Belozersky stood stiffly to the rear of Yazykov at the conference table, hands locked behind his back. Yazykov sat with his hands folded on the table. Hoffman looked over the demands and wrote out a quick translation on her slate for Gerhardt. Gerhardt read them quickly and shook his head.
“We reject your demands,” Hoffman said flatly in Russian. She, too, had spent time in the third chamber library.
“These men are criminals,” Yazykov said. ”They have kidnapped one of our colleagues and hidden in one of the cities where we cannot find them.”
“Whether that’s true or not, we already agreed to separate governmental and judicial systems. We can’t help you find these men without breaking our agreement.”
“They are hiding in sections dominated by your people,” Belozersky said. ”You yourself may be hiding them.”
“If that’s the case, then I’ve been told nothing about it,” Hoffman said. ”I doubt it.”
“Surely you support our attempt to form a civilian government,” Yazykov said.
“We don’t support it, and we don’t oppose it,” Hoffman said. “That’s your concern. Our concern at this table is with Mirsky.“
Yazykov rose quickly and nodded at Hoffman. They crossed the cafeteria and exited through the rear door.
“What do you make of that?” Hoffman asked Gerhardt.
The general shook his head ruefully and grinned.
“Mirsky’s stolen their main man,” he said. ”Looks like he anticipated them and made the first move.”
“What’s your opinion of Mirsky?”
“Hard-line Soviet military or not, I’d rather deal with him than with Yazykov or Belozersky.”
“So do we help him?”
“Help Mirsky? Hell, no. First instincts are best. We stay out of it and let them settle it themselves. Besides, Mirsky won’t ask for help. We just have to hope it doesn’t come to a fight. We might not be able to stay out of that.”
Mirsky and Pogodin removed Vielgorsky from the third chamber city in the truck, following a tortuous series of service roads until they found a main artery that crossed the remaining twenty kilometers in a straight line. the artery emerged through a number of open half-moon gates onto the ninety tunnel leading to the second chamber.
Mirsky examined several buildings along the second chamber thoroughfares before picking one that suited him. It, was hidden between one of the giant chandelier-skyscrapers the Americans called megas, and a long row of hundred-meter-high asteroid-rock towers of no apparent utility.
The building was only four stories tall and seemed to have once been a kind of school. Long rows of connected seats filled the three rooms on each floor, facing slate-black walls rimmed with silvery glass.
In the easternmost room of the top floor, they spread their supplies, and Mirsky sat down with a much quieter and even more somber Vielgorsky. Pogodin went to hide the truck.
“I don’t thank you,” Vielgorsky said. He lay back on a bench and stared at the gold stars on the dark blue ceiling. “My father died in Afghanistan. I was told nothing about his death ... state secret. I still don’t know. But that it was all a military exercise to battle-test the army...” He shook his head wonderingly.
“A ten-year exercise! To find—” he coughed into his fist, “to find that all one has believed has been an orchestrated lie—”
“Not all,” Mirsky said. ”Much, but not all.”
“Having one’s eyes opened doesn’t make one grateful.”
“We’ve always known bits and pieces, haven’t we?” Mirsky asked. ”About the corruption, the inefficient and incompetent and venal superiors ... The State preserving itself at the expense of revolutionary ideals.”
“Every man must work with such things, if not accept them. But using our finest athletes and dancers as concubines—“
”Hypocrisy mixed with stupidity.”
“How much worse for a government that says it is above scandal, and cannot do wrong! At least the Americans wallow in their scandal.”
They talked for two hours. Pogodin returned. He listened attentively, his brow wrinkling when they discussed things that pained him. He interrupted only once, to ask, “Haven’t the Americans discovered how corrupt they are?”
Mirsky nodded. ”They have always known, or at least as often as their press could uncover the facts.”
“Their press is not controlled?”
“Manipulated, yes,” Mirsky said. ”Never completely controlled. They had thousands of historians, each with his own perspective. Their history was confused, but deliberate distortions were usually found out.”
Pogodin looked between Vielgorsky and Mirsky and then turned away to walk to the entrance of the room.
“What we’ve been told about Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Gorbachev—” Vielgorsky let his words trail off with a shake of his head.
“Is different from what our fathers were told,” Mirsky finished for him, “and their fathers before them.”
And they talked for another hour, this time about life in the army. Mirsky described how he had nearly become a political officer. Vielgorsky outlined the accelerated training courses he and the other Zampolid had been given before being launched with the Space Shock Troops from the Indian Ocean.
“We are not so far apart after all,” Vielgorsky said as Mirsky poured him water from a thermos. Mirsky shrugged again and handed him the cup. ”You know the responsibilities of a political officer ... the duty to party, to the revolution ...”
“What revolution?” Mirsky asked softly.
Vielgorsky’s face reddened. ”We must still be loyal to the revolution. Our lives, our sanity depends on it.”
“The revolution begins here, now,” Mirsky said. ”We are unloaded of the past.”
They regarded each other for an uncomfortably long time.
Pogodin returned to find them silent, and sat to one side, gripping the index finger of one hand with thumb and forefinger of the other and tugging it uneasily.
“The power must be shared,” Vielgorsky said. ”The party must be reestablished.”
“Not by murderers and louts,” Mirsky said sharply, jaw muscles tensing. “We have had enough of them. Russia has been raped by murderers and louts too long in the name of revolution and the party. No more. I will end it all.here rather than bring this back to our children on Earth.”
Vielgorsky fumbled at his pocket, pulling out an antique gold watch. “Belozersky and Yazykov will be frantic by now. There’s no telling what they will do if they don’t hear from me.”
“That weakens them,” Mirsky said. ”Let them sit for a while, or hang themselves.”
Vielgorsky grinned wolfishly and shook his finger at Mirsky. “You bastard. I know what you are. You’re a visionary. A deviationist visionary.”
“And I’m the only one you can be comfortable with, sharing the power,” Mirsky said. ”You know they will come after you eventually. You can no more trust them than you can trust a mad dog.”
Vielgorsky did not look convinced.
“Maybe now we understand each other.”
Vielgorsky shrugged and turned down the corners of his mouth.
At 1200 hours the next day, Pogodin aimed the track’s antenna toward the southern bore hole, and Vielgorsky sent a message to Yazykov and Belozersky: “Our fourth chamber troops have captured Mirsky and henchmen in third chamber library. Join us there. Trial will be held in library.”