“Sir?”
“You sure that thing is working?”
He heard fumbles, mumbles. MacGuire was new to the PRC-25. Huston, his regular, was dead.
“It’s not working.”
“Oh, shit,” said Dill. “Can you fix it?”
“Uh, sir, it’s the batteries. They’re dead. We’ve been out of contact now for about ten minutes.”
“You got any extras?”
“Yes, sir, in my pack.”
“Great. Maybe they’ve surrendered and we don’t know it yet.”
He crouched as the boy struggled first with his pack, then with the radio. Dill thought he ought to say something to the kid about checking stuff like that before they started out. But Dill was gentle; he was good with kids, and they responded to him, which is why he coached basketball for a living at a high school outside Baltimore.
In a few seconds there was a gravelly growl as the boy got the walkie-talkie back in working order, and then handed it over to Dill, who hit the receive button to hear himself being vigorously paged by the old bastard colonel who was running things.
“—vo, goddammit, Bravo, this is Delta Six, where are you, Bravo? Goddammit, where—”
“Delta Six, affirmative, Bravo here, do you copy?”
“Dill, where the fuck have you been?”
“Ah, sorry, Delta Six, we had a temporary malfunction and lost contact there for a second or so, over.”
“You were out of contact for nearly ten minutes, soldier. Are you in position?”
Dill grimaced.
“Well, not exactly, sir. Tough going up here. We’re more or less where we’re supposed to be, about halfway up. I can’t see the Rangers or Third Infantry. But it gets real steep ahead, I can see that, and I—”
“Dill, there’s a change in plan.”
Dill waited. The colonel said nothing.
“Delta Six, I don’t read you, ah, over.”
“Dill, I’m advised that ahead of you there’s a creek bed.”
“Sir, I don’t recall any creek bed on my map. I really looked hard at it, too, sir.”
“I am advised that it’s there, nevertheless, Dill, and that you ought to be able to get a raiding party up that—”
Raiding party?
“—up that groove in the rocks and onto the perimeter flank pretty easily.”
“In support of the main attack, Delta Six?” asked Dill, computing the problem.
“Negative, Bravo. You are the main attack.”
Dill looked at the little box in his hand. Goddamn that kid, why hadn’t he discovered his dead batteries ten minutes from now rather than where he was.
“Sir, I don’t think my men are—”
“Bravo, this isn’t a request, this is an order. Look, Dill, sorry, but it’s how things have to go. The Rangers will never make it in the face of the heavy fire without help from the side. The front is too narrow and we believe there’s a network of trenches in their position. We have to take this fucking place in one stroke. You guys are it. Get humping, Lieutenant. It’s time to go to war.”
Tagged again, Dill thought.
He wished they’d leave him alone so he could get at the vodka in his pocket. At least with vodka he’d have a chance or something. But no, the Americans just kept drilling him, going over and over it again, where the bomb was, its fusing mechanism, the disarming steps, just in case, a crash course in nuclear technology, all a blur to him.
I want vodka.
But now the van had stopped. They were out of time.
“Okay, Greg,” said the FBI agent called Nick, “we’re on I Street, two blocks down from the embassy, right in front of the MPAA. You know the neighborhood. Just a few feet down to Sixteenth, then your left and there you are. We’ve halted traffic, we’ve got the place sealed off, and we’ve got enough SWAT people around to crack Nicaragua. But we’ve been feeding cars along so they won’t catch on. Okay, the street is clean, it’s sanitary, no mugger’s going to knife you on the way in.”
Gregor thought the man was hyperventilating. He looked as if he were going to have an attack of some sort. He looked as if he needed a bottle of vodka himself.
“Greg, you paying attention here, fella?”
“Yes, of course,” said Gregor.
“You sort of looked like you were dreaming about what was between Molly Shroyer’s legs there for a sec, old guy.”
“Actually, I am fine.”
“Good man, Greg. Anybody going to give you a hard time getting in? You code-cleared, all that?”
“I’m known. No difficulties. Well—”
“Well what?”
“I have been out of contact for twelve hours. It is not possible to know how they’re going to react. There might be a few questions, maybe an unpleasantly or two. But nothing I cannot handle.”
“Great. In other words, these guys may roust you just going through the door?”
“No. No, I am a trusted man. Nothing will happen.”
The American looked at him with great doubt on his plump, tough face. Then he said, “You want a piece, Greg, in case it should get hairy down in the Wine Cellar with this Klimov? I’ve got a nice H and K I could lay on you.”
“There’s a metal detector. If KGB security finds I am armed, it will be the end, There will be no way to get downstairs.”
“Sure?”
“Certain.”
“Now, don’t rush it, guy. That’s how these things fall apart. You get anxious, you try and force it, bingo, it’s history. There’s plenty of time. Hell, it’s not even eleven. You’re just old Gregor, in from the cold, looking to relieve your pal Magda downstairs. Okay?”
“Okay,” said Gregor.
“Time to go, guy.”
“Okay,” said Gregor again. Somebody slid thë van door open and out he stepped into amber light. It was moist and chilly; the streets glowed; the air was filled with sparkly mist. When Gregor breathed it felt like ice sliding down into his lungs, a great feeling. It made him feel alive. He shivered, drawing the cheap little overcoat around him, but took comfort from the weight of the vodka in the pocket. Once he got inside, he promised himself a nice hit, a drenching, gushing gulp of it, to send all his demons away.
He walked on down to 16th Street, turned left. He could see the building up ahead on the right, just past the Public Television Office, which looked far more totalitarian than the Russian building. The embassy was a big old place, Georgian, once upon a time a capitalist millionaire’s playpen. Up top, the complicated mesh of aerials, microwave dishes, and satellite communication transmitters looked like some weird spiked crown.
Gregor crossed the street. Two American cops — the executive protection service — at the embassy gate watched him come, but they didn’t matter. They were nothing. He knew once he was inside the gate, KGB would be on him.
Who? Who was captain of the guard that night? If it was Frinovsky, he’d be all right. Frinovsky was an old man, a cynic like himself, another secret drinker, a homosexual, a man of appetites and forgiveness. On the other hand, in KGB as in GRU, these kids were taking over. Ballbusters, show-offs, zealots, Gorbachev’s awful children, all with their pretend birthmarks. Gorshenin, perhaps. Gorshenin was the worst, a little prick who kept names and Wanted to Rise. He hated those like Gregor, who only Wanted to Stay. He was young Klimov’s pal too.
Gregor arrived. He flashed his embassy ID to the two cops, who stood aside, and then he stepped through the gate and headed up the walk toward the door, toward the bronze plaque, CCCP.
He was back in Russia, and scared shitless. The door opened, a blade of orange light spilled across the pavement.
It was Gorshenin.
“Arrest that man,” the awful Gorshenin shouted.
So very deep now. He couldn’t have much gas left in the cylinder at all. The angle was torture. It was like surgery, he was so far inside. The light from the torch was far, far away, a blur of bright flame through his black lenses. He could see only more metal. He withdrew.