Winter Hawk

peaceful blue ocean. 'It means that Linchpin is only the weapon— Lightning is the code name for the use of the weapon. That's why I'm to be punished for the rest of my life, Priabin, and why they killed Sacha — because I let the cat out of the bag. The beautiful, expensive, marvelous American space shuttle Atlantis is nothing more than a target!' Rodin's mouth was wet with excitement, his body was hunched over the set. 'They are going to use the laser weapon to destroy the American shuttle in orbit — a test of its efficiency, that's their joke.' He wiped at his forehead and leaned more heavily on the television, as if his words had caused him acute physical exertion. 'Now you understand what's at stake. Why Papa can't love his little boy anymore? Do you understand?'

Priabin stared at the floating, silent shuttle.

'They can't,' was all he could find to say in a weak, breathy whisper. He had no idea of the length of the silence that had preceded his words.

Valery Rodin laughed.

'Don't be a moron, Priabin,' he mocked. 'Of course they can do it. It will be explained as an unfortunate, tragic accident. The Americans will never suspect how it was done — or even if they suspect, they could never prove it. The shuttle will disintegrate, become dust.'

'But why?' Priabin's hands floundered in front of him, as if a great, drowning wave had broken over him. His thoughts seemed loose, like unsecured ballast or a freed cargo. The shuttle floated serenely; invulnerable.

Vulnerable, he realized now. So very vulnerable.

'Why — why again?' Rodin taunted. 'You're being very slow tonight, Priabin, or are you always that thick?' He left the television, as if no longer needing its support, and slumped with what might have been confidence into the beanbag. He lit a cigarette, and Priabin could see his hands were shaking. Then he said: 'To show the old dodderers in the Kremlin — and the ones who are only old in their ideas — to show them once and for all who is in charge of things. Who really gives the orders — who knows. Who cares. They're going to do it. The why of it only a policeman would want to know.' He shrugged. 'Maybe they want to make sure things go on just as before when that treaty is signed.' He was talking quietly now, intelligently, as if revealing another part of himself, one that would further win Priabin's admiration. He did seem calm, in control of himself — unlike Priabin, whose head beat with the knowledge, with its terrors and implications. Rodin continued: 'Nothing will change, will it? Whatever the old women in Moscow want to do about agriculture, schools, medical research, consumer goods, cars for every family, food for every family — it just won't happen. The army will have the icing on the cake, just as always. They'll have the laser weapon, they'll have shown they can use it. The project will never be scrapped or signed away. The greedy men of the Politburo will want a slice of that cake.'

He studied Priabin's wild expression, seemed to find it satisfactory, then plucked a grain of tobacco from the tip of his tongue. Unfiltered American cigarettes, not hashish, Priabin noticed. His eyes catalogued the furnishings of the room, his mind unable to cope with Rodin's words. Terrible, terrible… but his thoughts could get no further. Green carpet, the frieze of shepherdesses and their rustic swains, vases, a couple of pieces of jade, the hi-fi, the racks upon racks of LPs and cassettes — even one of the new compact disc players. Terrible, terrible…

'They'll agree to all the money they need for research, they'll build them all the laser weapons they want — just like the American President would do, no doubt, if his army had Linchpin. Killing the shuttle will give them backbone. It will be the starch in the Politburo collars. No one will ever limit or abandon the laser weapon project if its power is demonstrated, will they? All they have to do is kill that.' His fingers, and the smoking cigarette, pointed at the screen like a gun. 'Bang. See?' he added in a quieter voice. 'See now?'

Priabin shook his head. 'Why?' was all he could utter.

Rodin's mouth made a simpering gesture of sympathy. Then he grinned. The boy had found a small, precious superiority and was clinging to it. Priabin could not cope with Rodin's information, his opinions.

'Why?' Priabin asked again, finding technique held out like an assisting hand. The boy had to go on talking now, had to be used, had to—

Priabin remembered the microphone, imagined Mikhail and Anatoly in the darkened room across the street, imagined their shock, their sense of possessing dangerous knowledge. It was all on tape, but it would make no sense without Rodin. He had to use the boy as his proof. However he did it — and he had no solution at the moment — he needed Rodin, in person, in Moscow.

Technique stilled the swirling of his own fears and imaginings. So, when he asked why yet again, he tried to sound uncomprehending, dim.

Rodin grinned comfortably.

'What is it ever about, policeman? Power.' He raised his hands to acknowledge the room, the fiat, the benefits that extended beyond the windows, beyond Baikonur. 'This — this is privilege, bought by power. The power to divert contracts, twist the arms of suppliers, find out and blackmail the local Party officials and the local black market — but you already know all about that. Even you can tap in to that much of the system. But it isn't power, is it? It's just playing at things. My father never plays. He likes real power, not the gimmick of privilege. You know people who like privilege— beavering away in every city of the Union, finding the lever, assessing the fulcrum, tipping the scales in their own favor. But that's just kid stuff.'

Priabin clung to the analysis, to the cool mind that supplied it, the almost bored tone of Rodin's voice. He clung to it because he dared not think of the other thing. Now that he had been informed, he knew he must act — and could not even begin to contemplate action.

'And that's what the general wants — real power?'

Rodin shook his head.

'It's what the army already has. Its a question of preserving the power they have. For them, the issue's simple — the laser weapon is not an offensive system, it's to protect the army. Don't you see that?' He shook his head once more in reproof of dullness. 'Papa,' he announced with deep, bitter irony, 'Papa told me a lot. He had to have an audience. My mother is in Moscow, and he would not have told her in any case. I served as his audience. It's all about moving the wheel when you put your shoulder to it, not being defeated by the wheel's size and weight. Moving events.' He stubbed out his cigarette, murmuring, like a taunt or even a temptation: Haven't you ever wanted to be sure you could do that, if it came to it — control and change events?'

Priabin's features had come to reflect stupidity, incredulity. His mind swirled like the clouds interposed between the planet and the image of the shuttle on the screen. He realized Lightning would work. Yet he clung to the concretelike set of his facial muscles, drawing Rodin out, making him the superior, making him want to go on talking. Even now, as he spilled the whole of the story, he was implying that he was still his father's confidant, that they were really close. His father could relax only in his company.

'No,' he admitted as an answer to Rodin's challenging question; it was like an admission of abnormality.

'Then you haven't been on the mountaintop.' Rodin giggled. They all feel like that, always.'

'And they killed Sacha, just like that.'

Rodin's head jerked back as if avoiding a blow. His thin face became enveloped in shadow. What might have been an involuntary tear gleamed. Rodin snapped, wiping at his eye, 'Let's have some music on. I'm bored with all this talk.'

Priabin watched him cross to the hi-fi. There was no urgency in the KGB colonel; as if his knowledge restrained him in the armchair to which he had returned. He felt empty, as if at the end of a passion, or some great defeat of his most cherished hopes. Tired.

'I wonder what you like, policeman?' Rodin murmured to himself. His long fingers flicked along a shelf of LPs. 'Ah — what about this? About your era, I would have thought.'

He stood up, unsheathed the record, placed it on the turntable. A few moments later, the words struck against Priabin's thoughts as if Rodin had seen into some secret part of him and was using an interrogation technique of his own. Softening Priabin up.

Anna. The song was Dylan, of course. The American CBS album, no cheap copy. Not political Dylan, which Anna had always preferred, but the Dylan Priabin himself would always choose — had always chosen.

He was intent on the words, his face paled by the shocks of memory, and the likeness of his own history to the present. Anna and that damn wheelchair that had become part of the weapons systems of the Firefox. A wheelchair for the totally disabled, governed by brain impulses, corrupted into a thought-guided weapons system; its inventor, Baranovich, corrupted, too. He shook his head, hating the clarity of the past. Rodin studied him, his own face abstracted, filled with memories.