Legends

In disjointed sentences, Martin admitted that he had once been employed by the CIA; that it was perfectly true that he had set up shop as a private detective in Brooklyn, New York, after he left the service. He explained about Samat walking out on his wife in Israel, leaving her in a religious limbo; how the wife’s sister and father had hired him to track down Samat and convince him to give her a religious divorce so that she could get on with her life. “I have no interest in purchasing false limbs or generic drugs. I am simply following a trail that I hope leads to Samat.”

Smiling thinly, the interrogator humored Martin. “And what will you do once you find him?”

“I will take Samat to the nearest town that has a synagogue and oblige him to grant his wife a divorce in front of a rabbi. Then I will return to Brooklyn and spend the rest of my life boring myself to death.”

The interrogator turned Martin’s story over in his mind. “I am familiar with the school of intelligence activities that holds that a good cover story must be made to seem preposterous if it is to be believed. But you are pushing this thesis to its limits.” He rifled through the papers on the desk and came up with another report. “We have been observing people entering or leaving the Vyshrad Station for weeks now,” he continued. “We even managed to plant a listening device in the upstairs office. Here is a transcript of a very recent conversation. Perhaps it will seem familiar to you. A man was heard to say: I have a confession to make. I am not here to buy generic medicines. I have come to find out more about Samat’s project concerning the exchange of the bones of the Lithuanian saint for Jewish Torah scrolls.” The interrogator raised his eyes from the paper to look directly at his prisoner. “Curious that you make no mention of divorce before a rabbi. Bones of the Lithuanian saint, Jewish Torah scrolls—I take that to be coded references to weapons systems originating in Lithuania and Israel. I can tell you that, aside from the illegality of selling weapons and weapon systems, what intrigues us most about Mrs. Slánská is her motive. She was not doing it for money, Mr. Odum. She is an idealist.”

“Last time I checked, being an idealist was not a crime, even in the Czech Republic.”

“The American writer Mencken once defined an idealist as someone who, on observing that a rose smelled better than a cabbage, concluded that it would also make better soup. Yes, well, like Mencken’s idealist, Mrs. Slánská’s idealism is very particular—she remains a diehard Marxist, plotting the comeback of the communists. She desires to set the clock back and is thought to be using the considerable profits from the sale of weapons to finance a splinter group hoping to do here in the Czech Republic what the former communists have done in Poland and Rumania and Bulgaria: win elections and return to power.”

It occurred to Martin there might be a way to beat the fatigue that made it appear as if everything around him was happening in slow motion. He closed one eye, thinking that one lobe of his brain could actually sleep while the other eye and the other lobe remained awake. After a moment, hoping the interrogator wouldn’t catch on to his clever scheme, he switched eyes and lobes. He could hear the interrogator’s voice droning on; could make out, through his open eye, the blurred figure getting up and coming around to half sit on the desk in front of him.

“You arrived here from London, Mr. Odum. The British MI5 established that you lived for several days in a rooming house next to a synagogue off Golders Green. The warehouse where Mr. Taletbek Rabbani was murdered the day before you departed from London was within walking distance of your rooming house.”

“If everyone living within walking distance of the warehouse is a suspect,” the half of Martin’s brain still functioning managed to say, “MI5 is going to have its hands full.”

“We have not excluded the possibility of concluding a deal with you, Mr. Odum. Our principal objective is to discredit Mrs. Slánská; to show that she and Mr. Rabbani were in league with Mr. Samat Ugor-Zhilov’s weapons operation; that both the warehouse in London and the defunct train station in Prague were funded by the same Samat Ugor-Zhilov, a notable Moscow gangster who is associated with the Ugor-Zhilov known as the Oligarkh. The object for us is to tie the communist splinter group to Zuzana Slánská’s illegal weapons operation and discredit them once and for all … Mr. Odum, are you hearing me? Mr. Odum? Mr. Odum, wake up!”

But both lobes of Martin’s brain had yielded to exhaustion.

“Take him back to his cell.”