He realized the other woman was watching him. Hardly alarmed, more curious. He touched the peak of his cap with the glove he held in his hand.
"Your husband—Officer Mikhail Shubin—is. he at home?" he asked with brisk authority.
"Comrade Colonel, I—" the woman began. His tone had not been intended to disarm, and it had not done so. Her eyes were alert, shadowed with the expectation of concern.
"You must know," Serov insisted. "My name is Serov. GRU commandant here," he added carelessly. "I wish to speak with your husband."
He had already moved close to her. He could smell bedclothes still, and cooking. Cigarette smoke, too. He was allowed to all but pass her before she squeezed against him and they walked almost comically down the linoleumed corridor toward the flat's kitchen, close together, as if he held her in the crook of one arm. Serov was amused as she seemed to wish to scamper ahead, warn—
—Shubin, it had to be him, was sitting tousle-haired at the foldaway table erected against one wall of the cramped kitchen. Coffee steamed in front of him, the stove steamed with something boiling—eggs perhaps? Serov recorded the details with the eye of a painter. Cracked and discolored linoleum on the floor, a child seated on Shubin's lap, rolling a small toy car across the morning's copy of
Pravda
open on the tablecloth. Cloth—clean, too, and not oilcloth or newspaper. Precisely, Serov noted the fine gradations that would have told him, had he not already known, the rank, income, privileges of the man at the table. Condensation from the boiling water covered the window. The woman moved to the saucepan—yes, Serov could hear eggs bumping softly against its metal—and turned down the gas.
"Mikhail," she began in a remonstrative tone, then continued, Colonel Serov."
Shubin placed the child on the table. One of his large hands held the toy car, the other rubbed his head. His eyes, however, were hirtive and quick. Serov felt pleasure rise as tangibly as the steam in the kitchen.
"Comrade Colonel," Mikhail acknowledged, nodding his head almost in what might have been a bow. "What can I—?"
Serov held up his hand, sitting immediately at the table. Shubin collected his child in his arms, and he, too, sat down. The eggs stopped tapping against each other and the sides of the saucepan. The woman tended them with concentration; placed slices of bread on the grill pan, slid it noisily under the gas, which she lit with a plop—
—which made Shubin's hand jump. Serov thought of Viktor Zhikin's widow two doors away, and her children, and considered the eventual, inevitable absence of this man from this scene.
"Shubin, I won't beat about the bush, I'll come straight to the point," he announced, clearing his throat, laying his gloves on the table, near the now ignored toy car.
"Coffee, Colonel?" the woman asked from her position at the stove.
"Thank you. Black."
Shubin lit a cigarette. Puffed at it nervously. Serov felt Priabin must have confided in the man, or there was a record of what was said—and there'd been a warning, too. The strain of appearing calm was creasing Mikhail's face into hard, tight lines. He smoothed his hair again where the boy's hands had disturbed it; as if waiting for an interview. He needed to feel tidy. Serov glanced very obviously at the man's felt slippers, at the bottoms of his pajama trousers, at the robe. All weaknesses, disadvantages. Serov all but sighed aloud, anticipating the ease with which he would obtain what he wanted.
A kettle boiled, further clouding the window. The woman brought his coffee, in a cup, unpatterned but china, not in a mug like her husband was using.
"Sugar?"
He raised one hand to refuse. Shubin swallowed coffee quickly. Then Serov said: "You and one of your fellow officers
maintained
surveillance on
a
certain apartment in the old town until the early hours of this morning—that is correct?"
Shubin swallowed. He had a prominent Adam's apple, which bobbed as he swallowed his renewed fear. He attempted to
shake
his head. The little boy had picked up his toy, and one of
Serov
's
gloves. Serov reached out and held the child's hand; removed the glove and squeezed the hand as he held it. The child uttered a cry, perhaps of surprise. He dropped the toy in his father's lap. It fell onto the floor. Shubin held the child wonderingly, staring at him as if at some unexpected piece of information. Then his wife
snatched
the boy up and soothed him. Kissing the squeezed hand.
"Answer, why don't you?" Serov prompted, sipping his coffee. The woman retreated to the window with the child; they became less important than silhouettes, except that the woman would hear and understand every word. Her presence made the filleting process easier, in this case. It was always easier to break subjects of interrogation when you could hint at futures that might darken. "Well?"
"I—comrade Colonel, you should speak to Colonel Priabin, my commanding officer."
Serov s hand banged the table. Coffee splashed, and the cloth and the newspaper were stained. At the instant he began to shout, Serov heard Shubin's feet moving the discarded toy on the linoleum.
"Your commanding officer may possibly turn out to be a traitor! I am talking to
you
, Shubin—do you understand me? To you!"
The boy wailed in the ensuing silence. Serov heard the woman calming him, and raised his hand to warn her as she tried to take the child from the kitchen. Shubin's face was ashen.
"I, sir, I—
"You were following orders, Shubin. I realize that. Now, you simply follow my orders. What happened between them?"
"I don't know, sir. Really I don't."
"A tape, man. Don't tell me comrade Colonel Priabin talked to Lieutenant Rodin without being wired? Are you that sloppy in the KGB out here?" Serov shook his head in mock reproof. "Of course not. Now, what did they say to each other?"
Again, the woman tried to leave the kitchen, the boy in her arms. Serov raised his hand once more; and saw Shubin shake his head vigorously, warning her to remain where she was.
"Well?" Serov whispered, sipping the last of the coffee, careful that the sleeve of his overcoat did not touch the wet tablecloth.
"My family, sir—"
"Quite."
"If I—"
"Not if, when. And when is now. At once. You have no alternative. Oh, get on with it, Shubin."
"Sir, there was a tape."
"Yes?"
"We—I mean, we weren't monitoring. ..." Shubin seemed to
r
etreat from Serov's enquiring, exploratory gaze. It was true, Serov decided. The man had a tape, but hadn't listened in, knew little or nothing. Not that it mattered. He would be destroyed, along with Priabin and the others, as soon as
Lightning
was under way. Perhaps he could even be allowed to live. His knowledge would be irrelevant, once
Lightning
had happened. Priabin, of course, would have to go. "We know nothing, comrade Colonel Serov."
"Why was Lieutenant Rodin placed under surveillance? No, sit down, you can get me the tape in a moment. It is here, I take it?" Shubin nodded. Serov stretched his feet under the table; encountered the toy car and placed his foot on it. He gently applied pressure, and felt the cheap tin begin to give under his heel. 'Tell me," he encouraged. Shubin picked up his disregarded cigarette and puffed at it. "I want to know what's been going on here, for the past couple of weeks. A general's son under surveillance? A GRU officer under surveillance by the KGB? Very irregular. Yes—out with it, then. Everything."
Everything offended him deeply, with a separate, sharp shock for each recognition of his son's—sybaritic life-style. Quickly, as if for the purposes of healing, anger erupted and grew to replace the constriction in his throat that he understood to be grief. Yet this, this—
—these garments, behind the louvered doors of the built-in closets. Garish colors, silk, narrow leather trousers, the shirts more like women's blouses, the shoes, even the slippers that hinted at decadence, the bathrobes and the dressing gowns—each item offended him even as he continued his helpless inventory of his son's wardrobe. He felt anger becoming nausea. He kept his back to the room, to the bed. This was no man's wardrobe, no soldier's wardrobe, and he could not escape that judgment, that condemnation, not even when his vision dimmed. He sniffed loudly. The insistent cliches did not seem irrelevant or superannuated by his discovery. He clung to them, even as his hands, veins standing proud, gripped the edges of the louvered doors.
He uttered a strangled growl that he did not himself
understand,
and slammed the doors together so that they almost keeled from their runners. He could not look into that—mirror into his
son
's private life any longer. He turned to the bed. He had thrown a bedspread over Valery's limbs, but could not bear to cover his face-But the anger coursed, even now, even as he looked at the body-His son—his
son.
To live and die like this—
On the dressing table—no, on the carpet now—some of the bot-ties broken, the stench of the perfumes heady in the dry, silent room—the aftershaves, the colognes, even the makeup. General Lieutenant Rodin gagged at the image, at the smears of eye shadow and lipstick that his angry, violent bootsteps had produced on the
carpet.
As if he had wanted to grind each item out of sight, crush the images each evoked.
He turned his head from his son's cold features, almost regretting that he had shut the sliding doors of the closet; needing visual stimuli to sustain the anger he knew had arisen to conceal feelings he wished not to recognize. He strode from the bedroom without looking over his shoulder and entered the bathroom. Flung open the wall cabinets. Creams, makeup, powders, and—the drugs. The silver spoon on its thin silver chain like—like a medal, for heaven's sake! Worn like a medal.
He snatched up a handful of small packets. White powder. He ripped and tugged at the plastic of the packets, covering, his hands with the powder like an untidy cook flinging flour; ran the tap, washed his hands, washed the drugs away.
Fear had driven him here. Fear for—for Valery, yes, but fear of Serov. Fear on behalf of Valery—only to find, to find . . .
He grunted like a very old man, asthmatically. His head hung on his chest, as if he were on the point of vomiting. His arms were shaking as he leaned on his knuckles over the washbasin. He felt hatred surging in his body, shaking it like a fever. Hatred of Valery, of these creams and powders and colors and drugs that filled his thoughts; the perfumes that seeped from the bedroom and were released from these cabinets. He had not been able to sleep, but it was not the launch that had filled his restless mind, not even
Lightning;
his son, instead. Robbing him of needed sleep, robbing him of all anticipation of success. And now, now he had seen into his son's—soul. He'd opened cabinets, drawers, closets, and seen his son's private world mock him.
Why had Valery done it? Why? What fear had it been, what ache or despair? The concealed fluorescent lighting hummed softly. He could not look at his face in the mirror; lit from above, it would have been too naked, too old. Why? What had he been afraid of?
Love? He sobbed aloud, as if at sacrilege. The idea appalled him, hut he could not resist it; it was as if someone were whispering Insistently in his ear. Love? He groaned, staring at the water still Winning into the basin. The mirror was steaming up. He inhaled the heat as if trying to cure himself of a cold. Love? Impossible—for that actor? For him, for that kind of love?
There v/as no sense of self-blame, no tint of self-condemnation in his thoughts. The KGB colonel, Serov, that pathetic little homosexual actor—as if different in persuasion from Valery—all of them had played their parts in this, in what Valery had done to himself. All of them.
Eventually, his body calmed, the bathroom filled with steam from the wasted hot water; he left the bathroom and entered the living room. He picked up the telephone.
An ambulance. Without explanation. The boy's mother would have to be told. It would break her heart, the heart secreted from him, spent extravagantly like a windfall inheritance on her son— yes, it would break her heart. But, that was duty, and easy. He would inform her as soon as . . .
He dialed, staring out of the wide living room window at the cold sunlight seeping down the stained concrete of the building opposite.
Dmitri Priabin shivered, as if in a fevers spasm, and clutched his arms, wrapping them around him. He leaned his weight against the side of the car. He could not stop shaking. Couldn't.
She was watching him from a window of the flat. Wouldn't let him in, pretended that Mikhail wasn't there, had gone out, didn't know when he'd be back. Then, reality breaking through the hesitant lies, she'd cried out from behind the thin front door—
go away, get away from us
f
leave us alone, for God's sake leave us alone, can't you?
Apart from the crying child, Priabin had sensed Mikhail close behind the door. The woman's sobbing became muffled as if she were crying into someone's chest. He had banged on the door, even though he had already accepted her plea. The banging had
brought
Viktor's wife—widow—to her door, along the corridor. She had looked at him with what he could only perceive as accusation. She had not spoken, simply stared, then retreated behind her door, where there was a muffled hushing of curious children.