Supermind
He could hear the tramping of a lot of feet coming across the field
toward them. He looked and saw that the feet were all neatly attached
to bodies, two to a body. There were Thomas Boyd’s feet, the assorted
twelve feet of six FBI agents, and three pairs that belonged to Alexis
Brubitsch, Ivan Borbitsch and Vasili Garbitsch. Brubitsch looked even
fatter than ever, Borbitsch even thinner. Garbitsch was of an
indeterminate middling shape; he had grey hair and a pair of
pince-nez, and he walked a trifle unevenly, like a duck, with his
hands clasped low in front of him. He was looking down at the ground
as the crowd shoved him along.
When the crowd neared the steps, Luba went over to him. Garbitsch
looked up, with a pleasant, somehow wistful smile on his face. “Hello,
Luba, my child,” he said.
Luba smiled, too. “Hello, Dad,” she said. “All ready to go?”
“Certainly I am ready,” he said. “I am all packed. We take off in a
few minutes. And you, Luba, my child?”
“Fine, Dad,” she said.
She looked down. “They’ve got handcuffs on you,” she said. “Why,
that’s—”
Garbitsch shrugged. He looked even more wistful. “A formality,” he
said. “It makes no difference.”
“Okay,” Boyd said suddenly. “We’ve got to get out of here pretty soon,
and you’ll be taking off. Let’s break it up. Miss Thompson, you and
Luba go aboard. Malone, you follow with the others.”
Malone rounded up Brubitsch, Borbitsch and Garbitsch and followed the
ladies aboard.
He came back to the door then, and stuck his head out. “The keys,” he
said.
Boyd stared. “What?”
“The keys to the handcuffs,” Malone said. “I’ll need ’em.”
“You’re going to take them off when they get to Russia?” Boyd said.
Malone shook his head. “No,” he said. “Now.”
“But—”
“I think we’ll have plenty of warning if they decide to try anything,
Tom,” Malone said quietly. “Her Majesty, after all, is keeping them
under surveillance.”
Without another word, Boyd tossed up the keys. Malone caught and
pocketed them. “I’ll be back as soon as possible,” he said.
“Meanwhile, you can keep digging on other stuff—what we’ve discussed
and anything it seems to lead into.”
“Right,” Boyd said. “Stay out of trouble, Ken. So long.”
Malone nodded and ducked back into the plane. He unlocked the
handcuffs, and Brubitsch and Borbitsch immediately went and sat down
mournfully together at the back of the plane. Malone looked for Lou,
but she was already seated—with Her Majesty, naturally. He sighed
briefly and sat down, at last, next to the wistful Garbitsch.
“It will be nice to see Russia again,” Garbitsch said. “I hardly hoped
to do so.”
The plane shuddered, roared and took off. Then it settled down to its
normal state of unnatural quiet. Malone sat back and tried to relax.
It was impossible.
7
Red Square was, somehow, disappointing. It was crowded with men and
women, all looking very Russian in an undefined sort of way, and the
big glass windows sparkled from every side. “I know it’s silly,” Luba
said in a baffled voice, “but, somehow, I always expected Red Square
to be red.”
“And why should that be?” the MVD man next to her said. He was a burly
man with a sour expression, as if he had eaten too many onions the day
before.
“Well,” Malone said, “it is Red Square, after all.”
“But red is symbolic only,” the MVD man said surlily. “Is not color.
Only symbol of glorious Russia.”
“I suppose so,” Luba said. “But it’s still disappointing.”
“You expect, perhaps, that we recruit our glorious Red Army from
American Indian tribes?” the MVD man said sourly. “You are
literal-minded bourgeois intellectual. This is not good thing to be.”
“Somehow,” Malone mused, “I didn’t think it was.”
“But this is different,” Luba said. “The Red Army is made up of
Russians. But this is just a square. You could paint it.”
“After all,” Malone offered, “the White House is white, isn’t it?”
“White is cowardly color,” the MVD man pointed out with satisfaction.
“Never mind that,” Malone said. “We call it a white house, and it is a
white house. You call this a red square, and it isn’t even pink. Not
even a little bit pink. It’s just—just—”
“Just building-colored,” Luba put in. Malone turned to her and
executed a small bow.
“Thank you,” he said.
“Think nothing of it,” Luba said.
“Oh, don’t worry,” Malone said. “I will.”
The MVD man hissed like a teakettle and both heads swung round to look
at him again. Her Majesty, who had been admiring some dresses in a
shop window, also turned. “My goodness,” she said. “That’s a terrible
wheeze. Do you take something for it?”
“Is not wheeze,” the MVD man said. “Is noise representing impatience
with arrogance and stupidity of capitalist warmonger conversation.”
“Arrogance?” Luba said.
“Stupidity?” Malone said.
Her Majesty drew herself to her full height. “We do not monger war,”
she said. “Not in the least. We are not mongers.”
The MVD man looked at her, blinked, sighed and looked away. “This
color discussion,” he said, “it is very silly. Look at the Blue Ridge
Mountains, in your country. Are they blue?”
“Well—” Malone said.
“What color, for example, is the Golden Gate Bridge?” the MVD man
continued, with heavy sarcasm. “Is not even a gate. Is a bridge. Is
not golden. But you say we disappoint. No. You disappoint.”
There seemed to be no immediate answer to that, so Malone didn’t try
for one. Instead, he went back to looking at the Square, and beyond it
to where the inverted turnips of the Kremlin gleamed in the moonlight.
The turnips were very pretty, if a little odd for building-tops. But
Red Square, in spite of all its historic associations, seemed to be a
little dull. The buildings were just buildings, and the streets were
filled with Russians. They were not bomb-throwing Russians, bearded
Russians or even “Volga Boatman”-singing Russians. They were just
ordinary, dull Russians of every sort, shade, race, color and previous
condition of servitude.
It was just about what he’d expected after the trip. That hadn’t been
exciting either, he told himself. There had been no incident of any
kind. None of the three spies seemed to be exactly overjoyed about
being sent back to good old Mother Russia, but none seemed inclined to
make much fuss about the matter, either. Malone had blandly told them
that they were being deported, instead of tried, because there was no
evidence that was worth the expense of a trial. And, besides that, he
had particularly emphasized that the FBI did not believe any of the
stories the three men had told.
“They just don’t match up,” he said. “You all told different stories,
and there’s too much disagreement between them. Frankly, we don’t
believe any of them—not yet, we don’t. But mark my words. We’ll find
out the truth some day.”
He’d thought it was a good speech, and Her Majesty had agreed with
him. It had its desired effect, since the plane was the first place
the three had had a chance to meet since their arrest. “Each one knows
that he told the truth,” Her Majesty said, “but nobody knows what the
other two said.”
“That’s what I figured,” Malone said. “They didn’t have a chance to
talk to each other.”
“And so each one is lying his head off to the others,” Her Majesty
said, “and telling them all about how he, too, lied gloriously and
bravely in defense of the Motherland. It’s really very funny.”
“Well,” Malone said, “it makes them happy. And why not?”
Luba, too, had chatted with her father quite a lot of the time. Her
Majesty reported that none of this conversation could possibly be
understood as dangerous or harmful. It was just simple conversation.
Of course, Luba and her father hadn’t talked all the time, and Malone
did have a chance to get a few words in edgewise. Her Majesty made no
report on those conversations, but Malone was comfortably aware that
they did not belong in the harmless class. His relationship with the
girl seemed, he told himself happily, to be improving slightly. Now
and again, he even won a round from her.
As the American plane crossed the border, it was picked up by an
escort of Russian fighter craft, which stuck with them all the way
into Moscow. The fighters didn’t do anything; they were just there,
Malone figured, for insurance. But they made him nervous when he
looked out the window. The trip from the border to Moscow seemed to
take a long time.
Then, at the airfield, a group of MVD men had almost elbowed the
American Embassy delegation out of the way in greeting the
disembarking little band. There was a lot of palaver, in Russian,
English and various scrambled mixtures which nobody understood. The
American delegation greeted Malone, Luba and Her Majesty formally, and
the MVD concentrated on Brubitsch, Borbitsch and Garbitsch. The three
spies were hustled away, apparently to MVD Headquarters, without much
fuss. Luba said goodbye to her father calmly enough, and Vasili
Garbitsch seemed almost entirely unaffected by his surroundings. As
the plane touched ground, he had said: “Ah, the soil of Mother
Russia,” but, outside of a goodbye or two, those were his last words
before leaving.
One MVD man stayed behind, even after the American delegation had
left. His name, he explained, was Vladimir Josefovitch Petkoff. “It
will be my pleasure to show your group the many historic and
interesting sights of Moskva,” he announced to Malone.
“Pleasure?” Malone said. Petkoff was tall and heavy, and wore a row of
medals that strung out across his chest like a newspaper headline.
“My duty,” Petkoff said flatly, “is my pleasure. That is how we
arrange matters in Russia.”
And so the tour had started, with Red Square. Malone told himself he
didn’t really mind if it weren’t red, but he did think it could at
least look sinister. Unfortunately, the Square did not seem
particularly willing to oblige.
“So this is Red Square,” Malone said, after a long silence.
“You do not sound interested,” Petkoff said in what sounded like a
vaguely ominous voice. “Because it is not painted in capitalistic and
obvious colors, it bores you?”
“Not exactly,” Malone said. “But when you’ve seen one Square, you’ve
seen them all, is how I feel about it. There must be somewhere else to
sight-see.”
“Somewhere?” Petkoff said. “There is everywhere. This is Moskva, the
capital and the greatest city in Mother Russia. That is what we are
told to say.” He lowered his voice. “Personally,” he added, “I come
from Leningrad. I prefer it. But in Moskva one talks only of Moskva.”
“I know just how you feel,” Malone assured him. “I’ve been to San
Francisco.”
“Well, then,” Petkoff said, almost smiling at him. “What is there you
would like to see?”
Malone fished in his pocket for an American cigarette. He’d brought a
carton with him, having once tried Russian makes. They seemed to be
mostly cardboard, both the long filter and the tobacco. He lit the
cigarette and thought for a second. “I don’t suppose,” he said
cautiously, “that we could take a look around inside the Kremlin,
could we?”
“Aha,” Petkoff said. “I see what is in your mind.”
“You do?” Malone said, startled.
“Naturally,” Petkoff said. “You wish to see the tomb of Lenin. It is
famous throughout the world.”
Malone considered that for a minute. “Somehow,” he said cautiously,
“the coffin of Lenin doesn’t exactly sound like a gay start for
sight-seeing.”
Petkoff looked pleased instantly. “I understand,” he said. “Truly I
understand. You, too, feel sad over the death of the great Lenin. How
beautiful! How cultured!”
Malone wondered whether or not to disillusion the man, and decided
against it. “Well, something like that,” he said vaguely.
“I’ll tell you what: is there a restaurant around here where we could
get something to eat?”