Tom Clancy's op-centre_ mirror image - Tom Clancy [27]
Though the Minister was affable enough, and seemed consumed by an almost narcotic contentedness when discussing Russian history, particularly the Stalin years, his worldview was out of step with the times. And when Dogin made his monthly trips to St. Petersburg, it seemed that the Minister's memories of the Soviet years became more and more idealized.
Then there were men like Rossky, who didn't appear to have any worldview. They simply enjoyed power and control. Orlov had been alarmed by Assistant Security Director Glinka's surreptitious call to the apartment. Glinka knew how to play both sides of the fence, but Orlov believed him when he said that Rossky's activities over the past twenty-four hours had been unusually secretive. It started when Rossky insisted on handling, himself, the trivial investigation of an intrusion alert the day before. It was followed by unlogged and coded computer communications to an operative in the field, not telling anyone where he was going, and mysterious dealings with a local coroner.
I've been ordered to work with Rossky, Orlov told himself, but I won't let him run rogue operations. Whether Rossky liked it or not, he would toe the line or he would be restricted to a desk job. As long as Rossky had Interior Minister Dogin's support, threatening him would be difficult. But Orlov had overcome difficulties before. He bore the scars to prove it, and was willing to bear more if need be. He had learned English so that he could travel as a goodwill ambassador when, in fact, he was busy acquiring and sneaking home books just so he could see what the rest of the world was thinking and reading.
Orlov raised the collar of his off-white trench coat against the knifing wind and tucked his black rimmed glasses into his pocket. They always fogged when he came back outside from the over-- or underheated bus, and he didn't have time to fuss with them. As if it weren't frustrating enough to need them at all, these eyes that had once been keen enough to pick out the Great Wall of China from nearly three hundred miles in space.
Despite the problem with Rossky, Orlov's full-lipped mouth was relaxed, his high forehead unwrinkled beneath the brim of his gray fedora. His striking brown eyes, high cheekbones, and dark complexion were, like his adventurous spirit, a part of his Asiatic heritage-- Manchu. His great grandfather had once told him that his family was part of the first wave of warriors that had poured through China and Russia in the seventeenth century. Orlov didn't know how the old man could place them so precisely. But it suited him to think that he was descended from a pioneering people, benevolent despite having been conquerors.
Standing just under five-foot-seven, Orlov had the narrow shoulders and slender build that had made him an ideal, resilient cosmonaut. Though his record as a fighter pilot had been flawless, Orlov carried physical and mental mementoes from his years in space. He walked with a permanent limp, due to a left leg and hip badly broken when his parachute failed to deploy in what turned out to be his last mission. His right arm was severely scarred when he pulled a cosmonaut-in-training from the wreck of a MiG-27 Flogger-D. He had pegs inserted in his hip to enable him to walk, but declined to undergo plastic surgery on the arm. He liked the way his wife oooohed and ohhhhhed whenever she saw her poor singed bird.
Orlov smiled as he thought of his precious Masha. Though today's breakfast had been cut short by Glinka's call, the afterglow of being with her still warmed him. More so because it would have to hold him until tomorrow, which was the earliest he'd be seeing her again. As always before he left on a mission, the two of them went through a ritual they'd begun nearly twenty years ago, before he rode his first flaming rocket into space: they held each other tightly and made sure they parted with no unspoken thoughts or anger,