“What news?”
Gerasimov gestured annoyance. “The spy Filitov is a tough old bird. It will take another week or two to get the confession.”
“You should shoot that Colonel of yours who—”
The KGB Chairman shook his head. “No, no. One must be objective. Colonel Vatutin has done very well. He ought to have left the actual arrest to a younger man, but I told him that it was his case, and he doubtless took my instructions too literally. His handling of the rest of the case was nearly perfect.”
“You grow generous too soon, Kolya,” Alexandrov observed. “How hard is it to surprise a seventy-year-old man?”
“Not him. The American spy was a good one—as one might expect. Good field officers have sharp instincts. If they were not so skilled, World Socialism would have been realized by now,” he added offhandedly. Alexandrov lived within his academic world, the Chairman knew, and had little understanding of how things worked in the real one. It was hard to respect a man like that, but not so hard to fear him.
The older man grunted. “I suppose we can wait a week or two. It troubles me to do this while the American delegation is here—”
“It will be after they leave. If agreement is reached, we lose nothing.”
“It is madness to reduce our arms!” Alexandrov insisted. Mikhail Petrovich still thought nuclear weapons were like tanks and guns: the more, the better. Like most political theorists, he didn’t bother learning facts.
“We will retain the newest and the best of our rockets,” Gerasimov explained patiently. “More importantly, our Project Bright Star is progressing well. With what our own scientists have already accomplished, and what we are learning about the American program, in less than ten years we will have the ability to protect the Rodina against foreign attack.”
“You have good sources within the American effort?”
“Too good,” Gerasimov said, setting down his tea. “It seems that some data we just received was sent out too soon. Part of the American computer instructions were sent to us before they were certified, and turned out to be faulty. An embarrassment, but if one must be embarrassed, better that it should result from being too effective than not effective enough.”
Alexandrov dismissed the subject with a wave of the hand. “I spoke to Vaneyev last night.”
“And?”
“He is ours. He cannot bear the thought of that darling slut of a daughter in a labor camp—or worse. I explained what is required of him. It was very easy. Once you have the confession from the Filitov bastard, we will do everything at the same time. Better to accomplish everything at once.” The academician nodded to reinforce his words. He was the expert on political maneuvering.
“I am troubled by possible reactions from the West . . .” Gerasimov noted cautiously.
The old fox smiled into his tea. “Narmonov will have a heart attack. He is of the proper age. Not a fatal one, of course, but enough to make him step aside. We will assure the West that his policies will continue—I can even live with the arms agreement if you insist.” Alexandrov paused. “It does make sense to avoid alarming them unduly. All that concerns me is the primacy of the Party.”
“Naturally.” Gerasimov knew what was to follow, and leaned back to hear it yet again.
“If we don’t stop Narmonov, the Party is doomed! The fool, casting away all we have worked for. Without the leadership of the Party, a German would be living in this house! Without Stalin to put steel in the people’s backbone, where would we be, and Narmonov condemns our greatest hero—after Lenin,” the academician added quickly. “This country needs a strong hand, one strong hand, not a thousand little ones! Our people understand that. Our people want that.”
Gerasimov nodded agreement, wondering why this doddering old fool always had to say the same thing. The Party didn’t want one strong hand, much as Alexandrov denied the fact. The Party itself was composed of a thousand little, grabbing, grasping hands: the Central Committee members, the local apparatchiki who had paid their dues, mouthed their slogans, attended the weekly meetings until they were sick to death of everything the Party said, but still stayed on because that was the path to advancement, and advancement meant privilege. Advancement meant a car, and trips to Sochi . . . and Blaupunkt appliances.
All men had their blind spots, Gerasimov knew. Alexandrov’s was that so few people really believed in the Party anymore. Gerasimov did not. The Party was what ran the country, however. The Party was what nurtured ambitions. Power had its own justification, and for him, the Party was the path to power. He’d spent all of his working life protecting the Party from those who wished to change the power equation. Now, as Chairman of the Party’s own “sword and shield,” he was in the best possible position to take the Party’s reins. Alexandrov would have been surprised, scandalized to learn that his young student saw power as his only goal, and had no plan other than status quo ante. The Soviet Union would plod along as before, secure behind its borders, seeking to spread its own form of government into whatever country offered the opportunity. There would be progress, partly from internal changes, partly from what could be obtained from the West, but not enough to raise expectations too much, or too rapidly, as Narmonov threatened to do. But best of all, Gerasimov would be the man with the reins. With the power of the KGB behind him, he need not fear for his security— certainly not after breaking the Defense Ministry. So he listened to Alexandrov’s ranting about Party theory, nodding when appropriate. To an outsider it would look like the thousands of old pictures—nearly all of them fakes—of Stalin listening with rapt attention to the words of Lenin, and like Stalin, he would use the words to his own advantage. Gerasimov believed in Gerasimov.
18.
Advantages
BUT I just finished eating!” Misha said. “Rubbish,” the jailer responded. He held out his watch. “Look at the time, you foolish old man. Eat up, it’ll be time for your interrogation soon.” The man bent forward. “Why don’t you tell them what they want to hear, Comrade?”
“I am not traitor! I’m not!”
“As you wish. Eat hearty.” The cell door hit its frame with a metallic rattle.
“I am not a traitor,” Filitov said after the door closed. “I’m not,” the microphone heard. “I’m not.”
“We’re getting there,” Vatutin said. What was happening to Filitov was little different in net effect from what the doctor was trying to achieve in the sensory-deprivation tank. The prisoner was losing touch with reality, though much more slowly than the Vaneyeva woman had. His cell was in the interior of the building, denying the prisoner the march of day and night. The single bare light bulb never went off. After a few days Filitov lost all track of what time was. Next his bodily functions began to show some irregularity. Then they started altering the interval between meals. His body knew that something was wrong, but it sensed that so many things were wrong, and was so unsuccessful in dealing with the disorientation, that what happened to the prisoner was actually akin to mental illness. It was a classic technique, and it was a rare individual indeed who could withstand it for more than two weeks, and then it was generally discovered that the successful resister had depended on some outside register unknown to his interrogators, such as traffic or plumbing sounds, sounds that followed regular patterns. Gradually “Two” had learned to isolate out all of these. The new block of special cells was sound-isolated from the rest of the world. Cooking was done on a floor above to eliminate smells. This part of Lefortovo reflected generations of clinical experience in the business of breaking the human spirit.
It was better than torture, Vatutin thought. Torture invariably affected the interrogators, too. That was the problem. Once a man—and in rare cases, a woman—became too good at it, that person’s mind changed. The torturer would gradually go mad, resulting in unreliable interrogation results and a useless KGB officer who would then have to be replaced, and, occasionally, hospitalized. In the 1930s such officers had often been shot when their political masters realized what they had created, only to be replaced with new ones until interrogators looked for more creative, more intelligent methods. Better for everyone, Colonel Vatutin knew. The new techniques, even the abusive ones, inflicted no permanent physical harm. Now it almost seemed that they were treating the mental illnesses that they inflicted, and the physicians who managed the affair for the KGB could now confidently observe that treason against the Motherland was itself a symptom of a grave personality disorder, something that demanded decisive treatment. It made everyone feel better about the job. While one could feel guilty inflicting pain on a brave enemy, one need only feel good about helping to cure a sick mind.