The Company: A Novel of the CIA (97 page)

"I work for the American government—"

"So what kind of stuff do you do for the government?"

"I help protect America from its enemies."

"Why does America have enemies?"

"Not every country sees eye to eye on things."

"What things?"

"Things like the existence of different political parties, things like honest trials and free elections, things like the freedom of newspapers to publish what they want, things like the right of people to criticize the government without going to jail. Things like that."

"When I grow up, I'm going to protect America from its enemies same as you—if it still has any."

"When I grow up," Manny said aloud. He didn't finish the sentence because he knew the cell would be bugged.

Soon afterward Manny was handcuffed and taken down in a freight elevator to a basement garage. There he was seated between two guards in the back of a closed bread delivery van, which drove up a ramp, threaded its way through traffic and eventually came to stop in another basement garage. He was escorted up a fire staircase to the second-floor holding room, where his handcuffs were removed and he was offered coffee and a dry doughnut. Before long Pravdin and the vice-counsel Crainworth turned up. Pravdin explained that the traitor Kukushkin's trial was about to start; that there was a possibility Manny would be summoned as a witness. Pravdin removed his eyeglasses, fogged the lenses with his foul breath and wiped the lenses on the tip of his tie. Manny's chances of eventually being treated leniently by the Soviet judicial system, he repeated, depended on his cooperating with the prosecution in the Kukushkin case. Manny stuck to his cover story. Miss Crainworth, clearly in over her head, merely looked from one to the other as if she were watching a ping-pong match.

At five minutes to ten Manny was escorted into what looked like a ball room, an enormous high-ceilinged chamber with glittering chandeliers and white Corinthian columns set against light blue walls. On one side were rows of plain wooden benches filled with working-class people who looked uncomfortable in city clothing. Several seemed to know who he was and pointed him out to the others when he entered. Flashbulbs exploded in his face as he was steered into a pew with a brass railing around it. Pravdin, the muscles in his cheeks atwitch, settled into a seat in front of him. Miss Crainworth squeezed onto a front-row bench and opened a notebook on her lap. Two judges in dark suits sat behind a long table on a raised stage.

At the stroke of ten the accused appeared through a narrow door at the back of a wire enclosure. Kukushkin, surrounded by KGB security troops in tunics and peaked caps, looked gaunt and dazed. His face was expressionless, his eyes tired and puffy; he closed them for long periods and conveyed the impression of someone who was sleepwalking. He was dressed in rumpled suit and tie and, judging from the mincing steps he took when he entered the courtroom, wearing ankle cuffs. At one point he looked in Manny's direction but gave no indication that he recognized him. There was an angry murmur from the crowd when Kukushkin turned up in the prisoner s box. Flashbulbs burst, causing him to raise a forearm over his eyes. One of the guards gripped his wrist and pried it away. The chief judge, wearing a black robe and a red felt cap, appeared from a door at the back of the stage. Everyone in the courtroom stood. Manny was nudged to his feet. The chief judge, a white-haired man with red-rimmed eyes and the jowls of a heavy drinker, took his place between the assistant judges. "Sadityes pojalusta," the bailiff called. The audience on the benches, along with the lawyers and stenographers settled onto their seats. The security troops guarding the prisoners continued to stand. The State Procurator, a young man wearing a beautifully-tailored blue suit, climbed to his feet and began to read the charges against Kukushkin.

"The traitor Kukushkin, the accused in criminal case Number 18043, is an opportunist," he began, his voice suffused with outrage, "a morally depraved person who betrayed his country. He was recruited by agents of the imperialist espionage service while he served in the Soviet embassy in Washington. There he committed treason with the intent to overthrow the Soviet regime, dismember the Soviet Union and restore capitalism in what would be left of the country. Returning to Moscow on home leave, he was caught in the act of meeting an agent of this imperialist espionage service. Confronted with irrefutable evidence by the representatives of the state security organs, the traitor Kukushkin had no choice but to admit to his crimes and sign a confession. It is this document, respected judges, that you now have before you."

Manny leaned forward and tapped Pravdin on the shoulder. "What did he say?"

Pravdin twisted around in his chair; Manny got another whiff of his bad breath when the lawyer whispered, "The Procurator explains that the traitor Kukushkin has confessed to his crimes. If you want to save yourself, so, too, must you."

Across the courtroom the Procurator sat down. The bailiff rose and demanded, "How does the accused plead?"

Kukushkin stood up. "I confirm I am guilty of espionage but my intent was not to dismember the Soviet Union or restore capitalism. My intent was to save the Soviet Union from an oppressive ruling class that is ruining the country economically and distorting the Communist ideal politically."

The Procurator leaped to his feat and waved a copy of Kukushkins confession. "How is it you admitted to these charges in writing?"

"I was forced to."

There was an astonished rumble from the benches. The Procurator turned to the judges. "In light of this recantation I request a recess."

"Granted," the chief judge growled.

Manny was taken back to the holding room and offered coffee from a thermos and a sandwich filled with a meat he couldn't identify. Two hours later he found himself back in the courtroom. The bailiff addressed the prisoner. "How does the accused plead?"

Kukushkin, his shoulders hunched, mumbled something. The chief judge ordered him to speak louder. "I plead guilty to all the charges," the prisoner said. "I admit everything."

The Procurator said, "What, then, was the meaning of the statement you made two hours ago?"

"I could not bring myself to admit my guilt before the world," Kukushkin said. "Mechanically, I sidestepped the truth in the hope of presenting my treachery in a better light. I beg the court to take note of the statement which I now make to the effect that I admit my guilt, completely and unreservedly, on all the charges brought against me. I assume full responsibility for my criminal and treacherous behavior."

The Procurator accepted this with a nod of satisfaction. "The accused Kukushkin admits that he delivered state secrets into the hands of an agent of the Central Intelligence Agency?"

"I openly and unrestrainedly admit it."

"The accused Kukushkin admits that he met in Moscow at a prearranged place and at a prearranged time with this same agent of the Central Intelligence Agency?"

"Yes, yes. I admit it."

The Procurator shuffled through what looked like cue cards. "The question inevitably arises: How can it be that a man like the traitor Kukushkin, which is to say someone born and brought up and educated during the years of Soviet power, could so completely lose the moral qualities of a Soviet man, lose his elementary sense of loyalty and duty and end up committing treason?"

As if reading from a prepared script, Kukushkin answered: "It was the base qualities in me which brought me to the prisoner's dock: envy, vanity, the love of an easy life, my affairs with many women, my moral decay, brought on in part by the abuse of alcohol. All of these blotches on my moral character led to my becoming a degenerate, and then a traitor."

The chief judge asked, "Is the agent of the Central Intelligence Agency you met present in this courtroom?"

"Yes." Kukushkin raised a finger and pointed at Manny without looking at him. "He is sitting over there."

"Look at him to be sure of the identification," the chief judge ordered.

Kukushkin reluctantly turned his head. His eyes met those of Manny, then dropped. "I confirm the identification."

The Procurator said, "Respected judges, the agent from the Central Intelligence Agency is not protected by diplomatic immunity and will be tried in a separate proceeding. The American agent denies the obvious—that he was sent to Moscow to establish contact with the traitor Kukushkin so that he could continue his perfidious behavior here in the capitol of the Motherland. The American agent denies also that he speaks fluent Russian, though a child can see, as he looks from one speaker to the other, that he is able to follow the conversation."

The chief judge addressed Manny directly. "Do you know the traitor Kukushkin?"

Pravdin twisted around and repeated the question in English, then whispered urgently, "This is your opportunity to impress the judges by your truthfulness. The traitor Kukushkin is condemned out of his own mouth. Save yourself."

Manny rose to his feet. "Your honor," he began. "I do know the accused." The spectators in the audience stirred, the American vice-counsel cooked up from her notebook. The chief judge brought his gavel down sharply. "I am a tourist, your honor," Manny continued. "The truth is that I was separated from my group and, wanting to see some of the interesting sites that were not on the itinerary, wound up in the Novodievitchi cemetery. It was there that I met the accused for the first and only time in my life. Taking me for a foreign tourist, he asked me in English for my impressions of the Soviet Union. As for my being a member of the Central Intelligence Agency—nothing could be further from the truth."

A frail elderly woman sitting behind the judge had been scribbling notes in shorthand as Manny spoke, and now translated his testimony into Russian. The chief judge said, "Let the record show that the American denies that he is an intelligence agent." He nodded at the Procurator. "You may deliver your summation."

The Procurator rose. "I call upon the respected judges, however reluctant they may be, to deliver a verdict of guilty and a sentence of execution. An example must be made of the traitor Kukushkin. The weed and the thistle will grow on the grave of this execrable traitor. But on us and our fortunate country the sun will continue to shine. Guided by our beloved leader and the Communist Party, we will go forward to Communism along a path that has been cleansed of the sordid remnants of the past."

Kukushkin's defense lawyer stood up to address the court. "Respected judges, confronted with the confession of the accused Kukushkin, I can only echo my colleague's remarks. I invite the court's attention to the fact that the confession of the accused was wholehearted, if belated, and should be weighed on the scales of justice in deciding on a sentence appropriate to the crime."

Twenty-five minutes later the three judges filed back into the courtroom. The chief judge ordered the accused to rise. "Do you have a last statement before I pass judgment?"

Kukushkin intoned woodenly, "My own fate is of no importance. All that matters is the Soviet Union."

The judge removed his red cap and replaced it with a black one. "Sergei Semyonovich Kukushkin," he intoned, "degenerates and renegades like you evoke a sentiment of indignation and loathing in all Soviet people. One can take comfort from the fact that you are a passing phenomenon in our society. But your example shows clearly what danger lurks in the vestiges of the past, and what they might develop into if we do not act with ruthless determination to uproot them. I pronounce you guilty of all the charges brought against you and sentence you to be shot. Court adjourned."

The spectators on the benches applauded the verdict vigorously. "So finish all traitors to the Motherland," a man called from a back row. Kukushkin's expressionless gaze drifted over the room and came to rest for a fleeting moment on Manny. The barest trace of an ironic smile disfigured his lips. One of his guards tapped him on the arm. Kukushkin turned and held out his wrists and handcuffs were snapped on. Walking in short steps because of the ankle bracelets, he shuffled from the prisoner's box and disappeared through the door.

Sometime in the pre-dawn stillness, Manny was startled out of an agitated sleep by the sound of a metal door clanging closed in the corridor, followed by footsteps outside his cell. The overhead light came on. A key turned in the lock and Kukushkin appeared at the door. Manny sat up on the army cot and pulled the blanket up to his chin. Still wearing ankle bracelets, Kukushkin walked slowly across the cell and sat down at the foot of the cot. "Hello to you, Manny," he said, his voice reduced to a rasp.

Manny knew that the conversation would be recorded, perhaps even filmed. He chose his words carefully. "I gather things didn't go well for you. I want you to know..." His voice trailed off.

Kukushkins heavy shoulders sagged. "I am to be executed at dawn," he announced.

The news struck Manny with the force of a fist. "I wish... if only I could do something—"

"You can."

"What?"

"For me it's over. For Elena, for my daughter—"

Manny could see the torment in Sergei's eyes.

"In Soviet Russia, the immediate relations of enemies of the people are made to suffer. I have denied it, of course, but they assume that my wife, even my daughter, were aware of my... activities. They will be sent to a Gulag camp for fifteen years. With her heart condition Elena will not survive fifteen days. And my daughter will not survive the loss of her mother."

"I don't see—"

"Look, Manny, I'll come to the point. They have sent me to offer you a deal. It is important to them, vis-a-vis international opinion, that you admit publicly to being a CIA officer."

"But I'm not—"

Kukushkin raised the palm of his hand. "In return for your cooperation they have promised that Elena and my child will not be punished. So, like it or not, their fate is in your hands." Kukushkin turned away and chewed on his lip. When he had regained his composure he said, "You owe it to me, Manny. And I ask you to pay this debt. I beg you. I will go to my death with a firmer step, with a lighter conscience, if you do this thing for me."