Op Center 02 - Mirror Image

by Mirror Image [lit]

  "I'm deeply sorry," Orlov said. "Is there anything I can do to-"

  "General," Hood interrupted, "I'm not selling guilt or asking for anything. We'll reclaim the remains through diplomatic channels. But my second-in-command was very close to the team leader, and he wanted you to relay something to your son."

  "Of course," said Orlov.

  "He says that in the Russian folktale 'Sadko,' the Czar of the Sea tells the hero that any warrior can take lives, but a truly great warrior struggles to spare them. Make sure your son understands that. Help him to be a great warrior."

  "I've not had great success convincing my son of anything," Orlov said, "but I give you my word, great warriors will grow from the seeds that have been sown here. "

  Orlov thanked Hood again, and then the General signed off and thought in respectful silence about the nameless, faceless man but for whom his own life and the life of his wife would now be a shambles.

  And then he got up from his desk and took his hat from the rack and went outside. Except for the dwindling crowd of protesting workers, the day looked exactly like it had when he arrived, and he was startled to realize that exactly twenty-four hours had passed since he'd arrived for the showdown with Rossky.

  Twenty-four hours since the world nearly changed.

  And twenty-four hours since he had hugged his wife.

  SEVENTY-SIX

  Tuesday, 10:00 P.M., Helsinki

  It was easy for Peggy to get out of the Hermitage.

  When the shots were fired on the staircase, rumors erupted among the striking workers that the Army was coming and the gathering was going to be broken up. The crowd quickly began to disperse, then rejoined almost as fast, like mercury, when police began to rush inside and leaders realized that the gunplay had nothing to do with them. The mass of workers then sloshed toward the Hermitage, clogging the main entrance where there were no longer any guards, walking and tripping inside, causing panic among tourists trying to get out, and drawing the guards back again. They used nightsticks and rigid forearms, hands pressed knuckle-to-knuckle, to protect the art and drive the strikers back.

  Peggy left as a panicked tourist.

  The day was growing dark, and once outside Peggy made her way to the Nevsky Metro stop. It was crowded with rush-hour commuters, but the trains came every two minutes and, paying her five kopeks, she was able to leave shortly after arriving. From there, it was a short run across the Neva to the Finland Station, which made stops in Razliv, Repino, Vyborg, and Finland.

  Private George was already there, sitting on a wooden bench in the waiting room, reading an English-language newspaper, a plastic bag of souvenirs at his side. She watched him after showing her visa and passport at the ticket window and purchasing passage to Helsinki. He would read for a minute, look up and around for a few seconds, then read again.

  Once, he looked up for several seconds longer than usual. Not at her, but she was certainly in his range of vision. Afterwards, he got up and walked away with his newspaper and postcards and Hermitage snow globe and other mementoes. That was to let her know he had seen her and wouldn't be watching anymore. Once he was gone, Peggy walked over to the central kiosk and bought English and Russian newspapers of her own, several magazines, and sat down to await the midnight departure of the train.

  Security was no tighter than usual at the train station, events in Moscow and Ukraine obviously consuming the resources and attention of the rank-and-file militia. Peggy boarded the train without incident after presenting her credentials and leave papers at the gate.

  The train was a modem one, brightly lit with fauxplush seats in the coach which were narrow but soft, to make unsophisticated travelers think they're riding in high style. Though Peggy couldn't stand the ambience here or among the crushed red and yellow velvets of the lounge car, neither her aesthetic disapproval nor the pressure of the last few hours showed on her relaxed features. Only when she was in the airplane-style rest room, checking her clothes and flesh for spots of the dead woman's blood, did she allow herself a moment of release.

  She leaned on her hands on the stainless-steel sink, shut her eyes, and said in a voice below a whisper, "I did not go to seek vengeance, but it's mine and I'm comforted by it." She smiled. "If there's parole in the afterlife, sweet love, I promise to be on my best behavior to get from where I'm going to where you've surely ended up. And thank Volko. What he did for us should put him at the feet of God himself"

  Several times during the journey, Peggy bumped into Private George, though the two of them didn't speak other than to say "Excuse me" when they passed in a snug corridor. Though they had been able to get out of Russia, that was not to say there weren't spies on the train who might not have a good description of them and would be looking at couples or watching men and women traveling separately. For that reason, Peggy spent as much time as possible hovering around a group of Russian soldiers in the lounge car, contributing comments now and then to suggest that she was one of them and even allowing one of them to come on to her to give her a guardian angel if she needed one. Upon reaching Finland shortly before dawn, she gave the soldier a false phone number and address as the two passed through customs. A verbal declaration was sufficient to get Peggy through, though the Russians were treated to a thorough hand-luggage search.

  Peggy and Private George fell in side by side as they walked briskly into the street. The Englishwoman squinted into the sun as it poked its orange crown into the new day.

  "What the hell happened back at the museum?" George asked.

  Peggy smiled. "I forgot, you didn't know."

  "No, I didn't. I kept imagining that scene in The Guns of Navarone where the woman spy bought it."

  "I pretended totrip down the stairs," Peggy said,

  "When the woman showed her hand by running after me, I had to cancel her. I used her gun on a spetsnaz officer who seemed to feel that he could take a few bullets and still wring my little neck. He couldn't. There was a lot of confusion after that, and I just slipped out."

  "They'll never make a movie out of your life," George said. "No one'd believe this."

  "Life is always more interesting than the movies," Peggy said. "That's why they have to make the damn things forty feet high."

  The two chatted about possible departure plans, George deciding that he'd take the next flight he could get on, Peggy saying that she wasn't sure how or when she was going to leave Helsinki-that all she wanted to do right now was to walk and feel the sun bake her face and avoid any closed space that reminded her of a midget submarine, the backseat of a car, or a cramped train.

  The two stopped walking in front of the Finnish National Theater. They looked at one another with warm smiles and soft eyes.

  "I confess I was wrong," Peggy said. "I didn't think you'd be up to this."

  "Thanks," George replied. "That's encouraging, coming from someone with so much more experience, someone so much older."

  Peggy was tempted to throw him on his back the way she had when they first met. Instead, she offered him her hand.

  "The face of an angel and the soul of an imp," she said. "It's a good combination, and you carry them well. I hope to see you again."

  "Ditto," he said.

  She half turned, stopped. "When you see him," she said, "the chap who grudgingly allowed me to join you, thank him."

  "The team leader?" George asked.

  "No," said Peggy. "Mike. He gave me a chance to take back some of what I lost."

  "I'll tell him," George promised.

  And turning to the sun like a moth to flame, Peggy walked down the empty street.

  SEVENTY-SEVEN

  Friday, 8:00 A.M., Washington, D.C.

  An overnight rain had left the runway at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware damp and misty, reflecting the mood of the small group that had gathered to meet the C-141 transport. Standing beside an immaculate honor guard, Paul Hood, Mike Rodgers, Melissa Squires, and the Squires's son, Billy, were of one heart, and that heart was bleed
ing.

  When they had arrived in the limousine following the hearse, Rodgers had thought that he should remain strong for Billy. But now he realized that apart from being unnatural, it was impossible. When the cargo hatch was opened and the flag-draped coffin was rolled out, tears warmed Rodgers's cheeks and he was as much a boy as Billy, anguished and in need of comfort and despairing that there was none to be had. The General stood at attention, enduring as best he could the sobs of Lieutenant Colonel Squires's widow and son to his left. He was glad when Hood came from his right to stand behind the couple the hem of his trench coat billowing slightly in the wind, his hands on their shoulders ready to offer words or support or strength or whatever was necessary.

  And Rodgers thought, How I have misjudged this man.

  The honor guard fired off their guns, and as the coffin was loaded onto the hearse for the ride to Arlington, and the four of them stood alongside it, the spindly five-yearold Billy suddenly turned to Rodgers.

  "Do you think my daddy was afraid when he was on the train?" he asked in his pure, little-boy voice.

  Rodgers had to roll his lips together to keep from losing it. As the boy's big eyes waited, it was Hood who squatted in front of him and answered.

  "Your dad was like a police officer or a firefighter," Hood said. "Even though they're all afraid when they face a criminal or a fire, they want to help people and so they pull bravery out of here. " He touched a finger to the lapel of Billy's blazer, right over his heart.

  "How do they do that?" the boy asked, sniffling but attentive.

  "I'm not sure," Hood replied. "They do it in a way that heroes do."

  "Then my daddy was a hero?" asked the boy, obviously pleased with the idea.

  "A great one," said Hood. "A superhero."

  "Bigger than you, General Rodgers?"

  "Very much bigger," Rodgers said.

  Melissa put an arm around Billy's shoulder and, managing a grateful smile at Hood, ushered him into the limousine.

  Rodgers watched Melissa as she climbed in. Then he looked at Hood.

  "I have read-- he started, stopped, then swallowed hard before he began again. "I have read the greatest speeches and writings in human history. But nothing ever moved me the way you just did, Paul. I want you to know that I'm proud to know you. And what's more,

  I'm proud to be serving under you."

  Rodgers saluted Hood and climbed into the car. Because his eyes were on Billy, the General didn't see Hood wipe away a tear as he followed him in.

  SEVENTY-EIGHT

  The following Tuesday, 11:30 A.M.,St. Petersburg

  Paul Hood, his wife, and their two children took a long walk in the park off the Nevsky Prospekt before separating-Sharon and the children to watch a group of schoolchildren play soccer, Hood to sit on a bench by an ancient tree, where a short man in a leather flight jacket was feeding breadcrumbs to the birds.

  "It's odd to think," said the man in clear, comfortable English, "that creatures of the sky must come to earth to feed and build nests and raise families." He swept a hand across the sky. "You'd think there would be a place for them up there."

  Hood smiled. "From up there, they get a special perspective on things down here. And that's quite a lot, I think." He looked at the man. "Don't you, General Orlov

  The former cosmonaut scrunched up his lower lip and nodded. "It is, at that." He looked at the new arrival. "How are you, my friend?"

  "Very well," said Hood.

  Orlov pointed across the park with a half-torn piece of bread. "You brought your family, 1 see."

  "Well," said Hood, "I sort of owed them the rest of a vacation. This seemed like a very good place to take it."

  Orlov nodded. "There is no place like St. Petersburg. Even when it was Leningrad, it was the jewel of the Soviet Union."

  Hood's smile warmed. "I'm glad you agreed to see me. That makes this doubly rich."

  Orlov looked down at the bread and finished tearing it up. He scattered the pieces and brushed off his hands. "We have both had quite an extraordinary week. We thwarted a coup, stopped a war, and we have each had a funeral-yours of a friend, mine an enemy, but both of them ends that came too soon."

  Hood looked away and sniffed down still-fresh sorrow. "At least your son is well," he said. "That's helped to make this endurable. Perhaps all of it will have been for something."

  "With luck, that will be so," Orlov agreed. "My son is recovering at our apartment here in the city, and we'll have several weeks to talk and mend old hurts. I think he'll be more receptive to me than in the past, what with the wounding of his spetsnaz mentor and the courtmartial of Generals Kosigan and Mavik. I hope he'll see that it takes very little courage to run with vandals." Orlov reached into his jacket. "There's something else I hope," he said as he pulled out a slim, old book bound in leather and stamped on the cover and spine with gold lettering. He handed it to Hood.

  "What is it?" Hood asked.

  " 'Sadko,"' said Orlov. "It's an old copy-for your second-in-command. I've ordered fresh editions to be distributed among the troops here in St. Petersburg. I read it myself and found it quite stirring. It's odd that an American should be the one to point out to us the richness of our own culture."

  "Perspective," Hood repeated. "Sometimes it's good to be a bird, sometimes it's good to be on the ground." "Truly," said Orlov. "I've learned a great deal from all of this. When I accepted this post, I thought-perhaps you did the same-that I would spend my time the way a supply officer does, filling intelligence needs for others. But I realize now that it's our responsibility to put these resources to good use. Indeed, when my son returns to duty, I'm going to assign him to a special force whose job will be to hunt down that monster Shovich. I'm hoping, in fact, that our two operations centers can collaborate on that."

  Hood said, "It will be an honor, General."

  Orlov looked at his watch. "Speaking of my son, I'm joining him and my wife, Masha, for lunch. We haven't done that since I was still flying rockets, and I'm looking forward to it very much."

  He rose, and Hood did likewise.

  "Just keep your expectations on the ground," Hood said. "Nikita, Zhanin, you and I-we're all just people, no more, no less."

  Orlov clasped his hands warmly. "My expectations will always be up there." Orlov pointed by raising his brow. Then he looked past Hood and smiled. "And despite what you may feel, teach your son and daughter to do likewise. You may be surprised at how things work out."

  Hood watched as Orlov left, then turned and glanced toward the comer of the park where Alexander and Harleigh had been. He saw Sharon standing alone, and he had to search for a moment before he spotted his children. They were playing soccer with the Russian youths.

  "I may be at that," Hood said aloud.

  Pushing his hands in his pockets, he took a last look at Orlov, then walked with a light step and lighter heart to his wife's side.