'Hie bedside telephone rang, startling him. His recriminations had been as leisurely as a reverie. He sat up in bed, the shadows in the comer of the ceiling now without meaning. The clock on the bedside table showed it to be almost midnight.
"Rodin. Yes?"
"Comrade General — Serov here. Have I disturbed you?"
Serov. GRU commandant.
"What is it, Serov?" Why did he always react to Serov's voice or presence with a certain hostility? He shook his head.
"Sir — General, it's a delicate matter…"
Serov was being uncharacteristically sensitive and hesitant.
"Is it Lightning?" Rodin asked, too quickly. He almost hoped that it was. Lightning was not a delicate matter, merely crucial. Something prickled in his chest like a warning of illness.
"No, comrade General, it's your son," Serov announced, his adopted tact no longer present. His habitual sneering calm had reasserted itself. Rodin felt his own hostility rising.
"Valery? Lieutenant Rodin?" he corrected himself. "What about him?" He wanted to ask, what is wrong, what has happened? And surprised himself with such a wish. Something chilly seemed to wrap itself around his heart like a cold scarf. "What about my son?" Control of his voice was an effort.
On the ceiling, the shadows were larger. The central heating seemed to have switched itself off
"I — General, I have considered this matter very carefully. I suggest that your son should be sent on leave, perhaps even to Moscow, for the present. Perhaps a two-week furlough?" Serov's manner seemed incapable of retaining deference for much longer. The bully in him was always close to the surface.
"You call me at midnight to tell me that?" Rodin blurted in reply. "To suggest he go on leave?" Genuine irritation had been recovered; he felt more in control of himself.
"I — apologize, comrade General. It's taken me a lot of time to come to this conclusion, but now that I have, I think my advice should be acted on as soon as possible."
"Why?" His voice was too quick, too high.
"Sir, I arranged that accident to — plug a leak. It did not have to involve your son." What was Serov hinting at? What had Valery done? He felt hot once more, his heart stone-heavy in his chest. He was angry with his son; Valery had again caused him trouble, embarrassment, that was more than obvious; but because it was Serov, there was that edge of fear, too. "Unfortunately, it required the immediate removal of the actor—"
"Well?" Rodin almost shouted, ashamed of his rising fear.
"Unfortunately, after coming to us and cooperating with us, your son has managed to interest the KGB commandant, Priabin, in the matter, and in himself. The accident has become a suspicious circumstance in Priabin's eyes, one in which your son is—"
"My son was not involved!" Rodin shouted. His free hand trembled, plucking at the comforter. His reactions confused him. They were muddied, stirred up like a pool by Serov's words. He tried to analyze his emotions, but was unpracticed.
He looked at the photograph on his bedside table, ornately framed in silver. A snowbound Moscow park, a handsome young woman in a tailored suit exposed by her open fur coat, fur boots on her feet, but a fashionable felt hat rather than one of fur on her dark hair. A pram, and a child in it. He had taken that snapshot himself. Had Valery been a disappointment to him since then? No, no, only when he had begun to grow, attended school, was too much and too long under his mothers influence…
He regained control, and snapped: "Get to the point, Serov. Are you suggesting my son has been insecure?"
"The word I would choose is — indiscreet, comrade General."
"Then?"
"Your son has interested the KGB. I would rather they did not talk to him."
"You attracted the KGB's attention by staging that accident."
"We had to kill the actor, a queer — your son's friend. He knew too much and he was being asked about Lightning by the KGB. Does that satisfy you?"
"Serov, you're impertinent — insubordinate." Rodin began to feel breathless. He pressed his free hand on his chest, hard. And calmed himself. Valery's actor friend — the words hurt like a physical pain. Valery blabbing to his circle about Lightning:, Serov prepared to kill to keep the matter secure… kill.
"General, I apologize. It was my professional anxiety." The voice did not soothe, but seemed confidently silky with threat. To Valery? The man would not dare.
"Yes, Serov, yes." His voice was high.
"The accident was designed to stop the leak. To warn others."
"Yes."
"Your son must go on leave." Rodin felt himself led along a dark path, his guide a creature determined to rob him. "If he is not here, then all the gaps will be stopped up. There will be no further leaks."
"But you say my son told — the actor?" He was floundering now, he realized. Serov had assumed control of the conversation. His own authority seemed to have vanished. "Everything?"
"Oh, nothing of the detail, General, we're sure of that. After all, he doesn't know very much, does he?"
"Of course not." He felt his son's safety, and his villainy, working deeper and deeper into him.
"General?"
"I–I will speak to my son in the morning," he managed to say.
"I recommend—"
"I will speak to him in the morning!" Rodin bellowed in an irate voice, thrusting the receiver back onto its rest.
Dmitri Priabin yawned and rubbed his cheeks, then replaced his hands on the steering wheel. He was tired from lack of sleep after the emotions he had endured. He could not fend off those glimpses of the past hours that flickered in his imagination. Zhikin's wife, in particular. He had watched her staring at him as her face crumbled into grief and she began crying in a way that seemed to make her ache. Ugly, mouth open, eyes blind, twisting her apron.
The children had been taken by a neighbor. He'd seen to that before breaking the news of Viktor's death. After a while, she seemed to have forgotten his very presence, as if tied to her chair in a stiff, unmoving posture; staring into a storm that made her eyes stream.
Eventually, he had left her, patting her hand, mumbling justice, revenge, which she heard as little of as she had his earlier sympathy. He'd told her nothing of his suspicions — knowledge, he corrected himself — but he'd wanted her to know something would happen, something would be done to balance things. Then his flat, and sleeplessness; crowding fears, dim futures. The dangerous path — he knew about Rodin and the little actor. Rodin knew he knew. An ugly, dark standoff.
But he had to go on with it.
He opened the car door. Morning leaking into the sky. The wind chilled through him at once. He crossed the yard at the rear of the KGB's Tyuratam building toward the central garage. Rodin's narrow, somehow naked features were vivid in his mind, tempting and threatening, as he bent his face away from the wind and hunched into his overcoat. Would he have told his father? What did the GRU know, how much had he told them about his conversation, his slip of the tongue, in Priabin's office?
Rodin knew. He cleared his throat with what might have been a growl. Concentrate on that, not your own skin, he told himself. Remember they killed Viktor — whatever else, they did that.
He banged open the judas door of the garage, startling one of the mechanics.
"Well?" he snapped. They'd been working on the Zil all night, presumably. His jaw worked, masticating emotion like hot food. Revenge? No, just making things come out right. "Well, Gorbalev?" he snapped, more impatiently, catching sight of one of the forensic officers leaning out of the driver's seat of the wrecked car as it rested on a hydraulic ramp in the center of the untidy, oil-stained floor of the garage. "Anything? How did they arrange it?"