Legends

The interrogator switched off the light. Martin felt the world spinning giddily under his feet. His lids drifted closed over his eyes as his forehead sank onto one of the photos. The interrogator didn’t break the silence until the prisoner sat up again.

Martin heard himself ask, “When did all this happen?”

“A long time ago.”

Martin sagged back into his seat. “For me,” he remarked tiredly, “yesterday is a long time ago, the day before yesterday is a previous incarnation.”

“The photographs were taken in 1994,” the interrogator said.

Martin breathed the words “Three years ago!” Kneading his forehead, he tried to work the pieces of this strange puzzle into place, but no matter which way he turned and twisted them, no coherent picture emerged. “What happened after this individual was buried alive?” he asked.

“When the photographs were developed and circulated, we decided to mount an operation to free him—to free you—in the hope that you were still alive. When we reached the site of the execution, in the dead of night, we discovered the peasants, led by the village priest, had already scraped away the tarmac and pried up the planks and rescued the man buried in the crater. Before first light, our people helped the peasants replace the planks and tar over the spot.”

“And what happened to … this person?”

“The village’s tractor repairman drove you to Moscow in Prigorodnaia’s tow truck. His intention was to take you to a hospital. At a red light on the ring road, not far from the American Embassy, you leaped from the cab of the truck and disappeared in the darkness. Neither the municipal police nor our service was able to find any trace of you after that. As far as we were concerned, you disappeared from the surface of the earth—until today, until a custom’s officer at the airport signaled the arrival of a Canadian bearing a passport issued to Kafkor, Jozef. We assumed you would be returning to Prigorodnaia, which is the reason the interior ministry troops closed the road—we knew we could pick you up on the way out.”

A secretary appeared behind the desk and, bending close, whispered in the interrogator’s ear. Clearly annoyed, the interrogator demanded, “How long ago?” Then: “How in the world did he find out?” Shaking his head in disgust, the interrogator turned back to Martin. “The CIA station chief in Moscow has learned that you are in our hands. He is sending a formal request through channels asking us to turn you over to his agency for interrogation when we’ve finished with you.”

“Why would the CIA want to question Jozef Kafkor?”

“They will want to discover if you were able to tell us what we want to know.”

“And what is it that you want to know?”

“Whose side were they on—Samat Ugor-Zhilov and the Oligarkh, Tzvetan Ugor-Zhilov? And where are they now?”

“Samat took refuge in a West Bank Jewish settlement in Israel.”

The interrogator carefully unhooked his eyeglasses from one ear and then the other and began to clean the lenses with the tip of his silk tie. “Bring tea,” he instructed the secretary. “Also those brioche cakes stuffed with fig confiture.” He fitted the glasses back on and, collecting the five photographs, slipped them back into the folder. “Gospodin Kafkor, the Russian Federal Security Service is underfunded and understaffed and underappreciated, but we are not dimwits. That Samat took refuge in Israel we have known for a long time. We were negotiating with the Israeli Mossad to have access to him when word reached him that Chechen hit men had tracked him to Israel, causing him to flee the country. But where did he go when he disappeared from Israel?”

The interrogator leafed through more reports. “He was sighted in the Golders Green section of London. He was seen again in the vicinity of the Vyshrad Train Station in Prague. He was said to have visited the town of Kantubek on the island of Vozrozhdeniye in the Aral Sea. There were reports, too, that he may have gone to the Lithuanian town of Zuzovka not far from the frontier with Belarus. There is even a rumor that he was the mysterious person who turned up in the helicopter that touched down for half an hour behind the cemetery in Prigorodnaia.”

The secretary turned up at the door carrying a tray. The interrogator motioned for him to set it on the small round table between two high-backed chairs and leave. When he was alone with the prisoner, he waved him over to one of the chairs. Settling into the other chair, he filled two mugs with steaming tea. “You must try one of the cakes,” he advised, sliding the straw basket toward Martin. “They are so delicious it must surely count as a sin to eat them. So, gospodin Kafkor, let us sin together,” he added, biting into one of the cakes, cupping a hand under it to catch the crumbs.

“My name is Cheklachvili,” the interrogator said, speaking as he took another bite out of his cake. “Arkhip Cheklachvili.”

“That’s a Georgian name,” Martin noted.