Then Trewitt started down the hill to the shack for some tortillas too.
39
Chardy was made uneasy by the approach of night. He had a history of unpleasant evenings, for during them, late, when he was alone, the things that he could not control by sheer will crawled out to harry him. And when he had found Johanna in her car, across from the blinking police lights, the rushing officers and medics, the gathering crowd, he was aware that in some strange way a trap had been sprung in his mind. He had stared at her, knowing exactly what had happened, and why, and how: he saw it now. A pain came and took his breath away and almost knocked him to the sidewalk.
He had thought he heard somebody tell him to be reasonable.
The memory would not die; it had increased the next several days, all through his time as athlete, among the postman and his friends.
Be reasonable, somebody was telling him.
The voice was sane and calm; it was almost compassionate.
“Paul. Be reasonable.”
Chardy was alone in his little Silver Spring apartment, on the night after he returned from Danzig’s. A baseball game was over on the tube, it was that late. He’d had a few beers. He’d laid out his new suit, a clean shirt, and his shoes for tomorrow. He felt like another beer, but realized he was now out and wondered if it made sense to dress again and drive around until he found an all-night liquor store or a bar with package goods.
Be reasonable, he told himself.
But the voice was not his. It was affable, pleasant, colloquial, American. It was the voice of a pudgy man, about fifty, with merry, alert eyes and thinning blond hair, almost white. He wore a Soviet major’s uniform, army, with artillery boards and insignia, but he was KGB all the way. The uniform made this point explicitly: no Soviet military careerist would be seen in a Third World country in such a disgraceful uniform, rumpled, spotted, humorously impressed. An orthodox man could not wear such a uniform under pain of instant censure and discipline; thus the wearer was not an orthodox man. He enjoyed special privileges. He was permitted his eccentricities.
“Paul,” he had said, “come on. Let’s be reasonable, shall we?”
Chardy’s Arabian Nights, which were not 1001 in number but only six, were beginning to reassemble in his mind this night in his little apartment.
“It’s so difficult, this business,” said Speshnev. “I’d much prefer to be your friend. I really would. Will you please talk to me? Please, Paul.”
But Chardy would not talk. He remembered instructing himself: don’t give them anything. If you start, you will not stop. Don’t give them anything. The first surrender is the only surrender; it is total, it is complete. Time. Play for time.
He studied the cell. Down here, the walls sweated. The air was moist, almost dense. This room had probably been cut from living stone a thousand years ago, by slaves. Who knew what pains it had witnessed? Had it always been a torture chamber?
“Paul, let me explain how it works. I’m going to have them burn a hole in your back. The pain will be — well, it will be indescribable. But I think you can get through it. You are a very brave man. I think you can get through it. Then tomorrow, Paul, tomorrow, I’m going to have them burn another hole in your back. You’ll have all this evening to think about the hole they’re going to burn. You’ll know exactly what it’s going to feel like. There will be no surprises. Paul, the day after that, I will burn another hole. You’ll have a night to think about that one too. And on and on, Paul. On and on and on. If we run out of back, then we’ll move to the chest. Do you understand? That is the future, Paul. That’s all the future there is.”
You can do it, he told himself. You can stand it, he told himself.
Oh, it’s going to hurt so. Oh, Christ, it’s going to hurt.
You can do it, you’re Chardy, you’re so tough. You’ve been begging for this one your whole life. To see how tough you are.
They burned the first hole in his back.
“Paul, it’s so absurd,” Speshnev told him on the second day. “What do you gain by resisting? We win in the end, of course. But think further: What do we win? Frankly, not much. We win a momentary advantage, a half a point’s shift in momentum. Perhaps I win a promotion, or at least advance a few inches closer to promotion. And what of it? Is the world really changed? Is one system that much better off than the other? Of course not Let’s face facts: our two nations face each other on a thousand different battlefields, a thousand different contests each second. Some we win, some you win. But nothing really changes. The process of change is implacably slow and no human endeavor may be seen to affect it. So what sense does it make to resist us? None at all. It’s thoroughly ridiculous, an exercise in playground heroics. Now, in this cellar, you are being a hero, an authentic American hero, fighting the pain, the psychological pressure, fighting alone without help, without hope, standing against everything we can do to you. It’s incredible; it’s quite moving. You have my respect. I couldn’t have done nearly so well. I’d have cracked in the first session. I’d certainly have cracked by now. You are a champion. Paul, must I have them bum another hole in you? Must I? Will you force me?”
Chardy’s wrists were tied before him; he could see old stone and smell his own sour perspiration. He’d spent the night thinking about his back.
“Paul, please. Help me on this. We can work together.”
They burned the second hole in his back.
“How was your evening, Paul? The guards say you screamed all night. They say you woke several times with nightmares. I would imagine the psychological pressure is immense. I know this business weighs heavily on me as well. I hope we can finish it today and that you’re able to cooperate. What do you say, Paul? Do you think you’ll be able to help me?”
Chardy was silent; in his peripheral vision he could see Speshnev standing behind and beside him in his rumpled uniform.
“Paul, now let’s think about this. At this very moment an American from the IBM Corporation is selling a Russian from the Committee on Scientific Research highly sophisticated computer software whose intricacies are a thousand times more complex than you or I could ever understand. A traitor? No, it’s done in the open! Businessmen! With the support and endorsement of both governments. It’s simply trade. Also being sold are licenses for the bottling of Pepsi-Cola and the manufacture of Ford Pintos. In exchange we fork over tons of our desperately needed minerals, crude ore, and so on. So against this panorama of exchange, this Technicolor extravaganza of commercial greed, of ideological co-option, what can you expect to accomplish? Paul, be reasonable. You prevent one man, me, from becoming a full colonel. It’s really quite humorous, Paul. I wish you’d work with me on this.”
They burned the third hole in his back.
“Paul, they tell me you had a terrible evening. The guard says he thinks you did not sleep at all. And you do look feverish, Paul. Frankly, you look awful. You look terrible. I think yesterday I let them go too far. That wound is terrible. Paul, if you could see it you would be disgusted. And the flies. The flies must drive you insane. Paul! How much longer can you let this go on. You are destroying yourself!”
Chardy had given up, by this time, any idea of heroism. Courage had no meaning in a cellar among men with blowtorches. He’d quit caring for the Kurds; they could have the Kurds, they could have Ulu Beg and his band of lunatics. And the Agency — what good was it? They’d let him hang on ropes for three days now, in his own filth, in a cell with rats, a medieval place full of damp straw where other men screamed in the night, and his nightmares were huge and terrible and he could think of nothing but the torch.