Winter Hawk

— he'd stopped for tea in the canteen, then made his way up to Viktor's office. To find that Viktor and the actor had not returned. Three hours after his telephone call. Immediately, he had begun to worry. He sensed danger, even violence. The actor had called someone — Rodin, it had to be. What had happened to Viktor?

Eventually, as if only confirming something he already knew, a police patrol found signs of — an accident, a car had evidently gone into the river… on the route Viktor had said he would take. Yes, yes, I'll come at once. What? The army? To get the car out… very well, you've called in the army…

Holding the Zil aloft like some cup or trophy contested for and won, the SKP-5 ground and chugged its way back out of the water. The disturbed plates of gray ice slid and grumbled together, as if healing the breach in the river. The streaming car hung nose down; something tilted and restrained pressed against what remained of the shattered windshield. Army frogmen, who had attached the crane's cables and hooks to the car after it was located on the riverbed, half buried in the thick ooze, walked out of the freezing water. Other frogmen, in reserve, hurried toward them with tea or coffee and blankets and warm capes and parkas. Their interest in the Zil was minimal now that it was coming ashore.

Priabin blew sleet from his open mouth and pulled the hood of his parka closer around his head. Like a gesture of mourning. Viktor Zhikin's body threatened to loll out of the broken windshield and across the car's hood; it would then slide like an awry tailor's dummy, Ml into the riverbank mud.

He shuddered. The car was carefully set down at the top of the bank; almost a car again, intact for a moment in the poor light. He hurried up the slope, his rubber boots slipping on the churned mud, while police and army crowded gingerly around the wreck. The SKP-5 was uncoupled and chugged away, slithering lizardlike toward the tarmac of the road.

A car had crashed, skidding on the icy surface of the road that ran alongside the river. Two people had, unfortunately, drowned. That's all there was to it, Priabin thought. It was simply a coincidence that the car happened to be driven by his KGB second-in-command. Viktor.

He pushed the others aside, his emotions supported by his rank. People parted. He touched at, then lifted Viktor's head. Water seeped from Viktor's lips and nostrils. Bruising begun and halted by death. Gashes. He touched the face, feeling the embedded glass pricking and cutting his fingertips, his palm. His eyes watered with the cold wind and with the contact of the dead man's cold, wet skin. He snatched his hand away, sniffing. Moved around the car to the passenger door, tugged it open — no damage to the car, no evidence of a collision to drive it off the road, no violent skid marks on the tarmac behind it? — and a second body flopped dutifully and dramatically out of the door like dirty water escaping; to loll lifelessly as a doll, wet hair touching the churned mud at the roadside.

The little actor, Rodin's lover. As expected. Priabin felt an unreasoning hatred well up in him at the cause of Viktor's death. No skid marks? An accident?

Viktor might have died just because this little poof had panicked, tried to grab the wheel perhaps? Viktor might have died that way, but instinct, damn instinct, made him suspect other hands, an arrangement, a plan.

He was aware of the army uniforms that surrounded him, and aware that they outnumbered the KGB uniforms present. Why did he suspect that this was not an accident? Because it had killed Viktor? Was it simply grief getting in the way of reason, like a powerful bully? He stared at the actor's still head. You, he thought, you made a phone call from the theater, you spoke to someone — and then this happened. You'd have been shit-scared, because you were in real trouble and you knew what we wanted to ask you about—Lightning. The logic of the sequence was as tight and aching as a band of cold steel around his temples. He could not remove it. What had he heard? Loose talk because of the cocaine, mock toasts, murmured in-jokes? Enough to know what was meant, what was intended?

Viktor, Viktor, he thought. Why did you let him make that call? He must have called Rodin, yes. Priabin sighed. Coming out from his office, to this spot, driving through the failing afternoon light beneath the low, uncommon cloud cover, he had become convinced there had been no accident; he had been summoned to witness a design, a deliberate thing. Someone had wanted the actor shut up— and they'd shut Viktor up, too.

He felt his chest and throat fill with misery and useless rage. He glanced again at the actor's head near a frozen puddle. The voices of those around him had retreated to desultory murmurs, like those of people attending a funeral. The actor's bald spot was streaked with strands of water-darkened hair. Then he looked across the car at Viktor's graying temples above the scratched, glass-filled cheeks. It would have been so easy — an army patrol to stop the car, quick, decisive blows, a just-as-quick shove to the car, and down the river-bank and into the water… slipping out on the ice, breaking through it, vanishing up to the level of the roof. It must have been like that.

He wiped his eyes and nose. Lit a cigarette, hunching into the folds of his parka to do so. The first exhaled smoke was whisked away by the wind; as insubstantial as any protest, any action he might contemplate. Lightning had killed Viktor, he was certain of it. Rodin had threatened him after his slip of the tongue, and he had been frightened, too. Kedrov had used it as a lever, a bribe, to make the Americans sure to rescue him; the little queer actor had panicked as soon as Lightning was mentioned, panicked enough to make a desperate phone call.

Every mention of it was like spiffing gold; people rushed to retrieve it.

'What?' Priabin snapped, startled back into the cold wind and the enclosing, bare, low hills that hemmed the scene. He glared at Dudin, the senior KGB officer for the town of Tyuratam. The man's expression was still shocked, but in a less personal way than Priabin knew must be true of his own features.

'I said, sir' — Dudin was careful with the occasion and Priabin's rank; Captain Dudin—'can I get the bodies loaded aboard the wagon now? Or do you want Forensic to inspect the car with — while they're still in place?' Dudin shuffled his feet, blew on his gloved hands.

'Let — get Forensic to examine the car first,' Priabin said carefully, aware of each syllable, weighing its unhurried, neutral tone. Why? Give nothing away, he answered himself. The numbers of army parkas and overcoats seemed to press toward him like a hostile crowd. Rifles — holsters — guns. Instinct outran logical deduction, but he moved with the certainty of a strong swimmer in calm, familiar waters. 'Yes,' he repeated, 'Forensic first.'

The approaching car was moving fast, and its engine noise distracted him. Made him flinch, seeing the crashed, soaking Zil in front of him, as if he heard the accident happening in his head. He turned. Coming from the direction of the main complex, not from Tyuratam. A German car, silver-gray. A small, quick sedan, a BMW. He knew it had to be Rodin's car, the general's wealthy, privileged son's shiny toy. Yes.

Rodin, capless, got out of the car and hurried toward the wreck. His fine, thin hair was immediately disarrayed about his head. He pushed blindly past Dudin, then his eyes met Priabin's with a wild look. He seemed unnerved by the stare of the KGB colonel. Carefully, as if pointing, Priabin lowered his gaze, drawing Rodin's anxious, frightened eyes after it.

To the bald spot, the lank strips of hair like drying leather thonging the stained, soaked yellow sweater. Rodin sobbed chokingly, just once. He did not look up, though he appeared to wish not to look at the dead actor. Did not wish to touch, kneel beside, stare into the dead eyes of—

— wanted not to be there, Priabin concluded. Yet aware of what he would find even before he saw it. He had not dared to hope for anything better than this. Priabin felt himself embarrassed, as if he had intruded upon a scene of private mourning. Eventually, Rodin looked up, still kneeling.

They understood each other entirely as their eyes met. Priabin's gaze waited for the young man like a statement of arrest. The KGB officer even nodded, half-consciously, confirming what he had learned, what had been confirmed for him. Rodin looked aside, his cheeks blanched, his eyes wet and shameful.

He called you, Priabin recited silently. He sensed Rodin gathering his story together like wisps of material to be woven. But you panicked, too, you told others. It was dangerous, but then you had no choice. You knew what you'd done, what you'd find here. He called you, and you set the dogs on him and Viktor, my friend.

Because of Lightning.

Slowly, now…

Rodin's face was bleak as he turned once more to Priabin, his hps primed with their cover story. Seeing the young man's obvious fear chilled Priabin. Ahead of him, something like — he glanced involuntarily at Zhikin's dead face — something like that, unless he was careful, so careful. They'd killed now, the barriers had come down, the cage had been left open.

And their panic was evident, too.

Care, care… Priabin stared over Rodin's blowing hair, even as the young man began his halting, unconvincing story. The low, surrounding hills were closer in the gathering twilight. Sleet blew spasmodically. He was cold.