The Day Before Midnight

subjectifying, calming, soothing, as it went.

“Ah, Miss. Another, please.”

“Sure, hon. You surely do sop it up.”

He smiled. His teeth were not terribly impressive either. Her eyes were merry.

“You kinda cute,” she said, handing the glass down to him. “Bartender’s a close personal friend of mine. He said this one’s on the house.”

Gregor smiled. Somewhere under the bulge of his gut that hung down over his lap his dick stirred.

But then he thought of young Klimov. Trying to kill him. And his dick withered.

Clouds came across his wide face; fear flashed in his little eyes. The waitress was gone. The only thing that was there was the whisper of the blade as it darted by him, and the thrum of its vibration as it plunged into the car roof.

Gregor blinked, came out of it, and dived into the vodka.

Yes, so much better.

Gregor sat back. He had figured it out.

It was Klimov. Really, he could almost sympathize with the younger man. He wished to move his least productive agent out. He could not simply fire him, the time had passed for that, he had fired too many others, if he fires him then it reflects poorly on Klimov. Therefore, with a little ingenuity, perhaps aided by the intercession of his powerful uncle Arkady Pashin of GRU, he penetrates the Pork Chop security arrangements, sets up a phony meet, and then arranges for his rotten apple to die.

The results are interesting and beneficial to everyone except poor Gregor, who in theory is now dead, six inches of Spetsnaz blade cleaving his fat chest. But Klimov has eliminated his bad apple in a dramatic way, with a minimum of personal embarrassment. He can be protected in this maneuver by the importunings of Pashin, watching over his little nephew, wielding his great power and influence like a sword. At the same time, Pork Chop has been discredited. To what purpose? Perhaps whoever controls Pork Chop has accumulated too much power in the higher ranks and must therefore be destroyed by a rival. Surely the rival in question would be, again, Pashin.

Good God, realized poor Gregor, he had been targeted for execution by a senior general in the GRU, one of the most powerful men in the Soviet Union.

There was only one answer: vodka.

“Miss. Another one.”

Gregor swallowed the liquid. It dashed down his throat. He felt his face burning red. He looked at the empty glass in his fat hand.

Lumbering with agility that might have surprised his many enemies in this world, Gregor made it to the men’s room, pulled out a pocketful of change, and with studied labor and enormous effort called the one person in the world he felt he could trust, Magda Goshgarian.

The phone rang time and time again. Finally, her groggy voice came on.

“Magda!”

“Tata! I am stunned. What on—”

“Magda, listen please. I need a favor. I will be continually in your service if you can help me. Please, I cannot begin to tell you how—”

“Stop sniveling, Tata. Are you drunk? You sound pathetic.”

“Magda, something is going on.”

“Yes, it is. Young Klimov wants to bite your head off.”

“No, something else. Magda, I am — indisposed.”

“Is it a woman, Tata? Some American bitch with a baby in her belly that came from your tiny dick?”

“No, no. It has nothing to do with women. It has to do with the fact that I must stay clear of the embassy for a few days now while I sort some matters out.”

“You’re going over. Tata, don’t you implicate me, they are watching me too. I swear, Tata, if you go, you’ll leave such a mess—”

“No, I swear. I swear on my father’s grave and the great Marx’s image that I’ll remain true. It’s just that for technical reasons, I am indisposed tonight. Alas, I have cipher clerk duty in the Wine Cellar tonight. I—”

“Tata, I—”

“I know you did it last night. But since you have therefore rested today, you are therefore automatically my replacement. I call merely to ask you to take the duty for me. You can tell Klimov I called you from my afternoon pickup and that it was going very slowly for me and that I was afraid therefore I would not be back in time and that I therefore asked you to take the watch. And that you have not heard from me since. I think you’ll find him surprisingly agreeable.”

“Tata, I—”

“Please, darling. I’ll buy you a dinner. I’ll buy you the most extraordinary dinner in some ridiculously expensive Georgetown restaurant. I have a little squirrel fund hidden away, that’s all, and I can afford it, I promise.”

“Tata—”

“Magda, you know you cannot deny me one single thing. It is not your nature to deny me.”

“You are such a sniveling, craven fool.”

“Magda, you have no idea how desperately I need the help. You’ll help?”

At last she surrendered.

“All right.”

“I love you, darling.”

“It means I’ll have to do double duty tomorrow. My system will be upset for weeks.”

“Pick your restaurant, Magda, and you shall have whatever you want.”

Gregor hung up. Now, if he could call the other woman in his life, Molly Shroyer, and if she had found anything for him, then maybe, maybe he could make himself seem so important to Klimov that the young killer would desist.

Gregor dialed the second number. Molly answered curtly and he unlimbered the Sears code, then hung up and waited. And waited. And waited. He hung around the bathroom so long he thought he might be arrested for perversions, or beaten up by truck drivers or some such—

It rang.

Gregor picked it up.

“Gregor, I’ve got only a second,” she said.

“Darling, I—”

“Gregor, shut up! Something big is happening out in Maryland, so big they won’t tell even us. All the senators on the committee and the senior staff have been to the White House and there’s some kind of news blackout, but nobody’s talking. The only thing is that it’s very, very serious.”

“Out in Maryland?” Gregor said. Then he remembered the airplanes roaring over the Columbia Mall.

“But what could—”

“Gregor, as soon as I know, I’ll let you know. I have to run now, love. Really, it’s serious.”

“Yes, I—”

The phone clicked dead.

Damn! he thought. I need vodka.

Phuong loved the darkness, the stillness, the sense of being totally alone. She felt whole in darkness.

The narrow walls of the mining shaft seemed to be leaning in, and she could feel the man beside her breathing hard. She could sense his fear.

Yet for Phuong the tunnels meant one thing. They meant safety. Up above, her child had been turned to ashes and shards by napalm. Up above, her father had died, her mother had died, her brother had been maimed. Her sunny village was blasted into nothingness by terror bombers. Hard men in helicopters came to kill them, and to poison the jungle. So she faced the darkness with something close to peace. She knew no fear. Her feet found the way. She sensed the walls and the low ceiling and the rough transit of the floor. The darkness was everywhere.

Teagarden, the American, fought against it. His beam was a desperate protest against it, a plea for mercy