Legends

Martin identified a piece of the puzzle that was missing: How could Radek’s service have known he would turn up in Prague? Obviously the CIA chief of station had been talking to his Czech counterpart about Martin. And the chief of station reported to the Deputy Director of Operations, Crystal Quest. Which brought Martin back to what he’d told the late Oscar Alexandrovich Kastner in the windowless walk-in closet on President Street a lifetime ago: I’d like to know why the CIA doesn’t want this particular missing husband found.

“Your station chief,” the interrogator was saying, “claims you are no longer employed by the CIA. He says you are a freelance detective. It could be true, what he says; it could also be that they are simply denying any connection to you because you have been caught in the act. So tell me, Mr. Odum. What weapon systems were you contracting to buy at the Vyshrad Station. More importantly, who were you buying them for?”

“Zuzana Slánská sells generic medicines.”

“The woman you call Zuzana Slánská was never legally married to the doctor Pavel Slánský, who, as you surely know, was convicted as an enemy of the state during the communist period. Her real name is Zuzana Dzurova. She assumed the name Slánská when she learned of Pavel’s death in prison. As for the generic medicines, we have reason to believe they are a front for one of the most prolific weapons operations in Europe.” The interrogator pulled a report from one of the cardboard file boxes on the desk, pried a staple loose with his thumbnail and extracted the third page. He fitted on a pair of rimless reading glasses and began to quote from the text. “… operating in conjunction with Mr. Taletbek Rabbani in London, who claims to be selling prostheses at cost to third world countries …” The interrogator looked up from the paper. “It is surely not lost on you that both Mr. Rabbani’s prosthesis operation in London and Zuzana Slánská’s generic medicine operation here in Prague were funded by the same individual, a Mr. Samat Ugor-Zhilov, who until recently was living in a Jewish settlement on the West Bank of the Jordan River in order to shelter himself from the gang wars raging in Moscow.”

Martin’s muscles ached from the effort of keeping his body from sliding off the chair. He strained to bring the interrogator into focus. “Both Mr. Rabbani and Zuzana Slánská described Samat Ugor-Zhilov as a philanthropist—”

Radek emitted a single hiccup. “Some philanthropist!” he cried from the wall.

The interrogator threw Radek a dark look, as if to remind him that there was a pecking order; that birds on the junior end of it should be seen but not heard. Then, angling the sheet of paper toward the light, he began reading phrases from it. “Both Mr. Rabbani and Zuzana Slánská are marketing a French device that corrects the error the U.S. Pentagon builds into the satellite GPS system to thwart rogue missile launchings … Soviet-surplus radar units from the Ukraine … ah, yes, armored personnel carriers from a Bulgarian state-run company, Terem, sold to Syria for eventual delivery to Iraq … engines and spare parts for the T-55 and T-72 Soviet tanks from assorted Bulgarian armaments factories … ammunition, explosives, rockets, training manuals in missile technology from Serbia … spare jet-fighter parts and rocket propellants from an aviation factory in eastern Bosnia. And listen to this: The London prosthesis warehouse and the Prague generic medicine operation are used as clearing houses for orders for an ammunition factory in the town of Vitez and missile guidance systems fabricated in a research center in the city of Banja Luka … payments for items on the inventory were made in cash or in diamonds.” The interrogator flicked the nail of his middle finger against the sheet of paper. “I could continue but there is no point.”

In one of his legends—Martin couldn’t recall which—he remembered taking a course at the Farm designed to prepare agents in the field for hostile interrogation. The various techniques of interrogation discussed included one where the interrogator would invent flagrant lies to disorient the person being questioned. Agents who found themselves in this predicament were advised to hang on to the facts they knew to be true and let the fictions of the interrogator pass without comment.

Martin, his head swimming with fatigue, heard himself say, “I know absolutely nothing about the sale of weapons.”

The interrogator removed his eyeglasses and massaged the bridge of his nose with the thumb and third finger of his left hand. “That being the case, what brought you to Mr. Taletbek Rabbani’s warehouse in London and the Vyshrad Station in Prague?”

Martin longed to stretch out on the metal army cot in his cell. “I am trying to trace Samat Ugor-Zhilov,” he said.

“Why?”