Angel Eyes (77 page)

"If that is really how you feel," Odysseus said, "I cannot help you."

Irina drew her head back. She stared into his fathomless eyes. "What do you mean? You must! I'm relying on you."

"No, Irina. It's time for you to rely on yourself. I can help, yes, that's true. But only you can save yourself from the violent world you fell so madly in love with. And only if you want to."

The tension came into her frame, and her blackness returned, the blackness she recognized as her fear of the endless Siberian winter, the bars over her moon, the country as her prison, and a voice inside her said. Now you have nothing. You 're lost, utterly lost.

Irina could feel the tears welling hotly in her eyes, but this time she fought them back, just as she fought the voice inside her. She did not have to be lost, it was not preordained.

There were alternatives to being utterly lost, and now she found that she wanted more than anything to explore those alternatives.

They would not be in America, as she had dreamed, but it was a foolish dream, an adolescent's wanting to run away from responsibility. And if there was. anything she could learn from the ????, it was a sense of responsibility.

She stared into the depths of Odysseus's opalescent eyes, and in the silence of their communication, told him that she was ready.

While Russell saw to Valeri's wound. Ton went to where Lara lay, checked to see if she was still alive. She wasn't. Then she walked to the edge of the pool, bent down, pulled Tatiana from the water. She rolled her over, saw that she was dead, too.

Such a waste of life, she thought sadly. Where will it end? That was a question she had been asking herself ever since she had watched Koi commit ritual suicide in an attempt to cleanse her spirit and her conscience of the blood staining it.

Tori could not forget that moment, as if it were fixed in time in her memory: the blue of the sky, the white of Koi's clothes, the red of the blood flowing. And the lights of Koi's mountains, burning for her. Silently, Tori said a prayer for Koi's spirit-and her own.

Slowly, almost hesitantly, she walked along the edge of the pool. Her legs seemed to have lost their strength. Here was the Hero, the Russian cosmonaut who had trained and lived with her brother Greg. The man who had last seen Greg alive. What strange fate that had brought her here!

And now that she was here, Tori found that she was almost afraid to approach him. She heard the water purling against the coping, she saw the ice-blue and indigo shadows moving in mysterious patterns across the face of the water. She heard the odd clicks of Arbat's language. And all these things lent an otherworldly cast to the pool, as if they were not inside a fortress in the heart of the USSR at all, but in another time, another place altogether.

Tori saw Arbat first, and she was so surprised she did not know what to say. The blue dolphin immediately broke away from where the ???? and Irina hung in the pool, ducked her head, swam up to where Tori stood.

In a rush, Arbat leaped fully out of the water. Her nose brushed Tori's cheek, and then her great sleek body was gone, in one enormous splash hidden beneath the churning water.

Tori stood very still. Her legs trembled and she looked toward the two humans in the pool. Irina swam over, introduced herself.

"I'm Tori Nunn," Tori said, sitting on the coping. "We've come with Valeri to help White Star." She extended her hand. Irina took it.

For a moment the two women stared deep into each other's eyes. What transpired then? Was there a silent communication of words, of feelings, or of something far more elemental, something impossible to define? In any case, there was a sense of a shared emotion if not a shared destiny that leaped between the women when they touched.

"I'm sorry," Tori said, breaking the silence, "but I was stunned by what the dolphin did.''

Irina smiled. "Arbat has very particular likes and dislikes. It's obvious she likes you a great deal.'' She turned. ''Odysseus? Come meet Tori. She's one of the Americans who-" Irina stopped, frozen by the look on Odysseus's face. "Is something the matter?"

The Hero swam slowly into what light there was in the shadowy pool room. Arbat surfaced next to him, and he put his hand on her back.

Tori watched as the ???? emerged from the darkness. Her heart was pounding so hard she could scarcely breathe. She could see his gleaming, silvery skin first, as sleek as Arbat's. She saw the contours of his face, the utter hairlessness of him. And then she caught a glimpse of his opalescent eyes.

Tori opened her mouth, closed it with a snap. Opened it again.

She stared into his angel eyes.

"Greg?"

"Tori," the Hero said. "God in Heaven."

Tori tumbled into the pool, clothes and all. She swam to where Odysseus floated with Arbat. Tears were streaming from her eyes.

"Don't," Odysseus said. "Oh, don't." He stroked her head.

"Greg."

Tori pulled him to her, embraced him, kissed his cheeks. She held him and held him. She did not want to let go, and for a long time she didn't.

When at last she unclasped him, she said, ''But I thought you were dead. We all did. How is it-"

"The Russians," Gregory Nunn said. "Viktor Shevchenko and I were part of a secret experiment these bastards devised to see if exposure to measured amounts of cosmic radiation could counter the crippling effects of weightlessness. Then the EVA event happened, and Viktor was killed. I came home, but was in a coma for several months. When I regained consciousness, the Russians figured I was too valuable to give back to the Americans.

"I don't know how they convinced our people it was me who died in space, but they did. Then they set about calling me Viktor, I suppose in order to try to indoctrinate me to my new life in a Russian prison. Of course, I had one all to myself, but it was no less a prison for that."

"Tori," Russell said from the edge of the pool behind her, "the deadline."

She turned. "Russ, this is my brother Greg! It was the Russian cosmonaut who died in space, not him. The Russians have been holding him here.''

''Hey, Jesus Christ.'' He squatted down. ''What the hell have they done to you?"

"It's a long story."

"I'll bet," Russell said. his frown deepened. "Are you okay?"

"It's hard to say."

"Well, one thing's for sure, we've got to get you out of here. I can tell you there'll be a lot of people back home falling all over themselves to talk to you."

"Not so different from the Russians."

Russell cocked his head at Greg's cynical tone. "What am I missing here?"

"Time," Tori said to Russell, but she was looking past him to her brother.

Russell said, "Okay. Greg, believe me, I want to get the whole story, but right now-"

"Odysseus," Valeri interrupted, coming up behind Russell, "the KGB and the military have combined as we had suspected." His right shoulder was wrapped with surgical tape. ''At dawn today the order will be given to invade the Baltic states of Latvia and Lithuania. At the same moment, the president will be assassinated by his own bodyguards."

"So soon," Greg said. "We're not yet altogether ready."

"Nevertheless, we're going to have to make do," Valeri said. He winced with pain. "We are going to have to deploy the MANDs."

"MANDs?" Russell said.

"Yes," Gregory Nunn said. "The Mobile Anti-personnel Nuclear Devices that Bernard Godwin has provided us with." He nodded at Valeri. "I agree. It's the only way to avert disaster. '' He swam to the edge of the pool. ''Help me up.''

Valeri and Russell bent down, lifted him from the pool. Valeri used only his left arm, but sucked in his breath sharply at the strain.

Greg looked at him inquiringly, and Valeri grinned. "Only a flesh wound," he said. "Not to worry."

"The bullet went clear through him," Russell said. "Only the muscle is damaged. I've stopped the bleeding, applied antibiotic cream, and I've wrapped him well. There's an excellent medical dispensary here. Still, he must see a surgeon."

"But not now," Valeri said.

During this exchange, Irina had climbed out of the pool. Now she went over to where the Hero's wheelchair sat. She brought it over and, as they sat him in it, she covered him with an oversized towel as she had seen Lara and Tatiana do. Then, as Tori emerged, dripping, Irina wrapped another towel around her, began to rub her shoulders to bring up the warmth.

Valeri wheeled Greg over to the communications area and, as Greg began to set up, he said, "Mars was almost right. But he never could have grasped the whole truth-or believed it.

''We have been building the concept of White Star for years. First, we had to fight state repression, then the people's fear of that repression. More recently, as pockets of nationalism in Georgia, Lithuania, the Ukraine, and other sectors of the Soviet Union sprang up through our encouragement, we've had to battle the divided nature of that nationalism. The Georgians cared only about Georgia, Ukrainians only about Ukrainians, and so on."

He paused, and they could all hear him breathing hard as he tried to block out the pain. The shock had dissipated, and the full brunt of the pain had set in. Of course, he had refused to take a painkiller.

"Then, eighteen months ago, Greg dropped into our laps like a star from heaven," he continued, gathering himself. "Greg was the Hero of the Odin-Galaktika II disaster. He was of Soviet descent, being incarcerated and interrogated almost daily by the KGB. He became a rallying point about which all the disparate nationalist elements could agree, a symbol to which every splinter group could relate. He was our Rosetta stone, our Shogun, bringing order out of chaos. And he became the leader of White Star."

They could hear Greg on the shortwave, talking in short bursts, moving the frequencies every twenty seconds in a preset pattern.

"From here," Valeri said, "the MANDs can be deployed quickly and efficiently."

"But even so," Russell said, "it's almost five in the morning. The invasion will begin clear across the country.''

"Not if the orders are never implemented," Valeri said. "The MANDs are hidden here in Moscow." He smiled. "Actually, right around the corner from the church where you found me. They're in the basement of the Atomic Energy Administration on Staromonetny Street."

He nodded. "Odysseus-pardon me, Gregory-is seeing that our people get the MANDs immediately. With them, they can get to the generals in their villas in the Lenin Hills, the KGB leaders in the Lubyanka and Lefortovo. You see, our people are highly placed, and they need only go that far."

He bent down, retrieved the Kalishnikov that Irina had dropped. "Of course it won't be as straightforward as that. It never is. There will inevitably be complications, and before it's over, some of us may die. Which is why I must go. I must see that none of the generals slip our net. And then I must confront the president, to give him an account of this treachery firsthand."

"Isn't there anything we can do?" Russell asked.

Valeri smiled. "You and Miss Nunn have already done your part. Now you must stand aside and let us do ours. At this stage, it would not be helpful to anyone if news got out of American agents being involved in this crisis."

"What will happen here?" Tori said.

"I don't know. No one does," Valeri admitted. "But it is clear that some form of compromise between the Russians and the national minorities must be hammered out. A good degree of national autonomy is needed, but no one in White Star wants to cripple this country. We just want the repression and prejudice against us to end."

After Greg was finished on the shortwave, Russell took over to send a coded signal via the Berlin station to Mail Central. Irina took Tori into the shower and changing room, showed her where Tatiana and Lara kept their clothes.

Irina was in the shower, and Tori was just finishing dressing, when Greg wheeled himself in.

"It's good to see you, Tori. You can't know how good."

Tori knelt in front of him. "What's happened to you, Greg? Mom and Dad will be so frightened when they see you."

He looked into her eyes, said, "I don't think so."

''What do you mean?''

Greg reached out, gripped her shoulders. "They know, Tori."

"Mom and Dad know you're alive?" Her face was a mask of shock. "But how?"

Then something flashed in her mind. Russell saying. Haw the devil is Bernard getting the funds to buy these nuclear weapons? And, with fingers half paralyzed, she fumbled out the photo that Ariel had pressed into her hands at the point of death. But there must be something more to this photo. What's so incriminating about it? Russell had said. Bernard could have gone to San Francisco/or any one of a million reasons.

Tori looked past Ariel in the foreground, the bronze sundial, the little girl playing in the park. She saw Bernard in the lower left-hand corner of the frame, and then, coming toward him, coming to meet him, the couple.

She peered through the gloom. Could it be? Did the photo show Tori's mother and father meeting Bernard Godwin in a San Francisco park? To discuss financing? Were Ellis and Laura Nunn financing White Star? Was it their money that Bernard used to buy the MANDs from the Japanese coalition?

And then it all clicked together.

Tori said with a bit of wonder in her voice, ''Valeri contacted Bernard and told him about you, didn't he, Greg? And then Bernard went to Dad. He told him you were alive, that this was Dad's chance to help free the people of the Soviet Union."

She saw the truth in Greg's eyes. "Jesus Christ, Bernard wasn't content with roping me into his secret world, he had to drag Mom and Dad in after me."

''I don't think it was quite as simple as that,'' Greg said softly. "I think Dad and Mom decided on their own-"

"No, no," Tori said heatedly. "You don't know Bernard as I've come to. He coerced them-maybe not directly-Dad isn't so easily coercible. But even he has his weak spot. You. I've no doubt that Bernard used you to get Dad's and Mom's backing."

"I think you're giving too much power to Bernard, and not enough credit to Mom and Dad."

"Bernard's gone too far this time," she said grimly.