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Page 319
Aleyev. Kalinin could smell the vodka all the way across the room. My colleague, he thought angrily, my partner in crime. Kalinin could stand it no longer, and shouted, ''Damn it, I have to piss."
Aleyev gave a grunting laugh. He turned around to look at his fellow prisoner with red, watery eyes. He is totally disgusting, Kalinin thought.
"Let the flyboy piss, Colonel," Aleyev said mockingly. "For the fucking honor of the air force, man. He'll spoil his fancy pants if you don't, not to speak of what he'll do to the rugs."
Aleksandr Cherny heard Kalinin's plea as he entered the room. "There." He nodded impatiently toward a narrow door in the far wall of the octagon. "Go with him, Zenobiev."
Aleyev said in a thin, shaky voice, "Kalinin, thank the schoolmaster nicely."
The old drunk still shows some spirit, Kalinin thought with surprise. That gave him hope. Perhaps between the two of them, Cherny could be handled.
"Come," Zenobiev said curtly, obviously annoyed by the order. He escorted Kalinin to the door, opened it, and pushed him into a tiny room containing a galvanized bucket in a wooden commode. He left the door open.
Kalinin opened his trousers and, knowing that the sound of his urine striking the bucket could be heard in the outer room, with some difficulty began to piss. Humiliation after humiliation would be the pattern tonight.
When he reappeared, Zenobiev led him to a metal chair next to Aleyev. While he was in the other room, several people had arrived and were seated at the tablein the good chairs. He recognized two of them, Lykov and Yadanov, from the GKNT, fussy and self-important technocrats, but rather subdued tonight. They were seated together on his right, Cherny's left, closest to his side of the table.
Sitting to the right of President Cherny was a man named Gallikov, a youngish pedantic bureaucrat, who always parroted

 
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