"That is my position," said Valashnikov, tears welling up in his eyes with the joy of his returning manhood. "We have an international advantage, and I am warning you, every moment might mean its loss."
"Wait at your office. Because of your former position, I am going to authorize private and immediate treatment for transportation for you, Valashnikov, but let me warn you…"
"You're wasting time, son," said Valashnikov and hung up. He realized he was trembling and wanted a drink or a sedative. No. He would not have one.
The tension was delicious. But maybe he was wrong. He had seen the picture only briefly. Maybe because the girl had talked about tans and races and that was on his mind, he had only imagined that picture was of the man who visited the monument once a month to mow and trim. Maybe he had been away from the halls of power too long? What if he was wrong? He could be wrong. It was only a fleeting glimpse of the white-haired man in the car.
And then his great mind began to work, isolating and reducing all the facts to a very simple one: What if he was wrong? Was death any worse really than his life? Hadn't he made calculations for possible megadeaths in nuclear wars when he was in Moscow? Now he was making another calculation. This time for a single death. It was worth it. He would proceed, no matter what, on the assumption that the marble and bronze monument on the Montana prairie was the Cassandra.
No matter what fact came up, he would assume it was a camouflage. If he were to be shown the top of the monument being removed and if he were to stand on bare earth and then watch the earth being removed by shovels, he would still function on the premise that the Cassandra was there. He had committed his life to it. What else did he have to lose? Nothing.
He heard a knock at his office door, and before he could say, "Come in," the door opened.
Two men in KGB street uniforms of blazing colors, with gold epaulets and shining boots, marched into the office. They were followed by a plainclothesman, a man Valashnikov had always thought of as the superintendent of his building, a man of no major importance.
The man carried a cardboard valise that Valashnikov recognized as his own, even to the tears on the leather straps around it. The man snapped his fingers and another KGB officer led in the girl who had fled his apartment.
"Yes," said Valashnikov.
"Are you ready for your flight?" asked the man Valashnikov had thought of as his building superintendent.
"Yes," said Valashnikov coolly. "What is the girl doing here?"
"For your pleasure, comrade. Your file shows you are pleased with her."
"Get her out of here," said Valashnikov. His voice earned the hard precision of authority.
Hearing this, the girl cried.
Valashnikov emptied his pocket of bills and knelt down, pressing them into her hands.
"Little girl, just a few hours ago I thought that there was no bottom to life. Now I see it also has no top. Do not cry. Here is money for your mother. You are nice little girl. Go home."
"You don't want me," sobbed the girl.
"As a granddaughter I would want you, my dear, but no other way. You grow up and stay away from old men. All right? All right?"
The girl sniffled and nodded. Valashnikov gave her a tender kiss on the cheek and took his bag from the superintendent, who smiled weakly and shrugged.
"You will take her home, Comrade Superintendent. Without touching. I will check on you from Moscow."
And Valashnikov felt good because he had recognized the face of a white man, a man who could only be taken for a black as a result of bureaucratic error.
Tan, not Negro, thought Valashnikov as he left his office for a plane that would take him back to Moscow. And perhaps back to his career.
CHAPTER FIVE
Remo saw the two men in blue jeans and flannel shirts stringing wire from the monument, and he suggested to them that they stop what they were doing.
Obviously, this rather thin stranger impressed them because they immediately dropped their wire spools and fell to the Montana dust, clutching their groins.
"Thanks, fellas," said Remo.
"What did you do that for?" asked Petty shrilly.
"I got a better idea," said Remo.
"How can you have a better idea? Newstime says my command structure is immaculate. The networks called this takeover 'smooth.' The wire services have quoted federal marshals as saying I am incredibly well organized. You can't go hitting my men without my orders."
"I'm sorry, but blowing up that dinky monument," said Remo, pointing to the massive marble base, "is a one-shot deal. Then all you have is a hole in the ground. That's all you're occupying. So long, television coverage."
A group of the revolutionaries from the church who were still able to stand began forming around them. From the back of the crowd, Burning Star, née Lynn Cosgrove, let out a low, moaning wail.
"What is that?" asked Petty.
"It's an Indian chant," said a man standing near him.
"How the hell would you know?" asked Petty.
"I saw it in Blazing Arrows, starring Randolph Scott and Victor Mature. And besides, I'm your minister of cultural affairs." He punctuated his sentence by draining the last of his pint bottle of Old Grand Dad and angrily flinging the bottle against the marble monument, where it hit a tarpaulin and bounced to the ground without breaking.
"Brothers, brothers!" cried Burning Star. "Do not listen to the forked tongue of the white man. We must destroy that monument to oppression or we can never be men again. What is our manhood under the rule of the white man but drinking, gambling, and robbing? Our heritage calls for wiping out the vestiges of white oppression."
"Yeah, yeah, yeah!" shouted several gunbearers. Remo heard several war whoops.
"Brothers!" cried Remo. "If we destroy the monument, we have nothing. But if you come with me on a raiding party, we will have steaks and chops and cakes and beer and french fries and ice cream and all good things."
"Who are you?" demanded the minister of cultural affairs.
"And whiskey," yelled Remo.
In the spirit of the great raid, the minister of cultural affairs punched Burning Star in the face.
"To the great raid," yelled Chief Petty.
"To the great raid," yelled the ambulatory members of the Revolutionary Indian Party.
"What about our heritage?" cried someone else. Seeing that it was a woman, Jerry Lupin let her have it right between her braids with his rifle butt. Her boyfriend circled the crowd after Lupin, who found a spot close to Remo, then gave the boyfriend a central finger waving in the blue Montana sky.
The boyfriend made a fist, silently threatening to take the matter up later. Lupin pressed two fingers together to signal that he and Remo were close.
Petty waved everyone to silence. "We will raid. I appoint this man my raid chief, chief of raid."
There were whoops of approval.
"Watch out for the Apowa when you get out of here," whispered Petty to Remo. "They hate us. Hate us with a passion. If it wasn't for the feds ringing this place, we might all be dead. Those Apowas can be mean. You sure you can get a raiding party in and out, past the marshals?"
"Guaranteed," said Remo.
"With trucks?"
"How many people you got here?"
"About forty. And if you're getting ice cream, caramel fudge for me—and not the diet junk. You know, real ice cream."
Remo winked his assurances, and Petty put an arm around his shoulder.
"But the monument is mine," said Remo. "You leave it to me. I got something really great for the monument."
"What?" asked Petty anxiously.
"Half hour prime time," said Remo. "But you can't blow up the monument."
"We never had prime time before," said Petty. "The six o'clock news, the evening news, and of course that columnist from the New York Globe who writes my press releases and takes orders from us. He's the one who did the public relations for the Attica prison riot. But he's nowhere near prime time."