You are such an idiot, young Gorshenin. A real agent-runner is smoother; he’s got that easy, cajoling charm, that endless persistence and sympathy as he guides you on your way to hell. Arbatov should know: he’d guided a few toward hell.
“A present?” he said as if he were a moron.
“Yes. Oh, you know. Something small, but just to show you were enthusiastic, do you know? Something minor but flashy.”
“Hmmm,” said Arbatov, considering gravely. “You mean something from the Americans?”
“Yes! Something from the Americans would do nicely.”
“Well, actually, it’s a fallow time. You know how it is in this business, young Comrade Gorshenin. You plant a thousand seeds and then you must wait to harvest your one or two potatoes.”
Gorshenin appeared disappointed.
“A shame. You know I’d hate to have to turn you back to Klimov with a bad report on our interrogation. He’d not see the humor in it.”
“Hmmm,” said Arbatov, gravely considering again. “KGB has the GRU code book, of course.”
The idiot Gorshenin swallowed and the greed beamed from his eyes like a television signal. The code book was the big secret; it was the treasure; if KGB could get its hands on just one code book for just one hour, it would be able to read GRU’s cable traffic for years to come. And the man who brought it in …!
“I’m sure we do,” said Gorshenin, poorly affecting nonchalance. “I mean the things are left around in installations all over the world.”
Such a terrible lie, so thin and unconvincing. The books were, of course, guarded like the computer codes that launched the SS-18s.
“Yes, well, a shame. You see, though the book is locked except when the communications officer uses it to decode or to encode high priority messages, he’s an old friend of mine, and one night he called up and realized he’d left delicate medicines there. Barbiturates, did you know the poor man was addicted? Anyway, in his despair he gave me the combination. I was able to retrieve his drugs for him. I actually committed the combination to memory.”
“Surely it has been changed,” said Gorshenin too quickly.
“Perhaps, but not the last time I had communications duty.”
The two men looked at each other.
A small object was pushed across the table at Arbatov. It was a Katrinka camera.
“Aren’t you late for your duty in the Wine Cellar, comrade?” Arbatov glanced at his watch.
“Very late,” he said. “It’s nearly midnight.”
The hole glistened open, dilating as the metal around it liquified. Jack thought of a birth: a new world would come out of this orifice. The black hole would spread and spread and spread, consuming all. A terrible sadness filled him.
“There, go on. Go on,” insisted the general. “You’re almost there, go on, go on!”
The flame ate the metal, evaporating it.
Suddenly there came the sound of the opening of the elevator door and the rush of boots. Men raced down the outside corridor. Shouts and alarms rose. For just a second Jack thought the American Army had arrived, but it was only the Russian. The language rose and yelped through the halls. Orders were hurled at men by NCOs. Jack heard ammunition crates being ripped open, the clank and click of bolts being thrown, magazines being loaded, automatic weapons being emplaced. He heard furniture being shoved into the corridor as barricades were hastily erected. The atmosphere seethed with military drama; Jack was in the middle of a movie.
The general was talking earnestly in Russian with the tough-looking officer who’d come to Jack’s house that morning. They nodded their heads together, the younger man explaining, the general listening. Then the two of them departed from the capsule to check the preparations.
Jack stood. He was alone with the guard who’d shot him. His leg had stiffened and the pain was immense. He had a throbbing headache.
“You speak English, don’t you?” he said to the boy who stared at him with opaque eyes, blue as cornflowers. He had a rough adolescent complexion and teeth that could have used braces. But he was basically a good-looking, decent kid, a jock, maybe a rangy linebacker or a strong-rebounding forward.
“Do you know what they’re going to do?” Jack said. “What have they told you? What do you guys think is going on? You guys must not know what’s going on.”
The guard looked at him.
“Back to work.”
“These guys are going to fire the rocket. That’s what’s in here, the key to shoot the missile off. Man, they’re going to blow the world away, they’re going to kill mil—”
The boy hit him savagely with the butt of his AK-47. Jack saw it coming and with his good athlete’s reflexes managed to tuck his face just a notch and take the blow at the hinge of the jaw rather than in the mouth and cheek, and though he knew in the instant the pain and concussion erupted in his head his jaw was broken, he had a perverse pleasure in the fact that his teeth hadn’t been blasted out. He sank with a mewling scream to the floor, and the boy began to kick him in the ribs.
“No, God, please, no!” Jack begged.
“American pig shit motherfucker, kill all our babies with your goddamned rocket!” the boy howled in pain as genuine as Jack’s.
Jack thought he’d blacked out, but the kicks stopped — the boy was dismissed to the tunnel defense team by the tough major or whatever — and the major pulled Jack to his feet.
“Watch what you say, Mr. Hummel,” he said. “These kids know their pals are upstairs getting killed. They’re in no mood for charity.”
“Fuck you,” Jack screamed through his tears. “The Army’s coming in here and they’re going to kill your asses before you get this goddamned key, and—”
“No, Mr. Hummel,” said the general. “No, they’re still hours away. And you’re minutes away.”
The major raised his pistol and placed it against Jack’s skull. His eyes were drained of emotion.
“Do you wish to say ‘fuck you’ now, Mr. Hummel?” he asked.
Jack wished he had the guts to say it. But he knew he didn’t. It was one thing to be brave in the abstract, it was another thing with a goddamned gun up against your head, especially when everything about the Russian suggested that without blinking an eye he’d pull the trigger. Hell, they could cut the last inch or so of metal away with a Bic lighter, that’s how little was left.
The general leaned over, picked up the torch, and placed the sputtering thing in Jack’s hand.
“We’ve won, Mr. Hummel. We’ve done it, don’t you see?”
He turned and crossed the small room to a radio set between the teletype machines. He turned a few buttons and knobs, then looked back.
“It’s all history, Mr. Hummel. We’ve won.”
Dick Puller had left the command post and was airborne in a command chopper with his radio, hovering out of range, watching, giving orders over the radio.
“Cobra Three, you people have to bring more of your automatics into play. I can see a slacking off there, do you copy?”
“Delta Six, goddammit, I have four men dead and nine wounded on this side!”
“Do the best you can, Cobra Three. Bravo, this is Delta Six, any movement there?”
“Delta Six, their fire isn’t dropping a goddamn bit. I’ve still got people coming in.”
“Get ’em in and get ’em shooting, Bravo. It’s the guns that’ll win this thing.”
It was a question of which the men hated more, the Soviets dug in at the ruins of the launch control facility who would not stop firing, or the dry voice over the radio, clinical, impatient. The bird floated tantalizingly beyond them all, its lights running insolently in the night.
The Soviets were firing flares, which hung in the air under parachutes leaking flecks of light down across the scene, giving it a horrible weirdness. It looked like some musty nineteenth-century battle painting: the flickering lights, the heaps of bodies, the gun flashes cutting through the drifting smoke, the streaks of tracer darting about, tearing up the earth wherever they struck. All of it was blue with a smear of moonlight, white with a smear of gun smoke, dark where the mud and blood commingled on the earth.