by Thomas Craig
He looked around him and beckoned a senior technical officer, who hurried to his side.
The overcoated colonel had clattered along the echoing catwalk only moments earlier. His heavy features were still sharp and blanched by the outside temperature. Despite his anxiety, Rodin smiled at the man; greeting someone who shared his secrets, his outlook, his background, as if smiling at the portrait of an ancestor, or a son.
"Well, Suslov — Yuri — well? The express hoist at the pad — you have news? Well, man, well?" It was as if his eager, breathy questions were releasing something more than anxiety.
Suslov was nodding, regaining his breath, unable to prevent a smile of relief and satisfaction from spreading.
"Yes, yes — sir, its working again. Fully operational."
The small group of technical officers attendant on Rodin moved to surround Suslov, congratulating him. Rodin turned away, hands gripping the rail in front of him, staring down at the shuttle, back opened like some crustacean with its shell surgically removed. The laser battle station had come together now. Lasing gas tanks ready to be filled, the mirror complete, the long, lancelike nozzle positioned. The nuclear generator, which was to be activated only when the shuttle reached its orbit just before the launch of the battle station, was housed in the main section of the weapon's oil drum of a fuselage. Rodin itemized the battle station like a clerk; each constituent, seen as if with an X-ray machine, adding to the satisfaction he received from Suslov's report.
"Fully operational," he murmured. Suslov was at his side, gloved hands on the rail, eyes looking down. The kingdom—
"Yes, General," he affirmed, his voice sounding abstracted; as if he were on some high place and looking across the border to a homeland long missed. "Were back on schedule."
Rodin turned to him. "We must obey the Politburo's timetable," he instructed, as if passing on information he disliked. "We must launch when the treaty is signed. For the television transmission. Twelve in Geneva — the crew will reach orbit at that time. The opening of the cargo bay will coincide — so Nikitin and the other old women have ordered." He smiled at Suslov, easily, mockingly. "Don't worry, Yuri, careless talk will not cost lives, not here, at least." He turned back to the group that hovered behind them on the catwalk. Glanced through the glass into the assembly building offices and control room. Television sets, including on some of their screens the American shuttle in its orbit, the launch pad, with the booster stages upright in their gantry, the mission control room of Baikonur.
The battle station would be detached from the cargo bay of the Soviet shuttle and its boosters fired to place it in its thousand mile-high orbit. Then its infrared sensors would align the mirror and the nozzle, the laser radar would scan the target, the fire control system would trigger the main beam, and… and the American shuttle would vaporize; a tragic accident. A perfect, undetectable crime. What debris there was would remain in low earth orbit or burn up in the atmosphere as it fell earthward, toward the Amazon forest or the remote Sahara. It was irrelevant; there would be nothing left.
"Pictures," Rodin announced. He snapped his fingers, as if the word had struck him with the force of an original idea. "I want a photographic record, from this moment, Yuri." He turned to his hovering staff. "Organize it. There will be Politburo and Stavka members who will not understand without pictures." His voice was light, his mood almost jolly. "The older ones, the tank people, the infantry commanders." His staff smiled conspiratorially. "Yes — and others will want to savor what we have witnessed." He looked down once more. "Especially the moment we first move the shuttle — but everything else, too. Loading the weapon, the cargo bay, the crew boarding, out at the gantry — everything." Excited by his own orders, he glanced at his watch. "It is now one-thirty. The shuttle begins its journey to the launch pad in ten hours' time. Back on schedule, as you so rightly say. Gentlemen, lunch." He clapped his hands together, as if at the sudden thought of food. They parted for him, a closely knit group of satisfactions; smiles, confidence — just what he wished to see… Valery. A soldier, like these men, he forcibly instructed himself. Already uniformed, lying in an open coffin in the morgue. Waiting to be flown home, as if fallen in a war.
Lunch.
He opened the door of the control room. Television images erased the presence of his son, as did the anger they evoked. Pictures from Germany: Strategic Rocket Forces officers and men, supervising the loading of SS-20s onto trains — trains! — to bring them home.
It will stop, he promised, whether to the men he saw on the screen or those around him, or even himself, he was not certain. But it was like the taking of an oath. It will stop. The trains will halt and be turned around. The army will not be broken by the politicians.
"Lunch!" he made himself announce again with hearty pleasure. "Later, there'll be little time for eating."
"Yes, yes," he snapped impatiently, his eyes glowering at Marshal Zaitsev, the defense minister. "This is not the time or the place to press these matters, comrade Marshal," Nikitin's voice warned. His hand waved around him to indicate the private departure lounge, the gathered small groups of uniformed or overcoated men — the press and the cameras and the photographers herded into one far corner. "What I have agreed to approve the Politburo will approve."
"But, comrade President, the revised budget is no more than a fraction of what is required."
"Zaitsev — drop this matter. There are — other factors. Do you expect us to divert rivers, make deserts bloom, feed our people with lasers? You will have enough money for research, then for development, when we are convinced you require it!" His hand made a firmer gesture, dismissive of protest. He deliberately turned his gaze from Zaitsev and looked out of the huge windows of the lounge and across the snowbound tarmac of Domodedovo Airport. A snow-clearing plow plumed a thick, darkened fountain of snow in an arc. His aircraft waited below the windows. To the north, hardly discernible in the heavy midday cloud and threat of further snow, the hills and towers and domes of Moscow were insubstantial. Crowds had gathered, or been gathered; black-coated, head-scarved or hatted, they waited in the icy temperature for the departure of this flight — perhaps for this flight above all? Nikitin was — no, not moved by the sense of occasion, but affected, certainly affected by it. And by his own sense of himself as a historical figure, he observed with a semblance of humor. He would bring back hope, he supposed. The Americans would look at things in that light — perhaps much of the world. For himself, it was a question of necessity; historical inevitability.
Well, whatever he called it, it was necessary. Zaitsev, of course, would protect the army — the bloody army — to his last breath, realist though he often appeared. So he'd offered the army something of a reprieve. This laser weapon business would distract them from the cuts in the budget, the other reductions, the diversion of funds to agriculture, consumer production. They could play with their new toy, make it bigger and better, while people ate and watched television. Yes, it was a good bargain to strike with Stavka and their allies in the Politburo; and it was the dagger in the sock, the gun up the sleeve as far as the Americans were concerned. It couldn't, it really could not, be better…
… except when Zaitsev and his cronies started to be greedy again — and now, of all times.
"It's time to go," Nikitin announced to the window, to the gray, lowering scene beyond it. He turned to Zaitsev. "Yes, yes," he soothed with almost clumsy humor in his voice. "Don't sulk, comrade Marshal. I'm right — you'll see. And I won't emasculate the army, either." He slapped the defense minister's shoulder with hearty violence, then stared across the room at the waiting press cameras, the television crews. "Come, stand beside me, for the photographs." Then: "Come, come!" he bellowed to negotiators, generals, Politburo members, waving them to him. "Time to have our pictures taken, for posterity." He laughed in a great roar. Then he looked at Zaitsev. "And remember to smile, comrade Marshal. This is a wedding, not a funeral."
The press contingent, garnered and selecte
d from the foreign press corps in Moscow, moved forward. The pick of the crop, Nikitin observed, recognizing faces he had seen across tables in the past weeks as he gave his carefully prepared and monitored interviews. As cameras rose to eyes or bobbed on shoulders, he barked with mock severity at the defense minister, "Smile!"
13: The Key to the Prison
Serov smoked as if he were the one undergoing interrogation. Priabin was not certain how much of a pretense it was, like the pacing up and down, the staring from the window, the lengthy silences. Or perhaps Serov's adrenaline surged in situations like this one, as he worked toward the revelation of their true identities, prisoner and jailer. Priabin kept his hands still in his lap, his features calm; Dmitri Priabin, colonel in the KGB, with a wave of Serov's magic wand becomes—
— nothing; lost; irrecoverable.
Serov made another display of lighting a cigarette. His square, blunt face bullied by its very lines and angles. His eyes glared. Priabin saw a change in Serov's mood. They had been there for more than an hour. Priabin had been uncooperative.
"I'm just about pissed off with you, Priabin," Serov announced heavily, leaning forward. The leather of his chair creaked, his face was angled so that the sun behind it shadowed and strengthened his expression. Anger, frustration, the losing of patience. Priabin concentrated upon his own role; innocent suspect, man of authority.
"What is it, Serov?" he all but sneered. "I've told you I don't know how many times already, I don't know what you're talking about. Yes, I saw Rodin, no, I did not harass him, yes, I'm sorry he's dead, yes, it was about drugs." He threw his hands in the air. "What the hell else do you expect me to say?" He leaned forward, hardly pausing, summoning a pretense of anger on his own part. "And while we're at it, when do I get the credit for catching our friend Gant — and Kedrov?" His index finger tapped the edge of Serov's desk peremptorily. Then he leaned back, acting a mood of self-righteous superiority, and lit a cigarette of his own…
… careful not to draw in the smoke too greedily. It was his first cigarette since leaving his own office. Careful…
Serov's face was full of anger, his eyes were brimming with contempt.
"You stupid little prick," he murmured, and it sounded like a threat rather than an insult.
"Have you finished with your questions, Serov? I'm busy in my own little way, just as you are. Can I go?"
"No you can't go!" Serov bellowed.
Priabin made as if to stand. "I don't see the point of any—"
"Sit down!" Serov screamed. Priabin could not prevent his whole frame from flinching from the voice's assault. "Sit down, you pretentious little turd, and I'll tell you just what's going to happen from this moment on."
Priabin made a huge effort to shrug with a modicum of nonchalance. Serov was physically intimidating. Their fencing was at an end. The man's real interrogation technique was simple and brutal; old-fashioned and direct — the inspiration of fear. Priabin sat down slowly, smoothing the creases in his trousers, crossing his legs. He flicked ash into the china ashtray on the desk and looked up at Serov.
"For heaven's sake, get on with it, Serov. What's troubling you — a clash of authority? Territorial imperatives?"
Serov remained standing. "There's no clash of authority. You don't have any authority, except by my say-so."
"I see. Then what the devil is the matter with you? Not sleeping well? Is that it?"
Serov sat down with a sigh. He waved his hands over open files strewn on the desk. Brushed ash from one sheet. "Let me tell you what's happened to one of-your prisoners, shall I?" He smiled without humor. Priabin braced himself. Serov cleared his throat. "Unfortunately, Kedrov couldn't take it. He's told us everything." He drew on his cigarette and coughed. "I don't know what scrambled state his brains will be in when he comes out of it. Still—" He shrugged. "We found out how long he'd been working for the Americans, what he told them — everything — even what he overheard concerning Lightning."
"What's that?"
"Too pat, Priabin, too pat. I know you and Rodin talked about it — I've got the tape, sonny. From your friend Mikhail. I know.'
"Bully for you, Serov." He could not eradicate the quaver from his voice, and Serov bellowed with hard laughter, his hand slapping the desk violently.
"Shall I tell you why we've been fencing for an hour or more?"
"Probably because you enjoy it." Priabin carefully stubbed out his cigarette.
Serov nodded. "That, too," he admitted. "When I've got time for it. But in this case, I wanted to know how far you'd go to hide the feet that you knew as much as you did. Quite a long way, apparently." He plucked at his full lower lip, extending it into a deformity. Then he said: "Now I know for certain you'll try as hard as you can to spread the news — don't I?"
"Sorry?"
"You want to tell someone, don't you? About the naughty secret you've discovered? Moscow Center, the Politburo — Lenin's stuffed and mounted corpse for all I know. It's why you were at the roadblock, why you tried to use the radio. You should have come in here and told me everything, tried to convince me you were on our side, believed in our point of view. I wonder why you didn't."
Priabin cleared his throat. Why hadn't he? "It didn't occur to me," he replied quietly.
Serov laughed, like a dog barking. Banged the desk with his palm once more. "You're all the same, you Party pretty boys," he mocked. "Give you a nice new uniform and you can't help believing you're immortal, can you? You came in here unable to conceive that anything nasty could possibly happen to you. Deep down, you couldn't believe. That uniform's as much good to you as a cardboard gun, sonny." His palm banged again and again, punctuating his words. "You'll get years for this. You might never be seen again— like Wallenberg — oh, heard of him, have you? It happens to colonels in the KGB, too, not just to intellectuals and scribblers like Solzhenitsyn. You, too, can disappear, is our motto!" His laughter made him cough; it did not weaken the fear he had created in Priabin. "It's up to you," Serov continued, "which way we proceed from this point. You want the drugs? You want Rodin to believe that his son was harassed to death by your interrogations? Or do you want to — tell me?"
The silence was immediate. Priabin's body itched and stung with uncontrollable nerves. He stared at Serov, but sensed the paleness of his face, the weak, small movements of his lips. His mouth was dry. Serov meant to have him finished with. The brute fact of his situation was unavoidable. How could he have lied to the man? He could never have persuaded him of his harmlessness. Perspiration prickled on his brow. His collar chafed. No, he could not have taken him in, not for a moment. But Serov was right, too. Whatever his fear when he was brought here, he had not believed, not with every part of himself, that this would be the outcome. The damned uniform, the authority — they'd deceived him, lulled him.
"Tell you what, exactly?" he asked, his voice almost casual.
Serov glowered, but his eyes sparkled, as if his enjoyment had achieved a new level of satisfaction.
"Oh, I couldn't trust you, could I? Not for a minute," he said. "Even afterward, when all this had been resolved, you'd still be trying to cause trouble. No, I think I'd better wash my hands of you now." He chuckled. Shook his head as if in reproof of a friend's poor joke. He clasped his hands behind his head and leaned back in his creaking swivel chair. "You're too much of a survivor for me, Priabin. I don't like you — never have, come to that." His voice was almost meditative. "How you bloody well survived that cockup over the MiG-31, I'll never know. Let your dead girlfriend take all the crap, I don't doubt." He did not look at Priabin's face; Dmitri felt himself flush. "Even got this cushy posting out of the deal — talk about falling in the manure and coming up smelling of flowers. You should have kept your head down, nose clean — walked away from trouble, sat out your tour." He sat upright, looking keenly at Priabin, leaning his arms on his desk. "You see, that's the trouble with you — you don't know when to leave well enough alone. Do you, eh?"
"Can I get up?"
Priabin asked after a while.
Serov shrugged dismissively. "Why not? I think we're about finished, don't you? You are, at least."
Priabin stood, almost to attention, testing the strength in his body before moving. He walked to the window, standing beside Serov, looking out. Serov turned to watch him, heavily amused. There was nothing Priabin could do.
"Going to throw yourself out?" Serov asked confidently. "Could do worse, old man." He saw Priabin's body shiver. "Could do a lot worse. We've got our Serbsky Institutes, and our Gulag, too. I don't think we'll be hearing from you again — if you get that far." He did not raise his voice. His tone was that of a judge passing sentence. Priabin thrust his shaking hands into his pockets, staring blindly into the afternoon outside. Gantries, cables, pylons, masts, radar dishes, low buildings — away beyond the square and its cobbles. An endless vista of — army authority.
He turned to Serov, as if to speak, then returned his gaze to the world outside the room. The square. The heavy military statuary, the modern Cosmonaut Hotel, the cars and the people. He saw nothing except his brief and violent future. Fear, real fear, quivered through him. Serov was indeed going to kill him.
"There's no way out for you," Serov was murmuring. "No way out."
His words were like a quiet but demented refrain. Priabin's mind caught them up, set them spinning together with his thoughts of Anna, Gant, Rodin, and now Kedrov. No way out, no way, no way out.
He wanted to press his hands to his ears, as if the words were still being spoken and he could shut them out. But Serov was silent, standing back like a painter to observe the effect of his last brush strokes. No way out, no way out…
… Anna, Gant, Rodin, Kedrov, Anna, Gant…
No way out.
There must be some way…
… some way.
There must be some way out of here, said the joker to the thief.
God, why Dylan now? The song ran in his head together with Serov's taunt. No way, some way, no way out, some way out, no way out of here, some way out of here… It was like contemplating the onset of madness, his mind was so helpless in its desperate attempts to avoid the idea. No way, some way… — thief, thief, thief!