Winter Hawk

staring into the same storm that Zhikin's wife had endured. Revenge, now — oh, yes.

'It was done deliberately. They did it.' He stared at Zhikins face, which was empty, blank, asked nothing of him; yet weighed on him with an intolerable but unavoidable burden. It was easier to feel enraged by the twisted limb than by that dead face.

Zhikin's face, his wife's face, Anna's face — all the same; distinct but communal. Fellow victims.

'OK. Keep quiet about this. Your report is to say nothing, except that you're satisfied it was an accident. Understand?'

Evidently, the forensic officer was mystified, but he nodded.

'I understand, Colonel.'

Priabin's fist closed on Gorbalev's lapel. He jutted his face close to that of the other man. 'No, you don't understand. Just do as I tell you. Your report describes those injuries as being entirely consistent with the accident. The car reveals nothing to account for the crash Zhikin' — he looked at the body, as if he were engaged in its betrayal; not for long, he fervently promised—'must have blacked out or swerved to avoid something or simply lost control. He made a fatal mistake. Understand? There are no suspicious circumstances— none!'

He glanced, once more, at Viktor Zhikin s body, saw the ink-stained knee and ankle, the twisted shape of the whole leg, and sensed the hands that had done it, breaking the bones with a rifle butt, or even a sledgehammer. Zhikin had still been alive when—

— hopefully unconscious when they began. With time and care, they could have wedged his foot and ankle without damage. They'd hurried it, taking the violent shortcut — and they'd probably wanted to. Twiglike snaps greeted with laughter, the handling of a living human form like a child's rubber doll, bending and breaking the pipe- cleaner skeleton within the flesh and muscle. Priabin felt sick. The damage was as much a warning as the drowning, as the actor's death.

Keep out. Restricted area, under military control. Keep out. Stay away if you know what's good for you.

Priabin prayed, once more, that Viktor had been unconscious when they began breaking him.

'He was still—?' he faltered, releasing Gorbalev's lapel. He smoothed the jacket's material absently. Gorbalev, polishing his glasses with haste and concentration, nodded.

'Alive? Yes. Water in his lungs. He wasn't dead when he entered the water. Probably unconscious, though. He was hit on the back of the—'

Priabin heard no more, slamming the door of the small, bare, harshly lit room behind him and cutting off the noise of Gorbalev's voice. His chest felt tight, his throat full. He shook with the irrepressible desire to kill someone.

Colonel Gennadi Serov of Soviet military intelligence, commandant of military security for the Baikonur area, watched the screen of his television set with a withering contempt. He had not turned up the volume. The puppets appeared more wooden, more meaningless without their words, without commentary. Bobbing, smirking heads posed in front of backdrops of Moscow and Washington. Both of them in darkness, the American capital slipping into night. the Moscow backdrop bright, jeweled with lamps. Two heads without authority. Calvin the American puppet and their own dolt, Nikitin. It was another of the endless repeats of the broadcast that Moscow television was transmitting to the entire Soviet Union, the whole of the Warsaw Pact, no doubt, just to make certain. There they were, the fools, grinning their little pact at one another; one of them relieved, the other defeated, he reminded himself. Which only made them all the more contemptible.

That fool Rodin, he thought.

Lightning.

Doubtless the father had talked to the son and then the son had whispered everything into the shell-like ear of the queer little actor. The whole matter angered Serov; it was almost an abstract emotion, tinged with his habitual disappointment regarding other people.

He stood with his back to the room, close to the television set. His hands were in the pockets of his uniform trousers, his jacket was unbuttoned; he wore a cigarette in the corner of his mouth, a Russian cigarette with a cardboard tube. The strong, acrid smoke surrounded him. He stood, hunch-shouldered, staring at the two voiceless faces on the screen, as if menacing them. Then, weary of them, he switched off the set. Thursday. It was to be Thursday. Calvin was so sensitive to world opinion at that moment he had been forced to agree to the signing. He was powerless against the wave of events. The launch would take place on Thursday, to coincide exactly with the signing of the miserable treaty. The real secret would come on Friday, with—

— Lightning.

And because of Rodins sodomite offspring, and this, this thing now sitting on the other side of Serov's desk, quaking in its highly polished boots because a pal had dropped him in the shit up to his neck. Because of people like that, Lightning had been threatened.

Serov glared at the army captain, who visibly blanched. Serov enjoyed the reaction; enjoyed, too, the captain's presence. His own efficiency, his personal stock, would emerge well from dealing with this — and from making Rodin toe the line over his son. Yes, if he could manage things with a certain deftness, then he would profit.

The captain's collar was crumpled and his tie was askew. With heavy, malicious humor, Serov thought it looked like the beginnings of an attempt to hang himself. The captain had opened a Pandora's box; Serov had to find the lid and replace it. He did not doubt that he could.

The captain had been the direct cause of the flight of the computer technician, Kedrov. The man had disappeared after overhearing this buffoon's loose talk — in a lavatory, for Christ's sake.

An evening of boozing, a big mouth, the simple inability to realize he and his pal were not alone. The man wasn't just disappointing, he was a disaster. Serov deliberately leaned one fist on his desk; the other rested on his hip. The pose suggested either might strike at any moment. The captain, gratifyingly, shook visibly.

Serov began. 'You're a senior telemetry officer in the main mission control room, your security clearance is high — so high that you were placed in possession of certain most secret information in order that your computations would remain valid — you are experienced, you have been in your present post for five years — and you open your mouth in the lavatory, Captain?' The voice, the long sentence and its subordinate clauses had been orchestrated to reach a climax accompanied by the banging of his fist on the desk. The captain's tall, slim frame — apparently he was something of a wow with the women — obligingly twitched in response, jumping like Serov's paperweight carved in the form of a tortoise.

'I–I—' The captain tried to protest, his mouth and vocal chords captive in the surroundings of the office, imprisoned by his sense of Serov's boundless authority in police matters.

'Shut up!' Serov raged. 'This miserable little computer operator, a civilian into the bargain, has disappeared. He is the man you saw in the club toilet?' He held up a clear, sharp color print of Kedrov's head and shoulders, thrusting it at the captain like a weapon. The captain rubbed his arms as if cold. His hands were near the shoulder flashes that denoted his membership of the Strategic Rocket Forces, the elite. Not for much longer, Serov promised. It would be the Far East, if he wasn't shot. Or perhaps military adviser somewhere in Africa, deep in the bush with the niggers, the fuzzy-wuzzies. 'Is it him?' he bellowed. The captain twitched again. 'Is it?'

'Yes, comrade Colonel, it is him,' the captain blurted out.

It appeared, with this little turd's confession, that Kedrov had panicked, fearing he had heard too much for his own good — but he was running around somewhere with knowledge of Lightning.

'You will no doubt be dumbfounded to learn that this man is not at his work, not in his flat with influenza, with a woman or walking his dog — in fact, he is nowhere to be found!' Serov bellowed, amused by the evident terror his words inspired. Mentally, he was ruefully cynical, detached. Guilt was, of course, a hideous weapon. The captain was already, in his imagination, packing for the Siberian Military District and stitching lieutenant's shoulder boards on his uniform.

Yes, Serov thought, 111 see to everything on your behalf. Afghanistan for you, sonny. There you'll either be filling your trousers from sheer, unadulterated terror, or your stomach with booze or your head with hashish or your arm with heroin. One of them will see you off and save the price of a bullet in the nape of the neck.

'He's gone, flown, disappeared,' he continued aloud. 'And all because you frightened him off. He overheard you, saw the look on your face when you discovered him, and took off for the hills.' He flicked his intercom switch as violently as if striking the captain, and barked into the machine. 'I want some rubbish cleared out of my office —