The Englishman was little better than an animal — worse, if the capacity to keep oneself clean was taken into account. Vorontsyev could see that he hadn't been beaten — if he had, then the beating was a time ago. This man had been broken by isolation — by the utter loneliness he had suffered.
Vorontsyev had seen it work before. The collapse of the will, crumbling like stale cake in the pressure of fingers. Because the fingers that held him were omnipotent, omnipresent — and no help would come. That was how it was done.
Just to find out what the West knew about Finland Station. Vorontsyev shrugged. The Englishman was having difficulty with what he had heard. Vorontsyev, easing as much gentleness as possible into his voice, repeated himself.
'The United States Consulate — I will take you there, as soon as you are ready to go.'
And then he wondered, as the man moved, seeming to release a more gagging odour from his armpits or crotch. Perhaps he had been unable to control his bowels, realising that he might be safe. Beyond hope, safe. Wondered.
What would he do with this Englishman?
'You — you… Why?' Folley found it difficult to speak, as if his voice had gone rusty; or he had not wanted to use it because of the things it had said, confessed, revealed. He tried to look at the Russian, read what was in his mind in the white mirror of the face. He couldn't tell — did not trust…
Vorontsyev saw the distrust, riddled deep in the man. Yet, thankfully, he saw the mounting hope; a quiver to the lips that was not cold. He could not help hoping — beyond shame, un-worthiness, despair. He would be feeling all those things, or felt them already. But he could not help hoping.
His interrogators had never offered him hope. They had used despair. Therefore, the weapon of hope was his.
'Yes, my friend. Frankly, you are an embarrassment to my government. You were captured on neutral territory — your government knows you are alive.' Disbelief was swept away by gratitude. Vorontsyev breathed a sigh of relief. The Englishman could not accept him as an ally — but now he could believe in him because he spoke of others knowing, his own government, the people who had sent him. He had not been abandoned, after all.
Vorontsyev had no idea whether the British knew this man was alive; it did not matter. It served. He said, 'I am to take you directly to the United States Consulate. I have a car outside. You will make yourself ready to go, just as soon as you have helped me a little.'
The flash of fear again, returning like a stain ineffectively erased; and cunning, a re-adoption of an earlier self, the early days of his interrogation. Vorontsyev guessed at the dazed, damaged mind of the Englishman. He was busily erasing his abject defeat, his failure. Now, he knew his friends were working for his release, he only had to hold out. He had told them nothing. He would tell them nothing.
Vorontsyev said, 'I know you told them nothing, my friend. What I want to know is who they were. That is all. Nothing about you. Only about who came here. They were traitors, you understand — understand? Traitors. That is why they hurt you.'
He stroked at the man's leg still, comforting, lulling him. Then, on an impulse, he lifted the hand, and held it out to Folley. There was a long moment, and then the Englishman grabbed at the hand, pressing it to his face, bending the head to do so. Vorontsyev felt the stubble, and the filthy hair on the back of his hand. He prevented himself from shuddering.
Then Folley looked up. 'Traitors?' he said suspiciously, as if he had been accused.
'Of course! Why else were they in Finland? My government does not wish a war at this time. A — conspiracy in the Army. That is why you were questioned by Army men — uh?' Folley nodded. Vorontsyev had guessed luckily — no, not so luckily. It was likely that GRU would handle Folley. 'What is your name — don't tell me if you don't want to!'
'Alan,' Folley said after a while. The hand was still against his cheek. No one had touched him, not since he was beaten. Perhaps even the guards had avoided any physical contact. Touch-deprivation. It was an accustomed technique, one of the devices of alienation. Perhaps this man, Alan, had begun to doubt he had a physical shape any more. Had begun pathetically touching his body in the dark, to be certain. And revolted by his own filthiness, become even more desperate.
'Alan. Mine is Alexei.' He gripped Folley's weak hand more tightly. He felt wetness on the back of his hand. Folley was crying silently. Stifling impatience, and distaste, he reached out with his other hand and stroked the matted, greasy hair. Folley moaned like a lover, and leant against Vorontsyev.
The driver came through the door, and stopped, mouth open, as he saw in the gathering light from the tiny high grille in the wall, Vorontsyev and the prisoner in each other's arms. Vorontsyev waved him out with a flip of his hand, and the driver, winking knowingly and irreverently, mouthed his satisfactory status report. Then he went out. Folley did not appear to have heard his approach.
'Tell me, Alan,' Vorontsyev said, rocking to and fro slightly, as if cradling a child. 'Tell me about the men who questioned you — all about them. Then we can catch them. Begin with the one I shot, outside the door…'
It was as if he had turned on some tap in the Englishman. At first a trickle of rusty water; then an increasing flow. Patiently, he listened, attending to only one thing, which did not come. Desperate not to hear it, yet knowing he had to ask.
Folley was still in his arms, and he was brushing the matted hair and patting the shaking shoulder, when he appeared to have finished his self-purgation, self-justification.
Then, in the sudden and unfamiliar quiet, Vorontsyev said, 'Wasn't there someone else, Alan? Perhaps he only came once, so you forgot him. I don't know when it was — but I know he came to see you. An — older man… ?' Folley was quiet, like a child thinking in the arms of a parent. Then, after a long while, he said, 'But he didn't — interrogate me.'
'No, he wouldn't,' Vorontsyev said. Or not seem to, he added to himself. 'Tell me what he looked like.'
'Is he a traitor too?' It was direct and unfeeling as the question of a child. Piercing.
'Yes — he is,' Vorontsyev said quietly.
And then he listened. He did not, he was sure, draw breath once until the Englishman had finished. His hands plucked nervously at the stuff of Folley's shirt, and he perceived a despair more real than he had ever felt before.'
He could envisage the features that were being described; the clothes, too, betrayed the picture. It was as if an outline that he had deliberately blurred were redrawn, etched then coloured and shaded.
Mihail Pyotravich Gorochenko, Deputy Foreign Minister of the Soviet Union, and his own adoptive father — was Kutuzov. What he had suspected when Natalia had tried to betray him in Khabarovsk — the man had sent her with him to the Far East — and what he had seen in his mind as Vassiliev had talked, was now confirmed. There could be no mistake about the face these two words confirmed. Gorochenko was Kutuzov. The despair of acknowledgement welled up in him; he could not prevent the tears, though the tears now were slow in coming, an emotional condition already abandoned by the rushing brain.
He sensed Folley moving a little apart from him, but took no heed of it. His thought at that precise moment — of a moment before it had been to kill Folley, silence him — was that no one else must hear what he had just heard. For whatever reason he had come to the cellar room, whatever confirmation he had sought — now he must act. He must bury the truth, and find Mihail Pyotravich.