Red Army

Nine

Guards Colonel Anton Mikhailovitch Malinsky sat in his command car, eyes lowered to his map, thinking about Chopin. His lingers tapped and touched delicately at the milky plastic map bag, forming chords and absentminded arpeggios across the routes and rivers, cities and towns of central Germany. Remembering a favorite passage, a quick flourish into melody, he closed his eyes, the better to hear the vibrating strings and wires of memory. He loved Chopin. Perhaps, he thought to himself, it was the Polish blood that had poured heatedly into the Malinsky lines back in the days of hussars with ornamental wings rising from their armored backs.

Anton regretted the war, although his formation had not even been introduced into combat as yet. He regretted his spectacular rise to the command of a premier maneuver brigade at a jealousy-inspiring age. He regretted all of the things his father had never been able to see clearly. The old man made such a fuss about accepting no patronage for Malinskys. Yet, Anton thought, were it not for his position, it’s unlikely I would be more than a middling major. Were it not for the name, the name and its iron burden of traditions, I would hardly be a soldier. Colonel of the Guards. Guards colonel. It sounded marvelously romantic, the stuff of operettas and oversized epaulets. Strauss might have had a grand time with such a character. Or Lehar. Better yet, a more common touch. Romberg. Well, you could not dismiss light music so easily. There was a need for more lightness in the world.

Anton peered out at the grim German sky beyond the camouflage net. He was alone now, his officers attending to their endless chores. He had sent his driver splashing off through the mud in search of something warm to drink. His driver was a good boy, not really cut out to be a soldier either. Quite frightened of the great, brooding colonel, son of one of the most powerful officers in the Soviet military establishment. Anton remembered how the sickly colored mud had grabbed the boy’s ill-fitting boots. A lean Russian boy in a dismal training area in the Germanies, waiting for orders. Waiting for orders like all of them.

Anton had heard that the war was going very fast up front, even faster than the plan had called for in some sectors. The combination of modern killing technologies and the barely controllable mobility of contemporary armored vehicles and aircraft had torn the orderliness of situation maps apart with a rapidity alarming even to the side enjoying success. Anton remembered the baffled faces at the corps briefing he had attended earlier in the afternoon. Everyone had expected a tougher initial fight. But the fairy-tale endings of countless dreary exercises had suddenly come true. Even the careful Tartar eyes of Anseev, the corps commander, had revealed an odd disorientation, unsettled by the velocity of events.

In his heart, Anton felt that the war could not go too slowly for him. He recalled the detritus of enemy bombings on the approaches to the Elbe River crossing site north of Magdeburg. The long lines of burned-out trucks and the hapless rows of burned bodies had not even made it into the war in the traditional sense. Hours away from the border and the stew of combat, death had come without warning. If war had ever had any glamour, Anton thought, it was surely gone now. If war had ever had any glamour. Now complex, inhuman systems flew overhead, or perhaps just somewhere in the middle distance, beyond the reach of the human eye, and computers told the machines what to do and when to do it, and the earth erupted with hellfire. Anton had counted thirty-seven wrecks in one area, over fifty in another. The crossing sites themselves were little more than vehicle graveyards, the riverbanks blackened. His brigade had lost several vehicles during the Elbe River crossing, including precious air-defense systems. Now the survivors sat hidden in an assembly area in the Letzlinger Heide, topped off with fuel, organized into combat march serials, ready to move on the last, most difficult leg of their journey into battle. The corps commander projected a resumption of the march within twelve to eighteen hours, and a rapid movement to commitment, with no scheduled rest stops or halts at provision points. When the vehicles moved again, their destination would be combat.

As soon as the Guards colonel told them to move. As soon as the corps commander told the Guards colonel. As soon as the front commander gave the word to the corps commander.

Anton thought helplessly of his father. He truly loved the old man. And admired him. Of course, it was easy to admire Army General Malinsky, Commander of the First Western Front. But Anton wondered how many other men truly loved him. His father had always seemed enormous and heroic to him. And blind, as heroes had to be in the social architecture of the Soviet system. Anton was convinced that his father was scrupulously, almost absurdly honest. The old man meant it when he said he wanted no special treatment for his son. But the system was not equipped to handle such requests. Anton knew well that he would have had to commit a string of outrageous public follies even to slow his career. Malinsky’s son. Promote him. And get him out of here.

Even if he had it all to do over again, Anton doubted he would follow his own desires. The old man was too big, too grand to be resisted. And disarmingly demanding, in his aristocratic way. He had never threatened or bullied Anton into becoming an officer. He had just assumed it would be so with such unshakable conviction that Anton had found himself powerless to resist.

Zena wanted him to quit. She wanted him to find his own life. It was far too late now, of course, to think seriously about becoming a concert pianist. Too many years had gone by. His fingers had stiffened around too much military hardware. But, she pointed out, he could perhaps become a professor of music, and a critic. He had a good name, and the good names were back in fashion at last, a new novelty for the privileged elite. And then they could be together always.

Zena.

She was a fine, loving, exuberant chaos of a woman, absolutely inappropriate for the role of an officer’s wife. She could never remember the ranks of the other wives’ husbands; she was only half-aware that Anton wore a rank himself. If Zena liked her, a lieutenant’s child bride was as good as a marshal’s dowager. And naturally, since she was married to a Malinsky, the wives from the upper echelons assumed that Zena purposely snubbed them. Zena was an open, honest, naive, hated woman who danced jauntily through it all, never fully aware of the nastiness behind the smiles, singing her little Beatles’ songs learned from Western tapes. He played Scriabin, and she listened, curled up like a cat on an old peasant stove. But left to her own devices, she buoyed in and out of rooms, delighted and frenetic with life, singing in her phonetically memorized English, “Honey Pie, you are making me cra-a-zy…”

Tears came to his eyes as he pictured her, straight red hair draping a white throat made for jewels. Jeans and jewels. Zena. He touched his eyes, dreading discovery, and a queasiness that had been nipping at his stomach for the last few hours twisted in him again. He hoped he was not getting sick, even as the beginning of illness soured his mood still further.

He felt now that his entire life had been a masquerade. The brooding, serious officer. It had been all right as long as there wasn’t a real war. He had not even had to go to Afghanistan. Instead, he had been shipped off to Cuba, under the protection of General Starukhin, the senior Soviet military representative in Havana. Starukhin was an abusive drunkard, clever and talented enough to survive, and indebted to Anton’s father. He had treated Anton carefully. And Cuba had been a good assignment. Anton had run the motorized rifle troops and several special training programs. But life had been slower in the tropics, and there had always been a little time to live, and he had even been able to take Zena with him. The Cubans had had no interest in socializing with Russians beyond the requirements of official functions. But he and Zena had lived in a world all their own, going down to the beach together when a bit of free time could be scavenged, or spending a rare weekend in Havana, in the splendid, run-down aftermath of decadence. “What fine little capitalists we might have made, darling,” Zena had teased him. “Wicked rum and the stars on the water, a casino perhaps, and my Anton in that dreaded capitalist uniform, a dinner jacket.”

Now he was here, in Germany, in the mud, and everything was painfully real. The war was real. And he did not know if he could accomplish his assigned tasks, if he could really be his father’s son. He knew all of the phrases and the drills, all of the wisdom of the classroom and the training range. But would he be able to lead men into battle? Would he be able to manage the complexity? Would he be able to do it right when it really mattered? In his heart, he doubted his adequacy.

Perhaps the hard men of the Revolution had been correct. Perhaps the old families were no more than parasites. Useless. Perhaps the Bolsheviks should not have stopped until they had purged every last man, woman, and child.

Anton thought of his father again, and the theory fell apart. His father would pay the Soviets in full for what little they had given him; he would overpay them. But he was not a Soviet man, no matter what he said and no matter what they said. His wonderful Russian father, as great as the low hills and the endless steppes. As great as summer and winter. Anton smiled. Surely, the old man was in his glory now, as strong as his son was weak. Perhaps this time the plaudits would outstrip those gained at the gates of Plevna. Or the entry into Paris.

Yes. Paris. And Zena. One of their many fantastic dreams. But he had pictured it all a bit differently than this.

His driver came around the trees, plopping through the mud, struggling to balance two steaming cups. Tea. And Chopin. And Zena.

Anton shook his head in wordless sorrow.

“Flight Leader, I have you on my screen. You are cleared for auxiliary runway number two. Don’t screw around. We have more hostiles on the way.”

“This is Zero-Five-Eight. Roger. Auxiliary number two. Coming straight in.”

“Watch for the smoke, Flight Leader. We have burning fuel.”

“With me, Fifty-nine?” Sobelev called to his wingman.

“Roger, Fifty-eight.”

“You’re in first. Number two’s longer than it looks, but it comes up suddenly behind the trees. Don’t flare early. You’ll be just fine.”

But Sobelev himself was unprepared for the sight of the airfield. Fuel fires raged, and black smoke rose thickly against the gray sky. Vehicles with warning lights ran along the apron, and planes lifted through what appeared to be great hoops of fire. From several kilometers out, the litter NATO raids had left behind challenged the pilot’s confidence.

“Flight Leader, this is Control. I have you visual.”

“I’m rolling out. My wingman’s coming in first.”

“Roger. Do you need assistance on the ground?”

“Negative. Not unless we bugger it up.”

“Your runway.”

The lieutenant, Sobelev’s wingman, took his aircraft in cleanly. Sobelev remained surprised that they had made it this far, that they were still alive. For at least one more mission. He came around and followed his wingman in, bouncing on the runway.

“Talk to me, Control. Where am I going?”

“Proceed onto taxiway four. Move out. Hard hangars, crescent B.”

“Numbers?”

“Just take the first open bay. This is war, my distinguished Comrade Aviator.”

Sobelev guided his plane through the trailing smoke and the wreckage of planes that had been caught on the ground. It struck him that all of this was an incredible waste, but now that he was on the ground, he realized that the focus of his life was to get to a latrine.

Sobelev’s legs quivered as he stood on the concrete of the hangar floor, and his thighs felt spongy as he walked to the tunnel and collected his wingman. After a latrine stop, they reported to the mission room, deep underground. Muffled blasts sounded through the layers of earth, steel, and concrete. The enemy aircraft had returned.

As Sobelev and his wingman entered the mission room, the occupants went silent, and each face turned to see who had made it back. Several men offered greetings, but their voices were hollow with the knowledge that their survival might only be a temporary affair. Sobelev drew himself a cup of dark, steaming tea from the samovar. Conversations resumed, but the mood was serious, almost somber, unlike the swaggering tone of peacetime exercises. Now there was no question about who had passed and who had failed. Sobelev took a chair, listening to the patchwork dialogues of the other men and trying to calm his insides. His lieutenant took a seat close by, as though they were still in the air and he still required shepherding. There was one basic subject to which all of the talk returned.

“Sasha’s down over Guetersloh. I couldn’t see a chute.”

“It’s hard to see anything in this weather.”

“Has anybody seen Profirov?”

“Profirov went deep.”

“Vasaryan got clean, though. Good canopy opening.”

“He’ll come out all right. Luck of the Armenians.”

“Couldn’t even see what was shooting at us. The visibility was some of the worst I’ve ever flown in.”

“And this forward air controller was absolutely worthless. Couldn’t locate the enemy, couldn’t get a fix on me…”

Sobelev began to grow conscious of less dramatic physical sensations now. His flight suit felt greasy and cold on his skin, stinking with the sweat of fear. The strong tea burned his empty stomach.

“How many more sorties do you think we’ll run today?”

“They’re not going to try to do this at night, are they? With these planes? In this weather?”

“Is there anything to eat around here? Any biscuits?”

The entrance of a staff officer interrupted the pilots’ conversations. The outsider strode to the blackboard, positioned himself for authority, and began to call names. Several times, the selected names met no response, and Sobelev realized that the staff did not have a firm grasp on which pilots were available at this point.

At the end of the grim roll call, Sobelev, his wingman, and six other pilots were ordered to report to a special top-security briefing room. The major could not tell them anything about their mission, only that their aircraft were being prepared with the correct ordnance packages.

Sobelev led the way down the grimy corridor. He was seriously worried about his ability to keep going without making deadly mistakes. He could accept the fact that the enemy might get him even if he performed perfectly. But he did not want to die because of an error.

He looked at his wingman. The boy looked as though he had been sick for a week. “Feeling all right?”

The lieutenant nodded. “Was it ever this bad in Afghanistan?”

“Not even remotely. No comparison.”

They rang a bell for admittance at the oversized steel door. The special facility was identified only with a number. A lieutenant colonel from the intelligence services opened the door slightly, looked them over, then allowed them inside. Maps and aerial photographs, some of which were impressive blowups, covered the walls of the briefing chamber.

“Sit down, Comrades. I must ask you to remain in this room and only this room. If any of you need to visit the latrine, you’ll have to go back outside. This complex is restricted to intelligence personnel only. Now, can I offer you some tea?”

The pilots declined as a group.

“Well,” the briefer began, “you’re all in luck.” He glanced from face to face, an eager lieutenant colonel, conditioned to the paper reality of staff work. “This ought to be the easiest mission anyone’s had all day.” He turned to the map with his pointer. “This is the city of Lueneburg. Actually, more of a large town. The photos on the walls show the air approaches to the heart of the old town and various key features, such as the town square, the town hall, and so forth. Your mission consists of the destruction by aerial means of certain physical structures within the town. Each of the photographs on the far wall shows a specific target. They’re very clearly identified, as you can see. There are three targets, or target groups. Two planes to a target. The last pair of aircraft — let’s see, that would be… Bronchuk and Ignatov — will take pictures.”

“Just a moment,” one pilot said. “What’s the military value of the target?”

The lieutenant colonel appeared surprised at the question. “The target,” he said, “is just the town itself. Don’t worry, we assess a minimal air defense threat in sector. You’ll be safe. Our own troops are already in the vicinity.”

“But what’s the military purpose? The enemy’s bombing the hell out of our air bases, and we’re attacking little towns nobody’s ever heard of?”

The staff officer’s last hesitant smile disappeared. The exchange was underscored by a series of blasts thudding dully up on the surface.

“You will do as you’re told,” the briefer said. “There is no time — or allowance — for argument. You will all do exactly as you’re told.”

Kryshinin lay on the canvas litter, waiting for the ambulance to begin moving again. He felt inexplicably weak now, tired beyond reason. He kept his eyes closed because it was so much easier. He could not understand why his wound did not hurt any worse. There was only a dull discomfort, an unwillingness on the part of his torso to move. He felt lightheaded, and he was no longer sure that he was conscious without interruption. Over and over again, the scenes of battle played back in his head, and he was vaguely aware of calling instructions, trying to warn his men. Bylov, the air controller, sat on the roof, and the world was in flames, and Bylov was eating his lunch as though unaware of the violence and waste around him.

“Vera,” Kryshinin said. “Vera, I have to explain.” He could not understand where Vera had gone. Only a moment ago, his wife had been beside him. Now he could not remember where she had gone.

His immediate surroundings returned. The grimy interior of a battlefield ambulance, waiting, sickening with exhaust fumes and the smells of ruined bodies. Two medical orderlies chatted with each other between the packed litters.

“This one’s gone.”

“Can’t be helped. Nothing to do. If they want to hold us up for everybody in the army to get past, we’ll lose them all. None of our doing.”

“Have a look. See if it’s still tanks going by.”

“You have a look if you want. I can tell by the sound that it’s tanks.”

“You’re closer to the door.”

They were stuck in a minefield, Kryshinin realized. They needed someone to lead them. He wanted to explain to them how it could be done, but they wouldn’t wait for him. He struggled to speak, muttering, but unable to get the words out in order.

“This one looks bad. He needs a transfusion quick,” an orderly said. “He’s white as snow.”

“Unless piss works, he’s out of luck.”

Kryshinin suddenly realized that they were talking about him. And he wanted to reply. But he did not know what to say, or how to say it now. And it seemed as though it would take an absurd, unreasonable amount of energy to speak.

“Well, to hell with them, anyway. At least they’re officers and they get to die in an ambulance.”

Vera. He knew he had seen her. She had been there a moment before, wearing her green dress that was growing a bit too tight. No. No. Grip reality. Vera is far away. Hold on to the actual. Don’t let go… But it was all so difficult.

He had not thought of Vera once during the battle. Perhaps that was a sign of how far apart they had grown. Nothing had worked out as planned. Nothing ever quite worked between them. They fought over trivial things, and he knew he drank too much at the officers’ canteen, but he did it anyway. And Vera carried her resentment in silence until it suddenly exploded into vicious, public anger, for all of the families in the officers’ quarters to hear.

But it could all be mended. Kryshinin felt the warmth of conviction. If only he could see her now, it could all be put right. It was all foolishness. And they must have children. When he found out that Vera had had two abortions without telling him, he had beaten her so badly that she could not go outside for almost two weeks. Two abortions. As if she wanted to kill every part of him that could have gotten inside of her.

“Get away from the window,” Kryshinin shouted. “Get back.”

But the lieutenant failed to obey the command. He reached to catch an object hurtling through the air, and he burst apart as though his body were the climax of a fireworks display.

“I need support, can you hear me? I need support. We can’t hold. They’re all over us. Please.”.

Vera surrounded by clouds of black smoke.

“Sounds as if this one had an interesting day,” one of the orderlies said in amusement.

“It just gets on your nerves after a while,” the other replied.

Halfway between the improvised helipad and the concealed forward command post of the Third Shock Army, the range car carrying Lieutenant General Starukhin down the muddy trail backfired once, shook, and sank to a stop. The sudden absence of mechanical noise startled the general. The world seemed to stop inside the big perceived silence, despite the vigor of the rain and the dull, distant sound of the war like a hangover in the ears. Each rustle of uniforms and wet leather straps seemed amplified, and the sour smell of tired men in damp uniforms grew unaccountably sharper.

Overcoming his initial bewilderment and horror, the junior sergeant behind the steering wheel clumsily tried to restart the vehicle, but the engine would not come to life. Instead of waiting for the dispatch of his own vehicle from the headquarters, Starukhin had hurriedly commandeered the immediately available range car, unwilling to lose the extra ten or fifteen minutes. Now he sat heavily in the little vehicle, with no means of communication, still several kilometers from his command post, mocked by the barrage of rain on the canvas roof.

The young driver carefully avoided looking around, fixing his eyes on the dashboard as though his stare might bully the machine back to life. The two aides accompanying Starukhin remained carefully silent. Starukhin listened to the boy’s fumbling for as long as he could bear it, then shouted:

“You can’t coax it to start, you drizzle ass. Get out and look at the engine.”

The boy shot out of the vehicle, banging against the door frame with bruising haste. Beyond the rain-smeared windshield, Starukhin could see him fumbling with the engine cover. In the blurred background, the rain seemed to have scoured all of the color out of the sky and landscape.

“And you two,” Starukhin bellowed, turning on his aides. “Get out there and help him. What’s the matter with you jackasses?”

The aides moved with the panic of men caught in a terrible crime. One of them, a lieutenant colonel, jostled wildly against Starukhin in his anxiety, and the army commander gave him a hard shove toward the door. Soon the two aides stood glum-faced beside the driver in the steady rain.

They were hopeless. All of them. Starukhin sat back, squaring his shoulders, convinced that he had to carry the entire army on his back. All of his life, he thought, he had had to drive his will head-on into the ponderous complacency characteristic of the system into which he had been born. Every day was a struggle. When something broke, those responsible would sheepishly sit down and wait to be told to fix it. Then they would take their own good time about the task. Unless you drove them. And Starukhin had learned how to drive men. But now, during the great test of his lifetime, he feared his inability to move the men under his command.

More than anything, he feared failure. He feared it because he believed it would reveal some secret incompetence hidden within him. Deep within his soul, where no other human being had ever been allowed to penetrate, Starukhin doubted himself, and nothing seemed more important to him than the preservation of his pride.

The damned whoring British would not break. It seemed incredible to him that he could not simply will his way through them, hammering them to nothing with his personal determination and the tank-heavy army under his command. He drifted back and forth between his bobbing doubts and waves of immeasurable energy. Now, as he envisioned the defending British, he sensed that it would be impossible for them to resist.

Yet the British were resisting, fighting bitterly for every road and water obstacle, seemingly for every worthless little village and godforsaken hill. While to the north, that bastard Trimenko was breaking through. Starukhin knew that Trimenko’s Second Guards Tank Army was already ahead of schedule, splitting the seam between the Germans and the Dutch. While he, Starukhin, had to butt head-on against the British.

That little Jewish shit Chibisov undoubtedly had a hand in it, Starukhin was convinced. He stared through the mud-speckled windshield at the soaking trio bent over the vehicle’s engine, feeling a strange pleasure at the thought of Chibisov. The hatred he felt was so intense, so pure and unexamined, that it was soothing. After the war… the Chibisovs would be made to pay. The Motherland had to be purged yet again. It was time to settle accounts with the Jews and the Jew-loving writers, with the leeching minorities and false reformers. In the wordless clarity of the moment, Chibisov embodied everything foul in the Soviet Union, all responsibility for the failures of Starukhin’s own kind. And yet Starukhin recognized that he hated Chibisov not merely for his Jewish-ness, but for his easy, controlled brilliance as well. Everything came too easily to Chibisov. Malinsky’s staff Jew could perform offhandedly tasks that confronted Starukhin with agony and consternation.

Surely, Starukhin decided, Chibisov was sabotaging him, poisoning Malinsky against him and cleverly throwing the front’s support behind Trimenko. As he sat in the hard, low vehicle seat under canvas vibrant with rain Starukhin imputed to Chibisov every action that he would have taken in the other man’s place.

And Malinsky. How could Malinsky fail to support him, even at the expense of Trimenko? Trimenko was nobody’s friend. But Starukhin had served as a baby-sitter for Malinsky’s son in Cuba. Just to keep the boy out of Afghanistan. Starukhin was certain that the posting had been no accident. No, Malinsky must have fixed it up for the boy. And Starukhin clearly understood who possessed power and how much. He had known what would be tacitly expected of him. Keep the son out of trouble.

Of course, the kid had not been so bad. He worked hard enough. As the officer responsible for training, he had done all that was required, even a bit more. Young Malinsky was clever at solving problems. Yet somehow, there was so little to the boy. It was as though he was never fully present, as though his heart really wasn’t tucked inside the tunic of his uniform. There was no fire. Young Malinsky had gone through all of the paces, performing with ease. But he just did not seem like a real soldier.

Young Malinsky didn’t even drink like a man. In Cuba, the boy had spent all of his spare time cuddled with his redheaded bitch of a wife, following her around like an excited dog. Starukhin doubted that the boy would have had the strength to raise his hand to his wife even if he had caught her in the act of being unfaithful to him. Not that Starukhin had any evidence that she had betrayed young Malinsky. No, the little cunt was probably too smart for that. She knew what she had to do to have it good. But she was still a whore. One look at her and you knew. You could smell it. And her independence of manner, her lack of respect… the boy seemed to have no control over her. You had to treat women the same way you treated the men beneath you. Break them down. Force your will on them. Get them by the ears and shove it down their throats.

Starukhin thought briefly, disgustedly, of his own wife. A sack of fat. The woman had no pride, no respect for her position. She had the soul of a peasant, not of a general’s wife. Young Malinsky’s wife, now — she at least looked the part. But she was a calculating little tramp.

Hearing a series of distant explosions, Starukhin pounded his big fist on the frame of the car. The war would not wait for him. His war. The opportunity of his lifetime. Even the daylight seemed to be floundering, failing, letting him down. Everything was running away from him, while he sat in a broken-down vehicle in the mud. He felt as if the universe had conspired to humiliate him. And Trimenko and Chibisov and all of the whoring Jewish bastards of the world were leaving him behind. Starukhin felt as though he would explode with the enormity of his anger.

He threw open the door of the car and clambered out into the mud just as the rain picked up again. He stared at the sergeant and the two aides. They were tinkering dutifully with the engine, but it was clear that not one of them knew what to do.

“You’re relieved,” Starukhin told the two officers. “I don’t want to see your goddamned faces anywhere around the headquarters. Your careers are finished.”

Suddenly, two NATO aircraft roared in low overhead. The sound of their passage was so big it shocked the ears like an explosion. The aides and the sergeant threw themselves into the mud. But Starukhin only raised his wide face to meet the jets, automatically sensing that they were after something bigger than a stranded range car. In the instant of their passage, he clearly saw the black squared crosses and the hard colors of the West German air force. A moment later, the tactical helipad that served the army’s command post threw a bouquet of fire high into the heavens, followed quickly by a second bloom, orange, yellow, and a ghostly red, tricking the eyes as it singed the air to black. The mud grasping at Starukhin’s boots turned to jelly, and waves crossed the surface of the puddles. Then the sound of the blasts arrived with an intensity that seemed to penetrate the skin as well as the ears.

Without a word or backward look, Starukhin turned down the swamped trail toward his forward command post, raging at the rain that fell on him, cursing every man and woman who crossed his mind, marching, almost running in the slop, fervent and vicious with fear.