own service. There, the wooden dacha amid the trees was the best that might be hoped for. Obscurely, the room angered him. He was not the simple son of a peasant; his father had been a schoolmaster and Party member, with a medal from the Great Patriotic War — he'd seen the red banners rise above the shattered, grandiose buildings of Berlin. Seen the Fascists finished off.
And now this. A lieutenant in the People's army with all this.
He moved closer to Valery Rodin. And sat on the floor, cross-legged in front of him.
'Tell me,' he said softly, his hand touching the sleeve of Rodin s robe. 'Tell me about it.' His overcoat, after he had removed it from his shoulders, lay at his side like a large, untidy dog. He placed his cap and gloves on top of it, making himself look younger, less official. Sympathy, not envy, he cautioned. Pat his arm, but gently.
Rodin's features seemed engaged in an effort to regain an attentive pattern around his nose and mouth. The cocaine, as a stimulant to the nervous system and taken, no doubt, to help him climb out of the pit of loneliness his father had condemned him to, had lost its effect. It had been defeated, to some extent, by the brandy. He was now quiescent, but deeply introverted and depressed. Priabin felt himself little different from a bomb-disposal officer approaching a suspicious device.
Rodin's pupils were like shriveled raisins in his chalky face. Acute paranoia, Priabin recalled from somewhere. Large doses of cocaine and acute paranoia. The bomb might explode; worse, it might be a complete dud and not go off at all. He continued to pat the young man's arm. Rodin did not respond to the contact. Eventually, Priabin said:
'Tell me, Valery, who's locked you up in this expensive cell?' He shook Rodin's arm gently, but the lieutenant dragged it away from his touch. He scowled because his features could not find a sneer of contempt quickly, then the look soured into a drooping snarl.
'Get out,' he whispered, blinking his eyes to make them focus.
Priabin shook his head. 'I know you want company, Valery,' he asserted. 'You're all alone here. They've seen to that, haven't they?'
Perhaps ten seconds later, Rodin nodded. Once the action had commenced, he continued to nod, like a doll. His breathing was loud and ragged; his hps quivered, and his eyes appeared damp.
'Your father?'
'Of course my bloody father!' Rodin hugged his arms around himself, turning into the beanbag, drawing his feet up. His whole body shivered. He began to sob. His voice had seemed to tire after the scream. 'Always my bloody father. He made me go into the fucking army when all I wanted to be was a painter.' Priabin glanced swiftly around the room. The walls displayed nothing that might have been painted by Rodin. 'No good at it, anyway,' Rodin pursued, 'but he couldn't wait to tell me that.' He looked at Priabin, who arranged his features to express sympathy. Rodin's voice was a transmission from a distant radio station; fading, indistinct. 'In the bloody army for you, my lad,' Rodin mocked, his face twisted, his hand flapping in a caricature of a salute near his temple. 'In the army, make a man of you.' He turned once more to his listener. It seemed that he did not recognize his visitor; did not care who it was. 'Never admitted it, never, never, never. All the army gives you is privileges and a chance to bugger the conscripts!'
He laughed raggedly, staring at Priabin. His attention subsided almost immediately, the world around him rushing into a vague distance. His eyes were inwardly focused, and the retreat seemed more profound. Priabin was greedy to interrupt, to begin to interrogate, yet restrained his mounting impatience. But it was a race against time.
'Worse for him, really, now I'm in the army and under his nose. He had to — to keep sweeping up after me, cleaning up the turds I leave on — his doorstep… art, culture, acting don't interest him. Queers are forbidden, don't talk about them. My mother knew, she understood. Couldn't bear it, but understood. He can't though, never has.'
Priabin absorbed the room once more. The father paid. Every day, General Lieutenant Pyotr Rodin paid. Drugs, affairs, indiscipline; the general had committed a grave error in having his son posted to Baikonur. Custody must have turned into a nightmare.
Away, he suddenly thought. The next logical step, especially now, would be to send his son away somewhere; to avoid any and all consequences of the interest he had aroused — that Sacha's murder had aroused. That was why the boy was in quarantine. He might have no other chance of talking to him; it had to be now. He had to press.
'Why did they kill Sacha?' he asked bluntly, but not without a sympathetic tone.
Rodin's face paled further around his open mouth.
'What?' He was attempting to concentrate, to realize that it was cold water that had been thrown over him, to wake him.
'Why did they kill Sacha, Valery?'
'I killed Sacha. / did it.'
'Why, then, Valery? Had you quarreled? Out of love?'
'What?'
'Why did you kill him?'
'Sacha? I didn't.'
'You said you did. Did you?'
Tears leaked from Rodin's eyes. He began nodding again like a round-based doll, tilting his whole upper body time after time.
'Yes,' he breathed at last. Then: 'Yes, yes, yes, yes.'
'How? How did you do it?'
Would the paranoia hold? Persecution, the sense of isolation, the depth of misery, all conspirators surrounding Rodin, making him spill his little cargo of guilt.
'How?'
'Yes, how? Did you rig the car?'
'What do you mean?'
'You killed Sacha.'
'I told them about him!' he cried out, then curled more tightly into the beanbag chair, into himself. He cringed away from further pain.
Priabin stood up, and Rodin shivered at his movement. The lieutenant was more deeply withdrawn than ever, almost lost to him. Priabin crossed the room, looking for the bathroom.
Bedroom, bathroom next door, he remembered. Bathroom— yes, light on; drawers, cupboards, vanity, marble-topped — my God. Aftershaves, colognes, shaving lotions, hair spray — yes, expensive makeup, French and American. Whose? Sacha's?
He opened the bathroom cabinet. Nothing he wanted there — not the mouthwashes and the creams. Drawer? No. Second drawer? Ah, yes.
Silver spoon, bottle. He gathered the items and returned to the living room. Rodin had not moved. Priabin placed powder in the bowl of the spoon on its thin silver chain, to be worn around the neck. If he gave Rodin another dose of cocaine now, the stimulant might make him high enough, temporarily, to talk about
The telephone rang. White powder spilled from the spoon as Priabin's hand jumped with surprise. He stared at the receiver on a table near the windows. It continued to ring.
Warning?
He'd heard nothing outside. The telephone was reaching Rodins sunken consciousness. His face turned, wildly hopeful. He made as if to move.
Priabin picked up the receiver, but said nothing.
'Colonel?' Anatoly s voice.
'Yes, what is it?'
'Staff car's just drawn up outside the building, sir. Looks like the general… wait a minute' — he heard Mikhail's voice calling out indistinctly—'yes, sir, it's the general.'
'Damnation!' he exploded. 'Is he—?'
'Coming in, sir. On the steps now. Do you want—?'
