The Zero Option

by David Rollins

  Nami looked at Colonel Korolenko and saw him grinning.

  September 11, 1983

  Washington DC. Roy Garret was sure he didn’t want to be here, especially on a Sunday, but he’d done as Clark had asked and come down. A young woman with a mouthful of braces and rubber bands handed him a button as he approached the crowded steps up to the front door of Constitution Hall. The button read ‘Remember Flight 007’, which she reiterated with a high-pitched, excited voice.

  Reporters were everywhere, taking photos of the attendees. There were also other photographers present, who were not employed by the media but were equally inquisitive about the guest list assembling to commemorate the life of Congressman Larry McDonald.

  Garret walked into the hall. It was almost a political convention, the walls and chairs hung with red white and blue streamers, bunting and rosettes. Banners read ‘Down with Communism’ and ‘This Time We Will Not Forget’. The front stage was hung with flower garlands and the US Navy Band played ‘Yankee Doodle Dandy’ as people took their seats. The place was absolutely packed, the atmosphere charged.

  Garret wandered around the side of the hall and eventually claimed a seat on the end of a row. Scanning the crowd, he saw it was a who’s who of the ultra right—generals, admirals, prominent businessmen, politicians, the clergy, lobbyists.

  Kathryn McDonald, her children beside her, was saying hello to various friends and supporters of Larry McDonald’s cause, which, as far as Garret knew, was to prevent the companies owned by the Rockefeller family buying up the world. Or something like that. Kathryn McDonald had personally invited the President, who had found an excuse not to attend. A wise choice, thought Garret. There was something a little crackpot about the proceedings.

  Garret lasted until someone giving a speech compared McDonald to Samson of biblical fame and ‘Amens’ were tossed from the seated crowd like hats at a graduation. He snuck out during a round of rapturous applause.

  On the stairs, a thin woman in her Sunday best beneath a broad pink sunhat handed him a bumper sticker that said ‘Honk if you hate massacres’.

  ‘Remember Congressman McDonald,’ she advised him earnestly, a Daughters of the American Revolution button pinned on breasts that sagged well below her belly button.

  ‘I sure will,’ he replied.

  At the bottom of the stairs he dropped the bumper sticker in the trash and wondered how Congressman McDonald was getting along.

  The martial music pounded through the speakers with such force that droplets of condensation caught in the seams of the metal doors vibrated in four-four time. The approach to information retrieval employed at the dacha was different in several fundamental ways from that practiced at the Lubyanka, though the end result was the same. Instead of sensory deprivation, sensory overload was the preferred route taken to keep the subject awake, the music pumped into the prisoner’s cell through enormous speakers set into the roof. And it didn’t let up, not for a minute. Night and day it played, until the subject’s nerves were ragged and frayed and he was ultimately bludgeoned into submission.

  Then there were the other inducements to keep a subject awake. Korolenko opened the judas hole and peeked in. It was gloomy in the cell, no need for bright lights here. Prisoner 98987 was standing in the small cell, head forward, chin on his chest. He held his arms out from his sides, as he was forced to do to prevent being sprayed with ice water from a hose. Hour after hour he was made to stand like that, on a raised platform molded into the concrete floor, an island in a pool of water so cold that white ice blocks bobbed in it.

  ‘Not good,’ said Colonel Ozerov over Korolenko’s shoulder. ‘A day and a half at the Lubyanka, and two days here. If not for the four and a half days wasted resolving the transportation issues, we might have broken him by now.’

  ‘A few extra days won’t matter,’ said Korolenko with a shrug.

  ‘No, except to one’s professional pride. But he will break soon, perhaps in ten minutes, perhaps in another few hours. Once his will collapses and his mind accepts there are two choices, talk or sleep, and that one is the only route to the other, we won’t be able to shut him up. No man can beat his own mind.’

  ‘You should expect him to be tough,’ said Korolenko. ‘As you know from his biography, he was a doctor in the navy before he was a politician. They teach interrogation survival techniques in their armed forces. He’ll have tools to help him resist. Combine these experiences with a doctor’s knowledge of physiology . . .’ Korolenko let the thought trail off.

  ‘We’ll see. I don’t believe the US military is quite aware of the best interrogation methods. Torture for its own sake is quite a different beast from information retrieval. And, of course, sadists often conduct torture simply for the sexual pleasure it brings them. But we are not interested in inflicting pain, as you know. As for his survival knowledge, it could work against him. If he knows what lies ahead, his willpower may collapse soon and spectacularly. An imagination can be a soldier’s worst enemy.’

  Korolenko saw that Congressman McDonald was now wearing gray pajamas, which were damp from being sprayed. His face was turned away from the door. He shifted his weight on the raised pedestal and his naked toes dipped into the pool, touching an ice block. He shifted his weight again, to bring his bare skin away from the water.

  ‘How long has it been now?’ asked Korolenko.

  Ozerov checked his watch. ‘In this cell? Coming up to thirteen hours. The last time he tried to sleep was three hours ago.’

  Korolenko went off, enjoyed a lengthy breakfast of bacon and sour milk cakes, and had conversations with several comrades at the dacha, none of whom knew of McDonald or that he was being held. Security was tight. A few hours later, he returned to the dacha’s basement refreshed and ready to go to work. Ozerov was sitting outside the cell with a Pravda on his knee.

  ‘What’s the truth today?’ asked Korolenko, playing on the meaning of the newspaper’s title.

  ‘That we are winning,’ Ozerov said.

  ‘And what are we winning?’

  ‘Everything, apparently.’

  ‘Good, as it should be.’ Korolenko gave his old friend a grin. Pravda was rarely the bearer of bad tidings. ‘Anything new?’ He nodded at the metal door of McDonald’s cell.

  ‘He went for a swim half an hour ago, did a little shouting . . . Since then, all has been quiet. Take a look.’

  Korolenko put his eye to the judas hole. McDonald’s pajamas were wetter than the last time he’d looked. While he watched, the prisoner urinated, a bright yellow stream running over his white foot, a yellow delta over the raised platform, a yellow stain in the surrounding water. Excellent: dehydration and hypothermia were working their magic. McDonald couldn’t last much longer without fresh water and sleep. He was more slouched now, stooped, and swaying slightly. His hands were out from his sides, but only a few inches. And then, suddenly, he twitched.

  ‘I think it’s starting,’ Korolenko said over his shoulder.

  From many years’ experience, the colonel knew what was happening. The combination of lengthy standing and sleep deprivation had become an intense and overwhelming torment from which there was no escape. And because the pain was induced by McDonald’s own mind, there was no one he could focus resentment upon, nothing that could be forged into a kind of mental bunker inside which he could take refuge. Pain was now the man’s whole universe, with every sleep-deprived cell in his body begging for release. His extremities would be filled with fluids. His legs would be swollen, and even bearing his own weight would be agony. If the veins in his legs were in the least incompetent, perhaps blood clots would have formed, further adding to the swelling and the pain. At least his heart was strong—that much had been established in a preliminary medical. Beneath the pajamas, there would be lesions. Soon, they would begin to suppurate. The only thing keeping McDonald upright was fear of slipping back into the ice water, the sensation of which would be like sharpened knives carving into his super-sensitized skin. />
  McDonald twitched again, and cried out. The cry was directed at no one in his cell, but at something within him.

  ‘The hallucinations have started,’ Ozerov observed. ‘I think he is almost ready.’ He smiled warmly at Korolenko beside him. ‘No one holds out. Not ever. It’s just not possible.’

  McDonald screamed again and flailed his arms. The action caused him to lose his balance. He staggered into the water and fell to his knees, only to jump up off balance and slam into a wall. Sobbing, he took several shuffling, uncertain steps to the raised platform. His legs buckled and he fell to the water again, screaming, thrashing his fists at invisible specters in the air around him, all control gone. The madness was temporary, at least at this stage. He would recover his senses, but now was the ideal moment.

  ‘It’s time,’ said Ozerov.

  He beckoned at a heavy, square-set woman at the end of the corridor in the uniform of a KGB sergeant. She came forward with two of her subordinates, squat, thick-shouldered men in black rubberized canvas greatcoats, surgical gloves and knee-high rubber boots. One of the men carried a canvas bag of various items over his shoulder. Korolenko and Ozerov stood back and let the team do their job.

  The woman opened the cell door and the two men went in. They appeared moments later behind a wave of loud music and human stink, the soaked and manacled congressman shaking with cold between them, plastered with his own excrement, his eyes rolling in his head, babbling something nonsensical.

  ‘This is going to be interesting,’ said Korolenko as he and Ozerov walked behind the congressman, who had begun to urinate again as he was being dragged, leaving a bright yellow trail on the floor for the two officers to follow.

  The new room was the size of four of the smaller individual cells combined, and the ceiling was higher. It contained a simple desk, several chairs for the interrogation team—which also included a KGB stenographer, in this instance an attractive, petite brunette who wore make-up more suitable for an evening at the Bolshoi Ballet—and a reel-to-reel tape recorder, its spools revolving slowly.

  The team delivered McDonald clean and dry, in a fresh set of gray pajamas. He was chained to the wall behind a narrow shelf on which he was allowed to sit. His eyes were inflamed, the whites the color of red light globes framed in fluorescent red rims, the color accentuated by the pale whiteness of his skin and the almost two weeks of ragged salt and pepper beard on his cheeks, chin and neck.

  As Korolenko sat beside the stenographer, McDonald began to sob, his face cracking into an expression of absolute torment.

  ‘Why, why, why . . .’ he said, over and over.

  ‘Lawrence,’ said Colonel Ozerov, ’would you like to sleep?’

  ‘Yes . . . sleep.’

  Korolenko noted that McDonald said the word ‘sleep’ as if it were water and he had just crossed a desert without a drop, his Adam’s apple shooting up and down in his throat.

  ‘I will let you sleep if you tell us what we want to know,’ the colonel said.

  McDonald closed his eyes and so Ozerov slapped him—not hard; he didn’t need to. The lack of sleep had sharpened the congressman’s senses to the point where the slightest touch felt like the lash of a whip. The red coals that his eyes had become shot wide open.

  He mumbled, ‘Must sleep first.’

  ‘No, talk comes first. There is a warm pillow waiting for you, a soft mattress.’

  The congressman hung his head and then lifted it. ‘You are Lawrence Patton McDonald, US Congressman for the state of Georgia.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why were you traveling to Korea?’

  Korolenko leaned back in his seat and found the most comfortable position. The initial interrogation—there would be many to come—would follow the classic path and last around an hour, during which the congressman would be asked low-stress questions to get him used to answering them rather than asking them. There would be minimal physical coercion—the threat of going back to the music and the ice water and the memory of the endless hours of wakeful torment would be enough to keep him cooperative. If McDonald was compliant, he would be rewarded with several hours of uninterrupted slumber, after which he would be given the choice of cooperating fully with Ozerov or returning to his sleep-deprivation cell for another session with the demons in his own mind. For most people, the memory of the agony of their previous experience—the edge of madness, a cliff from which they had very nearly jumped—was enough to guarantee full and complete cooperation.

  Colonel Korolenko was privately impressed. The congressman had, indeed, been iron-willed. After the brief sleep, he had woken newly defiant. It took four hours in the sleep-deprivation cell to remind him of the torment that could stretch on indefinitely. But now McDonald was ready to open out like a flower. It was time to tear off the petals.

  Ozerov sat in a chair facing the congressman, who also sat in a chair, his manacles secured to the wall behind him. The colonel glanced at the notes, prepared by Korolenko, on his lap and nodded at the stenographer.

  ‘So, Congressman,’ he began, ‘you wish to be President of the United States?’

  McDonald spoke slowly. He said, ‘I wish to protect the Constitution of the United States and the Bill of Rights. That’s the President’s first job, that’s what being President is all about.’

  ‘Oh, I didn’t know that. I thought your President’s first job was to wage war wherever and with whomever he pleases. Is your Constitution under threat?’

  ‘You should know,’ McDonald said, his eyelids heavy.

  ‘And you should know that you can call off this friendly talk at any time, in which case you’ll be returned to your cell. We believe in freedom of choice here.’

  McDonald said nothing, but the reminder was patently sobering.

  ‘I asked you whether your Constitution is under threat,’ said Ozerov with studied patience.

  ‘The Constitution is under threat from globalists.’

  ‘Who are these globalists?’

  ‘They want a one-world government so that the spoils can be divided and the dividends maximized. This will be called the New World Order. But before it can come about, a revolution must erupt and it must be universal.’

  ‘We don’t need another revolution in the Soviet Union. We have had ours.’

  ‘In the 1988 presidential elections, globalists within the United States will field their candidate. It could be a banker like Rockefeller; it could be a public servant like George Shultz. More than likely the candidate will be the current Vice-President, George Herbert Walker Bush. If he wins that election, Bush will put events in train—events that will lead to this New World Order, or One World as it’s also called.’

  ‘What will this One World be?’

  ‘Perhaps it will be the end of the Soviet Union.’

  ‘The end of the Soviet Union?’ Ozerov glanced at Korolenko. There was mirth in his eyes.

  ‘That will be just the first step.’

  ‘The first step to what?’

  ‘Globalism.’

  ‘The only revolution that could possibly sweep the world is Marxism–Leninism.’

  ‘You say that because you have to. Religion is revolution, so is technology. What if there was a global plague? Or another global war? Or another great depression? What if something could lead to another global war? What if something could cause a social meltdown on a global scale that required a supergovernment to take control?’

  ‘So you don’t know what form this revolution will take?’

  ‘No. But as President of the United States, I might have a chance of stopping it. And that’s why I’m here, isn’t it?’

  ‘You are here because you are a spy.’

  ‘This whole thing was put together by the CIA.’

  Ozerov sat forward intently. It was what the KGB believed, too. ‘Do you have proof of this?’

  McDonald shook his head. ‘Come on . . . I’m here because you’re CIA, not Russian. You want me out of the way, the field cleared. W
hat about all the other passengers on the plane, aside from those who came here with me? Are you going to line them up against a wall and shoot them, just so that you can keep me?’

  Ozerov threw Korolenko a concerned glance.

  ‘I’m afraid you are mistaken, Lawrence. This is not some plot and we are not CIA. You are in a dacha outside Moscow, I assure you. As for your fellow passengers, they will enjoy rich and fruitful lives within the glorious Soviet Union, discovering the simple joys of work.’

  Korolenko made a hand movement that suggested a change of direction might be worthwhile.

  ‘Tell me about your association with Hilaire du Berrier.’

  ‘He’s my friend.’

  ‘Just your friend?’

  ‘My visor.’

  McDonald was slurring his speech and becoming difficult to understand.

  ‘Your visor?’

  ‘Advisor.’

  ‘Du Berrier was your advisor.’

  McDonald nodded, his head barely moving.

  ‘What sort of advice would an operative of the former Office of Strategic Services be giving you?’

  ‘Hilaire . . . in the OSS during the war. Came up against your NKVD.’

  ‘Ah, yes, the NKVD, our old intelligence machine, forerunner of the KGB. Hilaire du Berrier helped you set up your Western Goals Foundation. Am I right?’

  ‘Yes,’ McDonald whispered.

  ‘Western Goals, your own personal spy network. Let’s talk about that.’

  ‘Western Goals is a counterpoint to the Eastern Establishment.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Do you?’ said McDonald, discovering within himself a small reserve of strength.

  ‘No. Perhaps you should tell me. What might the Eastern Establishment be?’