Deep Cover

“I mention all this simply to remind you that there are worse things than returning to the Soviet Union and the privileges that will accrue to you in recompense for the loyal service you have done Mother Russia.”

Ramsey Douglass spoke without bothering to pry his lips apart. “We’re a little old for a recruiter’s pep talk, don’t you think?”

Belsky’s face hardened. “What we require of each of you now is a total sense of loyal duty. There’ll be no time for you to stop and debate whether what you are doing is right or wrong. What you must live by is a fundamental obedience.

“I’ll remind you that Moscow keeps hostages on each of you to discourage your defection. We can always imprison these hostages in the interests of national security. I suggest the possibility of seven years’ coal mining on a penal squad in a taiga, or ten years in the Potma labor camp. But we also recognize that hostages are not always effective levers of persuasion. After twenty years we can’t be certain all of you still hold your Russian families in such close regard that you’d do anything to avoid jeopardizing them. After all, you haven’t seen or heard from these people for half your lifetimes. Douglass has a son he hasn’t seen since the boy was eight months old—how much can he mean to you now, Douglass?”

“He’s my son.” Douglass’ expression was hot and unforgiving and again he spoke without moving his lips. “If you’re suggesting I don’t care about him—”

“I’m saying it’s possible. You understand why I can’t depend on your assurances.

“Perhaps some of you feel you don’t need to be bound by any oath you signed half a lifetime ago. Perhaps you feel you’re out of our reach. We understand that. We understand the superficial attractiveness of the decadent bourgeois life and we don’t expect you to realize you may have become unwitting tools of a system in which men exploit other men and the workers have been conditioned to lick the boot that kicks them.

“You all know in a general sense that the penalty for deviationist crimes is severe. But we’re not interested in penalizing the guilty. We’re interested in making sure no one is tempted toward guilt. The only fish that get caught are the ones that have their mouths open. You people will keep your mouths shut, and I’m going to show you why.”

He pointed to Nick Conrad and beckoned with his finger and when Conrad dragged himself out of his chair Belsky handed him the packet of photographs. “Examine those closely if you will and pass them around.”

The blood drained from Conrad’s face when he looked at the first picture; he backed toward his chair, moving like a mechanism. Adele took part of the stack from him and passed them out, and Belsky spoke abruptly—this time in Russian:

“The remains you are looking at are those of the members of a cell of Illegals who were seeded into Bo

“KGB has a number of mobile disciplinary squads, one of which is commanded by a Mongolian known as Tircar whose work you see in these photographs. As you see most of them have been systematically dismembered begi

He stood up and walked from place to place collecting the photographs. He put the pictures away without looking at them. “You find this inconceivable but I remind you that all acts which further history and socialism are moral acts. In Moscow we have great confidence in you; we’re quite sure this kind of measure won’t be required in your case. But if it proves necessary Tircar and his Mongolians can be brought into this city within forty-eight hours. I won’t belabor it any further.”

Nicole said very dryly, “You ought to apologize to the Party for your negative thinking, Comrade.”

“I hope you’re right,” he answered gravely; he was demonstrating the seriousness of his purposeful melodrama.

He turned to Douglass. “You’re the cell leader. I don’t need to know every step you take in carrying out your mission, but you’ll have to inform me of all details which require the cooperation of people outside your own cell. You’ll have to work out the rest of the details among yourselves and I don’t need to remind you we haven’t time for endless mental masturbation and debate. You know how to reach me. That’s all for the moment—you’ll leave by twos, at intervals.”

Gus Craig sat tensely with one shoulder raised. When Belsky entered the room Craig stirred, ready to bounce out of the chair, but Belsky’s eyes jammed him back down in his seat.

Craig’s upper jaw poked forward so that his mouth had a gopher appearance; his undershot chin receded to the ski

“All right,” Belsky said. “Push him.”

Torrio pocketed his gun and went around behind the prisoner’s chair and held him down by the arms while Hathaway struck him with a scientifically wielded blackjack. Hathaway worked with a nice precision on that exact spot at the point of the shoulder where the nerves run shallowly over the bone. Hathaway paralyzed Craig’s main joints effortlessly, and Craig exhaled with a long slumping sag of disappointment and disillusion. Belsky heard him utter a monosyllabic curse. Torrio lifted him to his feet and Hathaway searched him brutally, jabbing with knees and elbows and the heels of his palms. Agony pulled at Craig’s mouth; he thrust his jaw forward to bite at his upper lip in order to keep from crying out. Hathaway, imbecilically calm, grabbed the front of his shirt and pulled his face down onto the desk. Craig’s teeth clicked; his jaw sagged; his eyes rolled up. Belsky could see him going under, losing focus; he made a signal and Hathaway stepped back; Craig slipped to the floor in a slow ungainly pirouette and lay on his back, belly rising and falling with his breath.

Belsky stepped forward and stood looking down at Craig and when the eyes blinked and stayed open he said, “Who are you working for?”

“You ain’t going to make me talk.”

“They always say that. You know you’re going to talk, Craig. Don’t make us crack you.”

“You bloodless bastard. Stick it up your ass.”

Torrio held Craig’s hand out on the floor and Hathaway stepped on the fingers with methodical brutality. “I can break every bone in your hand. That what you want?”

Craig’s eyes showed his distress. “No. Let me up.”

They picked him up and put him in the chair. Trembling violently, he sat hunched, the hurt hand pinched between his squeezed-together knees. His mouth worked.

“The name,” Hathaway said. “Who you’re working for.”

“The CIA.”