Politika

THIRTY-SIX

His back to the door, hands clasped behind him, Starinov was standing by the window, watching the sun leap at severe angles off the golden helmet domes of the Assumption Cathedral, when Yeni Bashkir entered his office.

On Starinov’s large mahogany pedestal desk was a bound report. Printed on its first page in Cyrillic were the words “CLASSIFIED MATERIAL.”

Letting the door close softly behind him, Bashkir grunted to himself and took two steps forward over the medallion-patterned Caucasian rug. He was reminded, as always, of the rich history of his surroundings. Going back through the centuries, how many tsars and ministers must have stood just as he and Starinov were now?

“Yeni,” Starinov said without turning to face him. “Right on time, as always. You’re the only man I know whose obsession with punctuality equals my own.”

“Old military habits die hard,” Bashkir said.

Starinov nodded. He was wringing his hands.

“The report,” he said in a heavy tone. “Have you read the copy I had delivered to you?”

“I have.”

“There is more besides. A bill has been introduced in the American legislature. It would force the President to discontinue all agricultural aid to our country and result in a complete economic embargo. Business enterprises between our nations would be suspended.”

“I know.”

“These sanctions can be avoided, I am told, if I prosecute a man the Americans have implicated as the originator of a heinous conspiracy and act of destruction. A man who would surely deserve the harshest of punishments should the accusations against him be proven.”

There was silence in the room for perhaps two full minutes. Bashkir didn’t move. Starinov’s eyes didn’t leave the great crownlike cathedral domes.

“Just once,” he resumed finally, lowering his head, “I would like to feel as sure of myself as I remember being in my younger days. Does everything sooner or later cloud with uncertainty, so that we go to our graves knowing less than we did as children?”

Bashkir waited a moment, staring at Starinov’s back. Then he said, “Let’s get this over with. If you need to ask me, then do it.”

Starinov shook his bowed head. “Yeni—”

“Ask me.”

Starinov expelled his breath in a massive sigh. Then he turned and looked sadly at Bashkir.

“I want to know if the report the Americans have given me is true. If you are responsible for the bombing in New York,” he said. “I need to hear it from your lips, on your honor.”

“The truth,” Bashkir echoed.

Starinov nodded again.

Something turned in Bashkir’s eyes. “If I were the sort of man who would slaughter thousands of human beings in a cowardly terrorist attack, the sort who believed that a political agenda would be worth spilling the blood of helpless women and children — be they Americans, Russians, or innocent citizens of any nation — then what trust could you place in my word of honor? And what value would our friendship have? Would a man behind such a deceitful coup against you, a man capable of betraying you so completely, have trouble answering you with a lie?”

Starinov smiled ruefully. “I thought I was the one with questions here,” he said.

Bashkir had remained rigid and motionless. His cheek quivered a little, but that was all. After a moment he spoke again.

“Here is truth for you, Vladimir. I have been clear about my mistrust of the American government. I have dissented with your open-door policies to American investors. I still subscribe to the basic ideals of Communism and am convinced we must build closer ties to China, a nation with which we share a four-thousand-mile frontier. I am open about all these things. But I also openly abhor terrorism. And as a sworn member of your cabinet, I have always acted in what I believe to be your best interests. Dissect me if you will, discard the parts that conflict with those that have cast my loyalty and integrity in doubt. That is the easy way out for you, I think. But I would have expected you to look at the whole of who I am. Who I have been for as long as we have known each other.” He paused. His eyes bored into Starinov from under his shaggy eyebrows. “I did not have anything to do with the bombing. I would never become involved in creating such horror. You speak of my honor? I will never again be dishonored by responding to such a question as you have asked me. Lock me away in prison, execute me… or better yet, have the Americans do it. I have spoken my piece.”

Silence.

Starinov regarded him steadily from across the room, his outline framed in the hard winter sunlight flooding in the window.

“I will be leaving for my dacha on the coast next week,” he said. “I need to be alone and think. The pressure from the United States will be intense, and will be joined by those here at home who want us to cave in to them, but we will find a way to stand against it all. No matter what they do, we will stand.”

Bashkir gave him a stiff, almost imperceptible little nod.

“There is a great deal of work ahead of us, then,” he said.