5
“How?”
“Your own pack of gangsters is a little less squalid than ours, but not much. They will always want to keep the secret tight. That Bailey knows is bad enough. But a random math professor a thousand miles from Washington? They would feel profoundly insecure about that. Plus they don’t really want to trade the kind of superstar prisoner it would take to get you out of here in less than a year. So your embassy will tell you there’s a small bureaucratic issue, and it might be a couple days before they can get you out, but they need the number immediately, right now, for obvious national security reasons. You’ll give them the number, because you’re a good citizen. And then you’ll never hear from them again. They’ll betray you without a second thought. They’ll forget about you. You’ll cease to exist. You’ll die here, invisible and unheard. It will be a perfect win-win for them.”
“No,” Tyler said. “That won’t happen.”
“It happened to me. Now I hammer nails for a living.”
“That’s different. You criticized your government. I’m working with mine.”
“With them or for them?”
“They called it a team effort.”
“Was it a team plan?”
“It was the president’s plan. But he can’t leave me here. I could get a message out. I could go public.”
“The ravings of a lunatic. Do you have proof you even met the president?”
Tyler paused a beat. These conversations never existed. They never happened. We’re not even filing a flight plan. This trip doesn’t exist. He didn’t answer.
“I thought not,” Suslov said. “Come see me tomorrow.”
The next day was all about the clang of the iron bar on the iron triangle. Like every day would be, Tyler thought. Forever. First reveille, then the call to breakfast, then the start of work hours. The sewing machines were difficult. Tyler couldn’t manage them. Jan de Vris found him a job sweeping the floor and hauling the trash. The dump was in the no-man’s-land between the last of the buildings and the stockade fence. Men were stumbling toward it, toting heavy pails the size of oil drums, tipping them out, coming back faster.
One of the men was Arkady Suslov. Tyler got in the procession ten yards behind him. Suslov looked happy to be out in the air. He was whistling a cheerful tune, like birdsong, face up to the misty sun, dragging his pail, making a scar in the dirt. Whistling was rare in a labor camp, Tyler imagined. Suslov emptied his pail and turned back. He saw Tyler and nodded a greeting, but said nothing. Maybe talking was forbidden. Tyler nodded back and they passed shoulder to shoulder, a yard apart. Suslov was still whistling. Tyler emptied his pail and headed back for more. He made three trips before the iron bar sounded lunch, and two afterward. On his return from the second, Jan de Vris stopped him at the door. He said the guards were looking for him, because two people had showed up from the US Embassy.
Tyler walked back to the guardhouse, where he had been processed the day before. The guard pointed to a hut a hundred feet away. It stood all on its own. Some kind of conference room, ostentatiously private.
Inside was Michael Cartwright, the legal attaché. The Brooks Brothers guy. With him was an older man, harder, brisker, altogether different. He gave his name as Shaw. Just that. No first name. He said he was also a legal attaché.
Cartwright asked, “How are you?”
“I haven’t showered since London,” Tyler said. “I haven’t changed my clothes. In fact I haven’t even taken them off. I eat turnips three times a day, and I haul garbage for a living. Apart from that, I’m great.”
“We have things to discuss,” Shaw said. A deep voice, confident, used to being in charge. “We got a need-to-know briefing based on heavily redacted information from a classified source. It read like a bedtime story. Apparently you have four friends in America. They send their best wishes. They’re anxious to hear your progress. They look forward to getting together again soon.”
“OK,” Tyler said.
“Separately we got an operational order to set up a prisoner swap. Involving you, I assume.”
“You’re not a lawyer, are you?”
“It’s how we get in here. Shameful, I know. The order was incomplete. Apparently the swap happens when you say the word. I assume that means when you complete your mission, which I assume means when you get the information your four friends want. But exactly how do you say the word? We’re eight hundred miles away. You can’t call us on the phone. You can’t put a chalk mark on a tree. We can’t drive out here every day, just in case.”
“We’ll figure that out,” Tyler said. “Assume you get the word. What happens then?”
“We get you out.”
“Immediately?”
“More or less. The ducks are all in a row. Finland is cooperating, so we can use the short route. Call it two hours’ flight time from there, which we would spend in the car, driving to the airfield to meet the plane. He gets off, you get on. So yes, more or less immediately.”
“I have the information my four friends want.”
“What?”
“My mission is complete.”
“Fantastic,” Shaw said. “That solves our problem entirely.”
“So let’s go.”
“You bet,” Shaw said. “I have to drive thirty minutes south to get cell reception. You wait here with Cartwright. In this room. Do not go back to work. As long as one of us is with you, it’s a legitimate legal conference, and they can’t touch you, as long as it takes. I’ll make the call, and I’ll pick you up on the way back.”
Tyler waited with Cartwright, in the room. They didn’t talk. There was nothing to talk about. Cartwright was strictly need- to-know. And don’t-want-to-know, Tyler thought. He figured thirty minutes south and thirty minutes back plus a phone call would add up to an hour and ten, maybe an hour and a quarter. He had no way of keeping track of time. There were no clocks in the camp. Just the iron triangle.
Shaw came back after an hour and twenty minutes. He looked concerned. He said, “We have a small problem.”
“What problem?” Tyler asked.
“The Russian prisoner due to be exchanged is waiting in Finland. He came down with COVID. The prison system in Finland prohibits the movement of infectious inmates. He has to isolate until he tests negative. Could be three days.”
Tyler didn’t answer.
Shaw said, “Your friends in America apologize for the inconvenience. They ask you to sit tight. They want you to rest assured they’re on it.”
Tyler didn’t answer.
“But they say the information you have is critical and urgent. A matter of national security. They need you to pass it on right now, through me.”
“No,” Tyler said.
“Excuse me?”
“Go call them again. Remind them of the arrangement we made. I go back there to discuss the information in person.”
“They won’t like that.”
“They suggested it.”
“You’re in a weak position.”
“I don’t agree,” Tyler said. “They want the information. I have it. That feels like a strong position.”
“This is national security.”
“Tell them to find another prisoner to exchange. One that doesn’t have a fever.”
“That could take days.”
“We have days, according to them. In fact tell them to find two prisoners. Tell them the price just went up. Tell them to loan the second guy to the Dutch government. To swap for a prisoner named Jan de Vris.”
“Who the hell is he?”
“A man who wants to go home.”
“You can’t do this.”
“I am doing it. Go make the call. Make as many calls as it takes. Mr. Cartwright and I will wait here. We’ll wait all night if we need to. We’ll wait all week. In this room. A legitimate legal conference. They can’t touch us.”
Jan de Vris made it home first. Helsinki to Rotterdam was a shorter distance than Helsinki to DC. Tyler was met at Andrews by the same two agents who had escorted him inside the NSA. This time they drove him to the White House. Ramsey, McGinn, Cash, and Bailey were waiting in the Oval Office. The club of five, reunited. None of them had a bad word to say. The details of his return went unmentioned.
Ramsey said, “Tell us.”
“Suslov knew we would come,” Tyler said. “The ambiguity was deliberate. He called it an invitation.”
“To what?”
“He doesn’t care for his government. He called them a sordid pack of squalid gangsters. He doesn’t want them to benefit from noble Soviet achievements. He wants us to deactivate the arsenal and let it rust.”
“So he just told you the number?”
“No,” Tyler said. “He didn’t. He was expecting Professor Bailey, not me. He thought it was too dangerous for me to know the number.”
“Why?”
“He thought you would get it out of me in bad faith and abandon me there.”
No one spoke. A long silence.
“Just Russian paranoia, I’m sure,” Tyler said.
“So you don’t have the number?” Bailey said. “You told us you did.”
“I saw him the next day. He was hauling trash to a pile. Out in the air. Korovki is a dismal place, full of indignities. To be outside was a simple pleasure. He was happy. He was whistling a tune. It sounded like it came from somewhere deep down.”
“What tune?”
“It was a piping sound,” Tyler said. “Like birdsong. Like a robin in an oak tree. All octaves. Low high high, high high high, high high low.”
“That’s the first palindrome,” Bailey said. “That’s 188,888,881. We thought it would be the second palindrome. We should go run a simulation.”
“No,” Tyler said. “I’m going home. I’m going to be a normal person. Living my life. Doing my work. Reading the news. Maybe sometimes wondering if the pointy-heads in our three-letter agencies have hacked the Russians yet. But never actually knowing for sure.”
No one answered.
“I think you want me to be that person,” Tyler said. “Less for you to worry about.”
“May we call you if we need to?” Ramsey asked.
“No, sir,” Tyler said. “I would prefer that you didn’t.” He opened the door and stepped out of the Oval Office. One of the agents in the anteroom walked him to the street. Three hours later he was boarding a plane, by group number, through a jet bridge jammed with shuffling people.