Chapter 6

It quickly became clear that the Americans weren't prepared to use torture. The bald man Murray had any number of things that could have been used to cause pain, but they stayed on their shelves. They just kept asking the same questions over and over, and he kept giving the same answers. Yes, their generators had made the magnets fall, and he was sorry about that. The generators were powering the Starcourt Mall. Why was Starcourt using Soviet labor? Where you could find technicians willing to work for less money, he countered. Capitalism at its finest. He insisted he was just a mechanic, there to fix the generators. Nothing more. They didn't believe him, but they also didn't do anything to increase the pressure. He occasionally checked the clock over Joyce's shoulder. Eventually, something would change – he would have to try something else, if Grigori didn't arrive soon. But he wasn't doing badly so far.

After a few hours, Hopper left to get food. Alexei requested a cheeseburger, French fries, ketchup (he'd heard Americans put it on everything, and he was curious), cigarettes, and another cherry ice, in the largest size possible. He wondered if he might be pushing his luck a bit, but there was precedent for indulging the whims of valuable prisoners. A few aging Nazi physicists he'd encountered at the beginning of his career had everything they could want: plush apartments, spacious dachas in beautiful parts of the countryside, personal cars and drivers, official tolerance of their unwholesome sexual appetites. An ice drink was hardly so much to ask. And anyway, they'd committed crimes against the Soviet people and still been forgiven so long as they worked. All he'd done was break Joyce's magnets.

When Hopper got back, they restarted the questions.

"Those generators you were working on, what are they powering?" Murray translated. "We know it's not the mall."

They weren't going to take the same answers. He needed a new tactic. He took a sip of the ice and tried to think. Strawberry. This could help. He spat it out.

"This tastes like shit strawberry," he said. It wasn't a terrible taste, though he would have preferred cherry. But anything to get them off topic. The three Americans debated the ice flavor while he made an exaggerated show of cleaning his mouth.

"It's all the same," Murray said. "Sugar on ice. No difference."

"Tell that stupid man it is not the same in the slightest, and I would like the cherry I requested," Alexei responded. He was being difficult and probably not very likeable, but these were his captors, not his friends.

"He says forget it. No cherry," Murray relayed again.

Alexei shrugged. "No cherry, no deal," he said, and turned his eyes back to Murray's television, which they'd turned on while waiting for Hopper. He wasn't sure who this bird was, but he liked his spunk, against bigger, stronger animals.

Hopper looked as if he might concede that round, but then he gave a roar of rage, plucked Alexei from the chair and threw him across the table where they'd laid the food. Then he threw him back in the chair until it tipped him onto the floor, despite Joyce and Murray yelling. He immediately grabbed him off the floor and threw him up against a wall. Alexei moaned as the breath knocked out of him. Hopper was inches from his face, growling something he didn't understand. Then he threw him to the ground outside. Alexei quickly grabbed his glasses where they'd fallen before Hopper could step on them and braced for another blow.

But it didn't come. Hopper threw two sets of keys at him and slammed the door. Alexei could hear him yelling at Murray inside. "I have dealt with assholes like this my entire life!" He wasn't sure what they were saying, but it didn't matter. He quickly tried one set of keys. It opened his cuffs. He didn't bother with the other hand. He could free it later. With one hand free, he could escape. Did Hopper think he wouldn't? Or was he tired of his spy game? It didn't matter why Hopper had been so stupid. He would take the car and go back to his comrades.

He jumped in the car, which was harder than movies made it look. It started. Good. It was even playing a cheerful song for him. He'd only driven a few times, and never an American model, but it wasn't terribly difficult. He backed it up and started for the driveway. What would Grigori think, seeing him escape in a beautiful American vehicle with no help –

What would Grigori think.

He stopped. No one would give him credit for a daring escape. No one would believe the truth, that the Americans had gotten frustrated with him and thrown him out without receiving anything of value. He could claim they had roughed him up – he'd always bruised easily, and Hopper had surely left a few marks – but it wouldn't impress Grigori. Even if he found the will to mutilate himself, to cut off a few fingers, Grigori would want to know why he hadn't resisted to the point of death. And then he would make Alexei wish he'd died.

He moaned softly. There was no other option. He was compromised. Whether he wanted to help them or not, these Americans were his best chance of survival. From now on, they were his masters, and he would be their slave. He gave Hopper the keys without even bothering to uncuff his other hand. They would just chain him again. He could see Hopper knew he'd won, and he was relishing it.

"I like strawberry too," he said, even though the words felt bitter in his mouth. If there was even a shred of dignity to be salvaged, he wanted it.