Libra - Don Delillo [75]
Alek said they would resume in the morning. Lee wanted a sign from him. How is it going? Will they let me stay, give me solid duties, allow me to study economics and political theory?
“I have a click in my knee when I bend,” Kirilenko said. “What do you think, old age?”
There is time for everything, he seemed to mean. Time to recall the smallest moment, time to revise your story, time to change your mind. We are here to help you clarify the themes of your life.
They spent many days on Oswald’s early experience in the military, many more days on the U-2 and Atsugi, dividing every compact topic into fractional details, then dividing these. They moved on finally to MACS-9, his radar unit in California.
Castro was exploding on the scene. Oswald had wanted to go to Cuba and train young recruits. He was a skilled technician and fighting man, sympathetic to Fidel.
He subscribed to a Russian-language newspaper and a socialist journal. He answered the guys in his quonset hut with da and nyet. It used to get them all worked up. They called him Oswaldovich.
He told Alek about the rumors he’d heard of a false defector program run by the Office of Naval Intelligence. They inserted agents into the Eastern Bloc, a select number of men posing as victims of the American system, lonely and impressionable, eager to adopt another kind of life.
This was precisely at the time he was taking steps to defect. The whole scheme was written with him in mind. He half expected to be approached by Naval Intelligence. It was easy to believe they knew about his pro-Soviet remarks and Russian-language newspaper. He would tell them he was trying to make contact in his own way. They’d train him intensively. He’d be a real defector posing as a false defector posing as a real defector. Ha ha.
Alek sat across the table shaking salted nuts in his fist. He said something about getting a TV set brought in. Oswald was surprised to hear that broadcasting started at six in the evening. It was one of the strangest things he’d heard since crossing the ocean.
The guard showed up. He showed up every evening before Alek left. Alek never introduced him, didn’t seem to notice he was in the flat. The guard usually sat by the washbasin in the hall, his hat balanced on his knee.
There were things Oswald didn’t tell Alek, like details of the MPS-16 radar system, just integrated into the network. He wanted to see how their friendship progressed. It occurred to him that the U.S. military might have to spend jillions to change the system anyhow, now that he’d crossed to the other side. How strangely easy to have a say over men and events.
The other thing he didn’t tell Alek concerned the false defector program. When nobody contacted him, Ozzie decided to sign up for a foreign-language qualification test. Russian. Just to see if he’d get noticed.
His rating was P for poor throughout.
A doctor and nurse came to give him a physical. They listened to his heart, shined a light in his ears. They weighed and measured him and went away with samples of his urine and blood. Then three men arrived and took him to a concrete building about half an hour away. He walked into a modem apartment. They had him remove objects from his pockets. They sat him down in a chair that was attached to a console equipped with graph paper, pen recorders, dials, switches, etc. They told him to put his feet flat on the floor. Then they attached tubes and devices to the arms, chest and hands of Oswaldovich. One of the men sat facing him. Is your name such-and-such? Did you ever use another name or identity? Is your favorite color blue? Are you an agent of U.S. intelligence? Are you in secret contact with anyone in this country? Is your hair brown? Have you been sent here to assassinate some person or persons? Are you married? Are you homosexual? Do you smoke or drink?
Deadpan.
No sign of Alek. Oswald stood while they unplugged him from the console. He was lonely for his friend and had a sneaking suspicion