‘How do you know if his answers are truthful?’ asked Grogan.
‘Smithers has a lie-detector feed into the console. He alerts the interrogators if necessary. It helps. In this instance the scientists will probably know if he’s lying on technical subjects. No system is perfect. Ours is based on the latest neurological and psychiatric techniques. The desire to lie is removed. It doesn’t often fail.’
‘Is there any permanent damage — I mean to Krasnov.’ It was evident that Tanya was not likely to be counted among McGhee’s admirers.
‘No,’ said McGhee. ‘Nothing permanent. Unless it’s damage to his conscience. We can’t do anything about that.’
‘I’m sure you can’t.’ Her eyes flashed.
‘Look,’ said McGhee, with a trace of irritation. ‘I’m not pretending interrogation is humane. Of course it’s not. This isn’t a vicar’s tea party. You know that. You’ve done the resistance course. You may be subject to interrogation yourself. It’s an occupational hazard.’
The course convinced me I wouldn’t be a very good resister.’
McGhee saw her quick glance at the ring she was wearing, a stainless steel hexagon. ‘What’s in that?’ he asked.
‘Something,’ she smiled sadly. ‘Better than betrayal.’
McGhee looked at her curiously. Only his wife would have recognized the slight twitching at the corners of his mouth as sympathy. ‘It’s a way out.’ He shrugged his shoulders, seemed about to say something, looked embarrassed, then went back to his subject. ‘Yes. Interrogation is unpleasant. Certainly humiliating. But the end justifies the means. We live in a tooth and claw jungle this end of the twentieth century. Krasnov possesses knowledge which can help us survive. We intend to get it.’ His steely grey eyes outstared hers and she realized for the first time that he was not only a strong man but a very frightening one.
‘Well, he was a tougher proposition than we thought.’ McGhee, wheezing from a climb up several companion-ladders, wiped his face with a large silk handkerchief, leant back in the easy chair, unbuttoned his waistcoat and lit a cigarette. ‘Doesn’t do himself badly for accommodation, does he?’ He looked with approval round the captain’s day cabin.
‘For how long have we got it?’ asked Wilson.
‘He’ll be on the bridge for the next couple of hours. We’re okay until noon.’
Wilson yawned, shook his head, looked at his watch. ‘Good heavens! Nearly ten hours of it. Exhausted me. Goodness knows what it’s done to Krasnov.’
‘He’s sleeping. On a stretcher in that small storeroom at the after end of the laundry. They’ve locked him in,’ said McGhee. ‘He’ll need time to sleep off the LSD and a bit of shock.’
‘The Liang Huis still down there?’ said Wilson.
‘Yes. Until we land him tonight they’re the only people he’ll see or hear.’
‘Have they discussed the landing with him?’
‘Not yet. They will. When he’s had a good sleep and his mind is clear.’
Curtis was on the settee, feet stretched out, ample stomach bulging over his belt line, pink flesh peeping through a taut shirt. ‘I hated every minute of it. Absolutely loathsome. Glad I’m a scientist and not…’ He stopped short, pulled up by McGhee’s stare. ‘Sorry,’ he went on. ‘I know it’s your job.’
‘Somebody has to do it,’ said McGhee. ‘Warm in here, isn’t it?’
‘It’s the heater,’ said Grogan. ‘Shouldn’t have thought it necessary with air-conditioning.’
‘Nice and homely,’ said McGhee. ‘Nothing like the glow of artificial coal.’
‘He’s a tough young man.’ Wilson clasped his hands behind his head. ‘Took Smithers a long time to introduce… what was it you called it, McGhee?’
‘State of compliance?’ suggested McGhee, sticking his thumbs in his belt.
‘Yes, that’s it. He was anything but compliant at the start.’
‘Interesting,’ said Grogan. ‘Did you notice when the break came?’
‘The threats?’ Curtis shivered. ‘Ugh!’
‘No. It was after that. When Brough put in that bit about the futility of war. How the only way to avoid it was to share technological progress. Don’t let one side become dominant because that’s an invitation to armed conflict. Maintain the balance. He used the joint space programme rather well, I thought. After that Krasnov began to co-operate.’
‘There were a lot of other things at work,’ said McGhee dryly. ‘He was going to co-operate anyway.’
‘Incredibly slow start’Wilson yawned. ‘I thought we’d never get going.’
‘Smithers, Brough and Hamsov are a good team.’ McGhee said it with the pride of a parent.
‘It’s not pleasant to watch,’ said Grogan. ‘But I must say it works.’
He went on, ‘I suppose the price in moral terms is high. But that interrogation may have saved the West five years of research. Even then we might not have got on to the drone.’
‘Fortunate for us the Zhukov got on to those rocks,’ parodied Wilson. ‘We knew the USSR had moved ahead in submarine missilry but we were thinking in terms of MARV, range, megatonnage. That sort of thing.’
‘You mean you hadn’t thought up anything like the secondary missile system?’ suggested McGhee.
Curtis said, ‘We’d thought of it. But we haven’t got very far with it. Too many snags. They’ve got it. A remarkable achievement. That and the drone give their BM and fleet submarines an offensive capacity well in advance of anything in the West. When their construction programme is completed they’ll not only have the edge in terms of nuclear exchange but superiority in conventional naval warfare.’
Wilson said, ‘They must have got a long way with AC super-conductors.’
‘In marine application — yes,’ Grogan agreed with some reluctance. ‘But the Japanese are already operating a test locomotive on super-conductors at 400 m.p.h. We know the technology of course, but there are problems of application, particularly with marine motors. They’ve overcome them. We haven’t.’
‘What’s the big advantage of the super-conductivity motor?’ asked McGhee.
‘A power-weight ratio ten times better than anything else around. It’s as simple as that.’
McGhee leant back in the chair puffing happily at his pipe, hands clasped behind his head. ‘So the Krasnov interrogation wav worthwhile?’
Grogan regarded him thoughtfully. ‘As a scientist I don’t care much for purple passages, but I think it would be no exaggeration to say that this has been one of the most important intelligence operations conducted by the West since the nuclear arms race began.’
‘Yes. And at what a price,’ Curtis grimaced. ‘Reduces us to the moral level of thugs, child rapists, Gestapo sadists, anything foul you care to think of. God! To think I’ve been involved in that.’
‘It would do you good to be in on an interrogation session in Lubianka Prison.’ McGhee stared at Curtis through a haze of cigarette smoke, shook his head sadly and changed the subject. ‘We’ve got the whole thing on tapes but I won’t be releasing them in their present form. Anyway I doubt if you’d be able to use them as they are. A lot of editing is involved. We’ll do that at Special Branch. Cut out the interrogation by-play. But you’ll get the essential detailed questions and answers.’ He took a miniaturized transistor recorder from a coat pocket, put it on the table in front of Wilson. ‘You’d better get on with the summary. The principal facts. That’s what we’re here for.’