The Company_ A Novel Of The CIA Part 59

"To tell the truth, I wasn't sorry. The tour is too organized for my taste. We never get to talk to any honest-to-G.o.d Russians. So I decided to strike out on my own for the rest of the day I took the subway to Kropotkinskaya and walked over to the Pushkin Museum. After that I decided to see the famous tombs in the Novodievitchi cemetery-Stalin's wife, Bulgakov, Chekhov, Gogol."

"And Khrushchev."

"Right. Khrushchev."

"And you happened to strike up a conversation with a man who was pa.s.sing next to the tomb of Khrushchev. And this man, by a complete coincidence, turned out to be the traitor Kukushkin."

Manny retorted, "He wasn't wearing a nametag that said 'the traitor Kukushkin.' He was just a guy who happened to be there and spoke English. And so we chatted for a few minutes."

"About what?"

"When he realized I was a foreigner he asked what my impressions were of the Soviet Union."

"When he saw the police and the militia coming toward him he tried to escape, and you fled with him."

"Put yourself in my shoes," Manny pleaded. "I was talking to a complete stranger. Then suddenly I see an armed gang heading my way and the stranger starts to run. I thought I was going to get mugged so I ran with him. How was I to know these people were policemen?"

"You and the traitor Kukushkin conversed in English."

"English. Right."

"Vui gavorite po-Russki?"

Manny shook his head. "I studied Russian at Yale. For one year, actually. I can catch a word here and there but I don't speak it."

"The traitor Kukushkin told us you speak fluent Russian."

"I want to talk to someone from the American emba.s.sy."

"Who at the emba.s.sy do you want to see? The Chief of Station Trillby?"

Manny glanced around the room, which was on the top floor of Lubyanka and s.p.a.cious and filled with functional wooden furniture. The jailer who had brought him up from the cell, a bruiser wearing a crisp blue uniform at least one size too small for his bulky body, stood with his back to the wall and his arms folded across his chest. The windows were double-glazed and barred on the outside. A portrait of Lenin and another of KGB Chairman Andropov hung on the wall over a sideboard containing a samovar and bottles of mineral water. Looking back at the Russian, Manny played dumb. "I don't know anyone at the emba.s.sy by name or t.i.tle, so I don't know whom you're talking about."

The Russian nodded to himself as if he were savoring a good joke. His inter-office buzzer sounded. The melodious voice of a woman could be heard saying, "Comrade Arkiangelskiy is here."

"Send him in," the Russian ordered. He eyed Manny across the table, shook his head and smiled again. "The game is up, my friend."

The door to the office opened and a short man dressed in the white coveralls of a technician pushed a dolly into the room. On it was a bulky tape-recorder. He wheeled the dolly up to the table, then unraveled the electric cord and plugged it into a wall socket. Straightening, he turned to the inquisitor, who said, "Play the tape for him."

The technician bent over the machine and pressed a b.u.t.ton. The tape began to whir through the playback head and onto the pickup spool. At first the sound was m.u.f.fled. The technician turned up the volume and increased the treble. A voice became audible. The entire conversation was in Russian.

"...would debrief me in the apartment of the Ept woman who worked for the Patent Office."

"What about the patents that you gave to the rezidenti?'

"Manny supplied them."

"Did he give you money?"

"Never. Not a penny. He offered to organize medical treatment for my wife's heart condition. I accepted that-"

"Did he promise to give you money when you defected?"

"There was talk of compensation but that wasn't why I-"

"What were your motivations?"

Kukushkin could be heard laughing bitterly. "The Americans were also interested in my motivation."

"You haven't responded to the question."

"The system under which we live is inefficient and corrupt, the people who preside over this system are unscrupulous. They are only interested in one thing, which is power. It is not an accident that our word for power- vlast-is also our word for authority."

"And this distorted reasoning induced you to betray your country?"

Kukushkin muttered something unintelligible.

"Of course you betrayed your country. You betrayed its secrets, you betrayed the operatives who are defending it into the hands of the Central Intelligence-"

"Fast forward to the rendezvous in the cemetery," the inquisitor ordered.

Manny said, "Why are you playing this for me? I don't understand a word he's saying."

Hunched in his chair, concentrating on the tape recorder, the inquisitor remarked, "You understand every word."

The technician hit the fast-forward b.u.t.ton and regarded the numbers on the counter. When it reached the place he wanted he pressed "Play." Kukushkin s voice came on in mid-sentence, "...primary meeting place in the Pushkin Museum at noon on the second and fourth Tuesday of any given month. I went there immediately before the appointed hour but decided it was too crowded. Manny arrived at the secondary meeting place, the tomb of Nikita Khrushchev in the Novodievitchi cemetery. There were nine people in the cemetery but they looked innocent enough and so I went ahead with the meeting."

"What did the American tell you?"

"That the CIA could smuggle my wife and myself and our daughter out of the Soviet Union from the Crimea."

"How were you to get in touch with the CIA if you decided to accept?"

"I was to call a phone number in Moscow-K 4-89-73-and cough twice and hang up. This would activate the primary meeting place in the Pushkin Museum and the secondary meeting place next to Khrushchev's tomb in the Novodievitchi cemetery on the second or fourth Tuesday of every month."

The inquisitor waved his hand and the technician touched another b.u.t.ton, cutting off the recording. He unplugged the electric cord and rolled it up and, pus.h.i.+ng the cart ahead of him, left the room.

"As you yourself can see, the traitor Kukushkin has admitted to everything," the Russian told Manny. "He has agreed to plead guilty in the trial that will start in a week's time. With this in mind, would you care to make an official declaration that will relieve the judge of the obligation of imposing the maximum sentence when you come to trial?"

"Yeah," Manny said. "I guess I ought to." He spotted the smirk creeping back onto the inquisitor's lips. "Hotel-twenty-three."

The Russian's eyes flashed with triumph. "Ah, that must be your parking s.p.a.ce number at Langley."

Curled up in the eye of his storm, Manny thought of the story that had plagued him as far back as he could remember-the one about his father telling the Hungarian interrogators to go to h.e.l.l. He had heard it as a child, had memorized it and repeated it to himself whenever he found himself in a tight corner. "Hotel-twenty-three is the s.p.a.ce a.s.signed to me in the parking lot two blocks down from 44 Wall Street," he said. "Which is where I work when I'm not dumb enough to come as a tourist to the Soviet Union."

For Manny, time slipped past in a series of hazy and curiously detached vignettes. Basic training on The Farm-he'd been locked in an icy room and deprived of food, water and sleep for several wintery days-had not prepared him for the hard reality of a KGB prison. The anxiety he felt wasn't a result of physical abuse (the KGB actually did lay on a bare minimum of creature comforts); it came from the stifling uncertainty of what would happen next, and how the game would play out. He was decently fed and allowed to shower daily and questioned again and again; the sessions with the persistent inquisitor sometimes lasted into the early hours of the morning, at which point Manny would be led back to his cell and permitted to sleep for six hours. Two days after his arrest he was taken to a room to talk to a Miss Crainworth, who flashed a laminated card identifying her as a vice-counsel from the American emba.s.sy. She reported that the Secretary of State had summoned the Soviet emba.s.sador in Was.h.i.+ngton and demanded an explanation for the arrest of an American tourist. The Russians, the vice-counsel explained, were claiming that Manny was an officer of the CIA sent to Moscow to contact a recently returned diplomat who had defected to the American side in the States. The CIA had vehemently denied that it employed anyone named Immanuel Bridges or had had any contact with a Soviet diplomat named Kukushkin. Miss Crainworth said that the emba.s.sy had hired an English-speaking Soviet attorney to represent him.

The attorney, whose name was Robespierre Pravdin, was permitted to spend an hour with his client that evening. Pravdin, an anxious man with a facial twitch and sour breath, a.s.sured Manny that the Soviet system of justice would be lenient with him if he admitted what the KGB could prove: that he was, in fact, an agent of the Central Intelligence Agency. When Manny persisted in his denials, Pravdin told him, "I have seen a typescript of the traitor Kukushkin's confession, which implicates you. I will be able to help you get a lighter sentence only if you plead guilty and throw yourself on the mercy of the court."

The next morning Manny was roused from a deep sleep as daylight penetrated the open slit of a window high in the wall of his cell. He was permitted to shave with an East German electric razor that worked on batteries and given a clean pair of trousers and s.h.i.+rt. Sitting on the edge of the bunk waiting for the guards to fetch him, he stared at the small porthole to the world high above his head, listening to the jeers and catcalls of prisoners kicking around a soccer ball in the courtyard below. A conversation he'd had with his father when he was very young came back to him; he could hear his father s voice in his ear and he smiled at the memory. They'd been returning to Manhattan on the subway after an outing to Coney Island.

"Mommy says you work for a Center Intelligence Agency. She says that's why you spend so much time outside America."

"I work for the American government-"

"So what kind of stuff do you do for the government?"

"I help protect America from its enemies."

"Why does America have enemies?"

"Not every country sees eye to eye on things."

"What things?"

"Things like the existence of different political parties, things like honest trials and free elections, things like the freedom of newspapers to publish what they want, things like the right of people to criticize the government without going to jail. Things like that."

"When I grow up, I'm going to protect America from its enemies same as you-if it still has any."

"When I grow up," Manny said aloud. He didn't finish the sentence because he knew the cell would be bugged.

Soon afterward Manny was handcuffed and taken down in a freight elevator to a bas.e.m.e.nt garage. There he was seated between two guards in the back of a closed bread delivery van, which drove up a ramp, threaded its way through traffic and eventually came to stop in another bas.e.m.e.nt garage. He was escorted up a fire staircase to the second-floor holding room, where his handcuffs were removed and he was offered coffee and a dry doughnut. Before long Pravdin and the vice-counsel Crainworth turned up. Pravdin explained that the traitor Kukushkin's trial was about to start; that there was a possibility Manny would be summoned as a witness. Pravdin removed his eyegla.s.ses, fogged the lenses with his foul breath and wiped the lenses on the tip of his tie. Manny's chances of eventually being treated leniently by the Soviet judicial system, he repeated, depended on his cooperating with the prosecution in the Kukushkin case. Manny stuck to his cover story. Miss Crainworth, clearly in over her head, merely looked from one to the other as if she were watching a ping-pong match.

At five minutes to ten Manny was escorted into what looked like a ball room, an enormous high-ceilinged chamber with glittering chandeliers and white Corinthian columns set against light blue walls. On one side were rows of plain wooden benches filled with working-cla.s.s people who looked uncomfortable in city clothing. Several seemed to know who he was and pointed him out to the others when he entered. Flashbulbs exploded in his face as he was steered into a pew with a bra.s.s railing around it. Pravdin, the muscles in his cheeks atwitch, settled into a seat in front of him. Miss Crainworth squeezed onto a front-row bench and opened a notebook on her lap. Two judges in dark suits sat behind a long table on a raised stage.

At the stroke of ten the accused appeared through a narrow door at the back of a wire enclosure. Kukushkin, surrounded by KGB security troops in tunics and peaked caps, looked gaunt and dazed. His face was expressionless, his eyes tired and puffy; he closed them for long periods and conveyed the impression of someone who was sleepwalking. He was dressed in rumpled suit and tie and, judging from the mincing steps he took when he entered the courtroom, wearing ankle cuffs. At one point he looked in Manny's direction but gave no indication that he recognized him. There was an angry murmur from the crowd when Kukushkin turned up in the prisoner s box. Flashbulbs burst, causing him to raise a forearm over his eyes. One of the guards gripped his wrist and pried it away. The chief judge, wearing a black robe and a red felt cap, appeared from a door at the back of the stage. Everyone in the courtroom stood. Manny was nudged to his feet. The chief judge, a white-haired man with red-rimmed eyes and the jowls of a heavy drinker, took his place between the a.s.sistant judges. "Sadityes pojal.u.s.ta," the bailiff called. The audience on the benches, along with the lawyers and stenographers settled onto their seats. The security troops guarding the prisoners continued to stand. The State Procurator, a young man wearing a beautifully-tailored blue suit, climbed to his feet and began to read the charges against Kukushkin.

"The traitor Kukushkin, the accused in criminal case Number 18043, is an opportunist," he began, his voice suffused with outrage, "a morally depraved person who betrayed his country. He was recruited by agents of the imperialist espionage service while he served in the Soviet emba.s.sy in Was.h.i.+ngton. There he committed treason with the intent to overthrow the Soviet regime, dismember the Soviet Union and restore capitalism in what would be left of the country. Returning to Moscow on home leave, he was caught in the act of meeting an agent of this imperialist espionage service. Confronted with irrefutable evidence by the representatives of the state security organs, the traitor Kukushkin had no choice but to admit to his crimes and sign a confession. It is this doc.u.ment, respected judges, that you now have before you."

Manny leaned forward and tapped Pravdin on the shoulder. "What did he say?"

Pravdin twisted around in his chair; Manny got another whiff of his bad breath when the lawyer whispered, "The Procurator explains that the traitor Kukushkin has confessed to his crimes. If you want to save yourself, so, too, must you."

Across the courtroom the Procurator sat down. The bailiff rose and demanded, "How does the accused plead?"

Kukushkin stood up. "I confirm I am guilty of espionage but my intent was not to dismember the Soviet Union or restore capitalism. My intent was to save the Soviet Union from an oppressive ruling cla.s.s that is ruining the country economically and distorting the Communist ideal politically."

The Procurator leaped to his feat and waved a copy of Kukushkins confession. "How is it you admitted to these charges in writing?"

"I was forced to."

There was an astonished rumble from the benches. The Procurator turned to the judges. "In light of this recantation I request a recess."

"Granted," the chief judge growled.

Manny was taken back to the holding room and offered coffee from a thermos and a sandwich filled with a meat he couldn't identify. Two hours later he found himself back in the courtroom. The bailiff addressed the prisoner. "How does the accused plead?"

Kukushkin, his shoulders hunched, mumbled something. The chief judge ordered him to speak louder. "I plead guilty to all the charges," the prisoner said. "I admit everything."

The Procurator said, "What, then, was the meaning of the statement you made two hours ago?"

"I could not bring myself to admit my guilt before the world," Kukushkin said. "Mechanically, I sidestepped the truth in the hope of presenting my treachery in a better light. I beg the court to take note of the statement which I now make to the effect that I admit my guilt, completely and unreservedly, on all the charges brought against me. I a.s.sume full responsibility for my criminal and treacherous behavior."

The Procurator accepted this with a nod of satisfaction. "The accused Kukushkin admits that he delivered state secrets into the hands of an agent of the Central Intelligence Agency?"

"I openly and unrestrainedly admit it."

"The accused Kukushkin admits that he met in Moscow at a prearranged place and at a prearranged time with this same agent of the Central Intelligence Agency?"

"Yes, yes. I admit it."

The Procurator shuffled through what looked like cue cards. "The question inevitably arises: How can it be that a man like the traitor Kukushkin, which is to say someone born and brought up and educated during the years of Soviet power, could so completely lose the moral qualities of a Soviet man, lose his elementary sense of loyalty and duty and end up committing treason?"

As if reading from a prepared script, Kukushkin answered: "It was the base qualities in me which brought me to the prisoner's dock: envy, vanity, the love of an easy life, my affairs with many women, my moral decay, brought on in part by the abuse of alcohol. All of these blotches on my moral character led to my becoming a degenerate, and then a traitor."

The chief judge asked, "Is the agent of the Central Intelligence Agency you met present in this courtroom?"

"Yes." Kukushkin raised a finger and pointed at Manny without looking at him. "He is sitting over there."

"Look at him to be sure of the identification," the chief judge ordered.

Kukushkin reluctantly turned his head. His eyes met those of Manny, then dropped. "I confirm the identification."

The Procurator said, "Respected judges, the agent from the Central Intelligence Agency is not protected by diplomatic immunity and will be tried in a separate proceeding. The American agent denies the obvious-that he was sent to Moscow to establish contact with the traitor Kukushkin so that he could continue his perfidious behavior here in the capitol of the Motherland. The American agent denies also that he speaks fluent Russian, though a child can see, as he looks from one speaker to the other, that he is able to follow the conversation."

The chief judge addressed Manny directly. "Do you know the traitor Kukushkin?"

Pravdin twisted around and repeated the question in English, then whispered urgently, "This is your opportunity to impress the judges by your truthfulness. The traitor Kukushkin is condemned out of his own mouth. Save yourself."

Manny rose to his feet. "Your honor," he began. "I do know the accused." The spectators in the audience stirred, the American vice-counsel cooked up from her notebook. The chief judge brought his gavel down sharply. "I am a tourist, your honor," Manny continued. "The truth is that I was separated from my group and, wanting to see some of the interesting sites that were not on the itinerary, wound up in the Novodievitchi cemetery. It was there that I met the accused for the first and only time in my life. Taking me for a foreign tourist, he asked me in English for my impressions of the Soviet Union. As for my being a member of the Central Intelligence Agency-nothing could be further from the truth."

A frail elderly woman sitting behind the judge had been scribbling notes in shorthand as Manny spoke, and now translated his testimony into Russian. The chief judge said, "Let the record show that the American denies that he is an intelligence agent." He nodded at the Procurator. "You may deliver your summation."

The Procurator rose. "I call upon the respected judges, however reluctant they may be, to deliver a verdict of guilty and a sentence of execution. An example must be made of the traitor Kukushkin. The weed and the thistle will grow on the grave of this execrable traitor. But on us and our fortunate country the sun will continue to s.h.i.+ne. Guided by our beloved leader and the Communist Party, we will go forward to Communism along a path that has been cleansed of the sordid remnants of the past."

Kukushkin's defense lawyer stood up to address the court. "Respected judges, confronted with the confession of the accused Kukushkin, I can only echo my colleague's remarks. I invite the court's attention to the fact that the confession of the accused was wholehearted, if belated, and should be weighed on the scales of justice in deciding on a sentence appropriate to the crime."

Twenty-five minutes later the three judges filed back into the courtroom. The chief judge ordered the accused to rise. "Do you have a last statement before I pa.s.s judgment?"

Kukushkin intoned woodenly, "My own fate is of no importance. All that matters is the Soviet Union."