Authors: James Barrington
Five minutes later Khamil leaned back in his chair and laughed. ‘So, Hassan, now we know where you receive your inspiration: from the ramblings of an infidel who scribbled down his visions
five hundred years ago. What nonsense!’
Abbas shook his head slightly. ‘You mock me,
sayidi
, but in truth this Nostradamus does seem to suggest that our plan will succeed. And,’ he added, ‘other prophecies he
made have been fulfilled, such as the downfall of the Shah.’
Khamil continued to smile, but shook his head. ‘It’s all nonsense, Hassan. The future is not pre-ordained, as well you know. If you wish to rely on the obscure words of a Frenchman
dead half a millennium, that’s your choice. But it does save me the trouble of choosing a code-name for you in our communications. I shall simply call you “The
Prophet”.’
Present day – Tuesday
Lubyanskaya ploshchad, Moscow
In the Lubyanka Prison a man lay dying, and he had no idea why. No medical practitioner in the world could have diagnosed his ailment, for he had none, but he was
nevertheless dying, and there was nothing any doctor could do to save him. At four fifteen, he had perhaps four hours to live. He knew it. His jailers knew it. And the white-coated technicians
preparing the table and equipment in the soundproof interrogation room knew it.
He knew, without the slightest doubt, that he would never see the sun again, never see a blue sky or the waves breaking on the rocky shores of his native Northumberland. His future, short as it
was, would be tightly constrained, limited to the four discoloured concrete walls that imprisoned him, and to whatever colours the KGB had elected to paint the basement interrogation room where
they were going to kill him.
When they came for him, he was sobbing in despair, but when the guard put a hand on his shoulder to drag him off the stained mattress and on to his feet, he screamed and lashed out blindly,
using fists, feet and teeth. The struggle was short and pointless. The captive lapsed into unconsciousness when the blackjack descended on the back of his head, and when he awoke the short journey
to the interrogation room was over, and he was strapped naked on the table.
An elderly grey-haired man with twinkling, innocent blue eyes and a short white beard leaned over him, looked down and smiled. ‘Good. You are awake. No, don’t try and talk yet. You
will have plenty of time for that later. First I want to explain things to you.’ The Russian’s English was fluent, the accent faintly American. He leaned closer. ‘I am what you
British would call of the old school. I am an old-style interrogator. I do use drugs, the truth drugs, scopolamine and sodium pentothal, but they are unreliable and people can be taught, as no
doubt you were taught, to resist their effects. And they can just as easily kill, if they are used in too large doses, or cause such great brain damage that we are left with a gibbering idiot. And
we don’t want that, do we?’
He chuckled, looking a little like a benevolent Santa Claus, and sat down on a stained plastic chair next to the table. ‘So, I only use them if I can take my time, and increase the dosage
slowly. But now we need answers quickly, and the best method of persuasion, I believe, is pain. Pain is my profession. I will start with a little pain, to show that I am serious, and then I will
ask you some questions. If you answer those, I might not hurt you again, but you will probably lie, or I might think that you are lying, and then I will hurt you more, a lot more, and then I will
ask you again. And I will go on like that until I decide that you have nothing more to tell me. If you have helped me, I will kill you quickly, and it won’t hurt. But if you have not told me
what I wanted to know, then you can take a long, long time to die and you will suffer pain that you will not believe possible.’
He paused and looked down at the Englishman. ‘The point, you see, is that I will get the answers I need. I always get the answers. How much pain it costs you is up to you, but I will get
the answers. Now, I am going to leave you for a few minutes while you think about what I have said. You must choose, not me.’
He stood up, walked over to the two white-coated figures waiting in the corner and spoke softly to them, then left the room. As soon as he had gone, the technicians moved two trolleys over to
the table, and left them in the clear sight of the captive. Each displayed an array of medical equipment – saws, knives and scalpels – as well as more utilitarian tools – pliers,
screwdrivers, soldering iron, bolt-cutters and a blowlamp. The Englishman had no doubts about why they had been left there, just as he had no doubt that the interrogator would use any or all of the
equipment to obtain whatever information he wanted.
About five minutes later the door opened and the interrogator entered, followed by a white-coated figure carrying a small black bag and a stethoscope, and walked straight to the table.
‘Now, to business,’ he said. ‘I enjoy my work, and I am very good at it, but I would still rather avoid all the unpleasantness of the physical side.’ He waved his hand at
the two trolleys. ‘So, what have you decided? If you help me, I, or my medical friend here, will end it all for you with a simple injection. If not, well, you know what will
happen.’
The Englishman was no coward, but neither was he stupid. Faced with a terminal situation, from which there was clearly no possibility of escape, there was only one choice. ‘I’ll
answer any questions you ask,’ he said, his voice choked with fear.
‘Good, good.’ The interrogator sounded gratified. He sat down on the plastic chair, picked up his clipboard, selected a particular page on it and began the questioning. Two minutes
later he sat back, then stood up. He did not look pleased. ‘That is not what I wanted to hear. I do not think you realize the gravity of this situation. I have explained the options to you,
but I must have the information I want.’
The captive shook his head desperately. ‘But I don’t know the answers,’ he shouted. ‘I’m trying to answer your questions, but if I don’t know the answers, how
can I?’
The interrogator looked at him coldly, then smiled again and resumed his seat. ‘Well, let’s try once again, shall we? But this time, you really must help me.’ Again the
questions began, but again the answers did not satisfy the interrogator, and after a few minutes he stood up and shook his head sadly. ‘I thought you were going to be sensible about this, but
I was wrong. I told you that I must have this information, and you will tell me – now or later.’
The Englishman shouted again, naked terror in his eyes. ‘I’ll tell you anything you want – everything that I know. But these questions – I don’t know what
you’re talking about.’
The interrogator looked down at him and patted his shoulder gently. ‘We shall see,’ he said softly. ‘We shall see.’ He stepped across to the wall next to the
interrogation table, reached up and clicked on two switches marked, in Cyrillic script, ‘video’ and ‘audio’. Directly above the table, two red lights winked on, showing that
the video camera and tape recorder were operating. The interrogator nodded, walked across to the corner of the room, selected a waterproof apron from a peg, and put it on. He motioned to the
technicians and the doctor, and they followed his example.
The captive on the table began to scream. The interrogator looked over at him and issued a swift command to one of the technicians, who walked over to the table and roughly applied a
sticking-plaster gag. The doctor sat down at the captive’s left side, and attached a blood-pressure cuff to the Englishman’s arm. He opened his bag and prepared a number of injections,
principally stimulants, and taped his stethoscope microphone to the man’s chest. With his preparations complete, he nodded to the interrogator.
The technicians waited expectantly by the trolleys, looking at the captive with all the compassion of a couple of butchers contemplating a side of beef. Finally, the interrogator sat down again
on the plastic chair and leaned close to the Englishman, who was still trying to scream, even through the gag. ‘Quiet, now,’ he said. ‘You have had your chance to act sensibly.
Now you must face the consequences.’
The interrogator spoke briefly in Russian, and leaned forward to watch as the technicians began their work. He enjoyed assessing the resilience of his subjects, and this man, he was certain,
would be easy to break. Four minutes later the captive passed out. When the doctor had revived him, the technicians started again. Then they tore off the gag and the questioning began. The answers
still didn’t please the old man with the innocent blue eyes, so he stepped back from the table and motioned the technicians back to work. When the captive had stopped screaming, the
grey-haired man asked him exactly the same questions again.
A little over two hours later they stopped. The captive had mercifully gone into massive shock, and no efforts by the doctor or the technicians had the slightest effect. The interrogator stood
and looked down at the wreck of the man on the table for a long moment. Then he selected a thin steel probe from one of the instrument trolleys, and carefully pushed it through the captive’s
left eyeball and deep into the brain cavity. For good measure, he did the same to the right eye. He pulled out the probe and tossed it back on the instrument trolley, then turned to the chief
technician. ‘Get rid of it,’ he said.
Officially, the
Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti
, the KGB, has ceased to exist, and certain parts of the organization’s old headquarters building at number 2
Lubyanskaya ploshchad – formerly Dzerzhinsky Square – are even open to parties of tourists during the day. The tourists are not allowed into any sensitive areas of the building, and the
impression given by their guides is that the huge structure is just a shell, no longer used for any important purposes, a monument to an evil past that has no place in modern, post-
glasnost
,
Russia. But, as with so many things in Russia, past and present, the official position differs markedly from reality. Certainly, the KGB has officially ceased to exist, but a new organization, the
Sluzhba Vneshney Razvyedki Rossi
or SVR, has inherited its mantle – or at least that of the First Chief Directorate – with virtually no visible changes apart from the new name.
The SVR occupies the former KGB’s sixty-acre office complex at Yazenevo, located close to the orbital ring road in Moscow’s southern suburbs, and virtually all the personnel now
employed by the SVR are ex-KGB staff, many still in their original offices and doing precisely the same jobs.
In fact, the old building in the heart of Moscow is still used, outside what might be termed visiting hours, for purposes little different from those that characterized the heyday of the KGB.
Number 2 Lubyanskaya ploshchad has a grandeur and a presence that is lacking in the featureless new complex, and many of the more senior officers much prefer to operate from it when their duties
permit. It is also useful for clandestine meetings or covert actions that would not be practical, or even possible, at Yazenevo.
The grey-haired man left the cellar after removing his waterproof apron and blood-splattered white coat, and ascended in the lift to the third floor. He walked down the light
green painted corridor, his shoes rapping on the parquet flooring, then paused and entered a room after a perfunctory knock. He carried the clipboard upon which he had made copious notes in both
English and Cyrillic script during the interrogation. The audio tapes would be transcribed later, and the video tape was nestling in his jacket pocket, ready to be hand-delivered to a Ministerial
address later that day, but his verbal report of the interrogation was required immediately.
In the room at a massive old oak table, ranged with brand-new office chairs, sat two men. On the left was a tall, thin and sharp-featured man wearing the uniform of a lieutenant general in an
artillery regiment. The GRU –
Glavnoye Razvedyvatelnoye Upravleniye
, Chief Intelligence Directorate of the Soviet General Staff, the Russian military intelligence organization –
does not have a uniform of its own, and Viktor Grigorevich Bykov continued to wear the uniform of his previous regiment, in which he still nominally served. He was sipping dark Turkish coffee from
a fine china cup.
On the opposite side of the table – for the GRU and the KGB have never been willing bedfellows – sat a senior SVR general. Nicolai Fedorovich Modin was the former head of Department
V of the KGB – the Executive Action Department responsible for sabotage, kidnapping and assassination. A powerfully built man of medium height, iron-grey hair topping a flat, almost Slavic
face, he could have passed in a crowd as just another Russian peasant – as indeed he frequently had done in the early part of his KGB career.
Originally known as the Thirteenth Department of Line F, Department V was reorganized and renamed in 1969, but the KGB slang term for its activities –
mokrie dela
– remained
unchanged. The Russian expression means ‘wet affairs’, because most of Department V’s activities involved the spilling of blood. With the creation of the SVR, the General’s
title had changed, but not his duties.
As the SVR interrogator entered the room, Bykov put down his cup. ‘Well?’
The interrogator shrugged his shoulders, walked across the carpeted floor and helped himself to coffee from the American-made percolator. Sipping the bitter liquid, he sat down in a chair at the
end of the table. ‘I need this,’ he said.
The GRU officer drummed his fingers on the table impatiently. ‘Well?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Nothing?’
The grey-haired man shook his head, and put his cup down. He passed the clipboard over. Nicolai Modin took it, scanned rapidly through the notes, then put it down on the table and looked up.
Viktor Bykov reached over, took the board and stared at it. ‘Is he . . .?’ The interrogator nodded. Bykov tossed the clipboard down angrily, and looked with disgust at three small
spots of blood on the interrogator’s collar. ‘You should have used drugs. We allowed you adequate time for a thorough interrogation. Your methods are crude and out of date.’