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Page 318
once pillarlike manhood now probably resembled a shriveled turnip. Fear had that effect.
Yet if he wasn't granted relief soon, there was going to be humiliation enough to go around. It was absurd to spend what were probably his last moments on earth brooding over urination, but it came as an epiphany that some of life's most elemental demands wiped the mind clean of other, loftier thoughts.
To distract himself, he concentrated on the unfamiliar soldiers guarding the passageway. So, the President had replaced the security forces guarding the Kremlinall of them. An act totally out of character, if General Kondratiev were to be believed. Until this black morning, Kalinin thought, I would have agreed with him. Every time I saw Cherny, he behaved like no more than a gassybrained academic.
A second elevator loomed at the end of the corridor. When the door opened, Kalinin and Zenobiev got in, followed by all of the soldiers who were guarding them. The elevator was so small and so full that the soldiers' equipment struck, the varnished walls with hollow, drumlike sounds. The car began to move with paralyzing slowness.
The rank smell of sweat and damp wool was redolent in the enclosed space. Only the scent of blood is missing, or I'd believe I was back doing interrogations in Afghanistan. I've been too long in Moscow, Kalinin thought, away from soldiers in the field and the filthy, primitive way they live.
The elevator stopped and the door opened onto a small, octagonal room. A six-foot-square table stood near the far wall, where long draped cloths covered the windows closely. Stacked papers, bound documents, and a cocked and charged Kalashnikov assault rifle were visible on the table.
Large, high-backed upholstered chairs surrounded the table on three sides, three at the head, two at each side, and all empty at the moment. On the fourth side sat three low, scruffy, metal chairs, paint chipped, hard and uncomfortable. Slumped in one of them was the familiar figure of Admiral Eduard

 
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