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"Then," he went on, "I felt myself slow down. Something tugged me back. I did not want to leave light. I was dead. I knew it in my heart. I was dead and yet I did not fear death. I wanted to be with light. I think"-he lowered his voice and fixed Rair with his renewed eyes-"I think this light was God."
"No one believes in God anymore, dedushka," Rair had said. He was fourteen and thought he knew more than his seventy-year-old grandfather.
"Hush, Kroshka," he said, using a nickname- "Crumb"-Grandfather Brashnikov used when he wished to remind Rair that he had once played on his grandfather's knee. "Let me finish my story. I felt myself drawn back. The light faded in the distance. When I opened my eyes once again, your father-my son-was beating on my chest." He laughed ruefully. "My ribs still ache. I am happy to be with family, but I feel sad too. For I ache for that light the way I used to ache for my dead wife, Saint Basil preserve her."
Rair never forgot the story of his grandfather, who lived another ten years but came away from being dead with a lighter step and joy-filled heart. He was a man who had faced death and found it an experience filled with hope, not gloom.
The dark walls of the tunnel flew past Rair. He looked to see his body, but he had none. He was part of the darkness. He looked ahead of him, seeking the pure clean light that had once stirred his grandfather's soul. But he saw nothing like it. Only the snaking, whizzing walls of the tunnel through which he passed, no more substantial than a beam of light himself.
So this was death, Rair thought. It was not so bad. Certainly preferable to facing a KGB firing squad, which had nearly been his fate.
As he raced along, Rair Brashnikov reflected on the events that had brought him to his death.
Had it started when he joined the KGB as a signals intelligence analyst? Or before that, the first time he
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felt that urge which was to dominate his life and nearly end his career at the age of thirty-one? Or had it truly begun the day they came to cell number twenty-six in the basement of Moscow's Lefortovo Prison. His cell.
It was cold in Lefortovo. For a prison that had known many famous occupants, from survivors of the czarist days to framed American journalists, it was unremarkable. A stone cell with a blue steel cot and scratchy camel-hair blankets.
Rair Brashnikov had spent less than two months in that cell, shunned except for the daily portion of runny soup and a mashed-potato-and-fish mixture in a cracked bowl shoved through the feed window of the rust-colored door.
Then one day they came for him.
They were two corporals and the prison's commandant. One of the corporals opened the cell with a grating brass key.
Rair Brashnikov cowered in his bunk. It was too soon. They had come for him too soon.
"Nyet. Not today. I do not want to die today," he whimpered, pulling the coarse blanket over his head.
"Come with us, thief," said the commandant. "Do not be a woman."
He was hauled out of the cell by the corporals, set on his feet, and handed his soft gray slippers. The men towered over Brashnikov, who had barely met the KGB's minimum-height requirement. He had the nimble body of a ballet dancer.
It was the middle of the night, which puzzled Brashnikov. Usually they shot prisoners at dawn. Of course KGB firing squads were normally reserved for captured spies, not cashiered KGB intelligence captains like himself.
Instead, snapping their fingers as a warning to the guards that a prisoner was being transferred, they escorted him to a garage and put him blindfolded into a car. Minutes later he found himself in a heavily
guarded office. It was the office of the general who ran the KGB. Semoyan. He was in KGB headquarters.
"Leave him," General Sernoyan had said. His face was a dour mask. "Sit."
Rair Brashnikov took the hard wooden chair the general indicated with a careless wave.
"You are thief, Rair Brashnikov," General Semoyan said. His voice was matter-of-fact, not accusing.
"Da," Rair had admitted. His eyes leapt to the general's T-shaped desk. There was a gold pen in a holder. Rair wondered if it was solid gold or merely gilt.
"You have been convicted of stealing KGB office supplies and selling them on black market."
"I cannot help myself," Rair blurted out. "I have had this urge since I was boy."
"Do not make excuses, Tovarich Brashnikov. I am told you are very clever thief, if such a thing can be said of a man who steals from his motherland and his comrades in uniform."
"I will never do it again," Rair promised, leaping to his feet. He leaned on the general's desk. His eyes welled up with tears.
"I believe you," said General Semoyan. "Now, sit down. Please."
"Thank you," said Rair Brashnikov, palming the general's pen from its onyx holder. The pen felt heavy. Yes, true gold. Rair slipped the pen up his frayed cotton sleeve.
"We are prepared to reinstate you, comrade," the general continued, "at your former rank of captain, with all back pay and benefits. Your past crimes will be expunged from your record."
"For that I will do anything," Rair promised. He wrung his hands so the pen would not fall out. "Just name the thing."
"You will go to USA."
"America?" Rair Brashnikov's voice had been filled with disbelief. The general misinterpreted this as fright.
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"You will be protected while you are between missions," General Semoyan assured him.
"America," Rair repeated. His mind was racing. The best electronic equipment came from America. The finest blue jeans. The food was incredible in its diversity. Red meat, it was said, was actually red in America. Not gray like Soviet gristle steaks.
The general's voice broke into his reverie. "If you fear it so, we can find another agent."
"Nyet!" said Rair Brashnikov. "I will undertake this mission. Just tell me what to do."
General Semoyan stood up. "Then come with me, Captain Brashnikov."
They escorted him to a room where a uniform with captain's bars was waiting for him. He was allowed to dress once more in civilized clothing with warm leather shoes on his feet, and, his black hair wet with fragrant hair oil, Rair emerged from the dressing room, his black eyes shining like rosary beads. The general's gold pen was tucked into a regulation sock.
Under guard, with General Semoyan in the lead, restored Captain Rair Nicolaivitch Brashnikov was brought deep into the subterranean bowels of KGB headquarters in Dzershinsky Square.
They halted before a thick steel door while security guards manipulated a complicated electronic lock. Above the door, in Cyrillic lettering, was a large sign:
REVERSE ENGINEERING DIRECTORATE
Rair Brashnikov wondered what reverse engineering meant as he was led into an antiseptic white room. Men in white smocks stood like students around a workbench. The air was tinged with ozone.
"Step up to bench, please," General Semoyan said. The others crowded around under the unstable fluorescent lighting.
On the bench were two objects. They appeared to be identical.
"This is component of the rocket motor of our new
shuttle spaceplane," General Semoyan told Brashnikov, tapping one of them.
"It is quite . . . shiny," Rair ventured. In fact it was very shiny. Rair wondered what it might fetch on the black market. He shoved his hands into his trouser pockets. There were too many witnesses in this room'. He could not palm it in full view of all these men.
The general hefted the other object.
"And this is component from American shuttle," he said. "Do they look similar to you?"
Rair took the second component in his hands and turned it over and over. The old urge tugged at his heart. Reluctantly he replaced it on the bench's grainy surface.