Eventually, Rodin said in a tiny, empty voice: "You're right, policeman, you're right. He's finished with me. Daddy's finished with his naughty little boy." Priabin bent to the glasses. Rodin sat un-moving, head in his hands. The remainder of the joint was burning a hole in the thick pile of the gray carpet. He might have been posing as a model for some bronze statue meant to symbolize defeat.
"Then talk to me," Priabin replied after a moment. No, he corrected himself. Not softly softly—not yet. "I haven't got time to waste, Valery." Commonsense approach, brisk and shallow. A man with a lot on his plate, things to do. "Do you hear me? Unless you
have something for me, I'll have to abandon this interview Be on
my way-
Silence, stretching so much that Priabin winced against its breaking. Then: "No. Don't do that."
"Why not?"
"I want to talk to you. I have something to tell you." He would not look up, like a child pleading in its misery, cowering in a corner. Afraid to look at the adults in the room. "I—you can come over. I'll unlock the door."
"I don't have much time to waste," Priabin said with difficulty, the pretense of indifference now almost impossible.
"I won't waste your time," Rodin replied, looking up and out into the night. "I know what you want to know. You come over. Who knows? I might even tell you."
The step onto the wooden porch felt greasy, treacherous beneath Gant's boot. Adamov's eyes, although peering into the dusty wind, nonetheless gleamed. Before Gant glanced away from the man's face, he noted the tightness of expectancy around Adamov's jaw, the slightly flared nostrils. Gant looked at the helicopter as if seeking some quick, complete escape. He felt dangerously inadequate, his feet on the step, the lee of the dwelling offering little protection from the wind. The two Uzbeks remained near the Hind, as if detailed to guard it. Gant felt himself without resources. He could not simply run, simply kill—
He unclenched his hands, looked directly into Adamov's face, and sneered.
"Georgi who? Who's he, comrade, when he's in the house?" He felt his chest tightening as he held his breath. Adamov's features narrowed, as if only now responding to the cold wind. His eyes squinted. Then he rubbed them, clearing flying dust.
"Georgi Karpov? You know him, surely?" he laughed.
Gant shook his head, watching Adamov's hand, the holster at his hip, the hand, the holster, the hand . . . which came unclosed slowly, purposefully, then passed the holster, moving up to the peak of his cap. His shoulders shrugged.
"I've never heard of him, comrade Captain—and neither have Gant said slowly, evenly. Then, more quickly, he added:
What
1
s the matter with you, policeman?"
The hand left the cap, hitting Gant's shoulder like a statement of arrest. Then Adamov laughed.
"I thought he was posted to Alma-Ata. Haven't heard from him for a couple of years, though. Could have moved on." He shivered. "Come on, man, let's get out of this bloody wind." Then he added as easily as taking his next breath: "Bloody country."
Gant glanced quickly toward the Hind, then said: "Sure." He allowed himself to be pushed ahead of Adamov, the skin crawling hotly on his back almost immediately, despite the chill of his body. The wind knifed along the porch, the dust curled like brown waves across the concrete.
"You can give me a lift, maybe?" Adamov said behind him as his hand gripped the handle of the door. Then he slipped on a loose board and giggled.
Gant seized on the advantage, gripping it fiercely. Adamov was half crocked with drink. When he turned, Adamov was holding a leather-bound silver flask in his hand, waving it encouragingly.
"Something to go in the coffee—kill the bugs!" He grinned. "Had to start on the flask. Rum." He sniffed it. "Not bad, either. Couldn't drink the vodka—got no smell. Wouldn't have drowned in the stink of that Uzbek pig." He gestured toward the truck and its driver. "Come on, get the bloody door open—I'm freezing."
Gant stepped into the narrow, shallow passage behind the door. Wooden floor and walls; uncarpeted, undecorated.
"How the hell can I give you a lift?" he asked.
"Wliy not?" Adamov replied, then bellowed: "Come out, come out, whoever you are!"
His fist banged against the thin wooden wall, which groaned as if in protest.
A door ahead of them opened. A woman in black. Muslim dress. Face hidden below the gleaming eyes. A wisp of graying hair. Olive skin. She stood aside, without reluctance and without welcome, simply attempting not to exist. Gant strode past her as Adamov
would
have expected Captain Borzov of the Frontal Aviation Army to do. Lift, passenger, his mind repeated endlessly, creating waves of heat. He could not, must not kill Adamov.
Too dangerous. People might know where he was, might be expecting him. The Uzbeks knew he was here. Yet there seemed no other solution. Time was elongating, being wasted. There was no other solution . . .
And soon . . .
Adamov bellowed something in
Uzbek
at the woman, as if spit
ing
out something that made him gag.
They
were evident crudities, an oath, a command.
'Told her to make some coffee and be quick about it," he explained.
The woman backed away, black robe sweeping the floor of the low room. Single rug, log fire—no, cakes of something that might have been dried dung—a bare table and chairs, one battered armchair near the fire. It was like a weekend cabin, suggesting no one lived there on any permanent basis. The woman closed the door of what must have been the kitchen behind her. Adamov slumped heavily into the armchair, which puffed dust and creaked with age.
"God," he murmured. Inspected the flask, and adjusted his holster so that it no longer dug into his hip in the narrow chair. Offered the rum. "Not while on duty?" he asked ironically. "Bad for your night vision, uh?"
Oil stains on the arms of the old chair, on the bare, scrubbed wood of the table. Gants eyes cast about as if trying to avoid the question. He did not want to drink, should not, but knew that he had to. He had to do more than keep Adamov tipsy, he had to make him drunk. Malleable. He smelled the coffee from beyond the closed door; the smells of cooking, spicy and strange, remained in the dead air of the room. There were loose threads, bare patches, in the one old rug on the floor.
"Drink?" Adamov asked again.
"Sure, why not?" Gant replied, taking the proffered flask and tilting it to his lips, sipping at the apparent generous swallow through clenched teeth. He wiped his hps and handed back the flask, coughing and shaking his head ruefully at the quantity he had Pretended to consume.
You can't kill him, there's no easy way, you can't get rid of the body—so watch him
. The killing of a half-drunk man slumped in an Armchair would be easy. Almost any part of him could be broken before he could even move. The situation in which Gant found him-
Se
lf, the watch on his wrist, the Hind outside, beyond where the ^nd rattled the window, all made him jumpy with the tension of Anting to kill and not daring to.
He crossed to the window and tugged back the thin curtain. He hatched the garage owner straighten, check the reading, then say
SOl
*iething to the truck driver. He removed the extension and the
funnel, then clipped the nozzle of the hose to the
pump.
Finished.
Full
tanks.
It
was difficult not to sigh with relief.
The woman returned and put down two tin mugs. The liquid in them was thick and black. She glanced at neither man. Gant realized she was not pretending she didn't exist; it was they who did
not
exist for her; simply scraps of something blown in by the wind. Adamov cursed her for not handing him his coffee by the fire. She continued to stare at the floorboards as she turned back toward her kitchen. Adamov grimaced at her bodily odor, or perhaps merely at her existence. He rose unsteadily from his chair and lurched toward the table.
The Uzbek who owned the garage was coming toward the house, slouching against the wall of the wind. Adamov joined Gant. The two of them were framed in the square of window.
Rum breath, a hand on his shoulder, a grin near his face, eyes unfocused. The familiar voice.
"Come on, comrade, you can spare the time to give me a lift to Samarkand—nice brothels in Samarkand, good clubs. For the tourists. Clean girls, dirty nights!" He roared with laughter, slapping Gant across the shoulder blades four, five, six, seven times.
"Anyway," he continued, leaning heavily against Gant, slopping a few drops of the thick black coffee down the front of Gant's flight overalls. "I reckon you can't refuse me, can you? Can't refuse me, mm? More than your future's worth for HQ to get to know you were all the way up here. What you up to, comrade? What's your game?"
His stubby, thick forefinger, the trigger finger, was prodding against Gant's breastbone, six, seven, eight, nine times, to
empha
size the force of his suspicions . . . twelve, thirteen, fourteen . • •
Gant caught and twisted the wrist to which the prodding finger was attached. Adamov yelled in pain.
"Don't do that, comrade," Gant hissed. "And don't even ask. He released Adamov's wrist. Immediately, the hand made
as
if to strike, then dropped to the man's side, obeying the gleam in Gant s eyes.
"All right," Adamov snapped. "Fuck your business, anyway.' 'He turned away—
—out of the window's well-lit frame, which showed him and Gant like objects in a camera lens to the two Uzbeks. The garage owner was near the window, turning to the steps of the porch.
Ada
mov was pouring more rum into his coffee, his face twisted agains* the pain in his wrist.
"OK, a lift is what you want—you can have it," Gant announced, his voice full of mock comradeship and loud enough to be heard—
—movement, quick and sudden, his hand coming down across the back of Adamov's neck, rabbit-punching him even as he turned.
Coffee
flew at the chair and fireplace, sizzled on the burning dung, splashed on the dirty floorboards. Adamov's eyes glazed at Gant hugged the body against him.
The garage owner entered the room sullenly, staring. Adamov leaned against Gant, his unconscious breathing loud and drunken. Gant glared at the Uzbek. He hefted Adamov's weight against his side and growled: "He's drunk. Understand? You speak Russian, pig?" He winced inwardly at the obligatory insult. The Uzbek nodded, rubbing his unshaven chin. Then shrugged.
"Pay me," he announced in a thick, almost indecipherable accent. And held out his hand to underline his demand.
"The army pays," Gant replied. The man was in the doorway. Adamov's weight bore against him. He wanted to flee.
The Hind was outside with full tanks. Reaction to the blow he had struck at Adamov coursed in him. Two minutes before windup, all systems on-line, takeoff. The empty, clean sky was two and a half minutes away from him.
He flung Adamov into the narrow chair, which squeaked on the bare boards but did not overturn. The GRU captain lay like an abandoned ventriloquist's dummy. The Uzbek's eyes narrowed, and his hands twitched about his belt as if he were searching for a weapon he had mislaid.
Gant reached into the zippered pocket on the breast of his flight overalls. The Uzbek flinched. Perspiration hovered along Gant's hairline. He pulled out a notepad, a pencil held against it with a rubber band. He removed the band and flipped open the pad.
"Come here," he snapped, and moved to the table. He began writing. Each sheet of the pad was headed with the insignia of the
Frontal
Aviation Army and the details of his regiment. He made out a receipt, snapping only once at the Uzbek to check the amount of gasoline he had supplied. Then he tore off the sheet and handed it to the Uzbek. "There—an official receipt. Any complaints?" His hand rested lightly on his hip, just above the holster.
The garage owner shook his head, reluctantly. He folded the re-
Ce
»pt with an air of resignation and slipped it into the pocket of his haggy trousers. Then he wiped his hands on his coat, as if they had become contaminated.
"Good," Gant remarked. "I'm taking this one. Tell your pal, the driver." He plucked Adamov's frame from the chair with ease
and
moved with him to the door. "Open it." The Uzbek scuttled to do so. Action revived Gant. He lugged the unconscious captain into the corridor, the man's boot toes dragging like fingernails down glass. The Uzbek pressed back against the wall as Gant flung open the outer door and leaned into the wind, clutching Adamov like a shield.
Steps—yes. He counted them, careful of his balance. Dirt, and no noise from Adamov's boots until they reached the concrete and the toes of'his boots began to scrape once again. "Fucking passengers!" Gant yelled to the wind, for the driver's benefit. "Bastard's drunk as a skunk and passed out!" The driver, leaning out of his cab, smoking, tossed his head and grinned, as much at Gant's struggle with Adamov as with relief that the GRU man had found other company.
Gant turned to the driver. "You shouldn't have let the officer drink so much," he barked. The driver was indifferent.