Mirror Image

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Sakhalin Island in the Sea of Okhotsk is a rugged, six-hundred-mile-long stretch of fishing villages on the coasts and majestic pine forests and coal mines in the interior, of rutted roads and a few new highways, of ruins of Romanov prison camps and of ancient graves where the most common surname is Nepomnyashchy— "Unremembered." Situated one time zone west of the International Date Line, it is closer to the Golden Gate Bridge than it is to the Kremlin. When it is noon in Moscow, it is already 8:00 P.M. on Sakhalin. The island has long been a retreat for leaders, many of whom have had dachas, comfortable cottages in the hills, and for eremites who lose themselves in Sakhalin's untouched wilderness to seek God and peace.

The Russians have long maintained a military presence in Korsakov, on the island's southeastern tip near the Kuril Islands, which stretch from the northern tip of Hokkaido to the southern tip of Kamchatka. The islands were occupied by the Soviet Union in 1945, though Japan still claims the seven-hundred-mile-long string of islands and the nations have argued over them ever since.

The Russian base in Korsakov is spartan, consisting of an airstrip, a small harbor, and four barracks. Five hundred naval troops and two regiments of spetsnaz frogmen and naval soldiers are stationed here, daily air and sea patrols keeping an eye and electronic ear on the activities of Japanese salmon boats.

Twenty-three-year-old Junior Lieutenant Nikita Orlov sat at his desk in the command post, high on a peak overlooking the sea and the base. His black hair was close-cropped, save for the longish waves that hung down over his forehead, and his full, ruddy lips were set in a square jaw. His brown eyes were alert and gleaming as he reviewed local intelligence and faxed news reports from the previous night— and stole frequent glances out the open window.

The young officer loved getting up before dawn, learning what had happened while he slept, and then watching the sun peek over the horizon and burn across the sea toward the base. He loved the waking of the world, even though each day no longer held the promise it did when he was a boy and then a cadet: that the Soviet Union would stand as the most enduring empire in the history of the world.

As keen as his disappointment was, Nikita loved his country as passionately as ever, and he loved Sakhalin. He had been sent here straight out of the spetsnaz academy, in large part to get him out of Moscow after the incident with the Greek Orthodox church— but also, he had always felt, to keep him from sullying his father's good name. Sergei Orlov was a hero, valuable as a flight instructor to impressionable young pilots, useful as propaganda at international symposia and conventions. Nikita Orlov was a radical, a reactionary who yearned for the days before Afghanistan destroyed the morale of the world's greatest military, before Chernobyl damaged the nation's pride, before glasnost and perestroika caused the economy and then the union to come apart.

But that was the past. And here, at least, there was still a sense of purpose, still an enemy. Captain Leshev— perhaps suffering from a touch of cabin fever after three years in command of the spetsnaz troops on Sakhalin— spent a great deal of time organizing shooting competitions, which were his passion. That left Orlov in charge of most military matters, and he felt that someday Russia would once again face Japan militarily, that they would try to establish a presence on the island and he might have the honor of leading the shock troops against them.

He also felt, in his heart, that Russia was not yet finished with the United States. The Soviets had beaten Japan in a war, and ownership of the islands was the prize. But there was a sense that Russia had lost a war with the United States, and the Russian spirit— certainly Orlov's spirit— bridled at that. Spetsnaz training had strengthened his belief that enemies must be destroyed, not accommodated, and that he and his soldiers should be unencumbered by any ethical, diplomatic, or moral considerations. He was convinced that Zhanin's efforts to turn Russia into a nation of consumers would fail just as Gorbachev's had, and that would lead to a final reckoning with the bankers and their puppets in Washington, London, and Berlin.

Fresh tobacco had arrived the day before, and Orlov rolled a cigarette as the rim of the sun rose above the dark sea. He felt so much a part of this land, of each sunrise, that it seemed possible to touch the tobacco to the sun itself to light it. Instead, he used the lighter his father had given him when he entered the academy, the orange glow of the flame illuminating the inscription on the side: To Nikki, with love and pride— your father. Nikita drew on the cigarette and slipped the lighter back into the vest pocket of his crisply pressed shirt.

With love and pride. What would the inscription have read after he received his commission? he wondered. With shame and embarrassment? Or when Nikita requested this outpost upon graduation, away from his father and nearer a very real enemy of Moscow. With disappointment and confusion?

The telephone rang, a relay from the communications shed at the foot of the hill. Orlov's aide had not yet arrived, so he picked up the trim, black receiver himself.

"Sakhalin post one, Orlov speaking."

"Good morning," said the caller.

Nikita was silent for several seconds. "Father?"

"Yes, Nikki," said the General. "How are you?"

"I'm fine, though surprised," Nikita said, his expression suddenly alarmed. "Is it Mother—?"

"She's well," said the General. "We're both well."

"I'm glad," Nikita said flatly. "To hear from you after all these months— well, you can understand my concern."

There was another short silence. Nikita's eyes were no longer joyous as he watched the sun rise. They grew hard and bitter as he pulled a long drag from his cigarette, thought back to his increasingly tense conversations with his father, then further back to his arrest four years before. He remembered how ashamed and angry the General had been about what he had done to that church, how the famous cosmonaut who couldn't go anywhere without being recognized was embarrassed to go out. How finally, on the night Colonel Rossky— not his influential father— had smoothed the matter over with the academy and gotten Nikita reinstated with just a week of double turns on the extra-duty post, his father had come to the academy barracks and lectured him about the infamy of hate and how great nations and great citizens have been destroyed by it. The other cadets had been silent, and when the great man left, someone came up with the Nikita and Sergei game, which the soldiers-in-training played for days: "Sergei" had to guess where in Moscow his son was painting hate slogans, while "Nikita" gave him hot-cold clues.

Nikita could still hear their voices, their laughter.

"The U.S. Embassy?"

"Cold—"

"The Japan Air Lines terminal at Sheremet'yevo Airport?"

"Very cold—"

"The men's dressing room at the Kirov?"

"Warmer!"

"Nikki," said the elder Orlov, "I've wanted to call, but I only seem to make you angry. I'd hoped that time would rid you of some of your bitterness—"

"Has it rid you of your arrogance," Nikita asked, "this celestial idiocy that what we ants do down here on the hill is petty or dirty or wrong?"

"Going into space didn't teach me that a nation can be destroyed from within as well as from without," Orlov said. "Ambitious men taught me that."

"Still full of piety and naivete," said Nikita.

"And you're still brash and disrespectful," the General said evenly.

"So now you've called," Nikita said, "and we've discovered that nothing has changed."

"I didn't call to argue."

"No? What then?" Nikita asked. "Are you trying to see how far the transmitter at your new television station can reach?"

"Neither, Nikki. I'm calling because I need a good officer to lead his unit on a mission."

Nikita sat up straight.

"Are you interested?" the General asked.

"If it's for Russia and not for your conscience, I am."

"I called because you're the right officer for this job," the General said. "That's all."

"Then I'm interested," Nikita said.

"Your orders will come through Captain Leshev within the hour. You'll be seconded to me for three days. You and your unit are to be in Vladivostok by eleven hundred."

"We'll be there," he said, rising. "Does this mean that you're back on active duty?"

"You know everything that you need to know for now," the General replied.

"Very good," Nikita said, puffing quickly on his cigarette.

"And Nikki— take care of yourself. When this is over, perhaps you'll come to Moscow and we can try again."

"That's a thought," said Nikita. "And perhaps I can invite my former comrades from the academy. Seeing you just wouldn't be the same without them."

"Nikki— you wouldn't have heard me out in private."

"And you couldn't have cleared the Orlov name unless it was public," Nikita said.

"I did that so others might avoid making a similar mistake," the General said.

"At my expense. Thank you, Father." Nikita ground out his cigarette. "You'll excuse me, but I must get ready if I'm to be on the mainland by eleven hundred. Please give my regards to Mother and to Colonel Rossky."

"I will," the General said. "Goodbye."

Nikita hung up the phone, then took a moment to look at the half-risen sun. It annoyed him that so many others understood what his father did not: that the greatness of Russia was in its unity, not its diversity; that, as Colonel Rossky had taught, the surgeon who cuts out diseased tissue does so to cure the body, not to hurt the patient. His father had been selected as a cosmonaut because, among other things, he was even-tempered, brave, charitable, and an ideal figure to present to schools and international journalists and young fliers who wanted to be heroes. But it remained for trench fighters such as himself to do the real work of the new Russia, the rebuilding, purging, and undoing the mistakes of the past decade.

After informing the duty officer where he was going, Nikita grabbed his hat and left the outpost, feeling sad for his father… but curious what the General planned for his son.