Owen Matthews - Black Sun

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.”