respiration over a loudspeaker. He willed himself to relax, to accept whatever would come.
They will break your will sooner or later, of course, his instructors had told him. So one might rightly ask: What is the value of resistance of any sort? Simply that the enemy knows we will treat his captured spies exactly the same as they do ours. Treat ours with respect and we will do the same. Treat ours with punishment, and we will respond in kind. The more you take, the more they know will be inflicted on their people.
So where was the twin of this room back home? Look to Washington. Look to Moscow. Zebra One, Zebra Two.
“What?” Miroshnikov asked, his face overhead. McAllister smiled.” Fuck you,” he said good-naturedly.” Thomas Murdock, let us begin with him. It is all that I want this evening.”
McAllister closed his eyes, the faint traces of a smile at the corners of his mouth. It was very possible, he told himself, that he would not come out of this alive. It was ironic that they wanted him to tell them about Murdock, of whom he knew nothing. Voronin, on the other hand, had been the gold seam. Had been, that is, until their last evening together. When? Had it been days, or weeks… — or had it been only hours ago.
A blindingly massive pain reached up from his groin, raced through his body, and rebounded in his armpits. From a long ways off he heard someone screaming, the sound animal, not human. As the pain receded he could hear his own heartbeat coming from the speaker, fast but still strong.
A second pain came, this one across his chest, and although the hurt of it was much less than the first, it was more frightening in that while it was happening he could clearly hear that his heart had stopped. When it began again he nearly cried in relief.
“Do you know Thomas Murdock, Mr. McAllister?” Miroshnikov’s voice was close in his ear.
No he did not. In the old days of Scorpius, of course, he had worked with Tom, but not afterward. Not in ten years.
The pain at his groin came again, this time more intensely, as if hot pokers had been rammed into his armpits, penetrating all the way inside his skull. Once when he was a young boy he had hit his finger with a hammer, and he couldn’t understand why the pain had been the most intense and most lasting in his elbow.Again the pain shot up from his groin, followed almost immediately by the more exquisite torture across his chest, his heart stopping, then beginning raggedly, and frighteningly weaker than before.
Tom had been a womanizer, a boozer, the network’s resident high roller. McAllister decided that he wouldn’t put it past the man to be involved down in Panama as a mule-a delivery and drop man. The cocaine connection, the pipeline back to the States, supposedly measured in the billions of dollars. Tom would be drawn to it, yes. But was there an Agency connection? We needed the hard currency, beyond the prying eyes of Congress. But how far?.
Again the pain came, this time unbelievably bad and his heartbeat stopped again. He listened. He was reminded for some insane reason about the guillotinings during the French Revolution. The man whose head had just been cut off had a few seconds to look up from the basket at his own mutilated torso flopping in the stock before the dark veil of death descended over him. McAllister found the same thing happening to him; the lights in the room began to fade, faster and faster.
“Mr. McAllister, Mr. McAllister,” someone was calling to him from an impossibly long distance.” Mac.” He opened his eyes to find that he had been unhooked from the electronic instruments, and had been unstrapped from the table. He was sitting up. There was little or no pain remaining, only a detached feeling, as if he were floating a few inches off the table. Miroshnikov stood at his side holding his arm, a big grin on his face.
“Splendid, really quite splendid, you know,” he was saying. Everything was coming back into focus for McAllister, and in some strange, almost indefinable way he felt even better for his experience. As if he had been cleansed. It was the same feeling, he supposed, that a marathon runner must feel after completing his race. Terribly tired and strung out, but with a feeling of inner strength coming from a Herculean accomplishment. They’d not told him about this at the Farm.
He also felt an exceedingly odd bonding with Miroshnikov. As if they had been, until just this moment, Siamese twins. The connecting tissues had been severed with the removal of the electronic probes and the electrodes from his chest and testicles, but he still felt as one with his interrogator.
“You should have felt the pain,” McAllister heard himself say, and he was no less astonished by his statement than Miroshnikov was.” But we’ve made progress, my dear fellow. So much wonderful progress that there cannot possibly be any animosity,” Miroshnikov said.” Here, let me help you down.”
McAllister allowed himself to be helped down from the table at the same moment the two nurses from before entered the room. He stood for a second or two, wavering slightly on his feet, then he leaned left away from Miroshnikov, as if he were about to fall.
The Russian stepped forward, his legs spread at that moment, his right hand outstretched, when McAllister turned back, bringing up his right knee with every ounce of his strength into Miroshnikov’s groin. A look of pain and disbelief spread across the interrogator’s face, and he started to rear back, his mouth opening in a bellow of pain.
The two nurses started forward, giving McAllister just enough time to roll left, then right again, the side of his right hand driving into Miroshnikov’s throat, then they were on him, shoving him roughly back against the tall torture table.
“Bastard,” one of them hissed.
“Fuck your mother, ” McAllister replied in Russian.
Chapter 3
The cell was clean, warm, and reasonably well furnished. For the last three evenings the lights had been extinguished so he had been able to sleep.
Solid, if plain meals had been brought at regular intervals. The Soviet attorney looked up from his reading.
“A substantial case has been built against you, Mr. McAllister. I don’t think a lengthy trial would be of much value. In fact, because sentencing in these kinds of matters is left entirely to the discretion of the judges, the easier you make it for them, the easier they will make it for you.”
“What about my defense?”
Yevgenni Tarasenko, the court appointed attorney, shook his head and smiled.” Under the circumstances, I frankly don’t think you have a defense.”
“Why have I not been allowed to speak with a representative from my embassy?”
“We have been in communication with them,” Tarasenko said.” In fact, I personally have spoken with Mr. Lacey, your charge d’affaires, and his concern goes out to you with all sincerity. He too wishes for a speedy conclusion.”
“Will I be able to speak with him?”
“Before your trial?”
“Now, immediately,” McAllister said. He felt much better than he had for days, and yet he still had the sensation of detachment. He supposed his food was still being drugged.
“I am sorry, Mr. McAllister, but in these matters we must adhere to Soviet law. Our constitution clearly outlines our rights as well as our responsibilities. It is the same in Washington, I assure you.”
McAllister had wondered about Miroshnikov. After that first night of torture, the interrogation sessions had ended. That very night he had been moved to this cell. The next morning he had been allowed to shower and shave, and had been fed a huge breakfast. It all had been confusing.” Formal charges have been filed against me?”
“Yes, they have. You are accused of spying for the United States against my government. Very grave, very serious charges.”
“And you are to be my attorney?”
“Yes, that is correct.”
“Are there other charges?”
The attorney shrugged. “You were armed with a deadly weapon at the time of your arrest. And there is the matter of the assault on Colonel Miroshnikov in front of witnesses.”
“Was my torture witnessed?”
