Something was coming.
I pressed my hands flat on the mattress and breathed.
Or someone.
*************
Volkov arrived several minutes later.
He was different. The pleasantness was still present, the professional composure, the specific charm of a man who believed that affect was a tool and kept it available regardless of the circumstances. But underneath the affect was something I had not seen in the prior visits: a quality of compression.
He sat. The ease of the sitting slightly reduced from the prior visits–the body’s involuntary communication that the mind’s management couldn’t fully override.
“I want to talk about what happens today.”
“What happens today?”
“Your husband is moving,” he said. Flat. Informational. He had decided that pretending otherwise was not a useful expenditure of energy. “His operation has been dismantling my infrastructure for thirty-six hours. The pace is—” He paused. “Faster than anticipated.”
I said nothing.
He absorbed this without visible reaction. “You’ll need to communicate to him—”
“No,” I cut in.
“Elena.” The pleasantness had thinned. Not gone–he was too controlled for gone–but reduced, the specific reduction of a man who had calculated that directness was more efficient than warmth in the current window. “People will die. I’ve told you this. The number of people who die in the next several hours is a variable that you have influence over.”
“I have no influence over it,” I said. “Youhave influence over it. You made the choices that produced this situation. Every person who dies in the next several hours dies because of the decisions you made, not the decisions I made.” I held his gaze. “I am not going to communicate anything to my Mikhail on your behalf. Not a request to stand down, not a suggestion of negotiation, not a word that serves your position. Nothing.”
Volkov looked at me.
I had been building toward this since the first visit. Not rehearsing it–I did not function well with rehearsed things, had always been better with the present-tense version of language–but understanding what I needed to say and waiting for the moment when saying it was the correct thing.
Looking at him, I was even less scared than I thought I would be.
Volkov was quiet for a long moment.
Then he stood. The compression was more visible now, the affect management working harder.
“We’ll see,” he said.
He left.
I pressed my hands flat on my thighs.
He was coming.
Mikhail was coming here.
I was not afraid of that. I was afraid of what would happen in the interval between now and his arrival, which was different–not the absence of faith but the presence of specific risk, the risk that existed in the gap between the certainty of his coming and the unknown of the timeline.
I breathed.
I moved to the window.
*******************
The sound didn’t come as much of a shock.
