The Debriefing (6 page)

The throbbing of the Globemaster engines makes Stone drowsy, and he has to struggle to keep his eyes open and the conversation, however intermittent, going. Kulakov, in a window seat, seems to be mesmerized by the thin wisp of smoke that spirals up from his cigarette in the ashtray. “I can’t remember,” he says slowly, troubled by the lack of memory, the failure to come up with names or details that he is sure he knows.

Stone does his best to reassure him. “The peasants say you have to forget something seven times before you can commit it to memory.”

“Yes, that’s so,” Kulakov says thoughtfully. “The peasants know many things we don’t know.”

After a while Stone asks, “Considering all the things that happened to you in the last—what was it?—six or eight months, how is it they let you leave the country?” His tone is casual, the delivery offhand, but the question is the first direct one Stone has put. It is the start of a very precise debriefing process that will go on and on until Kulakov has been drained of every last drop of information.

“I don’t know how to answer,” says Kulakov. He stares out the window into the darkness. “I saw a memorandum—the colonel conducting the investigation showed it to me—ordering my name eliminated from the courier list. I was told I was not permitted to leave Moscow. I was told there was every chance I would be formally charged, and that it would be in my interest
to hire a lawyer. I was told that if I didn’t hire a lawyer, the court would appoint one. And then … then … out of nowhere, that phone call …”

Kulakov is losing the thread again, but Stone gently nurses him along. “What phone call?” When this gets no response, he says, “You were talking about a phone call.”

“Yes, out of nowhere. Summoning me to the duty officer. In civilian clothes, they specified. As if nothing had ever happened. As if … and he … said I was to take this”—Kulakov taps the pouch—“to Cairo. He said I was elected by one vote. His.” Kulakov’s lips twist into a vicious smile. “You can bet that’s the last time that poor son of a bitch will vote for anything. He’s probably on his way to Siberia right now.”

The copilot, a young man with a blond mustache and a broad open smile, makes his way down the aisle to them. “Everything all right?” he asks conversationally. Without waiting for an answer, he hands Stone a metal message board that opens like a book. “I reckon this here’s for you. You’re Mr. Simon, aren’t you?”

Stone reads the message, which has been decoded and printed out in capital letters. “Reception preparations laid on as per your instructions. Judging from the fuss the Russians putting up on all fronts there is nothing less than solid gold in the pouch, so handle with tender loving care. FYI White House plus State Department plus CIA plus various foreign governments expressing curiosity bordering on interest. Treat affair like proverbial hot potato. Report only to me.” The cable is signed “Elbow Room,” which is the operational code signature of the crusty admiral who is the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff—and the man Stone happens to work for.

“Our estimated time of arrival is 2230,” the copilot informs Stone. “Weather conditions will be clear but cold, somewhere in the low twenties.”

“We’re not listed on the manifest, are we?” Stone checks. He doesn’t want to leave any trace of how he came into the country.

“Just like you specified, there’s nothing on the manifest. As for us monkeys, we haven’t heard nothin’, we haven’t seen
nothin’, we don’t know nothin’.” The copilot flashes a conspiratorial grin as he leaves.

Kulakov drifts into a fitful doze, his cheek pressed to the windowpane. Stone looks at his wrist watch, calculates the time left to the flight, settles more deeply into his seat, his mind going over for the thousandth time the details of the court case that his lady lawyer with a good line to the judge says he stands every chance of winning. “When you explain how it happened,” she reassured him—he reproduces her exact tone of voice, her precise words; she seemed so sure, he remembers, so confident—“you’ll get your rights back. Look, it could have happened to anyone, so stop worrying.”

With a stifled scream, Kulakov straightens in his seat. Stone sees that his body is rigid, his forehead laced with perspiration. “I always wake myself up like that,” Kulakov explains sheepishly, “but I never seem to be able to remember what I’m screaming about.” Almost apologetically, he adds, “I have a lot to scream about.” He takes out a handkerchief and mops his brow. “It’s strange: we call a man who has lost his wife a widower, and we call a child who has lost his parents an orphan, but there’s no word to describe a father who has lost his children.”

“It’s the same in English,” Stone observes grimly. “We have no word for it either.”

Kulakov obviously wants to change the subject. “Tell me,” he asks, “if you are permitted to tell me, what will happen to me in America?”

And so, in very general terms, Stone explains the drill: a farm tucked away in some remote part of the countryside; a staff that will take him under its collective wing, teach him English, American history, American money, American sports; will teach him how to blend into mainstream America on the assumption that the powers that be will one day be finished with him and throw him back in. “Eventually we’ll set you up with a brand-new name and a brand-new identity. You can have a business if you want one, or you can retire on a pension. While all this is going on, we’ll debrief you, of course.”

“Debrief? That means you will ask me questions. But I have
no answers. I don’t know secrets. I am just a messenger. Whatever you find in the pouch is all I have to give you.”

“There are things you can tell us, just the same,” Stone insists. “Look, Kulakov, you’re an intelligent man; figure it out for yourself. We must make absolutely certain, to begin with, that you are a genuine defector.”

All this seems to astonish Kulakov. “And how long will this debriefing take?”

“It’s already started,” Stone says in his disarmingly frank way. “It will end when we know more about you than God.”

The touchdown is as smooth as any Stone has ever experienced; one moment they are airborne, then the eight giant wheels kiss the earth, the engines reverse, the plane vibrates slightly, and they are in out of the night, taxiing toward a distant hangar with military police posted at every entrance and two cars, their motors idling, waiting in the semidarkness.

“This is where we part company,” Stone tells Kulakov as they walk toward the second car. Half a dozen men in civilian clothes are standing around, but their faces are masked in shadows. Kulakov peers anxiously inside the car, then looks over his shoulder at the airplane as if he is weighing the possibility of going back—to the plane, to Russia. He shrugs imperceptibly, takes a deep breath, and starts to duck into the back seat.

“Kulakov,” Stone says gently. The Russian turns to face him. “You agreed to give me the pouch when we got to America. We’re in America now.”

The men in the shadows move forward into the light; their faces are anxious. Stone tenses. Since he is the closest one to Kulakov, it will be up to him to punch him in the stomach with all his force at the first sign of hesitation. But Kulakov doesn’t hesitate; he only nods tiredly, retrieves the key from his shoe, unlocks the chain from his wrist, and hands the key and the diplomatic pouch to Stone. “There are two small locks,” he explains. “You must first turn the left one left, half a rotation, then the right one an entire rotation to the right, then the left one another half rotation to the left. If you don’t follow the sequence,
the contents will be destroyed.” As if guessing what Stone is thinking, he shakes his head. “Don’t try it. There is no other way into the pouch. If you try to cut into it, you will trip a circuit and it will all go up in smoke. You must use the key.” He smiles almost sadly. “And you must take my word for the sequence. It goes without saying, I understand the consequences if I should … disappoint you.”

Kulakov takes his place in the back seat; he seems to have shrunk in size and looks lost against the cushion. One of the men in civilian clothes climbs in alongside him, two others take their places in front. Just before they move off, Kulakov rolls down his window. “Tell me,” he asks Stone, “if you are permitted to tell me, how is it you can know more about someone than God?”

“All right, Stone, in ten words or less, what’s he got?”

The admiral, in dress blues and gleaming black shoes (he spit-shines them himself every morning, claims it is his only completely serene moment of the day), leads the way into the private dining room just off his suite of offices in the Pentagon. The metal Venetian blinds are drawn; the admiral feels ill at ease in bright sunlight. Philippine stewards in starched whites hold the backs of two chairs at the only table in the room. The admiral settles his bulk into place, sets his leather cigar case and a pocket calculator on the table, switches on a small black box with a circular antenna (which emits “noise” designed to jam any microphone in the room), turns his full attention on Stone for his ten words or less.

Stone and the admiral are ill at ease with each other the way people who complement each other often are—the admiral with a cerebral squint to his eyes, totally at home with computer printouts, ballistic trajectories, tables of probabilities; and Stone, all fingertips, nerve ends, intuition.

“Of course, I’ve only had time for a quick look,” Stone tells him evenly, “but from what I can see, it could be one of the biggest hauls we’ve ever had.”

The admiral, who has often boasted that he is prepared to be
bored by the start of World War III, takes Stone’s assessment in his stride, nods impatiently, adjusts his reading glasses and starts to leaf through the dossier. “Looks like the sight on a tank turret,” he comments, holding up one sheet to the light. Stone cranes his neck, skims the Russian text, tells the admiral, “That’s what it is, all right—a night sight which they plan to install in their T-62s already in Egyptian hands. The sheet gives the specifications for the sight—the ranges at which it’s effective, that sort of thing.”

“Hmm,” the admiral says. He is, as usual, professionally noncommittal.

One of the waiters offers the admiral a typed menu. He gives it the same attention he gave to the night sight. “Jellied madrilène, T-bone steak well done, carrots, jello. No bread. No butter.” He looks at Stone. “That suit you?” Without waiting for an answer, he tells the waiter, “Same for him. And we’ll take a bottle of that New York State red wine I had the other day.” To Stone: “The gnomes over at General Accounting won’t let us have French wines in the mess anymore. Some crap about balance of payments. Hmm. What’s this one say?”

The admiral offers another sheet of paper to Stone, who reads it quickly. “It looks like a report on our fleet movements in the Mediterranean for the next six weeks”—Stone shakes his head in amazement—“including the patrol routes of the two Polaris submarines on station.” Stone is whispering now. “They must have access to our movement reports, which means they’ve broken one of our naval codes. This one”—he hands the admiral another sheet—“is a letter to the Soviet ambassador in Cairo from his brother-in-law, who’s the general in charge of Soviet logistical support facilities in Kazakstan, on the border with China. He says the Chinese are thinning out their forces along the frontier, that the troops are being pulled back to garrison cities, which leads him to believe that Mao’s death has caused more internal trouble than most people are aware of.” Stone picks up the next page. “This one looks like a report on a defect in the low-level parallax input on the radar tracking system for the SAM missiles.”

The admiral attacks his jellied madrilène as if nothing unusual is happening. He finishes leafing through the dossier, listens with only an occasional “Hmm” to Stone’s running translation, hands the dossier across the table when he is through with it. “Obviously we’re going to have to go over these papers with a fine-tooth comb. Now tell me what you know about the defector Krolokov, isn’t it? What’s he like?”

“His name is Kulakov,” Stone corrects him. “He’s in his mid fifties, short, tired, frightened. It’s hard to characterize what he’s like. I was raised on coasts, Admiral—in China, in Brazil, later in New England. After a good storm, we always used to scour the beaches for driftwood. Friend Kulakov reminds me of a piece of driftwood washed up on the sand. He’s high and dry, beached, abandoned by the waves; he’s been rubbed smooth, if you see what I mean. He’s without edges, without a center. He feels cut off, isolated, though the isolation is psychological rather than physical. He’s cut himself off from everything behind him, and he has no idea of what’s ahead of him.”

“What prompted him to up and run for it?”

“Reading between the lines, I gather a lot has gone wrong with his life in the last six or eight months. I’m not sure of the details yet. Then they were going to bring him up on some kind of charges. So when he got the chance, he flew the coop.”

“Hmm.”

Stone, who has dealt directly with the admiral since he became chairman of the Joint Chiefs nineteen months before, thinks again how wrong first impressions can be. At their initial meeting—the admiral didn’t even know that such a group as Stone’s existed, never mind that it was directly answerable to him—Stone came away thinking he was dealing with someone who was slow on the uptake, a time-server who doled out ideas as if there was a limited supply. Now he sees him as one of the cleverest minds in Washington, a man naturally suspicious of conventional wisdom, an expert on so many subjects, not the least of which is Congress, that Stone has long since lost track of them.

“What’s next on the agenda?” Stone asks now.

The admiral ignores the question, slices into his steak, cuts it in small pieces of equal size, chews each morsel methodically, almost for a fixed time, before swallowing. When there is nothing left on his plate but the bone, he wipes his lips on his napkin, looks up to contemplate his guest. “I’ve been meaning to ask you for some time, Stone: Do you have a first name?”

Stone is caught off guard by the question. “I had one once,” he quips, “but it’s been lost somewhere in the bureaucratic shuffle.”