Winter Hawk

the drugs and kept his mouth shut. But the boy's contempt had stung him, made him angry…

Bad dreams of Anna the previous night, contempt for the face he saw in the shaving mirror just before the call had come — they'd played their part, too.

'You realize how serious an offense you've committed, Lieutenant?'

Rodin shrugged. His tie was loose at his throat, his uniform jacket was unbuttoned. The remains of a plate of sandwiches and an empty beer glass rested on Priabin's desk, near the boy's elbow. It might have been his office.

Anger. Useless, harmful anger, doing him definite harm and no damn good whatsoever, but he couldn't bring himself to let this arrogant, criminal little shit go free.

'I know who reported me,' Rodin hissed. 'The pretty little queen.' He did not bother to disguise his homosexuality, despite its magnitude as a criminal offense under Soviet law, as if he were immune to KGB charges.

Which he was.

Neither joke nor crime; just a fact about a young man whose father was a senior officer of the Strategic Rocket Forces, the army's most elite service. A man who was one of the triumvirate of staff officers running Baikonur, for God's sake.

You bloody fool, tangling with that lot.

General Lieutenant Rodin. His son could have worn makeup and a dress on duty, and little if anything of consequence would have happened to him. And the boy knew that as clearly as he knew who his father was.

And that's what enrages you, Priabin told himself, precisely that — look at his face now. He choked on a bile of silent rage. The conversation finished hours ago, as far as he's concerned. Priabin knew he was already on a list of petty revenges to be exacted as soon as the boy was released. In this case, a ruinous revenge if the father took an interest.

'Lovers' tiff, was it?' he asked quietly, unable to prevent himself. The boy set his teeth on edge, infuriated him beyond all measure.

Rodin laughed, not even blushing, not even angry.

'If you like,' he replied, shrugging insolently. Priabin's rank meant nothing, nothing at all.

Somewhere in the building, the damning evidence of the cocaine he had found would have disappeared by now, to placate the general's anticipated anger and the son s petty revenge.

'You don't seem to care much, either way.'

'Should I? After all, what can happen?'

There, he'd finally said it. Priabin, angry as he was, still felt chilled, and cursed the shame brought on by his shaving mirror; cursed Rodin's initial insolence as his locker was searched; cursed self-consciousness.

It was almost as if he carried within him some urge toward self-destruction. That was the Anna part of him, not the part of him that still worked, slept, ate, shaved, obeyed orders and stared at his uniformed self in mirrors, idled away his posting at Baikonur… a cushy number, you re bloody lucky to get it, after everything that's happened, they had said in Moscow. Not even demoted… yes, he was lucky to have gotten it after the American's escape and Anna's death. The part that wanted to convict Rodin, make him sweat, belonged to Anna; the wailing, never-to-be-comforted child she had left behind her, frozen in grief like a corpse trapped in thick ice.

Guilt, of course, overwhelming guilt for that moment when the border guards had opened fire, when his shouting had panicked them, when Gant…

He snatched his mind away from the images, from the round blue hole in her forehead. The effort to wrench his mind away from that one last image in particular was as violent as snatching his hand back from a flame. It was that image which, even now, returned more than any other. Often when he tried to remember her smiling, or making love, or concentrating on documents, or cooking, her forehead seemed to wear that final badge, the round blue hole. It was clearer and more terrible even than the blood from the back of her head, which had stained his hand and his overcoat.

He could not remember her alive, not for whole days at a time. She was always dead on the icebound road at the Finnish border where Gant had escaped him — and caused her death.

His voice was thin and angry, surprising Rodin out of his slouching posture.

'Listen to me, Lieutenant. Listen carefully. I may be just a policeman to you, but you're guilty of an offense that could land most people with a life sentence — the Gulag.' Already, Rodin's thin lips had regained their sneering smile. Priabin would have liked, dearly liked, to strike that soft, half-formed face. 'A life sentence,' he repeated. 'I don't want you, I want the supplier. Who supplies the cocaine, the hashish, all the uppers and downers used — people like you use? Who supplies? Who fixes?'

'And if I don't tell you?' Rodin asked tauntingly.

'Just tell me.' Priabin sighed, arms folded across his chest. He leaned his head slightly to one side, as if studying Rodin. 'No.'

'Even the general wouldn't — I don't say couldn't, you observe— but he wouldn't like to keep the fid on this. It might cause him a certain amount of — embarrassment?'

Rodin's features were blank with surprise. Then they looked haughty. The aristocrat's ruined son again.

'You wouldn't tell him. You think he'd want you to tell him? You must be mad.'

'If you're charged, he begins to be involved.'

'And you're finished!' The voice was, satisfyingly, a little higher, uncertain — in the upper atmosphere of Rodin's confidence, where it was more difficult to breathe. 'You know that, for fuck's sake. You know you'd be finished!'

'Lose my cushy billet here, you mean?'

'I heard you were lucky to get it.'

He had been — oh, yes, he had been lucky. They had blamed Anna, the double agent, not himself. He had lied and concealed and clumsily accounted for his presence at the border, and they had accepted his version of events. It had been the woman who had helped the American pilot to escape; he was still loyal. He had been disloyal, of course — to Anna. Saved himself by exposing her treachery — which he had only that day stumbled upon, when he realized that his mistress was trying to smuggle the American out of the Soviet Union. Yes, yes, yes, the woman was a traitor, and better dead. Executed, not murdered. Yes, yes, yes, he had gone along with it— all of it.

His anger became directed at the weak, dissolute, living young man in the chair.

'Be careful,' Priabin snapped, his face flushed with anger, tightened into hard lines. Rodin could not muster the satisfied smile that should have followed the gibe.

Why was he doing this? Was he looking for resurrection or oblivion, pursuing this dangerous young man whose father was a general? He was desperate, he admitted to himself; he didn't care.

'Rodin, whatever the reason or the consequence, I'll charge you.

You believe it. Papa would not be pleased with you, whatever his attitude to me. It's not your first — escapade, is it?'

'Don't be stupid, Priabin. Just look the other way. I won't make trouble for you.'

'Uncomfortable?'

'Get lost!'

'Ever thought Papa might grow tired of dragging his queer brat out of the shit, time after time?'

'What are you trying to do, Priabin? Make things difficult for yourself?'

'Maybe.'

'Got something against gays?'

'No. Just against drugs. Against you, almost certainly.'

'A Socialist!' Rodin exclaimed with bright sarcasm.

'Aren't we all, comrade?'

'Just walk away, Priabin,' Rodin warned, straightening his tie, preparing to button his jacket. 'Just drop it. Nothing of importance is happening in here; it's all happening out there.' He waved his hand toward the window: pale, long-fingered.