TVP: Chapter 46
Fell asleep in a blizzard sometime last night
Woke up alone, freezing and white
(Mudhoney)
Chapter 46.
Ocelot’s eyes opened to a high colorless sky beyond the window, and the stillness of a new and humbled day.
He sat up, getting his bearings, rubbing his face in his palms vigorously.
The air in the room was chilly as a prison, despite the hueless light that filtered in from outside.
The sheets were cold when he shifted, and he scowled.
It was easier to orient himself this morning, somehow, and the reason why eluded him momentarily until his eye fell on the bedside table, and the narrow drawer where the unobtrusive tin of Pentazamin lay.
And he recalled that he’d missed his regimen.
Which led him to recall everything leading up to that lapse.
“The Major,” he muttered, narrowing his eyes.
He frowned sharply, realizing he was alone, and he hadn’t gone to sleep that way.
So Raikov had been awake and aware while he slept. Not only that, he’d managed to dress and depart without rousing him. And from the temperature of the linens, he’d been gone for some time.
Ocelot scowled, and then his eye fell on the far side of the room.
Maybe even longer than he thought.
The cot by the window had a clear body-shaped indent, and the bedclothes the industrious grunt had so carefully snapped into military corners were mussed and disarrayed.
So Ivan had slept alone.
Ocelot’s eyes narrowed as he got to his feet.
Naked and unarmed.
He seized his telnik and shorts, pulling them on.
At least, they were probably his shorts. They were officer issue, at least.
His lips twisted in spite of himself.
“Not funny,” he muttered, vehemently.
The night before had been both revelation and revelry. His mind flashed through images of their inhibitions unwinding, of sharp and structured uniforms shed and discarded, sprawled and strewn across his quarters.
Last night, he hadn’t cared where anything wound up, with the exception of his…
“No,” he bit out, cutting the thought short. Thinking too lingeringly along those lines was not an option right now.
He spied his field jacket and jodhpurs, and gathered them from opposite sides of the room. His beret and scarf were nicely laid out where he’d left them, on the table by the open bottle of vodka and the empty shot glasses.
It was a picturesque tableau, if you liked that kind of thing.
He snorted, seizing them, making the glasses rattle.
Ocelot recreated himself swiftly, with practiced hands, fastening his buttons and belt, drawing on his boots with customary efficiency.
The last three steps he always did in order, like a warding mantra. Gloves, beret, guns.
He was frowning, his mind clicking along behind the expression, his actions automatic and unstudied.
Laundry listing.
CODEC reception would be back, satellites no longer blocked by the storm. He could check in with his KGB and CIA contacts.
Phones were almost certainly out- lines blown down, or weighted by snow. Groznyj Grad would deploy a team of engineers and electricians in personal hovercraft. If there was one thing the Colonel had absolute crystal clarity and insight in selecting, it was electrical engineers. They had built his safeguards, his suit, the Draconian room where he showered alone with conduits carefully taped and mapped along his body.
Yes, the Colonel had a fleet of them, night and day, at his disposal.
Volgin could damn well wait until the crew got the lines back up and running, although Ocelot anticipated the wiretap would be running off the hook in the main office.
DEAR MAJOR RAIKOV STOP ARE YOU ALL RIGHT STOP IF ANYTHING HAPPENED TO YOU I WILL DESTROY ALL OF TSELINOYARSK STOP I AM GOING TO DO IT STOP WITH FUCKING BIG LIGHTNING STOP I AM SERIOUS STOP YOU HAD BETTER ANSWER STOP
Perhaps it would be good policy to check in with the kapral who manned the telegraph in the lobby office.
Yes, all of that. Good ideas, and he would do all of them.
But first, a little talk with EVA.
Ocelot wasn’t sure immediately where to seek his elusive counterpart.
Or for that matter, what he was going to say when he found him.
A grimace crossed his lips briefly.
He would figure that out when he got there. Improvisation was one of his specialties.
The gorki was buzzing lazily, like a smoked hive. When he entered the main building he saw administrative soldiers passing and crossing, back on schedule, but mellow with the knowledge that not much could be done until the snow thawed a little more.
The field soldiers idled in the lobby smoking and playing cards. That meant the drifts were too high, or that the wire anticipated more inclement weather.
“Major,” acknowledged one, pausing and saluting. “I was instructed to tell you that the Ocelot Squad is at mess, after completing AM perimeter control. Major Raikov said you would be reporting late this morning.”
Ocelot’s lips jerked into a taut line.
Don’t shoot the messenger.
“Did he,” he scowled. “Noted. On your way, Lieutenant.”
The officer nodded briskly, heels together. A perfect office pedigree breed, with his grey winter overcoat and unlined, expressionless face.
Ocelot shifted his focus to the elevator.
He frowned.
“Wait, Lieutenant,” he called, and the departing officer drew up hastily, double-took.
“Sir.”
“Is Major Raikov in the officers’ lounge?”
“No, Major. I believe he’s in his temporary field office.”
Ocelot blinked.
Office? He recalled something about that, from the first day at Graniny, but it had long since fled his memory.
“On the second floor upper level, sir,” the Lieutant said. “Near Direktor Granin’s.”
Ocelot flexed the gloved fingers of his fist slowly, frowning.
“Right. Granin’s.”
“…and yours,” the soldier added tactfully.
There was a pause, and Ocelot’s eyes narrowed.
“That will be all, Lieutenant.”
“At your service, sir.”
Ocelot took the elevator to the second floor atrium, spinning his gun absently in his left hand.
He snorted to himself at Spetsnaz GRU rank protocol; the futility of automatically assigning him an office, especially at a command research outpost in hostile possession, like Graniny-Gorki.
Even at Groznyj Grad, Major Ocelot’s office theoretically was the battlefield, and in practice it was his personal quarters.
As ADAM, he had no stationary base of operations whatsoever. The assignment was a roving location, and it all triangulated around him.
He found Raikov’s office without much trouble, and stood, pausing at the door, smirking and checking his gun slowly, revolving it first one way and then the other.
Майор Раикофф Иван
Even considering the short-term nature of their assignment, administrative preparation had obviously been sufficient to engrave a brass nameplate and affix it to the door.
Had Raikov used his office since they’d come to Granin’s lab? Frowning, it occurred to Ocelot that perhaps that was where Ivan had disappeared to in the avoidant few days after that spontaneous, surprising “Belarusan kiss”.
He knocked on the door smartly with the butt of his gun, three times, with metronomic precision.
“Razreshenjye,” he heard Raikov call, absently, and so he took him at face value, opening the door and striding in.
His eye fell at once on the desk, where a hot cup of tea steeped lazily beside a stack of papers. Requisition forms, from the looks of it. Ocelot didn’t envy him that job. Of course, there was no justifying orders for Ivan Raikov. No, everything the Colonel’s man wanted, he got, no matter how inane or inexplicable.
You want miniature bears that wear big ugly wooden sabots and speak pidgin Yiddish because it would raise troop morale? Fine, I think I saw some at a souk in Kyrgystan. Let’s requisition twenty-six of them.
Raikov was standing by the far wall, gazing out on the towering snowscape from the many-paned window. He was wearing his stiffly bound and belted greatcoat, which meant he must have been out in the yard and the perimeter that morning, touring the storm damage with his men.
Or, as was more likely…
My men, thought Ocelot.
The thought didn’t bother him as much as he would have expected.
Ivan turned in mild expectancy, a blankly receptive expression on his handsome face, the studiously neutral response of a commander.
At the sight of Ocelot, his lips broke into a hesitant smile.
“Ah, khorosho,” he said with a slight nod. “Good morning, Adam.”
There was an underlying warmth to the words that was not lost on him.
Somehow, all of Ocelot’s ambivalence evaporated at Raikov’s greeting, along with the morning-after interrogation he’d planned to have.
He frowned, uncertain what to say next.
“You shouldn’t have let me sleep.”
Raikov shrugged.
“I looked outside and made a call. There was no need to wake you.”
He left reference to their interpersonal circumstance discreetly unspoken.
Ocelot averted his eyes briefly.
“I suppose not,” he allowed. “…I take it we’re immobilized?”
The Major nodded.
“Snowed in, well past the first floor windows, I’m afraid. Phone lines are out, and we’re still running on the main generator. The Tselinoyarsk forest roads will be impassible for some days, according to your squadron.”
“You sent them out.”
Raikov smiled, raising his eyebrows.
“Could I have stopped them?”
Ocelot only smirked in reply.
“Although they seemed to suspect I had killed you and stuffed you in my locker or something,” Raikov added, slyly. “Apparently you don’t miss many roll calls.”
“No,” said Ocelot. “I don’t.”
Never had, in fact, unless he had an unavoidable mission objective, in which case he would have merely barked orders over CODEC for Senior Lieutenant Imanov to cover his command.
The Major pulled the scattered requisition forms into a pile and stacked the edges against the desk surface.
He set them aside, briskly efficient, and raised his eyes obliquely.
“I was about to head to the kafeteriyj for some rassolnik. The bread should be freshly baked today. Are you hungry?”
At the casual mention of hot stew and new bread, Ocelot suddenly realized he was ravenous.
His eyes narrowed.
“Very hungry, actually, Major. I’ll take you up on that.”
Raikov smiled, looking genuinely pleased.
Ocelot glanced at the white world outside the office window and frowned.
“But first I want to step outside and see the situation for myself.”
Raikov followed his gaze.
“Minutko,” he said, nodding, once. “I’ll just get my gloves.”
“Do that,” Ocelot replied smugly, and Raikov rolled his eyes in a good-natured way as he pulled open the top drawer of his desk to retrieve them.
They were black and smooth like licorice across his palm, paired neatly flush. Something about them stirred the blood, though Adam was hard-pressed to define why. Perhaps because they suggested both mercenary ruthlessness and polished aggression. The innate violence of man’s hard fist, civilized in a sleekly tailored sheath.
Ocelot watched as he drew them on smoothly over tapered fingers, pulling them taut and settled at the wrist.
Then he glanced up, thrusting them habitually into the pockets of his greatcoat.
“Davai,” he said, laconic.
Ocelot raised his chin.
“After you.”
They strolled down the halls abreast, keeping a companionable pace, a reasonable distance from each other.
The clacking of their boots resonated in perfect counterpoint, and it was a reassuring sound, casual and unforced.
The smoking soldiers around the door scrambled to salute, but Raikov waved them off almost menacingly.
“Yeb vas. Go braid your pricks or something. I don’t have time to for you to inflict your subordination on me today.”
Ocelot snorted, repressing a laugh.
They passed through the jamb without being further accosted, stepping into the high peppermint chill of the yard.
It was less of a yard now than a glorified snow bank. The snow was piled as high as the concrete courtyard walls, except for where they now stood, a roughly cleared swath flanked by six feet of snow on either side.
The soldiers had shoveled a wide trench to the vehicle gate in the name of indomitable Sovietsky, but there was little point in accessing blocked roads.
Ocelot looked around, up beyond the walls at the surrounding trees and hills.
The world was white-swathed and demure, battered by the storm into quiet humility.
Raikov watched him, idly.
“You see? There was nothing to be done. Your Ocelots donned snowshoes and trekked out on patrol to see how the lines and roads fared. And the GRU men dug us passage to the supply cellars and artillery sheds. Otherwise, comrade major, I’m afraid our hands are tied. For a time, anyway.”
Ocelot’s first flash thought about tied hands was not conducive or relevant to their present conversation.
He scowled and burned his mind clean.
“What about helicopter access?”
Tied hands or not, both of them knew that Volgin would be aboard a Kamov at the first opportunity.
Raikov shrugged vaguely.
“Bolshaya Past Base is attempting to clear and de-ice their helipad, from what they reported over the wire, but that still leaves Graniny-Gorki unreachable because of the snowbound forest roads.”
“And our helipad?”
“Not a priority,” said Raikov, staring straight ahead. “It’s too far from the main grounds. We’ll get to it in the next two days.”
Ocelot smirked, out of habitual force.
“The Colonel won’t like that.”
“He has no choice. I spoke to him over the wire this morning. He knows what we’re facing here.”
Raikov glanced at him enigmatically. “In any case, Groznyj Grad has her own problems from the storm.”
“If we wanted to, we could clear the helipad without too much trouble- we have the men…”
The Major moved his shoulders in a pleasant shrug, but offered nothing in reply.
Ocelot eyed him cannily, but his face betrayed nothing.
It didn’t take long for his motives to dawn on Adam.
“…You don’t want him to come yet,” he accused, with a narrow-eyed smile.
Ivan turned his head, slowly, contemplatively.
“I want the full mission time we were assigned, comrade. Nothing more or less. There’s no need to truncate our tenure at Graniny-Gorki. Volgin doesn’t need to come thundering over here because of a little flurry.”
Ocelot smirked, looking at the walls of snow that surrounded them.
Raikov leveled his eyebrows in a lackadaisical fashion.
“I’ve seen worse.”
“I’m sure you have, Chukcha. From the window of your igloo.”
Ivan tried not to smile.
“Have you seen enough, Ocelot? Or are you going to put on snowshoes and survey the wilderness perimeter? I’d like to have some lunch, if you’re satisfied.”
Adam gave him a subdued deployment of the finger-guns and checked them back against his chest slightly, smirking.
“By all means, Raikov.” He glanced up at the drifts once more. “...I found out what I needed to know.”