“You bet.”
“Did I talk to you, Valeri? Did I tell you things?”
Valeri laughed, and his eyes closed. Yemlin had to shake him awake.
“What did I tell you, Valeri?”
“You got big plans. You’re going to kill the Tarantula.” Valeri laughed. “I told them about McGarvey.” His eyes fluttered.
Yemlin’s heart sank. Until this moment he’d only had his guilt and his apprehensions to deal with. But now his worst fear had been confirmed by a drugged queer. The operation was over, and they had lost. He was going to have to get out of Russia immediately. Possibly to Georgia where Shevardnadze would give him asylum. Or possibly back to the United States. But McGarvey had to be called off.
“Go to sleep now, Valeri,” Yemlin said.
“Am I a good boy?”
“You bet,” Yemlin said. He got lip and went to the other side of the bed where he retrieved the second silver box. He slipped it into his pocket, then switched the electronic device off by re latching the clasp. “I’ll be back,” he told the already sleeping Valeri, and then let himself out.
Lefortovo Prison, on Moscow’s northeast side, was hidden behind a tall, yellow brick wall that surrounded the two-square-block compound. At the height of the Cold War, the maximum-security prison housed what the KGB considered its hardest cases. They were dissidents and foreign spies who had resisted the initial phases of their interrogations in the basement of the Dzerzhinsky Square KGB facility. They were sent out here to the quiet suburbs for the long haul, where psychological and scientific methods had been developed to extract every gram of useful information, without damaging the accused.
At the Lubyanka the interrogators used rubber truncheons, cold water enemas, and electrical shocks to the genitals, so that often the prisoner would tell his or her interrogators anything they wanted to know, even if they had to invent the information.
At Lefortovo it was different. Here some of the interrogators were kindly, grandfatherly men who had a great deal of sympathy for their subjects. Psychologists would listen with an understanding ear. Drugs that didn’t fry your brain were employed, as was a method called “Pavlov’s Rewards.” It was a procedure developed in the early eighties, where electric probes were inserted into the prisoner’s skull, lodging in the section of the brain that recognized and processed sexual pleasure. The same method had been used in the United States to control the behavior of laboratory mice. The interrogator could reward his subject by rotating a dial that sent varying amounts of electricity into the brain. The prisoner immediately felt the sensation of sex. If the electric current was strong enough it could induce an orgasm that could last anywhere from seconds, to indefinitely.
The prisoners soon learned that if they lied, nothing would happen to them. No beatings, no cold water enemas, no intimidation. But if they told the truth they would be rewarded with an orgasm. The more they cooperated, the longer the orgasms lasted.
In one early experiment with a Moscow prostitute, when the KGB doctors were learning to calibrate the device, they’d turned the dial to its maximum value and left it there. The woman lasted for nearly two hours before her heart finally gave out, giving rise to a lot of lewd jokes. But no one on the staff volunteered to try it out, even though the prostitute had smiled and moaned with pleasure right up to the moment of her death.
These days a section of Lefortovo was still used as a prison for hard cases, but most of the compound had been taken over by the Special Branch of the FSK. Particularly difficult and sensitive operations were planned and conducted here away from the prying eyes of the public, the Militia and especially the SVR.
Dzerzhinsky Square was often overrun by western journalists under the openness policy instituted by Gorbachev. But Lefortovo was secret from nearly everyone.
Yuryn’s limousine was admitted through the main gates, and pulled up in front of the administration building that faced the assembly yard. Yuryn and Chernov went immediately upstairs to the third floor where Lefortovo’s administrator, Colonel Anatoli Zuyev, was waiting for them.
“Your assistant Captain Paporov is on his way over,” the hawk-nosed director said. “He can provide you with anything you need.” “I expect no interference from anyone here, Colonel—” Chernov began, but Zuyev held up a hand.
“Believe me, Colonel Bykov, I don’t know what your special operation is about, and I have no desire to find out. If you want to perch on top of the flagpole at midnight, drink vodka and piss on us, be my guest. No one will even look up. But if you need something, anything, Paporov will get it for you. He is very good.”
“Very well,” Chernov said.
“Paporov will meet you downstairs. If there’s nothing else I can do for you, I have a dinner date.”
“Enjoy your dinner, Colonel.”
“I will,” Zuyev said brusquely.
Chernov and Yuryn went downstairs, to the darkened day room empty at this hour. Everything was institutional gray, nothing more than functional. There was no television, no pictures on the walls, no rugs on the bare tile floor, just a few steel tables and chairs.
“Kabatov will want progress reports,” Yuryn said.
“Tell him whatever you want to tell him, General.”
Yuryn eyed him coldly. “You and I both know the truth, so don’t screw around here. You have less than ten weeks.”
Chernov’s left eyebrow rose. “I don’t screw around, as you put it.”
Yuryn nodded. “I’m having dinner at my club tonight, would you care to join me?”
“No,” Chernov said.
“As you wish,” Yuryn said. He turned and left.
Chernov went to the window. The prison seemed all but deserted. The outer walls were not illuminated, so far as he could tell there were no guards in the four towers and only a few windows on the one and two story yellow brick buildings were lit from within.
After Yuryn’s limousine passed through the main gate, Zuyev came downstairs and passed Chernov without noticing him. Outside, his car drew up, he got in the back seat and left by the main gate, and the building fell silent.
Chernov lit a cigarette as he examined his thoughts.
He had been placed in a very dangerous position, caught between the forces inside the Kremlin, and forces outside that were allied with Tarankov. Under ordinary circumstances he wondered if he would have got out while such an act was relatively uncomplicated. But these were not ordinary circumstances. McGarvey was the assassin, and whatever dangers there were here in chaotic Moscow they were worth facing for a chance at finally killing the bastard.,
A dark figure came across the parade ground. Chernov stepped away from the window and stubbed out his cigarette. The figure passed through a strip of light that came through the steel gates, and Chernov caught a brief look at the man’s face which was framed by long hair, and covered by a beard. Unusual for a military officer, Chernov thought, even in these times.
The man came in and walked over to where Chernov stood next to the window. “Good evening, Colonel. I’m Captain Paporov, I’ve been assigned to be your assistant.” “How did you know I was standing here?” Chernov asked in English.
“Your cigarette.”.
“That sort of a mistake could cost us our lives,” Chernov said, switching to French.
“Mats oui, man colonel.”
“Then we’d better not make any more mistakes.”
Paporov managed a slight smile. “I think we will, Colonel. But I’ll try to keep mine to a minimum.”
Chernov grunted. “You’re an arrogant bastard.”
“Yes, sir, that I am.” “Is that why they let you get away with all that hair?”
“It’s either that, or fire me. Something General Yuryn won’t allow, because I’m good at what I do. And from what I was told, so are you. Otherwise I wouldn’t have taken this assignment. Kirk McGarvey is a tough son of a bitch, and frankly I don’t give a shit whether Tarankov lives or dies. But trying to stop a man like McGarvey might prove to be interesting.” “For the duration, then, you’re mine. That means you will discuss no aspect of this
