The Enemy

NATO Special Forces put a lot of emphasis on endurance in selection and training. They have guys running fifty miles carrying everything including the kitchen sink. They keep them awake and hiking over appalling terrain for a week at a time. Therefore NATO elite troops tended to be small whippy guys, built like marathon runners. But this Bulgarian was huge. He was at least as big as me. Maybe even bigger. Maybe six-six, maybe two-fifty. He had a shaved head. He had a big square face that would be somewhere between brutally plain and reasonably good-looking depending on the light. At that point the fluorescent tube on the ceiling of his cell wasn’t doing him any favors. He looked tired. He had piercing eyes set deep and close together in hooded sockets. He was a few years older than me, somewhere in his early thirties. He had huge hands. He was wearing brand-new woodland BDUs, no name, no rank, no unit.

“On your feet, soldier,” I said.

He put his book down on the bed next to him, carefully, facedown and open, like he was saving his place.

We put handcuffs on him and got him into the Humvee without any trouble. He was big, but he was quiet. He seemed resigned to his fate. Like he knew it had been only a matter of time before all the various logbooks in his life betrayed him.

We drove him back and got him to my office without incident. We sat him down and unlocked the handcuffs and redid them so that his right wrist was cuffed to the chair leg. Then we took a second pair of cuffs and did the same thing with his left. He had big wrists. They were as thick as most men’s ankles.

Summer stood next to the map, staring at the pushpins, like she was leading his gaze toward them and saying: We know.

I sat at my desk.

“What’s your name?” I said. “For the record.”

“Trifonov,” he said. His accent was heavy and abrupt, all in his throat.

“First name?”

“Slavi.”

“Slavi Trifonov,” I said. “Rank?”

“I was a colonel at home. Now I’m a sergeant.”

“Where’s home?”

“Sofia,” he said. “In Bulgaria.”

“You’re very young to have been a colonel.”

“I was very good at what I did.”

“And what did you do?”

He didn’t answer.

“You have a nice car,” I said.

“Thank you,” he said. “A car like that was always a dream to me.”

“Where did you take it on the night of the fourth?”

He didn’t answer.

“There are no Special Forces in Bulgaria,” I said.

“No,” he said. “There are not.”

“So what did you do there?”

“I was in the regular army.”

“Doing what?”

“Three-way liaison between the Bulgarian Army, the Bulgarian Secret Police, and our friends in the Soviet Vysotniki.”

“Qualifications?”

“I had five years’ training with the GRU.”

“Which is what?”

He smiled. “I think you know what it is.”

I nodded. The Soviet GRU was a kind of a cross between a military police corps and Delta Force. They were plenty tough, and they were just as ready to turn their fury inward as outward.

“Why are you here?” I asked.

“In America?” he said. “I’m waiting.”

“For what?”

“For the end of the communist occupation of my country. It will happen soon, I think. Then I’m going back. I’m proud of my country. It’s a beautiful place full of beautiful people. I’m a nationalist.”

“What are you teaching Delta?”

“Things that are out-of-date now. How to fight against the things I was trained to do. But that battle is already over, I think. You won.”

“You need to tell us where you were on the night of the fourth.”

He said nothing.

“Why did you defect?”

“Because I was a patriot,” he said.

“Recent conversion?”

“I was always a patriot. But I came close to being discovered.”

“How did you get out?”

“Through Turkey. I went to the American base there.”

“Tell me about the night of the fourth.”

He said nothing.

“We’ve got your gun,” I said. “You signed it out. You left the post at eleven minutes past ten and got back at five in the morning.”

He said nothing.

“You fired two rounds.”

He said nothing.

“Why did you wash your car?”

“Because it’s a beautiful car. I wash it twice a week. Always. A car like that was a dream to me.”

“You ever been to Kansas?”

“No.”

“Well, that’s where you’re headed. You’re not going home to Sofia. You’re going to Fort Leavenworth instead.”

“Why?”

“You know why,” I said.

Trifonov didn’t move. He sat absolutely still. He was hunched way forward, with his wrists fastened to the chair down near his knees. I sat still too. I wasn’t sure what to do. Our own Delta guys were trained to resist interrogation. I knew that. They were trained to counter drugs and beatings and sensory deprivation and anything else anyone could think of. Their instructors were encouraged to employ hands-on training methods. So I couldn’t even imagine what Trifonov had been through, in five years with the GRU. There was nothing much I could do to him. I wasn’t above smacking people around. But I figured this guy wouldn’t say a word even if I disassembled him limb by limb.

So I moved on to traditional policing techniques. Lies, and bribery.