The Day Before Midnight

“Well what?”

“I have been out of contact for twelve hours. It is not possible to know how they’re going to react. There might be a few questions, maybe an unpleasantly or two. But nothing I cannot handle.”

“Great. In other words, these guys may roust you just going through the door?”

“No. No, I am a trusted man. Nothing will happen.”

The American looked at him with great doubt on his plump, tough face. Then he said, “You want a piece, Greg, in case it should get hairy down in the Wine Cellar with this Klimov? I’ve got a nice H and K I could lay on you.”

“There’s a metal detector. If KGB security finds I am armed, it will be the end, There will be no way to get downstairs.”

“Sure?”

“Certain.”

“Now, don’t rush it, guy. That’s how these things fall apart. You get anxious, you try and force it, bingo, it’s history. There’s plenty of time. Hell, it’s not even eleven. You’re just old Gregor, in from the cold, looking to relieve your pal Magda downstairs. Okay?”

“Okay,” said Gregor.

“Time to go, guy.”

“Okay,” said Gregor again. Somebody slid the van door open and out he stepped into amber light. It was moist and chilly; the streets glowed; the air was filled with sparkly mist. When Gregor breathed it felt like ice sliding down into his lungs, a great feeling. It made him feel alive. He shivered, drawing the cheap little overcoat around him, but took comfort from the weight of the vodka in the pocket. Once he got inside, he promised himself a nice hit, a drenching, gushing gulp of it, to send all his demons away.

He walked on down to 16th Street, turned left. He could see the building up ahead on the right, just past the Public Television Office, which looked far more totalitarian than the Russian building. The embassy was a big old place, Georgian, once upon a time a capitalist millionaire’s playpen. Up top, the complicated mesh of aerials, microwave dishes, and satellite communication transmitters looked like some weird spiked crown.

Gregor crossed the street. Two American cops — the executive protection service — at the embassy gate watched him come, but they didn’t matter. They were nothing. He knew once he was inside the gate, KGB would be on him.

Who? Who was captain of the guard that night? If it was Frinovsky, he’d be all right. Frinovsky was an old man, a cynic like himself, another secret drinker, a homosexual, a man of appetites and forgiveness. On the other hand, in KGB as in GRU, these kids were taking over. Ballbusters, show-offs, zealots, Gorbachev’s awful children, all with their pretend birthmarks. Gorshenin, perhaps. Gorshenin was the worst, a little prick who kept names and Wanted to Rise. He hated those like Gregor, who only Wanted to Stay. He was young Klimov’s pal too.

Gregor arrived. He flashed his embassy ID to the two cops, who stood aside, and then he stepped through the gate and headed up the walk toward the door, toward the bronze plaque, CCCP.

He was back in Russia, and scared shitless. The door opened, a blade of orange light spilled across the pavement.

It was Gorshenin.

“Arrest that man,” the awful Gorshenin shouted.

So very deep now. He couldn’t have much gas left in the cylinder at all. The angle was torture. It was like surgery, he was so far inside. The light from the torch was far, far away, a blur of bright flame through his black lenses. He could see only more metal. He withdrew.

“What is wrong?” the general said.

“My leg, Christ, it’s killing me.”

“Get on with it, goddamn you.”

“My leg’s bleeding again, Jesus, can’t you—”

“Get on with it.”

“Maybe we missed it or some—”

“No!” screamed the general. “No, you did not miss. The center, you went into the center. I saw, I measured myself, I know exactly where the cut should go and how it should proceed. I monitored. You have not failed. Cut, Mr. Hummel, goddamn you, cut, or I’ll have you shot and your children’s bones ground to fertilizer.”

Jack looked at him. Crazy fucker, he now saw, crazy underneath, crazy as a goddamned loon.

The general pulled out a pistol.

“Cut!” he said.

Jack turned, and again thrust the torch into the deep gash in the titanium. The bright flame licked at the far metal, licked and devoured, drop by drop, and the metal fell away.

Then — pinprick, BB, cavity, Cheerio, nailhead — a minuscule black hole began gradually to appear in the metal at the end of the tunnel. He saw it expand as the titanium liquified and fell clear. Jack’s heart thumped and, goddamn him, he couldn’t help the excitement.

“I’m there. I’m there,” he shouted, giddy with joy. The long journey was almost over.

Dick Puller hunched over the microphone, sucking on a Marlboro. He drew the smoke deep into his lungs, held it there, absorbed its heat, and hissed it out in a flare from his nostrils. His face was bleak and set and ash gray. Before him stood the map on the wall, with its brave little pin reading BRAVO, the radio transmitters, ashtrays, cigarette packs. Around him nervous staff guys, Commo clerks, state cops holding cups of coffee, talking quietly, just staring out into space. The air was heavy with tobacco smoke and pointless, dry chatter and despair.

And there was Peter Thiokol, who’d changed totally. He wore commando gear now, black field pants and a black sweater, the black knit watch cap down over his ears so that they were too hot. His glasses looked fogged.

Peter stood with his arms crossed, trying to get his thoughts assembled. Hard, under the circumstances. It was like a waiting room outside the maternity ward in an old Saturday Evening Post cartoon. There was no real sound in the room, no meaningful sound. He could hear the creak of boots as the men swayed their weight from foot to foot, or scuffed their heels against the floor, or exhaled loudly or sighed tragically. Occasionally, the crackle of static leaked from the speaker of the radio.

“What’s taking them so long?” Peter finally asked, but nobody answered.

He spoke again, because no one else seemed to have the will to.

“Colonel, maybe you ought to contact them again.”

Puller just looked up at him, his face gone shockingly aged, broken. He looked as if someone had been hammering on his bead with pipe wrenches and snow shovels. Peter had never seen this Puller, dazed and old, caught in the crunch of the stress, the energy bled out of him.

This is what Skazy saw at Desert One, he thought in horror. An old man without an edge; an old man squashed by the pressure; an old man who’d sent too many boys to die too many times.

“They’re either going to make it or they’re not,” said one of the other officers. “Talking to ’em during maneuver just screws things up. This, uh—”

“Dill,” said Puller.

“Dill, this Dill, he either gets ’em there or he doesn’t. Funny, you train all your life for a spot like this and there’s maybe twenty thousand professional officers who’d give an elbow and a jawbone to be there, and it comes down to a gym teacher.”

After that there wasn’t much to say.

“Delta Six, this is Halfback, do you read?”

“I copy, Halfback,” said Puller.

“Sir, we still holding?”

“That’s affirmative, Halfback.”

“Sir, if it comes to it, we’ll go in. I mean, we’re Rangers. We go in. You just say the word, and well jump off.”