were now night-vision binoculars that rendered the world in shades of gray, adding to that inevitable sense of the unreality; the person under surveillance being an object, not a human being.
There was special film in the camera. Each of the surveillance instruments had its own pleasure to give. The tape recorder linked to the phone tap, voice-activated. Rigged to record even their own telephone reports. The laser eavesdropper, which collected the vibrations of a windowpane as it quivered in sympathy with a human voice, had developed a fault and stood, as if it had transgressed, in one corner of the bare, carpetless room. Priabin shifted his weight from foot to foot. It was easy to let time slow down. He possessed Rodin like this.
Power, that's what it was, in the end. He'd spent what? More than three hours just watching, doing nothing. He made himself move. The other two men in the room, Mikhail and Anatoly, stirred like large, impatient cats. The room smelled of waiting, dust, pungent garlic sausage, and beer. And heady, cheap tobacco.
'OK, he's as ready as he'll ever be. I'm going over,' he announced.
'You'll want to be wired, then, sir,' Mikhail observed, moving to one of the suitcases lying on the other side of the room. His companion, Anatoly, dragged a chair to the tripod and at once sat down, adjusting the focus of the night glasses, humming tunelessly.
'No. Not this time.'
'Sir?'
Anatoly had stopped humming.
'Just take it from me — it could prove safer. He won't tell, I won't, and you won't — whatever I learn. But I don't want any record around of my conversation with the lieutenant the military might get their hands on.'
'OK, sir, if that's how you want to play.'
'Mikhail, believe me. Something big is going on. I can feel it in my water. He knows about it, the fairy prince over the way. He'll tell me, if I can persuade him. Now, where does that leave us?'
'We've got the message, sir. What we don't hear, we can't let slip,' Anatoly murmured without turning around. 'We'll play dumb.'
'Good. Right, I'll be on my way.'
'Shouldn't one of us—?'
'You think he's dangerous?'
'Little princess could be desperate, sir. Could come to the same in the end.'
'He's up to his eyeballs in coke. I think I can handle him.' He clicked his tongue against his teeth. 'All right,' he added, 'if you see me struggling on the bed with him, don't assume I've fallen for his boyish charm — get over there on the double.'
Mikhail laughed, an explosive noise in the darkness.
'OK, sir.'
Priabin sensed their alertness, all the tiredness of routine and familiarity erased. He picked up his overcoat and pulled it around his shoulders. Straightened his jacket and tie. First impressions—
His boots sounded heavy on the floorboards. He closed the door behind him, walked down the short hallway, and opened the flat's front door. The corridor was empty. As he waited for the elevator, he felt the place's chill, received its smells of cooking and electricity, heard its murmurs. A number of television and radio sets, laughter. It was a squat, modern block of flats spilling from the science city's boundary and encroaching on the most northerly street of the old town; it loomed over the grander, older house — some czarist businessman's idea of a town mansion — where the apartments were allocated to military, top scientific personnel, mistresses. The flats were bought and sold, exchanged for large favors, promotions, used as bribes.
The concierge watched him leave the foyer. He pushed through the revolving doors into the icy chill of the evening. The temperature had plummeted. He stood for a moment looking up at Rodin's windows, two of them lit. He saw again the young man lying on his silk sheets, as if he still watched him through the binoculars; or hurrying to the lavatory to be sick, drinking but unable to eat. Afraid. Posed with his sunken head in his hands on the edge of the bed, staring at the carpet and desperate for the telephone to ring. He was ready to talk.
Priabin sighed with satisfaction as he poised himself on the edge of the pavement. Then he crossed the quiet, narrow street, hunching his overcoat up around his neck. The wind seemed to pass through his clothing with casual, biting ease.
There was carpet in the wide hall. The concierge, summoned by means of the speaker to one side of the door, ushered him in with slight but evident deference. Complicity smoothed his features. He would say nothing, unless directly questioned by someone more imposing than a KGB colonel. Priabin nodded meaningfully at him and took the stairs two at a time. The concierge had no interest in whom he might be visiting.
Outside the door of Rodin's apartment, he was aware of the degree of quiet luxury around him, foreign even to a colonel in his service. Foreign to him, anyway.
The carpet was thick beneath his soles, betraying where he had walked. Wool, pure wool. The door was perhaps the original one, whatever alterations had been made to the house. Paneled wood dark with stain and age. He did not remove his cap as he pressed the doorbell. First impressions—
He felt subdued by his surroundings, and needed to offer Rodin an image of immaculate authority. He must look as if he meant business, would be satisfied with nothing less than the truth, the whole truth, nothing but…
He pressed the bell again, held it, heard its shrill summons from beyond the door. Hoped Rodin had not passed out. He'd been sitting on the edge of his bed when Priabin left the other flat, holding his head gently like some delicate, ripened fruit. He had been awake, but in what fashion? Had Priabin left it too late? He became aware of the emptiness of the corridor and the staircase behind him. He was an intruder here, making a secret visit. He thought of Viktor Zhikin, and felt the heat of his body mount to his face; his cheeks burned. Rodin had to be awake—
He kicked the lower panel of the door, savagely. A weak, almost pleading grumble reached him from behind the door. It opened.
He saw a pale-blue carpet, flowers in a tall vase that had begun to droop and fade. Priabin straightened. Immaculate authority. He stared into Rodin's sunken eyes and saw them flinch with recognition and anxiety.
'Good evening, Lieutenant,' he said with overflowing confidence. 'I think it's time we had a long chat, don't you?'
He studied Rodin's features. Saw deterioration and experienced satisfaction. He had chosen the right moment. There was tiredness and empty loneliness; dark blue rings under the pale eyes.
'May I come in?' His hand pushed authoritatively at the door.
'I–I—what do you want?' The eyes finally narrowed against a realization of danger. 'Who — what do you want?' His drugged awareness picked up disconnected phrases.
'To talk to you, Valery.' His hand pushed the door further open. Large rooms beyond Rodin's narrow shoulder, pale, rich carpeting, ornaments and prints. Just as he had seen through the binoculars. It seemed to Priabin, not without irony, like a glimpse into the West from the far end of a long tunnel.
'Why?' Stubborn anger now, gathering slowly like a storm. 'Get out.'
'No.'
He turned Rodin's body with the hand that still held his gloves, propelling him into the apartment's long hallway. Rodin accepted the inertia of his entry and moved ahead, his feet shuffling, his body leaning slightly against the strong hand's certainty, as if grateful.
Prints of hunting scenes and the French Impressionists, red walls set against an almost white carpet. An extravagance of rugs. Priabin could imagine loud rock music and laughter from past parties. He shunted Rodin into the main living room. All the time he had been whispering to him as to a child being shepherded into the dentist's office. Rodin seemed to accept the spurious comfort and the imposed situation.
As Priabin had moved through the hallway and past the rooms, he realized that the image through the binoculars had not conveyed the wealth here, the possessions, the splashes of carpet, rug, picture, vase, ornament, hi-fi, record collection. It wasn't the taste, simply the income — the influence, he corrected himself — that could obtain all these things for a mere lieutenant. Cushions, jade, heavy drapes, his thoughts catalogued.
He pushed Rodin gently into a deep beanbag of a chair. The young man, no more than twenty-two or — three, adopted a yogalike posture, arranging his robe to tidiness. His eyes were blue and blank. He seemed to be staring at his visitor's boots intently. As Priabin lifted his head, he saw the extravagant molding and the plaster frieze of shepherds around the main light fixture. The room suggested the existence of an elite beyond that of his
