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“Sooner or later I’ll be contacted.”
“How? By voices talking to you in the night?”
“No.”
“Then, how, Ta
“They will.”
“How?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“I can’t tell you, I can’t tell you, I can’t tell you. Like a broken record. Ta
“I can’t-”
“Shut up. Why did you turn them over to us?”
“Those were my instructions.”
“Really? I thought you couldn’t give us a thing, Ta
“I was told to deliver the papers to the CIA if I could find no other alternative. It would have been better to deliver them to my superiors, but I could find no way to get into the country except through the American Embassy, and that meant delivering the papers to you. I was supposed to do it only if there was no other choice open and I couldn’t contact my own group or get to the States under my own power, so I gave the papers to you.”
“Were they copied?”
“Not while I had them.”
“Where did you take them?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“Were you on other business? Or were you just cruising around Europe with the papers in your pocket for a couple of weeks?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“You’re a son of a bitch, Ta
Well, what else could I do? I know they didn’t believe me. If they had swallowed my story, I would have doubted their competence. It was, admittedly, an absurd story.
But what else could I do? I had to get back to the States. It was my home, for one thing, and for another I was finding it increasingly exhausting to be on the run. I could not endure being a hunted man forever. Obviously I had to go back home and had to straighten everything out, somehow.
And so the story. I was working for a governmental agency, it was secret, it was important, and the CIA didn’t know about it. I couldn’t make contact, I couldn’t give out information, I couldn’t do much of anything but sit on my cot and read spy novels or sit on my chair and say “I can’t tell you” until everybody got sick of listening to it. I had no idea what would happen eventually. I did not particularly want to think about it. It seemed impossible that they would let me go, and it was even less likely that they would release me to another country, or bring me to trial, or-
I couldn’t imagine what they would do to me. Unless they would merely keep me in my cell forever, and that did not seem very likely. Sooner or later they would tire of questioning me. And then what? Would they release me?
They might. Not in a matter of weeks, perhaps not in a matter of months, but sooner or later they would tire of housing me and realize that I was not going to tell them anything more than I had already told them. Their attempts to trap me in questioning sessions were getting nowhere. Whenever I was asked anything remotely tricky, I merely a
Once I made a mistake. I asked one of them when they would let me go.
He gri
I laughed. Actually, I figured I had it coming.
“Ta
“How?”
“Give us one name. That’s all, one name. Just one person we can call up and find out if you’re really you. Just one little name, Ta
“I can’t.”
“A phone number, then.”
“No.”
“Ta
“So?”
“What I’m getting at, Ta
“No.”
“Give me the initials, Ta
“No.”
“It’s all a big lie, isn’t it? You a communist, Ta
“No.”
“I don’t believe a word of it, Ta
“That’s your privilege.”
“You’ll stay here the rest of your life. The rest of your goddam life. Is that what you want?”
“No.”
“Well, how the hell will you get out?”
“My superiors will have me released.”
“How will they find you?”
“They’ll find me.”
And they did.
They found me after breakfast. I had been in the jail cell for over three weeks, and by then I was past the point of wondering how long I could hold up under questioning. I knew by then that I could hold up forever. The questioning had tapered off now. Sometimes two or three days would go by without a session, and the sessions themselves were getting shorter and less vicious.
Until one morning after breakfast a guard came and turned the key in my cell door. One of the CIA men was with him. “They’ve come for you, Ta
What things? All I had were the clothes I was wearing.
“And follow me. They found out you were here, finally. God knows how. I guess we’ve got a leak we don’t know about. You come with me. You know something, Ta
“So did I.”
“You can’t blame us, you know. Put yourself in our position, you’d have done the same thing. Am I right?”
“You’re right.”
“So you don’t blame us?”
“Of course not.”
“Some of the things we said-”
“Just part of the interrogation. Forget it.”
“Well, okay, Ta
Two men in dark suits were waiting in the front lobby. One of them said, “Phil Martin,” and extended a hand. I shook it. The other said, “Klausner, Joe Klausner,” and I shook his hand.
“The Chief just heard about you,” Martin said. “It took us a long time. You’ve been here three weeks?”
“About that.”
“Christ.”
“It wasn’t so bad.”
“I’ll bet,” Martin said. “The car’s out front. The Chief wants to see you right away. There’s a bottle in the car if you want a drink first. You look as though you could use it.”
There was a half pint of blended whiskey in the glove compartment. I took a long drink, capped it, and put it back. The three of us sat in the front of the car with me in the middle. Phil was driving. Joe turned in his seat as soon as we had pulled away from the curb. He stared out the back window.
After a few blocks he said, “Yeah, they’re following us. Two cars double-teaming our play. A brown Pontiac and a light gray Ford. See ’em?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Goddam CIA. Tell you the truth, I’m happy to see ’ em there. If they’re tailing us, it means they still don’t know where our offices are. Which is just as well. Lose ’em, Phil.”