He pulled out the pistol once more and ran back to the control console, banging past trolleys and stumbling over rubber pipes that snaked across the floor in the darkness.
“How do you stop it?” Vasin waved his Makarov wildly at Korin.
Korin folded his arms tightly across his chest.
“Leave it, boy. Adamov, don’t watch. Masha! Turn him away.”
Maria took her husband by the arm, and he allowed himself to be steered away from the sight of the desperate struggle in the tiny window.
“Stop it, Korin!”
“I can’t. The poor doctor already set the mechanism in motion. He left the door to the chamber open while he switched on the machine. Then got in himself. He knew that the plug door would seal itself as soon as the pumps began working. No way to change his mind, once he was in. A nasty way to go. But at least the choice was out of his hands. Brave, if you think about it. He knew he would never summon the will to pull a trigger or jump off a building. This way, it would be certain. The boy knew himself. Knew his own weakness. That’s what you’re going to conclude, Major.”
“He’s alive.”
“Not for long.”
“You’re lying. There’s a way to stop it.”
Vasin stepped up to the console. An incomprehensible array of dials, levers, and gauges spread before him. He began desperately toggling every lever within his reach.
Korin stepped into his path, blocking his progress down the control panel. The old man stood before him, craggy and immovable as an ancient tree.
“Steady.”
“It’s murder, Korin. It’s my duty to stop you.”
“It is sacrifice. ‘God called to Abraham. He said, “Take your son, your only son, and sacrifice him there as a burnt offering.” ’ ”
“The fucking Bible? Have you taken leave of your senses, Korin? Adamov, you must stop this.”
Framed in shadow, the Professor found his voice.
“One more life. To end war, Vasin.”
The pistons rose to their zenith, and a loud klaxon sounded. Vasin, alarmed, looked for the source of the sound. Korin lunged forward and grabbed Vasin’s wrist, slamming it down on the hard edge of the console. The pistol skittered across the floor, and Vasin scrambled to recover it in the black pool of shadow under the table. Korin remained where he was, guarding the console. Vasin found the cold metal of the Makarov and trained it on Korin.
“Switch it off. I’m warning you.”
Vasin snapped a round into the chamber and flicked off the safety catch. The bearded colonel loomed over the control panel, covering it with his body. Ignoring Vasin, he began to chant in the powerful, singsong voice of an Orthodox priest reading the lesson.
“For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it,” Korin chanted in his deep baritone. “But whoever loses his life for My sake, he is the one who will save it. Glory to you, Lord. Glory to you. Glory to you.”
The klaxon continued, deafening as an air-raid warning. Red lights went on all over the control panel. At the same moment Vasin pulled the trigger three times in rapid succession. One round hit Korin in the shoulder. The other two caught him square in the chest as he fell.
With a titanic thud the pistons released, slamming thousands of atmospheres of pressure into the steel chamber. Vasin turned to see Axelrod’s body burst like a popped balloon, his head collapsing and disappearing from sight.
Masha screamed and ran to catch Korin’s heavy body as it fell. As the cordite smoke cleared, the only sound was the compressor’s engines spinning slowly to a standstill, and Masha’s thin keening.
VI
Vasin’s brain scrabbled for comprehension like a dog slipping on ice, but he could find no purchase. The scene in front of him was unreal, as though he were watching his own life unfold frame by frame in one of Adamov’s slow-motion films. The gun in his hand was impossibly gravity-laden. His hand fell to his side from the weight of it. Masha had gathered Korin’s body into her thin arms. His lifeblood was spreading in a monstrous black stain across his tunic. Korin coughed, spitting blood messily on Masha’s face, shuddered mightily, and then slumped back. His handsome gray-bearded head lolled, the mouth falling open. Adamov remained utterly still, his face blank with shock.
Masha pressed her face into Korin’s, and she tried to lift his lifeless head from the floor in both hands. A stream of soft, unintelligible words came from her mouth, addressed privately to the dead man. Masha’s muttering stopped, as though she was waiting for an answer. She shook Korin’s head, first gently and then with increasing anger, like a child trying to shake a broken mechanical toy into life.
Once, Vasin had been a man afraid of chaos. Now chaos had embraced him. He had killed a man. Vasin turned the words over in his mind, unable to fit them into any meaning or feeling that he could comprehend. Korin, so deep-rooted and indestructible, so thickset and permanent, lay lifeless before them. Korin, the man who saw into the heart of things, the man who always had the answers, was gone. Vasin felt a stab of absurd anger. Look what you made me do, you stubborn old fucker. Are you happy now?
Vasin knew, with the violence of a physical blow, that his own life was now over. In a mad moment he had abandoned all reason to follow a pair of old lunatics into their insane plan. And now it was he who was left holding the smoking gun. The bomb, the end of the world, the uranium tamper, all the awesome, terrifying things that Adamov and Korin had told him seemed just a fantastical web of shadows, banished from his consciousness by the gunshots like shades before the light. He felt a stinging sensation between his thumb and forefinger from the pistol’s kick. He saw the dead man before him, the young woman cradling the corpse like a scene from an old Italian painting in the Pushkin Museum. He tried to wrench his mind beyond the scene before his eyes. But Vasin’s brain refused to obey him.
Crouching by the body, Masha released her burden. Korin’s head hit the floor with a hollow thud. The sound of skull hitting concrete, so human and so physical, broke Vasin’s paralysis. The outside world that surrounded them came crowding suddenly into his mind. He turned his head, listening for footsteps in the corridor, but heard nothing except the ringing of the gunshots in his ears. The engines had stopped spinning, and the pistons were subsiding with a soft, oily sigh. From the barometric chamber came a hiss of escaping air.
Vasin crossed the hall to the steel sphere. He pushed on the hatch, hard, until it finally yielded with a rubbery slurp. A single caged lamp on the inside turned from red to green as the pressure equalized, illuminating the contents of the sphere in a ghastly, theatrical light.
Axelrod lay sprawled in a pool of blood, his body akimbo like a loose sack of laundry. He looked as though he been stamped on by a furious titan. Axelrod’s head had partially caved in, and his chest was hollow. His life had been extinguished so violently that lines of black blood had spattered across the chamber’s walls, trickling downward like flung paint. Vasin turned away and walked slowly back to the console, wading through the thick darkness as though it were water running against him.
Masha had straightened up, though she still crouched on her haunches. Her breath came in shuddering sobs, and her face glistened wet in the yellow lights of the console. She swayed a little, balling her fists into her eyes for a long moment. Then she pulled herself together and stood. Adamov, his own spell of immobility suddenly broken by his wife’s movement, stepped toward Masha. He gathered her into his chest in a gesture that was so simple and intimate that the Professor suddenly seemed to have sloughed off his stern former self and become a vulnerable old man.
On the floor between them, Korin’s body jerked in a violent spasm that lifted his hands in a momentary, shocking convulsion before they fell back down with a lifeless slap. All three started in alarm. Adamov and Masha broke their embrace as they all stared at the corpse, waiting for more movement. The
Lazarus reflex, the final paroxysm of a dying body. Vasin had heard of it but never seen it for himself. Korin’s skin had turned papery and deathly pale.
Masha was the first to break the silence. Her voice was parched.
“Korin sacrificed himself. He’s the lamb. The sacrificial lamb.”
Vasin looked at Masha dumbly.
“Don’t you see? He offered himself. He was a believer in God. Don’t look so shocked.”
“Sacrificed himself, for what?”
“For us. For you. You heard what he said. ‘Take your son, your only son, and sacrifice him.’ ”
Vasin shook his head, but no coherent thoughts came into his brain.
“What are you saying?”
“We have to do what he said. He sacrificed his life, now we have to sacrifice his name.”
“How?”
Masha cleared her throat. Her voice became steadier as she spoke.
“We tell the truth. Korin poisoned Fedya. Korin forged the lab reports to make Petrov’s death look like suicide. And it was Korin who killed Axelrod. All that is true. Korin took his guilt upon himself. We can explain everything now.”
Abruptly, Adamov moved across the dais and sat down heavily on one of the operator’s chairs. It was if he had been folded up by some large invisible hand.
“Masha. We can explain everything, except why. Why did Korin kill Petrov? Or Axelrod?” Adamov reached into his tunic pocket and produced a papiros cigarette, lighting it with a slightly shaking hand. He spoke across the semidarkness to his wife as though they were alone. “Child—how can we possibly explain Korin’s motive? Without revealing the truth about why we made the changes to the device? And how do we explain how poor Korin ended up dead on the floor, shot through the heart with a kontora bullet? No, it ends here. Korin’s whole scheme? A desperate gamble. He thought he could protect the world from my bomb. To protect me. But he lost his gamble. We spilled the blood of young men in vain. There is no story to explain this.” Adamov gestured to the body on the floor. His voice had become a bleak whisper. “No. My love. We are lost. I am lost, at least. If Vasin agrees to protect you, Masha, you can still run. Save yourself. Tell them that you knew nothing….”
“Wait.”
Clarity came to Vasin like the shivering flush that follows the breaking of a fever. A recent memory had come looping vividly into his head with the force of a revelation. A cold night, creeping along the outside of Korin’s barrack. A glimpse of Masha through the papered-over window, huddled by a kitchen cupboard. The light of an electronic apparatus illuminating her face. And the thin, metallic voice carrying across the radio waves from distant capitalist lands, “This is the Voice of America….”
Finally Vasin’s reason had begun to make connections. His investigator’s mind began to fit the pieces together as he spoke.
“Korin was a spy.”
Adamov exhaled smoke contemptuously.
“Have you lost your mind, Chekist?”
“We have evidence. Material evidence. Korin had a hidden private shortwave radio set up in his hut. He listened to transmissions from America. ‘This is the Voice of America.’ Didn’t he, Masha?”
After a pause Maria nodded slowly.
“Masha? Have you gone mad?” Adamov flung his cigarette away in disgust. “Whatever this man has promised you, it’s all lies. Don’t repeat his fantasies. I know what these people will do.”
“No, husband. Vasin is right. Korin did have a radio. Here in Arzamas. He put it together himself. He used to listen to American programs. Sometimes he caught a Christian radio station run by some Russian émigrés from somewhere in Canada. Lots of different voices. All clamoring for his soul. Voice of America, Radio Liberty, Voice of Israel. Maybe he heard the voice of God there too. He taught me how to use it. I would listen to news programs. Sometimes. When he was away. But mostly because it was like listening to him.”
For the first time Vasin saw Adamov at a loss. The Professor rubbed a hand across his stubbly scalp.
“That fool,” the Professor said, almost to himself. “Saints and angels. Bloody fool.”
Vasin could see it now, the loose threads of the story tightening into stitches.
“Korin told me he worked with Americans, during the war. There was a pilot he was friendly with. Dan…Bilewsky. Bilewsky is the man who recruited him. Back in ’forty-two. He nursed his hatred for Soviet power through his years in the Gulag. And after he was pardoned for his crimes against the Party, he insinuated himself into the Motherland’s weapons program in order to betray it.”
A ragged sigh of disgust came from Adamov.
“Chekist, you know your job too well.”
“No, Comrade Professor. I know their minds well. It’s not about finding the truth, it’s about telling a story the people in power will believe. You will be questioned. You will say that you guessed at Korin’s secret religious sympathies. You will say that he often expressed anti-Soviet attitudes.”
“You want me to denounce him.”
“Yes. You will denounce a dead man. As he would have wanted you to. And the bomb, your version of the bomb, will drop on Monday morning without setting the whole damn world on fire.”
Adamov had recovered some of his icy spirit.
“And how does Korin’s holy radio explain…what we have here?”
“Korin knew Petrov liked foreign films, foreign literature. Decided that he would be susceptible to treachery. Korin tried to recruit Petrov. But he went too far. Every attempted recruitment is a calculated risk. Korin had to expose himself, reveal what he was. And when Petrov refused, he had to be dealt with.”
“So you will say that Korin the traitor murdered his young, brilliant colleague just to protect his own hide?”
“Exactly. Then he forged the record to make it look like Petrov committed suicide.”
“Quite the snake, this Korin of yours. And Axelrod?”
“Axelrod knew Petrov well. Very well.” Vasin shot a glance at Masha. “They were lovers, in fact. Axelrod suspected that his friend’s death was not suicide and came to me with his suspicions. But it was only when he and I checked the laboratory records together that we found Korin’s name on them.”
“And where does Sherlock Holmes come into this? I mean you, Major.”
Vasin ignored Adamov’s sarcasm.
“Korin was present at the dinner where Petrov was poisoned. I heard him listening to American radio. When I interviewed him in Olenya and here in Arzamas, he was defensive and told me many subversive stories against Soviet power.”
“Richard Jordan Gatling?” Masha piped up. “Marshal Zhukov’s nuclear test on our troops?”
“All that. Yes. I tell the kontora I had strong reasons to believe that Korin was a dangerous element. And then, when Axelrod and I found out about the forged records, I decided to bring this information to you, Professor. Privately. You were shocked. Korin was your old friend and colleague. You wished to hear this story from the mouth of his accuser. Axelrod. So you asked me to bring Axelrod here, to the Institute, tonight. And then you made a fatal mistake.”
“I told Korin?”
“Yes. You called Korin. No point in denying it. The kontora would have listened in to the call; it went through the central exchange. You could not credit what I told you. Your impulse was one of loyalty to an old comrade. You regret it now, of course. But you could not believe in the Colonel’s treachery. And Korin was such a very good liar, to survive all these years in the heart of our most secret city. Such a good liar that Korin persuaded you he would meet Axelrod down in the registry and ask to see the evidence in the files for himself. Korin promised to show the boy he was mistaken, then bring him up to your office. Where you were waiting. Where you are waiting still, right now.”
Vasin glanced at his watch
. Twenty minutes had passed since he had shot Korin. In an hour the body would start to stiffen. They had to work fast. Adamov began to answer, but Vasin spoke over him.
“I went to Axelrod’s apartment, told him you wanted to speak to him. He was nervous. Axelrod and I arrived here in the basement, at the registry, as you requested. We found Korin waiting for us. Then what happened, happened. He enticed us into this laboratory. Knocked me out. Dragged Axelrod into the chamber. I recovered, and tried to switch off the machine. After a struggle, I shot him. Then I called my colleagues in the kontora. They informed you of the tragedy. You were the unwitting cause of Axelrod’s death. But no blame will attach to you.”
The light of another papiros illuminated Adamov’s drawn face as he dragged on it.
“No. I will not spin such lies about Korin. He did not live by lies, nor will I.”
The solidity of the story that Vasin had spun seemed to dissipate like Adamov’s cigarette smoke in the vastness of the hall. He saw only Adamov’s exhausted face, proud and resigned to its own destruction.
“Professor, you told me yourself. If we do not do this, you will be condemned. Removed. Your work will be undone. Petrov will have died in vain. Korin too. Without you, we are all doomed.”
Adamov sighed deeply and shook his head.
“RDS-220 is not an invention, it is a discovery. This is not a creation of any human mind, it is physical truth made real. I did not create it, I revealed it. We have discovered how to create a sun, right here on earth. It cannot be undiscovered. It will be taken to its conclusion. Not by me, but by others. I can change this one device. But I can no more stop the nuclear age than I can end fire, earthquakes, or the wind. Korin was wrong. There will always be a new Petrov, a man who sees the bomb as a path to worldly power. What they call the arms race is a race between nuclear weapons and ourselves. And they will very soon outrun us.”
Black Sun Page 30
