The Cardinal of the Kremlin - By Tom Clancy Page 0,94

body, then closed slowly around her. The last thing she saw was the light toward which she'd been swimming-the light, she finally knew, that was never there. She knew her protest was a vain one, but it exploded from her lips.

"No!" She didn't hear it, of course.

She returned now, condemned to go back to her useless real body, back to the gray mass before her eyes and the limbs that could move only without purpose. She somehow understood that her imagination had tried to protect her, to get her free-and had failed utterly. But she couldn't turn her imagination off, and now its efforts turned destructive. She wept without sound. The fear she felt now was worse than mere panic. At least panic was an escape, a denial of what she faced, a retreat into herself. But there was no longer a self that she could find. She'd watched that die, had been there when it happened. Svetlana was without a present, certainly without a future. All she had now was a past, and her imagination selected only the worst parts of that

"Yes, we're in the final stage now," the doctor said. He lifted the phone and ordered a pot of tea. "This was easier than I expected. She fits the profile better than I realized."

"But she hasn't told us anything yet," Vatutin objected.

"She will."

She watched all the sins of her life. That helped her to understand what was happening. This was the hell whose existence the State denied, and she was being punished. That had to be it. And she helped. She had to. She had to see it all again and understand what she'd done. She had to participate in the trial within her own mind. Her weeping never stopped. Her tears ran for days as she watched herself doing things that she ought never to have done. Every transgression of her life played out before her eyes in fullest detail. Especially those of the past two years Somehow she knew that those were the ones that had brought her here. Svetlana watched every time she had betrayed her Motherland. The first coy flirtations in London, the clandestine meetings with serious men, the warnings not to be frivolous, and then the times she had used her importance to breeze through customs control, playing the game and enjoying herself as she committed her most heinous crimes. Her moans took on a recognizable timbre. Over and over she said it without knowing. "I'm sorry "

"Now comes the tricky part." The doctor put on his headset. He had to make some adjustments on his control board. "Svetlana " he whispered into the microphone.

She didn't hear it at first, and it was some time before her senses were able to tell her that there was something crying out to be noticed.

Svetiana the voice called to her. Or was it her imagination ?

Her head twisted around, looking for whatever it was.

Svetlana it whispered again. She held her breath as long as she could, commanded her body to be still, but it betrayed her yet again. Her heart raced, and the pounding blood in her ears blanked out the sound, if it was a sound. She let out a despairing moan, wondering if she had imagined the voice, wondering if it was only getting worse or might there be some hope ?

Svetlana Slightly more than a whisper, enough to detect emotional content. The voice was so sad, so disappointed. Svetlana, what have you done?

"I didn't, I didn't-" she sputtered, and still could not hear her own voice as she called out from the grave. She was rewarded with renewed silence. After what seemed an hour she screamed: "Please, please come back to me!"

Svetlana, the voice repeated finally, what have you done ?

"I'm sorry " she repeated in a voice choked with tears.

"What have you done?" it asked again. "What about the film ?"

"Yes!" she answered, and in moments she told all.

"Time eleven hours, forty-one minutes. The exercise is concluded." The doctor switched off the tape recorder. Next he flicked the lights in the pool room on and off a few times. One of the divers in the tank waved acknowledgment and jabbed a needle into Subject Vaneyeva's arm. As soon as her body went completely limp, she was taken out. The doctor left the control room and went down to see her.

She was lying on a gurney when he got there, the wetsuit already taken off. He sat beside the unconscious form and held