Bad dreams of Anna the previous night, contempt for the face he saw in the shaving mirror just before the call had come—they'd played their part, too.
"You realize how serious an offense you've committed, Lieutenant?"
Rodin shrugged. His tie was loose at his throat, his uniform jacket was unbuttoned. The remains of a plate of sandwiches and an empty beer glass rested on Priabin's desk, near the boy's elbow. It might have been
his
office.
Anger. Useless, harmful anger, doing him definite harm and no damn good whatsoever, but he couldn't bring himself to let this arrogant, criminal little shit go free.
"I know who reported me," Rodin hissed. "The pretty little queen." He did not bother to disguise his homosexuality, despite its magnitude as a criminal offense under Soviet law, as if he were immune to KGB charges.
Which he was.
Neither joke nor crime; just a fact about a young man whose father was a senior officer of the Strategic Rocket Forces, the army's most elite service. A man who was one of the triumvirate of staff officers running Baikonur, for God's sake.
You bloody fool, tangling with that lot.
General Lieutenant Rodin. His son could have worn makeup and a dress on duty, and little if anything of consequence would have happened to him. And the boy knew that as clearly as he knew who his father was.
And that's what enrages you, Priabin told himself, precisely that—look at his face now. He choked on a bile of silent rage. The conversation finished hours ago, as far as he's concerned. Priabin knew he was already on a list of petty revenges to be exacted as soon as the boy was released. In this case, a ruinous revenge if the father took an interest.
"Lovers' tiff, was it?" he asked quietly, unable to prevent himself. The boy set his teeth on edge, infuriated him beyond all measure.
Rodin laughed, not even blushing, not even angry.
"If you like," he replied, shrugging insolently. Priabin's rank meant nothing, nothing at all.
Somewhere in the building, the damning evidence of the cocaine he had found would have disappeared by now, to placate the general's anticipated anger and the son s petty revenge.
"You don't seem to care much, either way."
"Should I? After all, what can happen?"
There, he'd finally said it. Priabin, angry as he was, still felt chilled, and cursed the shame brought on by his shaving mirror; cursed Rodin's initial insolence as his locker was searched; cursed self-consciousness.
It was almost as if he carried within him some urge toward self-destruction. That was the Anna part of him, not the part of him that still worked, slept, ate, shaved, obeyed orders and stared at his uniformed self in mirrors, idled away his posting at Baikonur ... a
cushy number, you re bloody lucky to get it, after everything that's happened
, they had said in Moscow.
Not even demoted
. . . yes, he was lucky to have gotten it after the American's escape and Anna's death. The part that wanted to convict Rodin, make him sweat, belonged to Anna; the wailing, never-to-be-comforted child she had left behind her, frozen in grief like a corpse trapped in thick ice.
Guilt, of course, overwhelming guilt for that moment when the border guards had opened fire, when his shouting had panicked them, when Gant. . .
He snatched his mind away from the images, from the round blue hole in her forehead. The effort to wrench his mind away from that one last image in particular was as violent as snatching his hand back from a flame. It was that image which, even now, returned more than any other. Often when he tried to remember her smiling, or making love, or concentrating on documents, or cooking, her forehead seemed to wear that final badge, the round blue hole. It was clearer and more terrible even than the blood from the back of her head, which had stained his hand and his overcoat.
He could not remember her alive, not for whole days at a time. She was always dead on the icebound road at the Finnish border where Gant had escaped him—and caused her death.
His voice was thin and angry, surprising Rodin out of his slouching posture.
"Listen to me, Lieutenant. Listen carefully. I may be just a policeman to you, but you're guilty of an offense that could land most people with a life sentence—the Gulag." Already, Rodin's thin lips had regained their sneering smile. Priabin would have liked, dearly liked, to strike that soft, half-formed face. "A life sentence," he repeated. "I don't want you, I want the supplier. Who supplies the cocaine, the hashish, all the uppers and downers used—people like you use? Who supplies? Who fixes?"
"And if I don't tell you?" Rodin asked tauntingly.
"Just tell me." Priabin sighed, arms folded across his chest. He leaned his head slightly to one side, as if studying Rodin. "No."
"Even the general wouldn't—I don't say
couldn't
, you observe— but he wouldn't like to keep the fid on this. It might cause him a certain amount of—embarrassment?"
Rodin's features were blank with surprise. Then they looked haughty. The aristocrat's ruined son again.
"You wouldn't tell him. You think he'd want you to tell him? You must be mad."
"If you're charged, he begins to be involved."
"And you're finished!" The voice was, satisfyingly, a little higher, uncertain—in the upper atmosphere of Rodin's confidence, where it was more difficult to breathe. "You know that, for fuck's sake. You know you'd be finished!"
"Lose my cushv billet here, you mean?"
"I heard you were lucky to get it."
He had been—oh, yes, he had been lucky. They had blamed Anna, the double agent, not himself. He had lied and concealed and clumsily accounted for his presence at the border, and they had accepted his version of events. It had been the woman who had helped the American pilot to escape; he was still loyal. He had been disloyal, of course—to Anna. Saved himself by exposing her treachery—which he had only that day stumbled upon, when he realized that his mistress was trying to smuggle the American out of the Soviet Union. Yes, yes, yes, the woman was a traitor, and better dead. Executed, not murdered. Yes, yes, yes, he had gone along with it— all of it.
His anger became directed at the weak, dissolute,
living
young man in the chair.
"Be careful," Priabin snapped, his face flushed with anger, tightened into hard lines. Rodin could not muster the satisfied smile that should have followed the gibe.
Why was he doing this? Was he looking for resurrection or oblivion, pursuing this dangerous young man whose father was a general? He
was
desperate, he admitted to himself; he didn't care.
"Rodin, whatever the reason or the consequence, I'll charge you.
You believe it. Papa would not be pleased with you, whatever his attitude to me. It's not your first—escapade, is it?"
"Don't be stupid, Priabin. Just look the other way. I won't make trouble for you."
"Uncomfortable?"
"Get lost!"
"Ever thought Papa might grow tired of dragging his queer brat out of the shit, time after time?"
"What are you trying to do, Priabin? Make things difficult for yourself?"
"Maybe."
"Got something against gays?"
"No. Just against drugs. Against you, almost certainly."
"A Socialist!" Rodin exclaimed with bright sarcasm.
"Aren't we all, comrade?"
"Just walk away, Priabin," Rodin warned, straightening his tie, preparing to button his jacket. "Just drop it. Nothing of importance is happening in here; it's all happening out there." He waved his hand toward the window: pale, long-fingered.
Priabin knew he had been monumentally stupid. The general would be angry at any interruption, four days from the launch. He shook his head. Monumentally stupid.
"Well?" Rodin asked. His jacket was buttoned and smoothed, his cap in his hand.
Priabin rubbed a hand through his dark hair. Nodded.
"You still refuse to tell me?"
"I have nothing to say." A mere formality of a reply.
"Very well." Priabin sighed, waving a dismissive hand.
Immediately, Rodin stood up. Smiled. Walked across the carpet with what might have been a strut of pleasure, with an authority that made his movements more masculine. He grinned into Priabin's face, his eyes no longer tired, his mouth continuing to sneer.
Dmitri Priabin ignored him, staring out of the window. Beyond the giant assembly building and the glowing hangar, the lights of a dormitory town threw a faint stain on the clouds. The lights of the old town, Tyuratam, illuminated the sky to the south. He could just make out the skeletal gantries of the nearest launch pads against the glow. Across the flat country, toward the eastern horizon, groups of lights appeared like the encampments of units in some vast, invisible army. Missile silos, watch towers, factories, railway yards, power stations, the airport, towns, villages. The vast settlement of Baikonur; the army's Baikonur.
Now he wished he had let Rodin go at once; never even arrested him. He was angry with his former mood of bravado. He did want to keep his nose clean, keep his cushy billet until—until he used the tool that had been given him to ensure his return to Moscow Center with some sort of small triumph. Now he might need Kedrov's arrest just to fend off the general's anger . . .
Shit.
"Just keep looking through your window," Rodin purred close to his ear. "You'll have plenty to look at in the next four days. It should keep you occupied." Priabin glanced at him. He seemed inebriated with release and his sense of superiority over the KGB colonel. His mood seemed excessive, but promised trouble for Priabin. "You can watch
Lightning
get under way."
Because the words seemed choked, bitten off, Priabin looked up.
"Lightning?
What's that?"
"I—" Hesitation? Confusion? Rodin seemed regretful, nervous; emotions pursued a hurried course across his narrow face. Concluding in a tight-mouthed self-assurance and a glance around the office as if to dismiss any authority that might reside within it. "I meant
Linchpin
—the launch . . .
Linchpin."
"Linchpin,"
Priabin echoed dubiously. "The launch of the laser battle station?"
"Yes. Just that." His face was close to Priabin s eyes. Priabin could smell the meat from the sandwiches on his breath, scent the last whiff of the boy's heavy cologne. "I said nothing else—understand? Nothing." He moved away, then drawled affectedly and without real conviction: "I can go now?"
"Yes."
Rodin nodded, placed his cap on his pale hair, clicked his boot heels in an ironic gesture, and left the room. Priabin heard him whistling in the outer office. The noise faded in the corridor.
Why had he been threatened? Rodin had forgotten everything else, even his petty revenge, because of that one word, his slip of the tongue.
Lightning?
Rodin had quite evidently and deliberately threatened him, told him to forget the slip.
Lightning?
What the devil was
Lightning?
It was important, and it was a secret. . .
He was startled by the opening of the door, having failed to register the polite knock. Viktor Zhikin, his second-in-command, appeared relieved.
Tm glad you—dropped the matter," he said at once.
"What? Oh." Priabin attempted a broad, dismissive smile. "Why try to buck the system, Viktor? who wants the heartache, mm?"
Zhikin moved his hand almost as if to pat Priabin s shoulder. Priabin grinned unconvincingly. His awareness returned to—
—Lightning.
Not
Linchpin
, as the first of the laser weapons was code-named.
Lightning.
"What?" he mumbled, aware that Zhikin was speaking once more.
"Sorry—are we going to pull Kedrov and the cycle-shop owner in for questioning? The surveillance teams want to know. You said tonight." Zhikin's voice was firm, even parental. It reminded Priabin of his responsibilities. It reminded him, too, that the spy was perhaps the key to his own future, now that he had made an enemy of Rodin, even of the boy's father. "They want to know if they should go in and try to find the transmitter. It doesn't look as if Kedrov is going to go back there since he was spooked by those clods following him." Zhikin was angry, self-critical.
"Not your fault, Viktor—they should never have been spotted by an amateur like him. Idiots." He rubbed his chin.
"Where's the dog?"
"What? Oh, Grechkova's taken him for his walk. Now, what do we do about Kedrov?"
"Where is he?"
"Still in his flat.'
"And Orlov?"
"In bed above the shop."
Priabin looked at his watch. Midnight. Rodin had been there since early evening. He wouldn't have liked that, he'd want some revenge for the—the inconvenience he'd been put to. Yes, it would be better to have the agent and his transmitter man in the bag before the shit hit the fan.