Only the wind.
“Podshchitai i zakapai.”
The disembodied voice came from out of the whiteness. Avalik didn’t move. He held his breath, expecting to be kicked or to hear the short static cough from an automatic weapon that would end his misery permanently. But he wasn’t kicked or shot and he didn’t hear the voice again. For half an hour he just lay there. His white parka would serve as some camouflage, and if the blowing snow covered the blood that was surely splattered over his legs, they might not find him. He fought against the urge to cry out for help. He tried to orient himself. He prayed.
When he’d gotten enough nerve to raise his head, he saw nothing but swirling snow. He rolled onto his back and nearly blacked out from the pain. It took nearly another half hour to apply a compress from his first-aid kit on his leg and untangle himself from the straps and buckles of his radio and cartridge belt. He didn’t know where his rifle was — he didn’t even remember dropping it — but he wasn’t going to need it anyway. Not against those guys.
Corporal Avalik started crawling. He knew approximately where he was and approximately where he had to go. The main thing was to get away. That was the first thing. Stay alive and pray he could make his way back to the company. They’d send a squad looking, sooner or later. Maybe… maybe he could walk, at least hobble along, once he was safely away from here. But that was something to think about later.
He didn’t think about the Russians. He didn’t think about them, but he knew that’s what they were from the moment he heard the voice. It didn’t matter to him and he didn’t care why they were there, though it was pretty obvious. All he had to worry about now was not freezing to death and staying alive until someone else found him. Then he could worry about the Russians.
Avalik reached out with both hands and pulled himself forward. Snow whipped at his face. Just one foot at a time, he thought. Just one foot at a time.
MOSCOW
0900 HRS
The short procession of cars, a black limousine sandwiched between a pair of unmarked sedans, moved cautiously through the falling snow like three nearsighted beetles. It was Party Chairman Dimitri Gorny’s daily routine. He drove his son to school every morning and the security cars led-followed him everywhere he went like worker ants protecting their queen.
Gorny was in the rear seat of the limousine with his son Aram, a slight, gentle boy dressed in a school uniform and wearing a heavy coat. The physical differences between father and son were striking.
Gorny was powerfully built; his thick neck was merely an extension of his shoulders and his strong, disciplined face seldom gave away the workings of his mind. They were logical characteristics for a man party members had nicknamed The Bull. It was a name Gorny himself found amusing. He considered himself more thoughtful than bullish, more patient than headstrong, though there were times when it was expedient to let the party members believe what they wished.
Aram sat up in the seat, craning for a glimpse of the car that followed them. He’d been quieter than usual this morning, Gorny thought. In the last weeks his lessons had taken on the mysteries of planetary space and these morning rides were full of questions. The boy had decided to become a cosmonaut, and his energy on the subject was boundless. Except today.
“Those cars, Papa,” Aram said, pointing to one out the rear window. “Could they really help us if anything happened?”
Gorny frowned. He’d long ago given up trying to understand the motivation behind his son’s inquisitive-ness. The chairman nodded. “Of course.”
Aram gave him that how-do-you-know look.
Gorny tapped the window separating the front compartment from the rear. Major Veich, his personal bodyguard, turned quickly in the passenger seat and slid the glass back. “Yes, comrade Chairman?”
“Our friends, front and rear”—Gorny indicated with his head—”could they really help us if anything happened? Aram is interested.”
The major looked at the boy with a smile. “Of course.”
“How?” Aram asked innocently.
“Well…” Veich let his glance touch the most powerful man in the Soviet Union. Gorny knew that look. It said why do you do this to me. “Well, they’d stop immediately, of course.”
“And?” Gorny tried not to smile.
“I mean, those men would be all over us before anything could happen,” Veich explained. “They are trained especially for this work, little one.”
The chairman turned to his son. “I think they could not do much, either.”
“I’d protect you, Papa.”
Gorny nodded proudly. “Yes, but you have more serious thoughts to consider in school than heroic fantasies.”
“They’d have to kill me first,” the boy said.
“Please stop having us all killed,” Corny said. When he glanced at the major, Veich was smiling. “The boy dreams of such terrors.”
“You speak of terror, Papa.”
Not only inquisitive but a parrot, Gorny thought. “In another context, Aram,” he said, slightly annoyed.
To Veich he said, “His mother allows him too many films.”
“Yes,” the major said, amused, “mine also.”
The procession slowed for a bus that had been stopped by something up ahead. Veich spoke quickly into a hand microphone, instructing the driver of the lead car not to stop. “Move around it, then,” he said in response to an apparently lame explanation. He turned back to Gorny. “A commotion ahead, comrade Chairman. We will be past it in a moment.”
The commotion was a swarm of police with dogs and truncheons chasing a crowd of students. The limousine sped up in pace with the lead sedan but not before Gorny saw a woman lying on the sidewalk bleeding heavily from an open gash across her forehead. Several of the students were throwing rocks and the police waded into them, clubs swinging. Aram saw it, too.
“Papa, what are they doing?” He jumped up on the seat, following the action through the rear window as the car sped off. “What were they doing?”
“Hooligans,” Veich said quickly, “…loafers. They disgrace their country.”
Gorny glanced wearily at his bodyguard. “Please, Major, no cliches in front of my son.” He pulled Aram back into the seat by the hem of his coat. “Sit down, please. It is not a matter that demands your concern.”
“But, Papa? The police, they were—”
“It is a difficult time, Aram. People behave badly sometimes. Even good people. Sometimes.”
The boy nodded as if he understood. “But you are correcting things, aren’t you, Papa? You are.” He beamed a smile and quoted a line he’d been taught was truth. ” ‘All things are correctable.’”
Gorny looked away. He studied the gray street. “All things are correctable,” he said quietly. “Of course.” He leaned closer to Major Veich and spoke in a low voice so his son could not hear. “I would like some people added to the school detail, Major.” He was wearing his bull face.
“I have already done so, comrade Chairman,” Veich replied with matching grimness. “Today.”
The chairman’s official Kremlin office was so large no amount of furniture could make it appear less than grand. It was the ceilings, Gorny had commented the first time he’d seen it; they were too high and the windows were too large. It made the place too hot in summer and too cold in winter, but it was the party chairman’s traditional office and he used it only on official occasions or when he met with party members who expected no less than grand surroundings in which to conduct party business. The office he preferred was a smaller adjoining room which had been renovated and modernized (including a lower ceiling) and was more comfortable for the day-to-day affairs of state. This morning’s briefing, unfortunately, brought him to the official office, where he sat at the head of a ridiculously large conference table. Around it were seated Premier Sergei Temienko, age seventy, whose halting habits of speech were incessantly irritating (he paused between words as if out of courtesy for someone to write them down — assuming anyone wanted to); Foreign Minister Anatol Venchikof, age sixty; Minister of Agriculture Nadia Kortner, age forty-eight, though there was some doubt; Marshal of the Army Viktor Budner — in uniform, of course — age seventy-five, who invariably had difficulty seeing across such a wide expanse of table to follow whoever happened to be speaking; and Colonel General Aleksey Rudenski, age fifty, head of the KGB and the most dangerous man present. Of all of them, Gorny distrusted Rudenski most.