[ They draw his blood over and over, until he's sure he has none left to give, until he feels hot and cold and clammy at the same time, then dump him in his cell, then interrogate him again under the guise of a conversation with a doctor. Repeat ad infinitum.
Maybe this is his punishment. The anticipation, the wait for the inevitable end. The real torture will undoubtedly start before too long - presented with life after death, the Soviet Union's curiosity will completely occlude the possibility in its mind that he truly may not have any explanation to give.
He tells them that, over and over, and he's sure his counterpart on the other side of the interrogation table—a man in a doctor's white coat named Rigel, though whether he's a doctor is anyone's guess—simply assumes he's gaming the system, working with an intimate knowledge of the complex machinations he's caught in. The hopelessness is overwhelming—Vasiliy knows, better than anyone in this compound, that nothing he could possibly say will matter. Nothing will divert the fate that has been set for him. Execution would be kind in a way that the KGB is not.
Instead he will be tortured, kept within a hair of death for as long as possible with synthetic reprieves spent with a mirror image of his own chekist self. They already know everything. The photograph on the party identification book pulled from the KGB archives sat living across from them as Rigel slid it across the table at their first meeting. The signatures on the confessions in the man's slim leather briefcase had matched the one Vasiliy tried to avoid offering.
Things change from the nascent routine after three nights in solitary confinement; one night Vasiliy is simply pulled from his cell without notice and escorted down the dim hall without being told where he's going (he would expect no less) until they at last make a sharp right at another numbered room. The guards lead him in, step back, and the door locks behind him as the cosmonaut rises from the bed across the floor, dressed in a similarly form-fitting white tee shirt (although there's more bulk to him to fill his out) and track pants. ]
Commander.
[ He'd been sure that this was it. He saw something he wasn't supposed to see when he was in orbit, and he'd suddenly outlived the Motherland's use for him, a fate not even a Hero of the Soviet Union is immune to. He'd wondered, in the nights since the man was dragged out of his hospital room minutes after retching up blood, whether they would wait for him to regain some of his strength before they started the torture, or if they'd risk killing him. It would depend on how valuable whatever intelligence he may have had was, and that was anyone's guess - even Konstantin Sergeyevich's.
Even whether or not he's been told anything at all about why he's here can't be determined with any certainty until Vasiliy asks; it's not uncommon for those who are unprisoned to lack even the slightest idea as to what it is the intelligence services want from them. (Although, interestingly, the men who took Veshnyakov were military, not KGB. It was his own ilk that had seized him at the end of his shift, in the darkness (the preference for operations at night had not, it would seem, changed over the past few decades), though this decidedly is not the Lubyanka, or structured like any other office of the intelligence services.) ]
I... [ Have they told him, does he know? Is he well? ] Are you alright?
no subject
Maybe this is his punishment. The anticipation, the wait for the inevitable end. The real torture will undoubtedly start before too long - presented with life after death, the Soviet Union's curiosity will completely occlude the possibility in its mind that he truly may not have any explanation to give.
He tells them that, over and over, and he's sure his counterpart on the other side of the interrogation table—a man in a doctor's white coat named Rigel, though whether he's a doctor is anyone's guess—simply assumes he's gaming the system, working with an intimate knowledge of the complex machinations he's caught in. The hopelessness is overwhelming—Vasiliy knows, better than anyone in this compound, that nothing he could possibly say will matter. Nothing will divert the fate that has been set for him. Execution would be kind in a way that the KGB is not.
Instead he will be tortured, kept within a hair of death for as long as possible with synthetic reprieves spent with a mirror image of his own chekist self. They already know everything. The photograph on the party identification book pulled from the KGB archives sat living across from them as Rigel slid it across the table at their first meeting. The signatures on the confessions in the man's slim leather briefcase had matched the one Vasiliy tried to avoid offering.
Things change from the nascent routine after three nights in solitary confinement; one night Vasiliy is simply pulled from his cell without notice and escorted down the dim hall without being told where he's going (he would expect no less) until they at last make a sharp right at another numbered room. The guards lead him in, step back, and the door locks behind him as the cosmonaut rises from the bed across the floor, dressed in a similarly form-fitting white tee shirt (although there's more bulk to him to fill his out) and track pants. ]
Commander.
[ He'd been sure that this was it. He saw something he wasn't supposed to see when he was in orbit, and he'd suddenly outlived the Motherland's use for him, a fate not even a Hero of the Soviet Union is immune to. He'd wondered, in the nights since the man was dragged out of his hospital room minutes after retching up blood, whether they would wait for him to regain some of his strength before they started the torture, or if they'd risk killing him. It would depend on how valuable whatever intelligence he may have had was, and that was anyone's guess - even Konstantin Sergeyevich's.
Even whether or not he's been told anything at all about why he's here can't be determined with any certainty until Vasiliy asks; it's not uncommon for those who are unprisoned to lack even the slightest idea as to what it is the intelligence services want from them. (Although, interestingly, the men who took Veshnyakov were military, not KGB. It was his own ilk that had seized him at the end of his shift, in the darkness (the preference for operations at night had not, it would seem, changed over the past few decades), though this decidedly is not the Lubyanka, or structured like any other office of the intelligence services.) ]
I... [ Have they told him, does he know? Is he well? ] Are you alright?