"Washington don't know yet, Major."
"Then why in hell doesn't someone tell them?"
He turned away from Mac. Not because of the message, or because Mac's face was beginning to mirror his own, but because he had seen another dot in the high, clean desert air. Not the eagle— the lumbering crane helicopter from Nellis coming to collect the
Mil-24A. Its symbolism clashed with that of the bird and the trail of dust on the desert floor. Too violently.
'There's no way," he said breathily. "Just no way."
He could no longer see the eagle. The dust from the distant vehicle had finally settled. The desert before him appeared painted, a vast, empty canvas, no longer real.
Colonel Dmitri Priabin of the KGBs Industrial Security Directorate and head of nonmilitary security at the cosmodrome of Baikonur, turned away from the young man lounging with a shallow but arrogant confidence in the office's single easy chair, stifled a yawn and a desire to rub his shadowed cheeks, and clasped his hands behind his back as he stared out into the darkness of the winter night.
Across the expanse of low buildings in front of him lay the main assembly complex and the vast hangar that housed the G-type heavy-booster launch vehicle. Its bouquet of huge rockets was splashed with white light within the open hangar doors; they were end-on to him like the mouths of some enormous multiple gun.
The scene was distant but by no means toylike or unreal. It was all too vast to become miniaturized by mere distance. And it was thrilling, undeniably so. At least, whenever he could forget the purely personal, could step aside from himself for a moment and discover emotions he could share with others, then it was thrilling. He could experience pride, awe, satisfaction, secrecy, even nationalism. A rainbow of cliched emotions. When he could forget Anna and his past.
His office was warm, yet he wore frill uniform, including tie and jacket. The pale self that stared back from the dark square of the windowpane was tired, drawn, but neat. The uniform was not to impress the young man who had been brought in for questioning, but rather to impress himself. To remind him of who and what he was, and to exclude other, less respectable images. The brown uniform and the colonel's shoulder boards were a plaster cast inside which he slowly mended.
The rollout of the G-type heavy booster would begin on Tuesday morning. Powerful locomotives waited in a siding near the hangar, to Pull the booster on its flatcars the six miles — a short distance by Baikonur's sprawling standards — to the new launch pad. On two parcel sets of railway fines and within a vast erector cage, the booster would make the painfully slow journey. At least, the first three stages; the Raketoplan shuttle vehicle would follow in its wake as soon as the assembled laser weapon had been installed in its cargo bay.
He stifled another yawn, which might have become a sigh. He felt excluded from the simple emotions aroused by the scene outside. He was excluded by the presence of the general's son behind him, lounging in his chair; excluded, precisely, by his sense of the stupid mistake he had made in arresting the boy at all. Why the devil had he? Bravado, machismo, recklessness — lack of thought? Dmitri Priabin profoundly regretted his actions.
It would take nearly twenty-four hours for the first stages to reach the launch pad, and another half a day to move the shuttle and raise it atop the remainder of the rocket. By Thursday noon everything would be ready for that afternoon's launch.
He still felt excluded, felt his own concerns press in on him. It could well be a matter of self-preservation — and yet, the boy irritated him so much. He whirled on his heels to face the young man, whose eyes were now dull with tiredness rather than drug-brightened, as they had been when Priabin had arrested him. Tired though they might be, the eyes flickered with a pale gleam of contempt, a growing fire of anticipated satisfaction — wait till Daddy hears about this, the eyes promised childishly, maliciously. Not only was this little shit a general's son — a Baikonur general's son — but he was also GRU, military intelligence. Priabin realized, with a growing nervousness, that he had opened the trapdoor to a snake pit — a can of worms, didn't the Americans say? It was the boy's expectation, almost his right, to hold the KGB in contempt. GRU really ran security at Baikonur, it was the army that was really in control.
"You still refuse to identify the — source of the drugs, Lieutenant?" he asked with careful authority. "We really have wasted enough time on this already."
'Then let me go," the young man replied, pouting with thin, pale hps. Pale eyebrows, pale hair, faded blue eyes. Almost ghostly. He might have been some aristocrat's jaded, old-young offspring. Perhaps he was, in a Soviet sense — certainly the son of a powerful and dangerous man.
Why wouldn't he let the boy go? Spite? Possibly; the boy was homosexual. Spite might even have been the motive for the anonymous tip-off. One of the boy's circle, offended or jealous, a quarrel, a lack of tenderness? Whatever, he had arrested Valery Rodin, officer of the GRU, on charges of possessing cocaine. Once he had discovered the boy's rank and connections, why had he bothered to bring him in? He could have taken the drugs and kept his mouth shut. But the boy's contempt had stung him, made him angry…
Bad dreams of Anna the previous night, contempt for the face he saw in the shaving mirror just before the call had come — they'd played their part, too.
"You realize how serious an offense you've committed, Lieutenant?"
Rodin shrugged. His tie was loose at his throat, his uniform jacket was unbuttoned. The remains of a plate of sandwiches and an empty beer glass rested on Priabin's desk, near the boy's elbow. It might have been his office.
Anger. Useless, harmful anger, doing him definite harm and no damn good whatsoever, but he couldn't bring himself to let this arrogant, criminal little shit go free.
"I know who reported me," Rodin hissed. "The pretty little queen." He did not bother to disguise his homosexuality, despite its magnitude as a criminal offense under Soviet law, as if he were immune to KGB charges.
Which he was.
Neither joke nor crime; just a fact about a young man whose father was a senior officer of the Strategic Rocket Forces, the army's most elite service. A man who was one of the triumvirate of staff officers running Baikonur, for God's sake.
You bloody fool, tangling with that lot.
General Lieutenant Rodin. His son could have worn makeup and a dress on duty, and little if anything of consequence would have happened to him. And the boy knew that as clearly as he knew who his father was.
And that's what enrages you, Priabin told himself, precisely that — look at his face now. He choked on a bile of silent rage. The conversation finished hours ago, as far as he's concerned. Priabin knew he was already on a list of petty revenges to be exacted as soon as the boy was released. In this case, a ruinous revenge if the father took an interest.
"Lovers' tiff, was it?" he asked quietly, unable to prevent himself. The boy set his teeth on edge, infuriated him beyond all measure.
Rodin laughed, not even blushing, not even angry.
"If you like," he replied, shrugging insolently. Priabin's rank meant nothing, nothing at all.
Somewhere in the building, the damning evidence of the cocaine he had found would have disappeared by now, to placate the general's anticipated anger and the son s petty revenge.
"You don't seem to care much, either way."
"Should I? After all, what can happen?"
There, he'd finally said it. Priabin, angry as he was, still felt chilled, and cursed the shame brought on by his shaving mirror; cursed Rodin's initial insolence as his locker was searched; cursed self-consciousness.