Bakunin flushed, but ignored his commander’s remark. “I only know what power I have at my fingertips. I have seen the bombs go off at the test centers. I was there the day we misjudged the force of one hydrogen weapon and it killed more than fifty officials who were too close. Knowing that, I still went along with you because I believed that Stark would capitulate without a struggle. But I will be frank to admit I have had trouble sleeping nights, wondering whether he just might not surrender, that he might come to believe that it is better to die like a man than to consign his people to our domination. Man is the most complex of all primates, and his predictability is always open to question.”
The defense minister had gotten up, and he came around the table and put his arm around Bakunin’s shoulder.
“I am sorry for what I said to you, Pavel Andreievich. Please forgive me. Such arguments are out of place in a friendship as long as ours, which goes all the way back to Frunze Academy.” Bakunin nodded grimly as Moskanko hastened to smooth over his insult.
“You were called ‘the professor’ even there, Pavel Andreievich. Spending all your time reading instead of chasing the women. My sister was the only one who could bring your nose out of those damned books. When you married, I was certain you would spend the honeymoon in some library.” Moskanko laughed and Bakunin forced a smile.
The defense minister went back to his chair and waited for his friend to continue, but Bakunin had lapsed into another moody silence.
“You will see, Pavel Andreievich, it will turn out as I predicted. The Americans will not retaliate, and your rockets, like Omskuschin’s tanks, will collect rust where they lie.”
“I hope you are right, Viktor Semyonovich,” Bakunin replied to his brother-in-law. “I have seen the power of my rockets, and knew that someday I might have to use them. But this is different. We are the aggressors in this situation. If the world goes up…”
“It will not go up, I tell you. We will make it impossible for Stark to move in the next hours. We have a few more surprises that will render him absolutely harmless before the ultimatum expires.”
The bespectacled Bakunin showed no interest in Moskanko’s remark as he got up and went out to monitor the state of the enemy’s defenses. Omskuschin and Fedoseyev watched him go and turned to Moskanko for a reaction. The defense minister shrugged.
“He is too intelligent for his own good. He might just lose the debate he is having with his conscience. And that would not be good for us.”
Thirty-five minutes after having left the defense center, Vassili Baranov arrived at the infamous Lubianka Prison. Lubianka rivaled the Bridge of Sighs in Venice as a place where men’s last hopes for life flickered and were extinguished. Baranov went to the second floor and nodded to a blue-uniformed guard who opened the gate to a cellblock. Baranov marched down the stone corridor and stopped before Cell 212. He looked in at the bed, where Grigor Rudenko lay inert. When the guard let Baranov in, he walked to the edge of the cot. Rudenko sensed his presence and rose up on an elbow. The secret police officer blanched when he saw the results of Fedor’s careful handling.
“Rudenko, why don’t you cooperate?” pleaded the state security man, looking at his battered prisoner. “Then you can rest.”
Grigor’s head rolled slightly before he summoned the will to answer. “Comrade, I have told your people everything I know.” He smiled crookedly at Baranov, who then saw the blood dribbling down his chin in tiny rivulets. Baranov looked closer in the bad light and saw Rudenko’s mouth. His teeth were broken and jagged, where Fedor’s fist had smashed into them time and again and left the victim with a shattered face.
Baranov wasted no further time. He went to the door and muttered instructions to the guard. Shortly, two attendants brought a stretcher and lifted Rudenko onto it. As he lay with his face trailing over the edge of the cot, the prisoner spat blood onto the floor.
They took him down the hall to a room that smelled of ether. A Tchaikovsky ballet was playing somewhere, and Rudenko tried to follow it through the waves of pain that engulfed him. He sank into a real bed with fresh sheets and gazed through his good eye at a pink ceiling. It reminded him strongly of home, where Tamara’s room had this feminine atmosphere. For a moment he mentally held her in his arms and kissed her cheek. Then a white form hovered over him and Baranov’s voice cut through the fog: “Give him the maximum, Senski.” The white form was pulling at his left sleeve, and then Rudenko felt something metallic burrowing into his arm.
The white form spoke to him; “Now, Grigor, please count backward from ten with me. Ten, nine.” At the last second, Grigor sensed what they were doing and lashed out feebly with his arms. But then he was on a meadow with the morning dew still on the grass. A horse was cantering toward him, and he shouted to it, “Archer!” The horse slowed and stopped before him. Grigor jumped on its bare back and rode through the sunlight, his hair blowing wildly into his eyes.
Beside him, another horse and rider appeared, and Karl Richter shouted: “For a date with Sheila,” and spurred ahead of Grigor who laughed excitedly and gave chase. The two boys went bounding over stone walls toward a red barn in the distance. At the gate to the stables, a girl with golden hair waited for them. She was jumping up and down and urging them toward her, and Grigor could see her teeth gleaming in the ruby mouth. He pulled Archer up before her and jumped off. Sheila came toward him and Grigor reached out to touch her hand…
“Grigor, who gave you the blueprints?”
“… Sheila, I just won a date with…”
“Grigor, please tell us.”
“You.” And he held her hands and looked into her beautiful eyes.
“Who, Grigor?”
“Professor Parchuk, my wife’s uncle. He gave them to me on September seventh.”
“Why did he do it, Grigor?” and he kissed her on her ruby lips and felt her slim body cling to his. Karl Richter rode by, laughing, and said: “I’m going to shoot this old nag I’ve got. You and Sheila owe it all to him…”
“Parchuk found out what the laser was going to be used for.”
“Who else helped him?”
“No one! No one helped him. He only came to me because he was desperate, and he trusted me completely.”
“Where did you meet him?”
Sheila put her arm around him, and they walked with Karl to the main house, where Sheila’s mother had a breakfast of pancakes and bacon ready for them. Sheila’s eyes were twinkling with excitement and she tousled Grigor’s hair; Karl Richter was hugging Sheila’s mother who giggled and said, “Karl, I’m going to tell your father you’re going around bothering old ladies.” And they all laughed and Grigor sat beside Sheila.
“Where, Grigor?”
“At the GUM Department Store.”
Another voice joined that of the white-coated man: “Enough… get me Tashkent on the special phone.”
Grigor was walking again with Sheila, and the dew was soaking through their sneakers, and he was telling her he loved her, and Sheila was looking into his eyes happily.
William Stark had taken a sleeping pill at 1 A.M., but it had not brought him sleep. He tossed about in the bed until Pamela woke up and laid her hand on his shoulder.
Stark had been almost indifferent to her in the past two days. He had lied about the reason for delaying the trip to Bar Harbor, and she had been hurt when he explained that it was because of the pending passage of a conservation bill. Then she realized that the haunted look in his eyes hid a far more serious matter and she stopped pressing. Now in their bed, she asked again if she could help. President Stark lay against the pillow and poured out his turmoil to his wife of twenty-nine years. When he finished, she continued rubbing his back softly and tried to stop the fluttering in her own breast. Pamela was terrified not for herself but for the man beside her, who was faced with an intolerable choice — destroy the world or surrender more than 200 million people. Worse, she knew she could not help him except by her presence, by her devotion to him. And he needed more than that. Pamela Stark pulled her husband closer, and he fell asleep in her arms.