Prisoners of Tomorrow (20 page)

“You don’t really believe all that, do you?” Sargent said incredulously. From their conversations, McCain had come to suspect that he was connected with Western intelligence, too.

“Stirlitz has become legendary among the Russians,” Smovak said. “A lot of them accept him as real, without any question.”

“Yes, and everything else that it said, by association,” Sargent replied.

“How do you know it wasn’t so?” Smovak challenged. “The Russians get their brand of bullshit. You get your own bullshit. How do you know which is right. How do know any of it is?”

“When the Moscow Film Studio can make a movie that doesn’t have to be passed by Party censors before you can see it, then come and talk about it,” Sargent said. He upended the chair he was carrying and turned toward the stairway leading to the upper level. The others continued walking to the door of B-3 and entered the billet to a frenzied accompaniment of red flashes and beeps. In the mess area behind them, a deeper note sounded from a klaxon to signal five minutes to go before in-billets—the time for the mess area to be cleared and everyone inside. Lights-out would be one hour later. There was little of the roll-calling that had characterized earlier prison environments. Counting and checking that people were in the right places was performed automatically by remote computers monitoring the electronic bracelets that everyone wore.

Inside the billet, Koh, propped upright at the end of his bunk with an open book, watched silently as the moviegoers trooped in. Rashazzi and Haber were taking turns to scribble on symbol-packed papers littering the front table. “Now we need a way of relating
v
-prime to theta, and eliminating
x
-bar,” Rashazzi was saying.

“Use the expression for the work integral,” Haber suggested, rummaging. “Where was it? . . . Yes, here.”

“Why don’t you two learn a language that other people can understand?” Smovak grumbled as he passed behind them.

“Perhaps we like it better if they can’t,” Haber said pointedly. Smovak raised his eyebrows and moved on.

Mungabo climbed up onto his bunk above McCain’s and clasped his hands behind his head as he lay back to stare at the ceiling. “There’s never any ass in them Russian movies,” he complained. “Nobody cares about all that political shit, and some of the action was okay . . . but there’s never any ass.” Luchenko moved past the bunk, heading toward the far end of the billet, with Maiskevik and Nolan close behind. “Never any ass,” Mungabo repeated in a louder voice for his benefit.

“Imperialist decadence,” Luchenko tossed back. “That’s all they have to offer.”

“I’ll take it, I’ll take it,” Mungabo murmured, eyeing his pinups.

McCain grinned to himself as he folded his jacket and stowed it in the flat drawer beneath his bunk. Yevgenni Andreyov, who was following, stopped by the end of their bunk. Andreyov was probably around sixty, with patches of white hair on either side of a balding dome, and a white beard, but twinkling gray eyes that could have belonged to somebody thirty years younger. McCain always found him genial, and trusted him more than he did the others at the far end of the billet.

“They brought it upon themselves, you know—the Germans,” Andreyov said. “In 1917 they sent Lenin back so that he would take Russia out of the war. But the state that Lenin created was the one that finally destroyed Germany. That’s irony for you.”

“You seem to know a lot about all that,” McCain commented.

“Yes, well, my father was there, you know—with Konev’s army in 1945.”

Scanlon came in just as McCain turned to head for the washrooms at the far end of the billet. He was carrying a string bag containing grapefruits, which he deposited on his bunk. McCain indicated them with a questioning motion of his head. “A fella who has a friend who works in one of the ag zones,” Scanlon said. “I got them during the movie. It’s legal. You can get your bonus in kind instead of in points if there’s a surplus.”

“I haven’t seen one of those since I left the States. How much?”

“A point . . .” Scanlon caught the look on McCain’s face, “for two.”

“Capitalist!” McCain snorted.

“Sure, a man has to live.”

McCain picked up the bag containing his toilet gear and began walking through to the far end of the billet. At the middle table of the next section, Smovak and Vorghas were sitting down to a card game with Charlie Chan, the Amurskayan whose name nobody else could pronounce. Chan was slenderly built and studious-looking, with olive skin, slit-eyes, and a pencil-line mustache. He was notorious for his appalling jokes, which the other Siberians seemed to find as hilarious as he did. Behind them the Hungarian, Gonares, was already asleep in his bunk. Gonares was currently on outside work assignment, shifting freight in the cargo bays at the hub. Farther along, a Yakut called Nunghan and an Afghan were experimenting with the latest gambling creation—a pinball game that involved shooting glass marbles up an inclined wooden board to roll down again through an obstacle course of holes and nails. The idea had been Rashazzi’s, who had charmed “the Dragoness”—the stern-faced woman-mountain who ran the OI store—into getting a box of marbles from a children’s toyshop in Novyi Kazan specially for the purpose.

McCain now hardly noticed the strange smell that had greeted him the day he first entered the billet. It was due, he had since discovered, to a kind of wild garlic that certain Siberians, Yakuts in particular, once ate traditionally during the long winters when no other vegetables were available, and now chewed through habit. The scent reeked on the breath and exuded from the pores. “Yes, I know what you mean—we’ve got it, too,” Peter Sargent had said when McCain tried to describe it. “An extraordinary olfaction—fermenting birdseed in a crappy petshop,” which at least conveyed the intensity, if not the precise quality. McCain wondered if they’d bribed somebody in the ag zones to grow a patch of the awful stuff for them specially. He couldn’t imagine it being included in the production lists drawn up by the omniscient planners in Moscow.

On the far side, Taugin, the Frenchman, was stretched out with his head propped on one hand, staring mournfully at a woman’s picture framed on the locker next to him, as he seemed to do for most of his free time. The rest of it he spent prowling morosely about the compound or along Gorky Street. From time to time he would murmur things like, “Mimi, where are you now?” or “Oh, Mimi, where did we go wrong?”—but the name was different on different days, and the pictures changed.

Luchenko, Maiskevik, and Nolan were together in the rear section. On the other side of the table from them, Borowski, the Pole, was getting up from his bunk. In contrast to his Gallic neighbor, Borowski was pragmatic, cheerful, and always willing to help. But how much did that mean? He was still one of the group at the far end, which McCain looked upon as Luchenko’s personal circle. Russia was notorious for nothing being what it seemed. Zamork was a good microcosm of it.

“Profits before people,” Nolan fired at McCain as he passed. “That’s capitalism. It destroys life. There used to be beavers on Manhattan Island. Did you know that? And what about the passenger pigeon?”

“Ask the Siberian mammoth,” McCain said, and went through into the washroom. A moment later he stuck his head out again. “And there’s plenty of beaver in Manhattan. Ask Mungabo.” He disappeared back inside to relieve himself.

The door opened again a second later, and Borowski came in. They stood side by side, staring at the wall. Abominable noises and odors came from the cubicles behind, where two of the Siberians were entrenched. The damn garlic affected everything. “It’s a miracle that Razz’s mice survive in here,” Borowski commented. A flurry of scampering in the cage behind the door acknowledged the remark. McCain didn’t answer. He’d caught the expressions on Luchenko’s and Maiskevik’s faces when he poked his head back out to retort at Nolan. The back of his neck was prickling.

“What did you think of the movie?” Borowski asked.

“Hmm? . . . Aw, standard stuff.”

“You know, in Russia they teach that it was their entry into the Japanese war that brought victory there, too. But that was only a week before it ended, wasn’t it? Hadn’t America already dropped the first atomic bomb by then?” Borowski saw that McCain wasn’t listening. As he zipped himself up he leaned closer and murmured, “Watch yourself out there.” Then he left.

The sound of flushing came from one of the cubicles behind. McCain recreated in his mind every detail that he could recall of the situation in the end section just beyond the door when he had passed through. Luchenko had been sitting to the right of the end table, about midway along, with Maiskevik standing behind him and Nolan farther back by his bunk. Taugin was on his bunk to the left, and Borowski would probably have gone that way, too, after leaving the washroom. On the table in front of Luchenko there had been a pack of cigarettes, a book, a tin lid used as an ashtray, and at the near end a couple of magazines. Near the far end there had been a large enamel mug almost full of steaming tea, perhaps left there by Borowski. McCain thought carefully; then he opened the door of one of Rashazzi’s cages of mice and scooped a large fistful of feed grain into his left hand.

When McCain came out, Luchenko was still at the table, and Nolan had sat down on his bunk. But Maiskevik had moved to stand in the center aisle at the far end of the table, covering the way through to the rest of the billet. To the left, Taugin hadn’t moved, and Borowski was getting something from his locker. The mug of tea was still standing where it had been. McCain moved to the left to pass by the table.

“Earnshaw.” Luchenko’s voice was unusually clipped. “I may have some information on your colleague.” McCain stopped and looked inquiringly. “But first, of course, there is a price.”

“You never mentioned anything about that,” McCain said.

“I must have forgotten. Nothing is free here. I’m sure that being American, you will understand.”

“You expect me to pay you for doing your job?”

“It is the custom here.”

“No, thanks.”

McCain turned in the direction he had been heading, but Maiskevik moved to block the way. “If you choose not to avail yourself of the service, that’s up to you,” Luchenko said. “But I have done my part. It must still be paid for.”

Maiskevik shoved McCain roughly in the chest with the flat of his hand to stop him, and stood stroking the knuckles of his clenched fist. “Everybody in here pays their taxes,” he growled. It was one of the few occasions on which McCain had heard Maiskevik speak. The message was clear enough. On the fringe of his awareness, McCain registered that the rest of the billet had suddenly gone quiet. He heard somebody come out from the washroom behind him and stop.

McCain looked quizzically at Luchenko. “I thought you said we could always discuss these things reasonab—” His left hand shot the grain into Maiskevik’s face, and as the Bulgarian blinked reflexively McCain’s other hand swept the mug up off the table to follow with the tea. Maiskevik bellowed and staggered back, clawing at his scalded face. McCain kicked hard into his crotch, then seized the lapels of his jacket with both hands to pull the Bulgarian forward onto a murderous head-butt full in the face. Maiskevik fell back against the end of Borowski and Taugin’s bunk, his eyes glazed and blood gushing from his ruined nose. McCain kicked his feet away, and he crashed into a sitting position on the floor. Incredibly, he was trying to get up again. McCain grabbed a fistful of hair to jerk Maiskevik’s head back and delivered a straight-fingered jab to the exposed throat. Maiskevik gagged and crumpled to sit with his head lolling to one side, with rivulets of blood from his nose running down the front of his clothes.

It had been too fast and violent for anyone else to react. Luchenko was gaping from his chair across the table, Nolan was staring ashen-faced from behind, while a few feet from McCain, Borowski was still frozen in the act of turning from his locker. Forcing himself to be calm externally despite the adrenaline charge pulsing through his body. McCain replaced the mug on the table. “I’ve just filed for an exemption,” he told Luchenko. Then he stepped over Maiskevik’s legs to continue on his way. The others who had come forward from the other sections of the billet parted to let him through. He stopped halfway to pour himself a cup of tea at the center table, and carried it back to his bunk.

Slowly the billet came back to life behind him. At the far end, Luchenko was still sitting, stunned, while Nolan, Borowski, and a couple of others hauled Maiskevik to his feet and steered him into the washroom.

Scanlon was leaning forward on the edge of his bunk when McCain sat down opposite him. “Here,” he said, holding out his flask. “A little drop o’ the hard stuff will do you more good than that.”

McCain took a long swig and nodded. “Thanks.” He handed back the flask and sipped his tea.

Scanlon regarded him curiously for a while. Then he took a sip from the flask himself and looked across at McCain again. “So, Mr. Earnshaw,” he said at last, “what kind of a school of journalism was it, I’m wondering, that they sent you to, now?”

Inside the Government Building at Turgenev, General Protbornov and the three other men with him watched a replay of the incident as it had been recorded through a wide-angle lens built into one of the ceiling lights in billet B-3. The title on the thick, red-bound folder laying in front of Protbornov read, mc cain, lewis h., u.s. unified defense intelligence agency. absolute top secret.

Sergei Kirilikhov, from the Party’s Central Committee, nodded tight-lipped and pivoted his chair to face away from the screen. “You were right after all, General,” he said to Protbornov. “He reacted just as your people predicted he would. My compliments.”

Protbornov patted the folder on the table affectionately. “When he was a teenager in California, there was a gang of bullies at the school he attended who liked to terrorize other students, especially Hispanics. Well, one day they made the mistake of picking on a new batch of students who turned out to be the children of Nicaraguan mountain guerilla fighters recently arrived in the country, and almost got themselves killed. The affair made a deep impression on McCain. Later, when he was with NATO, he hospitalized a would-be mugger in Berlin. What we have just seen was fully in character.”