r, made sure that the panel and phone were in
working order, and went out. He stepped into Interrogation Room 7
trying hard to look bored, businesslike and unbeatable. Boyd and four
other agents were already there, all standing around and talking
desultorily in low tones. None of them looked as if they had a
moment's worry in their lives. It was all part of the same technique,
of course, Malone thought. Make the prisoner feel resistance is
useless, and you've practically got him working for you.

The prisoner was a hulking, flabby fat man in work coveralls. He had
black hair that spilled all over his forehead, and tiny button eyes.
He was the only man in the room who was sitting down, and that was
meant to make him feel even more inferior and insecure. His hands were
clasped fatly in his lap, and he was staring down at them in a
regretful manner. None of the agents paid the slightest attention to
him. The general impression was that something really tough was coming
up, but that they were in no hurry for it. They were willing to wait
for the third degree, it seemed, until the blacksmith had done a
really good job with the new spikes for the Iron Maiden.

The prisoner looked up apprehensively as Malone shut the door. Malone
paid no attention to him, and the prisoner unclasped his hands, rubbed
them on his coveralls and then reclasped them in his lap. His eyes
fell again.

Boyd looked up too. "Hello, Ken," he said. He tapped a sheaf of papers
on the single table in the room. Malone went over and picked them up.

They were the abbreviated condensations of three dossiers. All three
of the men covered in the dossiers were naturalized citizens, but all
had come in as "political refugees" from Hungary, from Czechoslovakia,
and from East Germany. Further checking had turned up the fact that
all three were actually Russians. They had been using false names
during their stay in the United States, but their real ones were
appended to the dossiers.

The fat one in the interrogation room was named Alexis Brubitsch. The
other two, who were presumably waiting separately in other rooms, were
Ivan Borbitsch and Vasili Garbitsch. The collection sounded, to
Malone, like a seedy musical-comedy firm of lawyers: Brubitsch,
Borbitsch and Garbitsch. He could picture them dancing gaily across a
stage while the strains of music followed them, waving legal forms and
telephones and singing away.

Brubitsch did not, however, look very gay. M