“But I can’t cooperate! I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Jesus Christ,” said Ruth. “Are you not even human?”
For an instant Sasha thinks she meant him. But when he looks in her direction, she’s staring instead at the KGB woman. She speaks in a sore, frayed voice.
“You see what it does to your soul? This is what it makes you. It turns you into a brute with no soul, a stone for a heart, movements and classes instead of human beings. My sister is a person! She’s beautiful and loyal and she saved my life when we were kids. I’m not kidding. I had a stomachache and she made my parents take me to the doctor and they got my appendix out just in time. And I never thanked her. She needs to live. Please. She needs a doctor. She’s a human being!”
“That’s up to her husband.”
“My God! Who are you? Don’t you have a sister, don’t you have anyone you love? What if she were your own sister? What if she were your daughter?”
From Iris’s cell comes the sound of a baby crying. Sasha turns and bangs his forehead on the window bars. “Let me in! For God’s sake, let me hold him!”
Behind him, Ruth screams at the KGB woman. Iris stirs and turns to the crying baby in her arms. In his panic, Sasha can’t even remember the name. The name of his own son! He bangs the bars with such strength, the door rattles in its hinges. The baby bawls his heartbreaking newborn cry. Iris shushes him. A pair of hands grasp Sasha by the shoulders and haul him away from the door. He shouts his wife’s name, he sobs at each breath. He struggles against the arms that hold him, but they’re massive arms and he’s as weak as a kitten from the drive—his hands are handcuffed behind his back—he’s helpless. The guard drags him outside and the door clangs shut. He falls to his knees. The prison hut is soundproof—all those desperate cries and shouts are cut off like a faucet. Sasha tilts his head to the sky and stares disbelieving at the gray pattern of midnight clouds. He has the strange feeling that his chest and stomach have been cut open and his entrails are spilling onto the ground before him.
“All right,” he whispers. “I’ll talk.”
Lyudmila
July 1952
Outside Riga, Latvia
Once a man confesses to treason, it’s easy to vacuum out all the details from him. He doesn’t want to die! He thinks if he tells you everything, every last detail, the information will somehow weigh in his favor. This many names and dates, this many acts of betrayal, all added together—surely the sum equals one traitor’s life. All you have to do is convince him to break. That’s the hard part.
But Digby seems reluctant to reveal anything. He answers her questions haltingly, backtracks, puzzles through his memory. Lyudmila’s beginning to lose her temper. It’s nearly four o’clock in the morning and the sun’s rising, pink and orange and gold outside the window. She didn’t sleep on the airplane that brought her here; she’s worked through the night. She sets down her pen and nods to the transcript typist on the machine in the corner.
“You are not being forthcoming,” she says sternly. “I have kept my side of the bargain. A doctor attends your wife this minute.”
“I thought you were going to set her free. I thought you were going to let her and the children go to the Americans.”
Lyudmila’s astonished. “Where did you get this idea? It’s absurd! They are citizens of the Soviet Union! Why would the Americans want them?”
“They have family there. If I’m going to be shot, I want them with their family.”
“It can’t be done. It’s likely the Americans have already given up and sailed off.”
He frowns. “What about Fox?”
“Fox is a spy and has been detained separately. Listen to me. The information you have given me is all very nice, but it’s not especially useful. What I need to know, first of all, is the identity of ASCOT—”
“I’ve already told you, I don’t know that. I only knew him by his code name.”
“Nonsense. You knew him in England. You and he set up Operation Honeysuckle together, possibly with the assistance of Fox.”
Digby leans forward. “How do I know there’s a doctor with Iris?”
“A doctor has been called for.”
“How do I know that?”
“You have my word,” she says.
He sits back again. “I’m not going to give you any more information until Iris and the children are safely in American hands.”