The Museum of Abandoned Secrets

caps.
    So why did he feel so weary-hearted, why?
    He had dreamed something bad, that’s why. And he could not remember what it was.
    Couldn’t even put shards of that dream together. Of one thing he was sure, though: the dream boded ill. And this feeling—that in the dream he was entrusted with a terrible secret that touched on the fate of many people, and he lost it, like a nervous rookie on his first courier run—would not let go of him. The beast that lived inside him lost its bearing and pawed at him, restless, not certain where the danger was coming from—from the raids in the forest behind? From the city ahead? And was it he himself that was in danger, or the friends he left in the ill-fitting makeshift bunker?
    In Von Clausewitz’s
Vom Kriege
, he once underlined something that struck him as especially apt: four elements constitute the atmosphere of war—danger, tension, chance, uncertainty. This was the formula he always chose to begin the course he taught at junior officers’ schooling: when you have a ready formula it becomes incomparably easier to act. Was he not well used to uncertainty? To the feeling of danger that filled the air? What, in heaven’s name, was happening to him—all he had done was
forget a dream!
    And yet he felt disarmed.
    He stood at the edge of the forest—awash in the inky-blue clearness that quickly, too quickly, with the swiftness implacable to any human prayer or curse, thinned the November night (somehow, all his riskiest missions, just like all the most significant collisions of his life, always happened in November)—and felt a nasty, uncontrollable tremor rise from the depths of his sleep-deprived body and swell in his throat, unstoppable like vomit. He tore off one mitten, fanned his fingers in front of his face—but it wasn’t light enough yet to see if his hand was shaking. Dog your mother! Had he gotten so he was afraid to step out of the woods?
    Stodólya. Stodólya was the reason—Stodólya wrung his memory dry of dreams. From the instant he woke, the man weighed down his consciousness with the full mass of his presence (oh yes, he was constantly aware of Stodólya’s presence as of an external force!) and stole that portion of Adrian’s attention that was supposed to keep his dreams afloat. Stodólya was heavy; he left no room, not the tiniest crack for anything that was not him. He was
stronger
than Adrian, yes, that was the thing. Finally, he’d said it to himself. Stronger than himself, Adrian Ortynsky (aka Beast, aka Askold, aka Kyi), Ukrainian Insurgent Army Lieutenant, the region’s administrative adjutant, decorated with the Bronze Cross of Service and the Silver Star.... None of which meant anything against this simple fact: Stodólya was stronger.
    And Geltsia knew it.
    That’s why she’d chosen—him.
    A woman, of course, she was a woman in everything—how do they say it in French?—a woman par excellence. And you can’t fool a woman; a woman sees the strongest man way before his commanders—and more surely than the men he commands. Stodólya had will enough to bend, not dozens, but hundreds, even thousands of people. The sector was too small for him—he’d do well with the region. Or even in the area’s Central Security Service Command. One day, if he doesn’t get killed, that’s where he’ll go, most likely. While he, Adrian Ortynsky (Beast, Askold, Kyi), always felt best in open combat—and when it ended without losses. Hated nothing more than sending people to their deaths. And that’s why, however much longer he had allotted to him, he would never rise to regional command.
    For some reason, he remembered the story Levko told him the day before—a story that was more like a confession. Levko did have an artistic temperament, and Adrian liked him: the boy was sensitive. Of them all, Levko was the first to feel uneasy—as soon as they stepped into that bunker to wait out the raid. He joked and bantered but it all came out somehow nervous, and Adrian could feel it: he and Levko, whom he had once prompted just in time to check for the bullet in the stock before cleaning his rifle, were connected by that special, wordless link that occurs between the rescuer and the rescued—the one Adrian could never sense with Stodólya. When they found themselves alone, Levko started talking as though he’d been waiting for the opportunity for a long time. He told Adrian how they had to liquidate an MGB major they’d captured during the