Deep Cover Read Free

barracks and the woman driver opened the door for them. “We change cars here,” Rykov said. “Your luggage will be brought along.” He took them past the checkpoint, through the gate. Between the outer and inner walls they showed papers to a guard in an olive-drab American uniform with an Eisenhower jacket. A yellow Chevrolet waited, tended by a man in denim jacket and a greasy yellow cap; the car had an Arizona license plate and a “Tucson Yellow Taxi” decal on the door. Rykov put the visitors in the back seat and climbed into the front beside Andrei, twisted around with his left arm across the back of the seat and said, “I’ll have to remind you, please, not to speak to anyone we see along the way.”
    Yashin said, “My objective is to interview some of your people. You know that.”
    â€œWe’ve got to keep you separated from them. You’ll conduct your interviews through soundproofed glass. There’ll be simultaneous interpreters—you’ll see the men and women you’re talking to, but they won’t hear your voice. Do you speak English?”
    â€œOnly in self-defense.” Yashin did not smile at his little joke.
    Rykov said, “The Illegals you’ll meet here are the survivors. We’ve screened out nine out of ten before they get this far. You understand we can’t afford the slightest slip at this stage. Once they come here from the primary training centers they need speak only a single word of Russian, even in their sleep, and they’re given the sack. I must ask you to humor my regulations.”
    The taxi took them through the woods on a four-lane stretch of highway divided centrally by a grass strip. Large yellow signs in English announced PAVEMENT NARROWS—EXPRESSWAY ENDS 1000 FEET, and they bumped past a row of flaming oilpots onto a temporary macadam surface full of chuckholes. They turned abruptly into a district of warehouses and automobile junkyards and repair shops, a utility plant, another patch of woods and a street of pleasant small houses with trees arching the sidewalks. A man stood in a driveway washing down a Buick with a garden hose, and a cocker spaniel cavorted on the sloping lawn. The house was all on one level and had large picture windows. They passed a small U.S. POST OFFICE van and a slow-cruising police car with a red dome light and came to an intersection with filling stations—Mobil, Texaco, Union 76—on three of its four corners. The traffic signal suspended on cables above the middle of the intersection turned from yellow to red and Rykov got out of the car to pick up a newspaper from the unattended corner stand. He left a five-cent piece beside the iron weight that kept the newspapers from blowing away and returned to the car before the traffic light had turned. “The Tucson Daily Star. We get it through Tass. It’s about ten days late, but that hardly matters. Yesterday we developed the major news stories from it and designed our radio and television broadcasts around it.”
    Traffic in a wide street sucked them into its flow. The curbs were lined with parking meters. Rykov pointed out Regan’s Drugs, the movie theater, Woolworth’s, John’s Men’s Shop, a beauty salon, real-estate and insurance offices. A red light halted them beside an open-fronted lunch counter and Johnnie Ray was singing “Walkin’ My Baby Back Home” on the jukebox. They went on past a Safeway Market with an enormous asphalt car park and General Grigorenko said, “You don’t see as many motorcars on the streets of Leningrad. What was the cost of this?”
    Rykov pointed off to the left. “The nursery school. We allow Illegals with children into the program if the childrenare younger than eighteen months. They’re raised in English.”
    Yashin’s wintry expression never changed. “One might suspect the Americans grow enough of their own.”
    The taxi