suddenly very small, a needle in the haystack of the landscape around him. But he had found it, and that was all that mattered. Relief was now far too late and unimportant.
He glanced to either side, then over his head. Clear. He was well clear of the corrugated roof and the power fines. The Hind continued to waddle, ready to lift. He eased the column laterally, in the direction of the wind.
He raised the collective pitch lever, applied rudder to remain headed into the wind, and felt the Hinds undercarriage lift from the ground and the wind buffet the helicopter. Then he increased his airspeed and entered a climb of more than two thousand feet per minute, rushing up like an elevator on the side of some tall building. The ground diminished beneath him, bathed in moonlight. Gant checked the moving map, his distance and course. Two hours' fly-tog. He moved the column to starboard, and the helicopter banked. He eased back on the stick. On the moving map, he watched the white dot that was the Hind resume its original course. Baikonur lay almost due north. He glanced at his watch once more. Twelve-forty. He was late; darkness already seemed to be slipping away like water to a drain. The moon was old and lower in the sky. His head spun with the flickering, separate illuminations of times and distances. He had just enough time — just enough — to get out again, with Kedrov, before daylight. His pulse slowed and his temperature seemed fall back toward comfort. Just enough time.
Be there, you bastard — be there!
Priabin wanted to bruise Rodin's face just as the boy's father had done. Urgency should be obeyed, not put aside like a book being loaned between friends. Kedrov was out there in the marshes, for the taking. Valery Rodin, having admitted him, seemed only to want to prolong the conversation. He was greedy for company.
'Let's talk about
He swallowed the whiskey Rodin had poured for him and attempted to calm himself. The room incensed him as much as it had done on his visit earlier that evening. The molding and frieze and the smell of hashish and cognac; the scent of his own expensive Scotch whiskey. Priabin felt the anger mount. This boy must not be allowed to waste his time.
'Let's talk about
Rodin's head snapped up. His eyes were wakeful, clearing from their drugged, drunken glassiness. Then the young man shrugged. Priabin sighed inwardly and controlled his own anger as Rodin continued talking as though Priabin were some kind of confessor figure, not a KGB colonel. Rodin was not afraid of Priabin, or of his rank or organization. Priabin was, in Rodin's eyes, the only visitor who was
Priabin felt the battery and the tiny microphone against his ribs. It was recording the maudlin details of Rodin's past; nothing of importance.
'I'm to train for the Sukhoputnyye Voyska, the Ground Forces, would you believe — specifically, the Tank Troops. I am to become a career soldier, hence the Academy.' His lips pouted with anger, helplessness. 'A career officer,' he barked thinly, the noise of a beaten animal protesting.
'But why?' Priabin asked.
'To make a proper man of me, of course.' He sneered. 'I'm to follow in his footsteps.' His voice was a venomous hiss. 'And it gets me out of the way very neatly,' he added.
'Why?' Priabin asked, too eagerly.
Rodin winked at him slowly, exaggeratedly. 'We'll come to that, all in good time.'
'I meant, why now? Why change branches of the service? Why are you in the GRU if your old man wants you to be a tank officer?'
Rodin swallowed cognac. He was very drunk, but somehow in command of the situation. Priabin could not bully effectively; and could not leave, despite images of Katya and Kedrov, Dudin and his men going to the girl's assistance. He had to know, had to open the oyster that was Valery Rodin. However long it took.
'Most of his closest pals in Stavka are in the intelligence directorate. It just worked out that way. And he could really trust those pals to keep an eye on me — keep me under control?' He giggled, but the noise was cynical, contemptuous. 'And in this God-forsaken place, he can keep a personal eye on me. He can surround me with watchers.'
'And now you think he's had enough?' Technique. Patience coming like a memory of training, calming Priabin's anxiety.
'Right. That's right. He's bloody had enough.' Rodin tossed his head. His eyes glazed once more. He stared down into his lap as he sat on the beanbag like a Buddha; a thin, blond idol. 'I told you, didn't I, that all I wanted was to paint?' He looked up, and Priabin nodded as if interested. 'I've told everyone,' Rodin added ironically. 'But you, I didn't fill in all the details. My mother plucked up the courage to put the idea to him, when he was home on leave. She made sure he had the best food the housekeeper could cook and she could buy — French wine, good cognac, a cigar. He was expansive, know what I mean?' Again, Priabin stifled his impatience and nodded. 'When Mother put it to him, he just looked straight at me, sardonically, and nodded like a judge. He even smiled, but that was cold, too.' Rodin waved his free hand, shooing away the oppressive dements of the memory. 'He went to the experts, to academicians, touting some of my watercolors, my sketchbooks, and canvases like a Penniless student, and showed all of them. It took him a week altogether. Then he came back, with a typed report, summarizing everything they'd said. Top copy for me, carbon for Mother. He made us sit there, in front of him, on dining chairs, and read the report.'
'And — they said you were no good?' Priabin said softly into the silence. The words echoed like the splashing of pebbles in a deep Weil. He saw Rodin once more without barriers, and could not avoid Pity for him.
Rodin nodded furiously. 'Yes, yes, that's what they said. They confirmed all his suspicions, answered all his prayers. I'd never make it as an artist. He had me in an army training school inside a month. Mother never raised the subject, ever again. All the theater visits stopped, the allowance was strictly controlled, no parties, and above all, no friends of a certain kind — I'm quoting him. I couldn't be unsuccessful, not as his son. So he put me in the army, where if your father's a general you can't possibly fail.' Rodin wiped his pale hps, rubbed a hand through his fair hair.
'I'm sorry,' Priabin said eventually. Rodin swallowed cognac by way of reply.
Priabin glanced at his watch. One in the morning. Kedrov was out there—
He twitched with indecision and impatience. How vulnerable was Rodin? Would he break soon?
Rodin said cynically: 'I have it all to look forward to, don't I? Once he abandons me, I'm lost.' He swallowed fearfully. 'God, I'm lost.'
'Why does he want to do that to his own son?'
'What?'
'Why does he want you to suffer? You won't have a prayer in the Frunze, once they realize your old man isn't protecting you anymore.' He winced, anticipating Anna's sudden return to his thoughts. 'They'll make a punching bag out of a queer without connections. They're all shits in the Frunze, you know that. He knows that. Why? Why do it to you?'
'Because I laiow, and I told!' Rodin shouted at him. His eyes were wild, large and moist like those of a hunted deer or rabbit.
'Why did he have Sacha killed?'
'Because Sacha's the one I told. Don't you understand? If you know, you don't talk, not to anyone.'
'Nothing's that important. Nothing could make him punish you like this, surely?' Priabin soothed and pressed. He was leaning slightly forward in his armchair, his eyes watching Rodin intently. It was a huge effort to let technique take its course. 'Tell me, what's that important?'
He got up and crossed to the beanbag. Rodin seemed to cower into it as Priabin leaned over him.
'Tell me,' he murmured. Had Rodin broken? Was he snapping like a stick now? He placed his hand on Rodin's shoulder, and the shoulder shuddered into his grip.
'You really want to know? Something so dangerous?' Rodin asked with a strange, wild cunning. 'Really? Aren't you afraid?'
'Tell me about it.'
Rodin put his bare feet on the carpet. Priabin stood aside as the young man crossed the room in his creased