Repin shook his head. “I know nothing. Only the gossip. I am not in that work anymore.”
Tarp looked at the Slavic face, the barrel torso. Despite its high cheekbones and its flat nose, the face could have been that of any retired old man along the beaches, any businessman who had gotten there by cunning and greed, a hard, driven, successful face — except that this one had gotten here because of torture and sabotage, subversion and death, none of which had left any more trace on it than if it had been in the hardware business all that time. When Tarp had been running networks in Southeast Asia, Repin had been in charge of agents from Singapore to Sri Lanka. Now he looked like a retiree from the garment district.
“You’re always in that work,” Tarp said almost bitterly. “It never gives you up.”
Repin looked away. His face clouded for a moment. He sucked on the cigar, and the shadow, whatever it had been — anger at Tarp, perhaps; perhaps regret or even guilt — passed.
Tarp looked at the radar. The other boat was still keeping station on them.
“Okay. I take you back to Havana and then I go home and I start to look around — where or how, we don’t know yet. How long do you think before they know it’s me?”
“How are they to find out?”
“I don’t know — you tell me. It’s my guess it’ll take them less than twenty-four hours. Who knows you came to Cuba?”
“All of them. That is, all of them who are suspect, and a few more.”
“And they think you’re here investigating Beranyi? What does Beranyi think?”
“He suggested it. To clear his reputation, he said.”
“Gutsy. Supposing he told the truth, why does he worry about his reputation? Who’s he afraid of?”
“Andropov. Telyegin.”
“Eugen Telyegin?”
“Da.”
“Old-time hard-liner. Friend of Lenin. Your patron — yes?”
“Da.” Repin nodded, smoked, spat. “‘The Monster,’ the Germans called him after Stalingrad. Very good to me, always.” He looked at the ashen end of the cigar. “He has cancer. First the prostate, now the bowel.” He exhaled. “I would kill myself.”
“Is he still at work?”
Repin stared at the dying cigar. “‘Work is blood,’ he says. I saw him three days ago in Moscow. A skeleton. Three operations, then chemical therapy. Everything has been burned away. He is like a man in the gulag. Like a man in religious fanaticism. His work has become his faith.”
“Could he be the one? What’s the name — Maxudov?”
Repin’s head moved heavily back and forth, back and forth. “He is suspected, too. Yes. But is ironic, you see — even if he is not Maxudov, finding Maxudov kills him. Only fanaticism for finding the guilty one keeps him alive.”
“It’s his project?”
“He has Internal Investigation Division now. So, it has become his blood — his truth. And I will say to you, my friend, only Telyegin, only Telyegin, had courage to say, ‘This must be stopped! This traitor must be found!’” He struck a little lighter and a gas flame thrust up. Puffing out clouds of fragrant smoke that vanished on the wind, he said, “Maybe it is cancer that gives him that courage, having nothing to lose. But it was Telyegin that insisted, nobody else.”
“Then you do know what went on in the meeting in Moscow!”
“I know what I know.”
“You’re holding out on me.”
“Of course! But I hold out nothing that you need.”
Tarp brought the boat into the stream and took a reading, then throttled down. On the deck again, he put the rods out for fishing.
“How many people are involved?”
Repin sucked in smoke. “One. Maybe two or three small ones, like the submarine captain. Maybe some more very small ones. But only the one matters: Maxudov. The others are like criminals anywhere — one who sells black market vodka, the manager who steals butter from his dairy, the woman who steals coupons from the company book. Little ones are nothing. They are typical Russians, good workers of the Soviet state.” He laughed. “Good petty criminals. Good for making examples of.”
“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 big 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: