Chapter 2 Interrogation
Doctor Yegorov
Sometime later, minutes or hours, a sharp grunt awoke him. A watery form swam into view. A man in a white coat. Nelson opened his eyes further. The man hovering over him reached into a bag—a slow motion arc—sitting on the bed next to Nelson's leg. He pulled out a needle and a vial of amber liquid. Straining to drink in the scene, Nelson felt the needle's prick. Even through his other pain, he could feel that. He struggled to rise, but the man in the white coat pushed him down again.
"Lie still," he said, in Russian. "I'm not going to hurt you."
"How do I know?" Nelson murmured, also in Russian. He felt his head going woozy and his throat tightening up. He could barely stay awake. His awareness refused to remain and he felt a heaviness like a pall drop over his entire frame.
"The bullet in your arm—an ambulance is waiting to transfer you to a hospital."
"Простите? Excuse me?" he asked, low-voiced and breathless with pain. "Пожалуйста, говорите медленнее. Please speak slower."
"Я говорю быстро? Am I speaking fast?"
The admiral shifted his position, his arm aching like fire. "Я не понимаю вас. I don't understand you."
"You don't have to. When we're through, you'll feel better and then you can tell us who you are."
"Don't count on it," Nelson breathed. This time he forgot to use Russian in his reply. Instead of that, he used what made him feel comfortable. English. The Soviet doctor looked down at him, perplexed. A dawning awareness deepened the lines of his features.
"Ясно. I see," he said. "We must go now."
Nelson could, just barely, see him signal others to lift him onto a stretcher. Of what happened in the hours after that, he had no knowledge. Drugged, he didn't know what happened in surgery. When he awoke, his arm lay in a sling, heavily bandaged. He wondered that he still had an arm. His head splitting with the agony of multiple shocks—of capture, surgery and drugs—he glanced up and saw the glass panel in the door. The cell again!
It was stifling and hot. Dressing smells from his arm hung heavy in the uncirculated air. Unable to draw breath, he thrashed about on his bunk as panic set in. He wanted to know things! How long had the operation lasted? What day was it, what time was it—and where was Vasily?
In prison denim now, though he didn't recall when he had changed clothes, he slept off and on until two men entered his cell. He woke up at the sound of the key in the lock, but these men moved without a whisper of sound. They were just there at the side of his bunk.
Squinting, he made out the doctor—who must have been on duty for hours—and, carrying the usual rifle, a guard in a green uniform.
"How did … everything go?" asked the patient, in Russian.
The doctor motioned the guard to stand outside the door. He has some clout, thought Nelson, to make him do that. When he was gone, the doctor turned back and said, in good English, "Everything went well. Your arm will heal without a problem."
"That's good," said the admiral—also in English now.
The doctor, a short, brown-featured man with a ragged moustache, pursed his lips. "I would like to ask you about Vasily Tereschenko. How do you know him?" He had switched to Russian, adding a pressuring tone to his words.
"I—I'm a friend of his," answered Nelson, switching back to Russian, too.
"Oh, come now," said the doctor. "You spoke English before. Speak it now."
"I did?" Nelson asked, raising his head from the bed. At a wave of dizziness, he lowered it again. He was still using Russian.
"Yes."
"You must be wrong." Tiring now, he nearly forgot to answer in Russian.
"You travel well—for a fisherman."
"What?"
"Our men saw a strange-looking plane take off with the Tereschenko family aboard. How do you explain that?"
"I can't."
"Others will ask you. About that and your 'friendship' with Vasily."
"Do you question all of your patients this way? Right after …" Here, the admiral could not supply the appropriate word. His Russian, on shaky enough ground, failed him.
"Surgery—is that the word you're hunting for?" In English.
Nelson nodded. His eyes closed beyond his ability to keep them open.
"Must sleep," he murmured—again, the words were in English.
"I thought so," replied the doctor, but with a different idea in mind. His patient, asleep, did not hear the words, in whichever tongue they were spoken.
Fisherman
The next day, the fifth since the Seaview set out for the White Sea from Santa Barbara, two guards came to his cell—without food. One stood by, while the other instructed him to rise. It was hard. Overnight, he had grown into the bed, even on a mattress that felt stuffed with barn straw. Awkwardly, with his left hand, he buttoned his shirt over his bandage. That was all he could do to make himself presentable. Beard and even some sea sand mingled on his face, and the last bath he had taken had been aboard Seaview two days ago.
After wrestling the button into its hole, he hesitated for ten seconds, ten long seconds, then slipped off the bed. Tilting his head up to look at the huge guard, he asked, "Where are you taking me?"
"Move out."
His arm afire with pain, the American admiral was glad to be out of the room, though not out of the bed. Up a flight of stairs, the guards stopped at the door of an office. He laid his head on the wall as one of the guards knocked and received permission to enter.
Inside the room, he took a chair offered him in front of a large desk. An older man with a long, torpedo-shaped head and a great shock of snow-white hair confronted him. The guards stood at the office door, rigid, resting their gun butts on the floor. Nelson, the fingers of his left hand playing about his lips in a nervous way, turned to look at them as he waited for the white-haired man's first question. The dialogue flowed in Russian.
"Who are you?" The older man waited. "Who are you?" he repeated himself. "You may as well answer me."
Time elapsed, some few seconds. In that time, through one of the windows a photograph series would have caught a cloud moving horizontally across the sky.
"My name is Pietr," the admiral lied, then he fished around for a last name. His imagination, stifled by drugs, bad sleep, pain and hunger, faltered. Finally, he said, "Pietr—Kowalski." Not exactly Russian, but it would have to do.
"And what do you do?"
"I fish. I'm a fisherman. Рыбак." A fisherman.
"In a large yellow and orange flying boat?"
"Sometimes."
"You had a gun on the beach. You were firing at my men."
"They fired first."
"Why did you have a gun, if you only fish?"
"Protection against … sharks."
The admiral had to tax himself a moment there. All he could think of was the word for 'dolphins.' He and Vasily and Olena, Vasily's wife, who he hoped was safe now aboard the Seaview with her daughters, had on several occasions made visits to the Moscow zoo. His genial hosts had pointed out scores of animals and named each of them for him. There had been dolphins, but no sharks at the zoo.
Referring to the method of dispatching sharks, the man behind the desk said, "That's what spear guns are for, not automatic weapons. Вы понимаете меня? You understand me?"
"Da. I'm sorry, sir, but I don't know your name."
"Well, Pietr the fisherman, that is not your primary concern."
"What is, then?"
"Your continued good health. Your life. Your ability to think as a man."
"All that?"
"Yes. Now tell me again who you are."
It went on like that for hours. The admiral, weak from surgery, began to nod his answers. The man behind the desk, dressed in a tight-fitting dark suit, stood up once or twice and walked around the room. Nelson followed him with his eyes. When the interrogator banged his fist on the edge of the desk, the motion startled the prisoner. The admiral's left hand jumped to his forehead at the interrogator's outburst.
"You are a spy. An American. You were trying to take Vasily Tereschenko out of Russia."
"Why do you think I'm an American?"
"Questioning me again?" The white-haired man took a trip to the other side of Nelson's chair, alighting like a moth at his side. He bent over him. "In case you're wondering, that arm won't protect you. We can do things to you that don't involve your limbs in any way."
Nelson grimaced and turned away from the hot breath. He was unwell. Another half-hour and he might be begging for his bed again.
"What are you going to do with Vasily?" he asked, again forgetting he was not the interrogator.
"Vasily is our problem. Yours is of a different nature. You're not a fisherman. Fishermen stink of the sea! You do not smell of fish."
The interrogator had him there. He wondered what he did smell like.
"I'm very tired," he said, all sarcasm gone. "May I go back now?"
"I have not decided where you're to go."
There was a silence broken only by the admiral's labored breathing. He rested his head on his hand, with the elbow on the hard wooden chair arm.
"Go get me a fingerprint kit!" shouted the older man. He almost woke up his prisoner.
The admiral didn't understand at first. Then it dawned on him what had been sent for. Good luck finding my 'prints on file in any Soviet database!
"If you exist, Pietr, we will find you. If you don't exist, you don't have anything to worry about. You'll be dead."
Nelson submitted to the fingerprinting without a murmur. Longing for bed, he could not now, he thought, make a protest.
"We can resume in the morning," said the interrogator. He nodded at the guards.
Moving unsteadily to the door, Nelson turned and looked at the older man. All fuss and no budget, the desk-bound paper pusher had to find out the truth about him in the most economic means possible, or suffer certain consequences, himself.
The doctor, Todor Yegorov—at least that's how he introduced himself—revisited his patient in his cell later that evening, inspecting the arm and redressing it. He carefully laid it back in its sling on top of Nelson's chest. He spoke at first in Russian.
"Pretty rough, today?"
"A lot you'd care to know."
"I'm only doing what they pay me for—when I get paid," murmured the Yegorov, wryly. "Tell me," he said, using English again, "what was the weather like in the States when you left there?"
Nelson just looked at him. He put all emotion, all tension, all nervousness out of his face and stared up empty-eyed. He felt empty. Yegorov laughed and made his way out of the cell, first gathering up his bandage things and stuffing them into his bag.
Gerrymander
Reaching Moscow by train early the next evening, after an all-day train ride on this, his second day in Russia, Lee Crane disembarked and in a roundabout way, he went to the address he had memorized. No shred of paper existed to alert the authorities where 'Gerrymander' lived. After several wrong turns, Lee reached it finally and found it an older place, with stairs to all the floors and no elevators. Simply nodding, he passed the switchboard's operator, an old man who admitted guests and sometimes handled packages for the tenants.
Knocking at the battered and faded wooden door of #5, Lee stood ready for anything as it opened. He saw a shadowy face at first. At a gesturing arm, he walked in, but only so far. He glanced about the room for a trap before stepping all the way in. The man he faced was medium-built, large around the middle, with thick, dark hair and a bushy moustache over his lip. He had dark eyes and, his age indefinite, he could have been anywhere from forty to sixty-five.
"You lost a package?" It was spoken in English.
Lee nodded. "You're to help me?" He kept his voice low, tilting his head towards Gerrymander.
"I'll do all I can," replied the spy, "but the package is probably pretty well lost in the system by now."
"I'm hoping it's not. I have a strong feeling for it."
"I see. This is personal. That'll make it more difficult if we have to—" Gerrymander stopped talking and Lee looked at him.
"Have to what, you say?"
"Nothing for now. Maybe later."
Gerrymander went directly to the phone and began dialing a number. He spoke quickly and fluently in Russian and this made Lee Crane uneasy. He wished he had taken his several Russian lessons more to heart. As a trained ONI man, Lee could not do without the language of the Cold War opponents.
Gerrymander came back to him. "I've found the package," he said, and Lee instantly perked up. His gut-level interest was so intense that he could feel nothing else.
"Tell me, where is he—it?"
"In Archangel. That was a Duma man, a friend of mine. He knows what does on in the government better than I do. Tells me the item is locked away right now, for safekeeping. It was damaged. No word on how badly."
"He's alive!" Lee said, breathing out. He felt greatly relieved to hear that. He even smiled, thinking of Chip and the others aboard Seaview. He wished he could have told them all, without delay, but he had been instructed not to use a radio, even if he could locate one. "You said it's locked away. Where? Archangel? That's a lot of territory. Could your Duma man find out anything more?"
"He'll try. For certain reasons, I don't want to be too eager for news. I told my informant I heard a rumor, that was all, of—of the lost package."
"So he's filling you in on all the gossip?"
"Tells me what I wanted to know, without even knowing who he's talking to. He thinks I'm a KGB agent."
"You sounded pretty convincing."
"I have to be," said the agent, bleakly, rubbing the center of his chin, "or else I'm dead. Security's a watchword with me. Now, take this lost item." He leaned way over to Lee's ear. "If he should talk—"
"That's the second time you've said 'if.' Admiral Nelson," Lee's voice was very low, too, "isn't that kind. He wouldn't give anything away."
"You are fairly new to Moscow if you think that."
"But he's not in Moscow. You said Archangel."
"The KGB, lad, are everywhere."
Lee thought about that soberly enough. "Anyway, you have nothing to fear, Gerrymander—is that what I call you?"
"You can call me Ivan. I go by that name, too, and it's shorter. Just make sure you pronounce it right. It's not Ivan like we know it, but 'E-von.'"
"I'll remember. What's our plan now? Do we wait for your friend to find out more news? That could take some time."
"No, I have other sources. You should wait here. Have a drink. It's on the house. Actually, it's on the U.S. taxpayers, but we're not telling them."
Lee laughed a bit. Still so relieved over finding out that the 'package'—the admiral—was alive, he felt almost giddy.
"I'll have that drink, and celebrate."
"I hope you still have cause to celebrate after I get back."
Gerrymander left. He did not take Lee along because of the Seaview captain's hesitancy in Russian. Where Gerrymander, or Ivan, went, no one could have guessed, but he returned later that night with some less than comforting news.
"The package had a slight rip," Gerrymander said. "Made by an automatic rifle. At least not fatal. Top corner. Nothing too serious." Closer again, he said, "How old is he?"
"He's fifty-two."
"Good condition?"
"I'd say so," Lee answered briskly, sipping his second drink of the evening, a vodka and tonic—what else? "He works out with me in the gym aboard Seaview. He could go rounds with a tiger."
"That's good to hear. The Russians are thorough when it comes to getting information. He needs to be up to it."
Lee nodded, thinking of just how true Ivan's words were. Masters at interrogation, the Soviets had had years of practice in the art.
"What now?"
"We wait."
"For what?" Lee asked, crossly. "We wait for him to die in an interrogation cell?"
"No, not that long. But we can't just boldly stride in and ask for the prisoner, can we? We must plan on rescuing him when there is a vulnerable link in the chain of controllers."
"Controllers?"
"Every prisoner has controllers, from the top man behind the desk all the way down to the driver of the van that takes him to another place of interrogation or imprisonment."
"So what we're looking for is the driver of the van, right?"
"Not necessarily." Was Gerrymander being deliberately obtuse, Lee wondered. "The van driver may be a bully with an automatic machine gun."
"Then who?"
"The weak link will appear if we give it time."
"I don't like the waiting around."
Lee was disgruntled and having a hard time hiding it from his new companion. Uncrossing his legs, he sat forward in his chair, letting his arms rest on his knees. He held his drink in his hands. Uncertain about the wait, Lee felt as if he could trust Ivan, or Gerrymander, but only so far. He would have to watch him. There had been some slight hint in his words earlier, even a threat, that he might eventually have another agenda, concerning the admiral, than Lee's.
The next day, Lee's third day in Russia, would be taken up in another long distance train ride, this time from Moscow to Archangel. Ivan was going along, too, as chaperone, guide, and possibly CIA hatchet man.
Friends
The following afternoon, in the same plain blue cotton clothes and sitting up on the bunk, he had a tray across his knees. The food was as Spartan as the room, but the water in his cup was fresh. His right arm was still in its sling. He could clench and unclench his fingers, though they'd be stiff for a while. After a few false starts to eat with his left hand, he shot a glance at the door as two green-clad guards walked into the cell. Their spines ramrod-straight, their eyes as cold as agate, neither of them had an interesting face—that they were human at all was questionable.
Nelson rested the fork on the tray with a grave quietness. What thing made him so quiet stood between the two guards. Vasily, but no one would have recognized him.
His face battered and his hands shaky, he had been put 'through the ringer.'
"I'm sorry, Admiral," he said, in Russian. "I had to tell them. Dr. Yegorov told General Markovsky you had said a few words in English. They came to me. Demanded I tell them who you are."
Nelson's command of Vasily's language didn't fail him then. Though he could plainly see Vasily's suffering, as the Russian environmentalist stood before him and admitted his disloyalty to a friend, Nelson was very angry. His tone heated up.
"So after everything else," he said, staring straight up into Vasily's eyes, "you betrayed me?"
"No, I mean—yes, I did. You can see what they did to me?"
"You know what they might do to me?"
"I know." Vasily hung his head and looked as dejected as a man turning into rain.
For the moment, Nelson had no pity for him. In later reflections, he came to understand Vasily's torment. A man who threw missiles of accusation at the lofty Politburo and industry heads in the Soviet sphere of influence had stood humbly bowed before his wounded friend to tell of betraying him. That probably had been as hard a thing to do as he'd ever done.
Vasily turned of his own accord and fled the cell.
:::::::::: :::::::::: ::::::::::
"Admiral Nelson, you lied. A fisherman indeed!" cried Markovsky in Russian. "One who shoots sharks with, of all things, an automatic weapon!"
"Did you believe me?"
The white-haired Markovsky, the interrogator of yesterday, walked around the desk again and stood beside the prisoner's familiar chair. "From this moment on, Admiral, no more lies, no more stories. Nothing but the truth!"
Nelson began to stare at a spot on the wall directly ahead of him. He imagined it was a porthole and he was seeing moving water beyond it.
"A fisherman! If you think about it, Admiral, that's what you are. Fishing for information on the Soviets. Seeking to glean what you can out of Vasily!"
Nelson just kept looking at the spot on the wall. He even thought he could see Seaview's propellers through the port, as if he was looking at her from another sub at sea.
"What are you going to do with me?" he managed to ask, diverting his attention for a brief instant.
"I have not had word. Moscow is interested, of course. However, you know so much, even Moscow would be dangerous. Many live there," said Markovsky, "who would use you for their own gain."
"Why are the heads of the Soviet Union so afraid of their own people? Why do they resort to questionable methods?"
"You ask a wise question. Also a foolish one. If we ruled without fear, where would we be—those of us in charge?"
"Perhaps better off," said the admiral, lowering his head and rubbing his eyes. Exhausted, he lifted his eyes again and continued staring at the spot on the wall, the porthole to the sea.
"You are tired, Admiral. It's been a long three days for you, I'm sure. You can have anything, within reason. A good bed, more food, and even the quiet of a real room, not a guarded cell—if you relent. There are many things we could ask you."
"I don't want … want—" he faltered, seeking to remember just what he did want. Ages since he had wanted anything but sleep! Time had passed, taking him along in a numb kind of way. And Russian was so hard! Every time he thought of the right word, the right expression, he had to backtrack through his thoroughly depleted brain for another. "Do you think I want … more food, even rest … at the expense of … my country?"
"Come now. All I'm asking you is to explain what you were doing on the beach."
"You know already. You said it earlier. Vasily told you. Rescue."
"Why did he contact you?"
"Friends."
"Since your teaching days here?"
The admiral nodded. All of this Markovsky could easily check out. Many of their colleagues who saw Harriman Nelson and Vasily Tereschenko at work together on a scientific study or project could attest to their great friendship. The girls, Anya and Alina, had been little more than toddlers then and the redheaded American told them stories, fairy tales, in English. He even sang to them once about a 'dragon' that lived by the sea. Vasily and Olena often invited guests over to meet the admiral and to hear some of his fascinating stories. He could tell them so! Of course, in English, for the most part. He was a hit with the grown-ups for another reason. Nelson was also a good listener.
"I think that'll be all," said Markovsky. "You may rest, Admiral. Tomorrow, several top Soviet officials will be here to meet you. You must be ready for them."
Back in his cell, he washed up at the sink, trying to keep his bandage from getting wet. Lying on his bunk in damp prison clothes—the only clothes he had to wear, sleeping or waking—he let his mind drift to happier places. And times—like the Crossing the Equator party on board Seaview, now an annual event. Or the time he and Lee cooked up a prank to play on Sharkey. Each man questioned everything Sharkey said, or did, until they had the Chief contradicting himself about the simplest things relating to Seaview! He had been sore about that one. And then there'd been the time that Lee had doctored Sharkey's coffee—
These were not exactly sugar plums dancing in his head, but under their influence, the admiral slept.
Meeting
In the morning, the fourth day of his captivity, the admiral was handed back his own things, the dark corduroy pants, a red shirt and a dark wool sweater. Cold weather boots and thick socks made up the rest of the outfit—he was not headed for a Black Sea resort!
In a meeting room, its long table flanked by a forest of wooden chairs, Nelson took a seat towards the middle of one side. Waiting there, he gnawed on his fingernail, realizing he had bitten it to the quick. After about a quarter-hour, a dozen men filed in, most of them in business suits of a severe cut and design, some in uniform. He recognized a few faces, and the uniforms of the Soviet Navy, Air Force and Army presented no problems. He was about to meet the 'brass.'
"Admiral Nelson!" exclaimed a tall man with a goatee. He wore a Navy sub commander's uniform. "Welcome!"
"Admiral Smirnkov," said Nelson, standing up to shake hands. He greeted each man in turn, nodding at each and repeating the name if he didn't know it. This meeting had begun 'friendly.'
"It is an honor, Admiral, to meet you," said one man in a dark, thin-lapelled suit and of a short stature. Nelson didn't recognize him, but was startled to hear his name. Here, indeed, was trouble. The director of the Soviet secret police, or the Committee for State Security—in official Russian, комитет государственной безопасности, translated into English letters as Komitet gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti, or KGB. Intelligence, counter-intelligence, Soviet border patrol—the KGB.
"Mr. Ganov," acknowledged the admiral, tilting his head down but keeping his eyes firmly placed on the most dangerous Russian in the room.
Admiral Smirnkov took over the talk. "Let's all be seated." He began to explain the situation. "Without doubt, Admiral Nelson, you acted out of goodwill for Vasily, a long-standing friend." Who, by the way, was not in the conference room. "I have close friends, too, for whom I'd do almost anything. However, to act as a spy, to fly into Soviet airspace to rescue a Soviet national and his family—this act borders on international interference. Vasily Tereschenko made applications for asylum, all three of them denied. He cannot expect to find the Soviet leaders more willing now that he brought in an American to help him leave the Soviet Union." Smirnkov leaned back and clasped his fingers together on the table. "Where does that leave you, Admiral? Were you not out of uniform? On an alien beach, firing at Soviet police? Six agents died."
"I acknowledge what I've done," said Nelson. "Now, what are you going to do with me?"
"There's so much, Admiral, that we could do with you, it's hard to pick a starting place," said Smirnkov. "Some of my colleagues hold the opinion you should be eliminated. One or two others, including myself, believe you could work with us in the future. One man, Mr. Ganov, believes you will never work with the Soviets, but hesitates on eliminating you. You could be valuable in negotiations."
"Negotiations. Regarding what?"
"Regarding missile problems, military personnel, and future weapons systems, to name a few areas of interest."
"You might call them 'areas of interest,' but I call them areas of conflict." Nelson was digging in.
Smirnkov laughed, steepling his fingers before his lips as he spoke. "Admiral, if you could see things from our side. You invaded the Soviet Union. What with your Seaview, and your skills as a military man—though you had only the intention of rescuing the Tereschenkos, I know—you are very dangerous to us."
The admiral took his turn to laugh. "I am?"
"You are. Now we are at this board today to decide on the best policy to pursue from the standpoint of Soviet interests."
"My interests don't count, is that it?"
"Admiral, you invaded us." Smirnkov sighed. "If any one of us showed up on a beach on the Pacific coast of the United States, or on the Atlantic near Washington, can you not guess what your government would do with that man?"
The admiral looked down for a moment at his hand on the boardroom table. He knew just what would happen, but questioning and incarceration by the CIA did not always involve torture or a lifetime of oblivion in some Siberian labor camp.
The meeting broke up after extended talk by all parties except Nelson. He followed most of it, but wished he had a translator in his ear. Smirnkov remained close to him, inviting him along with a few others to lunch in the commons room of the police headquarters. Nelson accepted, of course.
"Very good borscht," he said. His compliment met with approval all around the oblong table in the private dining room.
It was a very good lunch. There were oyster sandwiches, roast meats and lots of cabbage and potatoes. For the first time in days, he could relax a bit and enjoy himself, though the word 'enjoy' was relative. He almost felt like he was back at home, in Santa Barbara. Among friends. Except for the borscht, or sour cream and beet soup, the meal was as familiar to him as his mother used to make in Ohio.
Wine, and then brandy, flowed liberally, with a few additional spirits. The admiral refused everything but one glass of pinot gris from Moldova—a satellite Soviet state where wine is stored in huge limestone caves.
Smirnkov noticed and laughed in his own sparkling way again. "Do you think, Admiral, we came here for lunch today to make you drink and tell us about your latest anti-missile defense system?"
Smiling, Nelson said nothing, but offered his glass again to a man pouring the pinot gris.
"Ah, one last drink of Russian natural culture, Admiral," said Smirnkov. "That's good."
