"What is it, Major? What prevents you from waiting to be announced?" he asked with studied lightness; a sting in the tone, too, because that helped dissipate his fear.
"Colonel Priabin?" the major asked stolidly; aware of his authority, confident, but tied to a defined script. A minion.
"Naturally. What is it you want, Major? I'm rather busy, as you can see." He lazily waved a hand over his desk, then drew on his cigarette. Puffed smoke at the ceiling. "Do you need those two men just to speak to me?"
"Colonel Priabin, I must ask you to accompany me to GRU headquarters." Priabin was on the point of interrupting him, but the major ignored his hand, his poised lips. "Colonel Serov wishes to interview you."
"Oh. Concerning what?"
"I am not able to divulge that, Colonel," the major announced stiffly, staring past Priabin's shoulder; but there was no sense of awe, of being daunted. Just the indifference of a machine. "Should you decline to accompany—
"It's an arrest, Major—I understand!" Priabin shouted, standing up quickly, surprising the two armed soldiers, whose guns moved, then stilled, in their hands. He sensed the confidence with which he had begun ebb from his face. "An arrest," he repeated firmly. "Ludicrous."
This minion was not his enemy, and he had tired of the fencing match. It did no good, it merely wasted breath and energy. He Would need all his wits, all his cunning and strength for his meeting with Serov, who
was
his enemy. If he were to save his life—
He could not complete the thought. Instead, Rodin's somehow decadently splayed limbs spread on the rumpled bedclothes filled his imagination. The same fete, the same fate, he heard the soft drumbeat announce, pulsing in his temple. He plucked his cap from the coat stand, glancing at the map on the wall as he did so. It seemed such a huge place, suddenly; so many miles, so many hectares in which he might have hidden . . .
"Let's go, Major," he growled. "Well? I don't have all day. Let's go."
They were already engaged in the process of breaking him down. It was natural to them, and inevitable. There might be beatings, there might not; humiliations, drugs, starvation, half drowning—it might take weeks or hours. They would choose. He could either endure for as long as he could or crumble like an old, honeycombed wall. It would not matter, just as it did not matter to that poor bastard Kedrov he'd failed to rescue. At the end of the breaking, there would be the disposal of what remained. Very little; husks of corn or empty peanut shells littering the floor.
Gant watched his clenched hands shivering. His wrists rested on his thighs, his hands faced each other like armored and frightened crabs, weighing each other. The shiver was not simply muscular. It was fear;
the admission of fear is not of assistance
, he remembered—some psychologist, some expert;
keep fear at arms' length or you may not be able to control it—it might end up controlling you . . . forget perspective . . .
... if you don't have a future, don't think about it. . .
What was that crap? Why was it here now, like laughter in
the
dark? He was cold, he was hungry—par for the course—and the walls of the cell had started to contract in his imagination. He was waiting for the first interrogation, the first pain, or the first enema of the mind, of the personality, that the drugs would bring. That was
almost
more difficult to bear—never mind to resist—than the beatings
and
the starving and the electrodes. The sense of being utterly
without
will. Gant shivered more violently. He knew he had begun to think too much. He had enlivened his imagination instead of drugging
and
sedating it with numbers or distractions of other kinds. Worst of all, he'd admitted to himself that there was no way out; no way back.
Because he was Gant, they would gut him like a catfish. Catfish? Catfish. He squeezed his memory like an orange, but nothing flowed. He could not get back to his youth, to the Valium of the past. They would want everything he knew. He would be in no condition—no condition—to be returned by the time they had finished with him.
He was cold. The shiver was in his arms now, in his body, too-Cold—
—door. He could not stifle his gasp of relief—fear seeped in whole seconds later—as the cell door opened. He had not even seen the preliminary eye at the peephole. The pit in Vietnam, in the Cong village, which had been approaching him again, retreated in his mind. He looked up with an almost pathetic eagerness.
Smell of spicy food. One of them had a rifle and kept his distance, the other moved closer with the food. Thin stuff, he saw, slopping in the mess tin; then it splashed on his flight overalls, down the sleeve of his leather jacket, soaked the thighs and crotch of his trousers. He snarled and almost rose.
The rifle moved, drawing a bead on him, the first round clicking into the chamber of the AK-74. Gant dropped back against the icily cold wall, hands pressed against his thighs, his body posed as if ready to absorb a blow. The corridor outside taunted him with its inaccessibility. The guard close to him was grinning, the armed one anticipated pleasure. Gant, involuntarily, flinched. The nearer guard unzipped his trousers, chuckled, then began to urinate on Gant's one gray blanket. Gant sat immobile, staring down at the food stains on his flight overalls. The guard whistled, as if using some public convenience. The urine spread in a pool. Both guards watched Gant greedily.
The guard finished.
"Should have drunk more beer," he called over his shoulder, zipping his trousers.
"You can't piss worth a kopeck anyway."
Gant felt the shiver in his body and attempted to quell it. The casualness of the humiliation was worse than a beating. A clear statement: You are ceasing to exist.
"You want a turn?"
"Piss
on
him, you mean? Who cares? There'll be plenty of time."
Gant stared at the rectangle of tiled corridor he could see through the open door. They had left the door open to undermine him further. The fact that he understood what they were doing did not help. The urine stank, but he did not move. He heard a squeaking noise in the corridor, a voice murmuring. Boots.
The surgical cart stopped directly opposite the door of the cell. He recognized Kedrov's profile, saw the blank, wild eyes staring at the ceiling, saw the furiously working mouth—and heard the insane, disconnected, drugged babble of sound coming from him. He Was still deeply drugged. Here he is, they were saying. Your role model; your future. Gant hunched further into himself; wanted to fold his arms across his heaving stomach, wanted to concentrate on something, anything other than the darkness that loomed in his mind. Two attendants in white coats peered into the cell. Kedrov babbled, screamed, denied, confessed, complied, rejected.
They had overdone it. Kedrov might be lost for good in his own head, amid that ceaseless, whirling jumble that filled his mind. He should be sedated now, quiet; spent. Instead, he raved like a lunatic. They'd most probably done it deliberately, just to make an impact on him.
Gant growled, but the noise seemed to whimper in the cell. Kedrov raved. The guards watched and weighed, the attendants looked around the cell like prospective house buyers. Gant's lips were wet. He continued to growl but could not make the noise assertive or defiant.
Kedrov's voice vanished. The cell was darker. The urine's stink predominated. They were gone. Gant groaned softly, cradling his chest and stomach with his arms, head forward.
And slowly but insistently, the stench of the guard's urine became transmuted into the smell of stagnant, muddy water. The bamboo cage was opened, he was thrust into the pit, the bamboo grill was closed over his head. The walls were wet, the water reached his chest. The strange, small Eastern faces looked down at him, then left him alone; utterly alone.
After a while, when he covered his face with his quivering hands, his father's face seemed to look down through the slatted bamboo, and be satisfied. Gant knew he would die. Once he had been emptied of everything he knew, every tiny chip of information.
Standing on the metal catwalk outside the long glass windows, it was as if he were able, at last, to look down not only on the main assembly building and its contents, but on recent events. That appalled and appalling silence at the other end of the telephone
connec
tion with Moscow, the silence that had gone on and on until he thought his head would be crushed by it. It had been as if his wife had died, too, at the moment he gave her the news concerning their son.
The silence had had the effect of allowing a slow, betraying light to leak into his mind, illuminating dark corners he did not wish to inspect; his failings, his treatment of Valery, his lack of affection for his wife. Eventually, he had tried to soothe her, gain some response. The line went on humming, and he could not make out her reply. Possibly, she was no longer even in the same room as the telephone—somewhere else in the flat, staring at photographs, at
Valery's room, at—? Rodin could not guess and was reluctant to pursue his questions. He had, after a further time, put down the receiver. And yes, he had wanted to tell her it was suicide, and his suspicions as to Valery's motives, but could not . . . not quite.
He tried to clear his thoughts, use the scene below him to erase his memories. Uniforms, white coats, the
Raketoplan
shuttle, the laser weapon now assembled and undergoing its final scrutiny . . . uniforms, uniforms . . . army, army. The repetitions, the sights that filled his eyes and thoughts, began to cleanse his mind. He could begin to think of Valery as—as a soldier. The detritus of his recent life was being cleaned from him, like pigeon droppings from the statue of someone honored and eminent. Yes, a cleaned statue . . yes, he could begin to think along those lines now. His breathing became easier, his chest seemed to expand, as if he were exercising his lungs in front of a window on a cool, fresh morning. His head felt cleared, sharply attentive.
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.