Читаем Panic Switch полностью

Mid-August, and the weather in Murmansk, Russia, was only a few degrees above freezing, a cold rain beating down, making a drum-beat noise on the metal roof over the bar’s outside porch. Georgy Alexeyev looked up at the lit sign above the door, the sign showing a graphic of a wolf ripping off the head of a sheep, blood splashing onto the face of the wolf. The Lamb’s Valhalla had been a popular hangout for the officers of the Northern Fleet before the brass came down and blackballed it for the practice of a backroom filled with friendly hookers. Ridiculous, Alexeyev thought, wondering if one of the senior female officers had insisted on the bar being made off limits.

Inside the solid wood door, the bar’s atmosphere was steaming hot, the wave of heat a welcome feeling. Alexeyev pulled off his heavy sheepskin coat and hung it on one of the many hooks by the door. A smiling, large-breasted, tall blonde waved him to his usual booth. After he settled in, she returned with a bottle of Glenfiddich scotch and two glasses. She asked if he would want any food, but he waved her off. Tonight was for drinking, he thought.

Captain First Rank Georgy Alexeyev had a thick, full head of gray-streaked hair swooping over his forehead and ears, the mirror reminding him that he needed a haircut. He wore a black eyepatch over his right eye. He really didn’t need the patch anymore, now that the surgery had been done to put in a glass eye, but he was self-conscious that the glass eye didn’t look realistic, and he’d rather people just realize he was half blind rather than try to guess why his face looked odd.

Alexeyev was tall, a bit over 185 centimeters, and he’d always been thin — even gaunt — although since the disaster in the South Atlantic, he’d gained a few kilograms he could stand to lose. But the weight was largely unnoticeable at his waist, his jawline still ruler straight.

Tonight he’d decided to dress in jeans and a denim shirt under an olive-drab submarine service pullover, forgoing his usual uniform. After all, showing up to an off-limits bar in uniform would seem to tempt the bosses. He was halfway into a glass of the scotch, which was cold despite being unrefrigerated, when his friend walked in, still wearing his coat, which was dripping wet.

“Take your coat off, Sergei,” Alexeyev said.

“Oh,” Sergei Kovalov said, shaking his head. “My mind is elsewhere. Pour one for me, will you?” Kovalov went back to the door, took off his jacket and returned as Alexeyev was corking the bottle. He slid over into the seat opposite Alexeyev. Captain First Rank Sergei Kovalov was a shorter man, built like a bear, everything about the man thick and hairy. He had a fleshy face with wide penetrating eyes, red hair, and a thick mustache. He was the son of a high-ranking government official, although Alexeyev had no idea what Kovalov’s father had been, since Kovalov refused to speak about him. Alexeyev and Kovalov had been friends ever since their junior officer tours on the Tambov a million years ago. Kovalov had nursed many a drink with Alexeyev during the troubled times of Kovalov’s divorce, the two of them convinced they could find the answers to life’s problems at the bottom of a bottle. And while they’d proved that theory wrong on multiple occasions, that didn’t stop them from continuing to try.

Kovalov raised his glass, and Alexeyev joined him. “To fallen comrades,” Kovalov said, and Alexeyev thought for a sad moment about the personnel he’d lost in the South Atlantic when his K-561 Kazan went down, at the wrong end of a damned Russian supercavitating torpedo. Alexeyev shut his eyes and drank, saying a momentary prayer that wherever the souls he’d lost were, they were okay. When he opened his eyes, he noticed his friend was staring down at the table, seeming lost.

“Are you okay, Sergei?” Alexeyev asked.

“Wife and daughter are driving me crazy,” Kovalov said, blinking. “Tonight they were screaming at each other so loud that not one, but two neighbors pounded on the apartment door to demand quiet. And then Ivana insisted that I remove Magna’s door from her room. Somehow, Mommy thinks that destroying the girl’s privacy is the cure to the trouble. And through all this, Magna’s still not speaking to me. After, you know, the thing. So at home? Pure chaos.”

“Removing a teenage girl’s door? You’d be throwing gasoline onto a fire already burning,” Alexeyev said.

“I know. So, Georgy, enough about my problems. You wanted to talk. Are there new sorrows to drown?”

Alexeyev poured more scotch for both of them. “You know, Sergei, the trouble with the attempt to drown sorrows in alcohol is that sorrows are such good swimmers.”

Kovalov smiled and tilted his glass back, drained it, and called for more.