Voyagers I Read Online Free PDF

Chinese water torture. Deliberate? he wondered. Part of the interrogation? Or simply the usual sloppy maintenance?
    The woman sitting across the small wooden table wore the tan uniform with red tabs and insignia of a lieutenant. She could not have been more than twenty-two, and she was taking this interrogation very seriously.
    Markov decided to be charming.
    “My dear young lady, you have my entire life story in those papers spread before you. It hasn’t been a very colorful life, I admit, but if there is any special part of it that you want me to relate to you…”
    She glanced down at the checklist on which her left hand rested. She held a chewed pencil in her right.
    “You are married?” she asked.
    She’s going to go through the whole damned list, Markov groaned to himself. This will take hours.
    “Yes. My wife is Maria…”
    “Not yet,” the lieutenant said, diligently making another check mark in the appropriate box. “Children?”
    “None.”
    “Wife’s first name?”
    “Maria.”
    “Maiden name?”
    “Kirtchatovska.”
    It made no impression on the lieutenant. She apparently had no idea that Major Markova had the power to make a lieutenant’s life very uncomfortable.
    “How long have you been married?”
    “All my life.”
    She looked up sharply. “What?”
    Markov smiled at her. It’s really quite a pretty face, he thought. I wonder what she would do if I leaned across the table and took a nibble of that luscious lower lip?
    “Twenty-four years this January,” he said.
    She looked down again and wrote on the checklist. Then her eyes rose to meet his. “Twenty-four years and no children?”
    “I suffer from a sad malady,” Markov lied cheerfully. “The result of a war trauma, the psychologists say.”
    “You’re…impotent?” She whispered the last word.
    Markov shrugged. “It’s all psychological. Sometimes, on very rare occasions when I have found someone beautiful and truly loving, I am a tiger. But with most women…nothing.”
    “But how does your wife…?”
    The interrogation room door was flung open by a stocky man in a captain’s uniform. “Haven’t you finished the forms yet? The colonel is waiting!”
    Unfolding his lanky frame so that he had the advantage of height over the young captain, Markov suggested, “If you are certain that I’m not a spy or an assassin, perhaps I could meet the colonel and then return here afterward to finish the forms.”
    The lieutenant stood up too. “Or I could complete the interview after the working day is finished.”
    Markov said carefully, “I wouldn’t want to put you to any trouble.”
    “I often work late,” she said. “And these forms are strictly routine. There’s nothing sensitive about them. We could even complete the interview at your apartment, if that is more convenient for you, Professor.”
    The captain snapped, “We don’t conduct security interviews in people’s apartments!”
    With a sad shrug, Markov reached for his chair. “Very well then. I suppose we’ll have to finish this here and keep the colonel waiting.”
    “No,” the captain decided. “You will see the colonel now, and then return here to complete the interview. No matter how long it takes.”
    “Whatever you say,” Markov agreed meekly. But he winked at the lieutenant.
    She kept a straight face and said, “I will see you in this room, no matter how late it is.”
    It was difficult for Markov to suppress a grin as he followed the stocky captain down the featureless corridors. The walls were bare of decoration and even though they had apparently been freshly painted, the halls looked grim and almost shabby. Men and women, most of them in uniform, hurried through the halls. Although Markov could see no cameras anywhere, he got the feeling that everyone was being watched constantly.
    The captain took him as far as an anteroom, in which a doughy-faced middle-aged civilian woman commanded a large desk with an electric typewriter and two