Under the Freeze

by George Bartram

  He went on at her for another forty-five minutes. It was more than enough time for the sanitation team to switch guns and clean her apartment of his traces, but he kept on because he hoped that she would tell him something useful. He even hoped — laughing inwardly at himself for the hope — that she would prove to be innocent of any connection with “Maxudov,” the submarine, or the plutonium.

  She sat limp in her chair. Her hair was lank; there were patches of sweat under her eyes and a sheen, like the result of fever, on her cheeks.

  “Have a cigarette,” Tarp said. He had said nothing for several minutes and they had both sat there very quietly. Now he could see she was cold, for goose bumps were forming on her arms.

  “I don’t really smoke,” she said, but she reached for the pack and took one. Her hands were shaking so violently that he had to light the match for her. He didn’t think she was frightened so much as she was reacting to her own exercise of will for the past two hours. She had been consistent. He wished they had not been to bed together, because his objectivity was affected, although whether for or against her he was not sure.

  “You would do better not to smoke at all,” he said.

  “May I walk around?”

  “Of course.”

  She got up. She held her right forearm across her belly and her left forearm vertically from her hip, the cigarette in that hand. She looked thinner, less full-breasted. There was a cot against the far wall and she stood looking at it. “What do you do now,” she said, “rape me?”

  He hesitated. “I suppose that has been done in this room.” He sounded like a pedant.

  “It would be such a good way to show what you think of love.” She had insisted throughout that she loved him. He believed that she believed she did, if only because such a belief was convenient to her. She blew out cigarette smoke and turned partly toward him. She was wearing a sleeveless top that was a little loose and that was far from new. She shivered.

  “You use the word love too easily,” he said. “I do not love you, Juana, no.” He thought of saying not yet but knew it would be insincere.

  She looked at him, shrugged, shivered. She dropped the cigarette on the floor and ground it with the ball of her flat shoe. “Say that I am infatuated with you, then.”

  “You are under great stress. It is understandable that you would think yourself infatuated.”

  “I know many men. None of them infatuate me.”

  “But you think I do.”

  “I know it.”

  “That is the result of stress.”

  “Why do you keep turning me off? I would think it would be a great sign of success, to have your victim infatuated with you.”

  “You are not my victim.”

  “Oh, yes! From the very first. I thought you were my victim. And all the time you were waiting to bring me here! I’m quite a fool, hey? Well, so what do you do? Turn me over to the DGI? Inform on me? Send me back to Moscow?”

  “Sit down, Juana.” He closed the notebook and laid the pen on top of it as if that part of the interrogation were over. She sat in the chair rather primly. Her shoulders were rounded forward. One brassiere strap showed beyond the edge of the sleeveless blouse.

  “When you first met me on the beach, you were suspicious of me. You thought I might be an American spy. Only a small suspicion, you say, so you arranged to meet me again. We went to the ballet, we danced, we went back to your apartment. You found my gun and my green card; then you thought I just might be a DGI agent who was trying to penetrate the anti-Castro cell of which you are a member for the KGB. So you checked the card and found it was not really mine, and then you thought again that I might be an American — except you had seen me bow to the troublemaker from Moscow. So here we are now, and now you know that I, too, am a troublemaker from Moscow who is trying to solve a problem inside the KGB. So you ask me what I am going to do with you. Why should I do anything with you? You have not betrayed the service. You have not behaved badly. In fact, I think you have done very well.”

  “Should I be grateful to you for that?”

  He stood up. “There is a traitor in the upper echelon of the service. We think he has corrupted part of the service here in Cuba. Now, if you found out that one of the people you work with had been corrupted, what would you do?”

  “I would need proof.”

  “If you had the proof.”

  “Have you got proof?”

  “That is not the point. This is hypothetical.”

  She managed to make herself look ugly. “Oh, well, hypothetically — if it were proven, I would go to Kepel, I suppose.”

  “Suppose Kepel could not be trusted.”

  “I would go over Kepel’s head.”

  “To whom?”

  “To …” She bit her lip. She dragged her teeth over her lower lip as if she were pulling fruit from a tough rind. “My God.”

  “An expression that has survived despite socialism. Yes, my God. You are far down in the levels of the service; you are insulated from Moscow by a bureaucracy that may be corrupt. You may yourself have been used by the corrupt ones without knowing it.”

  “Have I?”

  “This is only hypothetical.”

  “Well, what is real? I don’t like hypothetical; I like reality! What is real?”

  He stood with his hands on the back of his own chair, looking down at her. “What is real is that atomic materials have been stolen in the Soviet Union and sent to Cuba by submarine. Stolen — not sent because of any authorized plan. Stolen.”

  “Why?”

  “I wish I knew.”

  “My God! If the Americans ever found atomic weapons here they would bomb us off the face of the earth! They’re only waiting for the opportunity! Jesus God! What sort of lunatic would expose us to a danger like that?” She looked fiercely protective. “It isn’t Fidel.”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “It’s an American trick, that’s what it is. Have you looked into that? Are you sure this isn’t a CIA trick?”

  “That is a very interesting possibility. Yes, I intend to look into it, as a matter of fact. But — you see why I am in Cuba.”

  She hesitated. “If this is the truth, yes. Of course.”

  “You see why I have to work outside regular channels.”

  “If —” She put her face in her hands for a moment, then raised her head. Her eyes were wide. “It’s like being crazy! How do I know now what the truth is?”

  “Isn’t that always a problem?”

  “No!” She stood up. “No! That is the one thing I have always had — certainty. I trust the one above me and the one below me and … You know how it is. If you take that away from us …” Her nostrils widened. “Everything becomes hypothetical.”

  “I want you to work for me.”

  “I am forgiven, then?” She said it with a sneer.

  “I will try to get some authentication from Moscow, so you will feel a little less insane. It will mean your staying as you are, doing your usual work, but reporting to me through a direct line. I will give you codes, a point of contact. You will have two missions: to find out what you can about atomic materials here; and to test the service above and below you for corruption. Will you do it?”

  “I can love you?” She said that with a sneer, too.

  “I cannot order your feelings.”

  She moved away from the tables, hugging herself with her arms and protecting the bare upper arms with her long brown hands. She walked the length of the room and looked at the iron cot again and then came back, paused, and walked the two steps to him and rested her forehead on his shoulder, her arms still folded, as somebody who was too hot might have rested her forehead on a cool wall. “Come home with me,” she said. “I can’t. It’s too dangerous now.”

  “Where will you stay?”

  He dodged the question. She was right: it was like insanity, when nobody could be trusted. “I have a place.”

  “For how long?”


  “As long as I need.”

  “Let me come with you.”

  “No.”

  They kissed. It was a bleak sort of kiss.

  He took her to the door, where Repin’s KGB crony was waiting with a car to take her back.

  “When will I see you?” she said.

  “Tomorrow. I’ll tell you where and what time. I’ll use the name mariposa.”

  “A flower?” She laughed, for the First time. “My steel flower.”

  After she was gone, Repin came from an upper floor. “Well, how did it go?” he said in Russian.

  “I think it’s all right. She’ll need some verification. Maybe you can go through her father — find somebody he trusts and we trust and have him send her the word. Can you get messages back to Moscow?”

  “So far.”

  “Get on it, will you?”

  “And who would you like me to contact? Andropov?”

  “If he’s the only one who qualifies.”

  Repin was not amused. He went to an ugly credenza and took out a bottle and glasses. “She did not report you to her KGB officer here, at any rate. She took the green card to a friend at her local police station; we traced that an hour ago. The friend did the comparison for her as a favor — she had your thumbprint on a cigarette package — so that never went any further. Still, she was seen with you at the ballet, and if her anti-Castro friends are picked up for some reason, they can identify you from her apartment. So, I think she ought to report to her case officer that she met you and went out with you once and then lost sight of you. That way she is covered if something comes back.”

  “It means that they’ll identify me.”

  “Not for a while. But it is inevitable, yes.”

  “I suppose.” Tarp accepted a glass. “It makes me an instant target, unfortunately.”

  Chapter 10

  In the morning, Repin came to see him before breakfast. He was wearing a natty blazer and two-tone shoes, but he looked dyspeptic.

  “What’s the matter?” Tarp said as soon as he saw him.

  “Matter? What could be the matter?” He put the packet of identification papers on the table and Tarp picked them up. He had brought them from the Scipio and Repin had had a visa and an entry stamp put into the passport.

  “What’s the matter?” he said again as he examined them.

  “The ballet mistress snores. Nothing.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  Repin scowled. Then, after seconds of scowling, he put a hand into the side pocket of the blazer and took out a plastic bag. In it was a piece of paper that had been water-soaked and dried, and now it was thickened and crumpled. He put it on the table and Tarp could see faded writing:

  Doctor Bonano

  to

  Schneider, BA chem

  via

  ?

  “Well?”

  “You see? It is nothing. I showed it to you only because you pestered me.”

  “What is it?”

  Repin made a face as if he had smelled something bad. “My contact turned up dead.” He nodded at the paper. “In his pocket.”

  “Murdered?”

  “He was thirty-four; what do you think, he had a heart attack? In the water. Head crushed.” He put both hands into the blazer’s pockets, the thumbs jutting forward. He was wearing a scarf in the open collar of a white shirt and he looked like a stage Englishman. “They say he was playing with somebody’s wife. Maybe. But, you know, in this business …” He made a face again. “Still, it was very crudely done. Not Department Five. Amateur work. Not professional mokrie dela.”

  Tarp looked at the paper. “‘BA.’ Buenos Aires.”

  “I’m not a geographer.” Repin sounded like an elitist discussing a lower class.

  “Argentina is on the submarine’s route. Or at least it came close.” He waited for Repin to speak, but the old man was stubbornly looking away from him. “Since the Falklands mess, Argentina might be interested in atomic weapons.”

  “The plutonium thefts started before the Falklands war.” He sounded angry — old-man angry, petulant.

  “You can’t ignore this, you know.”

  Repin swiveled his head slowly to look at him. “What are the possibilities? One, the paper means nothing and my contact was killed by his lover’s husband — nothing means nothing. Two, the paper means something, but he was murdered by the husband — a coincidence too good to be believed; something means nothing. Three, the death is mokrie dela, but the assassin overlooked the piece of paper, which is unbelievable — something means nothing again. Four, the death is mokrie dela and the paper is a trap. Out of those four possibilities, only one suggests the paper is any use to us.” He shook his head. “One in four is bad mathematics.”

  “Five,” Tarp said, “the paper is genuine and he was murdered because he was your agent but not because of the paper and so they didn’t look for it. What do you think?”

  “I think nothing.” He looked directly at Tarp; his eyes were fierce, seemingly a darker blue than usual. “You know this work as well as I do. There are times when it is not good to think because it is too soon.”

  “But now we have to think.” Tarp touched the paper, and it spun on the corner of a fold. “They could have killed him and missed the paper. Oversights happen.”

  “But you cannot count on them.”

  “But killing a man so you can plant a message on him is extreme. Department Five is cautious, in my experience. Crazy, but cautious. It’s like the CIA and Castro; they had that insane idea to make his beard fall out, and they took months just talking about it. Crazy and cautious. No, if DGI or KGB killed your man, it was because he was a spy. But neither DGI nor KGB is in on the Maxudov business; the only ones who are are Maxudov’s own people. So if they did it, they probably did it quickly — reflexively. Defensively. And then, did they have time to think out what it meant, set up a trap, and plant the paper on him? How much time did they have, anyway? When did he die?”

  “Last night. About two in the morning.”

  “When did you see him alive?”

  “Me, before you came to Havana; one of my people, yesterday.”

  “So they had — a few hours. In a few hours, they made up a plan and carried it through? Maybe. Yes, it could be done. If there weren’t too many people involved. If they didn’t have to check back with Moscow.”

  Repin’s smile was thin and sour. He hated bureaucracy, even though he had ended up as a bureaucrat. “It isn’t like shooting the pope, you know,” he said heavily.

  “Well, you’ll admit at least that the message could be genuine.”

  “How did it get into the pocket?”

  “He was carrying it when he was killed, what else? Whoever killed him did it on impulse — got frightened, ran away. Or killed him in such a way that the body couldn’t be searched. Maybe he fell into the water from a height.”

  “You should write for the films.”

  “I’m thinking of possibilities.”

  “You are persuading yourself of a fantasy.”

  “Is the paper in his handwriting?”

  “We think not.”

  “How did he communicate with you?”

  “Code through a drop.”

  “This is not code.”

  “Obviously.”

  “Somebody passed him a paper with the writing already on it; he was killed before he had a chance to encode it.”

  Repin bounced twice on the balls of his feet. He was wearing white-and-tan shoes with lavishly fringed tongues that danced in the sunlight. “This was a good man. He would not have kept such a paper very long. Minutes. Seconds. He would read it, then destroy it.”

  “It was dark.”

  Repin nodded. “It was dark; he took the paper, put it in his pocket — he will carry it only until he reaches a light — but he is killed even before that, so very quick, within seconds —” He looked at Tarp.

  “Maybe the one who gave him the paper killed him.”

>   “Meaning that it is probably a trap. Now we are both writing films.” He sounded more cheerful, however. “I knew he had a source. He had been asking about plutonium and submarines. It was down around the docks. He sent a message two days ago he thought he would have something last night. You know what that says to me? I am such an idiot!” Repin struck himself on the side of the head and his straw hat fell off. He looked at it and then kicked it.

  “Well?”

  “He was waiting for somebody on a ship — what do you think? I am an idiot! And he was waiting because it was probably a ship that docked yesterday. Yah! My brain is turning to dust with age.”

  “What would you do, question every crewmember of every ship that docked? It could be a fisherman — there are thousands in Cuba. Or it could have been somebody on a plane, Repin.”

  “He was killed at the docks.”

  “So?”

  “Well.” Repin stuck out his lips in that characteristic expression of disgust. “Well, there he is, then, down near the docks in the dark. He meets the contact. The contact hands over the paper, my man hands over the money to pay for it. He turns away — ka!” Repin raised a hand, the fingers open as if he had just let the man’s life fall; his eyes followed it as it tumbled into the imagined water. “There is the body, the smashed head, the paper.” He folded his arms. “Maybe.”

  “So the message could be genuine.”

  “Could be. Not the likeliest possibility. Still …”

  “Well?”

  “I am very bothered by the matter of organization. In Moscow, we know we have Maxudov. A man of intelligence, power, passion. In Cuba, maybe we have half a dozen people Maxudov has corrupted. But do they kill for him? It is very, very difficult to get a man to kill for you. Unless he is entirely yours. And it is my feeling that Maxudov does not get very close to these people. He corrupts them a little, buys them off. But there is no belief here, no ideology, no passion. Let us say, for example, that I have decided to steal art works from the Hermitage. Fine. I bribe two guards; I bribe a trucker; I bribe some border guards. And so on. Right out of the Soviet Union to, let us say, a dealer in Bonn. Now, you find out about it. One of the people I have bribed realizes that you know. What is he going to do? Kill you to protect me? Of course not. He is going to cover his own backside with both hands and hope I fall down dead.”