“I mean, do you know us well enough to figure us out?”
“I don’t know.”
“It’s a little thick, you know, bringing in a capitalist to find a Soviet traitor. I suggested a Chinese, but that was taken as a joke.” He made another face. “Far too much of what I say is taken as a joke.”
“You have had only two foreign postings, is that right?” Tarp said severely. Strisz would recognize the tone — that of the serious man returning to business, rejecting amiability.
Strisz sighed. “Only two, yes. Bulgaria and Hungary. As you must know already.”
“You have never been to Cuba? To Argentina? To England?” Strisz shook his head right through all the questions. It amused him to do so.
“You were passed over for promotion last year.”
“I remember.”
“Three years ago you asked for a transfer.”
“And was refused, yes.”
“Why the transfer?”
“Because I am an ambitious man.” He raised his eyebrows as if to say, Surprise, surprise! “I asked to be switched to satellite communications training for one year and then to be given a suitable post in the Eighth Directorate. Am I saying too much?” He pretended to be worried. “Am I violating security, telling you this?”
“The Eighth Directorate is satellite and electronic communications. I believe that’s already known in Washington.”
“A Soviet citizen can be arrested for discussing these things with a foreigner. Are you really a foreigner? How do I know you’re not a Ukrainian in disguise? Ukrainians are the very devil for disguises. I may be one, in fact — this may be a false face I’m wearing.”
“Why did you want the transfer?”
“Because my post in the First Chief Directorate is a beautiful dead end. Do you think the future of communism lies in the reports of agents planted in the Warsaw Pact countries and Cuba? I doubt it — really, I doubt it. Satellite communications, on the other hand — there, an ambitious man could have a good time.” For a moment his face was open, as if he were asking Tarp to understand him as a man. It could have been part of his act. “I’m still young as these things go — the Soviet Union is a country of young workers and old leaders, as you may have noticed. Twenty years as head of the Eleventh Department doesn’t much excite me; twenty years scrambling to the head of First Chief Directorate does.”
“You would have to take an inferior post.”
“I have faith in my own abilities.”
“That sounds like something that Maxudov might say.”
“Now who’s indulging in psychology?”
Strisz was a good subject for interrogations. He was, as Andropov had said, intelligent, but he was also strong-willed. “Look here,” Tarp said, trying to sound hard but not unfriendly. “The man I want set up a clandestine network in Cuba, I’m sure of it. That took time and it took inside knowledge. You’re the ideal man for that. You have the opportunity, the contacts — I’m sure you have rewards you can hand out — you know the KGB presence there because you’re in charge of it. All right-on that basis, you are Maxudov.” He held up his hand as Strisz got ready to say something. “However, I’m also looking for a man who seems to have set up something much cruder in London.”
“Same man?” Strisz said conversationally. He might have been listening politely to a story about a not very interesting acquaintance.
“Perhaps. Logic would say so.” Tarp leaned back. “But I don’t think you’re the man who tried to kill me in London.” Strisz smiled a little painfully. “Did I try to kill you in Cuba?”
“That could certainly be.”
“And who stole the plutonium.”
“Yes, and who blew up Repin and that aircraft. Did you ever see those dancers?”
“They weren’t from Moscow.”
“They were very young. Good-looking, vital.”
“Are you trying to shame me?”
“Maxudov is beyond shame.”
“Well, surprisingly, you do shame me. Amazing, yes? I’m amazed myself. I don’t like death. I don’t like violence. I’ve never been involved in wet work. I am an intelligence officer. I am fascinated by the collection and analysis of facts. The other side of the business…” He seemed sincere. “It is evil. Do you believe me?”
“You seem very believable. But Maxudov will always seem believable.” Tarp stood up. “I may want to talk to you again.”
“But do you believe me?”
Tarp looked at him. He knew that nobody who had risen this high could be simple or simply fun-loving or really open. He thought of Juana’s bandaged head and the huge gash on her shoulder. He thought of the dancers in Havana. He thought of the old man lying in his blood in the Paris restaurant. He thought of Johnnie Carrington without his arm. “No, I don’t believe you,” he said. “If you really thought you hated violence, and you stayed in this business, you would be so self-deluded you would be a lunatic. You aren’t a self-deluded man.” He gathered up his papers and his coat and the Astrakhan hat he had been provided. “Neither is Maxudov.”
Konstantin Mensenyi met him in a park. Their cars were thirty yards apart on the wet, narrow road, the drivers inside with their newspapers while the two men walked across a field on which melting snow lay in a pierced crust that stood on the tips of the grass like lace. The firs that stood around the field were black in the gloom of the dense cloud.
Mensenyi was grossly fat — double-chinned, blubber-lipped. Tarp disliked him on sight, then scolded himself for deserting any attempt at objectivity.
“I protest,” Mensenyi began. “I am making my protest formally, to the general secretary. It is bad enough to be suspected of the worst crime of the century, but it is unspeakable that they should bring me face-to-face with a man like you.”
“Your department is Latin America?” Tarp said coldly.
“Did you hear what I said just now?” Mensenyi had a rather high voice. The fat and the high pitch made him seem a eunuch, but his file mentioned a wife and five children and a problem with a girl who had been a maid in the house.
“Your protest is noted and I think you are wise to make it formally to the secretary-general. Is your department Latin America?”
“You know it is.”
“Including Cuba?”
“You know the answer to that, too.”
“I’d prefer to hear it from you.”
“Bah. Very well. Cuba is not in my department except in cases where there is overlap.”
“Argentina?”
“Argentina, yes.”
“You managed the transfer of intelligence materials to the Argentinians during the Falklands war?”
“That is not relevant.”
“It is relevant if I make it relevant. Answer the question.”
“I protest. I will put this in my written protest as a breach of security. The answer is yes — note what sort of grief you may have caused yourself by acquiring classified data!”
“Did you receive a reprimand from the director for your conduct of intelligence during the Falklands war?”
Mensenyi grunted, then stopped. He looked around them, as if to make sure they were in the very center of the lace-covered field. “A letter was put in my file,” he said softly.
“You used a courier sometimes whom you called Penguin.”
“Code name Penguin, yes, yes. What has this to do with anything?”
“Penguin made four trips to the Soviet Union in the last three years.”
Mensenyi stared at him. He breathed partly through his mouth; his nose was thickened above the nostrils as if from adenoids. “Well, what if he did?”
“Three of them came immediately after three of the plutonium thefts.”