a hand partway to his shoulder.
“Name and home port?” a voice blasted over the speakers. Tarp picked up his bullhorn and said, “Scipio, Boca Chica. It’s me, Tarp.”
“How’re you doin’, Tarp?”
“Good. Is it Lieutenant Martin?”
“Doing some fishing?”
“Charter. One customer.”
“Doing any good?”
“Baby dolphin.”
“You staying on this heading?”
“For a while.”
“What then?”
“Maybe put out a chum line and drift.”
The dark glasses looked at him. The lieutenant was holding a microphone in his right hand, like an apple he was ready to eat. “How long you staying out?”
“Maybe all night.”
Tarp’s eyes were raking the Coast Guard boat, looking for an explanation for this long conversation. There was a flicker of movement among some equipment cases near the rail, and he thought he had found his explanation — somebody with a camera.
“Gotta go, Tarp.”
“See you.”
“Good fishing!”
The big gray boat shuddered, swung away, then got up on its step and roared back toward the bank of mist that was moving slowly toward them. Tarp’s boat rocked a little in its wake.
“So?” Repin said.
“They’re on to you.”
“Is impossible.”
“You’ve got a leak already. They were waiting for you.”
“Is impossible. U.S. Coast Guard?”
“Probably fed through some double into CIA and then down here. The two yo-yos in the other boat are probably Agency. Your Maxudov probably figured the easiest way to get rid of you was tip you to the perfidious Yankees.”
“So what do we do?”
“We fish, just like I told the man. They’re not sure yet, or they wouldn’t be horsing around taking pictures. They’ll try to get a confirmation, then they’ll come in like gangbusters.”
They took three more fish, one of them good, and Tarp gutted it and iced it down and rebaited. Repin asked no more questions. They were drifting southwest now, with Cuba far to their left and Florida behind them to the right. Three miles back, almost in their track, the other boat kept pace. There were fishing boats spread around them for twenty miles now, but Tarp was certain that the one behind him was the same one, and the same boat that the Coast Guard had had a rendezvous with.
Tarp got food for them. He cut thick, dark bread into b
ig chunks and sliced quarter-inch slabs from a crumbly, honey-colored cheese, and he set out Dijon mustard and bottles of bitter English ale. Repin grinned at him around a mouthful of the food; Tarp nodded and made a fist and held it up like a gesture of triumph. Repin took great joy in food, as he took great joy in women and in victory. He emptied one bottle of the ale by holding it an inch above his open lips and letting it splash down into his pouting old mouth, laughing as he gulped it down, delighted that some of it ran down his chin and darkened the despised knit shirt.
“Good!” He slapped his powerful belly. “Good food, Tarp!”
“Better than I’d get in the gulag, ha?”
“Sometimes, you are not very funny, my friend.”
“No, sometimes I’m not.” Tarp sipped his ale. “But we need to remember who we are, you and I.”
Repin tapped the faded khaki fabric on Tarp’s left knee. “You have done your crimes in your time, my friend.” His accent seemed thicker, his voice hoarse, the words slow, as if the emotion that clogged them were as painful as an emotion like love or grief. “I have done my crimes. I share in the gulag and that other excrement, yes. But you have the villages in Viet Nam. You share in Chile. All that.” He sat back. His blue eyes looked like windows into Arctic sky, as if his old face had been pierced so that it was possible to look through into the ice of his curious morality. “We are not judges. We are policemen. We do what we have to do.”
The executioner’s creed. “We do what we choose to do.”
“So, I am worse than you because I choose the KGB?”
“I didn’t say you were worse. I said we had to remember who we are.”
“Ah. It is your guilt you want to remind me of. How very American!” He laughed.
“This is a stupid conversation.”
“I did not start it.”
“Want another beer?”
“No. Whiskey.”
Tarp brought up the Scotch and coffee and then he made Repin write down the names of the people who were suspected of being Maxudov. Repin had given up objecting and did it meekly enough; Tarp realized that he enjoyed doing it — giving away at last a fraction of all the secrets that had clogged his head for a lifetime. Repin whistled while he wrote, sipping the Laphroaig, licking crumbs of cheese from a finger. When the list was done, he sat back sleepily and smiled; Tarp went below and uncovered a computer terminal and a scrambler that were hidden behind a bulkhead. He typed:
ACCESS: FILTER BLACK SUN NINER SEVEN.
PREP: SEARCH MODE.
SEARCH: LIST.
ANDROPOV YURI/ BERANYI MIKHAIL/ TELYEGIN EUGEN/ STRISZ FEODOR/ FALOMIN JOSEF/ GALUSHA GEORGII/ MENSENYI KONSTANTIN/ END.
INSERT: DATA.
DATA:
He followed with a digest of what Repin had told him. The information would go to a program of his own design that was stored in a vast computer near Boston, in which he rented time; mostly the computer was used by large corporations and think tanks. He communicated with it by a scrambled telephone line, transmitted in this case from his boat to his shore phone by radio. The request for a search would go to his own banks as well as to those of three large computer services that were often as well informed as the government was and that were a good deal more discreet.
He looked at the terminal, glanced out the hatch at the drowsing Repin, and then typed:
SEARCH MODE.
SEARCH: NAME.
REPIN VLADIMIR PETROVICH AKA CODE NINOTCHKA.
DESIGNATE: CURRENT LOCATION AND MISSION.
The machine hardly paused. Letters spread across the screen from left to right:
REPIN VLADIMIR AKA CODE NINOTCHKA DEPARTED USSR AEROFLOT 1783 DEST HAVANA 3/27/ MISSION OVERSIGHT REGIONAL BALLET TROUPE ON OFFICIAL VISIT TO HAVANA FESTIVAL OF ANTINUCLEAR NATIONS FOR WORLD PEACE/ ARRIVED HAVANA 3/27 10:27 LOCAL/ RUMORED LOVER OF SYLVA TATANOVA ARTISTIC MANAGER KOMI ASSR BALLET/ REPIN RETIRED KGB 1977 BUT ATTENTION/ STILL RUMORED ACTIVE/ ATTENTION/ REPORTED TULA 3/21 AT KGB SAFE HOUSE/ ATTENTION/ ANDROPOV, YURI REPORTED PRESENT SAME LOCATION SAME DAY ALSO QUOTE UPPER ECHELON KGB LEADERSHIP END QUOTE DETAILS NOT GIVEN/ ATTENTION/ KGB REPORTED UNDERGOING MAJOR SHIFT OF UNKNOWN NATURE AS REFLECTED IN REPORTS LONDON, PARIS, WASHINGTON, TOKYO, TEL AVIV ETC/ QUERY IF DETAILS WANTED/ END.
Tarp told it, HOLD DETAILS.
The screen went blank.
Well, Repin checks out, he thought. But then he would; if he was going to lie to me, he’d lay the groundwork.
He stared into the blue rectangle of the computer screen. It was temping to believe that it was the outer eye of a mind playful and intelligent that waited only for the right question. He knew better. It was only a blue screen. Unlike Repin’s eyes, it did not give insight to another world.
He typed:
SEARCH.
STORE FOR FUTURE ACCESS MY CODE BLACK SUN: ALL REFS LAST THIRTY MONTHS COVERT MOVEMENT PLUTONIUM
DITTO SUBMARINES SWEDISH WATERS, USSR PROVENANCE
DITTO SUBMARINES USSR PROVENANCE NEW LOCATIONS
DITTO SUBMARINE MOVEMENTS CARIBBEAN AND SOUTH ATLANTIC, USSR PROVENANCE.
I’m fishing, he told himself. I’m asking the machine to do my thinking for me. With an impatient gesture he turned the machine off. Better to cut bait.
Repin was awake and staring at the water as if it, too, were an eye that might give up an answer if only he could probe beneath it.
“Ready for some action?” Tarp said.
“Good. Yes.”
“What happens if I get to Cuba?”
“Cuban navy patrol will meet us. I give you radio signal to transmit. Is all arranged. I go aboard, you return to Florida.”
“Just like that. Cute.”
The other boat was still on the radar. The Coast Guard vessel had joined it some hours earlier but had disappeared. Now, Tarp tapped the glass over the little green brightness. “They’re going to have to do something soon.”
“Because of me?”
“And me.” He tapped the glass again. “The Coast Guard made contact with them, probably to drop off somebody who went aboard earlier — one of the two guys on the boat, probably a photographer. Getting pictures of you. Very exciting for him. Probably had to use a fast shutter speed because his hands were shaking — never had a KGB major-general so close before.”
“What will they do?”
“Try to pick us up.”
“Bad business.”
“Probably.”
“When?”
“Before dark, if they have any sense.” He switched to a wider sweep, and a scattering of other bright spots appeared. Most of them were to the north, closer to Florida; three were ahead of them; two were to their left. Tarp tapped one of them. “I think that’s a friend of theirs. The other one’s a commercial fisherman, judging from the course. Out of one of the west Florida ports.” His finger came down the line of boats closer in to Florida. “Coast Guard is one of these. That’s a fast mother of a boat. Can be here right quick.”
He switched to a still wider sweep. The boats became almost indistinguishable stars in a green sky full of static. “Cruise liner,” Tarp muttered, pointing to a bright blip out in the Gulf. “Oil tankers.”
“Why do we not run to Cuba?”
“We probably wouldn’t make it, and if we did, all the wrong people would know about it, and even if it worked, I’d be busted when I came back.”
He studied the screen again. He switched it back to its smallest sweep. The other boat seemed a little closer now but a little to the southwest, as if it meant to come up on him on a curve. Tarp stared at the bright dot as if he were looking through it at the boat itself. “They’ve got a coded radar,” he said carefully. “So they show up on the Coast Guard and the other boat as a special signal — a friendly. We don’t.” He folded his arms and stared at the screen. “They can call in air cover if they need it. We’re about fifty miles from the Cuban coast. Very iffy if the Coast Guard try to follow us in. Aircraft’s a different matter. As for the other boats …”
The sun was starting down. There would be two hours until darkness.
Tarp touched the ignition and the big engine throbbed; water gurgled throatily at the stern.
“Well?” Repin said anxiously.
“Diversion.”
He put on enough speed to maintain headway and then began to turn toward Florida.
“I’ll bring in the fishing gear and then we’ll eat. We may need it.”
He pulled in the big rigs and threw the baits over and stowed the rods in their upright holsters, like knights’ lances at the ready, and then he went below. He put out salad, and he cooked steaks cut from the iced fish, and he opened a bottle of crisp Alsatian white from the refrigerator. There was more of the thick bread and, after it, mangoes and coffee and more whiskey.
“Well?” Repin said when they had eaten hurriedly.
“Right.”
Tarp shut the engine down. The sky was lavender above them and a deep, gun-metal blue straight ahead. On the western horizon, a single cloud hid the setting sun and was rimmed with copper by it; on each side, the sky spread out in brilliant orange. Tarp opened the engine hatch and scattered tools around it; he poured a can of oil over the stern and watched it spread and stain the hull. He took black grease from the engine and smeared it over his hands and forearms. “You’re still Mr. Rubin of Scarsdale. Lie down.”
“I am tired?”
“You just had a heart attack. Or maybe a sunstroke.”
He climbed up on the bridge and flipped the radio to the general channel. “This is Scipio out of Boca Chica calling any boat with medical personnel. I got a medical emergency here. Man of seventy, maybe more, he’s down on the deck unconscious. Could be his heart. I’ve tried mouth to mouth and pressure and I got a pulse, but not much. Position follows.” He guessed at his position. There was only one boat that he wanted to answer the call, anyway. Irresponsible, Tarp. Crying wolf.
“So lie down,” he called down to Repin.
The tough old Russian tossed his straw hat to the deck and grudgingly sat, then lay flat on the deck. It was getting dark, yet he was very clear to Tarp, and the colors of the knit shirt seemed remarkably intense. “You like theatricals?” Repin said.
Under the Freeze Page 3