anything in the intelligence business was the surest route to disaster. That was why he'd never broken craft, why he never deviated from the training that had been drilled into him at Camp Peary, on the York River in Virginia, then practiced all over the world. Well. The next thing he had to do was predetermined. He walked to the communications room and sent a telex to Foggy Bottom. This one, however, went to a box number whose traffic was never routine. Within a minute of its receipt, a night-watch officer from Langley drove to State to retrieve it. The wording of the message was innocuous, but its meaning was not: TROUBLE ON THE CARDINAL LINE. FULL DATA TO FOLLOW.
They didn't take him to Dzerzhinskiy Square. KGB headquarters, so long used as a prison-a dungeon for all that happened there-was now exclusively an office building since, in obedience to Parkinson's Law, the agency had expanded to absorb all its available space. Now the interrogations were done at Lefortovo Prison, a block from the Sputnik Cinema. There was plenty of room here.
He sat alone in a room with a table and three chairs. It had never occurred to the courier to resist, and even now he didn't realize that if he'd run away or fought the man who'd arrested him, he might still be free. It wasn't the idea that Major Churbanov had had a gun-he hadn't-but simply that Russians, in lacking freedom, often lack the concepts needed for active resistance. He'd seen his life end. He accepted that. The courier was a fearful man, but he feared only what had to be. You cannot fight against destiny, he told himself.
'So, Churbanov, what do we have?' The questioner was a Captain of the Second Chief Directorate, about thirty years old.
'Have someone develop this.' He handed over the cassette. 'I think this man is a cutout.' Churbanov described what he'd seen and what he'd done. He didn't say that he'd rewound the film into the cassette. 'Pure chance that I spotted him,' he concluded. 'I didn't think you 'One' people knew how, Comrade Major. Well done!'
'I was afraid that I'd blundered into one of your operations and-'
'You would have known by now. It is necessary for you to make a full report. If you will accompany the sergeant here, he'll take you to a stenographer. Also, I will summon a full debriefing team. This will take some hours. You may wish to call your wife.'
'The film,' Churbanov persisted. 'Yes. I will walk that down to the lab myself. If you'll go with the sergeant, I'll rejoin you in ten minutes.'
The laboratory was in the opposite wing of the prison. The Second Directorate had a small facility here, since much of its work centered on Lefortovo. The Captain caught the lab technician between jobs, and the developing process was started at once. While he waited, he called his Colonel. There was as yet no way to measure what this 'One' man had uncovered, but it was almost certainly an espionage case, and those were all treated as matters of the utmost importance. The Captain shook his head. That old war-horse of a field officer, just stumbling into something like that.
'Finished.' The technician came back. He'd developed the film and printed one blow-up, still damp from the process. He handed back the film cassette, too, in a small manila envelope. 'The film has been exposed and rewound. I managed to save part of one frame. It's interesting, but I have no idea what it actually is.'
'What about the rest?'
'Nothing can be done. Once film is exposed to sunlight, the data is utterly destroyed.'
The Captain scanned the blow-up as the technician said something else. It was mainly a diagram, with some caption printed in block letters. The words at the top of the diagram read: BRIGHT STAR COMPLEX #1, and one of the other captions was LASER ARRAY. The Captain swore and left the room at a run.
Major Churbanov was having tea with the debrief team when the Captain returned. The scene was comradely. It would get more so.
'Comrade Major, you may have discovered something of the highest importance,' the Captain said.
'I serve the Soviet Union,' Churbanov replied evenly. It was the perfect reply-the one recommended by the Party. Perhaps he might leap over the rank of lieutenant colonel and become a full colonel
'Let me see,' the chief debriefer said. He was a full colonel, and examined the photographic print carefully. 'This is all?'
'The rest was destroyed.'
The Colonel grunted. That would create a problem, but not all that much of one. The diagram would suffice to identify the site, whatever it was. The printing looked to be the work of a young person, probably a woman because of its neatness. The Colonel paused and looked out the window for a few seconds. 'This has to go to the top, and quickly. What is described in here is-well, I have never heard of it, but it must be a matter of the greatest secrecy. You comrades begin the debrief. I'm going to make a few calls. You, Captain, take the cassette to the lab for fingerprints and-'
'Comrade, I touched it with my bare hands,' Churbanov said ashamedly.
'You have nothing to apologize for, Comrade Major, your vigilance was more than exemplary,' the Colonel said generously. 'Check for prints anyway.'
'The spy?' the Captain asked. 'What about interrogating him?'
'We need an experienced man. I know just the one.' The Colonel rose. 'I'll call him, too.'
Several pairs of eyes watched him, measuring him, his face, his determination, his intelligence. The courier was still alone in the interrogation room. The laces had been taken from his shoes, of course, and his belt, and his cigarettes, and anything else that might be used as a weapon against himself, or to settle him down. There was no way for him to measure time, and the lack of nicotine made him fidgety and even more nervous than he might have been. He looked about the room and saw a mirror, which was two-way, but he didn't know that. The room was completely soundproofed to deny him even the measure of time from footsteps in the outside corridor. His stomach growled a few times, but otherwise he made no sound. Finally the door opened.
The man who entered was about forty and well dressed in civilian clothes. He carried a few sheets of paper. The man walked around to the far side of the table and didn't look at the courier until he sat down. When he did look at him, his eyes were disinterested, like a man at the zoo examining a creature from a distant land. The courier tried to meet his gaze impassively, but failed. Already the interrogator knew that this one would be easy. After fifteen years, he could always tell.
'You have a choice,' he said after another minute or so. His voice was not hard, but matter-of-fact. 'It can go easily for you or it can go very hard. You have committed treason against the Motherland. I do not need to tell you what happens to traitors. If you wish to live, you will tell me now, today, everything you know. If you do not do this, we will find out anyway, and you will die. If you tell us today, you will be allowed to live.'
'You will kill me anyway,' the courier observed.
'This is not true. If you cooperate, today, you will at worst be sentenced to a lengthy term in a labor camp of strict regime. It is even possible that we can use you to uncover more spies. If so, you will be sent to a camp of moderate regime, for a lesser term. But for that to happen, you must cooperate, today. I will explain. If you return to your normal life at once, the people for whom you work may not know that we have arrested you. They will, therefore, continue to make use of you, and this will enable us to use you to catch them in the act of spying against the Soviet Union. You would testify in the trial against them, and this will allow the State to show mercy. To show such mercy in public is also useful to the State. But for all this to happen, to save your life, and to atone for your crimes, you must cooperate, today.' The voice paused for a beat, and softened further.
'Comrade, I take no pleasure in bringing pain to people, but if my job requires it, I will give the order without hesitation. You cannot resist what we will do to you. No one can. No matter how brave you may be, your body has its limits. So does mine. So does anyone's. It is only a matter of time. Time is important to us only for the next few hours, you see. After that, we can take all the time we wish. A man with a hammer can break the hardest stone. Save yourself the pain, Comrade. Save your life,' the voice concluded, and the eyes, which were oddly sad and determined at the same time, stared into the courier's.
The interrogator saw that he'd won. You could always tell from the eyes. The defiant ones, the hard ones, didn't shift their eyes. They might stare straight into yours, or more often at a fixed point of the wall behind you, but the hard ones would fix to a single place and draw their strength from it. Not this one. His eyes flickered around the room, searching for strength and finding none. Well, he'd expected this one to be easy. Perhaps one more gesture
'Would you like a smoke?' The interrogator fished out a pack and shook one loose on the table.
The courier picked it up, and the white paper of the cigarette was his flag of surrender.
