He then sneaked away, picked up an AKV and returned to the third chamber. Five people were in the library, Rodhzhensky again and four NATO people, one of them a United States Marine. Mirsky patiently waited for them to go, and entered the library with rifle in hand.

He had given the political officers one chance. If they were released, they would only come for him again. He would stay in the library for the next two days, waiting patiently. . . .

The library remained deserted for several hours. In that time, he realized that his plan was useless. The library would not stay deserted for long. He had to carry out his executions—murders—in secret, or they would be worse than useless. Unless he destroyed the three political officers even more thoroughly than they had destroyed him, they would be resurrected, and he would be incarcerated for nineteen days, and it would all begin again—a cycle of insanity and violence beyond the dreams even of Gogol.

He walked to the wall behind which the three political officers waited, unconscious, and lowered the rifle to the floor at the northern edge of the array of seats, blinking rapidly.

"I'm not the same person you killed," he said. "Why should I take revenge?"

Even if he felt that he was the same person, this could be an excuse. He could do what he realized he had wanted to do for years. Perhaps the clarity had been brought on by the destruction of some irrational section of his thinking, releasing another impulse, truer and cleaner.

Mirsky had always wanted the stars, but not at the price of his soul. And working within a Soviet system—even one such as he would have tried to establish—would always mean working against people like Belozersky, Yazykov and Vielgorsky. Their faces kept reappearing throughout Russian history: the vicious lackeys and the capable but cruel and slightly askew leader.

He would break from the cycle. He had the chance now. His homeland was gone. His duty was over; he had already died for his men once. Perhaps if Major General Sosnitsky had survived. . . But then, if the Major General were still alive, Mirsky wouldn't be in this position. Sosnitsky would be.

He left the library and rode the train to the fourth chamber fort. There, he gathered supplies into a truck—nobody questioning his intentions, not even Pletnev, who regarded him from some meters away with a look of mild puzzlement.

"They'll be glad to be rid of me," Mirsky thought. "They can get on with their intrigues and cruelties. The political triumvirate will return to take their rightful places. I've been an impediment all along. . . .”

His last duty was to write a message for Garabedian.

Viktor:

The three political officers will return. They will be in the third chamber library sometime within the next forty hours. Accept them as your leaders if you wish; I will no longer impede them.

Pavel