Through the mist, the silence after the shelling screamed its presence, the pounding of the heavy guns having pummeled eardrums so badly that only the high tones were left, their ringing so intense that the sound of the dawn birds’ song was lost to David Brentwood as he lay, muscles aching, his whole body tense, hands still gripping the squad automatic weapon, his eyes adjusting to the bronze dawn of his goggles until he took them off. The glare of the sun-infused mist was hurtful to his eyes, but now at least Brentwood had a wider field of vision across the cratered landscape, which he remembered from the aerial reconnaissance photos had once been a meadow backed by a wood of Lombardy poplar. The wood was now gutted, the few remaining poplars blackened and splintered, leaning at impossible angles, looking like burned Christmas trees, leaves that had no doubt once flickered gold in the autumn sun now gone, one of the starkly naked trees that remained reminding him of the gaunt “lynching trees” he’d seen in old movies, stripped of foliage, charred, only one leaf still defiantly attached, a hundred yards from him. It was on this leaf that he focused, at once amazed and buoyed by its resilience against all odds. Or was it less resilience and more sheer luck?
There was a flash to his right, sun on steel. He swung the SAW up and around, its burst driving the butt hard into his thigh, the gun now silenced, squashed into the mud and guts of the corpse next to him, the long, razor-sharp blade of a knife at his throat, motioning him up — the Russian, if he was Russian, in a long, black, zipped-up jumpsuit and black balaclava, frightening the hell out of him, the man’s eyes almost impossible to see, and his hot, sour breath on Brentwood’s face.
“Up!” he told Brentwood. “C’mon, quickly!” The ease of the man’s English, its purely American sound, devoid of any foreign accent, was the next thing David noticed.
The craters were now alive with the black figures moving forward. He counted at least fifty of them as he was hurriedly taken back toward Russian lines, escorted by relay, stumbling dizzily at first, his muscles still tight from the trauma of the shelling. A quarter mile farther on, he passed over more heavily cratered ground littered with the rotting corpses of what had been the American airborne, whole bodies the exception, limbs savagely amputated by the 120-millimeter shrapnel — from friendly fire. Stomachs literally blown apart, unrecognizable organs and intestines were scattered all over the battlefield in various hues of decomposition, some invisible in the mud except when revealed as a moving mound of maggots, others surrounded by crows pecking almost disinterestedly, waddling like ducks, so gorged they were too heavy to fly. And over it all the revolting burnt-chicken smell of death.
But for all the horror, worse than anything he’d seen during Freeman’s raid on Pyongyang in Korea, the thing that struck David most was the catlike grace with which the black-suited Russian commandos moved, up and over the deep craters, taking no notice of the human detritus about them, or if they did, not showing the slightest sign, pausing only at the butchered chunks that still had heads attached or stopping where a severed head lay encrusted with mud, bending down, removing the airborne’s dog tags, which were sometimes still attached to the neck or pressed into the mush that had been a face. Now and then he saw one of the black jumpsuits pause, raising his hand moments later with a clutch of ID tags. A runner, one of the Poles brought up from the support battalions, would dash up, grab the tags from the Russian, and then head back to the Russian battalion’s headquarters in a thick stand of pine, where David now sat silent with the other two-hundred-odd prisoners, a few British but most of them forlorn remnants of the disastrous airborne drop.
It was only after they took his own dog tags that he realized why he hadn’t been killed on the spot. A very fit, no-nonsense, English-speaking Russian NCO in army greatcoat ordered them to remove their uniforms. Walking behind him was a private, his arms festooned with wire coat hangers, one for every prisoner, and a small plastic garbage bag for personal effects. A British private, peeling off his brown-and-green-splash combat tunic with the British Army of the Rhine shoulder patch, offered David a cigarette. David normally didn’t smoke, but he took it. The Englishman, a cockney, brushed a sprig of sticky pine from his sleeve. “Don’t want ‘em all messy, do we?”
David looked puzzled.
“When they cut your throat,” said the cockney. “Makes a mess of the uniform.”
David nodded. His ears were still ringing so that the Englishman’s voice seemed to come from a long way off and as if he were talking underwater. Putting the cigarette in his mouth, still dry from fear, he reached over to steady the cockney’s hand as the Englishman flicked his lighter, but David found his hand was no steadier, both of them trembling.
David was surprised how good the tobacco tasted. He took a piece of the loose weed from the tip of his tongue and flicked it to the ground. “Could’ve—” he began, but his throat was so parched, he had to begin again, and only now, as he took off his trousers to put on the hanger, did he realize his thigh was wet not so much from the blood of the corpse against which he’d cringed during the barrage, but also from water that had leaked from his punctured canteen. The bullet had penetrated halfway up the canteen. He took a sip from what was left, offering the rest to the Englishman. “Could have strangled us, though,” said David. “Taken our uniforms there and then. Why march us back?”
“Nah, mate. You shit yourself then, see? If they strangle you. Have to wash your duds out. No — they want ‘em Persil white.” The Englishman paused. “Reminds me of when I was a kid: ‘I’m no fool, I use Persil on my tool.’ “ He shook his head, forcing a grin, and put out his hand to the American. “Fred Waite’s the name.”
“David Brentwood.”
“Schweig doch! “—”Shut up!” shouted one of the guards, a Stasi, from his red-gold-black shoulder patch, walking toward them on the soft, brown needles of dead pine, and coming from a command truck that was only now visible to David through the camouflage netting. “Schweig dock!” the German repeated, and David saw the shadows of others guards in the nearby pines looking over at them.
“Bit late now, Fritz,” said Waite. It was clear that it wasn’t only their talking but the apparent friendship between the American and Englishman which annoyed the guard. It was as he had been told: the British and Americans had no respect for authority. From Waite’s response, he appeared to think the two prisoners hadn’t understood his order and so switched to English and gesticulations, his English broken and not at all like that of the sleek, fluent jumpsuits, the first of whom were now returning after their quick foray into the crater zone, where Polish contingents were taking up positions, digging in.
“There is to be no talking already,” said the guard.
David saw the guard was about his age, maybe a few years older, midtwenties, his eyes tired but awake with suspicion. Waite, sitting on his haunches, leaned forward, arms protruding from the poncho that, apart from their regulation khaki underwear, was all the half-naked prisoners had to keep them warm. He held up his hand, like a schoolboy asking permission.
“Ja?” said the guard.
“Listen, Fritz. What’s going on?”
“My name is not this Fritz.”
“What is it, then? Your name?”
“Asshole!” called out someone from the twenty or so POWs in a clump that was being guarded near one of the eleven-man Russian armored personnel carriers.
“Who said this?” demanded the Stasi, swinging about. “What is this name?”
“It’s an expression of endearment,” said one of the British Army of the Rhine, shivering in the cold under his poncho.
“Yeah,” put in one of the Americans next to him. “Especially in San Francisco.”
There was a round of laughter, some of the British in another group opposite David and the cockney clapping their appreciation.
The young guard, red-faced, unslung his AKM, right hand snapping back the sideways-folding metal butt, and stepped to within a foot of the twenty or so prisoners. “It is strictly forbidden to — to be abusing socialist soldiers already.”
“Stop fucking around!” It was one of the black jumpsuits, a bunch of dog tags in his hands. In German he curtly told the guard to check if any of the prisoners still had their ID tags. No one said anything; the jumpsuit officer, a man of at least six feet, lean and wiry-looking, was one of the toughest men David had ever seen. As the guard snapped to attention and immediately began checking everyone’s neck for dog tags, the officer unzipped and removed his boiler suit, folding it with such dexterity, it was clear to the NATO prisoners of war that it wasn’t the first time he’d done it. Someone murmured something about a strip tease, but the weak ripple of laughter quickly died. He was standing in a well-worn uniform of an American airborne lieutenant, complete with dog tags.
“They get caught doing that,” murmured Waite, “they’ll be shot as spies.”
“Maybe,” agreed David, “but I’ll tell you something, Ted.”
“Fred.”
“Well, Fred, would you think of pulling up a lieutenant for his ID?”
The cockney, finishing his cigarette, pulled out another and lit it from the first. “Suppose not, old cock — Jesus, they’re gonna cause one hell of a lot of confusion if they get inside the pocket.”
“Nothing to getting inside it,” said David. “Everything’s screwed up inside there anyway — units split up, some of our guys inside, most of us dropped outside. They won’t be checking ID. These bastards’ll get through, all right.”
Waite nodded. “Afraid you’re right, mate.” He paused, cigarette held meditatively down in front of his knees. “They’re after bloody Munster.” He turned to Brentwood, his tone infused with the urgency of delayed revelation. “That’s it, Yank!”
“David.”
“They’re after bloody Munster. Our prepo site! Christ, mate!” Waite was feeling beneath his poncho for his cigarettes, forgetting he had one on the go. “They blow that depot — it’ll be a fucking slaughter.”
“Unless our guys can get out first,” said David. “Evacuate.”
“Where to?” asked Waite, fidgeting with his lighter. “No fucking Dunkirk this time, matey — boats waiting. Last I heard was they got fucking armored all round us. Getting ready for a big push, they are — west of Hannover. Right down to the fucking Rhine and on to Bumsum.” He meant Brunssun, south in Belgium, where the German operating out of headquarters dug deep in the coal mines. “And once we start crossing the Rhine,” Waite added, “it’ll be absolute tucking chaos. Sitting ducks. That’s what our lot will be.”
“Maybe not if the evacuation’s orderly,” said David.
Waite turned to Brentwood, his movement revealing white, bony legs like those of some overgrown chicken. “Orderly? No such fucking thing, Davey boy. It’ll be a balls-up.” They could hear artillery rumbling like thunder southwest of them from about twenty miles inside the pocket.
“Doesn’t have to be a mess,” said David, adding, “I’ve been in a pull-out.”
“Where?” asked Waite, his tone that of an incredulous senior talking to a freshman.
“Pyongyang.”
Waite raised an eyebrow. “You were with Freeman?”
“Yeah.”
“Freeman! Well, me old son, hats off! You should know. What was it like getting out then?”
David didn’t answer — the remembrance of the bloody retreat so vivid in his memory that for the last twenty-four hours, from the moment he’d hit the Hercules’ slipstream, it had overwhelmed him, the reason he hadn’t moved from beyond the crater, curled up against the protective carcass of the dead man. Waite was probably right. When they had got out of Pyongyang, there had been only fifteen hundred men to think of. And while it had gone much better than expected, they’d lost a lot going in. Trying to get out a quarter million men trapped in the pocket by a ring of steel would be a different proposition altogether. What had his father always told the three of them, Lana, too? “When the going gets tough—” It was old hat, but it made him feel ashamed of his recent loss of nerve. “Least it won’t be an air withdrawal,” he told Waite. “We’ll have the bridges.”
“What?” asked Waite, and David Brentwood knew instantly from the cockney’s tone that some of the bridges must be blown.
“How many?” he asked Waite, who was now watching the Stasi guard shouting at a man in another group of prisoners for his dog tags.
“What — how many bridges blown?” It was another man’s voice, also a cockney, sitting behind them, an eye partially covered with a blood-congealed bandage, the compress having slipped down on the man’s cheek, revealing a pus-filled gash beneath the black-red swelling. “All of ‘em, mate. Right, Waite? The whole fucking lot.”
“Marvelous, in’t?” said Waite as they watched the other Russians coming in, taking off their jumpsuits and looping the appropriate — British or American — dog tags about their necks. The Stasi guard was handing one of the Russians who was wearing a U.S. Army corporal’s uniform — with a machine gunner’s flash patch — a St. Christopher medal, which the guard apparently thought was part of the American’s ID. There were guffaws from the prisoners and barely suppressed laughter from some of the Russians. Then the tall Russian, wearing the American airborne lieutenant’s uniform, quietly walked over to the young guard, took the St. Christopher medal, and put it on.
“Then,” concluded David, “we’re going to have to swim across if all the damn bridges are blown.” They could hear the artillery, Soviet or American, they couldn’t tell, increasing.
Wake indicated the Stasi guards stationed around the edges of the pine wood. “Don’t know whether you’ve noticed, me old dallin’, but those Kraut goons ‘ave got a nasty habit of shooting people. My advice, old cock, is to sit tight for the duration. You’ve done your bit. ‘Sides, this lot’s only going to last a couple more months, then someone’s gonna threaten to push the big one and that’s going to get ‘em to the table.” Waite glanced back at his wounded comrade. “That right, Bill?”
“ ‘Ope so,” said Bill, his pallor like chalk, his arm, which he could hardly lift, making an unsuccessful attempt to keep the bloated flies away from his eye.
“I don’t think so,” said David, slowly, his gaze held captive by the curling twist of cigarette smoke disappearing into the mist that now shrouded the pines about the Russians’ mobile headquarters. “No one wants to use nuclear weapons — they’ll use up everything else first.” He flicked the cigarette away, the tiny red ember dying in the mud. “Anyway, no war’s finished when it was supposed to. Experts always get it wrong. After the second war, everyone said the next would be so high-tech, so mobile, it’d be over in no time. Hell, we’re bogged down in that pocket worse than—” He glanced across at Waite. “You know, World War Two wasn’t anything like as mobile as all the films make out. Soldiers dig in soon as they can. Then others try to root them out. Same old story. Look at our fighters — they can’t break through to Russia, and the Russians can’t break through to England. We’re in the middle. I heard bayonets last night.”
“Yeah,” said the Englishman with the bloodied eye patch. “So did I.”
“The Poles,” said Waite.
“Ivans,” put in someone else. “Shit — our sergeant told us bayonets were for museums and can openers. No one would ever use them again to—”
“Will you guys knock it off?” came a voice from the back. “Talking about the friggin’ war. Talk about women or something, for Christ’s sake. What I’d like now is a good lay.”
The Russians were ready to go — in all, sixty-two had captured Allied uniforms. The one in the American airborne lieutenant’s uniform was doing a last-minute check to see that none of the uniforms was too ill-fitting, making several men swap because sleeves were too short, pants too tight. Anything about the uniform that might draw undue attention was being weeded out. Next, he passed an American airborne Kevlar helmet along the line to collect their watches, followed by another in which prisoners’ watches had been collected, each man double-checking that there was nothing engraved on the watches that might arouse suspicion if they were questioned after being infiltrated behind enemy lines.
“We have to escape,” said Brentwood quietly. “Soon.”
“You daft?” asked Waite. “You’ve got no chance. Besides, why bust your gut, mate? You’ve done your bit.”
No I haven’t, thought Brentwood. If he’d done his bit, he wouldn’t have lain petrified most of the night; he would have moved down the lines, risking the deadly, albeit friendly fire, trying to get through to the pocket. Or had it been just common sense to stay put till the shelling was over? After all, no one would blame him for what he’d done. No one, that is, except himself — the man who’d won the Silver Star for bravery at Pyongyang. His father certainly wouldn’t forgive him.
Something had happened since Pyongyang. Strange, he’d always thought you could divide people into the brave and the not so brave, but an awful possibility began gnawing away at him — that it might just be how you felt on any given day. But there was another reason, beyond honor, beyond regaining his sense of self-esteem, that impelled him to think of escape. “We’ve all seen it,” he told Waite.
“He’s right,” said the man behind them, who, having lain down, was now propping himself up, trying to keep the head bandage on, grimacing in pain as the effects of the last morphine jab wore off. “Now we know what they’re up to, they’re not going to let us—” He didn’t have to finish it.
“Christ!” said someone else. Brentwood looked behind him. It was a British lance corporal, terrified. “Hey, wait a minute — I mean, they could have done us already. Right?”
David shook his head. “Not before they got our uniforms. Waite’s right. That would have got our uniforms all messy.”
“Aw, bullshit,” said another cockney. “They aren’t going to shoot us.”
“Why?” asked Waite.
“Well — too — too fucking close to the front, mate. Might draw a chopper strike.”
The young German guard and the other guards began to “Raus!” them — getting everyone ready to move out.
“Where are we going?” demanded a British officer from a group on the other side of the clearing.
“Charing Cross!” came a Scottish voice.
One of the Stasi guards, an older man, waved them to their feet with his hand. The German had a weary look about him that worried David more than it might have comforted him. It was the look of a man who’d seen it all before, a man for whom nothing would be a surprise. A man who would follow orders to the letter, not because he hated Americans or British but because it was the easiest thing to do. “You will be taken back,” the German said in passable English, “for the interrogation.”
“See?” whispered a cockney triumphantly. “We’re going to be interrogated — that’s all.”
“Oh, lovely,” responded Waite. “That’s just ducky, that is. I love being interrogated. My favorite fucking pastime, that is. Eh, Brentwood?”
“I can think of better things to do,” answered David.
“So can I,” said the soldier with the bloodied eye, his voice tremulous with fear. “Jesus, I can’t see where the hell I’m— “
“Here,” said David, getting up. “Hold on to my arm.”
As the bedraggled column of poncho-clad prisoners started off through the gloomy wood, the wounded cockney asked his American friend what he thought their chances were.
“Watch it,” said David, steering him around a jagged stump that was almost invisible in the mist-shrouded pines.
“What do you think, Waitey?” the man asked.
“Waitey—?” pressed the soldier, David steering him about a long, ghostlike branch that, stripped of its bark, had served as a toilet seat for the cesspool trench.
“I think,” said Waite, “we’re in for the high jump.”
“What the hell’s that mean?” asked one of the Americans.
“It means,” said a Scottish voice, “he thinks they’re going to hang us, laddie. Or shoot us.”
“Jesus! Jesus — that’s against the—”
“Geneva Convention,” the Scot finished for him. “Aye.”
“Anybody got a Mars bar?” asked an English sapper who’d been captured two nights earlier by a Stasi patrol sweeping the pocket’s perimeter.
“Och,” said the Scot. “Rot your teeth, laddie, and tha’s a fact.”
“You’re mad,” said the American. “You’re all goddam mad.”
“It helps,” answered Waite wryly, adding, “Be careful now.” He nodded toward the young guard they’d dubbed “Asshole.” But for now the guard wasn’t saying anything, looking as miserable as the prisoners. Even so, David was surprised they had let the prisoners talk at all — not when they were all supposed to be going to be interrogated. He remembered his DI at Parris Island screaming at them, “Never fucking let your prisoners talk. Why, marine? Because the fuckers’ll make up the same fucking story. Are you listening, Brenda Brentwood?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You listening, Thelma?”
David smiled at the memory of the DI yelling at him and Thelman — something David had once thought it would be impossible to smile about. Besides, he told himself, the Russians had probably already collected fairly reliable intelligence about the American, British, and German armies bottled up in the pocket. Hell, they were right there to pick up the airborne, or had they just been in the area anyway?
Try as he might, however, David could not help thinking of one of the great secrets of World War II: the massacre of thousands of Polish prisoners of war. Slaughtered by the Russians, deep in Katyn Forest.
“Leave it on,” the corporal told Malle. She reclipped her brassiere. The way he’d said it only added to her sense of shame, as if she’d been caught wanting to exhibit herself and he doing her a favor — a small mercy — telling her to cover herself up. But now she guessed his real reason was the thick, raised scar of the mastectomy where they had taken off her left breast. At once she feared for Edouard, hoping, in spite of the revulsion she felt for the Russian, that the scar hadn’t turned him off.
Tossing his cap onto the bedside table, obscuring the photo of Malle and her late husband, and pulling off his shining black boots, dropping them with a thud, motioning for her to come closer and smiling as one would coax a shy, frightened puppy, he patted the bed, dragging the two pillows down so they lay flat on the multicolored quilt.
“Come on, Malle. ‘You’ve done this before, eh?”
She was shocked at his use of her first name and for a moment stood holding her black slip protectively in front of her, suddenly frozen as she smelled the strong odor of camphor. No, she decided, of course he wouldn’t wonder about the new quilt — lots of people used camphor to protect their clothing.
“You should call me Mitya,” he told her, reaching out, hooking the slip’s spaghetti shoulder straps, taking it away from her. “It’s short for Dimitri.”
She forced a smile, walking haltingly toward him, her left hand in his. It was sweaty and warm — cloying — her other hand fidgeting at her throat. His grip became stronger as he pulled her closer. She fixed her eyes on the crazy pattern of the quilt, vibrant reds flowing into deep blues, men orange and speckled brown swirls that made no sense and which, normally pleasing to the eye, now panicked her — everything swirling out of control. She braced herself. He became suddenly angry, releasing her. “What’s the matter with you? You want me to pick up the boy? I can, you know. All I have to—”
“No, no,” she said, “no — I’m — I’m sorry.”
“You forgot something,” he said, his tone surly.
“I—” she began, hands on her forehead, her head shaking, trying to think of what it was. “I’m sorry, I—”
“All right—” he said, sitting up from his slouch, grabbing for a boot, obviously about to stalk out in a mad huff.
Quickly she sat down on the bed beside him, her hand touching his shoulder. “What did I forget — please?”
The corporal stared hard at her, his tone still angry, undershot with petulance. “My name—”
“Oh — Mitya. Yes, of course. I’m sorry. I forgot.” He hesitated for a moment, the muscles in his face and neck so taut that his face took on a knotted yet strangely adolescent expression. “It’s very important you call me Mitya.”
She understood now — her saying “Mitya” would make it all right. She could feel his whole body relax, except his member, which now looked so big, she knew it would split her, make her bleed.
“It’s a nice name,” Malle said.
“Kiss me first,” he said, then pushed her away as her face neared his. “No,” he instructed her. “There.”
She hesitated, felt him tensing angrily again, and so, quickly, closing her eyes, she bent her head between his legs. He fell back onto the bed, bumping the headboard, but of this he was oblivious, his groan of pleasure filling the room. She almost gagged.
“Mokree!”— “Wetter!” he ordered her. “Much wetter!” Now his arms folded from him like wings, his hands grasping both sides of the bed, the quilt sliding beneath him. Above them somewhere there was a noise, a rustling sound. “What—” His eyes opened, They were glassy. He looked idiotlike. “What’s that—” he began.
Malle lifted her head, brushing her hair away nastily.’ “The heating vent,” she gasped. “Do you want me to stop, Mitya?”
“What — no, no. S’wonderful.” Her lips encased him again, her tongue pressing, curling and darting, her saliva in danger of drying up, driving herself on frantically to keep him under the spell. “I love you,” he said, his breath panting. “I love you, Raza… Raza…” Then, just when she thought it would be over, he told her to stop, kneel astride him, pushing her, shifting her as one would a piece of furniture for the best effect, telling her to sit on him, pulling her forward until her brassiere was so close, he could smell the perfume of violets mixing with the musky cinnamon odor of herself. His eyes were closed. “Raza…”
She heard another noise, like a scrabbling, above her, and she rose, then drove herself down upon him, harder and harder until he was in a reverie, his head lolling, then whipping from side to side, his tobacco-stained teeth plainly visible, his mouth open like an ugly fish, eyes half-closed, the idiot expression becoming more pronounced so that it seemed his eyes were going to roll back into his head, his grip on the crazy quilt so powerful, he was now holding it up either side of them like the sides of a canoe, his wrist veins bluish in sharp contrast to his pale white skin. He was trying to talk, but it only came out as a series of short, gurgling noises and grunts, then the quilt sides fell from his hands, his body arched, arms locked about her, pulling her down hard against him, his body smacking her hard as spasm after spasm racked him, his crying like a child running terrified from some huge beast but the cries of ecstasy. Eager to get off, Malle felt him pulling her back, and he kissed her tenderly on the earlobes, stroked her hair, whispering how wonderful she was, how beautiful, his voice cracked and dry. “Did you come?”
Of course not! she wanted to scream. “Yes,” she said.
He knew she was lying, but it didn’t matter.
His breathing slower now, he pushed her away gently, asking her to bring him a towel.
When she returned, she had a housecoat on, and he avoided looking at her as, wrapping the towel about him, he walked unsteadily toward the bathroom. “Put on some coffee,” he said, closing the door.
As Malle turned on the gas, the blue ring became a blurred circle and she used her sleeve to wipe away the tears. She must get control of herself, mustn’t make him feel as if he’d forced her, for he could still turn on her. But what choice had she had? she asked herself. Turning the hot water tap full on — it was only lukewarm — she rinsed her mouth out again and again. For a moment in the bedroom when she had felt she couldn’t bear doing it, she had thought of her husband as the only way of getting through it. Now the guilt of sordid betrayal weighed so heavily on her, she felt she could never look anyone in the face again.
She heard a surge of radio static. It so alarmed her, she swallowed and swung about, realizing it was only the corporal’s walkie-talkie. Unhurriedly he pulled on his boots, turned down the squelch button on the walkie-talkie, and rising from the edge of the bed, picked up his cap from the bedside table. She thought she heard some mention of the Tallinn docks. The corporal glanced at his watch as he slipped it on his wrist, then clipped the walkie-talkie onto his belt. “The apartments are to be kept under surveillance,” he said, adding apologetically, “I can’t stay for coffee. We have to go to the docks.”
“Oh—” She tried to sound convincing. “That’s too bad.”
He was out in the kitchen now, pulling on his tunic, looking smart, repositioning his cap in front of the small hall stand mirror, the green cap’s green ribbon in gold lettering reading, “Infantry of the Border Troops.”
“Never mind,” he said, opening the front door and smiling back at her. “I’ll come by tomorrow.”
In Moscow there had been snow flurries all morning, giving the air a bluish-white tinge with a wind coming down from the Lenin Hills, making eyes water and noses run. Inside the Politburo chamber, all fourteen members and their aides present, the air was warm. It was too much so for Premier Suzlov, as he found, not yet halfway through the meeting, that his sinuses were plugging up. The minister of war was in favor of releasing twenty-five Far Eastern divisions, to be entrained at once from all points west of Ulan-Ude near the Mongolian border two thousand miles away.
“And if Japan enters?” asked Kiril Marchenko.
“Japan is already in it,” said the minister of war, suspecting, though not saying it, that because one of Marchenko’s sons, Sergei, had now qualified for fighter service and was based in Ulan-Ude in the Transbaikal, his father wanted to keep him out of it. The minister rejected the suspicion, however, as quickly as it had come in a moment of pique. Whatever else the Marchenkos were, they were not cowards. Sergei’s gallantry during the bloody breakout at Fulda was evidence of that — for this he had been awarded the Order of Lenin, the Soviets’ highest award for bravery. Nevertheless, the minister was confused by Marchenko’s comment about the Japanese. It was as if they still had something up their sleeve.
“Yes, they do,” answered Marchenko. “They are throwing in their lot with America but are not yet fully committed. Their defense forces are at America’s disposal, but only in a support role so far, and in defense of our bombing attacks on their ports. I assure you, gentlemen,” said Marchenko, looking down the long, green baize table toward Suzlov, “that Tokyo is nowhere near fully committed. My estimate — and it is supported, I should add, by the commander in chief, eastern TVD — is that they might yet throw in all their ground, naval, and air forces if they see the gate to their north unguarded. That is why I will vote against the motion.”
“Rubbish,” retorted the minister of war. “Beijing wouldn’t let the Japanese walk into Manchuria. The Chinese navy would sink them before they got across the straits.”
“It wasn’t Manchuria I was thinking of,” said Marchenko pointedly. “I am talking of our raw materials. Ore, oil—our Far Eastern holdings.”
“Oh,” replied the minister of war, “and what do you think our Pacific Fleet will be doing? Nothing?”
Kiril Marchenko pulled another Marlboro from his pack, taking his time to light it. Premier Suzlov appeared to be doodling, not paying attention, but Marchenko believed he was listening — intently.
“The Far Eastern Fleet will be attacking the Japanese,” said Marchenko, shifting the gold Dunhill lighter close to the packet of cigarettes.
“Exactly, Comrade,” said the minister of war, sitting back, relieved. “Exactly. So therefore why do we need so many divisions on the—”
“And the Taiwanese,” put in Marchenko. “Our fleet will have to deal with the Taiwanese.”
The minister of war shook his head. “No, my friend. Taipei hates the Japanese as much as the mainland Chinese do. And not just because Japan and Taiwan have been competitors in the capitalist system. No — it goes back much farther than that.”
“I know,” said Marchenko.
The minister of war was enveloped by the cloud of smoke from the American cigarette. “Kiril,” he said slowly, leaning forward, short, stubby fingers clasped on the baize, “my good friend. Tokyo will never team up with Taipei to try for Manchuria or for our raw materials in the East. It would be the guarantee of a future war between them. Splitting the spoils. You know how these capitalists are.”
“I disagree,” responded Marchenko. “Tokyo will team up with the devil to get more materials, war or no war. Together with Germany, she is the powerhouse of the West. But her stockpiles, for all her cunning, are limited, Minister. Oil from the Middle East, cheap coal from Canada, bauxite from Australia. It must all come by sea. And—” Marchenko looked about quickly but intensely at everyone at the table, making sure the premier was alert to his point. “And all of it must come a long way — thousands of miles by sea.” He shook his head knowingly and blew out a long stream of grayish smoke. “She is overextended, my friends. I agree that, for the moment at least, a Taiwanese attack on Manchuria is not likely. Our intelligence confirms that U.S. President Mayne has warned Taiwan not to do anything against China as long as China doesn’t attack the U.S.”
“Attack the U.S.?” asked the minister for war. “Where? China is five thousand miles from—”
“By sending Chinese troops across the Yalu,” put in Marchenko. “Into Korea. Korea is stabilized now after the Freeman airborne attack opened it up for the Americans to counterattack. The Americans don’t want any escalation of war in Asia.”
“Then you are arguing against yourself,” charged the minister of war. “There is no danger of Taiwan attacking. And if Japan makes a move against our Far East flank first, they will have to contend with our fleet of submarines and surface warships out of Vladivostok.”
“Very good,” answered Marchenko, “but I think they might try for Sakhalin Island. It’s rich in raw materials. You will recall that the Japanese called it Karafuto until we took it away from them at the end of World War Two. It is less than a hundred miles from Hokkaido. They could be there before our fleet way down in Vladivostok knew about it. And even if Vladivostok did find out, our fleet could never catch them in time. I can’t think of a more opportune time for them to move — while we are preoccupied in Europe.” Suzlov stopped doodling, looking up to see whether Kiril Marchenko’s thesis had surprised the rest of the STAVKA as much as it had him. It had.
“We would annihilate them,” said the minister of war confidently.
Marchenko leaned forward from across the table and offered the minister a Marlboro. The minister accepted it, smiling but nonplussed all the same. “Then,” said Marchenko, lighting the cigarette for him, “you will need soldiers.”
There was a silence invaded only by the intermittent clanking noise somewhere in the air ventilation system. Marchenko, holding his cigarette in the Western manner, unlike the minister for war, indicated the strategic map of the USSR across from them. It covered the entire wall: eleven time zones, its sheer vastness impressive even on paper. The war minister and everyone else at the table knew full well that once the Far Eastern divisions were raided for manpower and entrained westward — itself a logistical nightmare — the Far Eastern borders would be irrevocably weakened. Apart from Japan, there were the Chinese. There were always the Chinese. One point two billion of them at your back door. “Remember,” cautioned Marchenko, “when Chairman Khrushchev threatened Mao over Damansky Island. He told Mao, ‘We could invade China at a moment’s notice. A press of the button and you will have a million dead,’ to which the Great Helmsman replied, ‘A million less to feed. You would drown in our blood.’ “
“Then what are we to do?” the war minister asked Marchenko irritably. “About the NATO front?”
“We are sending in SPETS now,” put in the minister responsible for special forces. “Comrade Marchenko suggested we try further attacks behind their lines to take pressure off Marshal Kirov’s forces while they are being regrouped and refitted for the final attack on the Dortmund-Bielefeld pocket.”
“And how do the SPETS get there?” asked the general for logistics and supply.
“They will walk in,” said Marchenko, shifting his gaze west from Siberia to Western Europe. “In British and American uniforms.”
“The Allies aren’t fools,” said the minister of war. “They’ll catch on to that soon enough.”
“Of course,” conceded Marchenko, “but how long do you think it will take them, Minister? Hannover is sending in SPETS even as we talk.”
“Where the American airborne were dropped?” asked a brigadier general.
Marchenko turned, making sure he would remember the face. The man was quick. “Yes,” said Marchenko. “Exactly.”
“I expect,” said the minister of war, his tone tinged with sarcasm, “NATO will get onto it within a week. And then they’ll refuse to take any of our forces prisoner in retaliation.”
“A week!” said Kiril, smiling broadly, his cigarette jutting out from both hands, which were clasped in front of him as he smiled, positively buoyed by the minister’s assessment. “A week! We estimate only three days, Minister. We only need one decent raid on the monster depot at Munster and the whole pocket will be down to eating rats and using slingshots within a week.”
“If,” put in the admiral for the Northern Fleet, “the convoys resupply them.”
“Will they?” Kiril’s speed in turning the admiral’s question into a demand — almost an accusation against the admiral — took everyone by surprise. Suzlov was watching the admiral intently.
“I–I don’t think so,” replied the navy chief, clearly rattled but trying to rise quickly to the occasion. “We have a new strategy. Also — we have been — ah — gathering much better reports on shipping movements in and out of the English ports. Our intelligence agent networks in England are working extremely well. The more accurate the departure and arrival times, what ships are due where, the better chance we will have of sending in low air strikes across the English Channel… to specific targets… chop them up before they can even scramble their fighters.”
“Good,” said Kiril. “It’s imperative that we strike at both ends of the problem. At the convoys and at the pocket.”
“In a month,” predicted the admiral, “their rollover convoys will have rolled flat and sunk.”
There was hearty laughter, much of it released from the tension between Marchenko and the minister for war. Nevertheless, Suzlov wanted to know what made the admiral so confident. Such promises he knew were not made idly; the man who said no one could reach Red Square without him knowing it was quickly replaced after the young West German, Rust, had landed on Red Square in a light aircraft.
“The plan for the convoys is classified ‘for your eyes only,’ Mr. Premier.” It was the only answer the admiral could have given, but it aroused the curiosity of the other armed services so much that Suzlov decided to hear it along with the others. If he could not trust the STAVKA members, he could trust no one; besides, he was first and foremost a politician. He knew that a plan shared was responsibility shared, but when the admiral bared the plan from naval intelligence before them, Suzlov dearly wished he had kept his mouth shut. He would have preferred all the glory himself. It was a plan so stunning in its simplicity, so terrible for the Americans if it succeeded, that Suzlov knew it would win the war.
“Why have we not implemented this sooner?” he demanded.
“Timing, Mr. Premier. All the instruments were there, but the players must perform under a single baton, orchestrated, otherwise we lose the initiative.”
Suzlov nodded his assent. “Yes, of course, you are right. When may I expect results?”
Marchenko was struck by Suzlov’s use of “I” instead of “we.” A politician to his boot nails, thought Marchenko. Suzlov in an instant could take credit for something that others had been planning for so long. And it occurred to Marchenko that the admiral was almost as ambitious as he.
As Marchenko walked out to his black Zil limousine after the meeting, one of Suzlov’s other aides caught up with Marchenko, his questioning about Japan so transparently having come from Suzlov that Marchenko could not stop smiling. “What do you think Japan will do, Comrade Marchenko? Continue to play a passive role?”
“There’s hardly anything passive in Japanese antiaircraft fire, Captain.”
“No — no, of course not, Comrade. I merely meant — do you think she will commit herself more deeply?”
“It’s a world war, Comrade,” said Marchenko. His smile vanished. “You are either in it or you will soon be gobbled up.”
“Some are suggesting that Japan has lost her aggressiveness. Not in commerce, of course, but militarily.”
“Why are you so worried about Japan?” asked Marchenko, looking up at the dull autumn sky. “Do you have stocks on the Tokyo exchange?”
The aide was genuinely shocked. “Certainly not. But what—” The aide decided not to pussyfoot any longer and let Marchenko be so rude as to suggest that he, an aide to the Supreme Soviet, would be so guilty as to hold stocks in the—
“What the premier wishes to know,” said the aide tartly, “is whether you think Japan wants war or will simply sit it out as best she can — as an ally of the Americans.”
Marchenko made a face that said, “Who can tell?” yet he felt sorry for the aide. Besides, there was no sense in making enemies in a war that would see many dead — and many promoted. Had he himself not risen meteorically since the outbreak of the war?
Marchenko put his arm around the aide’s shoulders. “Comrade — I was only joking, of course, about the Tokyo exchange. But to answer your question seriously, I would have to say that, after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Japanese people will be reluctant to commit themselves to anything like war on this scale. They will prefer to leave it to the Americans — who, after all, began it with their aggression in South Korea. And wait for us to finish it. Ultimately we must win. You see, for all their gadgetry—” here Marchenko wiggled his fingers in caution “—and, mind, I do not underestimate their technology. It is quite frankly the best. But the Americans do not have the staying power. They have not lost twenty million dead, as we did in the Great Patriotic War. This puts iron in the blood.” He offered the aide a Marlboro. It was eagerly accepted, the aide putting it in his pocket for future use.
“Then,” said the aide, “although you wish us to be on the safe side, to keep our Far Eastern forces on alert, you do not think Japan will go much beyond her supporting role?”
“No,” said Marchenko. “I don’t think she will.”
Before his chauffeur closed the door, Marchenko handed the aide the packet of cigarettes. In case he was wrong.
Like Marchenko, many other strategic experts throughout the world had pondered the matter, believing themselves to have thought of every conceivable scenario and coming to much the same conclusion — that Japan would be America’s handmaiden but not much more.
Another expert, though completely unknown at this time, was Tadanabu Ito, a graduate student recently arrived at Washington State University as part of the exchange plan from Wasada University in Japan. He held two Japanese baccalaureate degrees, one in the field of “macro” or large-scale economics, the other in plate tectonics, or the study of the shifting of the suboceanic plates upon which the continents rest. Ito had submitted the first draft of a Ph.D. thesis on the subject at Washington State University but was told by his adviser that his English, while it might have “squeaked through” the B.Sc. and M.Sc. level, was simply “not up to par” for the Ph.D.
Ito was so despondent discovering how, when you can’t speak or use the language fluently, people automatically assume you’re not as smart as they are that he didn’t realize he was the only person in the world who, in his thesis, was predicting exactly what would happen vis-á-vis Japan. It was only a short chapter in his thesis — almost a footnote — and like a dream one has forgotten and only remembers later, he wasn’t yet aware that he was in possession of one of the most important hypotheses in history. One that would directly affect the lives of David Brentwood, trapped in the Dortmund-Bielefeld pocket, his sister in the far-off Aleutian Islands, and Robert Brentwood and his crew in many of the same ways that it would affect the more than thirty million men and women in arms in the worst war in history.
In northwest Germany, 19 miles north of the 250-square-mile Dortmund-Bielefeld pocket, a crack regiment of Soviet SPETS commandos began to advance under the protective barrage that had kept the ill-dropped American airborne pinned down in the northern sector of the pocket.
In the early morning mist that clung to the waterways of lower Saxony and in particular along the Mittelell Canal held by the Soviet 207th Motorized Division and 47th Armored, the SPETS were being sent in to take advantage of the earlier gains made by the 11th Motorized and elements of the Soviets’ 57th and 20ui Armored Divisions. The Soviet tanks, though they had punched a ninety-mile corridor northwest toward the pocket through the American M-1s and the German Leopards, were now due for refit and resupply before the massive, and what Moscow hoped would be the final, assault by fifty divisions. In all, it would pit a million Russian troops against the two-hundred-thousand-odd beleaguered NATO troops in the pocket, who would first be pounded by simultaneous Soviet artillery and rocket barrages all along the now chopped-up snake line that had formerly been NATO’s central and southern fronts.
The hundreds of SPETS and other underground cells that had infiltrated the West during the East German rush through the wire, or rather through the gaps in the wire that had been cut by the Hungarians in 1989, had already carried out highly successful sabotage raids on the railway marshaling yards throughout western Germany as well as hitting four of the huge “prepo” storage sites dotted about the central region, including two outside Gottingen and Fulda which had contained many of the central front’s 150,000 military vehicles and nuclear warheads for 105-millimeter and 203-millimeter artillery. But not all of NATO’s depots had been gutted in the early hours and weeks of the war, and the troops in the Dortmund-Bielefeld pocket were drawing on the deep underground reserve dumps of ammunition from around Munster, situated more or less in the middle of the kidney-shaped 250-square-mile pocket.
Soviet and East German bombers could not penetrate the NATO air screen thrown up around avianosets Angliya— “carrier England”—where, though exhausted by sometimes more than seven sorties a day, pilots of the RAF, USAF, and German Luftwaffe forming NATO’s Second Allied Tactical Air Force continued to go up against the swarms of MiG-23-escorted “Backfire” and Badger-C bombers, the Soviet fighters carrying Kitchen and Kingfish air-to-surface missiles. Despite their pilots’ fatigue and a crash rate of 5.2 percent — which didn’t sound like much to the layman at home but which meant that after just ten sorties, you had only a fifty-fifty chance of coming back alive — the NATO air force commanders deep in the Börfink bunker before it was overrun had kept the Soviets at bay in the air. What the HQ of Second Tactical Air Force, now in the south at Ramstein, wanted — and what the U.K. Royal Air Force command in High Wycombe prayed for — was foul weather.
While this would complicate the already insufficient supply lines across the English Channel, including the floating oil pipeline, NATO preferred it because of the experience of the American pilots who had fought off Soviet interceptors in the night skies and bad weather during General Freeman’s raid on Pyongyang. The American pilots, including Frank Shirer, had confirmed a long-held NATO article of faith: When it came to instrument flying with all visuals ruled out, American, British, and German fighters could outstrip their Russian counterparts.
Even during the daytime dogfights over northwestern Germany and over the area still held by NATO in the south around Mannheim and Heidelberg, the NATO fighters, particularly British and German Tornadoes and American F-111s and Falcon-18s, were outclassing the opposition. The problem was that the opposition had more planes and more pilots: an advantage of three to one in aircraft, two to one in pilots. It was a situation worsened by the spectacular success of the Soviet divisions in southern Germany, which had so badly mauled the Fourth Allied Tactical Air Force, SPETS attacks having penetrated as far as Bitburg, where forty-seven of the seventy-two F-15s based there were destroyed on the ground by “activated” SPETS groups who had easily infiltrated the sea of refugees fleeing westward from the Soviet juggernaut.
In Hannover, northeast of the Dortmund-Bielefeld pocket, the concern of the Soviet-Warsaw Pact was how to crush the pocket before NATO convoys could hope to replace what had been lost on the battlefields of Germany.
For the Soviet military accountants and logistical wizards in Berlin’s subterranean headquarters, the problem was never calculated in terms of pain, of lives lost, because already the human face had become obscured beneath the wrap of high technology. Modern technology, contrary to public opinion, had not made killing any less barbaric, the twisted metal of modern munitions wreaking as much hacking and butchering as any of the barbaric wars of old. One of the “advances” in technology was bullets so heavy, yet so small — made of depleted uranium — and of such velocity that upon impact, they could vaporize a man’s head in the way a piece of shell might have in the great artillery barrages of the First and Second World Wars.
For the HQ computer staffs, however, divisions were rectangles moved about on the computer screens, not a torso torn asunder, where arms and legs or stomachs simply disappeared and where carrion crows grew fat on the spilt innards of soldiers. Nor did the statisticians deal with the effect on morale of supersonic fighter attacks, or laser-guided antitank rockets, of the unimaginable nightmare of a cluster bomb bursting, bombs within bombs within bombs, releasing needle-sharp shrapnel. Nor did the statisticians deal with the overwhelming sweet stench of dead flesh that greased the treads of the tanks and APCs as men drove until they were exhausted or their fuel had been expended, many of them becoming nothing more than whimpering shadows of their former selves, their eyes bright with madness from high-tech stress levels beyond bearing.
In the Berlin bunkers, where the state had long held precedence over the individual, the Soviet military statisticians, many of them women, saw none of this — their job to coldly, dispassionately, estimate Allied losses and a timetable for Allied resupply. Bad weather to them was neutral; perhaps it would make the convoy safer, harder to find by visual means — on the other hand, the low mist and rolling fog banks of late fall could impede attack and aid defense on the land. For now, it was the matter of the convoys that Supreme Soviet Commander Marshal Leonid Kroptkin was concentrating upon. So long as the NATO fighter screen held over Western Europe, NATO supply lines through France and through Austria, if Vienna threw in its lot with the NATO forces, would sustain the Dortmund-Bielefeld pocket. And if supplies kept coming, the pocket could expand into counterattack. And so the top priority for Moscow and Berlin was to stop the convoys now heading for the French ports, from Dunkirk to Calais in the north to as far southwest as Dieppe, Saint-Malo, and Cherbourg.
“As long as this situation holds,” the Soviet Western Theater of Operations C in C reported, “we have not won the war.” It was not only the Allied submarine-escorted convoys that the marshal worried about, but the Allied capacity to airdrop supplies into the pocket if the NATO convoys succeeded in bringing in enough men and materiel to the ports. What the Russian commander wanted was massive reinforcements from the East preceded by an awesome artillery barrage of a thousand guns of the kind that had finally destroyed the Wermacht and swallowed up Berlin over fifty years ago. His losses had been staggering, the Allies exacting a terrible price, over 130,000 Russians killed while punching the hole through the Fulda Gap, and almost 200,000 Soviet troops wounded.
“There is talk of reserves coming up from Yugoslavia, Marshal,” his aide, a colonel, reminded him, pointing on the wall to the alpine border between northern Yugoslavia and southern Austria. “Through the Ljubljana Gap and—”
“Yes, there is talk,” said the marshal. “There is always a lot of talk, Colonel. And what if Austria does not come over to us and permit the Yugoslavs to pass through?”
“I think they will.”
“Yes, now,” said the marshal. “If it looks as if we are winning.” He turned to the huge, three-dimensional contour table map, his hand sweeping down over southern Germany to Austria. “No, my friend — the Austrians are stuffing themselves full of pastries, eyes darting like parrots west to east, waiting. Their friends are whoever wins. No one can wait for the Austrians.”
“The Yugoslavs could simply push their way through. Whether Austria liked it or not,” proffered the aide.
The marshal was bending over the contour map, his finger tracing the long fold of the Danube valley eastward to the conjunction of Czechoslovakia and Austria. “I thought you went to officers’ school. You should know better than to indulge in such speculation. If the Yugoslavs come in, they will first have to get through the Ljubljana Gap if they are to be any use to us.”
A dispatch rider, goggles and uniform splattered in mud, came in, saluted, and handed the marshal a list of the latest positions of the retreating Dutch forces in Westphalia, north of the Ruhr. The marshal nodded and told the rider to give the report to his logistics aide. The colonel, though distracted for a moment by the sight of the dispatch rider in a room buzzing and crackling with state-of-the-art electronic communications, returned to the subject of possible reinforcements confronting NATO’s southern flank. “Even if the Italians attacked on our southern flank, I doubt whether they could stop the Yugoslavs, Marshal,” the ambitious colonel pressed on.
“Perhaps not,” replied the marshal, his right hand alternately opening and closing to a fist, leaving a finger pointing at the Ljubljana pass. “But the Yugoslavs might stop themselves. With Serbs versus Croats. In any case, Colonel, by the time the Yugoslavs reach southern Germany, the Dortmund-Bielefeld pocket could have expanded. No — what we need are more troops. And quickly — so that we can annihilate NATO.” His arms swept across the Dortmund-Bielefeld pocket. “Before they can catch their breath. We need to destroy their convoys — and we need more men.”
“You’re thinking,” proffered the colonel, “of the Far East divisions.”
The marshall nodded. In the Far Eastern military theater, the Soviet Union, ever wary of the long-standing and often bitter border disputes with China’s one point four billion and India’s eight hundred million, maintained over fifty divisions, almost a million men, fifteen thousand tanks, sixteen thousand artillery and mortar pieces, and more than fifteen hundred tactical aircraft.
“I have already requested them,” said the marshal. “Whether I get them is another matter.”
“I’m sure you’ll get what you need, Marshal,” said the colonel optimistically.
“Why is it,” the marshal asked no one in particular, running thick, stubby hands through thinning white hair as he looked at the red-flagged bulge on the wall map that marked the disposition of the Soviet armies’ deep penetration of Germany, “that the young are so incurably optimistic?”
A soldier brought the marshal’s tea. “Is it,” continued the marshal, picking up the hard cube of sugar, “because they have no history? Or is it because they have not seen the defeats?” He raised the glass of tea, sucking the hot, steaming liquid through the cube of sugar until it disintegrated in a crunch of tobacco-stained teeth. “I think it is because they have not smelled war,” the marshal answered himself.
Until this moment the colonel had thought he had very much been in the war, but the marshal’s voice, utterly devoid of sentimentality, hard in its every estimate, conveyed to him the sudden truth that up till now, what he had thought was war had only been war behind the front lines, in the relative comfort of albeit makeshift headquarters in the ancient German capitals. Suddenly the colonel felt he needed the comfort of knowing that more men were coming. That thousands would come to aid them — so as to crush the British, American, and Germans in one decisive stroke. To bury all uncertainty.
“Marshal?”
“Yes?”
“Sir — this is meant as no criticism, but I was wondering if it might not be more efficient if we carried out all disposition-of-forces information by radio phone rather than by dispatch rider.”
“You’re worried about our gasoline supply for the armor, eh? Well, so am I. Our supply line is overextended, and I realized that every drop—”
“No, sir. I meant, wouldn’t it be faster — better — to rely on our electronics rather than—”
“Faster,” said the marshal, “of course. But better?” He grimaced, but there was also the hint of a smile. “I don’t think so.”
The colonel was flabbergasted. Had the marshal not attended officers’ school? But the colonel would later remember the incident as the turning point of his military career — the point at which the marshal had dragged him out of the twentieth century into the new age.