Prisoners of Tomorrow (21 page)

Maxim Sepelyan, from the Ministry of Defense, stroked his chin dubiously. “You, ah . . . you don’t think that this man could be too headstrong—too impulsive, perhaps?”

Protbornov shook his head. “We have studied his motivational psychology intensely. Despite what you just saw, he is not a person primarily disposed toward violence. He only resorts to force when compelled to in self-defense. His ideological convictions reflect the same principle. When given a choice, he bases his relationships on reason, persuasion, and patience. But he is defiant, and he has a strong sense of loyalty to his beliefs. Those are exactly the qualities we want.”

The other man present, General Andrei Tolomachuk, from the KGB’s Ninth Directorate, gestured toward the screen from Protbornov’s other side. “I presume that what we saw there was genuine. The Bulgarian wasn’t acting under instructions?”

“Definitely not,” Protbornov said. “That was all quite genuine, I assure you. Part of the objective was to test that McCain’s ability and determination are as we have assessed them.”

The four exchanged inquiring looks. “Very well, I am satisfied,” Kirilikhov pronounced. Tolomachuk agreed. Sepelyan thought for a moment longer, then nodded. “When I get back to Moscow, I will advise that the next phase of the operation proceed as planned,” Kirilikhov said.

Protbornov looked pleased. “So the countdown remains on schedule. We’re still talking about a November seventh D-day.” Kirilikhov nodded.

“Four months from now,” Sepelyan mused. “The waiting will make it seem like a long time.”

“It’s the centenary,” General Tolomachuk said. “We’ve been waiting a hundred years. What are four more months compared to a hundred years?”

“What are they compared to owning the world?” Protbornov asked.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Maiskevik was taken to the infirmary the next morning for treatment following an “accident,” and Luchenko was summoned to a talk with Major Bachayvin, the block commandant. An hour later two guards appeared at the billet to collect Maiskevik’s things, and by lunchtime the prevailing opinion was that he wouldn’t be coming back. No official reason was given. Luchenko reappeared later and had nothing to say on the matter except that two replacements would be coming to B-3 in Maiskevik’s place. McCain carried on in the metalworking shop through the afternoon, expecting to be hauled away at any time, but by the end of the shift nothing had happened. He could only conclude that the management, for reasons best known to themselves, were going along with the accident story officially. Maybe Luchenko was on the take to a greater degree than he cared to make known to his bosses, McCain reflected. Or maybe they were all part of it, too. Either way, it could add up to possible opportunities to be exploited.

When McCain arrived back at the billet, Nolan brought him a note from the mail pouch that a messenger delivered every day to Luchenko. It advised that the book McCain had reserved was being held in the library. McCain hadn’t reserved any book. He went to the library and was handed a gaudy paperback entitled
A Hero’s Sacrifice.
It was one of the standard pulp inspirational pieces churned out for the masses by Party hacks, and carried a cover picture of a standard Soviet workaholic hero, muscles taut beneath bronzed skin, steely-eyed, and complete with hard hat and jackhammer, shown against a background of cranes, bulldozers, and an oil refinery under construction.

McCain took the book to the general compound and shielded himself among a group of prisoners placing bets on a Siberian variation of the shell game before he ruffled through the pages. The slip of paper that dropped into his hand read:

SUBJECT OF QUERY WAS DETAINED IN SOLITARY AT SECURITY HQ TURGENEV UP TO FOUR DAYS AGO FOR CONTINUING INTERROGATION. CONDITION GOOD. NO GROUNDS FOR CONCERN. HAS RECENTLY BEEN MOVED TO ZAMORK, RESTRICTED SECTION, BLOCK D.

The message also included instructions for McCain to follow to reestablish contact, should he need further information on anything. McCain wasn’t sure whether he felt reassured or not, although, according to Scanlon, the source had proved consistently reliable in the past. Reputation was everything in any good business, Scanlon had reminded him.

He saw Andreyov approaching as he was about to begin walking back across the compound, and stopped to wait for the older man to join him. “Have you met the two new arrivals yet?” Andreyov asked. He had a thick woolen cardigan beneath his jacket and swung his arms across his body as he spoke, as if it were cold. McCain could picture him in a black overcoat and fur hat in a Moscow street scene.

“No, I’ve been in the library,” McCain said. “So they’re here already, eh?”

“And straight out of training, if I ever saw KGB before. You’ve stirred things up properly, you know. They don’t trust you an inch now. A bodyguard for Luchenko, that’s what they are. Mungabo has christened them King and Kong.”

“It seems strange,” McCain commented, mainly to see what Andreyov would say. “I’ve have thought they’d have shipped
me
out.”

“Oh, they couldn’t leave Maiskevik there, could they? Not any longer—after what happened. He’s lost face. . . . Wouldn’t be able to carry the same weight any more, in the billet. Not after what happened.”

“And I don’t get put away for a while to cool down?”

“No, they couldn’t do that, could they? Not if they want to pretend it was an accident.”

“That’s my point. Why would they pretend that?”

“Who knows why they do things?”

McCain gestured at the compound in general. “So, is it likely to be everybody’s gossip for the evening?”

“No, it won’t be spread around.”

“How come?”

“It’s best.”

They began walking slowly toward the door into the throughway between A and B Blocks. Andreyov turned his head to peer at McCain, as if weighing something in his mind. Finally he said, “You seem to be a man of strong opinions—strong impressions of things.”

McCain thrust his hands into his pockets. “Some things, maybe. I don’t know. . . . What did you have in mind?”

“The things you argue with Nolan about. You have strong ideals.”

“I never really thought of myself as an idealist.”

“Principles, then?”

“A few, maybe.”

Andreyov hesitated, then said, “I admire that. Everybody who is anything worthwhile has to admire that. But, you know, it troubles me that you should think so badly of Russia.” Before McCain could reply, he went on, “It isn’t everything you think. We are proud of our country, as you are of yours. Like you, we worked hard and we suffered to make it what it is. And we have transformed our Motherland from backwardness to one of the world’s strongest nations, and extended its influence everywhere—out into space, too. There are many positive things that you should remember, things we have achieved. Creative things. Our history, our arts . . . Russia has produced men of words and ideas that have swept through the civilized world as have few others. Russians have brought glory to music and ballet, and at one time to painting and architecture. . . . And hospitality and friendship! Do you know what the educated Russian values more than anything else? Good friends and stimulating conversation. There is nothing anywhere else in the world to match the loyalty of Russians who are close friends. You have to spend an evening at home with an apartment full of them, when the talking goes on over food and vodka until long into the night. Or I am on my own and the telephone rings at three in the morning, and it’s my friend Viktor who I have known for forty years and he tells me, ‘Yevgenni, I have problems and I need somebody to talk to. I am coming over.’ Or it is Oleg, who says, ‘I have been thinking about what you said last week. We must discuss it.’ So what do I do? I put the water on to boil for some tea. Where would you find that in New York? Oh, no, there I must get up and go to work because I have to be ‘successful’ all the time, or make money, money, or please the boss whose ass I want to kick, but then he fires me from my job and I sleep in the street. Is it not so?”

They emerged into Gorky Street and turned to follow it for a short distance to reenter the B Block area through its front entrance.

“No, you misunderstand,” McCain said. “I don’t have any quarrel with the Russian people. I respect everything the Russian tradition stands for—all the things you said. But the present political system is something alien to all that. That’s not the real Russia.”

“Yes, we’ve made our share of mistakes, it’s true,” Andreyov agreed. “Especially in Stalin’s time. And I admit we are still too bureaucratic and paranoid about foreigners. Russians worry a lot what people think of them, you see. They can’t stand the thought of being compared unfavorably, or of being seen in a bad light. They’re like a wife who is too fussy about her house and won’t let anyone in when she thinks it’s untidy. And we still tend to feel embarrassed by some things, so we hide ourselves from the world. But it’s changing. Someday we will show the world. Not in my lifetime, maybe . . . but it will happen.”

“Well, when it does, then I’ll feel a lot easier,” McCain said.

They walked on in silence for a short while. Then Andreyov said, “That movie last night, my father was there, you know—he was with Konev’s army that linked up with the Americans in Germany. Within months there was talk that now they were going to start fighting the Americans. He told me some of the soldiers wept when they heard it. They couldn’t understand why.”

“Life can be crazy,” McCain agreed.

“You don’t understand it either?”

“I gave up trying to. I just believe that you pay what you owe, you collect what you’re due, you protect what you have, and you help if you can. Otherwise mind your own business and leave people alone.”

“You don’t want to destroy the Soviet Union?”

“Not unless it tries to destroy me.”

“What about if you thought it was about to? Would you attack it preemptively?”

McCain nodded as he saw the point. “Like Maiskevik, for instance?”

“We are taught that the capitalists will start a desperate, last-ditch war to try and save themselves rather than submit to the inevitable triumph of world socialism,” Andreyov said. “Doesn’t what you’ve just said confirm it?”

“Look at Japan, China, and the rest of Asia and tell me again about the triumph of world socialism. I’d say it’s the other way round: it’s not us that’s in the ditch. Maybe we feel the same way about you.”

Andreyov shook his head sadly. “No trust, no trust,” he sighed. “Why does it always have to be that way? You know, I heard a story once about two men from a ship that had sunk, and they were floating on top of a chest full of food and water in a sea full of sharks. But to make enough room to open the door, one of them would have to jump in the water. Now, they had an oar also, which meant that the other one could beat away the sharks. But if he didn’t beat away the sharks and allowed the other one to be gobbled up, then he would be left with all the food. They both knew that they would maybe survive if they cooperated with each other, and that they would both die if they didn’t; but if one was left with all the food, then he would certainly survive. So neither of them would jump, because neither trusted the other. And they both starved to death, on top of a chest full of food.” Andreyov looked at McCain. “It’s the same problem, isn’t it. What’s the solution?”

McCain thought for a while. “I guess first we have to decide who the sharks are,” he said. They stopped inside the B Block mess area. McCain took in the usual evening scene, then his eyes came back to Andreyov. He wondered how a seemingly harmless old man came to be shut up in a place like this. “What did you do to get in here?” he asked.

“Oh, it’s a funny story. . . . I don’t really have any family left now, you see, so I volunteered for the experimental population that they were bringing up to inhabit the colony. But they didn’t like some of the things I said, so they put me in here rather than send me all the way back again. Subversive, they said I was.”

“Not many guys your age get to go into space,” McCain commented.

“Hah! I might as well not have bothered, for all I can remember,” Andreyov replied. “Very peculiar, it was. I don’t have any clear recollection at all of that trip. A lot of others I was with said the same thing. All like part of a dream, it was . . .” He paused and rubbed his temples. “In fact, even thinking about it makes me tired. And it’s past my time to rest, anyway. Not as young as you people. . . . If you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll turn in.”

“Sure. Thanks for the talk. ’Night.”

Andreyov went on into the billet. McCain spotted Scanlon and Koh at one of the tables and went over to sit with them. It could have been his imagination, but despite what Andreyov had said about gossip not spreading, McCain got the distinct feeling that many eyes were following him; too many heads seemed to look away suddenly as he let his gaze wander over the mess area. He looked back at the other two.

“How’s Andreyov tonight?” Scanlon asked.

“He always strikes me as a lonely kind of person. That’s why he talks a lot, and I listen. He only came up here because he doesn’t have any family down there.” McCain shrugged and gestured at the figures in the mess area. “Maybe this is his family now. I don’t think the idea of going home even crosses his mind.”

“Ah well . . .” Scanlon looked curiously at Koh. “Don’t you ever think about going home?”

“Not a lot.” Koh was packing his long, straight-stemmed pipe with the mixture of tobacco and herbs that he smoked.

“There is really no point. And besides, not everyone back where I come from agrees that what I did was an honorable thing.” Koh never pinpointed exactly where he considered himself to be from. “And that’s very important, of course. It’s conceivable that I’d have a harder time back there than up here.”

“Don’t you want to contribute something to what a lot of people are saying is Asia’s century?” McCain said.

Koh chuckled as he lit his pipe. “Maybe I already have.” He sucked several times, and was rewarded with a cloud of aromatic smoke that he puffed into the air.

“What did you do?” McCain asked.

“Maybe I’ll tell you one day,” Koh answered mysteriously. He went on, “In any case, whatever is destined to evolve will do so in the long run, with or without me. With all their glorification, I don’t believe that even the Christs, Napoleons, Hitlers, and Genghis Khans really influence history that much. All they do is slightly accelerate or slightly retard what would have happened anyway.”