Page 11 of Eleven Numbers

“Yes, but it turns out not many Russian spies are captured in the Netherlands. So we’re a bit short in the quid pro quo department.”

“How long have you been here?”

“Four years.”

“Christ,” Tyler said.

“What did you do before you became a shoemaker?”

“I’m a math professor.”

“Really? That’s good. You’ll fit right in. There are always a few math people here. Russians love math people. They respect them.”

“They have a funny way of showing it.”

“It proves their importance. They can be public figures. People listen to them. So if they say bad things, they must be isolated, so they can’t be heard anymore.”

“What kind of bad things?”

“They know that two plus two is four. They don’t like it when the Kremlin says it’s five, or one, or eighty-seven.”

“What about you?” Tyler asked. “What did you do before you became a shoemaker?”

“I was a boat builder. I made yachts for rich people. Now I live a thousand miles from the sea.”

They heard a clanging sound in the distance, like an iron bar hitting an iron triangle.Clang, clang, clang.

“Dinnertime,” de Vris said.

Everyone rolled off their beds and grabbed their mugs and headed out. Tyler grabbed his, and followed them.

Dinner was a thin stew, ladled into their mugs. Standard practice among the prisoners seemed to be to drink the liquid and eat the lumps with their fingers. Tyler followed suit. There was a faint taste of meat, and plenty of turnips. Maybe some beets. But overall it was disgusting.We won’t forget you,Michael Cartwright had said. The embassy lawyer. No doubt Jan de Vris’s lawyer had said the same thing. Four years ago.

The dining hall was the same size as the workshop buildings. There were maybe two hundred people in it, eating at long trestles, then milling around, talking in low tired tones. Like a social hour. Tyler saw de Vris moving from group to group, exchanging news, checking on the general welfare. He seemed like a decent guy. Others were quiet and withdrawn. Some were silent, some were miserable. Some were clearly foreign. Out of place, different, restless, visibly anxious. As if they were always wondering whether tomorrow would bring a diplomatic breakthrough.

People started drifting away. Tyler tried to remember the route back to his workshop. He started to follow a guy he remembered, but Jan de Vris cut him off before the door. He said, “I brought you a math friend.”

With de Vris was a young man, intense, skinny, shaved head, nervous eyes. He said, in formal English with a Russian accent, “Please do us the honor of joining us for an hour. We have a little mathematicians’ club. We would like to hear the news from America.”

Tyler paused a beat, and then went with him. Why not? What else did he have to do? They walked the maze of darkcamp streets together, beaten earth underfoot, to a distant workshop building the same as Tyler’s own, except there were no sewing machines inside. Just lasts and hammers, and bins full of heels, and tubs full of nails.

The dormitory was different. It was subdivided by extra partitions, into smaller rooms with four beds each. One room led to the next, and the next. A sequence. The last door was closed. The nervous guy stopped six feet from it and gestured Tyler to go on ahead without him.

Tyler opened the door. The room had just one bed, not four. Plus a wooden table, and a three-legged stool. There was no mathematicians’ club. No group of people. No waiting audience. Just one person. An elderly man, sitting on the bed, stooped, bent, long gray hair, seamed face, hooded eyes, a crackle of wild intelligence in his gaze.

It was Arkady Suslov.

President Ramsey and National Security Advisor McGinn had broached the subject on Tyler’s second day in DC. Smooth White House timing, he thought.It can’t be stopped. If you’re in, you stay in.Ramsey said, “At this point we need to inform you that Suslov won’t actually be at the math conference. He was arrested six months ago. Supposed to be a secret, but we heard about it. He criticized the government.”

“So where is he now?” Tyler asked.

“A penal colony in the middle of nowhere, named Korovki. So we need to find a way to get you there to meet with him.”

“Like a prison visit?”

“Not exactly,” McGinn said. “No visits are allowed at Korovki, except lawyers, and you’re not a lawyer.”

“Then how?”

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