Page 13 of Eleven Numbers

“So what’s the number?”

Suslov paused a long moment.

“I’m not going to tell you,” he said. “You’re not Oliver Bailey.”

“Does that matter?”

“Very much,” Suslov said.

“I’m better than Bailey,” Tyler said. “With Kindanskys, I mean.”

“No question. But he’s famous. He’s one of them. He’s part of the furniture. And you’re not. You’re young and, forgive me, obscure. It would be very dangerous for you to know the number.”

“How?”

“Your own pack of gangsters is a little less squalid than ours, but not much. They will always want to keep the secret tight. That Bailey knows is bad enough. But a random math professor a thousand miles from Washington? They would feel profoundly insecure about that. Plus they don’t really want to trade the kind of superstar prisoner it would take to get you out of here in less than a year. So your embassy will tell you there’s a small bureaucratic issue, and it might be a couple days before they can get you out, but they need the number immediately, right now, for obvious national security reasons. You’ll give them the number, because you’re a good citizen. And then you’ll never hear from them again. They’ll betray you without a second thought. They’ll forget about you.You’ll cease to exist. You’ll die here, invisible and unheard. It will be a perfect win-win for them.”

“No,” Tyler said. “That won’t happen.”

“It happened to me. Now I hammer nails for a living.”

“That’s different. You criticized your government. I’m working with mine.”

“With them or for them?”

“They called it a team effort.”

“Was it a team plan?”

“It was the president’s plan. But he can’t leave me here. I could get a message out. I could go public.”

“The ravings of a lunatic. Do you have proof you even met the president?”

Tyler paused a beat.These conversations never existed. They never happened. We’re not even filing a flight plan. This trip doesn’t exist.He didn’t answer.

“I thought not,” Suslov said. “Come see me tomorrow.”

The next day was all about the clang of the iron bar on the iron triangle. Like every day would be, Tyler thought. Forever. First reveille, then the call to breakfast, then the start of work hours. The sewing machines were difficult. Tyler couldn’t manage them. Jan de Vris found him a job sweeping the floor and hauling the trash. The dump was in the no-man’s-land between the last of the buildings and the stockade fence. Men were stumbling toward it, toting heavy pails the size of oil drums, tipping them out, coming back faster.

One of the men was Arkady Suslov. Tyler got in the procession ten yards behind him. Suslov looked happy to be out in the air. He was whistling a cheerful tune, like birdsong, face up to the misty sun, dragging his pail, making a scar in the dirt. Whistling was rare in a labor camp, Tylerimagined. Suslov emptied his pail and turned back. He saw Tyler and nodded a greeting, but said nothing. Maybe talking was forbidden. Tyler nodded back and they passed shoulder to shoulder, a yard apart. Suslov was still whistling. Tyler emptied his pail and headed back for more. He made three trips before the iron bar sounded lunch, and two afterward. On his return from the second, Jan de Vris stopped him at the door. He said the guards were looking for him, because two people had showed up from the US Embassy.

Tyler walked back to the guardhouse, where he had been processed the day before. The guard pointed to a hut a hundred feet away. It stood all on its own. Some kind of conference room, ostentatiously private.

Inside was Michael Cartwright, the legal attaché. The Brooks Brothers guy. With him was an older man, harder, brisker, altogether different. He gave his name as Shaw. Just that. No first name. He said he was also a legal attaché.

Cartwright asked, “How are you?”

“I haven’t showered since London,” Tyler said. “I haven’t changed my clothes. In fact I haven’t even taken them off. I eat turnips three times a day, and I haul garbage for a living. Apart from that, I’m great.”

“We have things to discuss,” Shaw said. A deep voice, confident, used to being in charge. “We got a need-to-know briefing based on heavily redacted information from a classified source. It read like a bedtime story. Apparently you have four friends in America. They send their best wishes. They’re anxious to hear your progress. They look forward to getting together again soon.”

“OK,” Tyler said.

“Separately we got an operational order to set up a prisoner swap. Involving you, I assume.”

“You’re not a lawyer, are you?”

“It’s how we get in here. Shameful, I know. The order was incomplete. Apparently the swap happens when you say the word. I assume that means when you complete your mission, which I assume means when you get the information your four friends want. But exactly how do you say the word? We’re eight hundred miles away. You can’t call us on the phone. You can’t put a chalk mark on a tree. We can’t drive out here every day, just in case.”

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