“Where is Beranyi?”
“Why do you ask?” Strisz was making a joke.
“Where is Beranyi?”
“Odd, that you should ask. For several days, Beranyi was asking, ‘Where is this Tarp?’ It seems you never appeared for your meeting with him.”
Tarp was not surprised by the story. He was surprised, however, that he was alive. “How did I get here?”
Strisz leaned on the bars of the bed and looked down, the way an idle man might lean on the railing of a bridge to look at the river below. His smile was that of a man with secret knowledge and a delight in letting go of it slowly. “A prostitute in the Maikov district called the police. She said you had been drinking and abusing her and had passed out.”
Tarp thought about that. “It sounds like more fun than what I was doing,” he said.
“I thought that might be the case, too. Your French passport was in your clothes when the police got there. They called us. Not my section, but the Seventh Department over in Directorate Two. It took a while for the news to reach me. Actually, I heard it from Telyegin, who had a bulletin out on you through Special Investigations. We moved you here as soon as we could clear the paperwork with the cops.” Strisz looked impish. “The whore gave a statement that you had paid her to tie you up and beat you with a curtain rod. She said she thought you might have some bruises.”
“Not very inventive.”
“Oh, being beaten by a whore is done, you know.”
“Not that. The story.”
“Oh? Well, if it’s false, there’s a tone of — may I say bravado? — about it. She said you had been drinking vodka for three days. She showed the police the empties. They did a blood test and you showed a high alcohol level. However, it was fairly easy to see that it had been put into the bowel.”
“The part about passing out sounds convincing. I thought I was going to die.” Tarp shut his eyes against the headache. When he opened them, Strisz was still there.
“What did Beranyi say?”
“You’ll never guess.” Strisz held up a finger, touched his nose with it as if he were a low comedian in a play. “Guess.”
“I don’t do guesses very well.”
“Guess.”
“Forget it.”
Strisz looked sad. He had wanted his joke. In a flat voice he said, “Beranyi said nothing, because he went to a congress of counterintelligence specialists in Budapest the day before the whore called.”
Tarp thought that over. “That seems odd.”
“Oh, not at all!” Strisz’s smile had returned.
“You’ve got something to tell me, right? You’ve saved the best for last.”
“Exactly!” Strisz leaned even closer. He was wearing a bulky overcoat, and the material was pushed up on each side of his neck like chubby wings. “He went to Budapest — and disappeared!” Strisz straightened and his wings collapsed. “We think he did, anyway. He had an invitation to go fishing on Lake Balaton. There’s some confusion about whether he actually got to the lake. Somebody got there and fished, somebody who looked like Beranyi, but the Hungarians aren’t at all sure that it actually was Beranyi. On the other hand, it might have been. So, we’ve sent a team down to find out the truth.”
Tarp struggled in the bed “Help me up.”
“You’re strapped.”
“Well, unstrap me!”
“You’ve got an intravenous tube in your arm.”
“I want to sit up!”
Strisz put two pillows behind him and Tarp was able to sit more or less upright. He felt his chin with his left hand and found a stubble that was just beginning to be long. “How long since I was supposed to have met with Beranyi?”
“This is the seventh day.”
“How long has he been gone?”
“Three days.”
“Christ, he could be on the moon.” The room was spinning and he squeezed his eyes shut. He opened them and fixed them on Strisz to make things stand still. “Well?”
Strisz was looking glum. He shrugged. “Well?”
“All right, let me have it: what’s my situation now?”
Strisz looked still glummer. Tarp accepted the possibility that Strisz might like him and might even feel sorry for him.
“Officially, you were with a whore when you should have been on a delicate mission. So, you are under official KGB detention.” Strisz cleared his throat. “Unofficially, there’s a panic because of Beranyi’s disappearance. But under the panic, there’s celebration. If he’s disappeared because he’s defected, then the panic will win — and I don’t know what will happen to you. If, on the other hand, he arranged his own disappearance not so that he could defect but so that he could go God knows where, then…” Strisz beat the palm of one hand on the fist of the other. “Then he will have proved himself to be Maxudov, but in a very disturbing way.” He grinned. “But that is the cause of the celebration, because if Beranyi proves himself to be Maxudov, then the traitor is found and the worry is over. He will be declared a traitor; we will put out a worldwide notice on him — and you might go home.”
“With thanks and a gold watch.”
“Is that an American joke?”
“It has to do with what happens when people retire.”
“Ah. Everyone gets a gold watch?”
“No, only people who don’t need them.”
“Soviet workers would be delighted with a gold watch.”
“I think the sense of humor is different here.”
Strisz looked troubled. “You think we lack a sense of humor?”
“What’s going to happen to me? Forget humor. What’s going to happen to me?”
“The general-secretary has decided that you will be detained until the Beranyi business is solved.”
Until it’s solved… Meaning, until knowledge falls into their laps. That could be months. Years. “What’s your role?” Tarp said, trying to make it casual.
“Me? Oh.” Strisz looked a little embarrassed. “Oh, I’m a friend of the court, as they say in Western law.”
“Well, better you than Telyegin.”
“But Telyegin is fair. When he’s well, I mean. For that matter, we’re all fair.”
Tarp looked at him. “Is that one of your jokes?”
“Certainly not. Certainly not!”
Tarp smiled. He was left unsure as to just where Strisz stood; no doubt it had been the intention to leave him that way. He was silent and began to think of his situation. There would be pressure now to wind the Maxudov thing up. And that could be good for me. Tarp wondered about the possibilities of escaping from the Soviet Union. Not good. I might do something through the French if I could find one of Laforet’s people, but my chances would be slim. There’s the Gogol’s statue drop. “Is anybody interested in what really happened to me during those days?” he said.
“Oh, definitely. But, ah, it is not my mission to ask such questions.”
“Whose? Telyegin’s? Falomin’s? Mensenyi’s, because of understanding of the foreign mind?”
“Two of Falomin’s people are outside.”
“Oh, I see. You’re the warm-up act. Is that it?”
“What is ‘warm-up act’?”
“I suppose everything we’ve said is on tape.”
“There has been normal surveillance.”
“I hope they get the joke about the gold watch.”