Part 38 (2/2)

And the chanting had followed him all this way. He had to stop the chanting. He had to do something or go completely mad.

McKenna rose, pale as a corpse, and hunted through his beaten footlocker. Dressed in the clothes he had worn in the Outback, neatly folded, stowed away for, perhaps, just such a time.

Picked up his Magnum .357 and checked the action. Slowly, methodically, he loaded the chambers. Then he went out the door of his apartment.

He was looking to kill or be killed. He did not know which.

Imagine! They would have gone to the ends of the earth for you. They sold their souls for you.

Daniella before the mirror that was part of a ma.s.sive oak armoire that dominated the bedroom a.s.signed to her at Maluta's dacha. It had a beautifully beveled edge but here and there dark patches like oilstains on limpid water bespoke the wear to which it had been subjected.

The black Dior gown that Yuri Lantin had bought her dropped to the carpet. Daniella stood, watching herself immobile in the mirror. It was almost as if, for this interminable instant, she were gazing at a sepia-toned photograph, her own daughter or granddaughter, perhaps, flipping through the family alb.u.m, coming upon the image of Daniella Alexandrova Vorkuta.

It was at this instant that, in the same manner a flash of lightning will illuminate a nightscape, she saw how distorted and unpleasant her life had become. Why, she realized, there is nothing at all normal about it.

Perhaps it was the thought of a daughtera child she might never bearor the granddaughter who would never exist. She had, in fact, no personal life whatsoever. She belonged to the sluzhba body and soul. Even the small pleasure she derived from being with Carelin was illicit, forever consigned to clandestine shadows, laced with the bitter taste of fear: that Maluta would expose them, or that someone else within the sluzhba or the Politburo would find out and use the information to suborn or destroy them.

For years she had been far too busy constructing a career on the back of her stretching ambition to think about what it was she was sacrificing on this terrible altar.

Mother of G.o.d, she thought, if someone had mentioned children to me even three years ago I would have laughed in her face. Children? For someone whose ambition was limitless?

For the first time in her life, Daniella contemplated the hollowness of power. Locked within her hideous psychological struggle with Oleg Maluta, she felt nothing but fear and loathing. Should she by some miracle defeat him, she knew that she would feel no sense of triumph.

Bowed their heads before you, conferred to you on bended knee all that made them powerful.

It was true what Maluta had told her that frigid night by the bank of the Moskva. She had been greedy for power. Like a vampire, she had feasted off it and then killed them all, all the men in her life who had tried to use her and had, in return, been used by her. They trooped through her mind like beloved actors asked to take a curtain call by their admiring audience.

Now, staring into her own cool gray eyes, those same eyes that had bewitched so many powerful men, she stumbled upon an astounding notion. She found what would make her happy. It was not the defeat of Oleg Maluta; it was not an elevation to head of the KGB or evento the head of her country. It was, simply, to feel Mikhail Carelin's seed flower inside her. She wanted his baby more than she wanted anything.

She lost her balance for a moment, falling into her own image, their lips meeting in cold gesture. When she pushed back, there was a dead spot on the mirror where her perspiration occluded the reflection.

In a moment, Daniella bent to pick up her Dior gown. It was all wrong for this evening. Putting aside the dress, she looked at herself in the mirror one more time. Her uniform with the blue shoulder-boards was holding its press well. There was nothing wrong with her, she decided, the way she was.

There was even the possibility that this was the correct way to go about it.

She had never seen Maluta drinkthat is, seriously drink. In Moscow, he drank an occasional shot of zubrovka at dinner. That was all. But here in the dacha, he swallowed ryabinovkathe vodka flavored with ashberriesas if he owned a piece of the business.

He was already well into the vodka when she came downstairs, where caviar and hot blini were waiting, piled on a chased silver salver. Before going in to dinner, he opened another bottle, bringing it in with them. Someone had obviously spent a great deal of time in the kitchen but it was Maluta himself who served the meal. If anyone else was in the dacha Daniella failed to see him.

The meal began with kulebiakabaked salmon surrounded by a multilayered wrapping of flaky pastry. Then ra.s.solnika steaming, rich soup made with a variety of pickled vegetables, many not readily available in the beginning of spring. The main course was an excellent chicken Kiev that shot a geyser of melted b.u.t.ter across its golden flank when Daniella pierced it with her knife.

For dessert, they feasted on vareniky, sweet dumplings filled with a delectable cherry conserve.

Over chai, Daniella said, ”Do you always eat this well, Comrade?”

Maluta, who was busy sugaring his tea, said nothing. He placed three cubes in his gla.s.s at once, using the curved end of his spoon to tap at them until they broke apart. He'd stir the tea a bit, then add three more lumps and repeat the process.

At length, he said, ”My wife was an exceptional cook.” But his tone told her that he was speaking more to himself. ”At home, I am used to eating in a certain manner. Some things should never change.”

Abruptly, he got up and went out of the dining room. Daniella spent a moment stirring her tea until she saw the sugar dissolve. Then she rose and followed him out.

He stood by one of the great paned windows in the living room that looked out on the Moskva far below. He sipped his tea absently, his free hand behind his back. He seemed uncommonly melancholy tonight, a side of him Daniella had never before witnessed. She had seen him calm and almost hysterically angry but never withdrawn and brooding.

”The Moskva survives,” he said, and again she had the eerie sensation that he was not talking to her at all, perhaps not even to himself but to some unseen presence. ”The mountains endure. But life must ebb and flow.”

He turned around to face her. ”Isn't that so, Daniella Alexandrova?”

She nodded. ”It is a law of nature, is it not?”

His dark eyes watched her from the shadows cast by the heavy brocaded curtains. ”Perhaps, yes. And we should know, eh? We who concern ourselves during each waking moment with the law. Is it man who makes the laws in this world, Daniella Alexandrova? Or is it, as you have said, nature?” He lifted his gla.s.s of chai, sipped at it without taking his eyes from hers. ”Is nature, I wonder, another name for G.o.d?”

The short hairs at the nape of Daniella's neck began to stir. Oleg Maluta talking of G.o.d? It seemed an impossibility for such a rigidly pragmatic believer in the Party. She did not understand the territory to which he had brought them, so she said nothing.

”Who made the world, Daniella Alexandrova? Was it created in a burst of incendiary star-matter? A trillion-year swirl of cosmic detritus? Or can you observe a divine hand in the molding of virgin clay?”

”Are you asking my opinion?” Daniella asked. ”Or merely listing options?”

He came away from the shadows of the brocaded curtains. ”I am curious about what you believe in.” They stood not a meter apart. ”I am curious to know if you see a, what shall we say, a higher intelligence at workat the beginning of all things.”

”Yes,” she said without hesitation. ”And G.o.d was a Communist.”

He did not laugh as she expected he would. Instead he frowned. ”I am serious, Daniella Alexandrova.” She wondered what he was getting at; what new trap he was about to spring on her. ”I want to know if you believe. You know what I mean. I want to knowif you do whether this belief affords you any measure of solace.”

”I was lying before,” she said. ”G.o.d doesn't understand Communism.”

He moved closer. ”Then you do believe.”

”I am a Communist,” she said. ”G.o.d doesn't understand me either.”

Now he did laugh. ”If He exists, which I doubt, I can't imagine that He'd understand any of us.” In a moment, his gaze broke away from hers. He stared down at the russet surface of his tea. The melancholy had returned, shrouding him. ”Daniella Alexandrova, I must ask you this. Did anything happen in your life that you could not explain a that you did not fully understand.”

”I'm not certain that I follow you, Comrade.”

Maluta lifted his head and his eyes grabbed hers again. ”I am speaking now about tragedy.”

And in a flash, Daniella knew what he was alluding to: his wife's appalling death. And because she knew he wanted a certain answer from her, she lied. ”Yes.”

”And?”

”Yes, and?”

”Did you” He broke off, perhaps embarra.s.sed. ”Did you witness the hand of G.o.d in thistragedy?”

”If you believe, Comrade, then the hand of G.o.d touches everything a and everyone.”

”Then how is the inexplicable a the tragedy of a lifetime explained.”

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