Priabin's features had come to reflect stupidity, incredulity. His mind swirled like the clouds interposed between the planet and the image of the shuttle on the screen. He realized Lightning would work. Yet he clung to the concretelike set of his facial muscles, drawing Rodin out, making him the superior, making him want to go on talking. Even now, as he spilled the whole of the story, he was implying that he was still his father's confidant, that they were really close. His father could relax only in his company.
"No," he admitted as an answer to Rodin's challenging question; it was like an admission of abnormality.
"Then you haven't been on the mountaintop." Rodin giggled. They all feel like that, always."
"And they killed Sacha, just like that."
Rodin's head jerked back as if avoiding a blow. His thin face became enveloped in shadow. What might have been an involuntary tear gleamed. Rodin snapped, wiping at his eye, "Let's have some music on. I'm bored with all this talk."
Priabin watched him cross to the hi-fi. There was no urgency in the KGB colonel; as if his knowledge restrained him in the armchair to which he had returned. He felt empty, as if at the end of a passion, or some great defeat of his most cherished hopes. Tired.
"I wonder what you like, policeman?" Rodin murmured to himself. His long fingers flicked along a shelf of LPs. "Ah — what about this? About your era, I would have thought."
He stood up, unsheathed the record, placed it on the turntable. A few moments later, the words struck against Priabin's thoughts as if Rodin had seen into some secret part of him and was using an interrogation technique of his own. Softening Priabin up.
Anna. The song was Dylan, of course. The American CBS album, no cheap copy. Not political Dylan, which Anna had always preferred, but the Dylan Priabin himself would always choose — had always chosen.
He was intent on the words, his face paled by the shocks of memory, and the likeness of his own history to the present. Anna and that damn wheelchair that had become part of the weapons systems of the Firefox. A wheelchair for the totally disabled, governed by brain impulses, corrupted into a thought-guided weapons system; its inventor, Baranovich, corrupted, too. He shook his head, hating the clarity of the past. Rodin studied him, his own face abstracted, filled with memories.
… if 1 could only hear her heart a-softly pounding…
He glanced at his watch. One-fifteen. Time was racing ahead of him. Kedrov in the marshes, Rodin here, the weight of what he had been told. It seemed impossible to act, to lift that weight. A growing dread seemed to have invaded his frame, making him weak.
… and if only she was lying to me…
The song pained.
"But we need this treaty," he heard himself saying, sensing that he wished to avoid the song and prolong the talk. Talk meant inaction.
Rodin shrugged. "They don't. Puts them out of a job, drops them from the top of the First Division, wouldn't you say?" tie returned his attention to the music.
… I'd lie in my bed once again…
… yes, and only if my own true love was waiting…
"You do understand, Priabin?" Rodin asked him after a time. The song had almost reached its conclusion, its final statement of joss. Anna—
"What?"
"All this, man." Rodin's arm gestured toward the soundless pictures on the television. Then he got up, crossed the room, and switched off the record. He stood, hands on hips, as if in challenge. "You do understand?" he repeated.
The shuttle floated. Priabin concentrated upon it. It was over South America. Cloud draped the planet like a bridal veil. The image was unbelievably beautiful He could not make himself care what happened to the shuttle, or to its crew, not for a long time. When he finally spoke, he saw that Rodin had sat down once more and was halfway through another cigarette. He did not look at his watch but simply said:
"They can t do it. They can t be allowed to. We can t afford it. He shuddered, felt cold. The nasal, almost whining song was gone, and Anna, too, had faded below the level of consciousness; as if she could safely leave him to his own devices. He lit a cigarette, blew smoke at the frozen shepherdesses, at the floating shuttle Atlantis. "No one can afford this project, you know that," he said. "The Union's bankrupt. Are they so mad that they can't see that? Why else would we be signing the bloody treaty?"
"I'm not arguing with you."
"We all need the rest, dammit! The whole of the economy's fucked. People are fed up with having nothing in the shops and no money to spend anyway — it's as simple as that in the end. The army can't be allowed to screw them again."
"Oh?" Rodin replied archly. "They can't, can't they?"
"We have to stop it," Priabin blurted out. His thoughts buffeted him like a wind. Maybe he could send a coded message, but they Wouldn't necessarily believe him — and to whom would he send the Message, the bloody Chairman himself? They'd ask the defense Minister to confirm or deny, always supposing they didn't dismiss it out of hand as the ravings of a lunatic. And then he'd be screwed like Sacha and Viktor. God, what could he do?
He studied Rodin.
Relief surged through him. Rodin was being flown to Moscow today. All he had to do was book a ticket on the same flight. Once *hey were in Moscow, he could begin to do something, talk to people, persuade them, with Rodin as his prize piece of evidence, proof—
"Not me," Rodin replied, his face dark with suspicion and self-concern; no longer confident.
"You must."
"And put my head in the gas oven? Piss off, policeman."
"You have to help me."
"What? You must be joking."
"It's your only way out—" He left the sentence evocatively unfinished. His features wore an implacable look.
"Joke over, Priabin." Rodin got to his feet and flicked off the television with a sharp, punching movement. Then he turned to Priabin. "Forget it, brother. Forget I ever told you — or you and I will end up where Sacha is now."
"I can't — not now. It mustn't happen."
"It will happen. Nothing's more certain. It's early on Wednesday morning; tomorrow isn't such a long time. Go home and go to bed and get up on Friday." He moved closer, appeared threatening though slight and dressed only in a robe. "Nothing. Say nothing, Priabin. For your own sake."
"No. We both know now, and we have to do something about it"
"You're crazy. You want to die? Like Sacha — they killed him like that." He clicked his fingers. "I'm staying alive. Whatever my father has in mind for me, I'm staying around for it."
"You can't."
"Just watch me."
"You have to help me."
"You can't beat them."
"Listen to me — just listen." He had grabbed Rodin's slim arms, holding them fiercely. "You're on your way to Moscow. You just have to do what is already arranged for you. I'll get a seat on the plane — we can both be in Moscow in time to stop this thing." Rodin was shaking his head, but in a shamed sort of way, eyes cast down at the carpet. "It's an act of war. And if the Americans ever suspect we had anything to do with the loss of their shuttle, there'll be a holocaust! Do you want that?" Kedrov's told them we have the weapon, he thought. They'll know we destroyed their shuttle.