Rodin. The boy wanted to talk, must be made to talk usefully, to the point.
'Just to talk,' Rodin murmured. The hashish had calmed him thoroughly. His voice was slow, easy, detached.
'Why did you want me to come, Valery? Why now? Why at the moment when you're being sent away?'
'Because I knew you would come,' Rodin replied dreamily. He even raised his balloon and swallowed in a mock toast what remained of his cognac. Priabin straightened from the glasses. The hoy s eyes were unfocused, wide-pupiled from the drug and from staring into the night. 'I knew you'd come,' Rodin repeated.
Time was diminishing quickly now. The boy wasn't frightened any longer. He had to be slapped into wakefulness; Priabin had only his voice and his experience to do it. Anna, go away.
'What did Daddy say, Valery?' he probed, his voice insinuating like a needle. 'Why did he beat you up? Just for being queer? Or was he giving you a taste of what's in store for you?' Priabin sensed the others in the room leaning forward, attentive and appreciative. Anna's dead face flashed like a warning. Go away!
'What?' Rodin breathed, shaken.
'Has he abandoned you, Valery? Told you he'll never drag you out of the shit, ever again? Is that what he was telling you with his fists — you're on your own now?' Rodin's quickening breathing, like some indistinct climax, accompanied his words, raced ahead of them. 'It was, wasn't it? You'll be at the mercy of everyone at the Academy — they don't like sodomites there, do they? He's going to cure you, Valery, isn't that it? He thinks enough beatings and you'll settle down with a nice young wife, eh? Eh?' Priabin laughed mockingly.
'Shut up, shut up, shut up.' Rodin was collapsing in his pain and distress and fear for the future. Future? At the Frunze Academy, without his father's protection, he had no future. He'd be the butt of jokes and casual violence from fellow students and instructors alike. 'Shut up, shut up, damn you!' Like the scream of someone being beaten into confession in a distant room. Priabin shuddered.
Rodin's voice had degenerated from words to sobbing; self-pity controlled and enveloped him. Priabin let the noise continue until it faded into a breathy, swallowing quiet. Rodin had walked away from the lighted square of his window and sat heavily on the edge of his bed. Next door, the subdued lighting of the living room showed the place like something in a brochure, for sale or rent; already abandoned.
Eventually, Rodin said in a tiny, empty voice: 'You're right, policeman, you're right. He's finished with me. Daddy's finished with his naughty little boy.' Priabin bent to the glasses. Rodin sat unmoving, head in his hands. The remainder of the joint was burning a hole in the thick pile of the gray carpet. He might have been posing as a model for some bronze statue meant to symbolize defeat.
'Then talk to me,' Priabin replied after a moment. No, he corrected himself. Not softly softly — not yet. 'I haven't got time to waste, Valery.' Commonsense approach, brisk and shallow. A man with a lot on his plate, things to do. 'Do you hear me? Unless you have something for me, I'll have to abandon this interview. Be on my way-'
Silence, stretching so much that Priabin winced against its breaking. Then: 'No. Don't do that.'
'Why not?'
'I want to talk to you. I have something to tell you.' He would not look up, like a child pleading in its misery, cowering in a corner. Afraid to look at the adults in the room. 'I — you can come over. I'll unlock the door.'
'I don't have much time to waste,' Priabin said with difficulty, the pretense of indifference now almost impossible.
'I won't waste your time,' Rodin replied, looking up and out into the night. 'I know what you want to know. You come over. Who knows? I might even tell you.'
The step onto the wooden porch felt greasy, treacherous beneath Gant's boot. Adamov's eyes, although peering into the dusty wind, nonetheless gleamed. Before Gant glanced away from the man's face, he noted the tightness of expectancy around Adamov's jaw, the slightly flared nostrils. Gant looked at the helicopter as if seeking some quick, complete escape. He felt dangerously inadequate, his feet on the step, the lee of the dwelling offering little protection from the wind. The two Uzbeks remained near the Hind, as if detailed to guard it. Gant felt himself without resources. He could not simply run, simply kill—
He unclenched his hands, looked directly into Adamov's face, and sneered.
'Georgi who? Who's he, comrade, when he's in the house?' He felt his chest tightening as he held his breath. Adamov's features narrowed, as if only now responding to the cold wind. His eyes squinted. Then he rubbed them, clearing flying dust.
'Georgi Karpov? You know him, surely?' he laughed.
Gant shook his head, watching Adamov's hand, the holster at his hip, the hand, the holster, the hand… which came unclosed slowly, purposefully, then passed the holster, moving up to the peak of his cap. His shoulders shrugged.
'I've never heard of him, comrade Captain — and neither have Gant said slowly, evenly. Then, more quickly, he added: What''s the matter with you, policeman?'
The hand left the cap, hitting Gant's shoulder like a statement of arrest. Then Adamov laughed.
'I thought he was posted to Alma-Ata. Haven't heard from him for a couple of years, though. Could have moved on.' He shivered. 'Come on, man, let's get out of this bloody wind.' Then he added as easily as taking his next breath: 'Bloody country.'
Gant glanced quickly toward the Hind, then said: 'Sure.' He allowed himself to be pushed ahead of Adamov, the skin crawling hotly on his back almost immediately, despite the chill of his body. The wind knifed along the porch, the dust curled like brown waves across the concrete.
'You can give me a lift, maybe?' Adamov said behind him as his hand gripped the handle of the door. Then he slipped on a loose board and giggled.
Gant seized on the advantage, gripping it fiercely. Adamov was half crocked with drink. When he turned, Adamov was holding a leather-bound silver flask in his hand, waving it encouragingly.
'Something to go in the coffee — kill the bugs!' He grinned. 'Had to start on the flask. Rum.' He sniffed it. 'Not bad, either. Couldn't drink the vodka — got no smell. Wouldn't have drowned in the stink of that Uzbek pig.' He gestured toward the truck and its driver. 'Come on, get the bloody door open — I'm freezing.'
Gant stepped into the narrow, shallow passage behind the door. Wooden floor and walls; uncarpeted, undecorated.
'How the hell can I give you a lift?' he asked.
'Why not?' Adamov replied, then bellowed: 'Come out, come out, whoever you are!'
His fist banged against the thin wooden wall, which groaned as if in protest.
A door ahead of them opened. A woman in black. Muslim dress. Face hidden below the gleaming eyes. A wisp of graying hair. Olive skin. She stood aside, without reluctance and without welcome, simply attempting not to exist. Gant strode past her as Adamov would have expected Captain Borzov of the Frontal Aviation Army to do. Lift, passenger, his mind repeated endlessly, creating waves of heat. He could not, must not kill Adamov.
Too dangerous. People might know where he was, might be expecting him. The Uzbeks knew he was here. Yet there seemed no other solution. Time was elongating, being wasted. There was no other solution…
And soon…
Adamov bellowed something in Uzbek at the woman, as if spiting out something that made him gag. They were evident crudities, an oath, a command.
'Told her to make some coffee and be quick about it,' he explained.
The woman backed away, black robe sweeping the floor of the low room. Single rug, log fire — no, cakes of something that might have been dried dung — a bare table and chairs, one battered armchair near the fire. It was like a weekend cabin, suggesting no one lived there on any permanent basis. The woman closed the door of what must have been the kitchen behind her. Adamov slumped heavily into the armchair, which puffed dust and creaked with age.
'God,' he murmured. Inspected the flask, and adjusted his holster so that it no longer dug into his hip in the narrow chair. Offered the rum. 'Not while on duty?' he asked ironically. 'Bad for your night vision, uh?'
Oil stains on the arms of the old chair, on the bare, scrubbed wood of the table. Gants eyes cast about as if trying to avoid the question. He did not want to drink, should not, but knew that he had to. He had to do more than keep Adamov tipsy, he had to make him drunk. Malleable. He smelled the coffee from beyond the closed door; the smells of cooking, spicy and strange, remained in the dead air of the room. There were loose threads, bare patches, in the one old rug on the floor.
