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made a low-level attack on a hillside bunker of bandits. It had almost been the end of him. |
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Next had come participation in the cosmonaut program. He had loved it, but it had ended abruptly with the collapsing economy. Then he had been posted to Air Transport, rushing to move all possible conventional weapons to the other side of the Urals, away from the scrutiny of any Conventional Arms treaty makers. That duty had introduced him to Kondratiev. He belonged to a group of high-ranking officers who were busy selling military materiel to the highest bidders and getting rich in the process. Those who were excluded called it criminal, the blackest of black markets. I prefer to describe myself as one of the new capitalists, Kalinin thought proudly. And a man needed the moneynot rubles, but hard currencies, dollars, pounds, deutsche marks. In these parlous times, money was power. |
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Through his lofty connections, he had avoided service as an adviser to the Bosnian Serbs, instead devoting himself to his military advancement, and he had succeeded at that, too. And yetHe looked back at the low log house, watching the nearly invisible heat waves from the great porcelain stove waft out of the chimney into the rainy air. We are all alike here, Kalinin thought. It was a kind of epiphany. We are all disappointed men, all desperate men, dreams dissipating before our eyes, like the waves of unharnessed heat from a chimney. |
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It is not what we dreamed of, Kalinin thought. Not what we expected. Not what we deserve. From that single fact, the desperation flows in a bitter, angry river. |
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Across the narrow road and beyond a low line of dunes lay the Black Sea. He could see the horizon. It was shrouded with heavy, dark clouds. Occasionally a streak of lightning, like a thread of sunfire, snaked down from the clouds to the sea. He waited, counting the seconds, until the thunder rolled in. As the sound rumbled past, Piotr Kondratiev emerged from the house carrying a fresh bottle of vodka by the neck. He strode across the wet grass to stand beside Kalinin. "Couldn't stand |
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