Legends

by Robert Littell

  Martin’s muscles ached from the effort of keeping his body from sliding off the chair. He strained to bring the interrogator into focus. “Both Mr. Rabbani and Zuzana Slánská described Samat Ugor-Zhilov as a philanthropist—”

  Radek emitted a single hiccup. “Some philanthropist!” he cried from the wall.

  The interrogator threw Radek a dark look, as if to remind him that there was a pecking order; that birds on the junior end of it should be seen but not heard. Then, angling the sheet of paper toward the light, he began reading phrases from it. “Both Mr. Rabbani and Zuzana Slánská are marketing a French device that corrects the error the U.S. Pentagon builds into the satellite GPS system to thwart rogue missile launchings … Soviet-surplus radar units from the Ukraine … ah, yes, armored personnel carriers from a Bulgarian state-run company, Terem, sold to Syria for eventual delivery to Iraq … engines and spare parts for the T-55 and T-72 Soviet tanks from assorted Bulgarian armaments factories … ammunition, explosives, rockets, training manuals in missile technology from Serbia … spare jet-fighter parts and rocket propellants from an aviation factory in eastern Bosnia. And listen to this: The London prosthesis warehouse and the Prague generic medicine operation are used as clearing houses for orders for an ammunition factory in the town of Vitez and missile guidance systems fabricated in a research center in the city of Banja Luka … payments for items on the inventory were made in cash or in diamonds.” The interrogator flicked the nail of his middle finger against the sheet of paper. “I could continue but there is no point.”

  In one of his legends—Martin couldn’t recall which—he remembered taking a course at the Farm designed to prepare agents in the field for hostile interrogation. The various techniques of interrogation discussed included one where the interrogator would invent flagrant lies to disorient the person being questioned. Agents who found themselves in this predicament were advised to hang on to the facts they knew to be true and let the fictions of the interrogator pass without comment.

  Martin, his head swimming with fatigue, heard himself say, “I know absolutely nothing about the sale of weapons.”

  The interrogator removed his eyeglasses and massaged the bridge of his nose with the thumb and third finger of his left hand. “That being the case, what brought you to Mr. Taletbek Rabbani’s warehouse in London and the Vyshrad Station in Prague?”

  Martin longed to stretch out on the metal army cot in his cell. “I am trying to trace Samat Ugor-Zhilov,” he said.

  “Why?”

  In disjointed sentences, Martin admitted that he had once been employed by the CIA; that it was perfectly true that he had set up shop as a private detective in Brooklyn, New York, after he left the service. He explained about Samat walking out on his wife in Israel, leaving her in a religious limbo; how the wife’s sister and father had hired him to track down Samat and convince him to give her a religious divorce so that she could get on with her life. “I have no interest in purchasing false limbs or generic drugs. I am simply following a trail that I hope leads to Samat.”

  Smiling thinly, the interrogator humored Martin. “And what will you do once you find him?”

  “I will take Samat to the nearest town that has a synagogue and oblige him to grant his wife a divorce in front of a rabbi. Then I will return to Brooklyn and spend the rest of my life boring myself to death.”

  The interrogator turned Martin’s story over in his mind. “I am familiar with the school of intelligence activities that holds that a good cover story must be made to seem preposterous if it is to be believed. But you are pushing this thesis to its limits.” He rifled through the papers on the desk and came up with another report. “We have been observing people entering or leaving the Vyshrad Station for weeks now,” he continued. “We even managed to plant a listening device in the upstairs office. Here is a transcript of a very recent conversation. Perhaps it will seem familiar to you. A man was heard to say: I have a confession to make. I am not here to buy generic medicines. I have come to find out more about Samat’s project concerning the exchange of the bones of the Lithuanian saint for Jewish Torah scrolls.” The interrogator raised his eyes from the paper to look directly at his prisoner. “Curious that you make no mention of divorce before a rabbi. Bones of the Lithuanian saint, Jewish Torah scrolls—I take that to be coded references to weapons systems originating in Lithuania and Israel. I can tell you that, aside from the illegality of selling weapons and weapon systems, what intrigues us most about Mrs. Slánská is her motive. She was not doing it for money, Mr. Odum. She is an idealist.”

  “Last time I checked, being an idealist was not a crime, even in the Czech Republic.”

  “The American writer Mencken once defined an idealist as someone who, on observing that a rose smelled better than a cabbage, concluded that it would also make better soup. Yes, well, like Mencken’s idealist, Mrs. Slánská’s idealism is very particular—she remains a diehard Marxist, plotting the comeback of the communists. She desires to set the clock back and is thought to be using the considerable profits from the sale of weapons to finance a splinter group hoping to do here in the Czech Republic what the former communists have done in Poland and Rumania and Bulgaria: win elections and return to power.”

  It occurred to Martin there might be a way to beat the fatigue that made it appear as if everything around him was happening in slow motion. He closed one eye, thinking that one lobe of his brain could actually sleep while the other eye and the other lobe remained awake. After a moment, hoping the interrogator wouldn’t catch on to his clever scheme, he switched eyes and lobes. He could hear the interrogator’s voice droning on; could make out, through his open eye, the blurred figure getting up and coming around to half sit on the desk in front of him.

  “You arrived here from London, Mr. Odum. The British MI5 established that you lived for several days in a rooming house next to a synagogue off Golders Green. The warehouse where Mr. Taletbek Rabbani was murdered the day before you departed from London was within walking distance of your rooming house.”

  “If everyone living within walking distance of the warehouse is a suspect,” the half of Martin’s brain still functioning managed to say, “MI5 is going to have its hands full.”

  “We have not excluded the possibility of concluding a deal with you, Mr. Odum. Our principal objective is to discredit Mrs. Slánská; to show that she and Mr. Rabbani were in league with Mr. Samat Ugor-Zhilov’s weapons operation; that both the warehouse in London and the defunct train station in Prague were funded by the same Samat Ugor-Zhilov, a notable Moscow gangster who is associated with the Ugor-Zhilov known as the Oligarkh. The object for us is to tie the communist splinter group to Zuzana Slánská’s illegal weapons operation and discredit them once and for all … Mr. Odum, are you hearing me? Mr. Odum? Mr. Odum, wake up!”

  But both lobes of Martin’s brain had yielded to exhaustion.

  “Take him back to his cell.”

  Once, several incarnations back, Dante Pippen had barely survived an interminable bus trip that took him from a CIA safe house in a middle class neighborhood of Islamabad (furnished, for once, not in ancient Danish modern but in modern Pakistani kitsch) to Peshawar and the tribal badlands of the Khyber Pass, where he spent the better part of a year debriefing fighters infiltrating into and out of Afghanistan. The bus trip (Crystal Quest’s notion of how an Irish reporter working for a wire service—Dante’s cover at the time—would travel) had turned out to be a nightmare. Squeezed onto the wooden bench at the back of the bus between a mullah from Kandahar wearing a filthy shalwar kameez and a bearded Kashmiri fighter in a reeking djellaba, Dante had been eternally grateful when the bus pulled up, sometimes smack in the middle of nowhere, other times on the sewage-saturated streets of what passed for a village, to let the passengers stretch their legs, reckon the direction of Mecca and murmur the verses of the Koran a Muslim is required to recite five times a day. Now, slouching on the plush banquette in the back of the air-conditioned double-deck touris
t bus, surrounded by well-dressed and, more importantly, well-scrubbed Germans on their way home from the spa at Karlovy Vary, Martin Odum suddenly thought of Dante’s Khyber trip and the memory brought a smile to his lips. As always, remembering a detail from Dante’s past reminded Martin that he, too, must have had a past, and this gave him a measure of hope that he could one day retrieve it. He patted the Canadian passport in the inside breast pocket of his jacket in anticipation of arriving at the Czech-German frontier. This particular passport, one of several he’d swiped from a safe when he was clearing out his office after being dismissed from the CIA, had been issued to a resident of British Columbia named Jozef Kafkor, a name Martin didn’t recognize but found easy to remember because it reminded him of Franz Kafka and his stories of anguished individuals struggling to survive in a nightmarish world, which was more or less how Martin saw himself. Lulled by the motion of the bus and the ticking of its diesel engine, Martin closed his eyes and dozed, reliving the events of the last twelve hours.

  He could hear Radek’s voice whispering in his ear. Please, Mr. Odum, you must wake up.

  Martin had drifted up toward the mirrored surface of consciousness in carefully calibrated increments, a deep sea diver rising languidly to avoid the bends. When he finally located the appropriate muscles and worked his lids open, he had discovered Radek, dressed again in jodhpurs and the Tyrolean jacket, crouching next to the metal army cot in his cell. “For the love of God, wake up, Mr. Odum.”

  “How long have I been asleep?”

  “Four, four and a half hours.”

  Martin had struggled stiffly into a sitting position on the cot, with his back against the wooden bulkhead. “What time is it?”

  “Twenty to six.”

  “Antemeridian or postmeridian?”

  “Before dawn. Are you able to focus on what I say? The guards on the quay, the staff on the houseboat have been sent home. People in high places want you to vanish into thin air.” He handed Martin his shoes, both of which had laces, along with his belt. “Put these on. Follow me.”

  Radek led Martin up the metal staircase to the weather deck. In a tiny room next to the midships passageway, he returned his Aquascutum and valise, which he had retrieved from the bed and breakfast. Martin snapped open the valise and touched the white silk scarf folded on top of the clothes. He ran his fingers across the underside of the lid.

  “Your false papers, as well as your dollars and English pounds, are where you hid them, Mr. Odum.”

  Martin regarded Radek warily. “You provide a great deal for thirty lousy crowns an hour.”

  There was a flicker of pain in Radek’s eyes. “I am not the man I appear to be,” he whispered. “I am not the person my superiors take me for. I did not rebel in my youth against the communists to serve so-called state capitalists who use the same methods. I refuse to be complicit with criminals.” He pulled the German Walther P1 with a clip inserted in it from a pocket of his Tyrollean jacket and offered it to Martin, butt first. “At least you are forewarned.”

  Thoroughly confused, Martin took the weapon. “Forewarned and forearmed.”

  “I was instructed to release you at fifteen minutes to seven. I surmise that your body would have been found floating in the Vltava. Your valise, filled with American dollars and British pounds and false identity papers, would have been recovered from the quay. The authorities would have speculated that a suspicious American, involved in the illegal sale of weapons and weapons systems, had been murdered by international gangsters. A small item to that effect would have appeared in the local newspapers. The American embassy would give the matter superficial attention—your CIA station chief might even hint that the national interest would be better served if they did not dig too deeply into the affair. With the ink still wet on the various reports, the case would be closed.”

  “A quarter to seven—that gives me less than an hour,” Martin noted.

  “My automobile, a gray Skoda, is parked fifty meters down the quay. The gas tank is full, the keys are in the ignition. Drive along the quay until you come to the first ramp leading to the street, then cross the river at the first bridge you come to and head due south, following the signposts to Ceské Budjovice and beyond that, Austria. If they stop you at the frontier, use one of your false passports. The whole trip should take you about two hours if you do not meet too much traffic.”

  “If I’m running, I want to take Zuzana Slánská with me.”

  “Her life is not in danger. Yours is. She faces a prison sentence if the evidence is sufficient to convict her.”

  Martin was worried about Radek. “How will you explain that your handgun is missing?”

  “I would take it as a service if you would strike my head above the ear hard enough to break the skin and draw blood. They will find me only just beginning to regain consciousness. I will claim that you overpowered me. They will have their doubts—I will certainly be demoted, I may even lose my employment. So what. I resist, therefore I am.”

  The two men shook hands. “I hope our paths cross again,” Martin said.

  Radek flashed a sheepish grin. “Be warned, Mister—next time I will not be such a fool as to settle for one lousy U.S. dollar an hour.”

  Gritting his teeth, Radek shut his eyes and angled his head. Martin didn’t stint—he knew Radek stood a better chance of talking his way out of trouble if the head wound were real. Gripping the handgun by the barrel, wincing in empathy, he forced himself to swipe the butt sharply across the young man’s scalp, drawing blood, stunning Radek, who slumped onto his knees.

  “Thank you for that,” he groaned.

  “It was not my pleasure,” Martin observed.

  He collected his belongings and made his way across the gangplank to the quay, which appeared deserted. Radek’s Skoda was parked in the shadows to his left. He went to the car and opened the door and threw his belongings onto the passenger seat. When he turned the key in the ignition, the motor started instantly. He checked the gas gauge—it was full, just as Radek had said. He threw the car into gear and started down the quay. He’d gone about half a kilometer when his headlights fell on the ramp leading to the street. Suddenly Martin’s foot went to the brake. Killing the headlights, he pulled the car into the shadows at the side of the quay. He sat there for a moment, shaken by the pulse pounding in his ear. An old instinct had triggered an alarm in the lobe of his brain that specialized in tradecraft. He retrieved the German handgun from the pocket of his jacket, removed the clip, flicked the first of the icy 9-millimeter Parabellum bullets into the palm of his hand and hefted it.

  He caught his breath. The bullet looked real enough. But it was too light!

  Contrary to what the interrogator had said, Martin was not past his prime!

  Checking out the bullets in a handgun was a piece of tradecraft Dante Pippen had picked up during a brief stint with a Sicilian Mafia family. When you gave someone a handgun, or left one where it was sure to be found, there was always the danger that it could be turned against you. In Sicily it was indoor sport to plant handguns loaded with dummy bullets that looked and (if you pulled the trigger) sounded like real bullets. But dummy bullets didn’t have the same weight as real bullets—someone familiar with handguns could sense the difference.

  Radek had set him up for a fall.

  Martin remembered the pained look in the young man’s eyes; he could hear his voice, oozing sincerity, delivering his manifesto: I am not the man I appear to be.

  Who amongst us is the man he appears to be?

  Martin thought about going back to liberate Zuzana Slánská. But he quickly abandoned the idea—if he returned to the houseboat for her now, they would know that he’d figured out the scheme. And they would fall back on Plan B, which was bound to be less subtle but more immediate.

  Martin could imagine the scenario of Plan A: The prisoner, carrying multiple false identity papers and arrested in the company of an arms dealer, overpowers his guard, swipes his handgun and escapes from the
safe house where he is being questioned, heading for Austria. Somewhere along the route, or perhaps at the border crossing itself, he is stopped for a routine passport control. In front of witnesses he produces the gun and tries to shoot his way out of a tight spot, at which point he is gunned down by uniformed police. Open and shut case of self defense. Happens all the time in the former Soviet wastelands of Europe these days.

  Knowing that Radek had been setting him up for a hit, Martin certainly didn’t want to use the Skoda, though if he parked it on a side street, where it could go unnoticed for hours or even for days, the authorities might spend precious time looking for Radek’s car on the highways leading south. Once he ditched the Skoda (he would throw the handgun in the river but leave the bullets on the driver’s seat to taunt Radek), the quickest way out of the country was the best: There were trains departing all through the day for Karlovy Vary, the spa in the northwestern corner of the country a long stone’s throw from the German frontier. And there were double-decker tourist busses heading back to Germany from Karlovy Vary by the dozens every afternoon; even under the communist regime it had been possible to bribe one of the bus drivers to take you across the border. If the frontier guards verified identities, he could use the Canadian passport that he’d stashed in the tattered lining of his Aquascutum. Checking the lining again, he felt there was a good possibility that Radek had not discovered that one.

  The driver’s tinny voice, coming from small speakers in the roof of the tourist bus, stirred Martin from his reverie. “Bereitet Eure Pässe, wir werden an der Grenze sein.” Up ahead he could make out the low flat-roofed wooden buildings that housed the money changers and the toilets, and beyond that the border guards in brown uniforms and berets. There was one tourist bus ahead of theirs and three behind, which Martin knew was a stroke of luck; the guards tended toward cursory inspections at rush hours. When it was the turn of his bus, a young officer with a harassed expression on his face climbed onto the bus and walked down the aisle, glancing at faces more than the open passports, looking for Arabs or Afghans surely. Sitting on the banquette, Martin opened the passport to the page with his photo and, smiling pleasantly, held it out, but the young officer barely gave it, or him, a second glance. When the bus started up again and eased across the red stripe painted across the highway, the German passengers, relieved to be back in civilization, broke into a raucous cheer.