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Page 204
ish superstition, he said, in the name of Russian science. Cherny wondered how Orgonev's immortal soul would explain that at the gates of heaven, always assuming it could reach so high, weighed down as it was by so many sins.
The echoing clangor of the bells, the crack of ice beneath marching feet, the rumble of wheels across the cobblesfor an instant, the President felt the presence of all those who had gone before him, in this most Russian of places.
A flight of Sukhoi fighters roared low over Red Square, like birds of prey silhouetted against the steel-colored overcast. One of the aircraft pulled up sharply into the clouds in an elegant execution of the USAF missing man formation. Still more ironies, Cherny thought, the day abounds with them. Yuri Kalinin, the young air force general whom Cherny had newly appointed as Air Officer Commanding the Moscow Military District Air Defense, had chosen the romantic symbolism to honor Orgonev. But perhaps the old barbarian atop the flower-decked missile carrier would appreciate it. Who could tell?
"Very impressive," David Milstein murmured as the Sukhois vanished into the winter mist. "Does Kalinin know what that little gesture cost us? We could give shelter to a hundred homeless for a year with the price of the jet fuel."
Admiral Eduard Aleyev, his face flushed with vodka and his breath freezing on his mustache, glared at the Minister of Finance. Milstein ignored him, his gaze fixed on Cherny.
If I could only get him to move ahead on the cleanup of the nuclear power plants, or agree to the American oil companies' rescue of the Siberian oil fields, Milstein thought despairingly. We will never get our economy in hand until we have our energy shortages solved.
I should be content, Milstein thought, that Russia has an elected President, instead of the wrangling turmoil of the years since Yeltsin. But I despair of an end to the ethnic wars, all around the old empire, eating away at the very heart of the

 
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