think. You won.’
‘You need to tell us where you were on the night of the
fourth.’
He said nothing.
‘Why did you defect?’
‘Because I was a patriot,’ he said.
‘Recent conversion?’
‘I was always a patriot. But I came close to being discovered.’
‘How did you get out?’
‘Through Turkey. I went to the American base there.’
‘Tell me about the night of the fourth.’
He said nothing.
‘We’ve got your gun,’ I said. ‘You signed it out. You left the
226
post at eleven minutes past ten and got back at five in the
morning.’
He said nothing.
‘You fired two rounds.’
He said nothing.
‘Why did you wash your car?’
‘Because it’s a beautiful car. I wash it twice a week. Always. A
car like that was a dream to me.’
‘You ever been to Kansas?’
‘No.’
‘Well, that’s where you’re headed. You’re not going home to
Sofia. You’re going to Fort Leavenworth instead.’
‘Why?’
‘You know why,’ I said.
Trifonov didn’t move. He sat absolutely still. He was hunched
way forward, with his wrists fastened to the chair down near
his knees. I sat still, too. I wasn’t sure what to do. Our own
Delta guys were trained to resist interrogation. I knew that.
They were trained to counter drugs and beatings and sensory
deprivation and anything else anyone could think of. Their
instructors were encouraged to employ hands-on training
methods. So I couldn’t even imagine what Trifonov had been
through, in five years with the GRU. There was nothing much I
could do to him. I wasn’t above smacking people around. But I
figured this guy wouldn’t say a word even if I disassembled him
limb by limb.
So I moved on to traditional policing techniques. Lies, and
bribery.
‘Some people figure Carbone was an embarrassment,’ I said.
‘You know, to the army. So we wouldn’t necessarily want to
pursue it too far. You spill the beans now, we could send you
back to Turkey. You could wait there until it was time to go
home and be a patriot.’
‘It was you who killed Carbone,’ he said. ‘People are talking
about it.’
‘People are wrong,’ I said. ‘I wasn’t here. And I didn’t kill
Brubaker. Because I wasn’t there, either.’
‘Neither was I,’ he said. ‘Either.’
He was very still. Then something dawned on him. His eyes
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started moving. He looked left, and then right. He looked up at
Summer’s map. Looked at the pins. Looked at her. Looked at
me. His lips moved. I saw him say Carbone to himself. Then Brubaker. He made no sound, but I could lip-read his awkward
accent.
‘Wait,’ he said.
‘For what?’
‘No,’ he said.
‘No what?’
‘No, sir,’ he said.
‘Tell me, Trifonov,’ I said.
‘You think I had something to do with Carbone and Brubaker?’
‘You think you didn’t?’
He went quiet again. Looked down.
‘Tell me, Trifonov,’ I said.
He looked up.
‘It wasn’t me,’ he said.
I just sat there. Watched his face. I had been handling investigations
of various kinds for six long years, and Trifonov
was at least the thousandth guy to look me in the eye and say it
wasn’t me. Problem was, a percentage of those thousand guys
had been telling the truth. And I was starting to think maybe
Trifonov was, too. There was something about him. I was
starting to get a very bad feeling.
‘You’re going to have to prove it,’ I said.
‘I can’t.’
‘You’re going to have to. Or they’ll throw away the key. They
might let Carbone slide, but they sure as hell aren’t going to let
Brubaker slide.’
He said nothing.
‘Start over,’ I said. ‘The night of January fourth, where were
you?’
He just shook his head.
‘You were somewhere,’ I said. ‘That’s for damn sure. Because
you weren’t here. You logged in and out. You and your gun.’
He said nothing. Just looked at me. I stared back at him and
didn’t speak. He went into the kind of desperate conflicted
silence I had seen many times before. He was moving in the
228
chair. Almost imperceptibly. Tiny violen! movements, from side
to side. Like he was fighting two alternating opponents, one on
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