The meeting, obviously, was over, Alexeyev thought, standing and shaking Zhigunov’s hand. The admiral shook Kovalov’s hand and made a hasty exit from the room after turning off the display screen.
“Georgy,” Kovalov began. Alexeyev waved him off.
“Not here. Not now.”
“Lamb’s Valhalla then,” Kovalov said. Alexeyev nodded, then reached for his officers’ cap and coat.
Alexeyev and Kovalov smoked in silence in the Northern Fleet staff car, then climbed out at the club, instructing the driver to wait for them.
Once comfortable in their booth, the customary toast to fallen comrades complete, Kovalov looked at Alexeyev and said, “Even before we talk about this madness, I have to ask you, Georgy. There’s something wrong, perhaps even more troubling than these orders. Someone’s walked on your grave, yes? There’s something you’re not telling me. What is it?”
Alexeyev looked at Kovalov and nodded solemnly. “Something happened this morning, but I’m not sure I have the courage to tell you about it.”
“Courage? You? You were awarded the Medal for Military Valor First Class for the South Atlantic run.”
Alexeyev scoffed. “That award is for those who are victorious, not those who lose their ships in battle. To this day, I still don’t know the motivations of the admirals for giving me that.”
“Perhaps to communicate into your thick one-eyed skull that you are a courageous hero, not the failure you think you are. So what if your sub went down? If you’d had two more torpedoes, you would have prevailed.”
“Maybe I wasted two torpedoes early in the fight,” he said.
“In countermeasure mode? Surely, had you not fired them, you would have gone down sooner. Georgy, what can I say to break your mood? This is a dangerous line of thinking.”
“Wait until you hear what I’m about to tell you,” Alexeyev said, draining his scotch and pouring more. Over the next few minutes, he told the tale of seeing Matveev in his apartment when he woke and the smell of her cigarettes. He tried to keep his voice level and even, but he could hear his voice trembling and his hands had started to shake, and by the end of the story he had that same shortness of breath he’d felt when Natalia came in. He concentrated on breathing deeply, trying to disguise his emotions by taking a deep pull of the scotch and refilling his glass, but his hand trembled and some of the liquid spilled on the table. Kovalov pretended not to notice.
The two men were silent for a long moment, Kovalov pouring out the remains of the bottle, then calling for the server to bring them a fresh one, two packs of his favorite cigarettes, and a new lighter. When she returned, Kovalov handed one pack and the lighter to Alexeyev. “Your bad habit is back, my friend. You’d best lay in a few cases of cigarettes before departure.” He hadn’t yet commented about the ghost from this morning.
“Sergei, do you think I’m crazy?”
Kovalov shook his head. “Crazy men have no self-doubts. The crazy ones are those who never question their own sanity. But let me tell you something, Georgy. My grandmother used to say, never trust the first half hour after waking or the last half hour before sleeping, for that is the witching hour, when uninvited spirits and things-that-go-bump-in-the-night appear. Most likely, you were having a dream that just seemed too real, and Matveev’s mysterious warning about ‘distance’ could mean anything.”
“Sergei, I would see things your way, but what about Natalia smelling the cigarette?”
Kovalov looked at him and shrugged. “Odds are, Natalia smelled the smoke on your clothes from one of your crew from your workday on the ship, and her emotions about not wanting you to smoke made that smell worse than it would smell to us.”
Alexeyev narrowed his good eye at Kovalov. “Yes,” he eventually said slowly, “I’m sure you are correct, Sergei,” the doubt apparent in his speech. He’d not been around anyone who’d smoked the previous day.
As if trying to close the discussion about the dead engineer, Kovalov raised his glass. “A toast to Captain Third Rank Alesya Matveev, that wherever she is, it is warm and safe and beautiful.”
Alexeyev raised his glass, shut his eyes, blinking back moisture, and drank.
5
He woke with a headache and a dry mouth. He sat up on the edge of the bed and forced himself to stand and walk to the ornate bedroom’s enormous bathroom. Usually he was up at least four times during the night to urinate. Advancing years, and doctors who were idiots, no doubt contributed to that problem. But last night had been somewhat uninterrupted. It was the dreams that woke him up this time, not his bladder.
After washing his hands and drying them on a fresh white towel, he stared at himself for a moment, preparing to shave before showering, running his fingers over his face. For a sixty-four-year-old face, it was almost youthful, but certainly not good-looking. But then, he had never been what anyone would call handsome. His hair had been a rat’s nest since he’d been a child, leading him to crop it all off since grade school. The short hair had helped, giving him a military air, which had gone a long way to helping his career, he thought. There was not much left of that military bearing now, nor the hair, for that matter. He’d added kilograms, most around his waist. He was told by people who sought his favor that he carried the weight well, that it made him resemble a bear, but in his own mind he was an older, overweight ghost of his former vigorous self.
He thought for a moment about the dreams. In the first, he was on a cross-continental train. His mother was in the window seat and she was old and sick, as she had been in her final year of life, some twenty years ago. He and his mother had stopped getting along after he had followed in his father’s footsteps. But in the dream, his mother leaned against him, seeming affectionate. Her eyes were shut. Her forehead was deeply lined. Feeling regret for their angry words of the past, he put his forehead against hers, and her skin was warm at first, but then rapidly and alarmingly cooled. He had blinked, wondering if she had passed, but before he could do anything, he was standing at a podium in the amphitheater of the Lubyanka, the gigantic emblem of the KGB behind him. It was a blue and red shield with a vertical sword behind a red star emblazoned with the gold hammer-and-sickle. He was again a low-ranking officer, there to give a presentation to the entire leadership of the KGB and representatives of the Central Committee, and he had lost his slides. The projectionist shrugged, not knowing where the slides were. He felt a stabbing anxiety, bile rising into his throat. He was lost without the slides, and he began to babble about what little he remembered of the subject of his speech until his old boss pulled him off the stage. Before the old man could say a word, the dream dissolved into the pre-dawn bedroom.
As he lathered up his face and grabbed his razor, the image of his wife standing behind him appeared in the mirror. He looked up at her and nodded a solemn greeting, wondering what mood she would pick to start the day. For two weeks, her mood had been either stormy or disturbingly quiet. He much preferred her anger. God alone knew what she was thinking when she descended into a cold silence.
“You’re up early,” she said, her tone neutral.
He turned to look at her, trying to remember the night before. As usual, when he’d had too much to drink, the memories of the hour before he retired seemed to vanish.
“Are you okay?” he asked, not knowing what else to say to her.