The corridor was empty.
Other sounds were now drifting in from the gala. Conversations in an indistinguishable murmur, a glass being placed on a tray somewhere. A brief crackle in the loudspeaker, then American music.
Ilya came down the corridor.
He moved more quietly than a wild boar in the mud, his hands loosely behind his back, his stride precise, his gaze fixed ahead. Anyone not looking closely might have thought he was simply on his way from one duty to the next: from the photo shoot to the team or from the buffet to the ice rink.
Anyone looking more closely noticed that he was deliberately not hurrying. He turned the corner and stopped. For a moment, all he could hear was the corridor: the faint creaking of the pipes, the distant hum of an overloaded circuit, the breathing of the hall behind the walls. Then he took a cigarette from a flat case, shielded the flame with his hand and lit it quickly.
The first drag tasted of paper, tobacco and a poor excuse.
He smoked often. Today, it wasn’t the smoking that was the problem, but the pressure of the reunion. And even if this hall wasn’t an enchanted colonial castle in Colombia, the gala atmosphere still felt like a poor disguise. Ilya needed to clear his head before the match. And he didn’t want to have to go out into the icy wind outside the hall to do so.
The door to a storage room wasn’t quite closed. A strip of warm light fell onto the floor, yellowish and narrow, which didn’t make for a good combination with damp concrete. The voices inside sounded more aggressive than one would expect at a gala outside the kitchen.
Ilya didn’t go any closer.
He stopped in the shadow of the wall, half a step from the doorway, as if the corridor itself had deposited him there. The cigarette glowed between his fingers. His face remained calm.
The philanthropist’s voice was heard first. It sounded quieter than earlier beneath the chandelier, but no less unpleasant. More like a man disciplining a schoolboy over a squashed orange.
“If you summon me here a third time, someone is bound to notice. You’re risking too much. Don’t behave like a child!”
The tournament doctor’s voice remained unshaken.
“No. I’m calculating. Tonight is about the United States, not some provincial hall or your personal bankruptcy.”
Ilyas’s gaze shifted to the door.
No visible expression changed his face. Only the tension around his eyes grew more alert.
“If you think you can use that to put pressure on me—”
“I’ve been putting pressure on you for a long time.”
A brief sound followed. Someone drank and set a glass down aggressively on a metal table.
Franklin’s voice dropped.
“Let the boy out of there.”
Ilya grew even quieter than he already was.
A tiny muscle twitched in his jaw.
“Then don’t give me any reason to drag him in. You know what I can detect in his blood if I want to?” said the doctor.
Silence.
From the front, a charming woman’s voice carried through the hall. Back here, it sounded like a message from another country. The audience laughed politely. Then walls and pipes swallowed the rest.
“He’s got nothing to do with it,” said Franklin.
“Those involved rarely get to decide that.”
Ilya briefly lowered his gaze to the floor. Not out of uncertainty. More like someone who’d been tracing a line in their mind and suddenly wasn’t sure where it ended.
“You’d ruin him.”
“Yes, with pleasure, ill-mannered louts whom success makes cocky—they deserve to be ruined. I’d simply make a dirty insinuation. That’s usually enough.”
Now Ilya’s posture visibly tensed.
Not enough for a casual guest to notice. But enough for anyone who knew him to understand: he was suddenly fully present.
“Training methods and equipment have changed drastically over the last seventy years,” said Franklin. “To use that against him now is pathetic.”
“It’s efficient. I repeat: this is about the United States, not interchangeable extras. And what was permissible intervention yesterday is now considered career-ending doping. No matter what age or nationality the man is playing for our side.”
Again that grey, clean silence in between, whilst the hall at the front continued to strum merrily, warm and oblivious.
Ilya took the cigarette out of his mouth without tapping off the ash. He was no longer thinking about the game, not about prizes, anthems, cameras or the trophy with the boar’s heads. He was thinking about the way Shane had smiled beneath the chandelier: professional, smooth, almost believable. A smile that was too narrow to really hide anything.
“You overestimate your indispensability,” said Franklin.
“And you underestimate how quickly sympathy turns into kompromat when the right people are watching. No matter how many star photos were hung up beforehand.”
Ilya raised his head.
The sentence hung in the air, clearer than anything before.
Ilya’s thoughts raced: It wasn’t just any young man who posed a risk. Someone vulnerable enough to serve as leverage had to be someone with a public face and a private weakness. The doctor pressed on, almost casually.
“Today a darling of the fatherland, then a photo, something inappropriate passed on to the papers at the right time. You know yourself how little it takes.”
Ilya exhaled very slowly.
There was no clarity in the truth. Only in the danger.
In his mind, what had been said immediately took on a concrete form: the doctor was prepared to use Shane. Or he was already doing so.
Inside, a chair was pushed back. Footsteps followed. The conversation ended.
Ilya slipped silently away from the doorway and took two steps back, right into the shadow of a protruding heating pipe. When the door opened, he was already standing where, with a bit of luck, he could be mistaken for a quiet guest with a cigarette who had taken a wrong turn.
The philanthropist stepped out. He appeared composed. His forehead glistened slightly. His hands were too smooth, his shoulders too straight. The face of a man who had just forced himself back into his public role because his private one no longer held any value. “That was our last conversation tonight.”
He didn’t notice Ilya.
Franklin walked towards the main hall, slower than before, but still with that practised, elegantly measured dignity intended to give others the impression that everything was under control.
A moment later, the doctor appeared in the doorway.
He spotted Ilya’s glowing cigarette immediately.
This time he even paused for a moment, as if he recognised not just a listener, but an opportunity.
“Mr Rozanow,” he said. “Smoking is harmful to your health.”
Ilya stepped out of the shadows, just far enough to make the conversation official.
“Doctor.”
“You look as though the social part of the evening has become too noisy for you as well.” The doctor closed the door behind him with a casual wave of his hand. “If you’re nervous, you can always withdraw. No one in Mother Soviet Union will be watching this little nest.”
Ilya took one last drag, let the smoke drift out slowly, and looked at the doctor as he did so.
“I’m here to play.”
A very small smile appeared on the doctor’s face. More acknowledgement than warmth.
“Then you’ve chosen the more honest part of the building.”
Ilya met the doctor’s gaze. Honest wasn’t the word that came to mind. But he didn’t say it.
“Honest is a flexible term.”
The doctor took half a step closer from the doorframe. As he did so, he smoothed the sleeve of his jacket. The Venetian mask pendant on his lapel caught the dim light of the neon tube, not enough to gleam, just enough not to be overlooked.
“Not as elastic as loyalty.”
Ilya showed no visible reaction.
That, too, was a reaction.
“Why loyalty?”
The doctor tilted his head. “I would have thought a man in your position would know very well why loyalty is both useful and dangerous.”
A pause.
Ilya remained completely still. Only his eyes grew colder.
“And what is my position?”
The doctor regarded him as if he were a diagnostic case.
“Young enough to believe that discretion is a private virtue. Old enough to suspect that other people turn it into ammunition. Anyone on your team could have a skeleton in the cupboard. Absolutely anyone.”
Ilya said nothing.
The doctor continued, gently enough that the menace in his words sounded almost medical.
“If I were you, I wouldn’t create any additional complications tonight. Neither on the ice nor off it.”
Ilya looked him straight in the eye.
“Is that medical advice?”
“An observation.”
“Then carry on observing—birds, ants, or even the health records of the losers!”
The doctor seemed to find that almost amusing.
“With pleasure. Only pleasure is poor protection when the wrong stories spread too quickly.”
Ilya finally moved enough to close the gap between them.
“Speak now or remain silent until my wedding!”
The doctor chuckled like a dishwasher caught snacking on dough, not the least bit surprised.
“I’m simply saying that public displays of affection are rarely the problem. Private vulnerability is more likely to be.”
A small blow, delivered with full awareness.
Ilya’s face remained almost unchanged.
Almost.
But the doctor had seen what he wanted to see.
He stepped aside and, with an elegant little gesture, cleared the way towards the hall.
“I wish you every success on the ice, Mr Rozanov. Perhaps you’ll do your family proud today.”
The doctor walked past him.
Ilya stayed behind.
He didn’t watch the doctor go. His gaze fell on the door of the equipment room, on the sliver of light beneath it, on the faded paint, on the ‘STAFF ONLY’ sign, as if one could tell from metal how many bad conversations a room had already survived.
From the front, someone was now calling out a name over the microphone. The music started up again. The gala carried on.
Ilya placed one hand flat against the cold wall.
Just for a moment.
Images. Rumours. A darling of the press. Something inappropriate at the wrong time. It wasn’t much of a story, more like a lot of hot air.
But his first thought was not of the philanthropist or the doctor, not even of his Soviet team, who were probably already looking for him.
He thought of Shane, not as a direct accusation, but as a sudden fear that someone wanted to accuse him of doping. Or that Shane would become a scapegoat here for something Ilya didn’t understand and perhaps wasn’t even meant to understand.
He flicked the cigarette butt into a drain grate. The ember died out immediately.
Then he squared his shoulders, put on that smooth, controlled expression again—the one that would stand up to cameras and officials—and walked back towards the main hall.