he were exercising his lungs in front of a window on a cool, fresh morning. His head felt cleared, sharply attentive.
He looked around him and beckoned a senior technical officer, who hurried to his side.
The overcoated colonel had clattered along the echoing catwalk only moments earlier. His heavy features were still sharp and blanched by the outside temperature. Despite his anxiety, Rodin smiled at the man; greeting someone who shared his secrets, his outlook, his background, as if smiling at the portrait of an ancestor, or a son.
'Well, Suslov — Yuri — well? The express hoist at the pad — you have news? Well, man, well?' It was as if his eager, breathy questions were releasing something more than anxiety.
Suslov was nodding, regaining his breath, unable to prevent a smile of relief and satisfaction from spreading.
'Yes, yes — sir, its working again. Fully operational.'
The small group of technical officers attendant on Rodin moved to surround Suslov, congratulating him. Rodin turned away, hands gripping the rail in front of him, staring down at the shuttle, back opened like some crustacean with its shell surgically removed. The laser battle station had come together now. Lasing gas tanks ready to be filled, the mirror complete, the long, lancelike nozzle positioned. The nuclear generator, which was to be activated only when the shuttle reached its orbit just before the launch of the battle station, was housed in the main section of the weapon's oil drum of a fuselage. Rodin itemized the battle station like a clerk; each constituent, seen as if with an X-ray machine, adding to the satisfaction he received from Suslov's report.
'Fully operational,' he murmured. Suslov was at his side, gloved hands on the rail, eyes looking down. The kingdom—
'Yes, General,' he affirmed, his voice sounding abstracted; as if he were on some high place and looking across the border to a homeland long missed. 'Were back on schedule.'
Rodin turned to him. 'We must obey the Politburo's timetable,' he instructed, as if passing on information he disliked. 'We must launch when the treaty is signed. For the television transmission. Twelve in Geneva — the crew will reach orbit at that time. The opening of the cargo bay will coincide — so Nikitin and the other old women have ordered.' He smiled at Suslov, easily, mockingly. 'Don't worry, Yuri, careless talk will not cost lives, not here, at least.' He turned back to the group that hovered behind them on the catwalk. Glanced through the glass into the assembly building offices and control room. Television sets, including on some of their screens the American shuttle in its orbit, the launch pad, with the booster stages upright in their gantry, the mission control room of Baikonur.
The battle station would be detached from the cargo bay of the Soviet shuttle and its boosters fired to place it in its thousand mile-high orbit. Then its infrared sensors would align the mirror and the nozzle, the laser radar would scan the target, the fire control system would trigger the main beam, and… and the American shuttle would vaporize; a tragic accident. A perfect, undetectable crime. What debris there was would remain in low earth orbit or burn up in the atmosphere as it fell earthward, toward the Amazon forest or the remote Sahara. It was irrelevant; there would be nothing left.
'Pictures,' Rodin announced. He snapped his fingers, as if the word had struck him with the force of an original idea. 'I want a photographic record, from this moment, Yuri.' He turned to his hovering staff. 'Organize it. There will be Politburo and Stavka members who will not understand without pictures.' His voice was light, his mood almost jolly. 'The older ones, the tank people, the infantry commanders.' His staff smiled conspiratorially. 'Yes — and others will want to savor what we have witnessed.' He looked down once more. 'Especially the moment we first move the shuttle — but everything else, too. Loading the weapon, the cargo bay, the crew boarding, out at the gantry — everything.' Excited by his own orders, he glanced at his watch. 'It is now one-thirty. The shuttle begins its journey to the launch pad in ten hours' time. Back on schedule, as you so rightly say. Gentlemen, lunch.' He clapped his hands together, as if at the sudden thought of food. They parted for him, a closely knit group of satisfactions; smiles, confidence — just what he wished to see… Valery. A soldier, like these men, he forcibly instructed himself. Already uniformed, lying in an open coffin in the morgue. Waiting to be flown home, as if fallen in a war.
Lunch.
He opened the door of the control room. Television images erased the presence of his son, as did the anger they evoked. Pictures from Germany: Strategic Rocket Forces officers and men, supervising the loading of SS-20s onto trains — trains! — to bring them home.
It will stop, he promised, whether to the men he saw on the screen or those around him, or even himself, he was not certain. But it was like the taking of an oath. It will stop. The trains will halt and be turned around. The army will not be broken by the politicians.
'Lunch!' he made himself announce again with hearty pleasure. 'Later, there'll be little time for eating.'
'Yes, yes,' he snapped impatiently, his eyes glowering at Marshal Zaitsev, the defense minister. 'This is not the time or the place to press these matters, comrade Marshal,' Nikitin's voice warned. His hand waved around him to indicate the private departure lounge, the gathered small groups of uniformed or overcoated men — the press and the cameras and the photographers herded into one far corner. 'What I have agreed to approve the Politburo will approve.'
'But, comrade President, the revised budget is no more than a fraction of what is required.'
'Zaitsev — drop this matter. There are — other factors. Do you expect us to divert rivers, make deserts bloom, feed our people with lasers? You will have enough money for research, then for development, when we are convinced you require it!' His hand made a firmer gesture, dismissive of protest. He deliberately turned his gaze from Zaitsev and looked out of the huge windows of the lounge and across the snowbound tarmac of Domodedovo Airport. A snow-clearing plow plumed a thick, darkened fountain of snow in an arc. His aircraft waited below the windows. To the north, hardly discernible in the heavy midday cloud and threat of further snow, the hills and towers and domes of Moscow were insubstantial. Crowds had gathered, or been gathered; black-coated, head-scarved or hatted, they waited in the icy temperature for the departure of this flight — perhaps for this flight above all? Nikitin was — no, not moved by the sense of occasion, but affected, certainly affected by it. And by his own sense of himself as a historical figure, he observed with a semblance of humor. He would bring back hope, he supposed. The Americans would look at things in that light — perhaps much of the world. For himself, it was a question of necessity; historical inevitability.
Well, whatever he called it, it was necessary. Zaitsev, of course, would protect the army — the bloody army — to his last breath, realist though he often appeared. So he'd offered the army something of a reprieve. This laser weapon business would distract them from the cuts in the budget, the other reductions, the diversion of funds to agriculture, consumer production. They could play with their new toy, make it bigger and better, while people ate and watched television. Yes, it was a good bargain to strike with Stavka and their allies in the Politburo; and it was the dagger in the sock, the gun up the sleeve as far as the Americans were concerned. It couldn't, it really could not, be better…
… except when Zaitsev and his cronies started to be greedy again — and now, of all times.
'It's time to go,' Nikitin announced to the window, to the gray, lowering scene beyond it. He turned to Zaitsev. 'Yes, yes,' he soothed with almost clumsy humor in his voice. 'Don't sulk, comrade Marshal. I'm right — you'll see. And I won't emasculate the army, either.' He slapped the defense minister's shoulder with hearty violence, then stared across the room at the waiting press cameras, the television crews. 'Come, stand beside me, for the photographs.' Then: 'Come, come!' he bellowed to negotiators, generals, Politburo members, waving them to him. 'Time to have our pictures taken, for posterity.' He laughed in a great roar. Then he looked at Zaitsev. 'And remember to smile, comrade Marshal. This is a wedding, not a funeral.'
The press contingent, garnered and selected from the foreign press corps in Moscow, moved forward. The pick of the crop, Nikitin observed, recognizing faces he had seen across tables in the past weeks as he gave his carefully prepared and monitored interviews. As cameras rose to eyes or bobbed on shoulders, he barked with mock severity at the defense minister, 'Smile!'
13: The Key to the Prison
