'You're not hurt?'
'Of course I am. You knew I would be — isn't that the way it works. Only the arm — your man aimed as far away from my body as be could, I guess — at the wheel.' A silence, then: 'You bastard, Kenneth — you
Aubrey held out the microphone to Anders, and saw that his hand was shaking. But then, so was Anders's big hand, and he was a much younger man. Much younger.
Gorochenko stopped dialling. There was a strange light in Vorontsyev's eyes, and he was afraid of it. It looked like madness, and he silently cursed himself for what he had done. The miscalculation of arrogance, or desperation — or even anger. Break Alexei, then rebuild him. Perhaps he had overloaded him —
How would he dig himself out? He dialled two more digits swiftly. His eyes flickered to the gun, once, just as he paused before the final digit.
Vorontsyev saw the old man resume dialling, and understood only that the truth about his father was just another ploy — like Natalia, like Vrubel, like Ossipov. Gorochenko had used everything — everything
He lifted the gun, and heard Gorochenko say, 'Stay calm, Alexei.' The dial of the telephone purred back to rest. He focused his gaze on Gorochenko's free hand — tapping on the edge of the table, the drumming muffled by the glove, the anxiety dear in the movement. He attended to the face. It was dear in his strangely foggy vision, and seemed wizened, shrunk. The cunning eyes were transfixed by the levelled gun. It was a hateful, arrogant face.
'Put down the phone,' Vorontsyev said, the gun pointing at Gorochenko's forehead. 'Put it down. You're under arrest.'
Gorochenko appeared surprised. Then he said into the telephone, 'Valenkov? Where is he — get him to the phone, at once!'
The telephone was a little way from Gorochenko's ear, and Vorontsyev could hear a distant, tinny voice referring to the caller as
A long moment of silence, in which Gorochenko seemed to concentrate utterly on the telephone. Until he looked up at the gun, and at Vorontsyev's face, and whatever he saw there caused a spasm of fear to cross his features. Vorontsyev felt himself inside a dream or a concussion, and he was simply doing his duty. He concentrated on the hand, the telephone, the shape of the jaw, the dark coat. Only physical things.
He could not kill his stepfather — but he would stop him. He was afraid that there would be an answer from Valenkov — an aide scurrying through corridors, ringing out on another line — just as Gorochenko, he could see, was beginning to fear that Valenkov would ignore the call.
Vorontsyev had buried his appalling misery for a moment. He felt clear-headed in a kind of delayed shock.
It was an endless moment for Gorochenko. He sensed that Vorontsyev was trying to excise areas of reality, concentrate only on the stupid inadequacy of his duty. He stared at his son for a long time, then he heard the receiver at the other end being lifted from a desk or table. He pressed the mouthpiece close, made as if to speak.
Before he uttered a sound, Vorontsyev did his duty. There was no time for thought or passion or memory. He shot Gorochenko through the head, twice, neatly. The body flew backwards out of the chair under the impact of the heavy 9 mm bullets, and the telephone clattered on to the floor squeaking tinnily.
As he sat there, the gun now resting on the table, he appeared from his angle of vision to be alone in the room. So he sat quietly, without moving his head. Not even slightly.
He had done his duty.
Because there was nothing else. Gorochenko had taken away everything else, except his duty, his loyalty to the state.
He grasped the heroic fiction of the moment. He had prevented the coup. Then he abandoned speculation for a dreamlike emptiness. Perhaps he would go and look at the body in a little while. But not yet, not just yet. At the moment, it was sufficient just to sit quietly in the silence of the dusty, cold little room. The telephone, its connection broken, buzzed like a distant insect. Everything else was quiet. It was five forty-six on the 24th.
