Jazz couldn’t resist a snort of derision. ‘Am I going to survive this one?’
‘Maybe you will at that.’ Khuv’s smile was very genuine now, as if in anticipation of something quite delicious.
‘First we must get you up on your feet again and show you round the place, and then – ‘
Jazz moved his head enquiringly.
‘And then . . . then we’ll see just what sort of a survivor you really are.’
3
The Perchorsk Projekt
The complex built into the base of the riven mountain at the bottom of the Perchorsk ravine was vast, and it wasn’t without a degree of Russian pride in achievement that Chingiz Khuv took Michael J. Simmons on a tour of inspection – but neither did Khuv lack respect for Jazz’s considerable talent for destruction. On their walkabouts, the British agent was literally strait-jacketed in a garment which effectively disabled him from the waist up, and as if that weren’t enough Karl Vyotsky was invariably present, surly bodyguard to his KGB boss.
‘Blame all of this on the technology-gap, if you must have any sort of scapegoat at all,’ Khuv told the British agent. The Americans with their microchips, spy-satellites, complicated and oh-so-clever electronic listening systems. I mean, where’s the security if they can tap-in on any phone call anywhere in the whole wide world, eh? And these are only a handful of the ways in which sensitive information may be obtained. The art of spying’ (a sideways glance at Jazz, but without enmity) ‘takes a great many forms and encompasses some formidable, one might even say terrifying talents. On both sides, I mean, East and West alike. High-tech on the one hand, and the supernatural on the other.’
‘The supernatural?’ Jazz raised an enquiring eyebrow. The Perchorsk Projekt looks solid enough to me. And anyway, I’m afraid I don’t much believe in ghosts.’
Khuv smiled and nodded. ‘I know,’ he said, ‘I know. We’ve checked on that – or perhaps you don’t remember?’
Jazz looked blank for a moment, then frowned. Come to think of it, he did remember. It had been part of his •debriefing’, but at the time he hadn’t paid it a lot of attention. Actually, he’d thought his ‘DO’ was pulling his leg: to ask what he knew about INTESP, or E-Branch, which used Extra Sensory Perception as a tool for espionage. Indeed ESPionage! As it happened, Jazz had quite genuinely known nothing at all about it, and he probably wouldn’t have believed it even if he had.
‘If telepathy was feasible,’ he told Khuv, ‘they wouldn’t have needed to send me, would they? There wouldn’t be any more secrets!’
‘Quite right, quite right,’ Khuv answered after a moment’s pause. Those were my feelings exactly – once upon a time. And as you rightly point out, all of this,’ he waved an arm expansively about, ‘is obviously solid enough.’
‘All of this’ was the gymnasium area, where for the past week Jazz had been getting himself back in shape following the fortnight he’d spent on his back. The fact that they’d so easily emptied him of all he had known still didn’t sit too well with him. Here, as they paused a while to let Karl Vyotsky strip off his pullover and work out for a few minutes with the weights, Jazz thought he’d try a little pumping of his own.
He had no doubt that whatever questions he put to Khuv, they’d be answered in a truthful, straightforward manner. In this respect the KGB Major was entirely disarming. But on the other hand, why shouldn’t he be open? He had nothing to lose. He knew that Jazz wasn’t going anywhere outside of this place, ever. He’d known that right from square one. That’s the way they had it figured out, anyway.
‘You surprise me,’ he said, ‘complaining about American know-how. I was supposed to be about 75 per cent proof against brainwashing, but you pulled my plug and I just gurgled away. No torture, not even a threat, and I’m pentathol-resistant – but I couldn’t hold a thing back! How the hell did you do that?’
Khuv glanced at him, went back to watching Vyotsky handling weights as if they were made of papier-mâché. Jazz looked at Vyotsky, too.