‘Yes,’ agreed Tudin.
‘I want to get out of this shit-hole.’
Tudin had not expected such an immediate demand but he was prepared for it. ‘I’ll arrange it as quickly as I can.’
Kapitsa was waiting in his second-floor office. ‘I didn’t expect you to be so long.’
‘Read this,’ demanded Tudin, curtly, offering the deposition.
It took Kapitsa three cigarettes to get through the document. He came up hesitantly and said: ‘Where is this going to be used?’
‘Before an inquiry into the activities of General Natalia Nikandrova Fedova,’ declared Tudin. ‘You will be required to testify as well.’
There was a further moment of uncertainty. Then Kapitsa said: ‘Yes. I understand.’
Late that evening, when they were quite alone back at Yasenevo, the lawyer said: ‘What authority do you have, offering that lout immunity from prosecution?’
‘None,’ admitted Tudin, casually. ‘I’ll recommend it, like I said. If the Federal Prosecutor doesn’t agree, that’s fine by me. Eduard Igorevich can be prosecuted. But after he’s testified against his mother.’ It was a wonderful feeling to have won: like the best drinking experience he had ever had.
It was the smallest class for a very long time, only three students, and they were all evasive and uncomfortable when Snow questioned them about the others, variously insisting they did not know the reason for the absences. Li arrived in the middle of the lesson, sending the familiar frisson through the room, and the priest accepted the pointlessness, quickly ending the session.
‘I have my photographs,’ announced the man, offering the packet. ‘I am very pleased with them.’
Snow accepted the folder, without opening it, not knowing what else to do or say.
‘Aren’t you going to look?’
Snow shuffled with forced slowness through the pictures, sure he was remaining impassive, mentally matching print for print, realizing that nothing Li had taken during their journey had been omitted.
The Shanghai prints were last. There were five, the same number that he had taken of the warships and proudly sent to London. But there were no warships in any of these shots. The positioning was the same and the lighting was the same and the time of day was the same but Snow knew they were not the same. The innocuous and quite meaningless photographs had to have been taken subsequently, after the flotilla had sailed.
‘Now I can have mine, in exchange, can’t I?’ smiled Li.
They’d anticipated him, Snow accepted: beaten him. ‘I would hope so, very shortly,’ he said. How? he wondered.
Thirty-five
It took several hours for Gower to get hold of himself and fully comprehend the psychological pressure being imposed upon him. Finally, thankfully, he began to draw on the interrogation resistance in which he had done so well in training – and which had been further refined during those last, unorthodox sessions – and to concentrate upon behaving professionally. He’d faltered, admittedly: initially forgotten everything he’d ever been taught, all the training he’d undergone. But now he’d recovered: now he could fight back. Win.
So far it was almost classically textbook: there were even elements of it dating back as far as 1953 and recorded by men taken prisoner by the Chinese during the Korean war. He knew all those techniques. And others that followed later. So he could anticipate them: not completely perhaps, but enough. Fear – of the unknown, of what might happen next – was the first, eroding, intention of every interrogation. Once fear was instilled, every other collapse was inevitable, simply a matter of time. But it wasn’t going to happen to him. Not now he’d collected himself. There was apprehension, naturally. But no longer the panicked emptiness that had made him piss himself, in those first few moments. He could think ahead: guess what was coming. And what he could guess, even incompletely, wouldn’t be erodingly unknown.
The filthy, shit-smelling cell and the lice-ridden, stinking uniform were very much part of the ritual, calculated to degrade him into the deepest despair as quickly as possible. There was no toilet paper, if he was forced to use the fly- and excrement-encrusted hole. Water would be fouled, to give him dysentery. He’d have to expect any food to be rotten, to achieve the same illness: possibly even maggot-infested, openly to revolt him. And for as long as he was detained, he’d be denied any washing facilities. Not allowed to shave.
From the concrete shelf, Gower at last surveyed the rest of the cell in the necessary detail, seeking how they would watch him, surprised when he couldn’t detect any electronic device in any part of the ceiling or upper walls. All that was obvious was the round Judas-hole, in the solid metal door. He stood at last and went entirely around the cell to look more closely and still found nothing. There would be the minimal warning, from the covering scraping back, when they looked. He would have to be prepared to move quickly to conceal from them any indication that he’d regained control. My advantage, decided Gower.
Moving about the cell brought him close enough to the lavatory hole to hear the permanent buzz of the flies. Revulsion could be eroding, although not as much as fear. Equally essential that it be controlled: overcome. Alert for any sound from the door, he forced himself towards the hole, tensed against the stench and the sudden cloud swarm disturbed by his approach. More insects rose up about him in protest when he began to urinate. As he did so, he was aware of a positive scratching, from inside the hole. How many rats would there be, he wondered.
Gower was back on the concrete ledge when the observation point scraped open. He was sure he hunched forward, arms around himself in the near broken pose they wanted, before anyone looked in. Gower remained unmoving. It was several moments before it scraped loudly closed again.
Gower started his mental count from that observation, remaining bent, intent on gauging their routine. Roughly every fifteen minutes, he estimated, after the third inspection. Part of a careful pattern constantly to disconcert him by the noise and by his becoming unsettled at how frequently he was being watched. But counter-productive because he could match his pattern to theirs and move around the cell, even relax as much as possible, in between their checks.
Think ahead, he reminded himself, as he exercised. There would be the tainted food some time. They might even make him beg for the infected water, to demean him. He’d have to do that, if it became obvious they expected it: had to take the greatest care against their realizing he was resisting them. What else? Noise, he remembered. It would get worse as the night progressed, to keep him awake. Sleep deprivation was inextricably linked with fear, in the very beginning: the mentally strongest man, indoctrinated with every resistance skill ever devised, could be reduced to a puttylike automaton if he were continuously deprived of sleep longer than seventy-two hours. It was important that he get as much as possible, before the noise disturbance became louder and more sustained, which he knew it would.
Gower did not attempt to stretch out full-length. He was crouched forward at the next Judas-hole check but didn’t bother to move after the visor screeched shut. Instead he remained as he was, although as far back on the shelf as possible to support his back, trying to doze. He was never wholly successful, never lapsing into a proper sleep, but he didn’t want to do that because it would have been a dangerous mistake: he drifted in a half consciousness, resting but aware every time of the rasping scrape of the peep-hole, alert enough when it came to the louder sound of the door opening to be awake and looking at who entered. The bow-shouldered, bowed-headed man carrying the food wore a stained and shapeless tunic like him, obviously another prisoner. There was a guarding soldier either side. The food slopped over the edge of the bowl when it was dumped on to the table. The soldiers looked at him, expressionlessly. The food-carrier didn’t try. Nothing was said by anyone. The sound of the door slamming shut was still echoing in the corridor when the covering metal was slid back from the observation point.