by Thomas Craig
Everything offended him deeply, with a separate, sharp shock for each recognition of his son's — sybaritic life-style. Quickly, as if for the purposes of healing, anger erupted and grew to replace the constriction in his throat that he understood to be grief. Yet this, this—
— these garments, behind the louvered doors of the built-in closets. Garish colors, silk, narrow leather trousers, the shirts more like women's blouses, the shoes, even the slippers that hinted at decadence, the bathrobes and the dressing gowns — each item offended him even as he continued his helpless inventory of his son's wardrobe. He felt anger becoming nausea. He kept his back to the room, to the bed. This was no man's wardrobe, no soldier's wardrobe, and he could not escape that judgment, that condemnation, not even when his vision dimmed. He sniffed loudly. The insistent cliches did not seem irrelevant or superannuated by his discovery. He clung to them, even as his hands, veins standing proud, gripped the edges of the louvered doors.
He uttered a strangled growl that he did not himself understand, and slammed the doors together so that they almost keeled from their runners. He could not look into that — mirror into his son's private life any longer. He turned to the bed. He had thrown a bedspread over Valery's limbs, but could not bear to cover his face-But the anger coursed, even now, even as he looked at the body-His son — his son. To live and die like this—
On the dressing table — no, on the carpet now — some of the bot-ties broken, the stench of the perfumes heady in the dry, silent room — the aftershaves, the colognes, even the makeup. General Lieutenant Rodin gagged at the image, at the smears of eye shadow and lipstick that his angry, violent bootsteps had produced on the carpet. As if he had wanted to grind each item out of sight, crush the images each evoked.
He turned his head from his son's cold features, almost regretting that he had shut the sliding doors of the closet; needing visual stimuli to sustain the anger he knew had arisen to conceal feelings he wished not to recognize. He strode from the bedroom without looking over his shoulder and entered the bathroom. Flung open the wall cabinets. Creams, makeup, powders, and — the drugs. The silver spoon on its thin silver chain like — like a medal, for heaven's sake! Worn like a medal.
He snatched up a handful of small packets. White powder. He ripped and tugged at the plastic of the packets, covering, his hands with the powder like an untidy cook flinging flour; ran the tap, washed his hands, washed the drugs away.
Fear had driven him here. Fear for — for Valery, yes, but fear of Serov. Fear on behalf of Valery — only to find, to find…
He grunted like a very old man, asthmatically. His head hung on his chest, as if he were on the point of vomiting. His arms were shaking as he leaned on his knuckles over the washbasin. He felt hatred surging in his body, shaking it like a fever. Hatred of Valery, of these creams and powders and colors and drugs that filled his thoughts; the perfumes that seeped from the bedroom and were released from these cabinets. He had not been able to sleep, but it was not the launch that had filled his restless mind, not even Lightning; his son, instead. Robbing him of needed sleep, robbing him of all anticipation of success. And now, now he had seen into his son's — soul. He'd opened cabinets, drawers, closets, and seen his son's private world mock him.
Why had Valery done it? Why? What fear had it been, what ache or despair? The concealed fluorescent lighting hummed softly. He could not look at his face in the mirror; lit from above, it would have been too naked, too old. Why? What had he been afraid of?
Love? He sobbed aloud, as if at sacrilege. The idea appalled him, hut he could not resist it; it was as if someone were whispering Insistently in his ear. Love? He groaned, staring at the water still Winning into the basin. The mirror was steaming up. He inhaled the heat as if trying to cure himself of a cold. Love? Impossible — for that actor? For him, for that kind of love?
There v/as no sense of self-blame, no tint of self-condemnation in his thoughts. The KGB colonel, Serov, that pathetic little homosexual actor — as if different in persuasion from Valery — all of them had played their parts in this, in what Valery had done to himself. All of them.
Eventually, his body calmed, the bathroom filled with steam from the wasted hot water; he left the bathroom and entered the living room. He picked up the telephone.
An ambulance. Without explanation. The boy's mother would have to be told. It would break her heart, the heart secreted from him, spent extravagantly like a windfall inheritance on her son— yes, it would break her heart. But, that was duty, and easy. He would inform her as soon as…
He dialed, staring out of the wide living room window at the cold sunlight seeping down the stained concrete of the building opposite.
Dmitri Priabin shivered, as if in a fevers spasm, and clutched his arms, wrapping them around him. He leaned his weight against the side of the car. He could not stop shaking. Couldn't.
She was watching him from a window of the flat. Wouldn't let him in, pretended that Mikhail wasn't there, had gone out, didn't know when he'd be back. Then, reality breaking through the hesitant lies, she'd cried out from behind the thin front door—go away, get away from us, leave us alone, for God's sake leave us alone, can't you?
Apart from the crying child, Priabin had sensed Mikhail close behind the door. The woman's sobbing became muffled as if she were crying into someone's chest. He had banged on the door, even though he had already accepted her plea. The banging had brought Viktor's wife — widow — to her door, along the corridor. She had looked at him with what he could only perceive as accusation. She had not spoken, simply stared, then retreated behind her door, where there was a muffled hushing of curious children.
… go away, we can't help you, go away, sir…
He had not even challenged the words, simply accepted the fear with which they were uttered.
… has the tape, sir, please go away…
He had nothing. The cold sunlight glanced from the car's chrome. He could not stop shaking. Only Serov could have frightened Mikhail and his wife that much. They hadn't even used his name, as if in fear of its invocatory powers. Don't name the Devil and he won't come. But it had to be Serov, who now had the tape and knew the whole game, knew that Priabin knew about Lightning.
And Dmitri Priabin knew, with absolute certainty, that Serov had had Valery Rodin put to death like a farm animal taken to an abattoir. He had always known it, of course; this was the confirmation. Serov would have Mikhail removed, just like Viktor, and he would remove — yes, his head nodding violently in agreement with the sharp, brutally clear picture in his mind, yes, Serov would have him killed too.
His fear narrowed. Serov was his enemy; it was Serov he had to evade — and frustrate. He had already attempted to radio, and to use the telephone, both without success. Code Green was fully operational, and Baikonur was severed from the rest of the Soviet Union. He could contact neither Moscow Center nor the nearest KGB offices in the town of Aral'sk, less than a hundred miles to the northwest. He could only—
— go there, go to Aral'sk; break out of the security net spread over Baikonur, and use the high-speed transmission equipment, even the telephone link, from Aral'sk to the Center. Without proof, without a shred of tangible evidence? Go, go now, he tried to tell himself; and heard a part of him reply, just a moment, in another minute, not just yet.
Get in the car.
In another moment, when I feel stronger… get in the car, they may be watching Mikhail's place, waiting for you to collect the tape.
The thought had not occurred to him, not even dimly, until then. He tried to make himself not stare wildly around at parked cars, at windows. Got into the Volga, gripped the wheel with both hands to still them in their renewed tremor. Saw the windshield fog with the heat of his tension. Looked through its cloudiness, looked through the rear window, checked the side windows after switching on the engine and shifting into first gear, so that he appeared only to be checking for traffic before pulling out; checked again, then once more.
<
br /> Saw…
Checked carefully. Two shadows in a small, anonymous car, fawn-color, a Polish-built Fiat or something like it. A car easily ignored. Exhaust puffed like hasty breathing from its rear. Just then, it had not had its engine running. They had known he would come, they had waited.
One chance now, he realized, his knuckles white from his grip on the wheel, his stomach churning again. One chance to get out— bluff… or maybe there weren't roadblocks and barriers yet. Maybe…
He accelerated, but not too violently, pulling away from the flats and out onto the almost deserted highway that ran between the river and the railway line west and then northwest. At its end, beyond Aral'sk and Orenburg and Kuibyshev and Ryazan was Moscow — fifteen hundred miles away. His heart, still beating wildly, seemed to lurch in his body. He swallowed dryly and tried to concentrate on Aral'sk. He need only reach Aral'sk… you don't have to go farther, just as far as Aral'sk…
Where would the checkpoints be? Telegraph wires scalloped between poles accompanied him, paralleling the empty railway track. Below him, to his left, now that the buildings were set down like randomly scattered lumps and blocks, he could see the frozen river in its shallow valley; gray and imprisoned.
Where would they stop him? Because stop him they would. The fawn car followed with an almost leisurely certainty. Priabin's mind, though his eyes darted and flitted across the topography, was without its own familiar landscape. His position was unique in his adult experience; it was that of — of a criminal. The hunted. His thoughts were shapeless and gloomy. He did not know what to do in this situation. He simply had no experience of being anything other than a man of rank and authority. He'd worn his officialdom like clothes, like his own skin, for years. And now it was gone, stripped away like old paint from wood. What did he do now, for God's sake?
The highway ahead of him narrowed to a point at the vague, uncertain horizon, almost invisible because of the flatness of the country. He passed a restaurant where he had once eaten with Viktor and his wife, a garage, a dirty, weed-filled place, the grass stiffly upright and icebound, where the building plots had never received their designated houses or factories; then there was openness that was oppressive, stretched ahead, surrounded him. Nothing but—
— Novokazalinsk, he told himself suddenly, with an audible grunt. That's where Code Green's maximum-security perimeter was always set to the west, on this highway. Dear God, why hadn't he even been able to remember that until now? It was as if his mind were frozen solid, like the river down there. Ducks waddled across the ice, but otherwise his surroundings were lifeless. A hut amid scattered trees, smoke straggling from an iron chimney; beyond the railway track, the marsh country was beginning, clumps and islets of trees, tall grass and sedge. The fawn car was still in his mirror. Above the road, the pale sky was empty; so featureless it might have been rushing away behind him, and always fleeing ahead of him, making him appear unmoving… no, some geese provided a false horizon, straggled across the sky like a hurried autograph as they flew toward the marshes. If only he could fly!
He kept his speed to fifty, even though his nerves jangled and bullied him to flee. He had to pretend, had to go on with the illusion that he was in no hurry, that this was routine. He had to — for the sake of hope, and his nerves.
A helicopter enlarged beyond the geese, moving along the highway, perhaps two hundred feet above it. Routine patrol. The geese diminished in the distance to his right, still indecipherable. Passing over abandoned launch towers, power cables, the tiny tilted cups of radar dishes. Far to the north, beyond the geese, the sticklike antennae and gantries of the principal military launch complex suggested a horizon. Ahead of him, there was nothing. He looked at his odometer. He'd done five miles — Christ, only five? — and there were another forty-five to Novokazalinsk.
He felt worn. The black helicopter had become gray-bellied, green-mottled, somehow less sinister as it floated above him and passed eastward toward Tyuratam. Yet there was no relief in its lack of special interest in him. Glancing at the map that he had half opened on the passenger seat had been a mistake. There were roads everywhere around Leninsk-Kuznetskiy and Tyuratam and the other towns and villages. But where he was heading — in fact toward the perimeter in any direction — roads narrowed, straggled, disappeared, merged. They needed perhaps no more than a dozen barriers to seal off the whole of the vast Baikonur complex from the rest of the Soviet Union; just so long as they stopped the trains and the planes, as they had done.
Plane, light aircraft. He felt sick as he remembered. During a Code Green the previous year, a light aircraft had strayed into maximum-security airspace and been shot down without challenge or apology or warning. Baikonur was a place of logic, of inescapable necessity. Things were not weighed, simply laid down in orders and regulations and systems. One huge steel box whose lid could be slammed shut at a moment's notice. Had been.
Fifty-five. Priabin eased his foot on the accelerator. The Volga's heater seemed more inefficient than usual; he was chilly, even within his overcoat. His forehead was cold with drying perspiration. The fawn car could be seen in the mirror. The helicopter had disappeared. He glanced at the car's clock. Nine-seven teen — three hours since he had been in Valery Rodin's bedroom, since he had found the boy's body, three wasted hours. Telephone, radio, trying to contact the Center — he'd known almost at once he wouldn't get through, but he'd gone on trying, arguing, hoping.
Just to find himself on this road, tailed by the GRU, knowing that the security of Code Green had bottled him up. He would get only as far as Novokazalinsk and no farther. It was like a brick wall with which he was destined to collide.
He thought of the main hangar and the shuttle craft and the laser battle station as pieces of a huge jigsaw puzzle on the point of completion, missing only the last few segments of the pattern that was Lightning in all its enormity. He ground his teeth. He could do nothing, nothing.
Fifty-eight. He slowed the car without thinking. Nine-nineteen. Ten miles from the flats now, perhaps forty more to go. Why bother? Forty more.
He hardly thought about Gant. Strangely, the American was reduced to insignificance now. Serov had Gant. Gant was as good as dead. Perhaps he hadn't ever wanted revenge, then? No, he had, just never expected the opportunity — and now, now he had himself to think of.
False horizon, very close. Against the narrowing road, a group of black silhouettes against the pale sky. The cars were carelessly disposed across the road, there were converging lines of red and white cones, even a barrier. One truck, men in yellow overblouses laying the cones out, military cars — four of those — and the coffee stand parked at the side of the highway, a shabby gray caravan with a side window and a ledge. Men near that, too. Men in the road, cones, barrier, truck, cars, overcoats, uniforms, guns…
Brick wall. Collision. His body felt jolted, shocked by something as real as physical impact. Not Novokazalinsk, then. Here. They were waiting just for him, Serov's GRU people.
The fawn car slowed, maintaining its distance behind him. One of the officers ahead was waving his arms to emphasize the paraphernalia and authority of the temporary arrangements on the highway. Priabin knew his journey was over. He stopped the Volga, fifteen hundred miles away from Moscow Center.
12: Solitary Confinement
Kedrov's form, strapped into the chair, seemed tense and resentful, struggling to defy the questions that buzzed and murmured around his head. Veins stood out on his arms and the backs of his hands where they gripped the padded arms of the black chair. Veins on his temples, too. Fierce concentration, the effort of denial, furrowed his brow. He was as taut as an overwound spring and yet utterly helpless. The contradiction amused Serov, satisfied him in a way he did not analyze; never analyzed. Only Kedrov's lips and tongue seemed involuntary agents. The willpower being suggested by his whole frame was absent from his mouth. He could not help himself answering the questions of the interrogation team.
Of course, the pupils of Kedrov'
s eyes were unnaturally open, considering he was facing the window. His eyes were too bright, with a stare that reminded Serov of utter disbelief—how can this be happening? — as it always did during such drug-assisted interrogations—why am I talking? I don't want to talk. Such involuntariness, such childlike, babyish inability and weakness was always — what? Satisfying to watch? Yes. He possessed Kedrov and the American, he had robbed them of everything, even will. In Kedrov's case, he controlled the man's mind.
Serov rubbed his chin. It was smooth from a recent shave. The landscape of his thoughts was open, rolling, sunny; he could see a great distance from the promontory of his successes that night. Rodin, Kedrov, the American pilot, whose story he had learned from that clown Adamov, discovered tied up in the Hind's main cabin. The pieces had fallen like lucky cards. Serov was confident, even eager. Priabin, too, would soon come entirely within his orbit. Then it would be finished with.
There was a trace of excitement in him, like a strange liquor moving through his stomach. But it was a sober sensation. When there was time, the American would be gutted, emptied of everything he knew — and he would know a great deal — while Priabin would disappear. Kedrov, of course, would meet the fate of a spy and traitor once he had confessed.
"… long have you been spying for the Americans, Kedrov?"
"What did you tell them?"
"How much do they know?"
"… send your signals?"
"Orlov…?"
Serov watched Kedrov's face attempt control around the mouth that no longer belonged to him. His voice stuttered like a cold engine, then the spy began to helplessly condemn himself, spilling his answers like water from a leaky bucket.
"… bicycle shop… don't understand? American equip-quip-ment…"
One of his people, standing behind the straining Kedrov, shrugged with the ease of the interrogation. Serov nodded slightly, condescending to share the man's amusement. Sunlight fell coldly on the sweating, straining man in the chair, his whole body thrust forward against the restraint of the straps.