The War in 2020

4

The real veterans, the women who had been here so many times they had lost count, said it was nothing. Less of a bother than having a tooth pulled. But the slow cramping deep inside made Valya want to draw her knees as close to her chin as bones and sinews allowed. Yet she did not move. She felt as though all of the energy had been bled out of her, and the comforting movement of her knees remained a vision, a futile dream. Her legs lay still, extended. Dead things. Only her head had turned out of the corpselike position in which the assistants had left her. She faced the wall at the end of the ward, facing away from herself, away from her life, away from everything. Staring at chipped pipes and plaster that had not been painted or even scrubbed down for decades.

She focused casually on a spray of brown droplets that trailed along the gray wall. Old stains, the beads and speckles seemed to have grown into the surface, and it was impossible to tell now whether their substance was old blood or the residue of waste. The business had been hard on her before. But Valya did not remember it as being quite this hard. Yes, it had seemed like a punishment then too. But not such a blunt punishment. Windows painted over, discoloring the cold daylight. The iron of the bedstead. She was conscious of a sharp, metallic clattering and terse voices in the open ward. But her humiliating inability to move, the dead weight of sickness in her belly, seemed to insulate her from practical concerns. If they could not help her, she would settle for being left alone on this bed whose sheets had not been changed under the day's succession of women.

Behind the masking smell of disinfectant, a morbid odor brewed. Valya sensed that she knew its identity very well, I but each time she almost named it, the label dissolved on her tongue, teasing her, prickling her ruined nerves. And her failure to find the word, to anchor reality with the hard specificity of language, left her somehow more alone than she had been in the emptiness of the previous moment. She thought of the lies she had needed to tell, another use of words, to escape from the routine of the school for a day. Wondering how much they knew or divined. Superiors sour with small authority. And the children with no color in their faces. The usage of definite and indefinite articles in the English language….

No. She would not think of that now. Especially not of the children. Nor of Yuri. And where was he now? God, the war. How could there be a war? It was impossible to imagine. There was no sound of war. Only the sameness; of the evening news. Yuri was fighting in a war. She knew it to be a fact. Yet, it held no meaningful reality for her. And it was unclean to think of Yuri now.

She wished she could clear her mind of all thought. To purge herself of present knowing like some mystic. But the harder she tried to empty her mind, the more insistently the images of her life tumbled out of their mental graves. Beds, lies, betrayals. The worst thieveries. And the feel of a new man's whiskers scrubbing her chin. The distinctiveness of the breath.

More than anything else, she hated the weakness. She hated any kind of weakness in herself, struggling against it. Only to grow weaker still, a greater fool. And now this dull physical weakness tethering her to this bed. And the faint, constant nausea.

Most of the other women in the ward remained silent. There was no desire to make new friends here, or to be known even by sight. Like a dirty train station, the clinic was a place through which to pass as quickly and anonymously as possible.

A girl became hysterical. Valya tried to keep her total focus on the plaster desert of the wall. But the voice, young and stupid with pain, would not relent. Valya thought that, if only she could find the strength to rise, she would slap the girl. Hard.

"First-timer," a woman's voice announced to anonymous neighbors. The remark was answered by cackling laughter and snickers.

Footsteps came down the ward.

An unwilling alertness in Valya isolated the sound. Heavy. Mannish. Cheap shoes on broken tile. Valya closed her eyes. She felt as though she would give anything she owned to lie undisturbed just a few minutes longer. Her best dress, the red perfect dress from America. The jacket from France that Naritsky had given her to wear to the party with the foreigners. The few precious shreds of her life. Take them.

"Patient!" The word was dreary from years of repetition. "Patient. Your time is up."

Reluctantly, Valya opened her eyes, turning her head slightly.

"Patient. Time to go."

"I… feel ill," Valya said, and, as she listened to herself, she despised the cowardice, the subservience in her voice. Yet she went on. "I need to lie here for a few more minutes. Please."

"This isn't your private apartment. Your time is up. And you're not bleeding."

Valya looked up at the shapeless creature beside the bed. Barely recognizable as a woman. The attendant's gray uniform smock looked as though it had been last washed long ago, in dirty dishwater, and her fallen bosom strained at a plastic button that did not match the others holding the cloth stretched over a lifetime of poor diet. When the attendant spoke, no anger animated her voice. There was no real emotion at all. Merely the unfeeling voice of duty, tired of repeating itself. The lack of emotion rendered the voice unassailable.

For a moment, Valya looked up into the woman's face, trying to find her eyes. But there was no spirit in them. Bits of chipped glass in a mask of broken veins, divided by a drunkard's nose.

Will that be me? Valya thought in sudden terror. Is a creature like this waiting inside of me, just waiting to appear? The thought seemed worse than dying.

In a last, uncontrolled attempt at fending off the attendant, Valya shook her head.

The older woman's expression did not seem to alter, but, then, in the instant before the woman spoke, Valya realized that the face had, indeed, changed, hardening into a mask of professional armor, refusing to regard Valya as anything more than a number.

"The bed is needed. Get up."

Valya surprised herself with her ability to rise unassisted. She imagined a real, well-defined cavity inside herself, a place of vacancy and coldness, and the ability to bring her legs so easily together and then to force them over the side of the bed astonished her.

"I think I'm bleeding," Valya said.

"No, you're not," the attendant said. "I'd see it." But she let her eyes trail down below Valya's waist. A flicker of doubt. "Finish dressing and report to the desk."

The woman left. And even before Valya could draw on her litter of clothing, another young woman appeared. Guided impatiently by a thickset woman in uniform who might have been a sister to the one who had roused Valya.

The new girl was a colorless blonde, whose hair and complexion struck Valya as much less vivid than her own, possessed of less of the tones men wanted. Yet, some man had wanted her. As the girl approached the bed her eyes looked through Valya, fumbling with reality. Her skin was white to the point of translucence, as though she had lost far too much blood. Steered by the attendant, she collapsed onto the soiled bed just as Valya herself had recently done, without regard for Valya or anyone else on earth. She stared at the ceiling.

Valya steadied herself against the wall, drawing on a stocking. The attendant marched away. And the girl touched herself timidly, as if expecting to discover some terrible change. Then her lower lip began to flutter. At first Valya thought the girl would speak, perhaps asking for help. Instead, she simply began to cry, a lanky child smashed by an adult world.

Valya averted her eyes, refusing to make a gesture toward the girl. But as she looked away she found herself trapped by the gaze of a solid little woman dangling darkhaired calves over the edge of a bed. Somewhere in her thirties, the woman had coal-black hair and a bit of a mustache. Georgian, perhaps. Her face bore the scars of disease, but otherwise she looked as robust as if she'd merely been on an outing. She grinned at Valya as though she had only been in to have her temperature taken.

"If they can't take the consequences, they shouldn't be so quick to spread their legs," the woman said with a slight accent, nodding proudly to the sickened girl who had taken possession of Valya's bed. "They all want to have their fun, then they don't want to pay the price."

Valya broke away from the woman's stare and worked unsteadily down between the rows of beds toward the exit. But the harder she tried to avert her eyes, the more she seemed to see. She tried to force her eyes down to the floor, to simply scan her next steps, but the sight of old stains and splashes, chips and scuffs, only aggravated her feeling of hopelessness. Why couldn't they take a bucket of water to it? It certainly was not sanitary. Weak-legged, she suddenly saw her future with perfect clairvoyance. Another nondescript clinic. Another bed not quite dirty enough to force a change of sheets. Another…

What kind of a life was this?

Trailing her little bag of essentials, Valya stood in line before the desk. She breathed deeply, fighting the nausea, but the effort only poisoned her with bad air. She felt sweat prickling under her clothing, polishing her forehead. She thought that she would collapse at any moment, that she would be terribly sick. Then they would see. Then they would understand…

But nothing occurred beyond the slow falling away of the queue ahead of her, until she stood before the clerk at the desk. The woman's hair was drawn back into a strict bun, and the skin stretched over her lean features with no hint of softness or resilience. She did not look up from her paperwork.

"Patient's name?"

"Babryshkina. Valentina Ivanovna."

"Difficulties?"

For an instant, Valya imagined herself telling this woman how sick she felt, how badly she needed to lie down just a little longer.

"No."

"Sign here, Comrade."

Valya bent down over the emptiness that seemed to grow larger in her with each new thought or action. She almost wished she would discover some terrible wetness on her legs that would make them let her rest a little while.

She signed the form.

"And here, Comrade. In two places."

Valya made no effort to read the forms. She signed where she had been told to sign, wanting now to be gone from the place.

Without a discernible gesture of completion, the woman behind the desk said, "Next."

Naritsky waited for her down the block, posing against his automobile. Even before she could distinguish the expression on his face, Valya knew that Naritsky was very pleased with himself. For waiting all the while. The thought i of him sickened her now and, for a moment, she could not imagine how she had ever allowed him to touch her, to have her. But even at her most self-pitying, Valya could not tolerate such mental flaccidness for long. She had enjoyed her times with him. And the sex had been all right. Not as sheerly athletic as with Yuri. But far more imaginative. Naritsky was vulgar. And that part of her was vulgar too.

Yet, handsome though he was, it was not sex that had attracted her to Naritsky. She could do without sex. And she had not run out man-hunting the moment Yuri left for central Asia. But Naritsky had seemed like a chance, a last chance.

Once, Yuri had seemed like a chance too. To a young, very foolish girl. And she had thought she was being so wise. An Army officer would always have a job. And Yuri was so bright, so much the ideal of what an Army officer should be. Everyone had predicted a great future for him. But this was not a country of great futures.

Officers, Valya thought, in a split second of disgust. Lives as stiff as their uniforms. In a country falling apart, where everything had been falling apart for decades, where nothing ever quite worked, where no dream ever quite came true, Yuri had seemed so strong and safe and capable of providing a worthwhile life. But there was nothing to it. And behind the rough uniform cloth he had hidden a love that did not even respect itself. Yuri and his slobbering devotions. A love all weakness. When she needed him to be strong. Men were filth.

And what does that make me? Valya asked herself.

Naritsky. Smiling. By his late-model automobile. Not too flashy. Naritsky was too clever for that. Naritsky was clever in so many ways. But he had been an ass when it mattered.

A friend had put them in touch. There's this guy. Works with foreigners. Business. You know. Nothing illegal. Not really illegal. You know. Anyway, he's got friends. But he needs a good English interpreter. A few extra roubles. Odd hours. Supplement your income. And he can get the nicest things. Let me show you…

The nicest things. Men aren't really my vice, Valya decided. I'm the tart of nice things. When it all went to pieces, she had considered, for an instant, destroying all of the material goods Naritsky had given her. But the mood passed like an inkling of terror, forcibly suppressed. She knew that she did not have the strength to cut and tear and throw away the only primary colors in her gray world.

And Yuri? I'm not a good woman, Yuri. I lied. And when you had to choose, you chose your army. What did you expect?

Yet, she knew that she would never tell him a thing. And if he found out, she would deny. And, anyway, he would forgive her. Everything. Yuri was hopeless.

Thank God for that, she thought.

Well, she had failed. She had convinced herself that she could control the situation with Naritsky. That she could use him. But now, wobbling out of a clinic on a lifeless October afternoon, there was no denying her failure. She had not controlled a thing. Naritsky had used her as his whore, paying her off in clothes and little toys that blinded her to everything else. And they were trifles to him.

She had considered turning him in. But there would have been no point in it. Naritsky had too many friends. And it would have been far cheaper for him to buy off the militia than it had been to buy her off. Minor consumer electronics. Or just the European condoms he refused to use.

She had actually imagined that Naritsky would marry her, that it would only take a divorce from Yuri. But Naritsky had never intended to marry anyone. Thank God she had not written to Yuri, hadn't really started anything.

She had been a fool.

Drunken, Naritsky had laughed in her face. "You're spoiled goods, my darling."

Later he had sought, lavishly, to make up for that single, killing, honest remark. But Valya had finally grasped the extent of her folly.

Now Naritsky preened against the side of his little blue car, jacket thrown open despite the cold air. A rich man in a country that grew poorer by the day. A country that, after a hundred years of promises, could not provide adequate birth control devices to its people. A country that still could not feed itself. All the promises. Like the promises a man made to a stupid mistress.

As Valya approached, Naritsky gestured toward her but did not really move. He had selected an expression of concern that made Valya want to shout, "Liar, liar, liar.

"Are you all right?" he asked.

Valya pulled her light stylish jacket closer against the chill, tucking in her scarf. She nodded. This was no place for a scene, no time for final decisions. And Naritsky seemed to sense something. He did not touch her but merely opened the car door. Automatically, she moved to get in.

Then she stopped.

"I need fresh air. I want to walk."

Naritsky looked at her, unsure.

For a moment, she imagined that he feared her. Some scandal. But he would be easily capable of managing that. She was the one with something to fear, with everything to lose.

"Valya," he said, in his warm, convincing voice. "You're in no condition to walk. You need to rest. Get in."

Unexpectedly, Valya lost her temper. "I'm walking. Do you understand?" Then she stopped, as surprised by her reserve of energy as by her loss of selfcontrol.

"It's too far," Naritsky said, with an unaccustomed edge of uncertainty in his voice.

"I'll get a trolley."

"Please. You're not well. You need to rest."

He was already back in control of himself. It was as if he could see into her, know everything about her. While she could not look into him at all. And she had considered herself so wise, the master of men.

"Don't speak to me as though I were a child," she half shouted.

"Valya. Please."

"I want to walk. And don't follow me."

Naritsky backed away, palms open, as if he had been accused of an infraction of the criminal code. He opened his mouth, then chose not to speak.

Valya took a last, heartbroken, furious look at him, and turned away.

"I'll phone later," he called after her. "To see…"

She forced herself to think of sex with Naritsky, and with others. Making herself sicker now with the images, even though she recognized that it was all emotional and physical reaction, with no intellectual honesty in it. She thoughtlessly swore that she would never let another man slop his weight on top of her ever again, then she began to choke with laughter at her brazen dishonesty. And her physical illness returned, nearly dropping her against a wall lathered with tom posters: The Future Belongs To Us!

Lies, lies, lies. A world of lies. Promises broken before they could be fully articulated. She forced herself to move along, eager to be well out of Naritsky's sight.

The back streets through which her journey took her seemed dismally gray and poor. All her life she had wanted to climb out of this plodding squalor. But there was nowhere to go. All of the good men were hopeless fools. And the bad men helped only themselves. Reformers came, but the reforms always failed or, still worse, worked halfway. Nothing ever worked more than halfway in this country. The reformers disappeared. But the reactions against the reforms, too, only worked halfway. As Valya walked along the broken pavement, the sickness in her made her feel as though she were slowly sinking, as though all her life she had been slowly sinking but had not noticed because everything around her was sinking as well.

She looked up at the balconies hung with wash, collecting the tiny particles of poison that haunted the Moscow air. She did not understand how others could tolerate it so easily, accepting the decayed communal apartments, where families shared one another's dirt and secrets, the struggle for poor food, and men who never gave a thought to their women except when they were aroused or drunk or both.

As she passed a butcher shop, Valya automatically glanced in the window. White-aproned attendants stood about slackly, crowned with undersize white hats. The display cases were empty. But the display shelves in the window were decorated with pictures of various meats and sausages, as though the passerby might be fooled into visions of abundance.

Even the sight of photographed food made Valya feel sicker. The nation of empty shops. Of empty wombs. She felt unreasonably cold.

Around the corner, a line had formed, but for once Valya had no interest in what had suddenly become available. Her only concern was to find the quickest way past the huddling women in their coats that smelled of storage. A few idle men had joined the line, as well, and they looked Valya up and down.

Valya laughed to herself. And if you could have seen me an hour ago? If you could have seen the bloody mess of me. Would you have wanted me then?

Probably. And then they would have complained about the waste left on them. They were all pigs.

Valya stumbled slightly and almost lost her direction. The nearest faces regarded her sullenly, as though she might attempt to push into the line. She heard the word oranges. And it was a remarkable thing to think of oranges appearing wondrously, magically now, in October, with the groves where oranges grew engulfed in war. Surely, these would be the last of the year. But she had no appetite for oranges now.

Perhaps Yuri was fighting amid the orange groves. What a pretty place that would be to have a war. Perhaps Yuri was happier with his tanks and guns and soldiers than he had ever been with her. In his letters he offered no details of his life, only maudlin reminiscences.

Valya tried to focus her eyes, her efforts. To decide where she was really going. She tried to think about trolleys and bus stops, routes and schedules. But she was uncertain of this street. Abruptly, she changed her direction.

Her thoughts would not come clear. All of the faces she passed appeared identical. Even their scars were identical. Horrible scars. She began to cross a bridge slumped over a drainage canal. She idly touched the old wrought-iron work, a rusted reminder of past centuries, cold under her fingers. Then she found herself gripping the oxidized spearheads, clinging to the bridge, struggling to remain on her feet. A wave of unexpected pain rippled up from her belly to her stomach and she began to spill a bit of saliva from the corner of her mouth. Now, too late, she felt a growing wetness at the top of her legs. It was a joke. Another punishment. Valya, the girl who was in control of everything. Closing her eyes, she gripped the railing still harder, praying not to fall to the pavement. But closing her eyes only made it worse.

She opened her eyes. And the pain suddenly receded. But the wetness was still there, quickly losing its warmth, sliming down over the inside of her thighs.

For a long moment, she could only stare into the filthy murk of the canal. Spotted with oil rainbows. So still. Necklaces of garbage on the banks. Islands of junk expelled from high windows. When leaves floated down, the water seemed to reach up and clutch them, anxious to coat them with its filth. The high walls of the apartment buildings lining both sides of the canal were flecked like old, sick skin.

She needed a toilet but had no idea where to look. It was a country that could not even receive its own waste properly. Suddenly Valya imagined that she would die before she found anyone or anything that would help her. Two grandmothers scuttled by, commenting sourly about public drunkenness and sparking Valya back to life, into a powerless, frozen rage.

She had dirtied herself. She had dirtied her entire life. And what if Yuri ever found out? She would lose even that. The bare minimum of safety.

She made herself walk. She went into the first open building she could find and tried to clean herself in the shadows of a basement stairwell. Her underpants were slopping with blood and a thick wetness, and her handkerchief was too small to cope with the problem. At first reluctantly, then resolutely, she pulled the silk scarf from around her neck. Another gift from Naritsky. And she began to clean her thighs, struggling not to lose her balance or to faint, no longer even caring if anyone saw her.

She leaned back against the wall, drinking in the dead air. She released the silken rag from her hand, and it fell heavily to the floor. As her eyes learned the darkness, she saw a row of dustbins, some with newspapers overflowing their collars. Determinedly, she tore off the cleanest-looking pages and bunched them, then held them against herself, trying to bring enough pressure to stop the bleeding. She was awash with sweat, and very cold.

She shoved hard at herself, trying to force away the ache as she stanched the flow of blood. How could men become so helpless over it? she thought. My God, what if they saw you like this? And she began to laugh again, dropping her head back against the cinder blocks, catching her hair.

She made her way back out into the gray day, walking out of any sense of time, until she came to a small, halfrecognized park. She limped down a curling path to a bench and sat down hard, as though dropping from crutches. She stared up into the gray vacancy, aware that she was cold, yet oddly calm and very still. There was no need to shiver. That would have been far too bothersome, too violent. She lowered her eyes slightly, to the emaciated white trees. Going bald. Their last leaves shriveled, hanging on randomly. Her bones pressed down on the cold slats. She felt a bit of wetness, but sensed that the worst bleeding had stopped.

Lies.

Suddenly, she felt hungry, even though her stomach still sent contradictory signals of nausea. Perhaps, she thought, it was just the other emptiness. My body wants to be full again. Any way it can. Utterly confused at herself, Valya buried her face in her hands. And, at last, she began shaking with the cold.

A female voice intruded. Speaking in a foreign language. English. But with a very bad accent. Perhaps an American. Valya looked up.

She saw the woman's clothes first. Because they were so much more impressive than the woman herself, who merely looked big and well fed. But the richness of the cloth in the coat, the wasteful generosity of its cut, the deep leather gloss and stitching of the shoes, these were qualities beyond anything that Valya possessed. The woman wore a scarf in rich, subdued colors, and Valya realized in shame that she would not have had the sophistication to choose such a scarf, that she would have missed it with her child's eye, captivated by hot colors and too-bold patterns. In a glimpse Valya saw the extent of her ignorance of the world in which she had imagined herself, realizing that her failure was even greater than she had intuited.

The woman held a book, and she turned hastily through its pages with her plump pink fingers. It was an English-language book. The cover said, A Guide to Moscow. The woman muttered a few English words. Oh, where is it now? Oh, wouldn't you know it? She caught her lower lip in her teeth as she scanned the pages, not once looking at Valya.

And perhaps I am not worth looking at? Valya considered.

The woman mumbled, tearing at the pages. Her English was so unlike the clean, careful sentences Valya drilled into her students. The boys in their blazers, arms growing out of the sleeves. And the white-aproned girls. This foreign woman had a nasal, distinctly unattractive voice.

She was not pretty. But her skin and hair had a quality as rich as her clothing, the sum of a foreign life of luxury. Even after all that had happened, the Americans were very rich. Valya could not understand why any of them would want to come to Moscow. For a vacation in a graveyard.

Perhaps she was a diplomat's wife. Of course. With the war, there could not be tourists. Or perhaps her husband was a great businessman. Naritsky said that business never stopped. Not even for wars.

The big woman's face brightened. And she nodded positively to herself, like a horse about to neigh. She had found her page. And she began to speak.

It was an attempt at Russian. But it merely came out as gibberish. Valya could not understand a bit of it. But she obstinately refused to offer the woman a word of English.

The woman ceased reading and looked at Valya. Imploringly. The sudden confidence had disappeared again. But Valya would not meet the woman's eyes. It was hard enough to look at the soft, thick, flowing fabric of her winter coat, or to consider the fine soft shoes that Valya's own glued-together bits of vinyl and plastic sought pathetically to imitate. Valya was certain that this woman had never suffered, had never endured anything. That she had been able to gobble dependable little pills or use some comfortable device that kept her body out of hell and be damned to her soul. By accident of birth this woman had everything of which Valya dreamed. A life without want, without pain.

Let her suffer now. For this one moment.

The big woman tried again, more timidly, in a measured voice. And Valya could just make out the substance of it. Where was the nearest metro station?

Valya did not even try to answer. She merely stared up at the woman, meeting her eyes at last, in the profoundest hatred she had ever felt in her life. Her feelings toward the brusque attendant at the clinic, or toward Naritsky at the depth of her humiliation, toward other women who had stolen boyfriends or precious clothes, had never approached this intensity.

The foreign woman did not understand, of course. Or did not care. She simply gave up and wandered off in her plush confusion, wearing Valya's ambitions and dreams.

Valya's anger trailed after the woman, weakening with each of the foreigner's steps, finally disappearing with her. It simply took too much effort. Exhausted from the ferocity of her emotions, Valya slumped back emptily against the hard slats, her mind finally idle. Soon, she sensed, she would need to gather her strength and go on. But for one peaceful moment she sat vacantly.

A snap of wind crisped dead leaves around her ankles and calves, then a ragged handbill lofted against her skirt, caught, and fell back onto the pavement. Valya could just make out the faded headline:

5

Colonel George Taylor stood erectly in his Soviet greatcoat, waiting for a ride. He set his ruined face against the cold and thought of enemies old and new, of the crisis lurching toward them all, and of a nagging problem with spare parts. He reviewed a recent disagreement with one of his subordinates, a general's son who had been pressed upon him, and that somehow tricked him into thinking about the woman he had left behind, about whom he disagreed with himself. Unexpected, contradictory, and so very welcome, she had a way of coming to mind whenever he failed to concentrate hard enough on the business at hand.

He quickly mastered his thoughts and marched them on. A part of him continued to suspect that the woman was plain bad medicine, and he had far more important problems with which to grapple. The Soviet forces were taking a godawful beating. And his own options were running out.

He whistled as he stood in the cold, without really being aware of his action. "Garry Owen," the old Irish reel that another cavalryman had taken for the U.S. Army, many years before. Taylor had begun the whistling business as part of the carefully constructed persona he had employed in Mexico, but afterward the habit proved impossible to unlearn completely. It settled into a sometime quirk, another sort of scar to be worn through the years, something you tended to forget until a stranger's reaction called your attention back to it.

It was very cold. The autumn snows had not yet come, but the industrial wilderness in which the regiment under Taylor's command lay hidden had the sharp feel of winter, of cold rusting iron. It struck Taylor as the sort of place that could never hold any real warmth, although Merry Meredith insisted that this part of Western Siberia could be miserably hot in the summer. The site was a museum of inadequacy, with tens of square miles of derelict means: work halls with buckling roofs, broken gantries and skeletal cranes, crumbling smokestacks, and mazes of long-empty pipes. Inside the metal shells lay useless antique machines, numbering in the tens of thousands. The sheer vastness of the abandoned site was unsettling. But it was a perfect place to assemble a military force in secrecy.

Still, it was no place a man would choose to be of his own free will. The site was a graveyard, leaking old poisons. It offered no evidence of life beyond a few withered fringes of grass, brown and futile in the decaying afternoon light. The regimental surgeon and the medics were going to great lengths to create sterile islands, to monitor toxin levels, to hold death at arm's length until the regiment was committed to battle. And Taylor let them go, commending their efforts, even as he suspected that the prophylactic measures were no more determinate than incantations or crosses painted on doors. The Soviets had poisoned this landscape, just as they had poisoned their country. This was the land of the dead. The cold acid-sharp air was haunted by death. The catacombs of plants and warehouses in which his war machines lay waiting felt infectious. Not only with the chemical waste of generations, but with a sickness of spirit. The troops either whispered or spoke too loudly in the course of their duties. Of all the grim places his career had taken him, only a few had made Taylor so anxious to leave. Above all, the broken industrial complex had a feel of enmity, of resentment. Of jealousy toward the living.

Taylor laughed, startling the officers gathered loosely around him. He was thinking that, after all, this landscape and he bore a certain resemblance to each other.

"You're in a good mood, sir," Major Martinez said, baffled. His voice wavered in the cold.

Taylor turned his jigsaw-puzzle face toward the supply officer, cutting a smile up into his cheeks. "Come on, Manny. The Russians are late, there's a nightmare of a war going on, we're stuck here in this… this Soviet Disneyland, and we're all trying to pretend we're not freezing our butts off. Why shouldn't I be in a good mood?"

Even as he finished speaking, the constructed smile collapsed. He was in the worst of spirits, worried about his mission and his men, at a point beyond shouting. But he knew enough about the devils in each of the officers who relied upon him in this bad hour to want to be strong for them, even if he could not always be strong for himself.

"Well, it certainly isn't Texas," Martinez answered, with an exaggerated shiver of his shoulders.

"Or Mexico," Merry Meredith offered. A coffee-skinned man so handsome that most men underestimated his ferocity. Toughest intelligence officer Taylor had ever met. Loyal to the end. And, no doubt, missing his bright, redheaded wife and his children.

"Or Los Angeles," Martinez shot back. They were teasing each other with the most wretched military memories they could bring to bear.

"Or Zaire," Lieutenant Colonel Heifetz said suddenly, with an awkward, well-intentioned smile. "Lucky Dave" Heifetz found it terribly difficult to deal with his fellow officers on anything but a professional level, and he had a reputation as the greatest of stoics, the man without emotion. But Taylor recognized the intent of the clumsy reference, the overwrought grin. Heifetz, too, felt the need to draw a little closer in the dying afternoon.

Taylor never spoke about Zaire. It was a rule that everyone tacitly recognized. Except Lucky Dave, whose social skills had begun to wither years before, in another country.

Taylor nodded to his hapless subordinate. Even now, after so long a time, it was the best he could do.

But Heifetz did not understand. He blundered on. His

Israeli accent grew more pronounced when he was ill at ease, and it was unusually heavy now.

"Yes, I think so," Heifetz said. "I believe that Zaire must have been the worst of climates. A very bad place." Taylor shrugged, not quite meeting any man's eyes. "Up on the big river," he said. "It's a hard place up on the river. But the grasslands weren't so bad."

"Where the hell are the Russians?" Merry Meredith said quickly. Meredith had been with Taylor longer than any of them.

"I can't believe they're jerking us around like this," Manny Martinez said. Martinez had made a life's work out of leaving San Antonio behind. Yet his body still wanted the southern sun.

"I don't think they're jerking us around, Manny," Taylor said. "Something's wrong. You can feel it."

"Everything's wrong," Meredith said. He was the regimental S-2, the intelligence officer, responsible, according to the time-honored division of labor, for enemy, weather, and terrain. "The Soviet front's coming apart. It's gotten to the point where I don't know which problem area to look at first." He laughed slightly, bitterly. "Hell, I think one of the reasons I'm standing out here with you guys is that I just can't take it back in the bubble anymore. The combat information's just pouring in. And all of the news is bad."

Taylor glanced off into the vacant afternoon. Still no sign of the Russians. It was especially troubling, since, up until now, they had been careful to live up to every support commitment, despite the overwhelming problems they themselves faced.

"Why don't you all go in and have a cup of coffee," Taylor said. "Go ahead. I need a little time to think. Merry, you can get us a threat update."

Taylor knew that they all wanted to go back inside the vast work hall where the regimental headquarters had been established. It was not much warmer inside, but the difference was enough that your mind did not dwell constantly on the cold. Still, none of them moved. Nobody wanted to seem disloyal to the old man.

"Goddamnit, fellas," Taylor said, "if I tell you to go back inside, you go back inside. Do you understand me?" Heifetz moved crisply for the battered tin door set into the huge double gates of the work hall. Heifetz always obeyed promptly, with no outward sign of approval or disapproval. Of them all, Taylor knew, Heifetz had the least interest in creature comforts. He would have moved as sharply had Taylor ordered him to march into a freezing swamp.

Martinez dropped his eyes, then went off at a lope, trailing a mixture of reluctance and childlike relief. Merry Meredith was the last to go.

"Bring you out a cup of coffee, sir?" Meredith asked. "No. Thanks. I just want to admire the beauty of the Soviet landscape."

Meredith lingered, feet almost moving. "You have to feel sorry for them." Between their shared duty in Los Angeles and Mexico, Meredith had spent several years in a military educational program that taught officers a foreign language and thoroughly immersed them in the whys and wherefores of the country where that language was spoken. Meredith's language had been Russian, and Taylor knew the solidly middle-class black American had fallen a little in love with the object of his study.

"I suppose," Taylor said.

"I mean, look at this. As far as the eye can see. And it's worthless. Dead. The whole damned country's like this. Thirty years ago, this was still one of the most productive industrial complexes in the Soviet Union."

"You said that. In the briefing."

"I know," Meredith agreed. "Maybe I'm just trying to convince myself that it's true."

Taylor turned slightly away from the younger man. "Could have been us, Merry. Almost was. Oh, I know you're a sucker for Russian culture and all that. But, where you see Anton Chekhov, I see Joseph Stalin." Taylor paused for a moment, his mind filling with dozens of other names enchanted with beauty or ruin. "Just remember. They did this to themselves. And now we're here to pull their irons out of the fire. If we can bring it off. If the M-l00s work as advertised. If some sonofabitch back in Washington doesn't lose his nerve at the last minute. Goddamnit, Merry. I haven't got time to feel sorry for them. I've got the only fully equipped heavy cavalry regiment in the United States Army — and possibly the only one we'll be able to afford to equip. And what's behind us, if we screw it up? A couple of tired-out armor outfits with gear that's thirty years old? God knows, the light infantry boys have their hands full down in Sao Paulo. And we'll have to garrison Mexico for another ten years." Taylor shook his head. "We're it, pal. And our butts are on the line because our little Soviet brothers spent a century turning what might have been the richest country on earth into a junkyard. And don't give me your speech about how they tried to reform. Too little, too late. They only stuck it halfway in. And they damn near bankrupted the Europeans in the process. You know the figures better than I do. All those big perestroika loans. Pissed away. And then, with what's-his-name gone, they couldn't even maintain the little bit of progress all those European investments had bought them." Taylor looked hard into Meredith's face, warning him against his own decency. "They've turned their country into one colossal cesspool, and we're here to dig them out with a teaspoon. And we'll do it, by God. If it's remotely possible. But don't ask me to love them."

Taylor stared out across the ruined industrial park. It seemed to go on forever. Black. Abandoned. He knew why he was here. He understood politics, economics, strategy. He even wanted to be here. Yet, the rational, dutiful officer in him suspected that it was all tied in with irrevocable folly.

"Go get yourself a cup of coffee, Merry," Taylor said.

"Sure you don't want a cup, sir?"

Taylor shook his head. "Just makes me piss."

The major turned to go, historically and ethnically all wrong in the gray Soviet greatcoat each officer wore as part of the deception plan. Then he hesitated, not yet reconciled.

"It's just," Meredith said, "that when I look at all this… I can't help seeing it in terms of all the dreams gone bad. Some of them really believed. In the possibility of a heaven on earth, in a planned utopia. In a better world. Back at the beginning, I think, there were real believers… and it all went so damned wrong."

Taylor shrugged.

"Could have been us," he repeated.

It was important, Taylor told himself, to remain objective. To avoid letting your emotions interfere in the least with your judgment. But it was very hard. He always hastened through the intelligence reports Meredith put in front of him, anxious to find any reference to the Japanese. He knew that the odds were very good that not one of the men under his command would come into contact with a single Japanese soldier during the entire campaign. The Japanese were too good at insulating themselves. Once, they had hidden behind the South Africans. This time they had concealed themselves behind the alliance that had slowly congealed against the continued Russian domination of the Soviet empire: ethnic-Asian Soviet rebels, Iranians, and Arab Islamic fundamentalists. No Japanese officer ever gave a direct command. Yet, the equipment was Japanese, the "contract advisers" who enabled the alliance to make military sense of itself, the trainers and repair personnel were all Japanese, and the ultimate goal was Japanese, as well. Dominance. Dominion. Domination. You could split hairs, play with words like a diplomat's clerk. But it all came down to the issue of the disposition of the world's richest supply of minerals, in a very hungry age.

He and his men had been sent to shore up a Soviet Union grown as frail as a diseased old man. To deny the Japanese yet another magnificent prize. But Taylor knew in his heart that he himself was sick. Cancered with the desire to strike back at the Japanese. To cause them a level of suffering and humiliation that paid back old debts with interest. He feared the day, the moment, when Merry Meredith would come to him with a report that a Japanese control site had been located in the regiment's area of operations. He was not sure he would be able to make a rational judgment, to prioritize his targets intelligently. He was afraid that he would turn out to be a mad animal, who merely walked like a man.

Taylor sought to be a good man. But even in this dead Siberian landscape of rusted metals he was still a young troop commander, flying up through the brief coolness of the African morning, cocksure and unwitting, on his way to see his command destroyed and his country humiliated. Even with his beginning gray hairs, his old scars, and his tiring body, he was still a boyish captain sailing the clear blue sky above those grasslands, waiting for the shock of the Japanese gunships. And he feared that Africa had ruined his soul as surely as it had ruined his skin. He wanted to be a good man. But he worried that he had become a killer in his heart, and a racist. A warrior to whom his opponents were no longer fully human. A smart, quick, cultured animal.

The first time his unit killed a Japanese military adviser in Mexico, Taylor had felt a level of exhilaration and self-righteousness that he knew could not be squared with any legitimate concept of human decency. And his satisfaction had not diminished with the further kills his unit chalked up. As a leader, his behavior, in word and deed, had always been impeccable. Yet, he wondered if he had not managed somehow to telegraph to his men that certain types of prisoners were not welcome. It was impossible to know, as difficult to master the past as it was to foretell the future.

His face worked into a tight-lipped smile he could not have explained to any man. Perhaps, he thought, I really am a devil.

Suddenly the roof of a nearby work hall exploded, shattering into the sky. But it was only a flock of birds lifting off. They briefly broke apart, then gathered into a black cloud and turned south. Toward the war.

Taylor kept his eyes on the bright green ribbon of light that marked the last twilight in the west. It was going to be very cold. He hoped the temperature would not affect the operation of his war machines. Every imaginable precaution had been taken. But the magnificent new killing machines had never before gone into battle, and there were many doubts. The M-l00s were so complex that there was a seemingly infinite number of potential problems.

Behind us, nothing, Taylor reminded himself.

He heard the tinny door of the work hall open just beyond his field of vision, and he made an innocent game out of guessing which of his officers it might be. Possibly Meredith with a threat update. But he bet on Lucky Dave. He knew that Heifetz was going crazy with all the waiting. A dispossessed little man from the new diaspora, haunted with the soul of a Prussian staff officer. Above all, Heifetz could not bear the disorder he found in the Soviet Union. Capable of something very close to perfection in his own work, Lucky Dave found it very difficult to tolerate anything less in others.

"Colonel Taylor, sir?"

It was Heifetz.

"We finally reached the Russians. They say they're on their way."

Taylor nodded. Accepting the news.

"We cannot afford such a loss of time," Heifetz went on. "It is hardly responsible. It's only a matter of time before the enemy finds us. We have been too lucky.

Lucky David Heifetz. Lucky, lucky Dave. His family dead, his homeland destroyed. Lucky David Heifetz, wearing a foreign uniform because he had nowhere else to go, because soldiering was all that was left to him.

David Heifetz, who would never have betrayed this bit of worry, of uncertainty, to anyone else in the regiment. Heifetz, who allowed himself no friends.

Taylor turned, making a slight opening in his world, as if lifting the flap of a tent. Heifetz carried out the functions of both executive officer and S-3 operations officer of the regiment, since the Romeo tables of organization and equipment had combined the two positions in a desperate attempt to save a few more spaces. It was too much to ask of any man, but Heifetz did as well as any human being might under such a burden. It told on him, though, and he looked years older than his actual age.

Of course, there were other causes for the man s worn look. Taylor pictured the young tank commander in a dusty pause on the road to Damascus, goggles lifted up onto the fore of his helmet, a handsome young Israeli, compensating with vitality for the physical stature he lacked. Taylor imagined him frozen in the moment before the word came down the radio net that Tel Aviv had been the target of multiple nuclear strikes. Tel Aviv, where a young officer's wife and child should have been safe.

It was all a long time ago now. Before the worldwide nuclear ban. The last Mideast war, launched by a fanatic coalition who saw their chance, with the United States beaten in Africa and seemingly helpless. It was a madman's war, begun by an alliance ultimately willing to trade Damascus for Tel Aviv in a war of extermination. Taylor had been so ill during the brief conflict that he had viewed the events at a passionless remove, and he had not recuperated sufficiently to take part in the evacuation of the surviving Israelis from a land poisoned by nuclear and chemical weapons.

Taylor curled one side of his mouth up into the jigsaw puzzle of his face. "Our Russian friends give any reason for their tardiness, David?"

The Israeli shook his head adamantly. "Nothing. A promise to explain. I spoke to Kozlov's alter ego — you know, the one who gestures all the time. Afraid to tell me anything. You know how they are. He claims that Kozlov will explain everything in person." Heifetz paused, considering. "All of them are frantic about something. I don't like it."

"Neither do I," Taylor said. "We haven't got a hell of a lot of margin on this one." He cocked an eyebrow. "Merry have anything new?"

"Just more of the same. From bad to worse. The question is which of their many crises the Soviets find so threatening at the moment. And why. At times, I find their logic difficult."

"You're thinking in purely military terms," Taylor said. "But for them… well, it's their country. It's the emotional triggers we've got to watch out for now."

Heifetz backed off slightly, as if Taylor had seriously admonished him. For a man who showed the world such a hard, uncompromising mask, Lucky Dave could be remarkably vulnerable. Of course, Taylor thought, out of all of us he's the one who really understands threatened homelands and emotional triggers. He's just fighting it.

"I was thinking, David," Taylor said. "You're a long way from home."

"Which home?" Heifetz asked, a bit of the twilight chill flavoring his voice.

"Israel, I suppose. Anyway, that s what I meant.

"I carry Israel with me. But the Army is my home." Yes, Taylor thought. If not this army, then another. The eternal soldier.

"Anything new down in the squadrons? Taylor asked, changing the subject.

Heifetz relaxed at the impersonal turn in the conversation.

"They're simply young soldiers. Fine young soldiers. Ready to fight, even though they're not entirely certain against whom, or even where. No change in systems readiness rates."

"You think we're ready?" It was the sort of question that might have been merely bantering. But Taylor let it be serious.

Heifetz looked at him soberly through the near darkness. "Half of the support base hasn't arrived. Fifteen percent of our crews aren't even range qualified. We've got half a dozen birds down for maintenance, three of them serious…" Suddenly, Heifetz smiled. It was a surprising, generous, confident smile. A gift to Taylor. "But we can fight," Heifetz said. "God willing, we're ready to fight.

Taylor smiled too. "Yeah, Dave. That's just about how I figure it. Now I guess it's up to the goddamned Russians.

Taylor was not about to succumb to Meredith's affection for things Russian. But neither did he wish to be too hard on his new allies. He was looking for a rational, functional middle ground. And the Russians had been very good at some things. Even as the fabric of their world was ripping apart, they had done a magnificent job on the deception plan, covering the secret — and hurried — deployment of the big heavy-cavalry regiment, first on the ships supposedly loaded with grain, then by rail across European Russia the Volga, the Urals, and on into this industrial wasteland buried in a natural wasteland. And there had not been one single indication that the enemy had detected the operation. Even the fine Japanese strategic collection systems appeared to have been lulled to sleep. Meredith had joked that the Soviets were so good at deception because they had practiced self-deception for so long.

The work hall door opened again. This time the footsteps came almost at a run. It was Manny Martinez.

"They're on their way in, sir." He sounded almost out of breath. The cold was very hard on him. "Checkpoint Delta called in on the landline. I've got the sergeant major rounding up the staff and the liaison officers. Merry's going to hang on in the bubble for another minute or two. He's got something hot."

As the supply officer spoke, Taylor could begin to hear the vehicles. Now that the wait was almost over, he finally realized how cold it was. It would be a fine thing to get into one of the little range cars with the heater turned up. If nothing else, you could say that much for the Soviet vehicles: the heaters were kept in good repair.

Taylor had already gotten to know the Soviet range cars with unwelcome thoroughness. Given the volume of heavy equipment his regiment had needed to deploy in secret, it had been agreed with the Soviets that the U.S. forces would leave their light support vehicles behind, relying on Soviet trucks and range cars. It also made good sense in terms of operations security. And the Soviets had been very good about providing vehicles and drivers on request. But the system was cumbersome, with a built-in delay that took the accustomed crispness out of routine ops. The Soviets were reluctant to turn the vehicles over outright, however, pleading insupportable shortages.

Perhaps they were being honest. Every one of Merry's statistics indicated that the Soviets really were in a bad way. But Taylor also suspected it was their method of controlling the whereabouts of the Americans and of ensuring that the Americans did not prematurely compromise their own presence by joyriding around Western Siberia and Central Asia. Taylor had let it go, out of respect for the brilliance and efficiency with which the Soviets had designed and carried out the deception plan, and there had been no major problems. Until today.

He listened as the hum of the vehicles slowly increased in volume while they worked their way through the junkyard maze with their lights blacked out. The pitch dropped abruptly. That would be the halt at the inner perimeter, where young boys from Arkansas or Pennsylvania in uncomfortable Soviet uniforms would carefully check the identities of the genuine article. Taylor imagined his boys, accustomed to their comfortable cavalry combat uniforms, cursing the antique wool tunics and trousers of their old adversaries.

The pitch of the vehicles climbed again, and Taylor could distinctly hear the shifting of gears. He felt like an old Indian scout, at the job too long. It was too easy to gauge the speed, to judge the range. One of the vehicles in the little convoy needed a tune-up. They were riding light, coming in nearly empty.

A small task force of officers slowly gathered around Taylor. The men who made a plan fit, who worked for the men who made the plan go. Taylor suspected it was going to be a long night's work with the Russians. Even if the news they brought turned out to be miraculously good. The time for contemplation was over. Mars was in the heavens.

Merry Meredith came up beside him. Sir, he whispered, "it's bad. Jesus Christ, it's bad. They've lost control of it entirely."

Taylor hushed the younger man. I know, he said. The lead range car pulled up very close to the work hall, stopping just a few feet away from the group of American officers. Immediately a bundled figure jumped from the passenger's side and hastened toward the human shadows. Taylor recognized Colonel Viktor Kozlov by the silhouette of his permanently slumped shoulders. Kozlov was Taylor's intermediary with the Soviet front commander, General Ivanov.

Kozlov instinctively headed straight for Taylor. The Soviet had become something of a bad joke among the American officers, despite his obvious abilities. The man had spectacularly rotten teeth and breath as powerful as it was unforgettable. Taylor had already upbraided one of his staff captains for making fun of Kozlov. In a voice louder than customary, Taylor had lectured the embarrassed young officer on the Soviet's skills and contributions to the combined U.S.-Soviet effort. Now Taylor himself dreaded the Soviet officer's impending assault.

Kozlov threw a salute into the darkness, his gloved hand a night bird in flight. He came up very close to the object of his attention.

"Colonel Taylor, sir," the Soviet began, his voice infectiously distraught, "we have a great problem. The Kokchetav sector. A great problem. The enemy has broken through."

6

Major Babryshkin carefully fitted the last fresh filter into his protective mask, listening to the sounds of disaster. Chugging, overloaded civilian cars and trucks struggled to work their way northward without turning on their lights, while the mass of bundled refugees on foot trudged along, unwilling to keep to the side of the road. Apart from an occasional staccato of curses, the ragged parade rarely wasted energy on words. Black against the deep blue of the night, the mob shed sounds uniquely its own: a vast rustling and plodding, the grumble and wheeze of the overburdened vehicles, and the special silence of fear. Thousands behind thousands, the heavily dressed men, women, and children moved on booted feet, slapping gloved hands, shifting parcels, nudged along by the frustrated drivers of automobiles or trucks commandeered from an abandoned state enterprise. Now and again, a dark form simply collapsed by the roadside, a faint disturbance in the night, almost imperceptible. Others broke away to beg the soldiers for food. But the majority kept marching, driven by the memory of death witnessed, closely avoided, rumored. Startling in the darkness, a driven animal would suddenly bleat or bray, sensing the mortal fear of its owner. Then the big silence would return, the huge silence of the Kazakh steppes, an emptiness that drank in the sounds of dozens of battles, a hundred engagements. Only the sputtering horizon acknowledged the ceaseless combat. It was a bigness that trivialized death.

The sharp metallic sounds of the shovels biting into cold soil and the mechanical grunting of engineer equipment marked the positions of Babryshkin's command, deployed on both sides of the endless dirt road that served as a highway, occupying a long reverse-slope position on a decline so slight it was almost imperceptible even in the daylight. You made do.

There wasn't enough food. Babryshkin had been forced to order his men not to hand out any more of their rations to the refugees — the exodus of ethnic Russian and other non-Asian citizens of the Socialist Republic of Kazakhstan. The last precious issues of rations were fuel for the fight now, the same as petrol, as important as the dwindling stocks of ammunition. Without food, the men could not bear the sleeplessness of battle, the heavy duty of digging into the freezing steppes, the energy-robbing chill of the autumn nights. Babryshkin himself hated to get too near the column of his homeless countrymen. He shrank inside at the need to march by their pleas for a bit of food, which, when ignored or denied, so often drew forth insults about an "overfed" army, or, more painful still, about that army's failure.

There wasn't enough food. Nor was there enough medicine. Doctors sought to tend the wounded, injured, or sick by the side of the road, attempting to adapt modem knowledge and techniques to the physical conditions of earlier centuries. There were not enough combat systems or soldiers left, and there was insufficient ammunition for those who remained. The communications did not work. There was never enough time. And there were no answers.

The retreat had gone on for well over a thousand kilometers, punctuated by repeated attempts to dig in and halt the enemy and by successive failures. Combat was a nightmare, a hammering confusion in which each side's systems slammed against each other until the surviving Soviet forces were, inevitably, forced back yet again. Short, sharp exchanges, often a matter of minutes, highlighted days or weeks of nervous skirmishing and endless repositionings. Actual battles were characterized by their brevity and destructiveness. Six weeks before, Babryshkin had begun as a combined-arms battalion commander. Now he commanded the remnants of his brigade, which, except for attachments such as engineers and air defense troops, now fielded a combat force smaller than the battalion Babryshkin had initially led into combat. Staff officers crewed tanks, and cooks found themselves behind machine guns. No one had even formally ordered Babryshkin to assume command of the crippled unit. He had simply been the senior combat-arms officer left alive.

He struggled to maintain control of his force, to continue to deliver some resistance to the enemy, however feeble, to delay the end, to cover the human rivers meandering northward, to cling to this soil made Russian by the armies of the czars so many centuries before.

The worst of it was the chemical attacks. Time and again, the enemy delivered massive chemical weapons strikes against the Soviets, forcing the soldiers to live in their suffocating protective suits and the masks that shriveled then lacerated the skin of the face and neck. No doubt, another chemical attack would hit them soon. There was never any warning now — the entire system seemed to have broken down — and he had not received any messages from corps for days, save one stray broadcast reminding all officers that losses had to be documented on the proper forms.

Babryshkin was glad for this bit of fresh night air, this slight respite between batterings and sudden chemical hells. He had even taken a few moments to scribble a note to Valya, although he had no idea when he might be able to mail it, or if the mails still functioned. According to the last information he had, there had been no attacks on population centers deep in the Russian heartland. The war, brutal though it was, was oddly mannered, localized in the Central Asian republics, the Caucasian republics, and the Kuban. That meant that Valya was safe.

Still, it was far too easy to picture her trudging along in this mass, on legs not made for such labor. He had made his peace with his mental image of Valya now. He knew she had been unfaithful to him at least once in the past. She was foolish. And selfish. But he was a man, mature, perhaps matured beyond what was truly desirable now, and he was responsible for her. Lovely, unreliable Valya, his wife. In the wake of combat action after combat action, he had grown to appreciate his happiness, and it seemed to him that his life would be a very fine thing if only he might live to get on with it.

The cold air felt wonderful on his cut, chapped face, just cold enough to deaden the discomfort. He had allowed his men to strip off their protective suits to facilitate the process of digging positions. He knew it was unwise in a sense, since chemical rounds or bombs might descend upon them at any moment. But he knew they needed a rest, a chance to feel the living air again. Later, he would order them back into the old-fashioned rubberized suits. But it was increasingly a formality. Living and fighting in the costumes had pricked and tom them until they offered dozens of entry points to chemical agents. And there were no replacements.

Still, he reasoned, his men were far better off than the civilians. Chemical strikes against the unprotected refugee columns produced up to one hundred percent casualties. And there was nothing to be done.

He remembered the dead in Atbasar, thousands of blistered corpses in postures of torment, far worse than his teenaged memories of the plague years in Gorky, when the river bobbed with dead. Those were hard years, for hard men. But the combination of old-fashioned blood and blister agents, followed by virtually redundant nerve-agent strikes, had created scenes he knew he would carry with him forever.

It was, after all, a racial war. The unthinkable had come to pass. Certainly, few Soviet citizens of his generation— if any — had taken seriously the threadbare ramblings about international and interracial solidarity to which the schools still subjected their charges. But neither had anyone quite expected the peoples of the Soviet Union to explode with such vast and consequential hatred.

Babryshkin wondered which of his many enemies he would fight next. In one engagement or another, as the shrinking brigade had been shunted between sectors, his men had encountered the Iranians, the armored forces of the Arab Islamic Legion, and the rebels, the latter's equipment and uniforms largely mirroring those of Babryshkin's force. He wondered if any of the officers opposing him were men with whom he had attended the combined tank school: Kazakhs, Uzbeks, Turkmen, Tadzhiks, Kirgiz. There had always been a shortage of officer cadets from the central Asian republics, and it told against the rebels now. Even after the military reforms that had allowed recruits from each fringe republic to serve in ethnically uniform units close to home, ethnic Russian or Ukrainian or other European Soviet officers had been required to fill out the command and staff positions. Most of them had been murdered or imprisoned by the mutineers at the start of the revolt, and consequently the rebel units suffered from a pronounced lack of qualified officers. Babryshkin had cut up rebel detachments again and again — only to suffer in turn when the invulnerable Japanese-built gunships returned, or when the Iranians or Islamic Legion forces bullied through with their Japanese-built combat vehicles, whose quality seemed to guarantee success no matter how inept the plan or its execution. The electronics brought to bear by the enemy prevented Babryshkin from communicating and fooled his target-acquisition systems, making a joke even of the Soviet Army's latest acquire-and-fire automatic tank fire control system. Soviet missiles and main gun rounds were drawn astray. And even when Babryshkin's men managed to land their fires dead-on, the enemy's prime fighting systems often seemed to be invulnerable.

He worried that his men would not be able to bear up much longer, that a point would come when the dwindling unit would simply dissolve. But, somehow, the men hung on. Probably, he realized, they felt many of the same emotions he himself felt. Desperation, a battered patriotism, and, above all, a furious hatred that could grow very cold without losing the least of its spiritual intensity. Babryshkin had never imagined himself as the sort of man who would develop a taste for killing, who would ache not only to kill his enemies but to kill them as painfully, as miserably as possible. Yet, he had unquestionably become such a man. The joy he felt when he saw an enemy vehicle explode was certainly different from, but matched in intensity, his best, early nights with Valya. After a time, after he had witnessed enough atrocities, the act of killing attained a sort of purity that would have been unimaginable to the man he once had been.

Babryshkin's brigade had been one of the ethnic Slav organizations garrisoned in Kazakhstan beside local "brother" units, each representing a distinct part of the regional population. Now the blood Russians made up these long columns of refugees, fleeing from the soil that had been their home for generations, that they had struggled to plough and make prosperous, fleeing from the wrath of people they had long imagined or pretended were their brothers in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

Certainly, there had been problems before — the old enmity between the Armenians and Azerbaijanis, between dozens of other ethnic groups whose fates had brought them to the same watering trough. But the Soviet Union seemed to have worked beyond the time of troubles that followed the end of the Gorbachev period, the phases of reaction, counter-reaction, and uneasy compromise. A period of somnolence, of dreary but thankfully unmenacing mediocrity seemed to have settled back down upon tundra and desert, steppe and marshland. The clumsy, ultimately unsuccessful repressions, the anarchic impulses, the unsatisfied needs, both spiritual and rawly physical, seemed to drowse off under the cobbled-together solution of dramatically increased federalism, with far more authority devolved upon the individual republics. Racial tensions sputtered now and again, but always settled back down into the prevailing lethargy.

Marx had been right, though. Economics were fundamental. And economics had ultimately exacerbated the smoldering ethnic tensions. As the Soviet Union had struggled to find herself, first under Gorbachev, then under the troika of decayed conservative nonentities who attempted to rule after the blunt end of the Gorbachevshina, the rest of the world rushed by in an explosive series of technological revolutions. While in the Soviet Union, nothing ever seemed to quite work, no approach appeared to solve the ever-worsening problem of relative backwardness. With tremendous pain and effort, the Soviet Union took a step forward. The West took three or four. And Japan took five. Then the great Japanese-Islamic Axis had surfaced in the wake of American retrenchment and European neutrality. The combination of Japanese technology with Islamic natural resources and Islam's population base sparked a dynamism that inevitably attracted the impoverished Asian and traditionally Islamic populations within the Central Asian and Azerbaijani republics of the USSR. The total inability of the state medical system and the central government in general to cope with the stresses of the plague years, and the resultant local famines, lit the fuse. In retrospect, it only seemed remarkable to Babryshkin that the bomb had taken such a long time to explode.

Now, as so often throughout history, the Russian people and their ethnic brethren stood alone against the Asian onslaught. Even the East Europeans, who had long since slipped their tether, looked on with a sense of amusement, almost a black joy, as the mighty Russians got their comeuppance. Thankfully, China slept. The Chinese were lost in another of their long cycles of introspection, occasionally raising an eyelid to check on the Japanese, then closing it again, content that their carefully delineated sphere of influence had not been annoyed. The developing — or hopelessly underdeveloped — world supported the right of the Central Asian republics to complete independence, lashing out at a bankrupt Soviet Union that had sent them neither goods nor weapons for a generation. The Russians stood alone, again, with a fatalistic sense of history repeating itself. Mongols, Tartars, Turks, and now these steel horsemen out of the Asian darkness. Even the possibility of a brisk nuclear response, such as the one that had saved the Americans in Africa, had been stolen away by a world too ready to take the Soviet Union at its word in the aftermath of the American blow against Pretoria and the suicidal exchanges in the Middle East that had taken only three days to gut a circle of nations. The Soviets had bellowed loudly, glad for one last chance to strut upon the world stage, insisting on complete nuclear disarmament. And, indeed, the nuclear arsenals had finally, foolishly been dismantled. Babryshkin's handful of tanks and infantry fighting vehicles were all that remained.

"Comrade Commander?" Two helmeted figures approached Babryshkin in the starlit darkness. He recognized Major Gurevich, the brigade's deputy commander for political affairs, by his voice. The position had been abolished back in the nineties, only to be revived again in the conservative retrenchment, with its archaic language and grim nostalgia. Babryshkin was not certain exactly what the political officer still believed in at this point, but he knew that it was not hard work. Gurevich's fitful attempts at making a contribution were far more self-important than helpful, but thankfully they did not take long to sputter out. None of the men would listen to the political officer anymore, and when Gurevich had complained to Babryshkin, the latter had brushed him off with the observation that the men were too busy for lectures and, besides, what was left to say? The men were fighting. There were no deserters. What did Gurevich expect? The political officer had answered that it was not enough to take the correct action, if it was taken for the wrong reasons. The men had to be made to see the theoretical imperative, the political propriety of their actions. But Gurevich had not pressed the issue further, and Babryshkin suspected that the man was simply lost, trying to find some point to his continued service with the unit, to his continued existence. With the collapse of the empire, Gurevich's world had begun to crumble, as well.

"Comrade Commander," the political officer said now, enunciating the antique title in his eternally officious voice, "I've brought the chief of signals. We're picking up a broadcast from headquarters."

Babryshkin turned directly to Lazarsky. He had not recognized the communications officer in the darkness, away from his bank of radios.

"What do they say? What's happening? I thought the secure nets were all being jammed off the air?"

"Comrade Commander," Lazarsky said, "the message is coming in code groups over the unencrypted net. I believe they're broadcasting from an airborne platform. They're repeating it over and over."

Babryshkin stared at the two silhouettes before him. "Well, for God's sake, what does it say?"

"We're to withdraw to the north," Gurevich cut in. "Immediately. It's a blanket message for all units and subunits that have been out of contact with their superior staffs. All units are to withdraw to a line just south of Petropavlovsk."

Babryshkin was stunned. That couldn't be right. "My God, that's over a hundred kilometers from here. At least." He shifted his eyes from one shadow to the other. "There must be some mistake."

"I checked the code groups myself," Gurevich said. Lazarsky shrugged. "We've been out of contact. The war's been moving on without us."

The only thing Babryshkin could detect in the signal officer's voice was weariness, resignation. But he suspected that Gurevich, despite all of his political demagoguery, did not mind resuming the withdrawal in the least. Instinctively, Babryshkin glanced back at the human river flowing along the road.

The order was impossible. It would leave countless thousands of refugees undefended. In any case, the road was so completely blocked up that the brigade would have to move across country, at a creeping pace. It was a journey beyond the capability of much of the unit's battered equipment. Besides, he was not even certain all of the vehicles had sufficient fuel to cover the distance.

Babryshkin could not believe that anyone who really understood the situation would issue such an order.

"Can we reach headquarters?" Babryshkin demanded. "Can we talk back to whoever's broadcasting?"

Gurevich cut off the commo officer's response, saying, "We can only receive — and that's faint. As soon as we try to call anyone, we're jammed off the air. If we continue with these vain attempts, we risk revealing our position. Such actions are irresponsible. And an order is an order."

"But, damnit," Babryshkin said, raising his voice, waving his right hand toward the road, "what about them?"

"Orders…" Gurevich stuttered.

Babryshkin's anger continued to rise. It was a sharp, general anger, aimed not only at the fool who had issued such an order but at all of his comrades and countrymen who had brought things to such a pass.

"How do we know it isn't a ruse?" he said, his voice changing pitch with excitement, with bitter vigor. "If we can't call back to verify the order, how do we know it isn't a trick, some sort of imitative deception? It could be the enemy ordering us to pull back. How the hell do we know?"

"The code groups…" the political officer said, "… it was all in code."

"But, for God's sake, we haven't received new code books since… since when? Since we pulled out of Tselinograd. You think the bastards haven't captured any code books?"

"It's a possibility," Lazarsky said matter-of-factly. The debate was of no deep interest to him. His was a world of radios, of antennae and cables, of microwaves and relays.

Gurevich would not respond directly to the question. Instead, he simply said, "The situation… is clearly irregular. But we are not in a position to question authority."

Babryshkin felt the weight of command bearing down upon him. It was important, he knew, to think clearly, to avoid emotionalizing. But he did not want to believe that the Soviet forces had been thrown back all the way to Petropavlovsk, the last major city on the northern edge of Kazakhstan, bordering on Western Siberia — and astride the best east-west lines of communication. The very thought was an admission of defeat, and despite the experience of battlefield failures one after the other, Babryshkin was not ready to admit that he had been beaten. Down in his depths, he believed that the Soviet forces would somehow pull off a miracle, first stemming the enemy advance, then beginning to reverse it. He knew that such imaginings had far more to do with emotion than with any reason or logic. But, just as there were certain thoughts he refused to think about Valya, he could not accept any situation in which these grumbling, spiteful, terribly frightened refugees would simply be abandoned.

"Maxim Antonovich," Babryshkin said to the chief of signals, "try to raise headquarters. Just try it one more time." Then his voice subtly altered its target, not really a conscious change, speaking now to the political officer. "I can't just leave them. We can't just turn our backs and go. And this is a good position. We can fight from here."

Sensing a weakness in Babryshkin's voice, Gurevich attacked. "We need to bear in mind the larger picture. Surely higher headquarters has a plan. We cannot be blinded by local conditions. This is all part of a greater whole. After all, winning the war is ultimately more important than any number of… of…"

"Damnit, what do you think this wars about?" Babryshkin demanded. Again, he gestured toward the miserable parade staggering northward. "It's about them, for God's sake."

But, even as he spoke, he knew he was lying to himself. Guilty of subjectivism, emotionalism. He knew that the war was about greater things: minerals, gas, oil. The riches of Central Asia. And the far greater wealth of Western Siberia beyond.

"Comrade Commander," Gurevich said, slipping into the lecturing tone with which he was so comfortable, "the war… is about the integrity of the Soviet Union. About people, surely. But the state as a collective is greater than individual fates. No one wants to sacrifice a single precious life. But we must bear in mind the greater aim."

You bastard, Babryshkin thought. Walk over and look at them. Let them beg you for a few crackers. Then listen to them curse you. But they're not really cursing you, or me. They're cursing what we represent. The failure at the end of all the promises, at the end of all their sacrifices. Go, damn you. Join that parade for a few minutes.

"I am the commander," Babryshkin said, regaining control of his voice. "The decision rests with me. And I do not accept the validity of the message. I believe it to be an enemy ruse. We will stay in these positions and fight, until we receive a message that can be verified directing us to do otherwise. Or until the position becomes untenable or impractical. Or until I decide it's time to move. Let the decision be on my shoulders."

"Comrade Commander, you're tired. You're not thinking like a true Communist."

Babryshkin almost laughed out loud in his exasperation and weariness. Valya would have said the same thing as Gurevich, he knew. Only she would have put it into different words: You fool, you're throwing away your chances, our chances. You've got to learn to give them what they want.

Valya. He wondered what she was doing at that instant. In Moscow.

"No," Babryshkin said, digging himself in deeper, relishing it, "Comrade Major Political Officer Gurevich, the problem is that I am thinking like a true Communist. You see, the problem is that it's easy to speak like a Communist, and for a hundred years we've all spoken like good Communists. The problem… is with the way we've acted" Babryshkin found himself foolishly waving his protective mask, posturing on the steel soapbox of a tank fender. He caught a glimpse of the absurdity of it all. This was no time for debate. Anyway, Communism meant nothing, and had meant nothing for a generation. It was an empty form, like the rituals of the Byzantine court. At the end of the Gorbachev period, the vocabulary had been revived, to try to fill the frightening emptiness. But the words had no living content.

Babryshkin carefully stuffed the mask into its carrier. "You may try to reach higher headquarters, if you wish, Fyodor Semyonich. But I will not give the order to move until I receive a confirmation."

Suddenly, the southern horizon lit up with flashes far closer than either of them expected. The sound of battle was slow to follow across the steppes, but Babryshkin realized that the enemy had almost reached his outpost line. Perhaps the outposts were already engaged. Or the enemy had caught up with the tail of the refugee column.

The enemy's presence was almost a relief to Babryshkin. After all the waiting. And the false dilemmas of words. Now there was only one thing left to do: fight.

Even before the booming and pocking noises reached the refugees, the display of light quickened the column. Women screamed. A vehicle accelerated, and Babryshkin realized that a driver was attempting to plow right through the mass.

Babryshkin had learned the temper of the crowds over the weeks. Far from reaching safety, the panicked driver would be dragged from his vehicle and beaten to death.

"Let's go," Babryshkin shouted. "Everyone in position." He raced back to the command tank, a battered T-94 All of the combat vehicles had been dug into the steppe at right angles to the road. Only their weapons showed above the shorn earth. Babryshkin nearly stumbled as he leapt from the collar of soil onto the deck of his vehicle, and he reached out to steady himself on the dark line of the main gun. A moment later he sat, knees skinned, down in the hull. The basic T-94 design, introduced more than two decades earlier, consisted of a tank hull traditional in appearance, but instead of an old-fashioned turret there was merely an elevated gun mount. The tank commander, gunner, and driver all sat in a compartment in the forward hull, scanning through optics and sensors packed into the gun mount. The design allowed for a much smaller target signature, especially in hull defilade, but tank commanders always missed the visual command of the situation their perches up in the old-fashioned turrets had allowed. The situation was especially difficult now since Babryshkin's electro-optics only worked erratically, and Babryshkin was sometimes forced to rely on an old-fashioned periscope. He had meant to swap vehicles, but the work required to remount the command communications sets into a standard tank involved extensive rewiring, and Babryshkin had always found more pressing matters to which to attend. Now he regretted his omission.

Even the acquire-and-fire system, which identified a target and automatically attacked it if the correct parameters were met, had broken down on the command tank. Babryshkin and his gunner were forced to identify targets and fire on them the way tankers had done it more than a generation before. Only a few of the complex acquire-and-fire systems still functioned correctly in the brigade, and Babryshkin had ordered that they be reprogrammed to attack the robot reconnaissance vehicles that always preceded the attacks of the best-equipped enemy forces, such as the Iranians or the Arab Legion. The Japanese-built robotic scouts could steer themselves across the terrain, extracting themselves from all but the worst terrain problems into which they might blunder and providing the enemy with a view of his opponent's positions that allowed him to direct his fires with deadly precision. The recon robotics had to be destroyed, even when it meant ignoring the enemy's actual combat vehicles. Babryshkin felt as though he were waging war with broken toys against technological giants.

"All stations," Babryshkin called into the radio mike, wrenching the set up to full power to cut through any local interference, "all stations, this is Volga. Anticipate chemical strike," he said, hoping he was wrong, that they would be spared that horror this time at least. He knew how the road teeming with refugees would look after the engagement if chemicals came into play. Stray rounds did enough damage. "Amur," he continued, "scan for the robot scouts. Lena, all acquire-and-fire systems that remain operational will fight on auto. All other stations, you have the authority to engage as targets are identified. Watch for Dnepr coming in. Don't shoot him up. Dnepr, can you hear me?" he called to the reconnaissance detachment on the outpost line. "What's out there?"

Babryshkin waited. The airwaves hissed and scratched. He did not know very much about the communications equipment in foreign armies, but he doubted that they were still using such old-fashioned radios. Except for the similarly equipped rebel forces, he never heard inadvertent enemy transmissions on his net. The confused, stray voices that occasionally appeared in his headset were almost invariably Russian.

"Volga, this is Dnepr," Senior Lieutenant Shabrin reported in. He was the only reconnaissance officer still alive in the brigade. "Looks like a rebel outfit. No Japanese equipment. No robotics. A mix of T-92s and 94s. Old BMP-5s. Possible forward detachment structure, feeling their way. The firing isn't directed at me. They're shooting up the vehicles in the refugee column."

Shabrin's voice betrayed more than the lieutenant might have hoped. Babryshkin could feel the boy struggling to control his emotions, to do his job as a recon officer. But the unmistakable tension in the voice conjured up images of the rebel forces savaging the helpless civilians.

Fury rose from under Babryshkin's weariness. Rebels. Men who still wore the same cut of uniform as his own, who had sworn the same oath. Who now believed that ethnic differences were sufficient reason to butcher the defenseless.

Babryshkin wanted to move forward, to attack the attackers. But he knew it would be a foolish move. He had no assets to squander on gallantry. In a running fight his men would divert themselves trying not to harm the refugees — while the rebels could devote their full attention to destroying Babryshkin's handful of vehicles. No, the correct action was to wait in the position his men had so laboriously prepared, to block out the suffering, to sacrifice some for the good of the many — was Gurevich right after all? — and to allow the enemy to close the last kilometers, hopefully without detecting his force, coming on until they became visible to the target acquisition systems, until they were silhouetted on the low rolling steppe. Be patient, Babryshkin told himself. Don't think too much.

"Volga, this is Dnepr. Looks like a reinforced battalion. Hard to tell for sure. I'm getting some obscuration from the column, and they're deploying on an oblique. Listen— I don't think they're just taking random shots as they roll along. They seem to be going after the refugees with a purpose. It's hard to see, but I think there are some infantry vehicles in among them already."

Again, Babryshkin could feel the terrible strain in the tired voice from the outpost line. But he could not indulge Shabrin, any more than he could indulge himself.

"Keep your transmissions brief, Dnepr," Babryshkin radioed. "Just send factual data. Out."

He stared into his optics. The horizon dazzled with golden explosions and streams of light. He knew the central Asian rebel units very well. Ill-disciplined, apt to run out of control. That's right, he told himself as coldly as he could, that's right, you bastards. Shoot up your ammunition. Shoot it all up. And I'll be waiting for you.

Still the flashes that kept lifting the skirt of the darkness would not give him any peace. The display insisted that he acknowledge the level of human suffering it implied, and he could not suppress the mental images, no matter how hard he might try. He toyed with the idea of moving out in a broad turning maneuver, taking the unsuspecting rebels in the flank.

No, he told himself. Don't let your emotions take control. You have to wait.

"Dnepr," he called, "this is Volga. I need hard locations. Where are they now?" He realized how difficult the task of pinpointing the enemy was in the steppes, in the dead of night. Even laser-ranging equipment helped only so much — and Shabrin had been forbidden its use, so as not to reveal his position to the enemy's laser detectors. Now Babryshkin was asking a frantic boy to define the exact location of enemy vehicles in a fantastic environment of darkness and fire, while the enemy continued to move.

"How far out are they now?" he demanded. "Over."

"Under ten kilometers from your location," Shabrin responded. Good boy, Babryshkin said under his breath, good boy. Hold yourself together. "I've got them within top-attack missile range from your location," Shabrin continued. But now Babryshkin detected a dangerous wavering in the lieutenant's voice. And, inevitably, the breakdown followed. "It looks like they're driving right through the refugees, running over them… we've got to… to…"

"Dnepr, get yourself under control. Now, damnit." Babryshkin was afraid that the boy would do something rash, perhaps attacking with his handful of reconnaissance vehicles, compromising everything. It was critical to be patient, to wait, to spring the trap at the right moment. Even if he were to open up with his limited supply of top-attack missiles, it would only warn the bulk of the enemy force that there was trouble ahead. And he wanted to get them all, to destroy every last vehicle, every last rebel. He gave no thought to taking prisoners. His unit had not taken any since the war began, and neither, as far as he knew, had the enemy.

"… they're just killing them all," Shabrin reported, almost weeping. "It's a massacre…"

"Dnepr, this is Volga. You are to withdraw from your position at once and rejoin the main body. Move carefully_; Do not let them see you. Do you understand me? Over."

"Understood." But the voice that spoke the single word bore a dangerous weight of emotion.

"Move now" Babryshkin said. "You'll get your chance to deal with those bastards. If you fire a single round, you'll just be warning them. Now get moving. Out."

Babryshkin dropped his eyes away from the cowl of his optics. He snorted, sourly amused. One officer wanted him to retreat a hundred kilometers, and five minutes later another one expected him to launch a hasty attack. While he himself was hoping that he could just get off the first rounds in the coming exchange, to hit first and very hard. Still he was glad he was not in Shabrin's position. He was not certain he would even be able to muster as much selfdiscipline as had the lieutenant.

"All stations," Babryshkin spit into the mike, change to combat instructions. Enemy force approximately battalion in size." He hesitated for a moment. They're rebels. No robotic vehicles in evidence. Automatic systems will be placed on fire-lock. No one opens fire until I give the order. I want to make damned sure we get as many of them as possible." He paused, worried about the length of his transmission, even though he knew to direction-finding equipment could locate a broadcast station in a split second, if any intercept systems happened to be in the area. "After Dnepr comes in, no vehicle is to move," he continued. "Any vehicle in movement will be fired upon." He said it forcefully, trying to sound as ruthless as possible to his subordinates. Considering that the rebel equipment was so similar to their own, a running battle would soon degenerate into hopeless confusion and fratricide. The only real difference between his equipment and that of the rebels, he consoled himself, was that theirs was apt to be in even worse condition. The central Asians were terrible at maintenance, and Babryshkin expected to have an advantage in functional automatic systems. We can win this one, he thought. "All stations acknowledge in sequence," he concluded.

One by one, the platoon-sized companies and company-sized battalions reported in. As he listened to the litany of call signs, Babryshkin peered out through his optics. He could not help but translate the spectacle of light in the middle distance into terms of human suffering, the destruction of his people, his tribe. Without fully understanding himself, he felt an urge not only to drive forward and kill the other men in uniform, but to continue southward, to kill their wives and children, responding to them in kind, pushing to its inevitable resolution this war between the children of Marx and Lenin.

Bogged down in their sport with the refugee column, the rebels were slow to advance. Babryshkin's men sat at the ready for hours, watching as the dazzling lines of unleashed weaponry simmered down into the steadier glow of the burning refugee vehicles. Babryshkin could sense the nerves prickling in each of his men. He could feel their torment through the steel walls of the vehicles, through the earthen battlements. They existed in a volatile no-man's-land between exhaustion and rage, aching to act, to do something, even if it proved to be a fatal gesture. They did not think about dying because they no longer thought about living. They hardly existed. But the enemy… the enemy existed more palpably than the frozen earth or the mottled steel hulls of the war machines. The enemy had become the center of the universe.

In the middle of the night, in the hours beyond the clear recognition of time, a furious banging started up on the exterior of Babryshkin's tank. The first thump was so startling in the stillness that Babryshkin thought they had been fired upon and hit. But the force of the blows was on a more human scale. Someone was hammering at the tank with an unidentifiable object, trying to get them to open up.

Cautiously, Babryshkin ordered the crew to sit tight. Then he swiftly flipped open the commander's hatch, pistol in hand.

By starlight, Babryshkin could see the posterior of a man's form kneeling on the steel deck. Then the man stopped his banging and turned toward Babryshkin, slowly, stiffly. He was sobbing.

The battle noises in the distance had faded to random small-arms fire now, and the stretch of road flowing between the wings of Babryshkin's unit was deserted.

The man was old. He panted, out of breath. When Babryshkin scanned him with his pocket lamp, he saw white hair, blue worker's coveralls, a forehead smeared with blood.

The old man searched for Babryshkin's face in the darkness, hunting for the soldier's eyes.

"Cowards" he shouted, weeping. "Cowards, cowards, cowards."

Babryshkin drowsed, reaching his physical limit. In an hour, the horizon would begin to pale, yet the rebel force remained out of direct fire range. They had clearly taken their time with the refugee column. Sated, Babryshkin told himself. A man can only take so much blood. They're drunk with it. Again, he considered launching a sweeping surprise attack, and, again, he suppressed the urge. Stick to the plan, stick to the plan. His heavy eyes settled over visions of earlier years. As a new lieutenant, he had had the hilariously bad luck to be assigned to Kushka, the notorious base at the southern extreme of Turkmenistan. His professors of military science had been embarrassed for him. Kushka was, after all, an assignment where officers were sent as punishment. Junior lieutenant and fresh graduate Babryshkin had been a top student, and he had no black marks on his disciplinary record. Yet, what could you do? The system needed a junior lieutenant at Kushka, where the summer temperatures soared above fifty degrees Celsius and poisonous snakes seemed to crowd as densely as Moscow subway passengers at peak hour. Meaning to console the boy, the professors could not help laughing.

Really, an assignment to Kushka was the stuff of which jokes were made — so long as you were not the assignee.

Kushka had been every bit as miserable as had been foretold, added to which the indigenous population was hostile to ethnic Russians — unless you had hard currency to spend or military goods to sell on the black market. But he had learned. How false so many of the teachings had been, how naive he had been himself. The locals felt far more kinship with their smuggling partners across the Afghan border in Toragundi, or with the not-so-distant Iranians. Even then, the lieutenant with the thin blond mustache had known that a change in borders, in formal allegiances, was inevitable. He had even told himself, "Let them have the godforsaken place." Yet, he had naturally hoped that the upheaval would not come when he was on duty, that it might somehow be delayed until it was no longer an immediate concern of his. Let the deluge wait until tomorrow, he thought sarcastically, sitting in his tank almost a decade later. It was the national attitude — may the disasters wait until someone else is on shift, until other shoulders bear the responsibility. He was ashamed of himself now. But there was nothing to be done.

Except to wait for the enemy. And to fight.

A sudden crackling in his earphones startled him out of an unwilling doze.

"Volga, this is Amur. Can you hear me?"

"I'm listening," Babryshkin said.

"I've got movement out to my front. Auto picked them up. I've got my main gun on fire-lock. But it wants to cut loose. Multiple targets. They're so bunched up I can't get visual separation on the screen. Over."

Good. That was how he wanted them. All shot out. Crowding. Unwary. Hungover with death and blood.

"How many?" Babryshkin demanded. "Give me a rough idea." He stared hard into the wasteland of his optics, but the enemy was still out of sight. He wished his on-board electronics were not broken. He wished he had had the determination and energy to transfer his command setup to a tank in better all-around condition.

"This is Amur. Looks like at least thirty heavies. Maybe more. They're moving like a pack of drunks. Nose to asshole. All jammed up."

"All right. Range?"

"Lead vehicles at seventy-five hundred.

Closer than Babryshkin had expected. "All stations, all stations. Anticipate engagement at five thousand meters.

He wanted them in close. Theoretically, he could begin engaging now, with both missiles and the swift, oversize guns. But he made up his mind to risk the further wait. The hull defilade positions were good. If the enemy was not very, very alert, they would detect nothing before they reached the deadly five-kilometer line. Once they were that close, none of them would get away. If his unit got off the first shots.

"This is Amur. I've got them under seven thousand. They're moving fast. It looks like their higher bit them on the ass."

"No sign of a combat deployment?" Babryshkin asked nervously.

"No. They just look like a mob.

Babryshkin pushed his brows hard against the optics, aching to see with his own eyes. But the darkness the range, and the long, long reverse slope prevented him from locating the longed-for tanks and infantry fighting vehicles.

"This is Amur. Six thousand meters. They don t even have flank guards out. No forward security."

It was too ideal. For a moment the thought flashed through Babryshkin's mind that it might be a trap.

No. He knew the rebels. He had gone to school with them, served with them, lived with them. And he knew that they had grown overconfident now.

Probably, he thought, the enemy had intercepted the directive to pull back to the north. Gurevich was likely correct — the message was genuine. And now this rebel unit glutted by a night of murder, had been ordered to get moving, to make up for lost time, to initiate a pursuit of the Soviet forces who were supposed to be pulling back.

Babryshkin grinned. The enemy had finally made a mistake. They had counted too heavily on the Russian tendency to obey orders, no matter what. They had forgotten that there would always be exceptions.

Now the bastards were going to pay for it.

"Volga, this is Amur. Fifty-five hundred meters. Like shooting pigeons."

"All stations, this is Volga. Hold your fire. Keep those auto-systems locked up. Let them come all the way in." Yes, there it was. He could just see the first slight movement in his telescoping optics. The manual system was inadequate to fire effectively at this range. Still he knew that he would fire. Wasting ammunition. He would allow himself that one indulgence. While the tank commanders who had better performed their maintenance or who had had better luck would gain the kills.

"Fifty-two hundred."

Babryshkin felt the tension gripping his men. Everyone wanted to feel the big guns going off. To destroy the other men rolling so clumsily, so unsuspectingly toward them.

"Fifty-one hundred meters."

At the Malinovsky Higher Tank Academy, Babryshkin had been assigned a Tadzhik study partner, along with orders to ensure that the central Asian passed the course, no matter what it took. The Tadzhik had clearly understood the system, and he had done as little work as possible. Babryshkin wrote papers for him and put together presentations, while the Tadzhik passed exams by cheating wildly. Anyway, there was a harder grading system for ethnic Europeans. Babryshkin had hated the system, hating the duplicity and dishonor of it all, the injustice…

Now he was glad the system had been the way it was. He only hoped his Tadzhik study partner was commanding the approaching detachment.

"Five thousand meters."

"Fire," Babryshkin called into the mike. "Free auto-systems. All others, engage at will." But his men heard nothing beyond the first word. They knew what to do. The huge, thumping sounds of the high-velocity guns penetrated the steel walls of his tank, the padding of his headset.

Explosions filled the lens of his optics. He tried to count the stricken targets in the distance. But they were bunched too closely. One tiny inferno blazed into the next. His headset buzzed with the mixture of elation and complaint he had come to know so well over the past weeks. It was the special sound of men at war now that they fought in separate machines, unable to look at, to touch, to smell each other, reassuring themselves that they were not alone. Babryshkin had come to the conclusion that, even if the radio were not required for communications on the modern battlefield, it would be psychologically necessary so that men locked in combat could reach out to one another. Tell me that my brothers are with me.

"Don, this is Volga," he called to the fire support commander. "Fire deep illumination now." He could not hear the response of the combination guns, which were deployed well behind the zigzag of tanks and infantry fighting vehicles, but the sky above and just behind the enemy vehicles soon glared with a false dawn as the parachute flares ignited and began to drift.

The brassy light was just enough to allow Babryshkin to distinguish individual targets. Perhaps two-dozen enemy vehicles were already burning, but, to their credit, the rebels were attempting to organize themselves into battle order. Some of the enemy tanks returned fire, but none of Babryshkin's subunit commanders had reported any losses yet, and the enemy fire had a desperate, unaimed feel to it. For an instant, Babryshkin pictured the chaos, the terror, and the flashes of heroism in the enemy ranks. In that quick sensing, the rebels almost became human again.

"Gunner," Babryshkin called. "Target… forty-seven- hundred… the guide tank on the far left."

"I see him."

"Fix?"

"It's a long way."

"Goddamnit, have you got him in your sights.

"Got him."

"Fire."

The hull shivered with the only partially cushioned recoil. And Babryshkin counted the seconds.

The enemy tank kept moving. There was no explosion.

They had fired right past him.

"Range," Babryshkin called out in fury, forty-five hundred…"

"Comrade Commander, he s too far out."

"Do as you're told, damn you… range, forty-four- fifty."

Suddenly, the enemy tank disappeared in a splash of fire. Someone else had made the kill.

For a moment, Babryshkin said nothing. He did not even scan for another target. The gunner was right. He knew it. It was foolish to waste the ammunition. God only knew when there would be any more of it. Better to let the tanks whose automatic acquire-and-fire systems were still operational do the killing. It was far more efficient.

It was only the matter of wanting to kill, to destroy. The feeling went far beyond the desire simply to contribute to the victory. It was far more intense, more personal than that, and Babryshkin could not help experiencing a feeling of disappointment, even of failure, as his brigade annihilated the enemy spread out across the steppes. He listened to the slow, cyclic fire of the auto-systems as they moved from target to target. The sound was almost hypnotic, with each loud report followed seconds later by the appearance of another distant bonfire.

He had not seen a single enemy vehicle putting out cyclic fire. Probably, he realized, they had not had a single operational automatic system. In a way, the war was even harder on the overbred machines than it was on their human masters.

A good thing, though, Babryshkin considered, that they were only rebels. He knew his tattered unit would not put up nearly so good a showing against the Arabs or the Iranians, with their magnificent Japanese war machines.

"All stations," he called, "this is Volga. Don't waste ammunition. All manual systems cease fire. Auto-systems… finish them off. Out."

When he looked very hard through his optics, he could still spot the occasional frantic movement as a rebel vehicle tried to get clear. But the auto-systems soon gunned down the last of them. The expanse of steppe looked as it might have looked almost a millennium before, dotted with the campfires of the Mongols.

Babryshkin waited for the familiar feeling of elation to come over him. But it was very slow in coming this time. At first, he wrote it off as due to his weariness. Yet, the adrenaline charge had always been enough to overcome any level of exhaustion.

They had destroyed the enemy force in its entirety. Without losing a single vehicle of their own. It was a significant achievement. They had gained time, saved lives. But Babryshkin felt as he might have after making love to a woman who repulsed him.

He surveyed the torchlit steppe. The sky had begun to pale There would be a new day, with new enemies. It had been the rebels' turn to misjudge, to take the wrong step. But next time? And the time after that? No one's luck lasted forever.

Well, Babryshkin told himself, we'll just take our bloodbaths one at a time, thanks.

The vehicle fires had already begun to bum out. Babryshkin smiled, as at the taste of bad liquor shared among friends. If nothing else, he considered, Soviet-built tanks were perfectly capable of destroying each other.

The morning light revealed a sea of frost around the battle-warm islands where Babryshkin s tanks were entrenched. He decided to spare Shabrin, the reconnaissance officer, this round of horrors, and he led the security party forward himself: a smattering of infantry fighting vehicles, followed by empty utility trucks to salvage any useful supplies and load up any wounded survivors from the segment of refugees the rebels had attacked. The ambulances remained behind, already filled with military casualties from several days of fighting. A single platoon of tanks moved off to the flank, guarding the searchers, while the remainder of the brigade prepared for movement to the north.

When they closed sufficiently to make sure that every single enemy vehicle had been hit, Babryshkin ordered the tanks to cease their forward movement. Every liter of fuel was critical now.

The infantry fighting vehicles made trails through the frost. It would be even easier to track them now, easier still to find them when the snows came. If they survived that long.

The motorized rifle troops rode with their deck hatches open, making a sport of hunting down any surviving rebels.

Only the enemy soldiers who appeared very seriously wounded went ignored. They weren't worth a bullet, and it gave the motorized riflemen more satisfaction to think of them dying slowly, unattended. Babryshkin made no effort to stop the small massacre, even though he had been taught that such actions were criminal and subject to severe penalties. He sensed that such niceties no longer mattered now. This was a different kind of war.

When the snorting war machines finally reached the point of collision between the rebel armor and the refugees, Babryshkin received still another lesson in the varieties of combat experience. He had truly believed that he had seen the worst of the worst, that nothing else would shock him or even move him very deeply, but the sight of the calculated butchery along the dirt track taught him differently. Even the victims of the massive chemical attacks farther south had been impersonally chosen, struck coldly by systems that stood at a distance — aircraft, missiles, or long-range artillery. But many of the bodies along the road had been killed by men who stood before them, close enough to sense them as human beings, to hear the varieties of fear in their voices.

The women had received the worst treatment. The men had merely been killed. But the corpses of the women, either naked or with winter coats and skirts bunched about their waists or pushed over their heads, looked particularly pained, especially cold. All around them the litter of their belongings rustled in the random stirrings of the air. Vehicles had been looted and burned, suitcases emptied beside the corpses of their owners. One of the women, especially vain, had attempted to carry her perfumes with her to safety, and the voluptuous scent from the smashed bottles jarred Babryshkin as he walked between the stench of cordite and the odor of torn bowels. The perfume reminded him of Valya, who always wore too much.

In his wonder at the spectacle of so much very personal death, it took Babryshkin a long time to realize that some of the scattered bodies still had life in them. The silence was deceptive. No one screamed. And you had to listen very closely to hear the rasp of injured lungs or the sobbing beyond hope or fear or any sense at all. The silence of it all frightened him in a way that the prospect of battle had never done.

Then the first scream came. From the mouth of a hemorrhaging girl, who thought that the Soviet soldier bending to help her was simply another rebel back for a bit more fun. Shrieking and slapping at the senior sergeant, she resisted his efforts to cover her and lift her in his arms. Finally the sergeant backed off, giving up. Other casualties were anxious for help. The fate of a single individual had become almost irrelevant, in any case. They left the child in the middle of the roadway, sobbing and clutching a headless doll.

7

Viktor Kozlov's teeth ached. He wanted to show the American officers, with their fine, strong, white teeth, how effectively a Soviet officer could perform in a critical situation. But he had to struggle to remain clearheaded. Each exchange he translated for General Ivanov, each small detail, had to be conveyed exactly to the impatient Americans. Yet, as he spoke Kozlov imagined he could feel his bad teeth shifting in his gums, and intermittent streaks of pain tightened the skin around his eyes. The combined staff meeting had dragged on through the night, under tremendous pressure, as the front dissolved more thoroughly with each incoming intelligence report. Kozlov felt bleary, hungover from the lack of sleep. He had made the mistake of eating iced salmon and caviar from the buffet table that had been erected and adorned with edible treasures to impress the Americans — and the cold had bitten into his sick gums. He had told himself that he needed food, that fuel was necessary for the body to continue under stress, without sleep. But he recognized now that it had been greed, jealousy, even malice that had made him select the specialties that had grown so hopelessly rare and expensive, even for a Soviet lieutenant colonel. The Americans had munched casually, uncaring, unaware of the effort that had gone into the provision of such a wealth of food. Many of them left their little plates half full of the snacks, in obvious distaste. It was difficult, very difficult to like the Americans. With their bright animal teeth.

He looked at the American colonel with the horrendously scarred face and the black major who made such a show of speaking Russian. Kozlov was certain that the black officer had been sent simply to insult the Soviets. In the U.S. Army nowadays, the Russian language was only worthy of the attentions of blacks. And the remarkable fluency with which the black major spoke only made it worse. Kozlov wondered how much the man could pick out from the hidden meanings skulking behind General Ivanov's admissions and omissions. No, Kozlov decided, he would never be able to like the Americans. He almost suspected that they had picked out officers with the very best teeth to send on this expedition. To offer one more small lesson in humiliation to their Soviet — their Russian—hosts.

"General Ivanov assures you," Kozlov translated to the colonel with the nightmare face, "that you will have no problems in such ways with our air defense forces. In the time of your movement to contact, these forces will be under the strictest of orders not to fire unless attacked. There will be absolute safety for you."

Kozlov's teeth felt brittle against his spongy gums, and the slow miserable aching between the jolts of lightninglike pain made him want to drink enough hard liquor to numb himself. But he could not and would not do such a thing, and all he could do was attempt to lull himself with the imagined relief. He wondered if these rich, hard-toothed Americans had some sort of dental officer with them, and if there might be some way to receive treatment without suffering too much humiliation.

He quickly dismissed the notion. Any amount of pain was better than further admissions of inadequacy in front of the Americans. The situation was bad enough. It was shameful that his country had come to such a pass, to require the help of the old enemy, to be reduced to the quality of an international beggar-state. No, it was better to lose all of your teeth than to admit even the slightest additional failure.

"It's of the utmost importance," the American colonel, this famous Colonel Taylor, replied. "There's no way our target acquisition programs can distinguish between your systems and the rebel systems. To our sensors, they're identical. Obviously, it's not a problem with the Arabs or the Iranians. The Japanese gear is easy to spot. But with Soviet-built systems, we can only rely on geography to tell friend from foe. We'll need the very latest information you have before we lift off — and in the air, if we can work it out. We just don't want to hit your boys by mistake."

Kozlov listened as the black major translated for Taylor. It was the exact opposite of the way dual translations should work, but Taylor and General Ivanov had agreed on the backward arrangement between them. He watched the general's face as he listened to the translation, wondering how much the man's expressions gave away to the Americans. The whole situation was made even more difficult by General Ivanov's constant stream of lies. Kozlov knew that the Americans, with their magical systems, knew a great deal more about the situation than they let on. And General Ivanov's deluge of untruths and half-truths was simply embarrassing, even when they were told with the best of intentions. The need to translate those words, to pass on those lies directly to these Americans who knew them for what they were, made him want to grind his teeth. But that was out of the question.

At the very least, Kozlov knew, it would be impossible to reach all of the Soviet air defense elements. Communications were erratic, almost impossible, and the Soviet forces east of the Urals were in such disarray, so fragmented across the enormous, gashed front, that no one knew their strength any longer. The Soviets could not even use their own space intelligence systems to locate friendly forces because the Japanese-built weaponry of the enemy had destroyed them at the start of hostilities. The Soviet forces were reduced to striking wild blows in the dark, unaware of the precise locations of the enemy, unaware even of the current friendly situation at any given time, and all they knew for certain now was that the enemy had almost reached the border between Kazakhstan and western Siberia in a breakthrough between Atbasar and Tselinograd, and that only tattered remnants of the Soviet 17th Army stood in their way in a frantically arranged defense just south of Petropavlovsk. The enemy forces had moved methodically over the last weeks, advancing and consolidating, then advancing again. But now the situation had gone utterly out of control. The intelligence briefing offered to the Americans had stated the enemy situation as clearly as possible. But Kozlov had been able to tell by the facial expression of the black major a man who for some reason was addressed as "Mary" — that the Americans knew far more than the hapless Russian briefer. Kozlov wished he could get just one look inside the American regiment's field intelligence center. Not to spy — he was past that. Just to find out what in the name of God was really going on out there on the Central Asian steppes.

Everyone knew that it was bad, of course. But there was such a tradition of lies, of glossing over all but the most evident failures, that Kozlov's countrymen could not quite bring themselves to admit to foreigners — even to allies in a desperate hour — how dismal the situation had become. General Ivanov was perfectly willing to admit there had been a breakthrough. But the desperate request for an American commitment to battle a full week ahead of schedule was excused as necessary only to guarantee the success of a planned Soviet counterattack. While the general knew very well that the closest the Soviet forces could come to a counterattack would be to hurl empty shell casings in the direction of the enemy. Ivanov, in fact, considered two real possibilities. First, the Americans, with their secret wonder machines, might actually achieve some degree of success. In which case, the Soviet defenses would be shifted southward, creating a larger buffer south of the border of Western Siberia and, in a sense, constituting something that almost qualified as a counterattack in a very liberal interpretation of the term. More likely, the American commitment would simply buy some time to sort out the incredible mess out there on the steppes. Moscow, of course, hoped that the shock presence might bring about a ceasefire. But that was a desperate hope. General Ivanov had long since stopped speaking to Kozlov or any of the staff about victory. Now they all simply fought on from day to day, struggling just to gain a clearer picture of the situation. For weeks, they had lived and worked in a mist. It was only with the Americans that General Ivanov still spoke as though he really commanded a wartime front, with all its units and support, when, in fact, the battlefield had collapsed into anarchy.

Kozlov poked at the rotted husk of a molar with his tongue. He had to admit that the Americans were very cooperative. As soon as General Ivanov had formally passed on the request for immediate assistance as approved by Moscow, the American colonel had excused himself to contact his superiors. The request had, of course, been transmitted from government to government, and Kozlov had watched anxiously as the American staff officers simply unpacked a gray suitcase lined with electronics and began a direct keyboard dialogue with Washington. Without the extension of an antenna or need of an external power source. The Americans conducted themselves nonchalantly in regard to the technology, as though the device were no more consequential than a cigarette lighter. Yet, a calculated display could not have slapped the watching Soviets across the face more sharply with the evidence of their technological inferiority. Kozlov felt as though he had been living in a country where time stood still.

The American colonel had not attempted to make any excuses in order to avoid entering battle early. Nor had he attempted to bargain to better his own position. He had simply spoken electronically to his superiors, his dreadful face impassive, and, within fifteen minutes, he had returned to General Ivanov with the words:

"Washington says go."

And the frantic planning had begun, with more American staff members hustled in from their hideaway in the industrial center. Now, in the heavy morning hours, the sealed planning facility stank of Soviet tobacco and unwashed bodies. Everyone, even the smooth-complected Americans, wore a weary, grimed look, and they spoke more slowly, in shorter constructions. The two staffs, awkwardly asymmetrical in design, struggled to work out the countless small details of a combined operation, pencils, pens, markers, and keyboards chiseling away at concepts as they sought to sculpt a viable plan that would bring the U.S. force to the battlefield in thirty-six hours. Technically, enough translators were available. But it soon became evident that the language skills were not sufficiently acute. Repeatedly, Kozlov himself had been called to help settle a point of misunderstanding in operational terminology or graphics, and he worried that he, too, might make a critical mistake. The Americans from the southern part of the United States were especially difficult to understand, while the easiest, curiously, was the Israeli mercenary operations officer — who spoke in English that was self-consciously precise.

Kozlov had studied the Americans for much of his career as a GRU intelligence officer. Even when he had labored beside line officers in the new Frunze Academy program for the Soviet Army's chosen, he had done his best to stay current with the status of U.S. military adventurism in Latin America. He sought to understand the nature of the United States and to grasp why its military was different from his own. He had shared the delight of his fellow lieutenants years before, when the United States had undergone its African humiliation. Of course, none of his peers had been able to read the portents any better than Kozlov. They had not, as the English poet had written, really understood for whom the bell tolled. Now the world had turned upside down. But Kozlov found that at least the American military character as he had imagined 1 remained a constant. These officers bending over maps and portable computers, though various in detail.seemed so typical as a group: aggressive to the point of thoughtlessness, undaunted by sudden changes, impatient with details, superficially open but in fact quite closed as people, poor theorists but instinctive fighters with a gutter edge, argumentative even with superiors and unperturbed by responsibilities that a Soviet officer would take pains to avoid. These were men so accustomed to a wealth of possessions, both military and personal, that they were blind to the small sacrifices and special efforts of others. The matter of the buffet table was a perfect example. Despite the urgent demands of the hour, the Soviet command had gone to outrageous lengths to provide the best possible foods for the American officers. Even the most embittered, calloused Soviet officers had paused in shock at the bounty spread over the tables at the end of the planning cell. The buffet was, of course, meant to impress the Americans. But it was also intended sincerely to convey the depth and self-sacrifice of Russian hospitality. To the Americans, however, the food hardly appeared worth eating. For hours, it went ignored, while the Soviet officers eyed it incredulously. Only when General Ivanov personally led the American colonel to the table — verbally dragging the man — had a few of the Americans broken loose from their maps and electronics to nibble a bit of this and that.

Kozlov had felt the humiliation and outright pain of each Soviet officer in the room as they waited until enough of the Americans had picked over the food to make it barely acceptable for them to help themselves. With guilty faces, the Soviet staff officers had sneaked toward the delicacies. For some of the junior officers, Kozlov suspected, it was the first opportunity in their lives — and perhaps their last— to sample some of these famous Russian specialties. As the early morning hours dragged on Kozlov had almost reached out to strike a young captain he noticed picking over the food an American had abandoned on a stray plate.

Yes, Kozlov decided again, in many ways the Americans were to be admired. Even envied. But they were impossible to like.

Colonel Taylor struck him as something of a stereotype of the American combat leader. Despite the eccentric details of the man's biography. This man appeared heartless, expressionless, businesslike to the point of cruelty. Even the man's scarred face was warlike, giving him the appearance of some tribal chief painted to frighten his enemies. Kozlov remained forever on edge in Taylor's presence, always expecting the man to lash out suddenly, unreasonably, to criticize his translations as too slow or somehow incorrect, or to call him a liar to his face. Normally, Kozlov was the most self-possessed of officers, successful, full of boundless promise, comfortable in the presence of generals and high officials. But this man Taylor had the power to keep him off balance with a casual glance. This tall, scarred man from a child's nightmare. In his no-nonsense fashion, the American colonel was unfailingly polite, even considerate. Yet Kozlov always felt on the verge of making a fool of himself.

Kozlov was familiar with the secret file on Taylor. Born in April 1976. U.S. Military Academy, class of 1997. Light athletics, a fine runner. An especially good horseman. Academically sound. A veteran of the African debacle who had made a near-legendary journey through the backcountry of Zaire. He had survived a bout with Runciman's disease with no apparent mental impairment but with heavy scarring that he refused to have treated. Kozlov paused in his mental review, ambushed by the image of his own young wife and child dying without decent care, without medicine, their fevered eyes full of blame. Then the image was gone, leaving only a residue of pain far harsher than the ache of his teeth.

Taylor was a bachelor. He had apparently been a bit wild as a young lieutenant, before the deployment to Zaire. But the facial scars had brought his amorous adventures to a sharp conclusion.

Kozlov rushed forward through the man's history. There was, of course, the little tart who worked for the Unified Intelligence Agency. A woman who had slept with everyone in Washington except the Soviet embassy staff. But that was a very recent development, and despite the gossip and laughter about the affair back in Washington Kozlov doubted that anything would come of the matter. He could not imagine even the most slatternly of women sharing more than a few clumsy hours of Taylor's life. Even then, they would need to turn out the lights.

But if Taylor's career as a lover had been cut short, he had certainly developed an impressive reputation as a soldier. Increasingly austere personal habits. Nonsmoker, light drinker. Obsessed with physical exercise, though not an outdoorsman by nature. Neither hunted nor fished, although he was reportedly fond of mountain hiking. Quietly intellectual behind his hard public personality. Professionally very well-read for an American. Liked to read classic American novels in private, especially Mark Twain, Melville, Hemingway, and Robert Stone. A penciled note in the biographical file had pointed out that all of Taylor's favorite books were about men who were outsiders. He had gained a master's degree in electronics and information theory — even though his personal interests lay elsewhere. He had survived each new wave of the personnel cutbacks that had so hollowed out the U.S. military. During the plague years, he had commanded first a cavalry troop, then a squadron in Los Angeles, where he had simultaneously enhanced his reputation as a soldier, taught himself Spanish, and completed a critique of the U.S. intervention in Zaire so merciless it nearly resulted in his dismissal. Instead, the ultimate outcome had been an accelerated promotion. American military personnel policies were completely unfathomable.

Taylor had then been instrumental in the U.S. Army's reorganization, when the colors of the old cavalry regiments were resurrected to identify the new, streamlined units replacing the heavier, almost immovable divisions and corps. An expert in the field of heavy forces and emerging military technology, Taylor had nonetheless been sent to command a light task force in Mexico as the United States attempted to halt the multisided war on its southern border. Arriving in the wake of the Tampico massacre, Taylor had exploited the newly imposed press controls to keep reporters out of his area of operations, first in San Miguel de Allende, then, upon his further promotion, in the Guadalajara region. This part of the file had been defaced with question marks where GRU analysts had tried to figure out the paradox of the man's success. He broke rules, always doing the unexpected, and gained a reputation as a savage mountain fighter. His subordinates employed techniques ranging from helicopter descents to old-fashioned cavalry patrols, eradicating rebel groups one after the other, many of whom were little more than bandits, while others were Japanese-funded patriotic forces. Almost invariably, he was very well received by the local population, who should have been supporting the insurgents. None of the Soviet analysts could sort out the dialectical equations.

This killer who read good books, this scarred man who was a perfect robot of a soldier, had returned to the United States to assume command of the newly reformed and reequipped Seventh Cavalry Regiment (Heavy) at Fort Riley, Kansas. The unit was built around a new series of weapons systems the details of which were still unclear to Soviet intelligence, even as the Americans planned their mission on the same maps as Kozlov's comrades-in-arms. Taylor had been in command only nine months, much of which actually had been spent in Washington, testifying before various committees, when the Soviet Union had secretly asked the United States for its assistance in the face of a growing threat of a war for national survival.

And why were these men here after all? Why had the United States responded positively? Kozlov was certain their purpose was not to selflessly assist the people of the Soviet Union. Nor did they particularly covet the mineral wealth of Western Siberia for themselves, since they had largely purged the Japanese presence from Latin America — and the new finds there were adequate to American needs He did not even believe the American motivation was vengeance, either against the eternally recalcitrant and bloody-minded Iranians or even against the Japanese, whose long shadow lay so obviously over the Islamic executors of their imperialist plans. In the end, Kozlov suspected, his country had simply become a proving ground for a new generation of American weapons, nothing more.

His teeth ached so badly he wanted to claw them out of his gums. When would it end? When would any of it end?

To hell with the Americans, he decided. He didn't give a damn why they were here. As long as their weapons worked.

Major Manuel Xavier Martinez stood beside Taylor at the corner of the ravaged buffet table, picking at a few leftovers to take the place of a combat ration breakfast and working through yet another set of interoperability problems. The two men spoke in Spanish for the sake of privacy and, despite his weariness, the supply officer could not help finding the situation bizarrely amusing. He routinely addressed Taylor as "Jefe," but this was only an inside joke. In fact, Taylor's Spanish was more grammatically correct, cleaner, and more exact, than was his own. Martinez's blood was Mexican-American, but his primary language — the tongue of his education and elective affinities — was the English of an erudite and educated man. His Spanish was the barrio dialect of his youth in San Antonio, fine for bullshitting on a street corner, but inadequate for expressing sophisticated logistical concepts. As they spoke Martinez punctuated his Spanish with far more English-language military terminology than his utterly Anglo-Saxon commander found necessary.

"I still see two areas where we can really get screwed, sir," Martinez said. "And I'm only talking about the log business." He glanced across the smoke-fogged room to the portable workstation where Merry Meredith stared wearily at the incoming intelligence information. "I wouldn't want to be in Merry's shoes."

"Merry can handle it," Taylor said.

"Yeah. I know that, Jefe. But it's not just that they're a lying bunch of bastards. It's the way they treat him. That lieutenant colonel with the rotten teeth. Christ, he acts like an Alabama sheriff from back in the nineteen fifties." Martinez shook his head. "And you know it breaks Merry's heart. He's so into that Russian culture shit."

"Merry's been through worse. You're just lucky they think you're a Georgian or an Armenian."

"I still can't get a straight answer out of them," Martinez said. "It's worse than Mexico."

"Mexico was the bush leagues," Taylor said.

"All the more reason why I wish these guys would play it straight."

"They can't," Taylor said, with surprising patience in his voice. The man's calm never ceased to impress Martinez. "They can't tell us the truth about the overall situation because they just don't know it themselves. Listen to them, Manny. They're lost. And they're scared. And they're trying to put the best face on it they can. Their world's coming apart. But they're willing to give us what they've got."

"The problem is finding out what they've got," Martinez said. He took a drink of flat mineral water to wash the last bits of cracker from his throat. "Anyway, the first issue

I've got to look at is fuel. We've got enough of our own to run the mission. But the M-l00s will be nearly empty at the end of it. First squadron is going to be running on fumes, judging by the arrow Lucky Dave just drew for them. That means depending on Soviet fuel. Our own complement won't be full-up for another five, six days, depending on the Soviet rail system."

"So what's the Martinez solution?" Taylor asked, face impassive, a graven death mask to which Martinez was only now becoming accustomed, after so many years of working together.

Martinez smiled. "I'm that predictable.

Taylor nodded. A ghost of amusement on the dead lips. "Well " Martinez said, "the Sovs have one type of fuel that's almost as good as JP-10. And their boy says he can provide it. Of course, their fuel's polluted as often as not. We'll have to test each last bladder and blivet. But, if we can corner them into delivering the fuel on time, I suggest we run this mission on their fuel and conserve our own. Without burdening Taylor with unnecessary details, he quickly reviewed the other advantages of such an option. Their own fuel reserves were already uploaded on the big wing-in-ground fuelers, and it would save transfer and upload time. They would preserve their independence of action.

"You're sure their fuel won't have us falling out of the sky?"

"No," Martinez said, even as he thought the problem through one last time, "no, we can quality control it As long as we get the pure stuff, the composition is just fine. Anyway, I'm not worried about the engines. Battle-site calibration's another issue."

"All right. Go ahead. You said there were two problem areas.

"Yeah, Jefe. You and Lucky Dave may have to get in on this one. These guys are just congenital centralizers. My counterpart wants to stash all of the supplies in one big site. At the far end, where we finish up the mission. He says the general wants it that way, that, otherwise, they can't guarantee support site protection. Logic doesn't make a dent in these guys. And decentralized ops just give

them the willies." Martinez shook his head. "We come at everything from different angles. They're worried about guarding the stuff on the ground. You know. 'Who goes there?' and all that. While I'm worried about missiles and airstrikes. Christ, the way they want to heap everything up in one big pile, it would only take one lucky shot to put us out of business."

For the first time, Taylor's face showed concern. The scarred brows bunched. "I thought we were clear on that. We agreed that each squadron had to have its own discrete dispersal area. Heifetz has them on the graphics."

"But Lucky Dave's talking apples, and they're talking oranges. They don't automatically assume that each squadron should have its own self-contained support site." Martinez caught the electric flash in Taylor's eyes. The old man had missed the potential problem, as had everyone else. Martinez was sorry he had not been able to resolve the conflict himself, because he knew Taylor well enough to realize that the old man would beat himself up unmercifully for not having spotted the potential disconnect earlier. Martinez had never met another man, another soldier, who was so hard on himself. Not even Merry Meredith or Lucky Dave Heifetz, the other members of the Seventh Cavalry staff's self-flagellation society.

Martinez's life had not been full of heroes. He had been lucky enough not to look up to the street-corner cowboys back in San Antonio, boy-men as his absent father had been, and his adolescence and young adulthood had been spent in a struggle to be better than the rest, to show everyone that the kid from the barrio could shut them down. Getting higher grades, speaking better English. His ROTC scholarship to Texas A&M had not only paid the bills, but it had proved that he was every bit as American as any of the Anglos. He refused to be categorized as anything less, to let any man define him in any way that might diminish his singularity. When he went home to visit his mother, he refused to speak Spanish with her, even refused to eat the Mexican food she was so anxious to cook for him. And as a captain he had put down his entire savings to buy her a solid, middle-class house in a suburb in northwest San Antonio, one whose payments would bind his salary for years to come. It was an enormous step, a triumph for him. Yet his unsuccessful, increasingly worried attempts to call home, to speak with the prematurely aged woman, soon brought him back to earth. He finally tracked her down at his aunt's number. And his mother wept, claiming she loved the house and she was as proud of him as any mother could ever be. It was only that the new house was so big, so empty, and so far from all that she knew. The neighbors did not understand Spanish. So she had taken to staying with her sister back in the barrio. Where she felt at home. Now the house stood empty, except on the rare occasions when he went back on leave. It was a monument to the personal limits, to the failure, of the young man without heroes.

And then there was Taylor. Martinez did not like to use the word hero. But, had he chosen to apply it to any man, his first choice would have been this unusual colonel who stood between him and the desolation of the buffet table.

Taylor of Mexico, intuitively grasping the situation and its requirements so much better than the Quartermaster captain who shared the indigenous bloodlines. The civilian academics and specialized advisers attached to the Army had lectured Taylor on the nutritional requirements of the populace and on the infrastructural deficiencies associated with chronic underdevelopment. And Taylor had kicked them out of his sector, in defiance of Army policy. He understood the need to satisfy minimum dietary requirements, but, above all, he understood the need for theater. Wearing preposterous silver spurs, Taylor was always the first man out of the helicopter. He traced canyon rims on a magnificent black stallion and walked upright where other men crawled. Martinez knew what it was to be afraid, and he did not believe that any sane man could be truly fearless. But Taylor certainly disguised his fear better than the rest — driving his utility vehicle, alone, into towns where the representatives of the U.S.-backed Monterrey provisional government hung from the utility poles with key body parts conspicuously absent. Exploiting the dramatic ugliness of his face to maximum effect and living on tortillas and beans so that he could ostentatiously give his rations to widows and orphans, Taylor transcended all of the Anglo rules of behavior to achieve the grand level of gesture demanded by a tormented Mexico. His peers called him a hot dog, a show-off, a nut, and a dirty sonofabitch— as they struggled to emulate his success. Taylor, who seemed able to project himself with equal ease into the mindset of a Mexican peasant or a Los Angeles gang member. Taylor, who masked his intelligence and command of language behind the terse, requisitely profane speech his subordinates imagined a commander must employ. Major Manuel Xavier Martinez did not believe in heroes. But he was not certain he could ever be such a man as Colonel George Taylor.

"Manny," Taylor said to the supply officer, "it's a good thing I've got you to keep me from fucking this whole thing up. I should have made the goddamned Russians clarify exactly what they understood by force dispersion." The colonel was angrily intense, but the sharpness was directed solely against himself. "When our boys come back in from the mission, I want to be damned sure they come in on top of all the fuel, bullets, beans, and Band-aids they need. The standard drill."

"Standard drill," Martinez agreed, anxious to please this man, to serve him well, yet, at the same time, ashamed that he would have to ask for further help. "I'm afraid you're going to have to take it up with Ivanov himself, Jefe. He's driving the train, and my counterpart's afraid to throw any switches on his own. He thinks I'm nuts for wanting to scatter our log sites all over creation and even crazier for questioning what a general wants."

Taylor nodded. "All right, Manny. Let's grab Dave and Merry and have another powwow with our little Russian brothers."

Martinez smiled. "I guess that means we have to let that sorry bugger Kozlov breathe on us again." He looked down at a smeared cracker he had lifted off his plate. The sight of it was so dismal, laden with a rough gray paste, that he held it in midair, unable to bring it the rest of the way to his mouth.

He felt Taylor staring at him. The intensity of the colonel's gaze seemed to freeze the supply officer's hand in midair, the trick of a sorcerer. Instantly, Martinez's eyes were drawn to Taylor's, and he saw absolute seriousness in the depths of the other man's stare.

"Eat it," Taylor said quietly, the tone of his Spanish as dry and ungiving as a high mountain desert. "And then smile."

Major Howard "Merry" Meredith had almost forgotten what it was like to be judged by the color of his skin. Although the Russians were not blatantly impolite, they barely masked their distaste in dealing with him. He was the sole member of Taylor's primary staff who spoke Russian, yet his opposite number obviously preferred dealing with Meredith's white subordinate through a translator.

Merry Meredith could take it. He had been through far, far worse experiences in his life. Yet he could not help being saddened. He had long been warned about Russian racism… but he had believed that he would be the exception. In deference to Pushkin. Only he of all these Americans had read the Russian classics. He knew the titles and even the dates of Repin's paintings, just as he believed he alone of the Americans grasped the iron inevitabilities that had brought this people to such tragedy. He even knew the names and ingredients of the array of zakuski, the bounty of snacks, which the hosts obviously had gone to great lengths to produce. Yet the Russians offered him only uneasy glances as he approached the buffet table, as though the color of his skin might dirty the food.

Racial discrimination was something that had found no entry into his sheltered college-town youth, and West Point had constructed its own barriers against such prejudice. The Army itself had been so starved for talent that a man's racial, ethnic, or social background truly made no difference. It was only a bit later that he had finally been forced to look in the mirror.

And now, years after that terrible day in Los Angeles, he found himself trying to work beside a Soviet colonel who regarded him as only a marginally higher form of animal. His counterpart lectured him on the intricacies of the enemy forces and the battlefield situation in so elementary a fashion that Meredith had to continually call up the example and image of Colonel Taylor to refrain from verbally launching into the paunchy polkovnik, if not physically assaulting him. The worst of it was that the Soviet clearly knew far less about the enemy and even the Soviets' own condition than did Meredith, and what little the colonel knew was out of date. Thanks to the constant intelligence updates he received in his earpiece and on the screen of his portable computer, Meredith knew that the battlefield situation was growing more desperate by the hour. Yet Colonel Baranov seemed interested only in demonstrating his personal — his racial — superiority.

Meredith was grateful to see Manny Martinez break away from his one-on-one with Taylor and head toward the worktable that had been set up as an intelligence planning cell.

Manny wore an inexplicably grand smile on his face, which hardly seemed to track with the prevailing atmosphere of physical and mental exhaustion.

"Excuse me, sir," Manny said to the potbellied Soviet colonel, who looked for all the world like the leader of an oompah band, his pointer waving like a baton. Then he turned to Meredith. "Merry, the old man wants you to listen in on a little powwow. Can you break away for a minute?"

Meredith felt like a schoolboy suddenly authorized to play hooky. He quickly made his excuses in Russian to the colonel, leaving his subordinate to suffer on in the name of the United States Army.

Squeezing between the tables, Meredith found that Manny's grin was contagious.

"What the hell are you smiling about, you silly bastard?" Meredith asked his friend.

Manny's smile opened even wider. "It's the food. You've got to try it."

"I have," Meredith said, puzzled. Although he intellectually understood the effort that had gone into the preparation of the buffet and the relative quality of the provisions, he could not believe that Manny really enjoyed the zakuski. His efforts to persuade other officers to eat had failed embarrassingly. "Come on, you're shitting me."

"Not me, brother. It's great food. Just ask the old man."

Meredith decided that it was all just a joke he'd missed, after all, and he let it go. Brushing past the last workstation, he caught the edge of an overlay on the rough wool of his trousers and tipped a number of markers onto the floor.

"Some quarterback you must've been," Manny said. Meredith and his friend hastily retrieved the fallen tools from amid the wasteland of computer printouts on the floor, apologizing to the bleary-looking captain whose work they had upset. When they arose, Colonel Taylor was standing before them, along with General Ivanov, Kozlov, and another Soviet whom Meredith recognized as Manny's counterpart. In a moment, Lucky Dave Heifetz marched up, along with the Soviet chief of operations.

Careful not to call attention to his maneuvering, Meredith shifted along the backfield so that he was not in the direct line of Kozlov's breath. The Soviet was a reasonably handsome man — until he opened his mouth, revealing broken, rotted teeth, the sight of which made a man wince.

The Russian's breath was easily the most powerful offensive weapon in the Soviet arsenal. Meredith felt sorry for Kozlov, since it was evident that he really was a first-rate officer, determined to do his damndest to make things work. But Meredith did not feel sufficiently sorry for him to stand too close.

As it was, the room stank and the air felt dead, heavily motionless. The fabric of the stiff old-fashioned Soviet uniforms worn by all had grown rougher still with dried sweat. Meredith was not certain his stomach could take Kozlov's halitosis at this time of the morning, without sleep, and with the Russians' rich, bad food clumped in his belly.

Taylor drew them all toward the map that lined the wall of the chamber, glancing toward Meredith to ensure that the intelligence officer was prepared to translate.

"It seems," Taylor began, "that our haste has accidentally created some minor confusion for our Soviet allies."

The translation was not difficult. Meredith knew precisely the tone Taylor wanted to strike, and it was exactly the right one. Whether dealing with street punks or Mexican bandits, with senators or Soviet generals, Taylor's ability to find not only the correct voice, but even the specific tone that best exploited his opposite number's preconceptions, never failed to impress Meredith.

What did the Soviets think of Taylor himself? Meredith wondered. Meredith had noted that few of the Soviet officers bore noticeable RD scarring. He knew that the Soviet Union had suffered a far higher percentage of plague casualties than had his own nation, but it appeared as though there were some code that prevented badly scarred survivors from attaining high rank. Meredith wondered if it was merely the old Russian military obsession with appearances at work in yet another form.

He tried to view Taylor afresh, as these strangers might see him. It was difficult to be objective, having worked with the man for so many years and feeling such a deep, if inarticulate affection for him. Even in the United States of 2020, Taylor was far more apt to be the object of prejudice, even of primitive fear, than a well-dressed, unscarred, full-fledged member of the establishment who just happened to wear skin the color of milk chocolate. Meredith wondered if the Russians would judge this man, too, solely by his appearance.

"… and we want to resolve all problems in an atmosphere of openness and good faith," Meredith translated.

Army General Ivanov listened to the easy flow of the black American's Russian, wondering where he had learned to speak the language so well. The Americans were full of surprises. And some of them were pleasant surprises — they were so willing, so confident, so quick. But other surprises were more difficult to digest. Such as this business about the dispersion of the support sites. The Americans' speech was very polite. But behind the courtesy they were adamant. Ivanov had already noticed the pattern. The Americans would give in on inconsequential points, but insist on having their own way in the more significant matters.

Ivanov was physically tired, and he was weary of arguing. All right, let them do what they wanted. And the Soviet Army would do what it wanted with its own forces. Let the Americans have their try. Ivanov would have liked to believe, to have faith, but he had experienced too much failure over too long a time. He doubted that a single regiment of these mystery-shrouded American wonder weapons would be enough to make a decisive difference. But he would be grateful for whatever they achieved. The situation was desperate, and he was haunted by the vision of going down in history as one of those Russian military commanders whose names were synonymous with disaster.

But who could say how much longer there would even be a Russian history? Look at the depth to which they had already sunk. Begging for help from the Americans….

Well, they, too, were living on borrowed time. Ivanov believed that the age of the white race was past, that the future belonged to the masses of Asia, and that the best one could hope for would be to hold back the tide a little longer.

Ivanov looked from American face to American face. How awkward they looked in their Soviet uniforms. This brutal-looking colonel — the man had to be some kind of monster inside as well as outside, or he would have availed himself of the fine American cosmetic surgery. And the one who looked like a Georgian playboy. Then there was the Israeli — Ivanov knew his type, the constipated sort who never smiled, never took a drink. You always had to watch the Jews. The Germans had not been able to manage them, nor had the Arabs, with their nuclear weapons and nerve gas. But the Jews had not been so smart after all — they had backed the American horse, when they should have bet on the Japanese. Then there was this black major who spoke such fine Russian. Ivanov believed that this American staff had been consciously selected, man by man, to convince the Russians of the internal solidarity of the American people, much as the staged photos of his youth had attempted to do with Soviet society, posing smiling Estonians and Ukrainians with Azerbaijanis and Tadzhiks. But the Americans were not fooling anyone, and Ivanov wondered how such a staff would fare in combat.

It had all been so different once, when he had been a young officer. Even a junior lieutenant had commanded respect. Then that man Gorbachev had come, with his reforms, his promises. And he had begun chipping away at the military. And ambitious men within the military had helped him. Ivanov himself had been convinced of the need for perestroika, caught up in the delusions of the times. So few of the promises had come true. People simply lost their respect, their fear. They wanted to live like West Europeans, like Americans. They did not understand the role of the Soviet Union, of Russia, in the world. They thought only of themselves. Then, as the country began to come apart, more sensible men had finally taken over. But it was too late. Ivanov was familiar with the theories— the inevitability of the decline of an economic model that had outlived its utility, the price of decades of overspending on defense, the oppressiveness of the system that stifled possibilities of growth…

Lies, lies, lies. Gorbachev and his cronies had betrayed the trust, they had given victory away. In the end, gutting the military had saved no one. The economy did not magically spring to life. Instead, conditions had become worse and worse. Shooting would have been too good for the men who had ruined the greatest country on earth.

Once the system had been spoiled, nothing else had worked, either. It was like trying to squeeze toothpaste back into the tube. Democracy. The word was barely worth laughing at. The Soviet Union had needed strength. In its place, the people had received promises, inequity, betrayal.

The decades during which Ivanov had gained his rank had been little more than a chronicle of decline, of insurgencies, of riots, of half-measures. His life had been squandered in a long twilight.

And now it had come to this. Civil war, invasion, collapse. And these Americans, who had come out of spite, for revenge.

As he settled the last details with these arrogant, overly confident men masquerading in the uniform that had clothed his life and dreams, Ivanov felt a tragic sense of loss toward his country's past, like a man in the worst of marriages remembering the girl he should have wed.

The staff meeting was breaking up. The Americans would go and finish their final preparations. Then they would enter the war. With their miraculous new weapons whose details they would not discuss even now.

Well, good luck to them. Ivanov hoped they would kill many of his country's enemies. Certainly, if confidence alone could kill, the Americans would do very well, indeed.

Perhaps they had very great secrets, even greater than Soviet intelligence suspected. But, alone among the Soviets and Americans in the room, General Ivanov also knew a secret. It was a terrible secret, one which the Soviet hierarchy had kept from everyone below Ivanov's rank, so as not to further demoralize the war effort. Not even poor Kozlov knew. But, Ivanov suspected, the Americans were soon going to find out.

8

"Perhaps…" Bouquette said, "we should slip off somewhere for a drink after all this. I do think we owe ourselves a break."

Daisy looked up from her notes. Clifton Bouquette stood above her, a bit too close. Her eyes scanned up the weave of his slacks, then along the silken breeding certificate of his tie. In these frantic days, when everyone else's shirt looked as though it had been worn hours too long, Bouquette's starched collar glowed with perfect whiteness. He was the sort of man who was born with a perfect knot in his tie, and now, at an age when other men had begun to soften toward incapability, when faces grew ashen with care, Bouquette stood easily, with a sportsman's elasticity, and his skin showed only the handsome damage of countless weekends spent sailing. When she first arrived in Washington, Daisy had been anxious to look up to, to believe in, men such as Clifton Reynard Bouquette, and the readiness of such a man to overlook his wife in order to spend even a few of his sought-after hours with a plain, if bright, young analyst had made her feel as though dreams — serious, grown-up dreams — really did come true in this city. She had felt that way for the first half-dozen affairs. Then it had all become routine, and the men with so many names had not needed to offer quite so many excuses for their absences, their inabilities, their growing inattention. She told herself that she was their equal, using them as sharply as they elected to use her, and she could not understand the feeling of desolation that had grown up around her professional success. Daisy Fitzgerald was a woman who could understand the course of nations, who could brilliantly intuit the march of events. But, she realized, she had never managed to understand men. Why, indeed, did a man such as Clifton Reynard Bouquette, deputy director of the Unified Intelligence Agency, wealthy in so many ways, married to a forbiddingly attractive woman not much older than Daisy, want to risk even the slightest embarrassment to sleep with a woman whose hair was never quite right and whose skin still broke out under stress or when she ate any of half of the good edible things in the world, a woman whose plain features had driven her to achievement? She remembered a workmate's laughing comment to the effect that Cliff Bouquette would crawl between the hind legs of anything female and breathing.

"I can't, Cliff," she said. "I've got too much work."

Bouquette inched closer, the nap of his trousers almost brushing her. She could smell him. It was a smell she remembered.

"Oh, come on, Daze. Can't keep going without a little break."

"Really…"

"Things will sort themselves out." Bouquette smiled beautifully. "After all, we don't want to get stale. Need to keep our perspective."

"I've got to get back to the office after this. The sort wool of his trousers. And the remembered feel of him. The taste. The things he liked to do. And the urgency he had always felt to leave when he was done.

She could feel a slight change in him. As though he had already invested too much time and effort in her tonight, as though, by her refusal, she were treating him with an inconceivable lack of gratitude.

"Well," he said, in a subtly changed voice, still carefully low, so that the secret service men would not overhear, "just a quick drink on the way back then. For old time's sake. All right?"

"Cliff, please," Daisy said, "I've got to look over my notes—"

"You know that stuff inside out."

"— and I'm seeing someone."

Bouquette backed away slightly. He smiled and shook his head. "Oh, Daze… Daze… we're two of a kind, you and I. And you know it. We'll have our little flings with others, but we'll always—"

"You have no right—" she said angrily. It was the first time she had ever raised her voice to him when they were both fully clothed, and it shocked him even more deeply than she had surprised herself. He backed up still farther, then instantly came very close to her, bending down as if to discuss something in her notes.

"For God's sake," he whispered, "keep your voice down. Do you know where we are?"

Nerves, she told herself, it's all nerves. I need sleep. Control yourself, control yourself.

"I know exactly where we are," she said. "Now stop it" For a moment that she promised herself she would treasure, Daisy saw a shadow of fear, of self-doubt, of age pass over Bouquette's face. Then he recomposed his features into the sculpted mask the world knew so well.

"We'll see," he said, smiling indulgently now, as though he pitied her foolishness. And he abruptly turned away. A few seconds later he was across the room, discussing the President's schedule with the secretary.

She stared briefly at his back, aching to see an imperfection in the lines of his body, any sign of the tyranny of the calendar. She already had her first gray hairs. Just a few of them, but, it seemed to her, at far too young an age. Bouquette would never gray — his hair was of a blondness that would simply mellow. He was a man who knew the names of wines and waiters, who affected to like nothing so much as a beer drunk from a bottle. He preened over his sports injuries and worked very hard to impress when he made love, seeking to convince his partner that he was still coursing with boyish energy. He had boyish names, too, for the things he wanted her to do for him, and she had done each thing even when it hurt her, unable to explain to herself why she could not say no to actions that would leave her uncomfortable for days. And the more a thing hurt her, it seemed, the more controlled he would be in it, drawing it out. Where her pain excited another man to lose control, to stream wildly inside of her, it only seemed to strengthen Bouquette. He savored the sexual borderland between misery and the passionate cry. Then, suddenly, he would begin to curse, to growl obscenely, and with a powerful thrust into her vagina or anus, he would finish. Anxious to leave, ready with an excuse as to why, after hours of mingled limbs and sweat and whispers full of praise, he had to disappear into the night or afternoon. Yet, she had valued him as a lover. Because he had known so many things about her desires. As a matter of course. In the physical sense, he had been a far better lover than the man for whom she told herself she was waiting.

There were, she suspected, few things that made a woman such as her more uncomfortable than being loved by an honest man.

And what kind of a woman was she? She tried to concentrate on the scribbled notes that updated her computer printout. But she could not help thinking of the unexpected man, the unreasonable, embarrassing man who had suddenly turned up in her life like a blemish found on the skin upon waking. What kind of a woman was she? The kind who lashed a sincere — hopelessly sincere — lover with her past, telling him needlessly much about what she had done with others, speaking in the name of honesty, making him suffer for the unforgivable crime of loving her when all of those other better, smarter, richer, far handsomer men had simply used her body as a place to empty themselves. The only time she had not been able to hurt him consciously had been in her bed. Over a dinner table, over a drink, she had been able to savage him with her confessions, instinctively aware that he could take all of this hurt and survive. But as his clumsy hands searched over her body, as he pushed himself into her with a laughable attempt to resurrect some long-forgotten finesse, as he held her with a ferocity that made her gasp, holding her as though she might slip away from him forever even as he stabbed himself urgently inside her, she sensed a weakness that could not tolerate the slightest mocking, the least teasing word. She was the kind of woman who shut her eyes tightly in the struggle not to weep as he continued to hold her — desperately — after he had drained into her, reluctant even to let her rise to go to the bathroom.

A plain girl with bad skin and bad judgment, who could foretell history, but not her own heart. Falling in something that might almost be love with a man whose face was something out of the shadows of an old horror film, a man too naive to lie, even to a woman such as she. She remembered him standing in her kitchen that last morning. She had known more about the situation into which he was being sent than he had, important things that he was forbidden to know, but which a lover of quality, of decent heart, could not have helped telling him. To warn him. But she had been unable to speak, and he had stood clumsily in the gray light, the wreck of his face curiously boyish, almost weak above the tie into which he had never learned to work a confident knot, "I love you…'' he had said. Not in the splendid darkness, which teased out so many lies, which excused the most ill-considered choice of words, but in the flat gray sober light, with rain tapping at the windows above the sink. In an unkempt kitchen in suburban Virginia, he had waited for a response. And, when she did not reply, he repeated himself: "I love you." As if testing his voice to see if it had really said such a thing. Eyes pretending to drowse, she kept her silence, legs cold where the bathrobe would not grip. Feeling slovenly, sluttish in a way that had little to do with her sex, a matter of hangovers worn on the skin and untidy hair. He stared at her in hopeless fear, and she recognized that nothing in his life, no matter how terrible or physically punishing, had cost quite the same sort of effort as those tentative words. "I… don't…" she said finally, in a voice too drab for his moment, "George, I just don't know… what I feel right now." Her heart pounded, and she felt with painful intensity that, yes, at least for that instant, she did love this man, that she loved him with the same ferocity with which he had clutched her to him in the darkness. But she could not say the words. She felt as though her speech would damn her beyond all hope of redemption. No god was sufficiently forgiving to tolerate those words from her mouth. And the moment collapsed into the inconsequence of a teaspoon chiming the porcelain sides of a cup, the stuck lid of a jam jar, and terrycloth slipping from a bruised thigh. At most, she managed to convey to him that she would make an effort to keep her knees together until she saw him again. And she watched him go, a plain girl who had done so much more to hold a life's history of uncaring men, saying goodbye to the one good man who had happened to her.

The door to the briefing room opened. John Miller, a staff aide, stepped halfway into the waiting room.

"Mr. Bouquette, the President's ready for you." Bouquette marched across the room to retrieve his briefcase from its place beside Daisy's thicker, heavier attaché case. Grasping it confidently, he turned:

"Is the President ready for Daisy, Miller? Or does he want to see me alone first?"

The aide considered it for a fraction of a second, while all the politics and intricacies of his job raced through his mental computer.

"She can come in too. Just remember, the President s tired. It's been a long day."

Bouquette nodded. "For all of us."

Daisy hastened to fit her notes back into her attaché case, feeling clumsy against Bouquette's polished manner. She had only recently reached the level where she personally briefed the President and the National Security Council, and she remained in awe of this holiest of realms, despite the years she had spent learning how very, very mortal and fallible the men were who governed the nation.

At first, the familiar faces were a blur. The room was slightly overheated, the air surprisingly stale. She hastily put down her attaché case, then stood awkwardly, trying to look both alert and at ease. Inevitably, her eyes were drawn to the black man in the navy pin-striped suit.

President Waters had loosened his tie. Normally, he was every bit as fastidious as Bouquette, and Daisy read the opened collar as a sign that the man had truly grown weary. President Waters had been elected in 2016, on a platform that focused on domestic renewal and on bridging the gap between the increasingly polarized elements in American society. Even after the disastrous trade war with the Japanese, as well as the long sequence of military humiliations and hard-won successes, even after Runciman's disease had cut a broad path across the continent, the United States remained a relatively wealthy country in an impoverished world. Yet the decades had more and more turned its society into a solvent majority and a number of marginalized subsectors whose members had fallen ever farther behind contemporary demands for an educated, highly skilled work force and the need for cultural integration to facilitate competitiveness. Then the United States had given sanctuary to the Israelis who had survived the final Mideast war, and although the Israelis settled largely in "homelands" located in the least promising areas of the Far West, they soon constituted a powerful force in post-epidemic America, where the shortage of skilled, dedicated workers had grown critical. The resulting explosion of anti-Israeli sentiment from minority groups that had isolated themselves ever more drastically from the mainstream manifested itself in demonstrations, confrontation, and, ultimately, in bloodshed. The candidacy of Jonathan Waters in 2016 succeeded on the premise that all Americans could live together — and succeed together. He promised education, urban renewal, and opportunity, and he was a handsome, magnetic man, who spoke in the rhetoric of Yale rather than the Baptist Church. A campaign-season joke called him the white-man's black and the black-man's white… and he felt like the right man for the times to a bare majority of the citizens of his country. He defeated an opponent who was a foreign policy expert, but who had few domestic solutions with which to inspire a troubled nation. Yet, the first term of President Waters had been shadowed by a wide range of international issues, while his domestic solutions remained promising — but the stuff of generational rather than overnight change. As Cliff Bouquette was fond of putting it, "The poor bugger's totally lost in all this, and he's about to be equally the loser at the polls." Everyone believed that Jonathan Waters was a genuinely good man. But a series of nationwide surveys indicated that he had lost his image as a leader.

The President looked first at Bouquette, then at Daisy, before settling his noticeably bloodshot gaze back on the tanned, perfect man at Daisy's side.

"Good evening, Cliff," the President said, "and to you, Miss Fitzgerald. I hope you've brought me some good news."

President Waters wanted a cheeseburger. It seemed unreasonable to him that so trivial a desire could haunt a man in an hour of grave discussions and fateful decisions. But, he told himself, the body could go only so long without fuel. Countless shots of coffee and some scraps of doughnut, even cut with the spice of adrenaline and nerves, could carry a man only so far. And now, faced with the prospect of Clifton Reynard Bouquette, whom he could not abide, and his sidekick, who was as nerve-rackingly intense as she was genuinely good at her work, the President wished he could just put everything on hold for fifteen minutes of quiet. Spent alone. With a Coke and the sort of monumental, dripping cheeseburger that his wife went to great lengths to deny him, in the interests of the presidential health.

But there was no time. And, the President reflected, you could hide behind a cheeseburger for only so long, in any case. Then you would have to return to this obstreperous, all too violent world, where the very best of intentions seemed to have no power at all.

He had dreamed of going down in history as the President who taught his people to join hands, to understand one another, and to go forward together. He wanted to be the President who spoke for the poor, the ill-educated, the badly nourished, the men and women whom the streets had educated to make the worst possible choices, and he wanted to speak for them in a voice that did not threaten, but that softened life's harshness — for all Americans. His vision had been of a great returning home — by all those socially or economically crippled citizens who lived as exiles in the land of their birthright. He valued, above all, kindness — generosity in spirit and in fact — and peace. But the world demanded a man with the strength to order other men to kill, to ruin, and to die. In his gestures and words President Waters took great pains to remain firm, strong, commanding. But, in his heart, he wondered if he was a man of sufficient stature for the hour. He had even taken to praying, in private, for the first time since the age of fifteen, when he had watched his father die unattended in a hospital hallway.

He smiled slightly, wearily, dutifully, greeting Bouquette and his assistant. Bouquette looked so damnably pleased with himself. Waters had first met the Bouquettes of the world at Yale, and he had been forced to recognize their genuine importance, their utility. But, even though he suspected it might be owing to sheer jealousy on his part, he had never learned to like them — even as he had laboriously taught himself to imitate their dress, their choice of words, their confidence…

His smile grew genuine for a moment, as he considered the reaction he would get if he asked Bouquette to run along and fetch him a cheeseburger.

Bouquette was already bent over the audiovisual console, feeding in the domino-sized ticket that held the classified briefing aids. Momentarily, the monitor sets perched above and behind the conference table flickered to life.

"Just a second, Cliff," the President said. "I've got some critical business to attend to before you begin." He turned his attention to Miller, the lowest-ranking man in the room. "John, would you mind sending down to the kitchen for some sandwiches? I suspect we're going to be here for a while. Call it a working dinner."

Miller stood up. Ready to go and do his president's bidding. "The usual for you, Mr. President?"

Waters nodded. The usual. A small chef's salad, crowned with a few shreds of tuna packed in water and, just to be daring, some tidbits of low-cholesterol cheese. No dressing. Two pieces of whole wheat bread. And grapefruit juice.

"Oh, and John," the President said, "remind the chef that there is… no urgent necessity for my wife to hear about our doughnut orgy at lunchtime." He laughed slightly, and the members of the National Security Council were careful to laugh with him. Just enough.

Miller disappeared. Bouquette stood erectly, portentously. God only knew what new disasters the man held ready on his tongue. The turbulent, seemingly unpredictable course of military operations baffled Waters. By comparison, the world of post — Chicago School economics, in which he specialized, seemed simple, orderly. Like most American males of his generation, President Waters had never served in the military, and for the first time in his life, he regretted the omission. He knew the generals and admirals tried to simplify things for him. But so much of it simply did not seem logical. The dynamics did not correspond directly to the laws of physics. The very vocabulary was arcane and forbidding.

Commander-in-Chief. During his presidential campaign, the title had simply been another term among many. Now he wished in his heart that he might pass off this responsibility to another, better-prepared man.

Well, perhaps the election would see to that. Waters did not expect to win this time around. Only his wife and a handful of men and women who had welded their careers hopelessly to his still spoke of reelection with even hollow confidence. Certainly, there was a part of him that wanted to remain in office, to complete the real work so barely begun. But he had no special desire to sit for one unnecessary moment in this chair of blood. If he could have, he would have created a dual presidency — one for the master of distant wars and interventions, another for the builder of a better nation. But there was only one presidency, and despite the natural, indescribably powerful urge to hold on to the office, to its delicious power, Waters had made himself one promise: He would in no way attempt to exploit the present situation to electoral advantage. To the best of his abilities, he would make the decisions that were correct for the United States.

Waters sat back in his chair, tugging at the already loosened collar that felt so inexplicably confining today.

"All right, Cliff. Let's hear what you have to say."

Bouquette nodded. "Mr. President, we have a great deal to cover tonight. We've trimmed it down to the minimum—"

Just get going, Waters thought. Speak of the things that matter.

"— but that still leaves a lot of ground to cover. I'll lead off with the counterintelligence update, then Miss Fitzgerald will cover the events on the ground in the Soviet Union." Bouquette looked directly into the President's eyes, a veteran of many briefings. "First, you may already have seen the story in today's New York Times." At the intonation of "New York Times " the monitors instantaneously exhibited the inside-page story about which Bouquette would speak. The headline read:

WHERE IS THE SEVENTH CAVALRY?

"No, I haven't seen it," the President said. He turned to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to see how alarmed he should be. But the general's face remained noncommittal.

"Well," Bouquette continued, "the good news is that there's no evident suspicion as to the real location of our forces at this time. The planted stories about secret training in northern Canada seem to be holding. But the Times's piece doesn't read well. They're a bit too interested."

"Any reaction from the Japanese?" the chairman of the Joint Chiefs asked.

Bouquette shook his head. Businesslike. "Nothing we've picked up as of yet. They've got their hands full. And they seem relatively confident that we've got our own hands full south of the border."

"What got the Times interested?" the secretary of state asked.

"Let me handle that one, Cliff," the secretary of defense said. But he did not speak directly to the secretary of state. Instead, he addressed the President. "Sir, we've been tracking this one. We didn't consider it of sufficient importance to bother you with it, but since Cliff's brought it up, I might as well give you the background myself. As you know, we constructed the Seventh Cavalry — which is a 'heavy' unit — and the Tenth and Eleventh cavalries— which are 'light' units of the sort we used to call Military Intelligence — as very special organizations. We carefully sought to fill those units with unmarried men. Of course, that's not always possible, especially with officers and senior NCOs. But we tried to avoid the private-with-six-kids syndrome. We wanted to be able to deploy these units on short notice, with as little bother as possible. We went through the personnel files carefully. We designed spouse support and education programs. Above all, these are basically volunteer units — very few soldiers come down on orders without first requesting to join. We wanted to kill the old commissary-PX grapevine, where you could learn more about a unit's activities in the checkout line than in the ops office. And we think we've done a pretty good job. We even made it policy not to tell the majority of the officers and men their destination until they're wheels-up— and we do not permit personal communications from the combat zone. So, all in all, we've been successful." The sec-def paused, leaning back as though to take a deep breath. "But this sonofabitch from the Times has been phoning up the Building, prying. He smells something. And you know why? Because some little girl in Manhattan, Kansas, wants to know where her boyfriend is. She claims she's engaged to a corporal in the Seventh Cavalry, and she wants to know what we've done with him." The sec-def smiled, waving his chin at the absurdity of it all. "So, in a way we're better off with this sudden speedup in the commitment of our force. From an operations security standpoint. We've had a hell of a run of bad luck. But nothing lasts forever."

For a moment, President Waters was filled with a terrifying vision of how very, very fragile everything was. He had never considered that the success or failure of a military mission in the middle of Asia might depend on a lonely, angry girl in Kansas.

"As a nation," the President said, "we've never been very good at secrecy. And, in many ways, it's been a blessing to us. But, all things considered, I think we might want to keep our current activities quiet just a while longer. Bill," he said to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, a great bear of a man, "why don't we just get that soldier to write his girl a letter saying he's fine and that he'll be home soon. Make her happy."

"And make her keep quiet," Bouquette said anxiously. His briefing had been taken away from him too quickly, and he wanted to get back into the game. "We could even get it postmarked from somewhere up in the Canadian wilderness. Let our friend from the New York Times dust off his snowshoes."

"We can do that, Mr. President," the chairman said. "But I think we have to be prepared for further inquiries from the media, now that the Times has made an issue of it. I'm just afraid that somebody's going to put two and two together. The situation in the Soviet Union is front page and lead story, every day."

President Waters was uncertain how to respond. He wanted these men to provide him with assurance, not with additional worries. "Well," he said, "we'll just hope our luck holds a little longer. Now let's move on. Cliff, what's next?"

"Staying with counterintelligence, Mr. President… the Soviets continue to be exceedingly cooperative. As you know, we have key elements of the Tenth Cavalry, the intel boys, on the ground in Moscow and elsewhere, supporting the combat commitment of the Seventh. And the Soviets have brought us in on almost everything — joint technical exploitation, interrogations, sharing of information. We're learning a great deal about their system, how it works and so forth. I must say, they've surprised us a few times. Their country may be in a sorry state, but they're still devilishly good at certain kinds of intelligence work. Bad at others, though. Their battlefield intelligence system is in the process of breaking down completely. At the strategic level, we've got a better picture of their tactical and operational situations than they do. In a few moments, Miss Fitzgerald will cover those developments for you. But, the good news is that the Soviets do not appear to be running a serious, comprehensive operation against us. We do know that General Ivanov, their senior man in central Asia and western Siberia, has orders to police up the wreckage of one of our M-l00s, if possible. But that's to be expected. They tell some little lies to save face, but all in all, they're playing it remarkably straight with us. Or at least they appear to be." Bouquette looked around the table.

"They're desperate," the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said. "But I still don't think we should trust them too far. Once they get back on their feet, they'll be back at our throats."

"If they get back on their feet," the secretary of state said "They've been struggling to do just that for over a generation. You're talking about a broken, ruined country, hanging on for dear life."

"Between nations," the national security adviser said, "trust is merely a matter of shared interests. If the Soviets are currently behaving toward us in a trustworthy manner, then it's because it's to their advantage to do so. When such conduct ceases to be advantageous, I can assure you that it will stop." The national security adviser rarely spoke, but when he did it was in a sharp, lucid, tutorial voice. He was the architect behind the President's foreign policy views, and Waters had come to depend on him to an uncomfortable extent. "Today, the United States shares the Soviet Union's interest in keeping the Japanese out of Siberia. Tomorrow, the Soviets may begin asking themselves why they allowed us into Siberia. For I remind you, gentlemen, that our assistance to the Soviet state is not intended to preserve that state for its own sake, but, rather, to maintain a regional balance of power. And… we are not there to help the Soviets achieve victory, but to prevent a Soviet defeat. The opening of Siberia to the world economy is inevitable. We just have to ensure that the United States has equal, or, ideally, preferred access to Siberian resources, and that the Japanese access is on the restrictive, disadvantageous terms possible. We need to remain honest with ourselves, to keep our goals clear. Our fundamental purpose is not to aid the Soviets, but to deny the Japanese."

"The little buggers still ought to be grateful, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs said.

"Mr. President, if I may…" Bouquette said.

"Go ahead, Cliff."

"There is one area of concern with the Soviets, one matter — and we're not sure of its relative importance — in which they don't appear to be telling us everything they know. Now, this is all rather nebulous… but we've picked up a reference in high-level Soviet military traffic to something called a Scrambler. Now, in the context of the message, it appeared that this Scrambler was some kind of Japanese operation or system. At any rate, the Soviets seemed very, very worried about it."

"Why don't we just ask them what the hell it is?" the chairman of the Joint Chiefs asked.

Bouquette spread his hands out at waist level, as though holding an invisible beachball. "If we did, we'd have to tell them we were reading their communications on the most secure system they've got. We can't afford to do that. For a number of reasons. As you all realize."

"Well," the chairman continued, "with the only fully modernized outfit in the United States Army about to enter combat, I'd like to know exactly what we might be getting into."

"Oh, I think we're all right. At least for the present," Bouquette went on. "I want to show you the text of an intercept we took off the Japanese earlier today. Intriguing coincidence. They were having trouble with their system, and we got some good take. By dumb luck. They didn't realize how badly the signal was bleeding, and with computer enhancement and advanced decryption, we got about an hour and a half's worth of traffic." Bouquette looked confidently about the room, setting the rhythm at last. "Now, this was General Noburu Kabata's private line back to Tokyo. You all recall that General Kabata is the senior Japanese officer on the ground out there. His command post is in Baku. Supposedly, of course, he's just a contract employee working for the Islamic Union. But that's merely a nicety. In fact, Kabata is running the whole show. Well, we found out that he's not entirely pleased with his Arab and Iranian charges — to say nothing of the rebel forces in Soviet Central Asia. But, then, you know the Japanese. They hate disorder. And Kabata's got a disorderly crew on his hands. But look at this…" He pointed to the nearest monitor. A bright yellow text showed on a black background:

"Now, gentlemen," Bouquette said, "the first station is the voice of the Japanese General Staff's External Division in Tokyo. The respondent from the Japanese Command in Central Asia — something of a misnomer, since the actual location is Baku, on the western shore of the Caspian Sea — is none other than General Kabata himself."

"That's all well and good, Cliff," the secretary of defense said, "but what does it tell us? That's raw intelligence, not finished product."

Bouquette shrugged. "Unfortunately, it's all we've got. Of course, we've made this Scrambler a top collection priority. But, at least this intercept seems to indicate that whatever it is, it's not an immediate concern."

President Waters was not convinced. Here was yet another unexpected element in a situation the complexity of which he already found unnerving. He looked to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs for reassurance yet again. The chairman had a tough old-soldier quality that had acquired new appeal for Waters as of late. But the chairman was already speaking.

"Now, goddamnit, you intel guys had better find out just what's going on over there. We can't play guessing games when the nation's premier military formation is about to go into battle. You assured us that, and I quote, 'We have the most complete picture of the battlefield of any army in history.' " The chairman tapped his pen on the tabletop.

"And we do," Bouquette said. "This is only one single element. When the Seventh Cavalry enters combat, their on-board computers will even know how much fuel the enemy has in his tanks—"

"Mr. President?" the communications officer spoke up from the bank of consoles at the back of the room. "I've got Colonel Taylor, the Seventh Cavalry commander, coming in. He's back from his meeting with the Soviets. You said you wanted to talk to him when he returned, sir."

Taylor? Oh, yes, President Waters remembered, the colonel with the Halloween face. He had forgotten exactly what it was he wanted to talk to the man about. More reassurances. Are you ready? Really? You aren't going to let me down, are you? Waters could not explain it in so many words, but, in their brief exchanges, he had found this fright-mask colonel, with his blunt answers, far more reassuring than any of the Bouquettes of the world.

"Mr. President," the chairman of the Joint Chiefs said, leaning confidentially toward him, as though Taylor's face had already appeared on the monitors, as though the distant man were already listening in, "I don't think we should mention this Scrambler business to Colonel Taylor. Until we have a little more information. He's got enough on his mind."

President Waters spent the moment in which he should have been thinking in a state of blankness. Then he nodded his assent. Surely, the generals of the world knew what was best for the colonels of the world.

"All right," he said. "Put Colonel Taylor through."

Taylor did not want to talk to the President. Nor did he want to speak to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as much as he liked the old man. He did not want any communications now with anyone who might interfere with the operations plan that was rapidly being developed into an operations order for the commitment of his regiment. Besides, he was very tired. He had not yet taken his "wide-awakes," the pills that would keep a man alert and capable of fighting without sleep for up to five days without permanently damaging his health. He had hoped to steal a few hours of sleep before popping his pills, so that he would be in the best possible condition and have the longest possible stretch of combat capability in front of him. Now he sat wearily in the communications bubble in the bowels of an old Soviet warehouse, waiting.

Just let me fight, damnit, Taylor thought. There's nothing more to be done.

Sleep was out of the question now. By the time this nonsense was finished, it would be time to start the final command and staff meeting with the officers and key NCOs of the regiment. Then there would be countless last-minute things to do before the first M-100 lifted off.

"Colonel Taylor," he heard the voice in his earpiece. "I'm about to put you through to the President."

The central monitor in the communications panel fuzzed, then a superbly clear picture filled the screen. The President of the United States, looking slightly disheveled, elbows on a massive table.

The poor bastard looks tired, Taylor thought. Then he tried to perk himself up. His past exchanges with the President had taught him to be prepared for the most unexpected questions, and it was difficult not to be impatient with the President's naiveté. For Christ's sake, Taylor told himself, the man's the President of the United States. Don't forget it.

"Good morning, Mr. President."

For a moment, the President looked confused. Then he brightened and said, "Good evening, Colonel Taylor. I almost forgot our time difference. How is everything?"

"Fine, Mr. President."

"Everything's all right with the Soviets?"

"As good as we have any right to expect, sir."

"And your planning session? That went well, I take it?"

"Just fine, Mr. President."

"And you've got a good plan, then?"

Here it comes, Taylor thought.

"Yes, sir. I believe we have the best possible plan under the circumstances."

The President paused, considering.

"You're going to attack the enemy?"

"Yes, Mr. President."

"And you're happy with the plan?"

Something in the man's tone of voice, or in his weariness of manner, suddenly painted the situation for Taylor. The President of the United States was not trying to interfere. He was simply asking for reassurance. The obviousness of it, as well as the unexpected quality, startled Taylor.

"Mr. President, no plan is ever perfect. And every plan begins to change the moment men start to implement it. But I harbor no doubts — none — about the plan we've just hammered out with the Soviets. As the combat commander on the ground, I would not want to change one single detail."

Taylor heard a laugh from the other end, but the sound was disembodied. The President's face remained earnest, worn beyond laughter. Then Taylor heard the unmistakable voice of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the background.

"Mr. President, Colonel Taylor's telling you not to fiddle around with his plan. We'll give him a lesson in manners once we get him back in-country, but for now I think we better do what he says." The chairman laughed again, almost a snort. "I know Colonel Taylor, and he's apt to just ignore us, anyway. Isn't that right, George?"

Thank you, Taylor thought, fully aware of the risk the chairman had just taken on his behalf, and of the cover he had provided. I owe you one.

"Well, I'm not certain I like the thought of being ignored," the President said seriously, but without malice. "However, I have no intention of interfering with the colonel's plan. I think I know my limitations."

If I live, Taylor thought, until election day, I just might vote for the poor bastard, after all.

"Colonel Taylor," the President said, "I'm just trying to understand what's going on. I'm not a soldier, and I seem to spend a great deal of time being confused by all this. For instance, these wonder machines of yours, these miracle weapons. No one has ever managed to explain to me in plain English just exactly what they're all about, how they work. Could you take the time to do that?" How, Taylor wondered, could you tell your president that you did not have time, that you had everything but time?

"You mean the M-l00s, Mr. President?"

"Yes, all that gadgetry the taxpayers bought you. What's it going to do for them?"

Taylor took a deep breath, searching for a starting point. "Mr. President, the first thing you notice about the M-100 is that it's probably the ugliest weapons system ever built." Taylor heard a background voice ordering that an illustration of the M-100 be called up. "The troops call it the flying frog. But, when you fly it, when you learn to fight out of it, it becomes very beautiful. It's squat, with a big belly to hold all the equipment and the fire team of dragoons — mounted infantrymen — in the back. It has tilt rotors mounted on stubby wings. It doesn't look like it could possibly get off the ground. But it does fly, Mr. President, and it flies very fast for a ship of its kind — or slow, when you want it to. Its electronics make it almost invisible to the enemy. He might see it with the naked eye, but our countermeasures suite — the electronics that attack his electronics and confuse him — is so versatile, so fast, and works on so many levels, that one of his systems might see nothing but empty sky, while another sees thousands of images His guided munitions will see dummy aircraft projected around the real one. But our target acquisition system— the gear we use to find him—has 'work-through technology Unless the Japanese have come up with a surprise, we should be able to look right through their electronic defenses.

"You see," Taylor continued, choosing his words from the professional history of a military generation, "we rarely fight with our own eyes anymore. It's a competition of electronics, attempting to delude each other on multiple levels, thousands of times in a single second. The Japanese taught us a lot, the hard way. But we think we've got them this time. Anyway, the revolution in the miniaturization of power components gives us a range of up to fourteen hundred nautical miles, one way, depending on our combat load. That's good for a bulky system that's really still more of a helicopter than anything else. But the best part of all is the primary weapons system itself. The Japanese surprised us with laser weaponry back in Africa. And they're still using it. But on-board lasers have more problems than were apparent back in Zaire. We didn't realize how dependent the Japanese were on recharging their systems, for instance. They were closely tethered to their support system and they could only fight short, sharp engagements. We took a different technological tack.

"Our main weapon is a 'gun' that fires electromagnetically accelerated projectiles. Just think of them as special bullets that use electromagnetic energy instead of gunpowder. These projectiles travel very, very fast, and when they strike their target, they hit with such force that they either shatter it or, at least, shatter everything inside it by concussion. There are several kinds of projectiles — the fire-control computer selects the right type automatically. One type is solid and can penetrate virtually anything. Another has two layers, the first of which detonates against the outside, igniting anything that will burn, while the hard inner core proceeds on through any known armor. The shock wave alone kills any enemy soldiers inside a vehicle, while rendering the vehicle itself useless. A tremendous advantage is that one M-100 can locate and destroy several hundred targets on a single mission. After that, the 'gun' needs to be recalibrated back at its support base, but it's still far more versatile, lethal, and survivable than the Japanese laser gunships."

"And the pilot's… just basically along for the ride?" the President said. "The M-100… does everything automatically?"

"It can do a great deal automatically. But the vehicle commander — the pilot — and his copilot/gunner still make the broad decisions. And the desperate ones that a machine still cannot think through. Ideally, you go in firing fully automatic, because the computers can identify and attack multiple targets in a matter of seconds. And the computer gets intelligence input directly from national-level systems. But it's still the man who decides what to do when the chips are down. For instance, the computer never decides when to land and employ the dragoons. It's a smart horse. But, in the end, it's still a horse."

Despite Taylor's best efforts, the President still looked slightly baffled. Then Waters spoke:

"Well, Colonel Taylor, while you've been filling me in, I've been watching some graphics your boss called up for me. Very impressive. Very impressive, indeed." His distant eyes seemed to search very hard for Taylor's. "Tell me, is it really going to work? In combat?"

"I hope so, Mr. President."

"And… you have enough… of these systems?"

Enough for what? You never had enough.

"Mr. President, I've got what my country could give, and we're going to do the best we can with it. I'm confident that we have sufficient combat power to accomplish the mission as foreseen by our current op-plan. Besides, there's more to the regiment than just the M-l00s. First, we have fine soldiers: superb, well-trained soldiers who are ready to believe in the job you sent them to do, even if they don't fully understand it. Without them, the M-100 is just an expensive pile of nuts and bolts." Taylor paused, as the mental images of countless men with whom he had served marched by — not just the soldiers of the Seventh, but faces remembered from half a dozen trials, as well as from the endless drudgery of peacetime garrisons. "Mr. President, I've got other equipment, as well. Magnificent electronic warfare gear… a battalion of heavy air-defense lasers to protect us while we're on the ground… wing-in-ground transporters that can haul my essentials in a single lift. And the Tenth Cav is giving me tremendous intelligence, electronic attack and deception support. But, in the end, it's going to come down to those soldiers down in the squadrons and troops. Are they tough enough? Are they sufficiently well-trained? Will they have the wherewithal to hold on longer than their adversaries? I think the answer is yes."

President Waters felt greater confidence than ever in this man with the ruined face and the firm voice. As a politician, he recognized that he had been a bit taken in by his own desire to believe that all would go well, coupled with the infectious persuasiveness of this colonel in the odd foreign uniform. He had been listening to exactly the sort of speech he wanted to hear, a speech in which the spoken words themselves were far less important than the manner in which they were spoken. Yet, this recognition of his own weakness did little to dilute the new confidence he felt. That, too, would slip away. But, for the moment, he felt that things might not go so badly after all.

He wondered if he should tell this hard-eyed colonel about the Scrambler business, to warn him, just in case there was something to it. But the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff had recommended against bringing up the matter. And, surely, these military people knew among themselves what was best for their own.

Still, the Scrambler business nagged at him. The instincts that had led him to the White House said, "Tell him. Right now."

The briefing room door opened, and John Miller poked his head inside.

"Excuse me. Mr. President, if we could clear the monitors for a moment, the sandwiches are here. And your salad."

President Waters nodded. But he held up his finger to the communications officer. Wait.

The President stared into the central monitor, where Colonel George Taylor's discolored face waited impassively, larger than life-size.

"Colonel Taylor," the President said, "we're going to blank the system out for just a moment. But I'd like you to stand by. We have an intelligence briefing coming up, and I'd like you to listen in. To ensure that we all have exactly the same picture of what's going on."

Waters thought that his logic sounded pretty good. But, in his heart, he knew that the intelligence update was only a pretext. He simply was not quite ready to release this man who had so much confidence to share.

When the monitor came back to life, Taylor saw the President with a forkful of lettuce in his right hand. The man looked surprised, and Taylor figured that the sudden reappearance of his face was not particularly good for anyone's appetite. The monitor system was superb — state of the art — and keyed to respond to certain registered voices, giving the effect of brisk, clean editing. But it had not been programmed to beautify its subjects.

"Colonel Taylor," the President said. "You're back with us. Good. We're just about to begin the intelligence update. It will probably mean more to you than to me." The President's eyes strayed from contact with the monitor, hunting more deeply into the briefing room. "Miss Fitzgerald?" he said.

Before Taylor could prepare himself, the monitor filled with a shot of Daisy, showing her from mid-thigh upward. For an instant it seemed as though their eyes made contact, then Taylor realized, thankfully, that it was merely an illusion. His face would no longer be on the monitor now. Only the intelligence briefer and the visual supports.

He relaxed slightly. Daisy. He had tried so hard not to think of her. There was too much to resolve, too much to fear — and he had far more important matters with which to occupy his mind. But, watching her now, as she went through the formalities of opening her portion of the briefing, he was struck by how weary she, too, looked, and by how much, and how helplessly, he loved her.

A map of the south-central Soviet Union replaced Daisy on the screen, while her voice oriented the President to the location of cities, mountains, and seas. She swiftly recapitulated the most significant developments, speaking in terms far simpler than those she had used when briefing Taylor on the developing situation in her office in the old CIA building in Langley, now property of the Unified Intelligence Agency that had been formed to eradicate interagency rivalry and parochialism in the wake of the African disaster and the unforeseen dimensions of the trade war with the Japanese. Taylor smiled to himself. He remembered how her hair had been pinned up, as though in haste, and the visible smudge on the corner of her oversize glasses. She had not reacted to the sight of him with any special distaste. She had hardly reacted at all. He had been merely another obligation in the course of a frantic day. And he remembered the first remotely personal thing she had said to him, an hour into the briefing that had been scheduled to take up thirty minutes of her time: "Well," she had said, looking at him through those formidable glasses, "you certainly do your homework, Colonel. But I don't think you really understand the background of all this."

She was behind in her work. Far behind. And what she believed he needed to understand was not really classified, not of immediate importance. Perhaps they could put it off until another time?

Taylor had stared at her for a long, long moment, mustering his courage. Professionally, she was fierce, merciless. Yet, he imagined that he sensed something else about her too. Something he could not quite explain to himself. In the end, his voice shook as he offered her the sort of invitation he had not spoken in many years.

"Maybe… we could talk about it over dinner?"

She simply stared at him. And he felt himself shrinking inside. A foolish, foolish man. To imagine that even this plain girl with the loose strands of hair wandering down over her ears would, of her own volition, face him across a dinner table. Then, without warning, without giving him time to prepare himself for the shock, she said:

"Yes."

He was so surprised that he merely fumbled for words. Until she came to his aid:

"You might as well come over to my place. It's far more private than a restaurant. We can talk shop." She considered for a moment. "I'm not much of a cook, I'm afraid."

"It doesn't matter."

She made a frumpy, disapproving face, as though he did not fully realize the risk he was taking.

"Pasta all right?" she asked.

"Terrific."

"This is," she said, "strictly business, of course."

"Of course."

He had spent the rest of the day tormenting himself. It had not mattered to him before that his one decent suit did not fit very well. Neither did he know what sort of tie was in fashion. He had always accepted that these more polished men who hastened down the corridors and sidewalks of the District were a different breed, that he would never look like them, that he was meant to appear in his uniform. But he could not go to dinner in uniform. Instead of stopping by the office of an acquaintance in the Pentagon as planned, he went downtown and bought himself a new shirt and tie, relying on the salesman's recommendations.

Only when he was dressing in his hotel room, did he realize that the shirt would not do without being pressed. And there was no time to use the valet service. He settled for the bright new tie on an old shirt that had made the trip to Washington without too many wrinkles, and as he fumbled with the knot in the bathroom mirror, it occurred to him that this probably was strictly business on her part and that she had probably invited him to her home because she was ashamed to be seen with him in public. The thought made him sit down on the closed lid of the commode, tie slack around his collar. He considered phoning her and canceling. But the thought of another evening alone in his room with his portable computer seemed impossible to bear.

He appeared at her door with flowers and a bottle of wine. To his relief, she smiled, and hurried to put the flowers in water. She glanced at the wine, then quietly put it aside, calling out to him, "Please. Sit down. Anywhere. I'll just be a minute." And he sat down, uncomfortable in his suit, admiring the surroundings of this woman's life, not because they were especially beautiful or aesthetically appealing, but simply because the ability to sit in the intimacy of a woman's rooms, the object of her attentions on any level, was a forgotten pleasure. He could not sit for long, though. The spicy smell and the noises from the kitchen made him move, and he examined the prints on her walls without really seeing them, glanced over the titles of her books without really registering them, waiting for the moment when she would come back through the doorframe.

He had not had the courage to kiss her that first night, nor even to ask her if he might see her again. He had tortured himself through the night and morning until he finally found the strength to dial her number at work. She wasn't in. He did not have the firmness to leave a message, convinced she would not return the call. Later, he tried again — and reached her.

"Listen… I thought that perhaps… we could have dinner again?"

The distant, disembodied voice replied quickly:

"I'm sorry, I've got something on for tonight."

That was it, then.

"Well… thanks for last night. I really enjoyed it."

Goodbye.

"Wait," she said. "Could you make it tomorrow night instead? I know a place over in Alexandria…"

Later, when he began to learn of her reputation, the effect upon him was brutal. For all his age and ordeals, he was little more than a schoolboy emotionally. The sexual escapades of his youth were enshrined in his memory, but the following years of loneliness had brought with them a sort of second virginity, and the thought that the woman he loved, whom he had even imagined he might marry, could be the butt of other men's jokes, little more than a creature they used and discarded, burned horribly in him. But he could not, would not, give her up. He tried to reason with himself. These were modem times. Everybody slept around. Anyway, what did it matter? In what way did it diminish her as a person, or lover, if she had shared her bed with others? Could you physically feel their leavings on her skin? Could you taste them? Did it really change anything about her when you were with her? How did the past matter, anyway? What mattered, after all, was the present — not who you had been, but who you had become. And who was he to criticize her? A wreck of a man? A fool, with the face of a devil? What right did he have?

Yet, the thought of her past would not let him be. He held her tightly, fearing she would be gone, but also trying somehow to make her his property and his alone, to make all of the ghosts disappear. In the darkness he would torment himself with the images of his beloved with other men, and he wondered, too, how he could possibly compare with those other men, the well-dressed, handsome men who knew from birth how to do everything correctly. Into whose arms would she tumble when he was gone?

He remembered the morning when they had said goodbye. The look of her, unpolished, askew, not quite awake, and the rich long-night smell in the air around her and on his hands. She seemed more beautiful to him in that slow gray light, in her spotted robe, than any woman he had ever seen. He did not want to leave her, did not want to go to some distant land to fulfill the long-held purpose of his life. He only wanted to sit and drink one more cup of coffee with her, to capture indelibly in his memory the wayward confusion of her hair and the disarray of the tabletop on which she rested her hand. But there had been no more time. Only one last moment wrenched from duty, the time needed to say, "I love you." And she did not really reply. He ached to hear those words from her. In a sense, that was why he had spoken them. But she only waited, pretending she was still more asleep than in fact she was. He had repeated himself, trying to bully the words out of her. But she only mumbled a few half-promises, and he left her like that: an indescribably beautiful plain woman in a soiled bathrobe, slumped by a littered kitchen table. He went out into a drizzling rain, telling himself that the words did not matter. She had filled so much of his emptiness with color and beauty that the words did not matter at all.

Now Taylor sat in a secure bubble in a tin cavern in the wastes of Siberia, listening from half a world away to the words of the woman he loved. She spoke in her brisk, assured, professional voice, the bit of low raspiness that was so erotic under other circumstances merely masculine now. Nothing in her tone, or her demeanor, gave the slightest hint that she knew he was listening, that she had watched him while he had been unaware. He was glad he had not known she was in the room while he had been speaking with the President. Somehow, he was certain, he would have collapsed into folly and incapability in the knowledge of her presence.

But she was stronger. She was every bit as serious as her subject, as her voice intoned over the succession of maps, films, and photos on the monitor. Taylor listened, fighting to pay attention.

"… The last pause in ground operations by the enemy seems to have had a more complex purpose, however. During the lull, the opposing coalition moved all of the Soviet rebel forces up to the front — forces that are still nominally Soviet and that are native to the region, in a broad sense. Such a move accomplishes two things. First, it allows indigenous 'liberating' forces to lead the attack northward out of Kazakhstan and across the border into western Siberia, and second, it bleeds the rebel forces white, ensuring that, when the smoke clears, the Iranians and the Islamic Union will clearly be militarily preeminent and that, thus, there will be less of a likelihood of any effective indigenous reaction against foreign exploitation of the mineral wealth of both Kazakhstan and Siberia. The Iranians and the Islamic Union will effectively control the key territories east of the Urals — and the Japanese will exercise a significant measure of control over them, in turn, since their military power would collapse without continued Japanese assistance. There is strong evidence, for instance, to support the theory that every military system exported by Japan has a sleeper virus buried in its electronics, which, if triggered, destroys the utility of the system. No matter what nominal government might be in place east of the Urals, the Japanese would be the de facto masters of northern Asia."

The monitor filled with Daisy's image. Intense, determined, her personal vulnerability was hidden behind the set of her chin and the armor of those oversize glasses. But she looked so tired. Taylor wished he could fold her in his arms. Just for a moment.

Had she forgotten him? Already?

"Unless we stop them, of course," a voice said. The secretary of defense. Another lawyer who had not spent a single day of his life in uniform. Taylor had to give the man credit, though. He had acquired a surprising grasp of his responsibilities. Unlike the secretary's old friend, the President himself.

"Yes, sir," Daisy said.

"And what chance do you think we have of stopping them, Miss Fitzgerald?" the secretary asked. "I'd just like your view."

Daisy was, again, the subject of the monitor's attention. Taylor was genuinely curious as to what she would say in response. A smart, smart woman.

"Mr. Secretary," she began, "I can't give you numerical odds or any kind of probability statement. There are too many variables. I can only offer you an analyst's… hunch. Not very scientific, I'm afraid."

"Please. Go on."

So far away, captured by electronics and delivered to him, Daisy's eyes were nonetheless alive, wonderfully, fiercely alive.

"First " she continued, "I am convinced that our presence is going to come as a shock to the Japanese There are no indications at this point that they have the least suspicion we've got forces on the ground. And that alone will give them pause. On the other hand, they may feel compelled to teach us a lesson in Central Asia, to pay us back for recent defeats elsewhere. They're still smarting from their reverses in Latin America. The performance of U.S. arms will be an important factor, of course. It our military systems perform according to specifications, the war will suddenly become much more expensive for the Japanese, both literally and figuratively. In that sense the chances for a negotiated settlement would increase dramatically. If we perform well enough on the battlefield."

The President interrupted. "Miss Fitzgerald, you haven't said anything about actually winning."

Daisy looked into herself for a moment. Yes, Taylor thought. What about winning?

"Mr. President," Daisy said, "an outright victory would exist only at the extreme range of possibility. No matter how well the Seventh Cavalry and its supporting elements might perform, the numbers don't work out. A single regiment… can't win a war."

Oh Daisy, Daisy, Taylor thought. That s your problem. You don't understand faith. The ability to believe against the numbers, against the facts, against science and learned men. He believed that he had suddenly learned something very important about her, and he wished he could tell her. That she lacked only faith. That the world could be hers, if only she believed.

"In any case," Daisy went on, "we have to ask ourselves to what extent an outright victory would prove advantageous to the interests of the United States. Certainly, if the enemy wins, we lose access to key resources, while failing to deny those resources to the enemy — specifically, to the Japanese. Further, we lose influence. And prestige.

And, of indirect concern, the Islamic Union, the Iranians, and especially the rebels will continue their practice of massacring ethnic Slavs. Not a desirable outcome overall. However, should we 'win' outright, we might only be setting the Soviet Union up for continued problems — for which we would suddenly share responsibility. The Soviet empire simply cannot hold together in its present state. Further, a victorious Soviet Union would be less susceptible to our influence. We want to enhance their dependence on us in key spheres. And the spectacle of a U.S. ally undertaking bloody retaliations and repressions in post-rebellion Central Asia would not present a desirable picture to other clients of the United States. Fundamentally, a compromise agreement ending hostilities on terms economically advantageous to the United States would be the optimum solution."

"Miss Fitzgerald," the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said, in a voice of barely controlled anger, "your logic is very impressive. But let me tell you something both I and that colonel off in Siberia have had to learn the hard way. Victory is always advantageous. You can sort the rest of that shit out later."

"Well," the President said quickly, filling Taylor's monitor screen again, "we seem to have a divergence of views." Waters looked down at the ruins of his salad, mouth twisted up as though something had not tasted quite right. He raised his left eyebrow. "Colonel Taylor? Are you still with us?"

"Yes, sir," Taylor said immediately, snapping back to the present.

"Well, tell me. What do you think about this discussion?"

"Mr. President, my soldiers… don't picture themselves as fighting — or dying — for clever compromise agreements. They don't understand any of that. But they do understand the difference between victory and defeat, and from their position the difference is pretty clear-cut."

"Does that mean… you think we can win?"

Taylor made a face. "I honestly don't know. I just know that an unknown number of fine young soldiers are going to die tomorrow thinking that we can win. No, 'thinking' is the wrong word. Believing that we're going to win. Because I told them so. And they believed me."

The President pondered the little islands of lettuce shreds in his bowl. "Well…" he said, "I hope they're right. Thank you Colonel. I won't hold you up any longer. I'm sure you have plenty to do." The President looked out over the miles, searching for Taylor's eyes. "And good luck. To all of you."

Taylor panicked. He had wanted so badly to end this nonsense, to return to his troops. But now the thought that he might never see Daisy again and that they had ended on a note of enmity, however indirect, paralyzed him.

Just a glimpse. Somehow, some impossible how, a word. The monitor left the President. But it did not go dead. Instead, the heavy, almost swollen-looking face of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs appeared.

"George," he said, "just one last thing. When the hell are you going to get out of that Commie uniform? You look like hell."

Taylor knew he was supposed to smile. But he could not.

"Just before we lift off, sir," he said.

"Well, give them hell, George. And God bless."

"Thank you, sir."

And the screen went blank.

Daisy.

Daisy felt as though everyone in the room must have realized how distraught she had become. She had struggled to overcome her emotions, forcing herself to brief in a voice that was even more dispassionate than usual. But the words, as she spoke them, seemed to come out just short of her intentions, and she felt as though she could not quite manage her thoughts.

It was his fault. She had watched him on the monitor during his conversation with the President, aware that he could not see her, that he had no reason to be aware of her presence. And, listening to him, to his raw, direct voice that would never compete with the Bouquettes of the world, she had wanted to get down on her knees and beg the President to call it all off. The fate of the Soviet Union, the disposition of far-off minerals, could never be as important as this one decent man, with his antique notions about duty. As she talked in her turn, adorning the classified imagery on the monitors with professional terminology and icy judgment, she had felt as though she were condemning him, sending him to a certain death. The logic of politics and power, once so evident to her, now seemed like so much nonsense. It was only about people, after all. About men. And women. Who had found someone they just might love. Only to see them go, in the name of high-sounding foolishness. It was about George Taylor, with his pathetic face and his determination to do the right thing at any cost for a country whose citizens would shudder to look at him.

Was she punishing herself? Was it only a travesty of love? How on earth could she imagine for a moment that she loved that man? She had needed to turn off the lights and close her eyes, as well.

She liked him best when he held her, with her back small against his chest, and his strong arm cradling her breasts. Taylor, in his dress suit bought carelessly from some post-exchange rack, giving him the look of the world's most serious appliance salesman. The clown who brought a bottle of dessert wine for dinner.

How could she feel so much at the sight of such a man?

When he answered the President in those blunt, sensible words that made a mockery out of her analysis, her career, her fine education, she had only wanted to tell him that she was sorry, that she hadn't really meant it, that it was only that her thoughts and words would not come out clearly tonight.

He was not coming back. She knew it.

A demon inside her wanted to call out to him, right in front of the President and all of the old identical men who served him, to tell Taylor that, yes, she loved him, and she had loved him already on that last morning, but she had not had the strength, or the common sense, to tell him.

Then Taylor was gone, the communications link broken, and she was left with the blank monitors, and with Clifton Reynard Bouquette by her side.

The President was smiling, shaking his head. He glanced around the big table and tugged wearily at his tie.

"Well, gentlemen," he said happily, I suspect that this colonel of ours is going to strike genuine fear into the hearts of the enemy." He bobbed his head slightly, in amusement. "God knows, just looking at him scares the hell out of me."

Everyone laughed. Except Daisy. Beside her, Bouquette laughed loudest of all. Then he leaned in close to her, whispering:

"You're not going to make a fool of yourself, are you?"

9

The nursing mother crouched against the main gun housing of Babryshkin's tank, her small, emaciated face barely visible under the oversize winter hat. Her layers of scarves, sweaters, and coat appeared to weigh far more than she could possibly weigh herself, and the infant was barely perceptible amid the disorder of felt and wool and worn-out fur. A small leg kicked back, the way a weaning pup pushes out at space, trying to bury itself closer to its bitch, and the tiny mother renewed her grip. Babryshkin sensed that the woman was very young, and that she might have been rather attractive under other circumstances, but now her cheeks were chafed until they looked like the dry skin of an old woman, and her sunken eyes lacked focus. Now and then she spoke quietly to her other child, a boy of perhaps four years, who clung to her coat with vacant eyes. When Babryshkin had lifted the boy onto the tank, lice flurried up from his cap like spanked dust. But the boy seemed unaware of the pests. He simply assumed his place beside his mother and stared out across the frostbitten steppes. The only sign he gave of normalcy was the avidity with which he devoured the stale crackers Babryshkin had put into his small hand.

Babryshkin had found the woman and her children at the rear of the truncated refugee column just as his tanks caught up with the plodding survivors. The boy had been unable to walk, and the half-starved mother was struggling to carry both her infant and her son, accomplishing little more than dragging the boy a few paces at a time. No one offered to help her. The refugees trailing the column felt the breath of the enemy a bit too strongly on their backs, and each had his or her own personal misery. The world had gotten beyond charity.

At the scene of the massacre, Babryshkin had abandoned his resolve to maintain full combat readiness at all costs. Instead of growing harder, he found that his strength of purpose had peaked, and that his will was now on a steeply descending curve. He had ordered the survivors of the bloody ordeal loaded onto his vehicles, and his column had quickly taken on a ragged, undisciplined look. There was a pervasive sense, almost as strong as an odor that little more could be done. The ammunition was virtually gone. The fuel hardly sufficed to continue the retreat. Against the political officer's protests. Babryshkin had continued to load the sick and disabled onto his tanks, personnel carriers, and trucks throughout the morning's progress. If he could no longer defend them, he could at least carry them.

The turretless tanks had proved to have an unforeseen advantage under such conditions. Since only the narrow main gun housing rose above the flat deck, there was room for a greater load of human cargo than the older tanks could bear. Besides the young woman and her two children, an old man, two bent grandmothers and a sick teenaged girl cluttered the vehicle, hanging on to whatever bits of metal their gloved or rag-wrapped hands could grasp. The weather had turned very cold, and the air felt ready with early snow, but each of the passengers was glad for this opportunity to ride exposed to the wind. The alternative was to die by the side of the road.

Not everyone could, or would, be helped. They had come upon a grandmother, sitting off to the side of the road on a battered plastic suitcase, resting her bearded cheeks on her fists. Babryshkin had ordered his vehicle out of the line to pick her up, and he jumped off the fender to help her climb on board. But she hardly found Babryshkin worth a glance, and her expression showed that she did not relish being disturbed by such a fool.

"Little mother," Babryshkin said to her, "you can't stay here."

She briefly raised her eyes, then lowered them back to the vacant steppe.

"Far enough," she mumbled. "This is far enough."

There was no time to argue. And there were too many others who wanted to be saved. Babryshkin remounted his tank, shouting at the driver to work his way back into the formation. Behind him, the shrunken black figure sat on imperturbably, balled fists pressed up against her cheekbones.

The column's progress took them past blackened intervals of military vehicles that had been caught by enemy air strikes, by undamaged war machines that had run out of fuel and been abandoned, and past still more whose mechanisms had simply been overtaxed: the vehicular equivalents of starvation, stroke, or heart attack victims. Government vans and private cars, city buses and rusted motorbikes, farm tractors drawing carts, a carnival of wastage covered the dirt road cut through the steppes. Bodies lay here and there, dead of exposure, or hunger, perhaps of disease, or the victims of murderers who killed those who wandered too far from the mass in the darkness — looking for food, or money, or anything that might increase the killer's chance of survival, however slightly. A collection of ravaged tents marked the site where someone had attempted to establish an aid station. All pride was gone. The proud were dead. As Babryshkin's tanks grunted by, men and women simply continued to squat by the side of the road, emptying shriveled bowels, many of them obviously sick. Here and there, a husband jealously stood guard over his wife, but, overall, there was only a sense of collapse, of the absence of law or reason.

The cold air narrowed Babryshkin's eyes as he leaned out of the commander's hatch. The nursing mother reminded him of Valya, although his wife was not yet a mother and had told him frankly that she did not wish to become one. "Why saddle ourselves?" she had said. Babryshkin suspected that few men who really knew her would classify Valya as a genuinely good woman. She was selfish and dishonest. Yet, she was his wife. He loved her, and, now, he craved her. He felt that, if only he could speak to her now, he might share some of his newfound wisdom with her — how important it was to be satisfied with what one had, to be grateful for the chance to live in peace, to love each other. He had not found new words with which to reach her, yet, somehow, his fresh conviction would persuade her. How lucky they had been just to be able to lie down together in a warm bed, without the slightest thought of death. To lie down in each other's arms with the sure knowledge that morning would come with nothing more unpleasant than the need to rise a bit before the body was ready and to go work. He realized that, before witnessing the spectacle of all this helplessness, failure, and cheap mortality, he had never grasped the spectacular beauty of his life. Cares that once had seemed immense were nothing now. He had been surrounded by beauty, bathed in it, and he had been blind.

A desperate man tried to climb onto the tank ahead of Babryshkin's while the vehicle was still in motion. Unpracticed, the refugee immediately snared himself between the big roadwheels and the grinding track. The conscious watched helplessly as the machine devoured the man's legs below the knee, slamming him to the ground, then twisting him over and over before the vehicle could be halted.

The man lay openmouthed and openeyed in the gravel. He did not scream or cry, but propped himself up on his elbows, amazed. Two soldiers jumped from the vehicle, yanking off their belts to serve as tourniquets. The soldiers had seen plenty of wounds, and they were not shy. They felt quickly along the bloody rags of the man's trousers, searching for something firm amid the gore and riven bone. But the man simply eased back off his elbows, still silent and wide-eyed, utterly disbelieving. And he died. The soldiers dragged him a little way off the road, although it made no difference, then hurried back to their tank, wiping their hands on their coveralls, with Babryshkin screaming at them to hurry, since they were holding up the column.

Now and again, some of the refugees had to be forced off of the vehicles, usually because their pleas for food, when denied, turned aggressive. At other times, they were caught trying to steal — anything, from food or a protective mask to the nonsensical. One man even tried to choke a vehicle commander, without the least evident cause. He was a terribly strong man, perhaps a bit mad, and he had to be shot to prevent him from strangling the vehicle commander to death.

Once, a pair of Soviet gunships flew down over the endless kilometers of detritus, and Babryshkin waved excitedly, delighted at this sign that they were not completely alone, that they had not been entirely forgotten. He attempted to establish radio contact with the aircraft, but could not find the right frequency. The ugly machines circled twice around the march unit, then flew off at a dogleg, inscrutable.

The young mother had finished nursing, and Babryshkin felt it was allowable to look at her again. He wondered where her husband might be. Perhaps in some other military unit, fighting elsewhere along the front. Perhaps dead. But, if he was alive, Babryshkin sensed the intensity with which he must be worrying about his family now, wondering where they were, if they were safe.

Babryshkin leaned back toward the woman, who was clutching her infant in one arm, while simultaneously cradling her son and holding on to the gun housing with the other. He felt the need to say something to her, to reach out somehow, to reassure her.

He brought his face as close to hers as possible and could not tell whether he saw fear or simply emptiness in her eyes.

"Someday," he shouted above the roar of the engine, "someday all of this will seem like a bad dream, a story to tell your grandchildren."

The woman was slow to respond. Then Babryshkin imagined that he saw the ghost of a smile pass briefly over her lips.

He reached down into his hatch, to where his map case hung, and he drew out the tattered packet containing his last cigarettes. One of his sergeants had stripped them from the corpse of a rebel officer. He crouched to light one against the cold breeze, then held it out as though to insert it between the woman's lips.

Again, she seemed unable to respond at first. Finally, she shook her head, slightly, slowly, as though the machinery in her neck wanted oil. "No. Thank you."

The old man seated just behind her on the deck looked hungrily at the cigarette. Disappointed at the failure of his gesture, Babryshkin passed the smoke into the old man's quivering hand.

By the side of the road, a man and a woman struggled to drive along two sheep who had balked at the grumble from the armored vehicles. Babryshkin was amazed that the animals had not yet been butchered and eaten. Lucky sheep, he thought.

The dull, constant static in his headset sparked to life. "This is Angara." Babryshkin recognized the anxious voice of the air defense platoon leader. "We have aircraft approaching from the south."

"Enemy?"

"No identification reading. Assume hostiles.

"All stations, all stations," Babryshkin called. "Air alert. Disperse off the roadway. Air alert. "

At his command, his driver turned the steel monster on to the left, scattering the two sheep. Their owners ran after them, openmouthed. Soon, Babryshkin thought, they would have other, greater worries.

"Don protective masks," Babryshkin shouted into the headset mike. "Seal all vehicles." He tugged hastily at the carrier of his mask. The refugees mounted on the vehicle's deck looked at him with fear, their faces vividly alive. He imagined that they were accusing him, as he pulled the mask over his head, temporarily hiding from their sight. There was no alternative. There was no point in dying out of sheer sympathy.

The unclean mask stank in his nostrils. Looking around him, he could see his vehicles churning off into the steppe, spreading out to offer as difficult a target area as possible.

No more time. He could see the dark specks of the enemy planes, popping up before entering their attack profile. They were aiming straight for the column.

There was nothing else to be done. The surviving air defense gunners had no more missiles. All they could do was to open up with their last belts of automatic weapons ammunition, which was as useless as trying to shoot down the sky itself.

All around, hatch covers slammed shut, leaving bewildered refugees stranded on the vehicle decks. Some of the civilians leapt to the ground, running off into the fields with their last reserves of strength, imagining that there might be someplace to hide, or that they might have time to distance themselves from the military targets. Babryshkin caught a glimpse of a struggle in the back of one of the infantry fighting vehicles as soldiers fought to clear away enough of the refugees to close the troop hatches. A burly civilian grabbed a soldier's mask, and shots rang out.

No time.

Without making a conscious decision, Babryshkin grabbed the woman's little boy, tearing him away from her. He forced the child wildly down into the belly of the tank. Then he pulled at the woman.

She began to resist, not understanding. Swatting and staring in horror at the creature in the bug-eyed mask.

Babryshkin launched himself out of the hatch as the planes grew larger on the horizon. He slapped the woman on the side of the head, then lifted her and the infant away from the gun housing.

The planes were hurtling down into the attack, clearly recognizable as fighter-bombers now.

"Come on," Babryshkin bellowed through the voice filter of the mask. He manhandled the woman over to the hatch and shoved her down inside, as though he were stuffing rags into a pipe. The other refugees watched in terror, struggling to hold on to the lurching vehicle as the driver maneuvered out into the steppe.

No room. No time.

Babryshkin kicked the woman's back downward with the flat of his boots, dropping in on top of her, kicking her out of the way. She tumbled to the floor of the vehicle's interior, attempting to wrap herself protectively around her infant. Babryshkin could hear the little boy screaming, even over the engine roar and through the seal of the protective mask.

He slammed the hatch cover down behind him, fumbling to seal it. The last thing he heard before shutting the compartment was the huge scream of the jets.

"Overpressure on," he shrieked into the intercom, aching to be heard through the muffle of his mask's voice-mitter. He slapped at the panel of switches in front of him.

One more time, just one more time. He prayed that the vehicle's overpressure system would function. He didn't care what would come afterward, that was too far away. He only wanted to survive this immediate threat. He knew the filters were worn, and the vehicle had taken a terrible beating. Death could come in an instant. Irresistible.

He felt a shudder through the metal walls. Then another.

Bombs.

Perhaps it would be a purely conventional attack, without chemical weaponry.

But he doubted it. The chemical strikes had become too commonplace. The enemy had become addicted to them, having grasped the marvelous economy of such weapons.

He tried to look out through his optics. But it was difficult with the mask on. The tank lurched over rough ground, and the bouncing horizon filled with smoke and dust.

The first test would be whether the woman and her children lived. If they survived, the overpressure system was still functional.

The boy continued to scream. But that was a good sign. Nerve gas victims did not scream. They just died.

Radio call. Hard to hear, hard to hear.

"This is Kama."

"I'm listening," Babryshkin said, dispensing with call signs, trying to keep everything as simple as possible with the mask on.

"This is Kama. Chemical strike, chemical strike. Kama was the last surviving chemical reconnaissance vehicle in the shrunken unit.

"What kind of agent?" Babryshkin demanded of the radio, already envisioning the scene that would await him when he unsealed his hatch. Nothing helped, there was nothing you could do.

"No reading yet. My remote's out. I just read hot."

"Acknowledged."

"This is Angara," the air defender jumped in. "They're leaving. Looks like just one pass."

The voice sounded too clear.

"Do you have your goddamned mask on?" Babryshkin demanded.

"No… no, we were engaging the enemy. We've got a good seal on the vehicles, and—"

"Get your mask on, you stupid bastard. I don't want any unnecessary casualties. Do you hear me?"

No answer. His nerves were going. He had stepped on the other man's transmission. They had merely canceled each other out. He was forgetting the most basic things. He needed to rest.

"All stations," Babryshkin said, enunciating slowly and carefully. "Report in order of your call signs."

This was the test. How many more call signs would have disappeared?

The overpressure system had worked. The woman and her children were still breathing on the floor of the crew compartment. The boy screamed without stopping, making up for his earlier silence. Babryshkin was about to command the woman to shut the brat up, when the skewed angle of the boy's arm caught his eye, evident even through the camouflage of his winter coat.

Nothing to be done. At least the boy was alive. Arms could be set. The woman looked up at Babryshkin, her eyes near madness. Her forehead was bleeding. She had protected her infant in the fall, not herself. A good mother. Hardly more than a child herself.

He listened as his subordinates reported in. The voices were businesslike, if weary and a bit slurred. Everything was reduced to a matter of routine.

The reporting sequence broke. Another crew gone.

Babryshkin spoke into the intercom, ordering his driver to turn back toward the road. Then he ordered the radio reporting to resume at the next sequence number.

Unexpectedly, his vehicle jerked to a halt. The engine was still running, however, and Babryshkin did not understand what was happening.

"Wait," he told the radio net. Then he switched to the intercom. "Why in the hell did you stop? I told you to get back on the road."

The driver mumbled something, unintelligible through the protective mask.

"I asked you why the hell we've stopped, goddamnit," Babryshkin barked.

"I can't…" the driver said in a flat voice.

"What do you mean, you can't? Are you crazy?"

"I can't," the driver repeated. "I'd have to drive over them."

What in the hell are you talking about?" Babryshkin demanded, putting the eye piece of his protective mask as close to his optics as he could.

The driver did not need to answer. Where there had been a plodding army of humanity a few minutes before, there was only a litter of dark, fallen shapes. No hysteria, no struggling, no shivering movements of the wounded, not the least evidence of suffering. Only stillness, except where scattered military vehicles continued their slow, aimless maneuvers, like riderless horses on an antique battlefield.

The only thing that still held the power to shock Babryshkin was the ease with which death came. The casual quickness. Whether to the man whose legs had so unexpectedly been gobbled by a tank, or to this stilled multitude. No allowance for struggle, for passion, for heroism. There was barely time for cowardice.

They said that the new nerve gases were humane weapons. They killed their victims so swiftly. And, within minutes, they dissipated back into the atmosphere, grown completely harmless.

Babryshkin radioed to the chemical defense officer. Do you have a definite reading at this time?"

"This is Kama. Superfast nerve, type Sh-M. It's already gone. I've unmasked myself."

Babryshkin shook his head at the universe. Then he tugged at his mask, feeling the sudden wetness as the rubber lifted away from his skin. He shook the mask out, then tucked it methodically into its carrier.

"Hold in place," he ordered his driver. "I'm going to dismount." But first he reentered the radio net. "All stations. All clear, all clear." He paused for just a moment, searching for the right words. When he could not find them, he simply said, "Clean off your vehicles." Then he unlocked his hatch and climbed out.

He was lucky. There wasn't so much dirty work. All of his passengers had tumbled from the maneuvering tank in their struggles with death, save for the old man, who still lay coddled against the rear of the gun housing, burned-out cigarette stub in his hand. Babryshkin got him under the armpits and rolled him off the side of the tank.

There was nothing you could do. He stood up, drinking in the cold, harmless air. As far as he could see, nothing remained alive in the roadway. Worse than the plague, he thought. Far worse. No act of God.

Something white caught his eye in the middle distance. At first, he was baffled. Then he recognized the carcasses of the two sheep that had been driven from God knew where.

Pointless.

Suddenly, a scream slashed out at the world, piercing, even over the idle of the big tank engine. Babryshkin looked around.

The woman whose life he had saved was standing up in the commander's hatch, screaming at the panorama with a ferocity that hurt in the listener's throat.

Well, at least she's got a voice to scream with, Babryshkin thought, glad even of this much evidence of life.

10

Ryder sat in the sparsely furnished office outside of the interrogation block, drinking gray coffee and waiting for his Soviet counterpart to return. Although he had drunk no alcohol the night before, he felt hungover. The captain billeted in the next hotel room had been hammering one of the Russian bar girls all night, with an energy that was as impressive as it was annoying. For hours, Ryder had lain awake as his neighbor's bed thumped against the wall. Now and then, the captain's partner would call out in a language Ryder did not understand, but whose message was unmistakable, and Ryder's thoughts would return to his wife, Jennifer, who refused to be called Jenny, and who had always been so silent in the bedroom. Ryder suspected that his old friend had been right when he declared that Ryder was biologically programmed to end up with the wrong women, but Ryder felt no malice toward his wife. Lying there in the Moscow night, he simply missed her, without understanding exactly why. The one affair in which he had indulged since his divorce the year before had been premature and unmemorable, and had not made the least impression on the lingering image of his wife-Ryder hoped she was happy now, with her new husband who promised to be all that he had failed to be.

Finally, Ryder had given up trying to sleep. Propping himself up, he drew his field computer from the shoulder holster slung over the bedpost. The tiny machine lit up at the electronically recognizable touch of Ryder's fingers, unable to spring to life under any other hand, unable to share its secrets with anyone else. It was almost as if the machine was relieved at his touch, as though it, too, had been made restless by the lions in the next room. Ryder called up a program he had been working on in Meiji, the Japanese military-industrial computer language, and he strummed through its odd music until he came to the problem that had been annoying him for days. Then the sexual thunder exploded again.

The problem between Ryder and his wife had not been physical disappointment. If anything, he had shown the greater appetite and resourcefulness, and he had never tired of her. But Jennifer had married him as a very promising graduate student in one of the elite new government-funded programs, not as a soldier. Ryder had been specializing in computer science and Japanese, along with a variety of specialized Japanese computer languages. It was a program open only to the brightest, and although it called for four years of military service after graduation, the longterm prospects were fantastic. American industry was screaming for employees with such qualifications, and Jennifer had married that particular future, while Ryder had been delighted to marry such a smart, beautiful, loving girl. Her parents had died in the plague years, she was alone, and he imagined that he would fill a terrible need in her life.

The problems had begun in the Army. Although Ryder's specialty pay as a warrant officer interrogator put his income above that of the average line major, Jennifer could not accustom herself to what she perceived as their low financial and social status. Her behavior was not the behavior of the physically enthusiastic college girl he had married. In private, then, later, in public, when she was drunk, she took to calling him Pretty Boy. She said that she should have married a man, someone who knew how to get ahead in the world, and not a child.

Ryder had actually looked in the mirror one night when Jennifer did not come home, wondering at his face, trying to understand how a man looked and what it meant. He had never cared much about his appearance. But the girls back home in Hancock, Nebraska, had cared, as had the wonderful, sun-washed girls of Stanford University a bit later on. There had always been girls, to the envy of his friends, who could not believe he would not take advantage of every last opportunity, who were utterly baffled by his inclination to treat girls and, later, women as people. "You're nuts," his old friend told him. "You're crazy. You treat them too good. If you just learn to treat them like shit, they spend their lives on their knees with their mouths open. Jeff, I swear, you're biologically programmed to end up with the wrong…"

He wanted to be a good man, to behave responsibly and decently toward women and toward other men. And the more Jennifer complained and threatened, the more attractive his military service became to him. On his own, he would never have dreamed of joining the Army. But the financial support for his attendance at the university had allowed him to study hard at a good school, instead of working his way through a mediocre one. He had initially regarded his term of required military service as an obligation to be fulfilled, nothing more. But he found the work satisfied him, filling him with a sense of worth he knew he would never find in Jennifer's dreamworld of corporations and credit cards. So he betrayed her, her trust, her faith. When he told her he intended to remain in the Army, she paled. Then she began to scream, cursing him with a vividness for which her relatively demure conduct in the bedroom had not prepared him. She swept her arm across the nearest countertop, hurling glass, wood and cork, dried flowers, and magazines across the room. Then she left, without real argument and without a coat.

She returned the next day but did not speak to him. Yet, their lives slowly seemed to normalize. Just before he went out on maneuvers, she even slept with him again. She seemed to be trying. Then, in the middle of the war games, he had the opportunity to return to main post for a few hours, and he phoned her, asking her to meet him in the cafeteria. She did. And she told him she was leaving him, just as he was biting into a slice of pizza.

Well, Ryder told himself, Moscow was an easy enough city in which to become depressed. The hotel rooms were never quite clean, the food was difficult to get down, and the daily ride to and from the fabled faded building that housed KGB headquarters led through dishwater gray streets where no one ever smiled. Not much to smile about, of course. From what little Ryder had seen of their lives, these people lived under conditions an American would find absolutely intolerable. On top of that, the war was going very badly for them.

Ryder felt sorry for the Russians. He was sorry that any man or woman had to live in so gray a world, and he yearned to make a professional contribution to the joint U.S.-Soviet effort, to somehow make things better. But, thus far, the joint interrogation sessions, although revealing as to Soviet capabilities, had produced little of value concerning the enemy.

Ryder took another sip of the thin, bitter coffee to clear his head and glanced again at the subject file. He had almost memorized the data. The case was a windfall, a miracle of good luck — but it promised to be tough going, perhaps the most important and difficult interrogation in which he had ever been involved. The subject was potentially very lucrative, but there would be layers of defenses. And time was critical. The Soviets were collapsing, and Ryder had just learned that morning, at the prebreakfast U.S. staff meeting, that the Seventh Cavalry, who were out in the thick of things beyond the Urals, were going to be committed early. None of the officers of the Tenth Cavalry, all military intelligence specialists, had been happy to hear that. Men had mumbled through their hangovers, still wearing the smell of women with whom they were not supposed to be fraternizing. The speedup in events meant that carefully plotted work schedules had to be discarded and that the officers, got up in a poor imitation of businessman's dress, would have to wake up properly and scramble to get some results with their well-meaning but hopelessly bureaucratic Soviet counterparts.

Ryder knew he had been lucky in at least one regard. Nick Savitsky, his counterpart interrogator, seemed to be completely open, and he was relatively flexible for a Soviet, anxious to learn about the American methods. Of course, much of that was simply the desire to gain information for the KGB files — but Ryder was doing the same for the U.S. It was the nature of the business.

Ryder was worried about Savitsky today, however. The subject they were going to work on had the potential of opening up the enemy's entire infrastructure. But you had to go delicately, patiently. Savitsky, like the other Soviets Ryder had encountered, did not always seem to understand that. They were given to excesses that sometimes ruined a subject's ability to respond. A Soviet interrogation, no matter how sophisticated, always had an air of violence about it, and there was a tendency to mishandle a subject severely, without really thinking through the consequences. He had already seen Savitsky in one fit of vengeful fury.

The door opened, and Savitsky came in, smiling, ill-shaven.

"Good morning, Jeff," he said, pronouncing the name as "Cheff." He dropped into a chair just opposite Ryder. "And how are things?"

Usually, the two men worked in English, which Savitsky spoke reasonably well. For highly technical exchanges, they switched to Japanese, but Savitsky was less comfortable in that language than was Ryder.

"Horrasho," Ryder replied, using one of his half-dozen words of Russian. He had been told that the word meant "very good." It was a very popular word with the officers of the Tenth Cavalry, who liked to pronounce it "whore-show," and regularly applied it to the nightly follies in the hotel bar.

"Today will be a big day," Savitsky said, helping himself to the coffee, "an important day." Ryder had learned that the coffee was put there each morning especially for him, and its presence was a treat for Savitsky, who never made a move toward the interrogation chamber until they had finished each last sip. Ryder had also noted that Savitsky would quietly wrap the used grounds in newspaper and slip them into his briefcase.

Ryder watched for a moment as the Russian thickened his coffee with teaspoon after teaspoon of sugar.

"Nick," he said, trying to sound nonchalant, "I had an idea last night about how to approach this case. I think I've got an angle—"

"Don't worry, don't worry," Savitsky interrupted. "Today — everything is the Russian way. I will show you something. A thing you have not seen." Savitsky smiled, either at the thought of the interrogation or at the piercing warmth of the coffee. "You will like it, I know." The Russian cradled his chipped cup in red hands, and nodded his head happily. "You must trust me."

Oh, shit, Ryder thought.

But Nick was in high spirits. "I have learned so much from you, my friend. You Americans… you Americans… always with such technology perfection. But today, I am showing you something splendid. Something I know you have not seen." The Russian laughed slightly into the steam from his cup. "All of your American comrades will have a great interest."

Ryder let it go for the moment. He did not want to do anything to spoil the cooperation between the two of them. But neither did he wish to waste a subject of such incredible possibilities. He decided to wait, at least until things threatened to get out of hand. If nothing else, he was anxious just to see the subject. Until now, the Soviets had played this one close to the chest.

Nick drained the last of his coffee, his facial expression moving from near ecstasy to regret.

"Everything is very good," he told Ryder. "Now we will go to work."

Ryder followed the Soviet through the cramped maze of hallways and security barriers that was slowly becoming familiar. Corridors as decayed and dank as an inner-city school after hours, stinking of disinfectant and age. Standard locking systems, not all of which worked the first time Savitsky tried them. Sometimes the vault doors were simply propped open, or minded by an inside guard. Framed photographs on the walls showed mostly unimportant men, since the years of infighting had stripped the walls of the readily recognizable faces. Bad air, poor light. An old woman mopping the floor with formidable slowness.

The last security door slammed shut behind the two men.

They followed a short hallway that was cluttered with electronics in various stages of disassembly, then turned into a small room that resembled the inside of a recording studio's control booth. The walls and counters were covered with racks of artificial-intelligence terminals, direct-function computers, environmental controls, recording and auto-translating devices — the tools of the contemporary interrogator's trade. Only these were all a bit nicked or chipped. There was a smell of old burned-out wires, and not all of the monitor lights worked. Much of the equipment was a generation out of date, while the most modem gear was of European or even U.S. manufacture. The Soviets had specialized in the areas of electronic translation, inferential patterning, and specialized software, and one of Ryder's superiors had compared them to brilliant tacticians who were forced to rely on foreign weaponry.

A long glass window covered most of one wall. To anyone out in the interrogation chamber, the window appeared to be a mirror, but from Ryder's position in the musty booth he could look out on the shadowy forms of the "application room." The design was a holdover from the old days, and the room remained so dark that he could not yet see the subject. He waited impatiently for Savitsky to turn up the lighting.

"The subject is already wired into our system," Savitsky said, as he touched over the control panel in the bad light. "We'll double-check, as you Americans like to say. But you will see. Everything is fine. Today, everyone is anxious to see how our performance will be." Savitsky turned his shadowy face toward Ryder. "Today, for the first time, I have received a direct call from the Kremlin. There is very much interest."

"I hope they're not too impatient," Ryder said. "This could take time."

Savitsky laughed slightly. It was a friendly laugh, that of a confident man. "But that is the surprise," he said. "Soon you will see. A very big surprise for our American friends."

Ryder did not know how to respond. This was so important. If any sort of foolishness were allowed to destroy the utility of the subject, an enormous opportunity would go to waste.

Turn up the damned lights, Ryder thought. Let me see. As if responding to Ryder's thoughts, Savitsky flipped a row of switches. Beyond the big window, spotlights came up to scour an electronic operating room with a sterile white glare. Despite the complicated disorder of the interrogation chamber, with its cascades of wires that connected one clutter of electronics to the next, Ryder focused immediately on the subject.

"Christ," he said to Savitsky, in honest surprise. "I expected…"

Savitsky laughed. "Amazing, isn't it?"

"Smaller than I thought, for one thing. Much smaller."

Savitsky stood with his arms folded across his chest in satisfaction. "Remarkable, I think. You know, such… inconspicuity — is that what you say?"

"Inconspicuousness."

"Yes. Inconspicuousness. How easily overlooked. It was only pure luck that a specialist was on the scene."

Ryder shook his head. It really was amazing.

"Well, my friend," Savitsky said, "shall we go out and have a closer look?"

Ryder followed the Soviet out of the control booth, almost stepping on the man's heels in his excitement. His sole interest now was the subject, and he almost tripped over a coil of wires.

Savitsky made straight for the central operating table, and he hovered over the subject for a moment, waiting for Ryder to come up beside him. Ryder remained so astonished that he felt almost as though he were out of breath. It truly was amazing. Unless the Soviets had made some sort of mistake, unless this wasn't the great brain after all.

But all of Ryder's professional instincts told him that this was the genuine article, that there had been no mistake, and that the Japanese were still the best at some things, no matter how broadly U.S. technology had struggled to come back. The electronic intelligence brain that processed and stored all of the data necessary to command and control vast stretches of the front fit into a solid black brick little larger than a man's wallet.

"My God," Ryder said. "I thought… it would be at least the size of a suitcase."

"Yes," Savitsky agreed. "It's frightening. Had you been able to combine the power of every supercomputer in the world at the turn of the century, the power would not have approached… such a power as resides in this device."

Ryder possessed access to the latest classified research in the States, as well as to intelligence files on foreign developments. But no one had anticipated that the process of miniaturization had gone this far. The Japanese had pulled off another surprise, and it worried Ryder. What else might they have in store?

"It was really pure luck," Savitsky stressed, as though he still could not quite believe it himself. "Perhaps the only luck we have had in this war. Not only did we not shoot down the enemy, our systems did not even detect him. The enemy command ship experienced the simplest of mechanical malfunctions. Imagine, my friend. One of the most sophisticated tactical-operational airborne command centers in the Japanese inventory… dropping from the sky because a bolt came loose or a washer disintegrated. Such wonderful luck. Had the aircraft experienced an electronic problem, the brain would have destroyed itself to prevent capture. Computer suicide."

"There may still be active self-destruct mechanisms built into it," Ryder said, in warning.

Savitsky shrugged. "Of course it is possible. But the electronic cradle in which we have placed the subject is a good mimic. How would an American say it? 'Reflexively imitative.' The cradle continues to assure the subject that it is a part of the system for which it was designed. No matter what happens."

"And…" Ryder began carefully, "what's going to happen, Nick?"

Nick smiled. "You'll see."

Ryder stared down at the tiny brain. How on earth were the Soviets going to attack this problem? They were good.

But Ryder had yet to see them manage anything at the level of sophistication required to overcome the powerful counter-intrusion mechanisms such a system would possess.

"You know," Ryder said, "I feel almost solemn. Maybe humbled' would be a better way to say it. To stand in the presence of an intelligence so great." He put his hands in his pockets, as if to prevent himself from reaching out just to touch the device one time, the way a man might feel compelled to touch a masterpiece of art. "I don't know. I didn't get much sleep last night. But… I could swear it knows we're here. That it senses us."

Savitsky just continued to smile. "Oh," he said brightly. "It will know we're here. In a manner of speaking."

"Nick," Ryder said, choosing his words carefully, "I don't want to blow this. I mean, we can't afford to… make any mistakes. There is… a primary computer system… of which you may not be aware. It's in the United States, in Colorado. We could connect it to this. It's possible, I'd just need approval, and—"

Savitsky's smile withered slightly, like a flower at the first light hint of frost. "Perhaps that will be necessary," he said. "Later. But I think you will see… that we are not so incapable." Then his smile returned. "Come," he said. "Let's get to work."

The Soviet turned with an air of decision, heading back for the control booth. It was difficult for Ryder to leave the proximity of the brain. He wished he could simply slip it into his pocket and take it away. To where it would be safe. From foolishness.

"Come on," Savitsky called. "I want to show you something, Jeff."

Ryder moved heavily now, the sleepless night returning to haunt him after the flare of excitement he had just experienced. He stepped over electronic switching boxes and loose jacks, more of the weapons of the modem interrogator. In a moment, he was back beside the Soviet in the control booth.

"Take a look at this," Savitsky said.

Ryder glanced after Savitsky's directing hand. Nothing much. An antique-looking device of the sort that was used to measure cardiac waves or earthquakes. A crude high-resolution screen of a type no longer used in the United States. Manual controls. Knobs.

"That looks interesting," Ryder lied. "What is it?"

Savitsky waited before answering. He looked into Ryder's eyes in the weak light, and Ryder could sense a new, weighty sobriety in the man.

"It's a pain machine."

"What?"

"A pain machine." Upon repetition, the Soviet s tone had lost its heaviness, becoming almost nonchalant. But Ryder sensed that the man was still serious. As serious as possible. "You're the first outsider to be let in on this… development." Savitsky smiled slowly, as if his facial muscles had become very cold. "It's a mark of honor."

Ryder did not understand. "What does it do, exactly?"

Ryder sensed the faintest air of maliciousness about the Soviet now. It was his turn, after a host of casual humiliations at the gold-plated hands of the Americans. "It occurred to us some years ago, that… interesting possibilities might come into existence, as artificial intelligence systems and their corollaries became more sophisticated. That, to say it in simple words, these devices would develop more and more of a resembling — is that the right word?"

"Resemblance?"

"Yes. More of a resemblance to the human animal. Consequently, they might also develop the same sort of vulnerabilities as the human being. It occurred to us that there must be some way in which a computer could be made to feel pain." Savitsky considered his words for a moment. "The electronic equivalent of pain, to be most exact."

Ryder slowly moved his hands together in front of his hips, interlacing the fingers, tapping his thumbs. Waiting for information. The concept was utterly foreign to him. He looked at Savitsky.

"Of course," the Soviet continued, "it's not 'true' physical pain, as you and I would know it. Just as the computer does not perceive the physical environment as we see it.

"I am speaking of simulated pain, for a simulated mind."

Savitsky examined his American counterpart's reaction. A small, hard smile tightened his lips. "And it works."

The gloomy control booth, with its odor of charred wires, had taken on an eerie atmosphere for Ryder. The Soviet was talking about an entirely new dimension of thought in a field where Ryder considered himself competent, and very well-informed. On one hand, Savitsky's speech sounded as silly as a tale about witches and ghouls, while, on the other, the man's voice carried an unmistakable message of veracity, of confidence. Ryder tried to think through at least the immediate ramifications, but his mind kept jumbling with questions of possibility.

"Your… approach," Ryder said. "It can't destroy the subject, can it?"

Savitsky's voice was merely businesslike. "We haven't had that problem with the latest variant of our system. As you can imagine, my friend, there has been some trial and error. We found that machines can no more tolerate unlimited amounts of pain than can the human animal. And, you might say, some machines have weaker hearts than others. Just like men."

"Have you ever tried it on so sophisticated a system?"

Savitsky looked at him in surprise. "Of course not. We don't possess such a system."

Of course not. Foolish question. "Nick, I'm honestly… concerned. I don't want to waste this opportunity."

The Soviet began to lose his patience. "And what, then, is the American solution? What is your alternative? Weeks of trial and error? The cautious stripping of logic layer after logic layer, like peeling an onion that has no end? My country doesn't have weeks. We… may not have days." The anger went out of Savitsky's voice, and he looked away from Ryder, staring off through the two-way mirror, perhaps staring at a battlefield thousands of kilometers away. "There is no time," he said.

No, Ryder thought. Savitsky was right. There was no time. He remembered the morning briefing. The Seventh Cavalry about to be committed to battle. A world in collapse. And he had been thinking like a bureaucrat.

"You're right," Ryder told the Soviet. "Let's see what you can do."

The two men worked briskly, side by side, readying the banks of interrogation support computers. The system was operating on Meiji. In less than a second, the machines could ask more questions than had all of the human interrogators in preautomation history, and they could make their inquiries with a precision denied to human speech.

Savitsky adjusted the lighting out in the interrogation chamber so that the harshest spots shone down directly on the subject. The electronic jungle that filled the room receded into an artificial night out of which peered dozens of tiny colored eyes.

"Ready?" Savitsky asked.

Ryder nodded in agreement.

The process would begin with logical queries on the most elementary level, trying to get the subject to agree to propositions on the order of two plus two equals four. The complexity was not important. The point was to compromise the subject's isolation, to get a hook in, to induce interaction. The first stage was normally the most difficult. Working in through the security barriers and buffers, it could take weeks to get a military computer to concur with the most basic propositions. But, once you broke them down, the data came pouring out.

"Query bank on. Autobuffers active."

In front of them the green lines on the "pain" monitor flowed smoothly, ready to register the subject's reaction.

Looking at Savitsky's profile, Ryder was surprised to see jewels of sweat shining on the man's upper lip. The Soviet was nervous, after all.

Savitsky twisted a dial that might have been salvaged from an antique television set of the sort Ryder remembered from his grandmother's living room, where the device had delivered the world to a child snowed in on the Nebraska prairie.

The lines jumped on the response meter. The bright movement was startling in the darkness, and Ryder reacted as though he himself had received a slight shock.

The language flow reader registered a negative response. Savitsky quickly turned the "pain" back down, and the green lines settled, trembling for just a moment, then resuming their smooth, flat flow.

"Well," Savitsky said. "Now we try again."

He gave the dial a sharp turn.

The green lines fractured into jagged ridges and valleys, straining toward the borders of the monitor. But the interrogation support computers continued to report negative interaction.

Perspiration gleamed on Savitsky's forehead. He turned the control back to its zero position, and said, "You know, when I was beginning my training, so many years ago, everything started with the theory of interrogating humans. I had not yet specialized in automation. That came later. Anyway, they told us that the breakdowns often came very suddenly, that it was important not to feel despair. You might think, oh, I am never going to break this subject. But you had only to persist. Because, in the end, everyone broke." The Soviet stared out through the window, to where the miniature electronic brain lay still under the spotlights. "It will be interesting to see if the same holds true for machines."

Ryder followed his counterpart's stare. Certainly, there had been no visible change in the subject. Just a small, obviously inanimate black rectangle that looked as though it had been hewn from slate. Yet, he imagined that something about it had altered.

You need a good night's sleep tonight, he told himself.

"I'm going to break this bastard," Savitsky said, his voice full of renewed energy. It was unmistakably the energy of anger.

The Soviet twisted the dial again, jacking up the intensity well beyond the previous level. Whatever the machine was doing, Ryder only hoped that it would not destroy the captive treasure for nothing. In the name of some arcane mumbo jumbo.

The green lines on the monitor went wild. There was, of course, no sign of movement, no physical reaction from the subject. But Ryder suddenly felt something unacceptable in the atmosphere, a change that he could not put into words but that felt distinctly unpleasant and intense.

The unexpected flashing of the language flow reader, where an interrogation's results were reported, made Ryder jump.

The screen merely read, "Unintelligible response."

But that was where it started. It was the beginning of interaction, a sign of life.

"Jesus Christ," Ryder said. "You're getting something, Nick."

Beside him, the Soviet was breathing as heavily as if he had been delivering blows to a victim's head. He stared at Ryder as though he barely recognized him. Then he seemed to wake, and he turned the system's power down once again. The green lines calmed, but never quite regained their earlier straightness. They appeared to be shivering.

"I wonder," Savitsky said, "if our computers could understand the nature of a scream."

He twisted the dial again, sharply. With a grunting noise that was almost a growl, he wrenched it all the way around, focusing on the captured computer brain out on the interrogation table with something that resembled hatred. He kept his hand tightly fixed to the control, as though he might be able to force just a bit more power out of it that way.

The green lines on the "pain" register rebounded off the upper and lower limits of the screen.

It could not be true. Ryder refused to let himself believe it. It was only the result of too little sleep and bad nerves, of allowing oneself to become too emotional. It was crazy. But he could not help feeling that something was suffering.

Tonight, he promised himself, he wouldn't be such a stick-in-the-mud. He needed a few beers. To relax. To sleep.

Machines, Ryder told himself, do not feel pain. This is absurd.

Savitsky turned the dial down as though he were going to give the captured computer a respite, then, without warning, he quickly turned the intensity up to the maximum degree again.

Ryder felt an unexpected urge to reach out and halt the work of the other man's hand. Until he could get a grip on himself, sort things out.

You silly bastard, he told himself. It's just a machine.

And machines don't suffer.

Savitsky ignored him now. The Soviet was spitting out a litany of Russian words that could only be obscenities. He had bent himself over the control panel in an attitude of such tension and fury that Ryder expected the man to lash out with his fists.

The monitor registered a craze of green lines.

There is pain in these rooms, Ryder thought. He tried to catch himself, to tell himself yet again that machines do not feel pain, but as he watched the tiny captive brain he imagined he was watching a grimacing, sweating, agonizing thing.

He lifted his hand toward Savitsky, whose face had become almost unrecognizable.

Suddenly, the entire bank of computers whirled to life. The eruption of corollary light from monitors and flow screens indicated that the machines were working frantically, pushed nearly to their capacity. The control booth dazzled with light issuing from all angles in staccato bursts.

Savitsky remained bent over the dial, covering it with hands like claws.

The main language flow reader began to flash, announcing a message from another world. Then the flow of characters began, in the peculiar language of top-end Japanese computers, repeating the same simple message over and over again:

"Please. Stop."

The data take was so voluminous that it quickly overloaded several of the Soviet storage reservoirs, and it kept coming, a deluge of information. But the two interrogators gave no sign of elation. They simply sat in the control booth without speaking to each other, without even acknowledging the other's presence. Each man was trapped in his own private weariness, his own confusion. Soon, linkages between data banks would need to be established, and superiors would need to be informed. The vast military bureaucracies would need to be moved to take advantage of the incredible range of opportunities that now presented themselves. But neither man was quite ready to start.

Finally, Ryder forced himself to climb out of the theoretical swamp through which he had been slopping, to consider the practical applications. There was a possibility of literally taking the enemy's war away from them. Their artillery could be directed to fire automatically on their own positions, their aircraft could be directed to attack their own troops. An entirely false intelligence picture could be painted for the enemy commander, lulling him to sleep until it was too late. The possible variations were endless. And there was only one catch: someone would have to sit down at a fully operative Japanese command console — the higher the level, the better — to infiltrate their network.

Ryder was confident. Nothing seemed impossible anymore. He felt his energy returning, compounding. He began to think about the best way to present the information to his superiors, to help them see the full possibilities, to get things going.

"Nick," he said. When Savitsky did not respond, Ryder touched the man's knee. "Nick, we've got to get moving."

The Soviet snorted. He looked exhausted, as if he had not slept for days, for years. He had given everything he had, and now he sat drained, his tunic sweat-soaked.

There would be a thousand problems, Ryder realized. But he was confident that each could be solved.

Savitsky blinked as though something was bothering his eyes, then he looked away. His limbs, his hands appeared lifeless.

"Yes," he said.

Looking at his weary companion, Ryder suddenly had a sense of things far greater than any single man, of things beyond words, of worlds in motion and the power of history. The hour of the Americans had come.

11

General Noburu Kabata sipped his Scotch, marveling at his unhappiness. Professionally, he had every reason to be pleased. The offensive continued to make splendid progress. The Soviets were all but finished east of the Urals, and they were in serious trouble between the Urals and the Caucasus. None of the problems within the friendly forces appeared insurmountable, and there was no apparent reason why all of the military goals of the operation should not be fulfilled. This was a time for joy or, at least, for satisfaction. For, even though his status was nominally that of a contract adviser to the Islamic Union and the government of Iran, this was his operation, the highlight of his career, and a triumph for Japanese policy. Yet, here he was drinking Scotch on an empty stomach, in the morning.

His father would not have approved. His father, who had pushed his eldest son to become a master of the golf club, rather than of the sword, as had been the family tradition. In Japan, he remembered his father saying, there was nothing more important than the ability to play a good round of golf — even for a general. And he remembered the vacation on which he had accompanied his father, so very many years before, to the golf courses of Pebble Beach, in California. He remembered the perfect greens along the stony, splashing coast, the remarkable private homes set among the cypresses, and his father's quiet comment that someday these careless, irresponsible Americans would be their servants.

His father had loved Scotch. He had trained himself to appreciate it, just as he later conditioned his son to the gentleman's drink of choice. So much was handed down. The tradition of bespoke suits from H. Huntsman & Sons of 11 Saville Row, the preference for the links of Scotland, the family military tradition that was older than the game of golf or the patent of any tailor shop. He knew his father would have been very proud of his military record, graced with achievements of a sort denied the older generation. But the elder general would not have approved of the consumption of alcohol in the morning, on duty.

Noburu consoled himself with the thought that he never lost control with alcohol. The drink was merely to better his temper in the face of yet another frustrating meeting with the foreign generals who commanded the armies executing his plan. Shemin, the Iraqi-born commander of the Islamic Union's forces, was a sharp politician, occasionally helpful in mediating disputes with the Iranians. But he was no soldier. Merely a strongman's brother, on whose shoulders his family had sewn epaulets. Shemin would have been far more at home plotting a coup than in planning a battle. On the positive side, Shemin usually accepted Noburu's plans and carefully worded orders, even when he did not quite understand them. But, on his bad days, Shemin struck Noburu as a typical Arab — illogical, apt to become fixated on the wrong thing at the wrong time, dishonest, subject to emotional outbursts, and very difficult to control when he was not in the right mood.

Tanjani, the Iranian commander, was worse. As fanatical as he was inept, he liked nothing better than to rear like a snake and spit poisonous accusations at Noburu. Nothing was ever good enough for the Iranian, who did not even begin to understand the physical principles that made the weapons that Japan had put into his hands function. The Iranian grasped only what was immediately visible to him and seemed to have no sense at all of the incredibly complex levels of warfare carried out in the electromagnetic spectrum. Of course, the others hardly understood the business themselves. Even Biryan, the commander of the Central Asian forces in revolt against the Soviet yoke, had only a nebulous understanding of the invisible battlefields flowing around the physical combat on the ground. Biryan was the most professional of the three subordinate commanders, the best schooled in military affairs. But he was also the most relentlessly savage, a man who could never drink his fill of blood. Noburu hated dealing with them, and their meetings always left him feeling soiled.

He took a sip from his glass, feeling the diluted liquid soak bitterly over his tongue, leaving a taste of acid and smoke. Then he shifted his eyes to the shoulders of his aide, who sat at the commander's private workstation, sifting through incoming reports for those that might require Noburu's personal review. The aide could be trusted to eliminate all but the essential. He had an unerring eye for the material his commander needed. Akiro was a fine officer from a very good family, and Noburu had no doubt that the younger man, too, would be a general one day. But Noburu had not selected the man for either his bloodlines or his professional abilities. There were other young officers possessed of greater talents and technical skills than Akiro. Noburu had chosen Akiro as his aide because the younger man was a perfect conformist.

If ever Noburu wondered what his own superiors or peers would think about a given matter, he had only to ask Akiro's view. Akiro was the perfect product of the system, convinced of its rightness, of its perfection. Of course, Noburu realized, he, too, had once been much like that, believing, if not in the perfection of the system, at least in its ultimate perfectibility. Now, on the verge of triumph, Noburu felt himself laden with doubts, almost physically bowed, as though each doubt were a brick piled upon his shoulders. He finished his Scotch, draining the last bit of sour water, and put the glass down. He would not have another.

Perhaps, he told himself, it was only the business about the Americans. An overreaction, almost a superstitious response to the shock of his success. His senior intelligence officer's report that unprecedented communications had been detected between Washington and Moscow nagged at him. Tokyo was not concerned. There was little the Americans could do, even if they did elect to intervene. The United States was far away, and the American forces remained tied down in Latin America — and if Tokyo had its way, they would be tied down there forever. The United States had retreated into its determination to maintain hegemony in its own hemisphere, and the rest of the world had received scant attention of late. In any case, what did the Americans owe the Soviets? It was not merely a military equation — Tokyo did not believe that the United States could muster the financial wherewithal to intervene. And, militarily, no one believed that the United States could compete with Japanese technology — an impossible task. No, the United States had been taught a good lesson, as Noburu knew firsthand from his experience as a young lieutenant colonel in Africa. They would not be anxious for another such humiliation. Primitive exchanges in the Brazilian backcountry were one thing; a full-scale confrontation with Japanese heavy weaponry was an entirely different matter. Even if the U.S. had not honored its treaty commitments and had hidden away a cache of nuclear weapons, none of their delivery systems could penetrate Japan's strategic defense shield, and any tactical employment on the field of battle could be parried militarily and exploited politically. At most, the Americans could send the Soviets an Air Force contingent — which Noburu's forces would simply knock out of the sky.

He had firsthand experience at knocking Americans out of the sky. He knew how very easily it could be done. Yet, beyond the strictures of logic, his instincts had perked up at the mention of the communications link between Washington and Moscow, and he wished the intelligence service would find a way to break into the system and decipher what the Soviets and Americans were discussing. For now, there was only the information that such a link existed, and that shred of information tantalized Noburu. Perhaps, he thought, it was only his fear that the dreams would come again. It was difficult enough with these Arabs and Iranians and the squalid minor peoples of Central Asia. He was not certain that he could bear the return of those dreams and still exercise sound judgment.

He thought again of the impending meeting, wondering how he could ever bring such men to their senses. Noburu certainly did not consider himself a softhearted man. His worldview was one of duty intermingled with existential— and physical — pain. But he could not reconcile himself to the way these savages made war. Personally, quietly, he was proud of the fact that he had not needed to employ the Scramblers to accomplish his mission. To Noburu, such weapons were inhumane beyond the tolerance of the most hardened warrior, and he was not pleased that his nation had gone to such lengths to develop them. Noburu pictured himself as an old-fashioned military man, a man of honor. And he saw no honor whatsoever in weapons such as the Scramblers. He had carefully concealed them from the men who were technically his employers and theoretically his allies. Once Shemin, Tanjani, and Biryan were aware of the existence of such devices, they would hound Tokyo until the Scramblers were employed. And then warfare would reach a level of degradation that Noburu did not care to contemplate.

Perhaps it was age, he told himself. Perhaps he was going soft after all. But he worried that Japan had made a terrible mistake in backing the forces its weaponry presently supported. He suspected that all of this was merely about greed, about needless overreaching. The Soviets had been perfectly willing to sell off the riches of Siberia on reasonable terms. But Tokyo was obsessed with control. There was vanity at play, as well. Noburu could recognize it because he had come to recognize it first in himself: the unwillingness to depend on the mercies of others. The need to be the master. Now Noburu found himself waging war beside men he could not regard as any better than savages.

They had begun the chemical attacks without consulting him. There had been no real military necessity involved. The Japanese weaponry was sweeping the Soviets out of the way. But Noburu had not been prepared for the depth of hatred his allies felt against the Soviets, against the "infidels." Noburu had urgently reported the attacks on populated areas and refugee columns to Tokyo, even as he shouted into every available means of communications with his allies, furiously attempting to bring a halt to the attacks. He had, of course, expected Tokyo to back him up, to support his threats to terminate Japanese support for the offensive.

To his surprise, Tokyo was unconcerned. The chemical attacks were a local matter. If the inhabitants wanted to murder each other with their own tools, it was of no concern to the General Staff. Noburu was admonished to stop disrupting friendly relations with Japan's allies and to simply ensure that military operations did not reach beyond the agreed-upon boundaries of the theater of military operations, to guarantee that Soviet home cities beyond the Volga were not attacked and that the conduct of the war did not violate its limited aims. Noburu was well-versed in the theory of modem limited wars. He had helped develop it. Now it seemed to him that all of his fine theoretical constructs had been the work of a precocious child, too immature to realize the basic truth that warfare involved human beings.

Noburu obeyed orders. His lifetime had been devoted to obeying orders. But for the first time, he had begun to feel that the job in which he found himself was greater than the abilities of the man who filled it.

It was not merely softness of heart, he insisted to himself. Despite the legal niceties of the Japanese role, they would be blamed for the atrocities of their allies. Again, the world would view Japan as a ruthless, merciless nation. Noburu was proud of his people, and the thought of being judged on the same level as these barbarians sickened him. He knew that many of his peers valued toughness of spirit, stoicism in the face of all suffering, above all other military virtues. But, to Noburu, the tradition of the soldier was that of defending the weak, of seeking the true path and right action.

I've grown soft, he thought. He touched the expensive wool of his sleeve. I've lived too well, too richly. How can I be right and Tokyo wrong? Aren't my very thoughts disloyal? Isn't the greatness of Japan everything?

Greatness. Power. Was it too easy to confuse the two concepts? And what was greatness without honor? The greatness of a barbarian.

He thought again of the Americans, almost wistfully this time. What a greatness theirs had been! A confused, exuberant, self-tormenting, slovenly, self-righteous, brilliant greatness… faltering ultimately into sloth, decadence, and folly. The Japanese people, humiliated by the kindness of their enemies, had had no choice but to humiliate those enemies in turn.

Suddenly, the illogic of his position struck him. Weren't the central Asians, the Iranians, and the Arabs right after all? What good did mercy do? The safest thing was always the complete massacre, the sowing of the ground with salt.

Enough. His duty now was to finish the mission entrusted to him. Afterward, it would be equally his duty to resign in protest. Not publicly, but quietly, stating his reasons only to those at the heights of power. Even though he knew in advance it would do no good.

We are a bloody people, he told himself.

The gods were laughing, of course. He had considered himself safe from the threatened moral dilemma as the offensive rolled northward, with the Scramblers remaining unused at a succession of closely guarded airfields. Then his allies had begun supplementing Japanese technology with their chemical attacks. No, Noburu realized, the ancients were correct. A man could not avoid his fate.

Noburu remembered the joy of his first combat mission. It seemed at once long ago and only yesterday. Riding along with the South Africans as a technical adviser on the new gunships. B Squadron, he remembered, Natal Light Horse. They had lifted off from their hide positions near Lubumbashi, rising into the perfect morning light, one squadron among many dispersed from southern Zaire down into the Zambian copper belt, erupting suddenly in a coordinated attack on the witless Americans. His squadron had been the first to make contact, and he had been at the controls himself, correcting the inept mistakes of a young lieutenant. They had easily swept the Americans from the sky. He remembered the pathetic attempts at evasive maneuvers, then the Americans' hopeless aerial charge. It had been a wonderful feeling, the richest of all elations, to watch the old American Apache helicopters flash and fall to earth. It had not occurred to him until years afterward that there had been living, thinking, feeling men in those ambushed machines. He had known only the joy of success in battle, something so elementary it could not be civilized out of a man. Never before and never afterward had he been so proud to be Japanese.

But he had carried those dead American pilots with him, unknowingly. They had waited deep inside of him as he garnered new ranks and fresh honors. Then, unexpectedly, unreasonably, their ghosts had begun to appear to him. His dreams were not the dreams of amorous regret that visited the sleep of healthy men. Nor were they the dreams of a true soldier. They were the dreams of a coward. His gunship sailed the morning sky, the blue, vast African sky, again. But this time he was the hunted. He could see the faces of the Americans behind the windscreens of their gunships, far too closely. They were the faces of dead men. Flying around him, mocking him, teasing him. Drawing out his agony until they grew tired of the game and decided to finish him off, laughing, howling for revenge.

"Sir," Akiro called suddenly, in his startling military bark. "This is interesting."

Noburu shook off his demons. He rose and crossed the room to where his aide sat intently before the screen of the commander's workstation. There was no trace of the Scotch in his walk. All that remained of the drink was a sharpness in his stomach. I'm growing old, Noburu thought.

"What is it?"

"Have a look at this imagery, sir. It's the Soviet industrial complex outside the city of Omsk."

Noburu considered the crisp picture on the screen. Like all of his contemporaries, he had learned to read imagery from space-based collectors at a glance. He saw rows of industrial halls and warehouses, with the active heat sources indicating a very low level of activity. Everything looked antique, monuments to decline. He could detect nothing of evident military importance.

"You'll have to explain it to me," Noburu said. "I see nothing."

"Yes," Akiro said. "In a sense, that's the point." He gave the terminal a sharp verbal command, and the industrial landscape faded, then reappeared. Noburu noted the earlier date in the legend of the new picture. In this previously harvested imagery, the buildings were cold, unused.

"This image was recorded just before the start of the offensive," Akiro said. "You see, sir? No activity. The industrial park had fallen into complete disuse. Then, yesterday, as our forces approached the border of western Siberia, we scanned the area again." He gave another quick command. The first image reappeared. "And this is what we found. Suddenly, there are heat sources in the derelict buildings. But there are no signs of renewed production. Only these muffled heat sources. They were so faint that we barely picked them up. This image has been greatly intensified."

"Have we X-rayed the site?" Noburu asked.

Akiro smiled. After another brief command, an X-ray image appeared.

Now there was nothing in evidence except the skeletons of unused machinery, vacant production lines. Emptiness.

Noburu got the point. Someone was going to great lengths to use very sophisticated technical camouflage means to hide whatever was dispersed throughout the mammoth complex.

He and Akiro understood each other.

"If the weather had not taken such a cold turn, we could have missed it entirely," Akiro said. "As it was, the imagery analyst almost passed over it."

"How large a force does intelligence believe is in there?"

"It is, of course, difficult to say. The camouflage techniques are remarkably good — this must be the very best equipment the Soviets possess. In any case, intelligence believes it would be easy to hide an entire armored division in there. Perhaps more."

Noburu reviewed the geography in his head. The force could be employed to defend Omsk. But, given the lengths to which the Soviets had gone to hide it, the formation would more likely be used as a counterattack force, probably on the Petropavlovsk front.

"Well," Noburu said, "even a fresh division won't make much of a difference. It would take at least an army-level formation to begin to shore up their lines around Petropavlovsk. And, given the backwardness of their military technology, even a full Soviet army could not sustain a deep attack against us now."

"We could, of course, simply catch them as they attempt to deploy," Akiro said.

Noburu waved his hand. "No. There's no point in taking chances. How current was that image?"

"We just scanned the area during the night."

Noburu thought for a moment, reexamining the details of the battle map he held in his memory. "Even if they moved immediately, they could not influence the battle in less than forty-eight hours. The distance is too great. I'll tell Yameshima to hit them tomorrow. There's no point in disrupting today's schedule. But tomorrow we'll take care of whatever the Soviets have hidden in there." He stared at the screen a moment longer. "Really, quite a remarkable effort. It almost seems unfair that none of them will ever reach the battlefield."

"The weapons are no good," General Adi Tanjani told Noburu in English, which was the only language all of the commanders shared in common. "They are breaking.

Noburu looked at the man, trying not to reveal the slightest hint of his disdain. He shifted his glance from the Iranian to General Shemin of the Islamic Union, then to General Biryan, late of the Soviet Indigenous Forces, Central Asia, and now the senior military man in the Free Islamic Republic of Kazakhstan. To Noburu, they looked like a gang of thieves. Finally, Noburu met the eyes of Colonel Piet Kloete, another "contract employee," who was the staff man responsible for the stable of South African pilots who flew the most sophisticated intermediate-range Japanese systems. Noburu shared many of the South African's views, not least of which was disgust at the illogic and ineptitude of these men to whom they were nominally subordinate. Yet, ultimately, Kloete had the limitations of the mercenary, just as his nation had those same limitations on a grander level.

"My dear General Tanjani," Noburu began, choosing his words carefully, "warriors who fight as boldly as yours are very hard on the machinery of war. Your successes have taken many of these land systems well over two thousand kilometers in less than a month. Under such circumstances, careful maintenance procedures are very important. It would be of the greatest help if your soldiers would follow the prescribed methods."

Tanjani would not budge. "It is not the task of the soldiers of the Islamic Republic of Iran to work as rude mechanicals. It is the task of the Japanese to guarantee that all machines operate."

Noburu wondered how on earth Tokyo would deal with men such as this in the future, when the Tanjanis had no more pressing needs for Japanese military support. The unconsidered arrogance involved in driving the Soviets— the Russians — from the heart of Asia was becoming ever more clear to him. As suppliers of resources, the economically starved Soviets were bound to be more dependable than the half-savages with whom Tokyo had determined to replace them.

Noburu was especially irritated with Tanjani today because Noburu's in-house intelligence sources had informed him of the Iranians' loss of one of the latest-variant command aircraft. Tanjani had not said a word about it, which told Noburu that the unexplained accident had been indisguisably the fault of the Iranians. The loss was potentially an important intelligence compromise — although, fortunately, the computer system was utterly unbreakable. The revelation of new aircraft composites to the enemy was nonetheless a sufficiently serious matter to outrage Noburu, but he had learned the hard way that it never paid to directly confront the Iranians with their failures. He would simply have to wait, exercising all of his selfcontrol, until the day came when Tanjani decided to mention the loss — if such a day ever came.

"General Tanjani, I assure you that all maintenance workers are doing their best to maintain the systems. But basic measures taken by the operators are essential. Otherwise, too many systems break down unnecessarily, and the maintenance system becomes overloaded. We have discussed this before."

Tanjani smiled cynically. "If the great industrial power of Japan can do no better than this, perhaps our confidence has been misplaced."

Noburu wanted to shout at the man. Those systems have carried your incompetent mob farther and faster than any force in history. You have crushed one of the fabled armies of the world. But, when hundreds of vehicles develop major problems simply because no one bothered to maintain proper lubrication levels or to change dust filters, you cannot expect to parade around in them indefinitely. The yen costs resulting from inept — or nonexistent — operator maintenance were astronomical.

"We must," Noburu said in a controlled voice, "all work together. We must cooperate. There are no more systems in the rear depots to instantly replace those lost unnecessarily. At present, I'm told that there are more tanks in the forward repair yards at Karaganda and Atbasar than there are on the front lines."

"Your system of maintenance is very slow," Tanjani said.

"Our system of maintenance," Noburu replied, "is overwhelmed. If only the truly avoidable maintenance problems could be prevented by your operators, you would find our system very effective."

"The problem," Tanjani said, "is that the tanks are no good. You have sold us second-rate goods."

"General Tanjani," Noburu said, trying to smile, to reach back toward friendliness, "consider your successes. Whenever our tanks have been deployed against the Soviets, you have not lost a single significant engagement. Consider how few of the tanks in our repair yards are actually combat casualties. Not one in twenty."

"Our success," Tanjani said, "is the will of God. Everything is the will of God."

"The will of God," General Shemin agreed, awakening from his daydreams at the explosively powerful words.

Biryan, the ex-Soviet, moved about uncomfortably in his seat, mumbling something that might be taken for agreement. Noburu knew that Biryan had been sufficiently well-trained by his former masters to understand that poor maintenance was not necessarily a direct reflection of the divine will. The maintenance problems in Biryan's rebel units were as much the result of combat stress on the decrepit systems with which the central Soviet government had equipped the regionally homogenous formations as they were of incompetence — although there was still plenty of that to be found.

Perhaps, Noburu thought bitterly, Allah could be persuaded to do a bit of preventive maintenance, or to do some overnight repair work.

"This… is a very important issue," General Biryan said carefully, catching Noburu off-guard. "The combat strength of the great forces of Iran must be maintained. My troops alone cannot finish the task before us." Noburu pitied the man, who seemed to have no real understanding of the fate planned for the rebel forces. Noburu knew that, for all of the problems under discussion, Tanjani's Iranians had the strength to make a far larger frontline contribution, as did the forces of the Islamic Union on the southwestern front. But it had been agreed that the rebels should be sacrificed to the maximum feasible extent now that success seemed imminent. It was vital that those with nationalist tendencies in the liberated regions have no significant military strength of their own on which to fall back. This very expensive war was not being waged to cater to the intoxicated visions of Kazakh or Turkmen nationalists.

"God will provide," General Shemin offered. The chosen tone suggested that Shemin might take on his occasional role as mediator. "But I think that we are under an obligation to help our Japanese friends when they tell us that they are in need. Just as they have been helpful to us. Now is not the time for such disagreements between friends. Surely, my brother," he said to Tanjani, "we will help the Japanese. We must consider their requests about this matter of maintenance."

Tanjani sensed that he was in the minority on this issue.

Yet, Noburu well knew, nothing was predictable. At times, Shemin would side rabidly with Tanjani. And, despite any verbal concessions, Noburu suspected that little would change as regarded maintenance. The conditions in Shemin's Islamic Union formations were only marginally better than those in the Iranian forces. It was astonishing that they had done so much, come so far. A tribute, Noburu thought, to the technical mastery of his homeland. The war-making systems were simple to operate and really very simple to maintain. It had taken negligence bordering on the ingenious to run them into the ground.

But the margin was thinner now than it had been at any time during the campaign. It was a good thing that the Soviets were so disorganized, so psychologically distressed. Noburu thought again of the incredible ratio of maintenance losses. At present, there were almost five combat systems awaiting repair for everyone on the front lines. Even the most skillfully designed high-technology systems did not have the simplicity of a bow and arrow.

Noburu's mind drifted back to the imagery of the possible Soviet counterattack force in the industrial park outside of Omsk. Really, a negligible matter in the great scheme of things. But he would have to deal with it. The Iranian and rebel forces were so depleted, so worn, that the sudden introduction of an organized counterattack force might prove capable of causing at least local panic. He decided not to rely on Yameshima and his Iranian Air Force charges to do the job. Kloete's South Africans could fly this one. It was not a time to take chances. And the South Africans needed to earn their keep.

An orderly delivered fresh tea and a plate of biscuits, catering to Noburu's guests. Noburu himself would have much preferred another Scotch, but he deferentially took the required thimble glass of tea. He watched as Tanjani dropped cube after cube of sugar into the orange liquid.

"And now," Noburu said, bracing himself against the impending storm, "there is another matter I would like to discuss with you. Among friends." He glanced toward the workstation, where his aide sat monitoring the flow of information, temporarily suppressing anything that might not be appropriate for the eyes of Noburu's guests. Noburu knew that Akiro would disapprove of his next tack. Perhaps the aide would even report the matter to the General Staff. Personal loyalty was not all that it once had been. But Noburu was determined to go ahead with the business. "This matter of the employment of chemical weapons against mass targets… specifically, against noncombatants… I know we have spoken of this before." He looked at Tanjani. "But the battlefield situation has continued to develop in our favor, and I'm certain that we all can agree that there is no longer the least justification for such attacks. We are on the edge of victory. I do not think our cause is furthered by attacks that can only turn world opinion against us."

Noburu noted that Akiro had stopped fiddling with the computer. The aide was listening attentively, aware that his commander was speaking in violation of the directive from Tokyo.

To Noburu's relief, Tanjani showed no immediate excitement. He continued to sip his sugar-laden tea. There was a moment of near silence, the clinking of metal and glass. Then Tanjani said wearily, "World opinion? Why are we to concern ourselves with the opinion of the world? Especially as we are still speaking largely of the opinion of the Western world, are we not?" He put down his tea glass, readying himself to speak at greater length. "For more than forty years, my country has laughed in the face of world opinion, and today we are the victors. World opinion? What does it matter? Dust in the wind. The American devil is impotent. He is a caged Satan." He laughed in tepid amusement, as at a good joke heard once too often. "And the Europeans care only for their economic welfare. They may weep, but they will still line up to buy our oil." Tanjani's eyes came to rest on Noburu's beautifully cut uniform. "They have become our tailors, our purveyors of sweets. Nothing more. And the Soviets… cannot effectively retaliate. Even if they had threatening weapons, they would not attack our home countries — they are too anxious not to draw our attacks down upon their main cities. They are degenerate cowards, who deserve to be destroyed. God is great, and his sword smites the infidel. He places fear in their hearts."

"But is it necessary to strike the refugee columns?"

"It costs Japan nothing," Tanjani replied haughtily. "These are our weapons. And, you see, they are more dependable than your machines."

"But such actions," Noburu said, "simply cause the enemy to retaliate with chemical weapons of his own. Your forces have taken needless chemical casualties."

"God is great," Tanjani said. "The soldiers of Iran welcome the opportunity to die the death of the martyr." Biryan, the rebel commander, leaned forward abruptly. It was a strikingly violent gesture that betrayed anger that could no longer be contained. He inadvertently knocked over his tea glass, but made no move to right it.

"The Russian and his brethren must be destroyed," he said. His face had grown pale. "They are all demons, the worst of infidels. My people have lived under the Russian yoke for more than a century. We know the Russian. He is an animal, a dog. And he must be beaten like a dog, destroyed like a mad dog. Not only the men, but their women and children — they are the source of the greatest evil in this world. They are a plague on the earth. There is no suffering too great for them."

Noburu glanced at Shemin but saw instantly that he would get no help from the man this time. Shemin was a survivor of struggles both military and political, and he picked his fights carefully. Born in Baghdad, he had begun learning his lessons as a lieutenant, back in 1990, leading a tank platoon into Kuwait.

Biryan's intensity had genuinely shocked Noburu, who still could not believe that this man had lately served beside the men he now wished to annihilate, that he had lived among the women and children whom he so ardently wished to butcher.

When will it be our turn? Noburu wondered.

Tanjani was smiling, clearly feeling himself the master of his Japanese counterpart. Yes, Noburu told himself, I'm just another infidel to them. Not fully human. It is only that I am temporarily useful. How on earth did we ever allow ourselves to make a compact with men such as these?

"My brother," Tanjani said to Noburu, "it brings…surprise to the righteous to hear you take the side of the infidel. Especially, when you refuse to employ all of your own weapons on our behalf."

Noburu wondered how much surprise his face betrayed. Hopefully, the years of discipline were standing him in good stead now.

Was Tanjani merely fishing? Did he really know? "General Tanjani…" Noburu said, "… the government of Japan is supporting you to the full extent of our treaties. You have received all specified aid."

"And yet," Tanjani said, "friends do not conceal their wealth from their true friends."

"I don't understand," Noburu lied.

Tanjani sat back in his chair, thoughtful, teasing. Then he lifted his eyebrows at the amusing trend of his thoughts. "Perhaps… if all of the Japanese weapons came to the support of the true cause… perhaps then there would be little need of these chemical weapons that are such trouble to you."

No, Noburu thought. Far better the chemicals.

"My friend," Noburu said, "you must tell me the details of your concern. Exactly which weapons are you speaking of? Perhaps I am too ill-informed."

Tanjani looked at him hard. "And what is at the base in Bukhara? What is so great a secret there? Why are my men not trusted to guard their Japanese brothers?"

He doesn't know, Noburu decided, relieved. He's only guessing. He's caught wind of something. But he doesn't know the details.

"The base at Bukhara," Noburu said, regaining his selfassurance, "is a very sophisticated technical support site. You know the terms of our agreements. There are some electronic matters… industrial secrets… which were developed at great expense to the people of Japan. Today, in a world still hungry for the tightening supplies of oil, Iran has no need of such things. You are very rich. By the grace of God. But, for Japan, these technical matters are our 'oil,' our only wealth. There is nothing at the Bukhara site other than electronics — to be used in your support, as necessary." The last part was true, Noburu told himself. If the whole story came out, he had not actually lied. There was nothing at Bukhara but electronics. The Scramblers were really nothing more than another arrangement of conductors.

Noburu sized up the others. Tanjani had played his card — neither Shemin nor Biryan had known anything about the matter. They were, however, rapidly becoming interested.

Noburu could not imagine worse allies. What did they have to offer Japan other than trouble, threats, complaints, endless discontents? He wondered if Japan were not unconsciously replacing the United States in yet another sphere.

"My dear General Tanjani," Noburu said, "may I offer you a visit to the Bukhara site? You are welcome to inspect everything. You will see for yourself. There is nothing at Bukhara other than aircraft, maintenance facilities — and electronics. General Yameshima could arrange such a visit immediately."

It was Tanjani's turn to be caught off-guard. Noburu knew that the Iranian could easily walk through the facility and even sit behind the controls of the aircraft without realizing their purpose.

"Perhaps…" Tanjani said, "… when there is more time. Yes. Perhaps this is a very good idea. But Bukhara is far from the front. A commander's place is with his troops."

Noburu knew that Tanjani would not return immediately to the front from the combined headquarters at Baku. First, the Iranian would stop off in Meshed, in the safety of northern Iran, where he would spend the night in the company of a woman who was distinctly not his wife. But the war would go on without him.

"Yes," Shemin said, rising, "we should all be with our troops. And the road is long." He smiled. "Even when we journey in the fine aircraft our Japanese brothers have provided."

Noburu rose and bowed formally to the other men. Tanjani made a great show of hugging and kissing the prim Japanese, mussing Noburu's uniform. Shemin followed with a token embrace that took better account of Noburu's customs, while Biryan, the rebel, shook hands like a Westerner.

A strange world, Noburu thought.

Amid the formalities of departure, Noburu mentioned to Kloete, who had silently listened to the verbal maneuvering, that the South African pilots would soon have a mission, and that he should keep himself readily available. The tall blond man gave a terse, if polite acknowledgment.

There is not one among them whom I can trust, Noburu thought.

Then they were gone. Akiro did not move to update his superior at once, sensing that Noburu required a breathing space after the ordeal of the meeting.

Noburu moved to help himself to another Scotch. But, bottle in hand, he stopped himself. What was the point? Even such controlled drinking suddenly struck him as unmanly under the circumstances. He was, surely, stronger than this.

He punished himself, disallowing this one comfort. At least for now. But the meeting had, as always, exhausted him. It was like trying to wage war with armies composed of wicked delinquent children.

Grateful for the fresh quiet, Noburu crossed the big room and opened the drape, conscious that his aide was watching him, squinting at the intensity of the sunlight. Until recently, the suite had belonged to a high-ranking Soviet officer. Now the last Soviet reoccupation forces were gone from Azerbaijan, and there was only scattered guerilla resistance in Armenia and Georgia, as the rebels and the forces of the Islamic Union pushed northward as far as the Kalmuck steppe. In the east, the Soviets had been expelled from Tadzhikistan, from Kirghizistan, Uzbekistan, and Turkistan. And they were almost gone from the vast expanse of Kazakhstan. Everywhere, the Soviets were on the run. Noburu mused that, if the Soviets regretted any single thing at this juncture, it must be their too-successful crusade to ban nuclear weapons. They had overestimated by far their ability to maintain a conventional hegemony on the Eurasian land mass. Now they were being dissected.

Of course, the technology still existed to construct nuclear weapons anew. But the Soviets were out of time. All they could do, he thought mockingly, was to ring up the poor Americans for help.

Well, it would all go well. Despite the sort of men Japan had chosen as allies. Everything would be fine. It was really a great day for Japan.

Beyond the oversize window, the cluttered hillside fell away to the density of Baku and the golden-blue sea beyond. A long way from home, he thought. In the southern sunlight, the autumn day still held the sort of warmth that felt so good on an old man's back. And the city lay in a midday swoon. It was a handsome, peaceful vista, where not long before all of the non-Moslem Soviet residents had been massacred in the streets by the maddened Azerbaijanis.

How had the Russians been so blind, for so long? Or had they merely been obstinate? Had they seen the inevitable and simply put it out of mind, dreaming away the danger in the slumber of their long decay?

Nightmare sleep. You woke, and there was your brother with a knife.

"Tell me," Noburu said suddenly, turning away from the panorama of green and white, of brown, blue, and gold, "what do you make of these contacts between the Soviets and the Americans, Akiro?" He wanted to hear the voice of Tokyo, of his own people, explaining it all to him one more time.

The aide gave a verbal command that froze the flow of data on the monitor. "The Americans?" he said, surprised. Clearly, his thoughts had been elsewhere.

"Yes. The Americans," Noburu said. "What could they possibly offer the Soviets?"

"Sympathy?" Akiro said with a tight smile, dismissing the issue. "The Americans have given up. All they want is to be left alone in their bankrupt hemisphere. And to sell a few third-rate goods here and there. To those who cannot afford ours."

"It's well known that the Americans have been working hard to catch up militarily. And their strategic defense system is very good."

"They'll never catch up," Akiro said in a tone of finality that was almost rude. "They're racially degenerate. The Americans are nothing but mongrel dogs."

Noburu smiled, listening to his aide speak for the General Staff and the man in the Tokyo street. "But, Akiro, mongrel dogs are sometimes very intelligent. And strong."

"America is the refuse heap of the world," the aide replied, reciting from half a dozen Japanese bestsellers. "Their minorities merely drag them down. In the years of the pestilence, they even had to order their own military into their cities. And the military could barely meet the challenge. For all of their 'catching up,' they still cannot completely control the situation in Latin America. In Mexico alone, they'll still be tied down for a generation. The Americans are finished." Akiro made a hard face, the visage of a warrior from a classical Japanese print. "Perhaps they can take in a few Soviet refugees, as they took in the Israelis."

Noburu, an officer of legendary selfcontrol, crossed the room and broke his promise to himself. He poured himself a Scotch, without measuring.

"It simply occurs to me," Noburu said quietly, "that Japan underestimated the Americans once before." And he let the bitter liquor fill his mouth.

12

Taylor stared at the face on the oversize briefing screen, searching the features for any trace of vulnerability. Marks of weakness, marks of woe, he told himself, the words singing briefly through his memory. He had become a careful observer of men's faces, and he was convinced that you could tell a great deal about your enemy from his appearance. The primitive cultures in which the belief prevailed that photographs stole away the soul were, in Taylor's view, closer to the truth than Western man realized. There, captive within the boundaries of the big screen, was his enemy, unable to resist this silent interrogation. And Taylor already sensed weakness in the features, although he still could not pin down the precise physical clue. The mouth was trim and strong, the skin smooth. The foreign contours of the eyes made it difficult for Taylor to see into them. The hair was dark and impressively youthful. No, he could not point to the perceived vulnerability as he might point to a spot on the map. But it was there. He was sure of it.

"All right, Merry," he told his intelligence officer. "You can go on."

Meredith briefly scanned the rows of waiting officers, then settled his gaze back on the colonel.

"This," he repeated, "is General Noburu Kabata, the senior Japanese officer in the theater of operations." His words echoed in the cold gloom of the warehouse. "Kabata is a senior Japanese Defense Forces general officer, with broad experience both in field positions and in staff jobs related to defense industry. If you look at the ribbons on his chest — just there," Meredith gestured with his laser pointer, "in the third row — that sand-and-green ribbon indicates that he served with the Japanese advisory contingent in South Africa, during our… expedition."

Taylor almost interrupted Meredith a second time, anxious to ask for specific details. But he caught himself. He would wait until the S-2 finished his pitch. He did not want to risk revealing a sign of his weakness in front of his subordinates. Africa was far from their concerns at the moment.

"Kabata has always been involved with heavy forces and cutting edge technology," Meredith continued. "He's not only aviation-qualified, but he was reportedly a test pilot for a while. When he was younger, of course. Speaks excellent English, which he perfected as an exchange student at the British staff college at Camberly, class of 2001. Reputation as an Anglophile. Even flies to London to have his suits tailored. Kabata's not in the military because he needs a job. His family's wealthy, although they took a beating when we nationalized all of the Japanese-owned real estate in the United States. Their holdings were rather extensive. Anyway, the guy's from a powerful old family, with a long military tradition." Meredith paused for a moment, chewing the air. "But not everything tracks. His wife's a professor of linguistics, and they have two children, a son and a daughter. The daughter works in publishing. Son's a chemical engineer. And that's what doesn't follow. This family has been military since Christ was a corporal, and Kabata's had a career that's been highly successful by any standards. Yet, he reportedly discouraged his son from becoming an officer."

We're alike in that, Taylor thought. If I had a son, he would never be a soldier.

"Other than Africa," Meredith went on, "the highlights of his professional career include a voluntary tour on the United Nations' team that assessed damage and helped supervise the evacuation of the last Israelis to the United States. He was one of the few inspectors willing to enter the dead zone around Tel Aviv and the nuclear wastelands surrounding Damascus, Latakia, and the other sites targeted by Israeli retaliatory strikes."

"Merry," Lieutenant Colonel David Heifetz, the regiment's operations officer, interrupted. "I met him, you know. In Israel. It was only the briefest of meetings. He was on a committee of the UN that was sent to receipt for our weapons. Before we could get on the planes. He did not seem at all a bad man to me. Very much a decent sort of man. I felt… well, you know, he is a soldier. As we are all soldiers. And I felt that he understood what I was experiencing. Watching and counting as my men turned over their arms. It was a very bad day for me, and I felt that he did not want it to be any worse. That's all. I wish I could remember more. But other things were important to me then."

"Dave," Taylor said coldly, before Meredith could resume, "if he's such a great guy, why is he dumping nerve gas on refugee columns?"

Heifetz looked down the row of chairs toward Taylor, his face set even more earnestly than usual.

"I don't know," he said, voice tinged with genuine regret. "I cannot answer that question."

Taylor switched his attention back to Meredith. "All right, Merry. Tell us more about this… man."

Merry shrugged. "He's the sort of officer who seems to do everything well. Even writes. His reports on collateral damage from the Middle East were repeatedly cited at the International Conference on the Immediate Elimination of Nuclear Weapons the Soviets sponsored in New Delhi. That was," Merry said, "perhaps the last time Soviet and Japanese interests coincided. Over the past few years, he's been a key player in the Japanese program to equip and train the Islamic Iranian Armed Forces and the military arm of the Islamic Union. This operation is the culmination of his work. Yet, there are persistent rumors in the military attaché community in Tokyo of problems between him and the General Staff."

"What kind of problems?" Taylor asked sharply.

"Unknown. And the reports may be unsubstantiated. Other than that, we don't have much on him. Drinks Scotch, in moderation. Loves to play golf. But so does anybody who's anybody in Japan. Whenever he's in London, he goes to the theater."

"Whore around?"

Merry shook his head. "Nothing the Brits thought worth mentioning."

"Merry," Taylor said, careful to maintain a tone of relative nonchalance, "did you happen to pick up anything else about his service in Africa? Was he… an active participant?"

"Sir, I don't know. All we have on that is the ribbon on his chest. He could have received that for sitting in Capetown."

"Or… for any number of things."

"Yes, sir."

It didn't matter, Taylor told himself. He had the man now. General Noburu Kabata. Who flew around the world to dress up in another man's heritage. Whose preferred drink was Scotch. Who encouraged his son to break with tradition in a land where tradition still mattered. "Reputation as an Anglophile," as Merry put it. But the chosen mask was unimportant. Taylor recognized the type. If not an Anglophile, then a Francophile, or Germanophile. It did not matter. Anything to get out from under the burden pressing down on him since birth. Anything, in order to be anyone other than the man he had been condemned to be.

I can beat him, Taylor insisted to himself, hoping it was true.

He looked at Meredith, who was waiting for any further questions. The assembled officers shifted and rustled, and Taylor knew that they were cold and anxious to return to their own subordinates, to solve the inevitable last-minute problems. And the briefing had only begun. Well, he would not waste too much of their time.

"You know, Merry," Taylor began. The small noises ceased as the collected officers leaned to hear the commander's words. "There's just one thing I can't for the life of me understand. It nags at me. I know the Japanese have

a reputation as being hard sonsofbitches. But I just don t get the chemicals. What's the point? What is it in this bastard that makes him do such a thing? With his goddamned English suits and his golf clubs."

Merry touched a control and the big screen went blank. At once, there seemed to be a greater silence in the room, a visual silence.

"Perhaps," the intelligence officer said, "it's another object lesson. Maybe the Japanese are making a point about absolute dominance."

Taylor considered it. He himself could not come up with a better answer. But it did not ring true for him. With all of the capabilities of Japanese technology, the chemicals were merely a crude display of barbarism. It was hard to imagine a payoff commensurate with the growing level of international revulsion.

"Colonel Taylor, sir," Heifetz said, "suppose that it is not the Japanese. Suppose that the Arabs and the Iranians are using the chemical weapons on their own. Perhaps this man cannot control them. They are, you know, unpredictable, unreasonable. And they have used such weapons before."

Taylor turned to consider Heifetz, turning his thoughts as well. That certainly would be one possible answer. He looked at this homeless soldier, who had lost so much. Heifetz's face sought to project a toughness beyond emotion: detachment, strength. And. to most men, Heifetz s efforts were successful. But, looking at the graying Israeli, Taylor saw only a man who had lost his family, his nation, his past, and his future. Of course Lucky Dave would blame it on the Arabs. He could not help himself. But. even if there was some logic to it, Taylor could not accept the proposition. There was simply no way the Japanese would have allowed their surrogates to run so far out of control so early in the game. The Japanese were not that stupid.

David Heifetz had all but lost his sense of wonder. Only the inconstancy of time still held the occasional power to make him marvel at life's possibilities, even if, for him. those possibilities lay buried in bygone years, in a country passed into history. The creation of calendars and clocks seemed to him a desperate, frightened attempt to make time behave, to disguise the unreasonable, unpredictable accelerations and periods of slow drift, the instants of wild inarticulate revelation, and the eternities of dusty routine. At times, he struck himself as the most cowardly sort imaginable, hiding from time's unmanageable currents on his little military island, forcing his slowly deteriorating body through the rituals of schedules so abundant in any army, bound by the excuse of duty to retreat at the approach of his black early morning dreams, to shock himself awake, to bind himself tightly into polished boots, and to plunge into the endless, numbing work that made an army go. And time would seem to grow docile as he deadened himself with late nights at the office, evaluating, planning, writing, correcting, laboring over range schedules, training ammunition allocations, school quotas, exercise plans and orders, SOPs, post police responsibilities, efficiency reports, natural disaster evacuation plans, mobilization plans, countless briefings, inspection programs — he was only sorry that there was not more, that the moment would inevitably come when he would have to extinguish the last light in the building and lock the door behind him, to return to his nearly bare quarters and the utter vacancy that passed for his personal life. He rarely neglected the ceremonies and self-denials required of a Jew, in hope that there might finally be some comfort there, but the words and gestures, each strict abstinence, remained futile. His God was no longer the remarkably human God of Israel, but a fierce, malevolent, relentless, and unforgiving God, not a God for the suffering, but a God from whom suffering flowed, a God who laughed at agony, then set his face in stone. His God was the primitive deity of the savage barely elevated from the beast, of dark ancient armies marching to bum the cities of light and hope, to massacre their inhabitants, to scour away all life.

Then time would swallow him up into one of its unseen cataracts, and in the artificially measured brevity of a second he would relive the past with gorgeous intensity, not merely remembering, but inhabiting it all again, there. Mira by an olive tree, seated with her arms around her knees, smiling up at the warm blue sky with her eyes closed. And he could feel it all with her, the air still and pungent with thyme. The sun. He could feel the warmth deepening in her cheeks, as though there were no difference between them at all. The spilled dregs of wine, the spoiling ruins of a picnic on a stony hillside overlooking their rich, ripe world. How can it be so beautiful? she said, without opening her eyes, and he knew exactly what she meant. These were the words he felt but could not form. Their world was so beautiful that physical sight was almost inconsequential. How can it be so beautiful, David? He closed his eyes too. Settling for the coursing of flies and the distant sounds of automobiles on a road that sacred feet had marked with blood. In that instant of memory, there was also time to remember the feel of a cotton skirt under his hand, and the warmth beneath the cloth, and the intoxicating feel as he moved the cloth higher to let the sun touch more of her.

How can it be so beautiful, David?

The startling sight of bloodstains at the small of her back as the two of them rose to return, finally, to the car. During their lovemaking, a sharp rock had been cutting into her spine, through her sweat-soaked cotton blouse. But it had not mattered, and he understood that too. He said nothing, but simply put his hand on the stain, as if his touch might heal her.

In the same instant, he watched as his brown-eyed son ran through their apartment, his face a masculine interpretation of his mother's beauty. Dovik. Perhaps his failures had begun there. In his memory, there were only the times when he had been too busy for the boy, when he had bellowed at Mira that the noise was intolerable when he had offered the boy only obtuse adult excuses for his unwillingness to take the child's requests seriously. Brown eyes, a striped shirt, and turned-up jeans. Mira, for God s sake, could you please….

Mira, the lawyer who had been working for laughable wages in an organization engaged in defending Palestinian rights. When an impatient warrior charged into her unready life. Who could ever say why humans loved?

Mira who had made him human, formidable in her beauty, but whose kisses spoke urgency at unexpected times. Looking back, it was almost as if she had known that they had little time, as if she had sensed all that was coming. He could not think her name without voicing it inwardly as a cry, as if calling out to her disappearing back across a growing distance. Mira.

He had been sitting loose-legged on the turret of his tank, drained by a successful battle, when the single code word came down over the radio net, irrevocable, reaching out to a spent tank company commander in the Bekka Valley, to infantrymen on the Jordan, to pilots guiding on the great canal.

Armageddon.

There had been no immediate details, and he had been able to hope as he continued to fight. But, already, a part of him had known. When the order came to maneuver all vehicles into the most complete available defilade, to remove antennas, to cover all sights and seal the hatches, he had known with certainty. There would be no more warm flesh under shifting cloth.

He had failed. He had failed to defend his family, his nation. But that was only his most obvious guilt. In retrospect, he knew his failure had been far greater. He had never been the man he should have been, that Mira and his son had deserved. He had never been a man at all. Merely a selfish shell in the armor of a uniform.

How can it be so beautiful?

He had read that epileptics experience a rare elation on the verge of a seizure, that their worst sufferings were preceded by a fleeting joy that some described as approaching holiness. And that was what time did to David Heifetz. In an unguarded instant, his memory filled with the fullness of his life with Mira, with blue seas and orange groves and a passionate woman's smell, only to kill her again and again and again. And he was convinced that each time she died anew in his memory, she suffered again. Time was far from a straight line. Mira was always vulnerable, her agony was endless. His God was the merciless god of eternal simultaneity.

Armageddon.

In his wallet, Lieutenant Colonel David Heifetz, of the United States Army, had buried a trimmed-down snapshot of his wife and child. He was constantly aware of its presence and he knew each shadow and tone, he knew the exact thoughts behind the four eyes considering the camera, the faint weariness of the boy at the end of a long afternoon, Mira's needless anxiety about dinner, the history behind her necklace, and the slight blemish that had temporarily made her beauty human.

He had not looked at the photograph for seven years.

"Lucky Dave looks tired," Merry Meredith whispered. He had just plopped back down in the field chair beside Manny Martinez, his closest friend. He felt drained by the intelligence briefing he had just delivered, troubled by its inadequacies, yet relieved, as always, that it was over. He did not fear Taylor. He only feared failing the old man. Now he sat, loose, and grateful that the honor of briefing had passed on to Heifetz. Meredith watched the S-3 as the man punched in the codes that filled the briefing screen with the exact map coverage he wanted. It seemed to Meredith that Heifetz was a bit off his usual crisp precision. Nothing the average observer would necessarily notice. But just the sort of thing an intelligence officer who had earned his spurs in the Los Angeles operation would pick up A minor human failing, perhaps the beginning of a vulnerability. "He really looks tired," Meredith repeated.

"Oh man," Martinez said in a low tone of dismissal, "Lucky Dave always looks tired. The guy was born tired.

He eats that shit up."

"Yeah," Meredith said. "I know. But there's something off. He almost looks sick."

"Lucky Dave?" Martinez said. "Lucky Dave never gets sick."

"Look at him. He's as white as if he'd just seen a ghost."

The two men looked at the operations officer. A compactly built man, with graying hair and shoulders a bit too big for the rest of his bodily proportions. Heifetz was about to begin his briefing.

"I just wonder if he feels okay," Meredith whispered to his friend.

"Come on," Martinez answered. "Old Lucky Dave doesn't feel anything. The guy's made of stone."

Heifetz surveyed the collection of officers before him, giving himself a last moment to catch his mental breath before he began sentencing them with his words. His instructions would send them to their particular fates, and he sensed that few of them really grasped the seriousness of the actions they would take in the coming hours. There was so much lightheartedness and swagger left in the Americans. No sense of how very dark a thing fate was. For many of the junior officers, this was a great adventure. And even those who were afraid feared the wrong things. These were men… who did not understand how much a man could ultimately lose.

But it was better so. Best to go into battle with a lightness of spirit, so long as it did not manifest itself in sloppiness. Best to go with a good heart into the darkness. With confidence that shone like polished armor. He remembered that feeling.

Perhaps a better god hovered over these bright-faced Americans sitting so uncomfortably in their Soviet greatcoats in the cold. After all their nation had suffered in recent years, the Americans still struck Heifetz as innocents. And perhaps they would be spared the sight of the black-winged god, whose jaws had slimed with the gore of Israel.

All of them except Taylor. Taylor had seen the burning eyes, smelled the poisoned breath. Taylor knew.

Taylor had insisted on this last face-to-face meeting with his subordinates. The purpose of the orders brief was to ensure that each man clearly understood his role, that there would be no avoidable confusion added to that which would be unavoidable. Technically, the briefing could have been conducted electronically, with all of the officers comfortably seated in their environmentally controlled fighting systems and mobile-support shelters. But Taylor had insisted on gathering his officers together in this sour, freezing cavern, unable to risk the comfort of an unmasked heat source that might be detected by enemy reconnaissance systems, but unwilling to forgo a last opportunity for each man to see his commander and his comrades in the flesh. Taylor knew. Even more important than the clarity of each last coordination measure was the basic need felt by men in danger to know that their brothers were truly beside them.

Heifetz knew about his nickname. He understood the soldierly black humor behind it and felt no resentment. And he knew that, in at least one sense, he truly was a lucky man. There were few men under whom he could have served without reservation, without resentment. Serving under Taylor was… like serving under a better, wiser, far more decent version of himself. There was only one fundamental difference between them. Taylor's sufferings had made him a better man. Heifetz would never have claimed the same for himself.

"Good afternoon, Colonel Taylor, gentlemen," Heifetz began. "I should almost say 'Good evening.' But we will go quickly now." Heifetz scanned the earnest faces. "Everyone has a hard copy of the order? Yes? Good. The flow copies and all of the supporting data are being loaded into your on-board control systems at this time. Each of you will run a standard up-load check immediately upon the termination of this meeting."

Heifetz touched a button on his remote control, and a bright map filled the briefing screen, covering the area of the Soviet Union from Novosibirsk in the northeast to Dushanbe in the southeast, then west as far as Yerevan and back north to Perm. A second button filled the map with colored symbols and lines, green denoting the positions of the enemy, red for the Soviets, and a tiny spot of blue marking the assembly area of the Seventh Cavalry. The little blue island was separated from the green enemy sea by only a thin, broken reef of red symbols.

"As the S-2 briefed you," Heifetz continued, "the Soviet front east of the Urals is in a state of virtual collapse. Our mission… is to attack the enemy in depth, with the immediate intent of destroying or dramatically disrupting key elements of his forces so that the Soviets are allowed time to reestablish an integrated defense. Beyond that, it is the overarching intent of the President of the United States to send a message to the enemy that we will not permit the dismemberment of the USSR by external powers."

Heifetz waved the remote at the screen. The image dissolved, then the map reappeared with a more detailed representation of the actual operational area of the Seventh Cavalry, still covering almost half the territory of the initial situation map. The friendly and enemy positions still showed, but now blue arrows and control measures began to trace over the battlefield.

"Execution," Heifetz said. "The Seventh United States Regiment of Cavalry crosses its line of departure beginning at 2400 hours, local. First Squadron, with fourteen operational M-l00s of sixteen authorized, leads on the left flank. First Squadron has the greatest distance to cover. You will deploy along axis Red-one, as shown here, in route south to Objective Ruby in the vicinity of Karaganda. During the passage of lines, all Soviet air defense systems will be under orders not to engage unless specifically attacked. Of course, we know that some of them may not get the word, so, on a practical level it means we will risk going with only our passive defense up until we cross the line of departure. There is no point in giving our enemies advance warning that something is coming their wav. In any case, your scout drones will be immediately preceded by unmanned light cavalry jammers from the Tenth Cav forward detachment. In-depth electronic warfare support — we're talking very deep — has been laid on by the Air Force."

"Don't hold your breath," someone mumbled from the audience. There was a splash of gloomy laughter.

"Knock off the bullshit," Taylor said in annoyance. "This is war. We're all on the same side now, and I don t want to hear any more of that crap." The colonel looked back over the rows of officers, a fierce parent. Then he settled back down into his chair. "Go ahead, Dave."

"First Squadron does not engage unless fired upon prior to reaching Objective Ruby. I know you're going to be looking for a fight." Heifetz said, "and there will be plenty of stray targets out there. But your target-acquisition systems are initially going to pick up mostly junk that belongs to the rebel forces. And there may even be roving pockets of Soviets out there who have been cut off. We can't sort them out, since their equipment is essentially identical— and, anyway, we're after the Japanese-built gear. Which brings us back to Ruby and Karaganda. As Merry briefed you, there are two principal targets in the objective area." The screen narrowed its focus all the way down to the area under discussion. "First, the most critical target — the Japanese maintenance facilities and the forward marshaling yards. I think that is what the old American Army called a 'target-rich environment.' There are over a thousand of the latest Japanese fighting systems on the ground at Karaganda, awaiting greater or lesser repairs. The volume… is irreplaceable. Further, the maintenance facility itself is a critical node. The Iranians — and the Arabs — are breaking their gear like toys. And if the Japanese can't repair the stuff, it's useless. I know what you are thinking: you want to kill shooters. But the maintenance facility is your primary target.

"Your secondary target at Ruby is the assembly and reconstitution area for the III Iranian Corps. They've pulled off-line to reorganize while the rebels carry the fighting northward. And they've grown overconfident. The sin of pride. The Iranians are just sitting there. You've seen the imagery. Barely an attempt at camouflage, no meaningful dispersion. They are so sure that the Soviets cannot touch them any longer."

Heifetz switched back to the midsize operations map. "Anticipated time on station vicinity Ruby is twenty minutes for either target area. Dismounted operations are not planned, except for the local protection of disabled systems. All right. Following action at Ruby, First Squadron continues along axis Red-two, with the mission of screening the left flank of the regiment. You have a long flight ahead of you, so you must not become distracted by insignificant targets of opportunity. You're on picket duty in case the Japanese have a surprise up their sleeves and get some sort of interceptors up into the air fast. You will be the first element across the line of departure, and the last to close. You will come in to Assembly Area Silver here, near Orsk. The S-4 will have fuelers waiting for you, and you'll need them. Axis Red stretches the capabilities of the M-100 to the maximum. Finally, some very good news," Heifetz began, telling the closest thing he could manage to a joke, but without the slightest trace of a smile. "I will be flying just off-echelon from First Squadron to help the regimental commander control the flank defense effort. I will not, of course, be interfering with the command of the squadron, but I will be there to keep you all company."

The officers of First Squadron, gathered behind their commander, groaned theatrically. It was all right. Heifetz was glad they could still make a joke of things.

"Any questions, First Squadron?"

Lieutenant Colonel Tercus, the squadron commander, shook his head.

"It's just a long goddamned way," Tercus said. "But we've got good horses."

"Any chance of getting those two down systems back up before you lift off?" Taylor asked the squadron commander.

"Doesn't look good. The motor officer's working on one of them right now. That's a straightforward hydraulics problem, but we're missing a part."

Taylor looked at Martinez.

"Shortage item, sir," the supply officer said. "We're authorized three on PLL, but we've already used them. It's turning out to be another bug they haven't gotten out of the system. We're trying to get an emergency issue from the States, but I can't even promise you the manufacturer's got spares. They may have to strip them from the new birds coming off the line."

"How about the birds that are down in the other squadrons, Manny?" Taylor asked. "It's your call. If the regimental motor officer has one he doesn't think he can fix by mission time, let's cannibalize it. We need every possible system up in the air."

"What we might as well do, then," Martinez said, "is cannibalize Bravo one-four right in First Squadron. She's never going to be back up in time for the mission. Software problem. That way we can keep the can-job under control within one squadron."

"How bad is Bravo one-four," Taylor asked, "really?"

Martinez looked at him earnestly. "Sir, she's not going to be back up in time for this war. The software problem's bad. It's depot-level maintenance."

Taylor turned to Tercus, the First Squadron commander. "Bud," he said, "I'm going to do a job on you. Sorry." Then he turned back to Martinez. "Manny, I want you to write off Bravo one-four. Combat loss. Then strip it for every damned part you're short. Get every bird up that you can in all three squadrons."

"Yes, sir."

"Dave?" Taylor shifted his attention back to the operations officer. "Go ahead. Give us what you got." Heifetz cleared his throat. "Second Squadron," he began, "you will deploy along axis White-one to an initial target concentration vicinity of Objective Diamond, near Tselinograd. The Iranians and the rebels have clusterfucked themselves around in there. They're probably massing for the big push into western Siberia, to the northwest of the Kokchetav sector. A successful attack on Diamond takes the pressure off the seam between the two Soviet armies just to the north and turns the tables by splitting the enemy's front in two. Gut the forces near Tselinograd, and the breakthrough area to the northwest starts to look extremely vulnerable."

Heifetz traced along the continuation of Second Squadron's route. "Following a thirty-minute action on a broad front at Diamond, Second Squadron continues the attack along axis White-two to Objective Sapphire, engaging significant targets of opportunity en route. Sapphire wraps around Arkalyk — here — where the Japanese have another forward maintenance site with extensive yards. Your mission here is identical to First Squadron's primary at Ruby. Take out the maintenance site itself, then the yards. Clear? Good. Second Squadron then continues along axis White-three, prepared to turn to the assistance of First Squadron to the south, on the regiment's left flank — should an emergency situation arise. Second Squadron will not, however, seek dogfights. No white-scarf nonsense, gentlemen. Remember, First Squadron cannot come in until you close, and they'll be flying on fumes. Your assembly area is here, at Platinum, in the Orenburg region, where you will be positioned to spearhead a follow-on attack to the southwest. if one is ordered. Colonel Taylor will fly off-echelon from Second Squadron, in control of the main battle. Any questions, Second Squadron?"

There were no questions. Those officers who had not been directly involved in planning the operations had nonetheless had the opportunity to read over the op order.

"All right," Heifetz said. "That brings us to Third Squadron. Thirteen operational M-l00s out of a complement of sixteen."

"I'll have two more birds up by H-hour, Lieutenant Colonel Reno, the Third Squadron's commander, announced. The swagger and peevishness in his voice sought to telegraph that he was a commander, while Heifetz was merely a higher form of staff flunky. "Don't worry about Third Squadron."

Heifetz did not believe the man. Of all the squadron commanders, Heifetz had the least faith in Reno's being where he was supposed to be, doing what he was supposed to do, when he was supposed to be doing it. But Reno was the son of a retired four-star general, and even Taylor had had no say in the man's assignment to the Seventh Cavalry. Taylor and Heifetz had been careful to assign Third Squadron the least demanding mission.

"Third Squadron," Heifetz continued, ignoring Reno's tone, "deploys along axis Green-one only upon receiving confirmation that First and Second squadrons have both crossed their LDs. Third Squadron's mission is simply the destruction of enemy forces along the corridor formed by Engagement Area Emerald. Now the Soviets have friendly forces cut off and scattered all along Green-one, so you re on weapons-hold until Emerald. Then you're on your own. Emerald stretches roughly from Kokchetav to Atbasar. Your navigational aids will automatically key when you hit the initial boundary. Within the engagement area, any military system is fair game. Your mission is extensive destruction of enemy follow-on and supporting forces in the rear of the breakthrough sector. The single specified target is here, at Atbasar. The headquarters of the I Iranian Corps is set into an excavation site just outside of town. The coordinates have been programmed in for Charlie Troop, and for Bravo, as a backup. The S-2 suspects this site doubles as a Japanese forward command-and-control site, so make sure you clean it out thoroughly. Upon exiting Emerald, you follow Green-two directly to Assembly Area Gold in the industrial park outside of Magnitogorsk, where you will prepare to accept a follow-on mission. Any questions?"

None.

"Fire support," Heifetz continued. "The regiment's dual-purpose artillery battalion will be employed in its air defense mode. The mobile operations envisioned by the plan will be too swiftly paced for heavy-artillery accompaniment. Thus, we have decided to move the regimental artillery directly to the follow-on assembly areas, by routes to the rear of the areas of contact. One battery will deploy to each site — Platinum, Silver, and Gold. You will be prepared to intercept any hostiles on the tail of our squadrons as they close."

Heifetz did a quick mental review. Had he forgotten anything?

No. He went into his closing. "Nonspecified coordination measures per SOP. Quartering parties are authorized to depart for the follow-on assembly areas at end-evening-nautical-twilight. Keep to the approved routes so you don't have some trigger-happy Soviets shooting at you. Artillery follows at EENT plus one. Scouts up at LD minus ninety minutes. Sir," he addressed Taylor, "are there any questions?"

"No. Good job, Dave."

"Then I will be followed by the electronic-warfare liaison officer from the Tenth Cav."

Heifetz rested the remote device on the field podium and moved for his seat, passing a tall, very lean young man on his way. The younger man took up a position just to the side of the briefing screen and began to discuss the intricacies of maneuvering jammers and conducting electronic deception assaults, of electronic tides, digital leeching and ruse dialogues with enemy radars, of ambient energy and frequency deconfliction.

Back in his cold metal chair at Taylor's side, Heifetz had no difficulty imagining the new briefer in a different battle dress, describing the employment techniques for a new type of arrow or sling.

Manny Martinez missed laughter. In peacetime exercises, even during the Mexican deployment, he had always been able to deliver his support briefings with a touch of humor. It was a tradition in any unit commanded by Taylor that the S-4 briefed last. And Martinez had always managed to brighten even the bad days with smiles and small jokes, with banter that made fun of himself or the world. But the humor was gone now, and he shifted uncomfortably in his seat, awaiting his turn to speak as he might await his turn in the dentist's chair. Nothing he had experienced had ever been this serious, and he felt only the weight of his problems — growing problems — within the support and maintenance system, doubt about his personal adequacy, and the deepening worry that he would let down Taylor and all of the other men who depended on him.

He war-gamed possible realignments and shortcuts that might better accomplish the ever greater number of required repairs, that might more efficiently move the regiment's extensive support infrastructure to the new assembly areas, that might begin to ready the maintenance crews for the still-not-quite-imaginable challenges they would face in the aftermath of combat. Martinez had always had a light, clever way with solutions to support problems, the ability to see the obvious answers hidden by the camouflage of regulations and routine, and he had been vain about his talents. Now he saw only the possibility of failure on a dozen fronts.

He half-listened through the series of other briefers, as the chemical officer reported on the latest strikes and the types of agents employed, and as the regimental surgeon warned of typhus among the refugees and lectured the warriors yet again on the uses and abuses of the stimulant pills they had been issued and on the limitations of the fear suppressants given to the dragoons and other junior enlisted soldiers — tablets the troops nicknamed suicide pills because they were convinced, despite all assurances to the contrary, that they impaired a man's judgment. If the pills were so hot, the soldiers asked, how come the officers didn't have to take them?

Martinez listened, wishing the briefings could go on forever, suspending them all on the edge of war, on the verge of action, forgiving them their impending duty. Despite the kidney-penetrating chill in the warehouse, he felt himself sweating.

It never occurred to him to be afraid for his life. He was only afraid of failure.

Then it was time. A startling voice said:

"I will be followed by the S-4."

It was time.

"Manny?" Taylor said, turning his discolored face down the row of chairs.

Martinez sprang to his feet, surprised to find his body as ready and buoyant as ever.

"Good afternoon, sir, gentlemen…" he began, "… as of 1600 local all combat systems have been fully fueled and their weapons suites calibrated and loaded. From the logistics and maintenance standpoint, there is nothing to interfere with the immediate mission, although there is still some question as to how many M-l00s we'll actually get across the LD. Assuming the parts swap-out allows First Squadron to get Zero-eight up, that leaves us with a present strength of forty-five operational systems of fifty assigned. There is a possibility that we'll be able to get one more of Third Squadron's birds up by lift-off time, but I can't guarantee it."

"Now, damn it, Martinez," Lieutenant Colonel Reno cut in, "you and the motor officer told me you'd have all three of my down birds back up."

It was a lie. Martinez knew it, and he knew that Reno knew it. Reno, the general's son.

"Sir," Martinez said, "I told you we'd do our best. But—"

"That's the damned trouble with this army," Reno said, "you can't count on—"

Reno, who, as Martinez knew, had joked that, "That little spic's going to find out that logistics means more than stealing car parts in some back alley."

"Colonel Reno," Taylor entered the exchange in his stark, commanding voice, "I agree it's worth a fight to get every damned machine in the air that we possibly can. But I'm personally convinced that regimental maintenance is doing a good job for all of us. No, a great job. As the Seventh Cavalry commander I'm about to go into battle with a ninety-five percent ready rate. I'll tell you frankly, that's better than I expected. I'm going to cross that LD confidently tonight — and I think everybody else who's going along on the mission can feel the same way. There was a quality about Taylor's presence that seemed ready to leap into an audience, like one of the big cats. At times like these, Martinez realized, it was not Taylor's relatively subdued words that invoked discipline, but the ferocity of his silences, the intensity of the pauses between the mannered sentences, expressing exactly what his language masked. "Anyway," Taylor went on, "I'd cross that line of departure tonight if I had to walk south throwing stones at the enemy. So I'm not sure we should complain about having forty-five of the most powerful combat systems ever built ready for action." Taylor took his eyes off of Reno. "Manny, I'm one hell of a lot more concerned about the problem with the calibrators. What's going on there?"

After being so firmly defended by the old man, Martinez felt doubly bad about the problem he now had to address.

"Sir," Martinez said, "as you know, the regiment's authorized four calibrators for the electromagnetic gun system on the M-l00s. Due to deficiencies, the first issue was recalled in July, but so far we've only received two of the A2-variant replacements. We deployed with both of those. Now one of them has gone down. The motor officer's been working on it personally, and we've got an emergency requisition in to the States. But it looks like we may only have a single calibrator to rotate between the squadrons at the follow-on assembly areas."

"And there's no way the recalibration can be done manually?" Taylor asked.

"No, sir. The system's far too complex. It's not just a matter of sights and a gun tube like in the old days — we've got to reset the control electronics, and it takes the recalibration computer to do that."

"All right. Assuming we'll have only one calibrator. How long until we can have the entire regiment ready for a follow-on mission?"

"That depends," Martinez began. He was about to say "on the number of losses we take," but thought better of it. It seemed like bad luck. "There are a number of variables. We have to factor in the distances between the assembly areas. We can re-cal a bird in fifteen minutes. But there's mounting time too. My best guess would be between thirty and thirty-six hours. With most of that being displacement time between sites."

"Shit," Taylor said. "I don't want to be down that long. Based on range firings, what's the maximum number of targets a system can engage before degradation becomes noticeable — and at what point is that gun nothing more than an expensive noisemaker?"

Martinez thought. He knew that range firing was not as stressful as combat. But Taylor knew that too.

"Sir, technically speaking, degradation begins with the first round downrange. But it only becomes pronounced after the expulsion of approximately three hundred to four hundred projectiles. Every system is a little bit different. They almost seem to have personalities. The best birds might still be hitting at a fifty percent kill rate out to six hundred rounds. But you can't count on it."

Taylor turned in his chair to address the assembly. "I'm sure most of you feel fat, dumb, and happy with those numbers. Sounds like a lot of killing power. But my gut feeling is that we're going to go through ammo at a far higher rate than either the contractors or Fort Leavenworth figured." Taylor nodded to himself. "Best system in the world. But even if it works exactly as advertised, gentlemen, those neat little war games back at the Combined Arms Center don't factor in the redundant kills, the inexplicable misses, the confusion, and the just plain fucked-up nature of combat. We've got a big mission, spread out over a geographically vast area. And I do not expect that it will be our only mission. So, what it means to me, is that systems commanders have to closely monitor their automatic acquisition systems to make sure we're getting the kind of kills we want — and that we're not all killing the same range car a couple of dozen times. You can use technology, you can even believe in it — but, in the end, you can't trust it." Taylor stared out coldly from under his ravaged brow. "Keep your eyes open out there.

And think."

Taylor's last word had the ring of metal, and it hung in the frozen air.

Settling back into a more relaxed posture, he continued: "All right. The operational calibrator goes first to Second Squadron at Platinum, then to First at Silver, finally to Third Squadron at Gold, unless the evolving mission dictates otherwise. You have anything else that's not covered in your annex, Manny?"

"No sir. Nothing for the group as a whole. The intent remains to be clear of this place by sunrise, but the work to get the M-l00s back on-line is keeping us from uploading the maintenance shop." Martinez lifted his shoulders. "But that's my problem."

"Don't be afraid to crack the whip. There's a good chance the Japanese strategic systems will pick us up as we break out of our hide positions, and I don't want to leave any courtesy targets back here on the ground. As soon as you can manage, Manny, I want you and your log animals and all of the motor officer's grease monkeys out of here. Move in even smaller increments, if you have to. But get them out of here. We're going to need you at the new sites."

"Yes sir," Martinez said. But he did not know it he could pull it off. There was still so much to do. There was no end to the work, no clear-cut point at which you could say, well, that's all done, now we can pack up our tools and be on our merry way. You fixed one problem, and turned around to find a pair of nervous lieutenants waiting to tell you about two more.

Be strong, man, Martinez told himself. Be hard. Like the old man. El Diablo.

This is the real thing, this is the real thing.

As he left his briefing position at the front of the assembly, Martinez suddenly laughed inside, remembering, with the blackest of humor, what Taylor had once told him.

"You can always tell when combat's coming your way," the old man had said. "Everything starts going wrong."

Taylor had said that to him in a cantina in an ugly little Mexican mountain town called Bonita. And Martinez had laughed, thinking that that was combat, chasing bandits in fatigue uniforms through the desert mountains. He had laughed happily, drinking a thin, sharp margarita, certain that he had everything under control, that he would always have everything under control. And Taylor had smiled his dead man's smile, with his spurred boots up on the table.

Taylor had known. He had known far more than a young quartermaster captain had imagined there was to know.

The real thing.

Taylor stood in front of his officers. He knew all of their names, even of the newest and most junior man. But that was not the same as knowing the men themselves. In his audience there were varying degrees of anxiety and bravado, of ignorance and enthusiasm. Even now, combat was not merely a tournament of machines, but the result of the countless unanticipated decisions made by a human collective. It had been his responsibility to prepare this group of men for war. He had not had them long, and he knew he had not prepared them adequately. But he also knew that there was never sufficient time for this, and that no man was ever fully prepared.

He knew that many of them, especially the younger ones, expected him to make a speech. If it were a film, there would surely be a speech. But he suspected that no amount of oratory on his part would be quite as valuable to them as time spent with their own subordinates, explaining, correcting, assuring. His purpose in bringing them together had been accomplished. They were reassured that they were not alone, neglected, forgotten. Each man was part of a greater work. And the briefing had dragged on long enough to content even the hungriest of them, to make every man anxious to rise from his seat and immerse himself in doing.

Manny was nervous, but that was all right. Taylor had faith in him. And in Meredith, who was frustrated by his inability to count each last hair on the enemy's heads. In Heifetz, whose bravery was born of despair. In the lieutenant in the back row who had embarrassed Taylor one night at the officer's club by apologizing profusely because his parents had seen to it that he had the best available cosmetic surgery to cover up his scars from Runciman's disease. He said he didn't want Taylor to think he wasn't a real man. And Taylor had been startled into silence.

He trusted Tercus to lead his squadron with vigor and dash, so he had assigned Lucky Dave to ensure that Tercus did not grow too dashing or vigorous. He even had faith in Reno to do his best when the chips were down with his father's demanding ghost at his shoulder. He had faith in the grinning young troopers with their tough-guy tattoos in the mechanics and ammunition handlers. He had great faith that the majority of the men before him would find more in themselves than they had ever expected.

But he did not have faith in himself to speak well to them now He had read too many books in his lifetime, and he feared that the words he would say would come from long-digested pages and not from his head and heart, that his words would ring false.

Better to say nothing at all.

He would have liked to tell them about the worn red and white pennant he carried folded small in his pocket. To tell them how he had taken it from a rooftop where it had been forgotten in the African wastes, and how he had carried it with him across the miles, through the years. He would have liked to draw it out and show them, the way a man might show his children or grandchildren. Here. This is what I am.

But he knew he did not have the words for that either. Or to tell them that he had waited a long time for this day, dreaming of it, when he knew in his intellect that no sane, decent man should wish for anything but peace.

He touched the Soviet greatcoat he still wore, feeling through the heavy material to the place where he had nestled the old cavalry guidon. It was still there, he reassured himself.

He did not draw it out. Instead, he began to unbutton the greatcoat, looking out at the rows of officers similarly dressed.

"Let's get out of these godforsaken rags," he told them, "and get to work."

13

"You don't have to do anything," her friend told Valya. "Just talk to them, have a drink or two. Come for the fun of it."

Valya told herself she could not go. There were countless reasons to decline the invitation. Since her visit to the clinic, she had resolved to behave as a wife should, to think only of Yuri, struggling to imagine that their lives together would improve. And she still had not recovered fully from the minor operation. The work had been carelessly done, and she still bled intermittently and often felt tired and weak. Standing in front of her students all day, forcing them to repeat in English, "I am pleased to meet you," took all of the energy she had. She barely cooked for herself, yet the table in the combination living and dining room was covered with neglected plates and cups. When she came home at the end of the day, she was even conscious that the tiny apartment had begun to smell unpleasantly, nursing a dreary odor of clotted broth and clothing left unlaundered. But she could not bring herself to raise her hand to work in earnest. In lieu of a proper cleanup, she halfheartedly shifted a few items about the room. At first Naritsky had phoned her again and again, but, slowly, he wearied of her unwillingness to give him an audience. She told herself that she must write to Yuri, while, night after night, she sat on the old green sofa, wrapped in a blanket, half-watching the television with its unkempt mixture of patriotic and sentimental programming punctuated by oddly fractured news reports from the war. She grasped that things were going very badly, and that Yuri might be in terrible danger. Yet, the recognition was merely intellectual. The small images had no real power to move her. No bombs fell in her street, and except for even greater shortages than usual in the shops, the war could not yet touch her. Absent, Yuri, too, was only an abstraction. She sat on the broken couch, staring at the livid rug hung to hide the disrepair of the opposite wall, while a songstress with mounds of chemical-soaked hair complained of the sorrows of love. Write to Yuri, she thought, I must write to Yuri. Yet, she did not write, and in her most lucid moments, she knew that she did not love the man to whom she had bound herself and that she simply feared being found out.

"I can't go, Tanya," she told her friend. "I really can't."

Tanya grimaced. She glanced instinctively at the random uncleanliness of the nearby tabletop, then forced her eyes back to her friend. But Valya was only faintly embarrassed. Things mattered less these days.

"You can't just sit here like a cabbage," Tanya said. "What in the world's gotten into you?"

"I've been thinking of Yuri," Valya half-lied. "I've treated him so badly. I haven't even written."

"Yuri can take care of himself," Tanya said. "You're being foolish. What's he done for you? What's so special about your life?" Tanya scanned the feckless clutter of the room. "They think they're so important. All puffed up in their uniforms. And look what a mess they've gotten us into. I always told you not to get involved with a soldier." This was not true. When they had begun going out together, Tanya had praised Yuri boundlessly, stressing the security of being an officer's wife, the dwindling but still considerable privileges, and even admiring Yuri's looks. Once, a two-room apartment in Moscow had seemed like a very great thing. Now the same living space felt like a prison to Valya.

"You were better off with what's-his-name," Tanya continued. "He at least had money. And he didn't mind spending it."

"Please," Valya said. "I don't want to talk about it. You don't know."

"Valya. For God's sake. You have to pull yourself together. I mean, look at this place. It's so unlike you."

But Valya knew that it was not really unlike her at all. She suspected that this was a truer reflection of her nature than imported perfume and careful makeup. But she also knew that she would, indeed, go with Tanya to the hotel. She only needed to delay the admission a little longer, not for Tanya's sake, but for her own.

"I haven't been well," Valya said.

"Oh, don't be a baby."

"I really should write to Yuri. For all I know, he's out there fighting or something."

"Don't be silly. Yuri's clever enough to take care of himself. Don't you believe all that talk about 'duty' and 'officer-this and officer-that.' Men love to talk." Tanya paused momentarily, as if she had to catch her breath at the thought of how many lies men had told her. Then she purged her expression of all mercy. "I'll bet he doesn't even think about you. He's probably sleeping with some nurse or with one of the local tramps. Those Siberian girls have no morals."

"Not Yuri " Valya said vehemently, certain of this one thing. "Yuri's not that way." It might have been better, she thought, if he had been that way.

Tanya laughed, a loud burlesque snort. You just don t understand men, my dear. They're all that way. You can't judge a man by the way he acts at home.

"Not Yuri," Valya repeated flatly.

Tanya sighed. "Well, time will tell. But why talk about Yuri? I came to talk about you. Valya, you simply must come out tonight. It's too good an opportunity to miss.

Valya tried to wrap herself in an aura of innocence, as though it were a second blanket. "I just don't think I can," she said. Then she glanced off toward the television. A man with silver hair called for a new era of self-sacrifice. A new spirit in the people was going to win the war. For a surplus moment of their lives the two women faced the television wearing the identical sober expressions that had allowed them to drift through hundreds of official meetings without hearing a word.

"What are they like?" Valya asked quietly, without looking at her friend. "I'm just curious."

"Well, first of all," Tanya said, "they know how to treat a woman properly. They're all rich, of course." Tanya thought for a moment. "Naturally, they're just the same as any other men that way. They just want to get your skirt up around your waist. But… well, if I can't be honest with you, who can I be honest with? At least they don't grunt once and roll off you."

"Tanya."

"Oh, don't act like the little innocent. I'm just saying I've never been so… so…" Tanya finally blushed at her own thoughts. In the moment of truth she could not overcome the force of the behavioral code. What you did was not of so much importance. But you had to be guarded in what you said. "They must study it at school or something," she giggled, as though a decade had been wiped away and they were both teenaged girls again.

The moment of silliness passed, and Tanya primped the line of her skirt. "But that's not why I came. I just thought you wouldn't want to miss a chance to talk to them. To practice your English. You know. You might learn some new expressions, the latest slang."

Valya looked down at the floor. That, too, badly needed cleaning. "I wouldn't know what to say to them," she told her friend. But she was already rehearsing verbal gambits in her mind.

"Oh, they'll take care of that. They really are friendly. Just like in the old Western movies. All scrubbed and clean and smiling all the time. And they don't act like stupid little bullies. Really, they're just the opposite of Russian men."

"But… I've heard they're very uncultured."

Tanya closed her eyes in an expression of disgust. "Well, if you want to go to an art museum, you can always go by yourself. I think the Americans are wonderful." To emphasize her point, she squeezed out a few words of her best English, far weaker than Valya's drilled speech. "To have fun," Tanya said. "Always to have fun. Darling, it is very nice. "

"I don't think I'd like them," Valya said, already imagining dull-witted American smiles, solid shoes, and lives of unforgivable material well-being.

"That's silly. First meet them, then make up your mind. I've already told Jim about you. He and his friends would love to meet you."

"Jeem," Valya said disdainfully. "It sounds like a name from a film. It's a foolish name."

Tanya shrugged in sudden weariness, as though Valya's slovenly malaise had grown contagious. Then she looked at her watch.

"It's getting late," she said. "I promised Jim I'd meet him."

Valya felt a rush of fear. Fear of being left behind, in these sour rooms, in her soured life. Who knew what possibilities might exist with the Americans? And a drink or two would do no harm. Perhaps there would even be something good to eat at the hotel. She felt herself blossoming back to life, after the long dead weeks. Surely, there would be marvelous food, gathered up just for the foreigners. Seductive, not-quite-focused visions began to crowd her mind.

"You're right," Valya said suddenly. "I need to get out. For some fresh air. I'll sleep better."

Tanya brightened again, and Valya wondered whether her old schoolmate had begged her to go along out of antique devotion, out of the need for further help in communicating with these rich men from abroad, or as some sort of procuress. But it did not matter.

"How long are they staying in Moscow?" Valya asked, letting the coverlet slip from her shoulders. In the background. the television displayed a map of far-off battles.

"A long time, I think," Tanya said. "Jim says he doesn't know for sure. They're on business. It's some kind of trade delegation. But don't worry. They're not boring, not at all the way you'd picture American businessmen. They're all friends, and they're always telling stories about when they were in the Army together."

It suddenly struck Valya as odd that a trade delegation would be in Moscow for an extended stay while the country was desperately at war. But she quickly shrugged it off. A thousand articles, programs, lectures had assured her that the Americans even made money off of plagues and famines, while Naritsky had already demonstrated to her how easily money could be made off of war. Perhaps that was why they were here now, to sell the tools of death. Valya found it no cause for serious concern.

"I'll have to wash up. And fix my hair."

"That's right," Tanya said happily. "And make sure you wash really well. They're very particular about it." She wrinkled her nose. "While you're getting dressed, I'll just clean up some of this mess."

Valya hastened into her tiny bedroom and began rummaging through a pile of neglected clothing. What was clean enough to wear? She had to be cautious with colors— she had been looking very pale.

China clacked in the next room, and she just heard Tanya's musing voice:

"You're such a bad girl, Valya."

Ryder sat at the bar. Alone. Drinking bottled beer that tasted as though it had gone stale in a can. He had not intended to stay so long. There was plenty of work waiting for him up in his room. Yet, it had been a very difficult day, troubling in ways that refused to be neatly labeled and put away. Machines don't feel pain. And a world of new possibilities. He had explained it all as clearly as he could to his superiors, and they, too, had grown excited. Opportunities like this, the detachment commander had said, only come once. Yet, Ryder worried that they did not really understand. He longed for them to come up with a plan instantly, to exploit this new dimension of the battlefield without hesitation.

He laughed to himself, playing with his half empty glass. So that this machine will not have suffered in vain. He had carefully played that aspect of the business down, stressing instead the enemy's near-miraculous vulnerabilities. And now it was up to them to make it all go, to forge the plan that sent the men to realize the possibilities. He knew he could not do that himself. But neither could he let go of the project. He sensed that his role had not yet been played.

He sipped the warming beer. Never much of a drinker. Absurd, he told himself. The entire thing. Absurd. But the word he felt and could not bring to bear was "haunting."

The entire world was haunted now. The hotel bar. Constructed in some bygone fit of hope, it was intended to be elegant but managed to achieve only a worn biliousness. Velvet seats with their contact surfaces rubbed white by countless rumps; brass plating crazed and chipped. Only the mirror had a genuinely antique feel, thanks to the years of cigarette smoke that had given it a deep gray tint. It was in that mirror, just above the palisade of bottles, that he first met the woman's stare, and now it was the memory of that stare, held a moment too long, that kept him fixed to the barstool.

He had been ready to leave, despite the passing admonishments of his fellow officers to join the party Ready to accept the loneliness that was not really all that bad when you made yourself think about it logically. Ready to go back to the small overheated room with its grumping noises of too much liquid in an old man's throat. There was always work, and work could justify any sacrifice.

Then her eyes caught him. Almost too strong for so delicate a face, he knew they were brown even though he could not begin to see their color through the smoky twilight of the bar. She had been watching him in the mirror, and the first thought that struck him was how bluntly out of place she was. Squeezed into a booth between two loud officers in ill-fitting sport jackets. It was finally the big sweep of a forearm that broke the reflected stare between them.

She seemed to be with a paunchy lieutenant colonel, whom Ryder knew as professionally incapable, politically adept, and delighted to be in a foreign country with a pocket full of money and without his wife. Ryder knew everyone at the table: officers for whom he had little respect. He even knew the other Russian woman by sight, even though he rarely strayed into the bar. Tallish, with a helmet of metallic-looking black hair. Charter member of the Bar-girl's International.

He knew everyone — except this fine-featured girl with honey colors strained down through the tangles of her hair. She sat silently, her face almost somber, while the increasingly drunken party spun its web around her. Neither the laughter nor the strangers with whom she sat seemed to touch her. She looked like a princess who had too little to eat, and he remembered a fellow warrant officer's snicker that "Most of them would do anything you could dream up for a good meal." Ryder felt a proprietary sense of loss that such a woman should be wasted on her present company.

Her face dropped back into the shadows, and Ryder could see only that she was smiling now, speaking words he could not hear.

He looked down at his beer. But he could see even more of her now, in his memory. Below the snapshot of face and hair a long white neck led down to bared collarbones and lace trim on a dress cut in a style that had been popular in the States some years before. A red dress, as if she were making a broad joke out of it all. He shook his head, telling himself that this one was genuinely beautiful, even though he knew it was not true. Somehow, her features fell just short of legitimate beauty. But, alone of the women in the crowded bar, this one had the power to jar him, to shake the hell out of his tenuous grip on the night.

There was nothing to be done about it, of course. The officers surrounding her distinctly outranked him. But, even had she been sitting alone, he would not have had the nerve to approach her. He had a fistful of excuses. Despite the detachment's general disregard for the rules, they were not supposed to be fraternizing with the locals. Besides, any of the girls could be KGB. And venereal disease was rumored to be epidemic in the city. Anyway, he had nothing to offer her. He could be gone at any moment. And he had far too much work to do. He had to hold himself in readiness.

He had never been much good at coming on to women. His friends could never understand him. Christ, an old friend had said to him, if I had your looks, my dick would be worn down to a nub. The women with whom he had swapped bits of life had almost invariably initiated things, like Jennifer waiting for him in the hallway outside of the computer science classroom. In one of her better moods, on one of their better days, she had told him, you just don't realize what a doll you are. Then she had divorced him.

Now there was no one at his side, and nothing in front of him but the dregs of a beer and another Moscow night of listening to the asthmatic plumbing and the escapades of his neighbors. So he sat a little longer, indulging himself in a fantasy about this woman with whom he knew he would never exchange a single word, imagining a life for her, the steps that had forced her to squander herself on the blustering drunks at her table.

He pictured her standing in line to buy rags of meat. The lines in the streets had grown so long that they seemed almost to meet themselves, to join until there was no beginning and no end, waiting for the opening of some rumored shop that did not even exist. Driving together through the streets, his Soviet counterpart had been unconcerned.

"The people of Russia," Savitsky said, "have always waited."

The wrong woman, Ryder thought, and the wrong country too.

He was just about to force himself away from the bar and his reverie, when the lieutenant colonel, who had the woman boxed in, noisily excused himself and weaved off toward the men’s room. Ryder instinctively glanced at the spot in the mirror where his eyes had caught her stare, and he saw that she, too, was excusing herself now. He suddenly felt sick to his stomach, thinking that she was about to follow the lieutenant colonel, realizing that he was headed not to the men’s room but up the hotel’s back stairs.

The woman surprised him. She did not follow the man to whom Ryder’s imagination had condemned her. Instead, she boldly met his eyes in the mirror once again and marched straight toward the bar. He lost the courage of his fantasies now. He broke the stare and huddled closer to his empty glass.

He sensed her coming up beside him. He stared nervously at the bartender's paunch as the man lolled it over a sink. Sergey, the hard-currency-holder's friend.

A hand, unmistakably feminine, touched lightly at his shoulder.

"This seat is occupied?" the woman asked. He did not have to look back into the mirror, or to turn. He knew it was her. He knew her voice with a certainty built on concrete and steel, even though he had heard only a faint, half-imagined laugh across a crowded room.

"No," he stammered, turning at last. "Please. Please, sit down."

KGB. Of course. She had to be. Otherwise, there was no reasonable explanation for it.

"How do you do?" she asked, and it was only then that he realized that she was speaking to him in English. Her voice was careful, the intonation studiedly flat, as though she were not quite sure of the words. But, as he looked at her closely for the first time he could not imagine why she should ever be afraid of anything.

Often, when you came close to Russian women, their skin proved unexpectedly bad, or the sudden foulness of their teeth shocked you. But this woman had a clear, perfect complexion. Pale, though. Almost as though she had been a little ill. Her teeth were small and even, behind lips that were, perhaps, just slightly too heavy. The close smell of her was just rich enough to tease him.

"I'm fine," he said automatically. "How are you?"

The woman sat down beside him, her body flowing in smooth elastic lines beneath her dress. Too thin a fabric for the Moscow autumn, washed almost to nothing. She, too, appeared too frail for the world in which she lived. But this was a country where even the beauties did not eat terribly well.

"I am very well tonight, thank you," the woman said. "Do you have a cigarette?"

"I don't smoke," Ryder said, instantly regretting that he did not.

The woman's eyes took on an uncertain look.

"Wait," Ryder said. "Hang on a minute." He reluctantly turned his face away from her, as if afraid she might disappear at this momentary inattention. "Sergey?" he called down the bar.

The bartender, who professed that he really loved Americans, that he loved Americans best of any of his distinguished customers, and why weren't there more Americans? moved down behind his barricade of polished wood.

"Please, mister?"

"A pack of cigarettes," Ryder told him, adding "Marlboros," at the sudden recollection that he had seen that one Western brand passing above the counter.

"This is not necessary from you," the woman said, her words devoid of conviction.

"No trouble," Ryder said, drawing dollars from his wallet. "By the way, my name's Jeff."

The woman looked at him. Dark brown eyes only enriched by the dark circles beneath them. Eyes, Ryder thought lightheartedly, that men would die for.

"I am Valentina," the woman pronounced slowly. "But I am called Valya. It is my shortened name, you see."

"Valya," Ryder repeated. "That's a very nice name." He was conscious of the inanity of his words. But he could not think of anything clever, and he feared a silence that might drive her away.

The bartender delivered the cigarettes.

"Marlboros all right?" Ryder asked the woman.

"Oh, yes. Very good." The woman seemed slightly nervous, although Ryder could not imagine how anyone so attractive, so graced by God, could be nervous in such a situation. He could not even believe that she was here. How could the men of this country have allowed her to slip through their grasp?

He thought again that she must be KGB. But he did not want to believe it.

She looked a bit hardened up close. But, in a way he could not explain, this slight defect only made her more attractive. He guessed that she was in her late twenties, approximately his age.

Striking, he thought. Not beautiful. Striking.

He fumbled to open the pack of cigarettes for her, unfamiliar with the task. Finally, relieved, he extended the open pack toward her, then he lit the cigarette for her, using the action as an excuse to close slightly on her, to get the near sense of her, to smell the mixture of womanly body and discount-shop perfume.

"Thank you," she said. "You are very kind, Jeff." She, too, pronounced it "Cheff." A word she had not practiced. "You speak English very well."

"I am a teacher. Of the children. I think that children are very wonderful. I am their teacher for the English language, which I love. It is very interesting."

Ryder struggled to find something to say, desperately afraid that she would abandon him at each next moment. He drained the very last of his beer.

"Can I get you a drink? What are you drinking?"

"That is very nice. But it is not necessary. I will have a Pepsi-Cola, with whiskey, please."

Ryder ordered. And another beer.

His language account went bankrupt again. The woman puffed at her cigarette, then tilted her head back in a display of her long white throat and thick, tumbling hair. She wore a schoolgirl's heart pendant that showed bright as blood against her skin. She blew out the smoke, and the action seemed oddly exotic to Ryder, something out of a very old film. No attractive woman in the States would be caught dead with a cigarette in her mouth anymore.

"You're a very lovely woman, Valya," he said, unable to think of anything else and afraid that this was far too much.

She smiled. "What a nice thing that is to say to me. Thank you very much."

"Do you live in Moscow?"

"Oh, yes. I am a Moscow girl. I was born in Moscow."

"It's a very interesting city," Ryder said.

The woman wrinkled her face slightly. "I think it is not so interesting. It cannot be so interesting for you. I think America is very interesting."

"Have you ever been to America?"

She shook her head, making it into a gesture of theatrical sorrow. "It is not easy, you know. Also, America is very expensive. But I think you laugh at us in Moscow. We are very poor. Not like life in America."

"I hope someday you can visit the United States."

The woman's eyes brightened. "Oh, yes. I would like that. To see America. There is everything in America." The woman seemed to have a talent for saying things that left him blank in response. And he ached to go on talking with her.

Their drinks arrived, and Ryder sent more dollars into the bartender's hand.

The woman tasted the drink, then shook her head sharply, bitten by the taste.

"He puts in very much whiskey. I must not drink so much. Tonight I forgot to have dinner."

"Would you rather have something else to drink? Ryder asked hurriedly.

"No. Oh, no," the woman answered quickly, alarmed at the suggestion. "This has made me happy. Thank you." He had the urge to ask her to join him in the dining room. He had not eaten, either. And the service hours had been extended for the well-paying Americans. He was no longer so concerned that she might be KGB. Somehow, he could not imagine that this woman of all women was some sort of undercover agent.

And yet, he thought.

He put off asking her. Not because he feared being compromised so much as because he was afraid she would say no, that his offer would force them to separate all the sooner.

"Do you know many Americans? he asked.

"No," she said, then added hurriedly, "I do not come often to hotels such as this. Tonight, you see, I have only come to keep company with my girlfriend. She has invited me "

Ryder sensed that her girlfriend's character was not the stuff of which good recommendations were made. But. He refused to think badly of the woman sitting beside him. She had asked him for nothing. And he knew that few of the women in the bar were actually hookers. The Americans were a feature attraction in a glum season. And who knew what this woman had gone through in her life? All at once it struck him that he and all of his peers were far too quick to judge.

His silence bothered the woman, who offered an additional line to keep things going. "I think Americans are very friendly."

Ryder nodded. Then he smiled. Yes. Indeed. Every American in the room would be glad to be friendly toward this woman.

In a moment of near panic, followed by deep relief, he saw the beery lieutenant colonel return to his table. Ryder was sure the man would head right for the bar when he noticed that he had been deserted, coming to take the woman back. But the big man just tottered for a moment, then sat down hard, reaching for his waiting glass.

"Americans are pretty friendly people," he agreed, as if he had given it a great deal of thought. "Most of the time."

"But you are sitting alone. That is not very friendly."

"I'm not alone," Ryder smiled. "You're here."

A shadow of annoyance passed over her face, and Ryder realized with the insight of a longterm language student that his response had spoiled the sequence of verbs and nouns she had planned ahead in her mind.

"You should not sit alone," she said adamantly.

"I had a long day. Hard work."

"And what is your work, Jeff?"

"I work with computers."

She thought for a moment. "That is very interesting. But I could not do it. The mathematics are very difficult for me."

"Math's only part of it," Ryder said. But he wanted to steer the conversation well away from his work. If she was KGB, she was not going to get anything out of him.

"Listen, Valya," he said boldly. "I haven't eaten yet. Would you join me for dinner? You said you haven't eaten."

He had taken his cowardice by surprise, pushing the words out. But the last breath of speech brought with it a collapse into fear. She would leave him now.

"That would be very nice," she said quickly. Her response came so fast that he almost missed it in his anxiety.

He still could not believe that she had come to him, that she was still sitting beside him. "I think I would like that very much," she continued. "To dine together.'

"Great," Ryder said, aware, somewhere down under his exuberance, that he was suddenly willing to risk far more with this woman than he had ever intended.

Valya struggled not to eat too quickly. She wanted to appear well-mannered, elegant. But it was difficult to offer sensible responses to the American's words. The food was simply too good, too bountiful. Even Naritsky, with all of his black market connections, had not been able to obtain meat of such quality. Valya had never tasted anything like it, and each bite — carefully, agonizedly restrained — left her in a fermenting mix of gratitude and anger. The quality of this meal, served to foreigners in her own city, was humiliating to one who had never been allowed to experience this world. She trimmed the beef into ladylike bits, wanting all the while to pick it up with her hands and devour it like a bad child. She believed that she had never known how hungry she really was until the waiter placed this meal before her.

"The food is very good," she told the American. Thank you very much."

The American nodded. "Glad you like it. God, I wish I could serve you up a real American steak. Something right out of the Kansas City stockyards. You'd be knocked out."

His words seemed to imply that American beet would be much better than this. But such a thing was unimaginable to Valya. She had never tasted meat of this quality, had not even supposed that it might exist. Now this American seemed to think it was not very good at all. He picked at his food. It made her angry.

Perhaps he was just a braggart. Like so many of them. Not just Americans. Men in general. And yet. This one truly did not seem that way. So quiet. Anxious to please.

Imprisoned by the boors to whom Tanya had introduced her, Valya had spent a long time watching him in the mirror before he noticed her. He was very handsome, in an immature American sort of way, and at first she thought he was sitting alone out of arrogance. But his gestures were too unsure, and when their eyes finally met, his face showed nothing of the wolflike traces she would have expected to encounter in so handsome a man, had he been a Russian.

Perhaps he was truly a good man, decent and generous.

Then why should he speak badly about the best meal she had ever had?

"This is very good," she insisted, her voice polite but definite.

He seemed to sense that he had made a wrong move.

"Yeah, this certainly isn't bad. They're doing their best. Would you like some more potatoes? I can't eat them all."

"No," Valya lied. "This is very much food. Thank you." She wanted to close her eyes and listen to the splendid melody the dinner sent singing through her body. She took another forkful of the vegetables in their thick sauce, careful not to spill anything on her dress. She felt as though she would give anything she had, as though she would even steal, for just one more meal like this.

She had watched him sitting at the bar, and she had made up her mind. The swine with whom Tanya had thrown in her lot were so obviously after only one thing that she knew there was no future with them. They offered no real possibilities. But the handsome, boyish one at the bar. Perhaps he had something to offer. He was young enough to be unattached, to have more future to him than past. She decided he was worth an effort. If nothing else, she wouldn't end the evening being pawed by a middle-aged drunk.

"How about some more wine?" he asked her, with the bottle already raised in his hand.

"Oh, yes. Please. You see it is very good, the Russian wine. It derives from the Crimea."

She saw a slight frown of disagreement cross his face, evidence of further dissatisfaction. What on earth was wrong with this man? What did he want? What did he expect?

She decided that he was simply trying to impress her. Perhaps not in such a bad way. He was still so much a boy. And he wanted her to think he was a man.

Valya warned herself again to slow down, to stop eating like a stray dog. As a penalty for her bad behavior she forced herself to put down her knife and fork for a moment, to talk to the American.

"Jeff. You are such a nice man. I think you are married, yes?"

She watched his face closely. It did not change in a bad way. There was no sudden embarrassment. No stupid furtiveness. Just a barely visible stiffening, a look of pain in the eyes.

"No," he said slowly. "No, I’m not married. I was. But not now."

"Oh. I am sorry. Your wife is dead?

He smiled slightly, and the pain was gone. "No. Nothing that dramatic. We just weren’t right for each other. We're divorced."

The woman was probably some faithless American slut, Valya decided. A bitch who had so much she could discard husbands without a care. In America, every woman had her own private automobile.

"You have children?"

"No," he said. "No, I guess we were lucky that way. Then he changed his tone, leaning in toward her. "But what about you? I can’t believe you’re not married."

Valya finished chewing and looked at him with her most serious face.

"My husband was killed," she lied. "On the first day of the war."

He retreated into his chair. Sitting up very properly.

"Valya, I’m sorry…"

"I do not wish to talk about it," she said. "Tonight is the first night when I am not at home. My friend thought that I must come out."

"All right," he said. "I just…"

"It is not important. Tell me about your wife, Valya said, although she did not want to hear about the woman at all. "I think she must be a very bad woman. Then she slipped another piece of beef into her mouth, convinced that he would talk for a while.

"Jennifer?" the American said. "No, Jennifers not a bad woman. She just sees the world differently than I do." He smiled. "There's a joke in America that everyone is authorized one trial marriage. I guess that was mine."

Valya swallowed hurriedly. "Then you will marry again, Jeff?"

"I don't know. Maybe. If the right woman comes along. I don't think about it."

"Perhaps you still love this woman?"

The American thought for a moment. "No. I'm pretty much over her, I think. I mean, I'll always remember the good times we had. And I think I kept on loving her a long time after she stopped loving me. But it's all over now."

"I think you must find a very good woman."

The American smiled. He had a wonderful boy's smile. "Or hope that she finds me." He poured more wine, leaving her glass a bit too full.

Without the least warning, Valya felt her stomach cramp. The pain was brutal and very sharp. She stopped chewing, and her eyes opened wide. Then the pain receded, leaving her shocked and numb in the torso, with sweat jeweling on her forehead. Her right hand clutched the tablecloth.

She forced herself to continue chewing.

"Are you all right?" the American asked.

Valya nodded. "I am fine. There is no problem." She reached for the overfilled wine glass. "I think it is hot in here."

Just as she lifted the glass, a second blade of pain ripped through her belly. She moaned slightly, absolutely helpless. The first shock had opened her eyes. Now she had to close them. She swallowed, miserable. Cursing to herself as bitterly and horribly as she had ever done.

"Valya?"

She felt cold sweat on her forehead and temples. Then another bigger, sharper pain cut through her, and she realized that everything was coming apart.

"Please. You will excuse me." She had to hurry, she could not worry about correct stress and pronunciation now. She got up, unsteady, ready to weep, hoping only that she would not embarrass herself too badly. She reached for her purse with a blind hand, but felt only the confusion of the tablecloth and the hard line of her chair.

There was no time. She marched herself quickly across the room, with the desperate, stiff dignity that teeters on the edge of shame, heading for the nearest waiter, to whom she could speak in her own language.

The waiter coldly gave her directions, not interested in being polite to her now that she had separated from her foreigner.

She walked swiftly, growing dizzy and faint, trying to find the way. She sensed that she did not have the spare seconds a wrong turn might cost.

Shadowy hall, buckled carpet. Blistered paint on an old, huge door. She charged inside, past the thick, middle-aged woman who sat guarding a pile of towels and a little plate of coins. As she flashed by, Valya saw quick changes pass over the woman's face. First disapproval, then the forced, begrudged smile that hoped for a tip, then anger.

Valya rushed toward the first stall. Anxious to get down on her knees, yet not quite sure what to do first. In the background, behind an invisible membrane that separated her from the rest of the world, Valya could hear the attendant cursing her. The woman had followed her, and a part of Valya sensed her hovering over her as she shouted insults. But it was all too distant for real concern. There was only the immediacy of sickness, terrible sickness. The burning in her stomach and the strain in her throat existed outside of time.

Then everything grew slow and rancid. The attendant had given up on her and returned to her perch, muttering. Valya sat down on the cracked tile, unable to care now what happened to her precious dress. With all available energy, she reached up to release a gush of fresh water to cleanse her world. Then she sat back down hard.

The physical sickness decayed, leaving her with a different sort of discomfort. Thinking over her folly. She had eaten like an animal. The food had been too rich, too much. It was heartbreakingly good food, and, even now, in the acidic wake of her sickness, she could only hope that there would be more such food in her life.

She breathed deeply. Several times. Finally, she stood up. Her legs felt unsteady at first. But it was evident that the sickness was not serious. Sheer gluttony. Like a child gobbling down sweets.

She lifted her skirt to fix her hose. And the legs that had seemed so long and lovely to her in the mirrors of her life now seemed to have grown too thin. Her wrists showed too much bone. In a world, in the very city, where there was such hidden bounty. Valya caught a glimpse of her body, of her life, wasting.

She approached the attendant, who was sitting sullenly at her post.

"Please," she said, all the while trying to iron her dress with the flat of her hand. "Please give me a towel. I left my purse outside. I was sick."

The woman, mighty in her authority, looked Valya up and down with disapproval.

"The towels," she said, "are fifty kopecks."

"I know," Valya begged. "I understand. But please. I have to clean myself. I can't go back out there. I have to wash."

The attendant laid a hairy wrist across her stack of towels and looked up at Valya with a lifetime's accumulated hatred.

"Fifty kopecks," she said.

Surrendering, Valya stripped off her watch. The marvelous Japanese watch that Naritsky had given her on his return from one of his business trips. For being good, he had said. Naritsky the pig.

She tossed the watch at the woman's swollen waist. It caught, then slipped as the woman grabbed for it, settling in the well of skirt between her legs.

Valya took her towel.

She washed hurriedly. She tried to rinse out her mouth, to fix her hair as best she could. In the mirror, she appeared very pale. But not so very bad, she told herself. She simply felt acid and empty. With the sickness hardly ten minutes behind her, she could already feel her hunger returning. She told herself she would sit down calmly, smile, and pretend nothing had happened. Even if the American had been put off, she would at least finish her meal. She would have that, if nothing else.

She breathed deeply one last time. By the door, the attendant was struggling to close the watchband over her thick wrist. Valya launched herself back toward the dining room.

To her immense relief, the American was still sitting at the table, and he brightened unmistakably when he caught sight of her. She straightened her back and slowed her step, feeling a surge of confidence that everything just might be all right after all.

Then she noticed that the food was gone. The table had been cleared, and all that remained was the wine. And the half-empty packet of cigarettes she had ravaged in her nervousness.

The lovely, heartbreakingly lovely food was gone. Valya continued her march toward the table, struggling to smile, to assure her American that everything was all right. He stood up clumsily and hastened to draw back her chair for her, and she sat down like a mechanical doll. She stared in disbelief at the white desert of the tabletop. The beautiful food was gone. Her belly felt emptier than it had ever felt in her life.

She began to cry. Helplessly. She did not even have the strength left to be angry with herself. She simply sat and wept quietly into her hands, overcome by her weakness and certain that her life would never be fine again.

"Valya," the American said in his flat, flinty voice, "what's the matter? Can I do anything for you?"

Take me away. Please. Take me away to your America and I'll do anything for you. Anything. Anything you want.

"No," Valya told him, mastering her sobs. "No, please. It has no meaning."

His jaw no longer worked properly and it was hard to push out the words through his swollen lips. He stared up at his tormentor through the pounded meat around his eyes. The light was poor to begin with, and the beating he had taken made it almost impossible to focus in on the KGB major who paced in and out of the shadows, circling the chair where Babryshkin sat with his hands bound tightly behind him. The man was a huge thing, a monster in uniform, a devil.

"Never," Babryshkin repeated, struggling to enunciate, determined not to yield his last dignity. "I… never had such contacts."

The great shadow swooped in on him again. A big fist rushed out of the darkness and slammed into the side of his head.

The chair almost tumbled over. Dizzy, Babryshkin struggled to retain an upright position. He could not understand any of this. It was madness.

"When," the KGB major shouted, "did you first make contact with the faction of traitors? We're not trying to establish your guilt. We know you're guilty. We just want to know the timing." He slapped the back of Babryshkin's head in passing. This time, it wasn't a real blow. Just a bit of punctuation for the words. "How long have you been collaborating with them?"

Damn you, Babryshkin thought, hating. Damn you.

"Comrade major," he began firmly.

An open hand slapped his burst lips.

"I'm not your comrade, traitor."

"I am not a traitor. I fought for over a thousand kilometers…"

Babryshkin waited for the blow, tensing. But this time it failed to arrive. It was so unpredictable. It was amazing how they established control over you.

"You mean you retreated for a thousand kilometers."

"We were ordered to retreat."

The KGB officer snorted. "Yes. And when those orders finally came, you personally chose to disobey them. Shamelessly. When your tanks were needed to reestablish the defense, you purposely delayed their withdrawal. In collaboration with the enemy. The evidence is conclusive. And you've already admitted disobeying the order yourself."

"What could I do?" Babryshkin cried, unable to control himself. He could hear that his words, so clear in his mind, slurred almost unintelligibly as they left his mouth. He tasted fresh blood from his lips, and shreds of meat brushed against his remaining teeth as he spoke. "We couldn't just leave them all. Our own people. They were being massacred. I couldn't leave them."

The major slowed his pacing. The desk lay between him and Babryshkin now, and the major walked with folded arms. Babryshkin was grateful for even this brief, perhaps unintended, pause in the beating.

"There are times," the major said firmly, when it is important to consider the greater good. Your superiors recognized that. But you willfully chose to disobey, thereby endangering our defense. What to disobey? And, in any case, you can't hide behind the people. You feel nothing for the People. You purposely delayed, looking for the opportunity to surrender your force to the enemy."

"That's a lie."

The major paused in his journey around the cement-walled office. "The truth," he said, "doesn't have to be shouted. Liars shout."

"It's a lie," Babryshkin repeated, a new tone of resignation in his voice. He shook his head, and it felt as though he were turning a great, miserable weight on his shoulders. "It's a lie. We fought. We kept on fighting. We never stopped fighting."

"You fought just enough to make a good pretense. Then you willfully exposed your subordinates to a chemical at-tack in a preplanned strike zone where you had gathered as many innocent civilians as possible.

Babryshkin closed his eyes. "That's madness," he said, almost whispering, unable to believe how this man in clean uniform, who obviously had been nowhere near the direct-fire war could so twist the truth.

"The only madness," the KGB officer said, "is to lie to the People."

Shots sounded from outside. The shots came intermittently, and they were always exclusively from Soviet weapons. Babryshkin realized what was happening. But he could not believe, even now that it might happen to him.

"So," the KGB major said after a deep breath. I want you to tell me when you first established clandestine contacts with the cadre of traitors in your garrison…"

Babryshkin's mind searched through the scenes of the past weeks. A newsreel, eccentrically edited, played at a desperate speed. The first night the indigenous garrison stationed side by side with his own had almost overrun the barracks and motor parks of Babryshkin's unit. Men fought in the dark with pocket knives and their fists against rifles. All of the uniforms were the same in the dark. The fires spread. Then came the armored drive into the heart of the city to try to rescue the local headquarters staff, only to find them butchered. The repeated attempts to organize a defense were always too late. The enemy was forever on your flank or behind you. He remembered the terrible enemy gunships, and the wounded lost in the swirling confusion, the murdered civilians whose numbers would never be figured exactly now. He recalled the sudden death of the last refugees, and the bone-thin woman with her louse-ridden offspring in his tank. Valor, incompetence, and death. Fear and bad decisions. Desperation. It was all there. Everything except treason.

He had finally brought his shrunken unit into the hastily established Soviet lines south of Petropavlovsk, pulling in under the last daylight, radioing frantically so his battered vehicles would not be targeted by mistake. And then they were behind friendly lines, marching to the rear to rearm, perhaps to be reorganized, still willing to turn back and fight when needed. But the column had been halted at a KGB control point several kilometers to the rear of the network of defensive positions. Who was the commander? Where was the political officer? Where was the staff? Before Babryshkin could make any sense out of the situation, he and his officers had been gathered together and disarmed, while his vehicles continued to the rear under the supervision of KGB officers who did not even know how to give the correct commands.

No sooner had the vehicles departed with great plumes of dust than the assembled officers were bound, blindfolded, and gagged. Several officers, including Babryshkin, protested angrily, until a KGB lieutenant colonel drew his pistol and shot one recalcitrant captain through the head. The action so shocked the men, who had believed that they had finally reached some brief, relative safety, that they behaved like sheep for the rest of the journey to the interrogation center. Made to jump off the backs of trucks still blindfolded and with their wrists bound together, officers who had survived twelve or fifteen hundred kilometers of combat broke arms and legs. Their blindfolds were finally removed to achieve a calculated effect: they were marched into the courtyard of a rural school complex and the first sight that met them was a disordered mound of corpses — all Soviet officers — that had grown up against a wall. Those who had broken limbs in exiting the trucks were forced to drag themselves, unaided, past the spectacle.

Everyone understood its implication.

Babryshkin had heard that one of the rules of interrogation was to keep everyone separated. But there were not enough rooms in the building. They were herded en masse into a stinking classroom, already crowded with earlier arrivals. The windows had been hastily boarded shut, and no provision, not even a bucket, had been made for the waste of frightened men.

At times, the officers were not even kept separate during their interrogations. Babryshkin's first taste of the questioning began when he was thrust into a room where his political officer was already seated. The political officer's eyes were unbalanced, and he recoiled from the sight of Babryshkin as if from the devil himself.

"It was him," the political officer cried. "It was all his doing. I told him to obey the order. I told him. And he refused. I told him and he refused. It was his fault. He even carried a woman on his tank for his personal pleasure."

"And why didn't you take command yourself?" the interrogator asked quietly.

"I couldn't," the political officer answered, terrified. "They were all with him. I tried to do my duty. But they were all in it together."

"He's a liar," Babryshkin said quickly, breaking his resolve not to speak out until he better understood what was happening. "I take full responsibility for the actions of my officers. The actions of my unit were the results of my decisions and mine alone."

The interrogator struck him across the face with a calloused hand that wore a big ring. "No one asked you anything. Prisoners are only to speak when they are asked a question."

"They were all in it together," the political officer repeated.

But the interrogator's focus had shifted. "So… a commander who even carries a woman with him for his pleasure. It must be a fine war."

"That's nonsense," Babryshkin stated coldly. "The woman was a refugee. With a baby and a little boy. She was at the end of her strength. She would have died." The interrogator raised an eyebrow, folding his arms. "And you decided to rescue her out of the goodness of your heart? But why this woman, out of so many? What was special about her? Was she an agent too? Or was she merely pretty?"

Babryshkin thought of the dreadfully emaciated woman, remembering her screams when she emerged to see the devastation of the chemical attack. Well, at least she was safe now, deposited at a refugee collection point with her starving infant and the louse-ridden, broken-armed boy. And, as he thought of her, he found that her ravaged face grew indistinct, becoming Valya's fine, clear, lovely features. Valya. He wondered if he would ever see her again. And, for a moment, she had more reality for him than any of the surrounding madness.

"No," Babryshkin said flatly. "She wasn't pretty."

"Then she was an agent? A contact you were to meet and evacuate?"

Babryshkin laughed out loud at the folly of such a thought.

The KGB officer did not need any underlings to do his dirty work for him. He landed a square blow on Babryshkin's mouth that knocked in his front teeth. Unlike in films, where men fought forever without really harming one another, this man's fists did real damage each time they landed. First on the mouth, then on the side of the head, on the ear, beside an eye. In a flash of confusion, the chair toppled over, and Babryshkin found himself lying sideways on the floor. The major kicked him in the mouth. Then in the stomach. It was at that point that Babryshkin realized that he was, indeed, going to die, and he resolved at least to die as well as possible.

Through blood-clouded eyes he looked up at the cringing political officer. And he smiled slightly through his broken lips, almost pitying the weaker man in the knowledge that they would soon be together on the growing heap out in the courtyard, that nothing would save either one of them. The system had gone mad. It had begun eating itself like a demented animal.

Another kick left Babryshkin unconscious for an indefinite period, and when he awoke, he was alone with his interrogator. They were all wrong. Babryshkin decided. There is a God. And this is what he looks like.

Babryshkin had been set upright on his chair, and his hands had been rebound behind its straight back so that he could not slump and fall. The questions began again, insane, twisted questions, beginning with the truth and butchering it beyond all logic, making out of it a sinister new calculus that was so perverse it was almost irresistible.

When did you first think of betraying the Soviet Union? Who were your earliest coconspirators? What did you hope to accomplish? Did you act out of ideology or for material gain? How long have you been plotting? With how many foreigners did you have contact? What are your current orders?

There was never any attempt to establish guilt or innocence. Guilt was assumed. Babryshkin had heard stories about such things happening back in the old days, in the darkest years of the twentieth century. But he had never expected to encounter such a thing in his own lifetime.

He sought to tell his tale honestly, in an unadorned, believable manner. He tried to clarify the simple logic of his actions, to explain to this starched creature from the rear area what combat was like, how it forced men to act. But his words only met with more blows. Sometimes the KGB major would hear him out before attacking him. At other times he would squeeze his swollen, ring-speckled fingers into a fist and bring it down hard at the first words out of Babryshkin's mouth.

Babryshkin tried to maintain his focus. He set himself the goal of ensuring that no blame passed to any of his subordinates, of establishing that each action had been the result of his personal decision. But it became harder and harder to form the words. And the intermittent shooting outside tripped his thoughts. As the questions were repeated to him again and again, he found it ever more difficult to focus. And the interrogator exaggerated the smallest grammatical inconsistencies in his story.

When the beating was at its worst, he tried to close his mind to it, to think only of the thing he loved the most in the world. He had long thought that it was his military service, but he knew now, with utter mental clarity, that it was Valya. Not even his mother, who had died in the plague years, had meant so much to him. Dying was terribly frightening. And yet… he knew it was really nothing. There had been so much death. But it seemed needlessly cruel, unbearable, that he would die without ever seeing his wife again.

He was grateful that the questions posed to him were all of a military nature. The KGB major never once asked about his family or about his nonmilitary friends. Babryshkin guessed that those questions were for more leisurely peacetime interrogations. Now there was only the war. And he was glad. It would be all right to die. He would have preferred to die in combat, being of some use. But the manner of dying had come to seem increasingly a matter of accident. Perhaps, really, one death was as good as another. As long as Valya wasn't dragged into it, as long as nothing hurt her. He even knew — and remembered without malice — that she had been unfaithful to him once. Perhaps she was being unfaithful to him now. But it did not matter. She was such a special girl. And because he believed that she had been unfaithful that time out of spite, only to hurt him, it had not hurt so much. It was not as if she had really loved another. And he knew he had broken many promises, that he had failed her again and again. It was a country, an age, of broken promises. And he suspected that Valya was far, far more helpless than she realized.

He made a deal with God. Not with the brief, small god whose fist hammered him over and over again, but with the other God who might be out there after all, who should be out there. He would die willingly, so long as Valya was not harmed. So long as he became only another corpse and the affair ended at that. He thought of Valya: the smell of sex and lilacs, a woman always ready with a little lie, imagining herself to be so strong, and he filled with pity for her. He could not leave her much else. If only he could leave her safe from all of this.

He could not keep his thoughts under control any longer. Under the torrent of blows, Valya became the refugee woman, gaunt with beginning death. Everyone was dying. It was a dying world. Chaos. A woman shrieked across the death-covered steppes. All who were not dead were dying. To the music of a scream.

Babryshkin came to again. He raised his head, feeling as though his skull had grown huge and he were a small creature within it. Only one eye would open now. But he noticed that other men had joined his interrogator in the room.

Uniforms. Weapons. His soldiers. They had come to rescue him. He would see Valya again after all. And they would walk across the river and up into the Lenin Hills, through the university gardens. And gray, sad Moscow would look beautiful in the sunlight. Valya. She was very close to him now.

He saw his interrogator bend over the desk, then right himself and hand a piece of paper to one of the soldiers.

"Enemy of the People," the officer said. "To be shot."

Ryder lay guarding one of the woman's small breasts with his right hand. His head reached high up on the pillow so that the tumult of her hair would not tease his nose and mouth. He did not bother to close his eyes. This darkness was not meant for sleeping, and he held the stranger firmly, bedeviled by the warmth and the buttery smell of her, by the musk they had spilled on the bedding, by her remarkable fragility. She filled his palm, then fell away with the rhythm of her breathing. He tried to concentrate, to burn the reality of her flesh into his mind so that he might keep her with him after she had gone. Yet, his mind strayed. He could not begin to tell why the presence of this foreign woman in his bed should conjure up so many memories.

Consciously considered, the immediacy of their two bodies seemed to be everything of importance. But he lay in the mild damp of their bed remembering prairies and the sparse, anxious pleasures of being young in a small town long bypassed by the interstate. Laughing girls gathered in a convenience store parking lot, and the bitter combat of high school sports, briefly glorifying towns that had lost their way in every other sphere of endeavor. Clumsy, greedy lasses, starving kisses that ground on until suddenly, unreasonably, a nervous girl risked love. The acquired words would never do. No place on earth was lonelier or vaster than Nebraska on an October night.

Sometimes the girls pretended they did not know what you were doing, while others knew it all startlingly well. And the only things that ever changed were the new television shows or the shape of a new model car, and they didn't really change at all. Ryder could not understand why a Russian woman in a dowdy hotel room, so far from his home, should have the power to alert his nostrils to the dust of gone Saturday nights, or to fill his open eyes with the common failures of his kind.

He remembered a girl who told him in a voice all bravery and truth that she would, that she could love only him forever. She, too, lay beside him now, hardly an arm's length away, as he recalled the whiteness of her legs in a car parked late, far from town, far from the world. Only a moment before, he had clumsily worked himself into her body as she clutched and cried, afraid to help him, afraid not to let him, because she loved him and only him and only ever him, and her naked legs were so white under the luminous cloud-light, and her eyes were wet and dark, staring away, as she rested her head on the flat of the car seat. Children, he thought, smiling at the temperate agony of such a loss, only children. And he remembered that prairie voice: "Only you… only you…" He recalled dark hair and the cold wind off the plains. The wind tried to batter its way inside the car, to punish them. He recalled her sharp recoil as her child's hand accidentally touched him. He remembered her perfectly, acutely. Her good-family bravery and quiet. Then her worry over telltale marks on her dress, or in her eyes. But he could not recall her name.

The slender, different woman with him now moaned one foreign word in her sleep and stirred slightly. Calling him back to the vividness of their much more recent and far less innocent collision. No, he thought, that's too hard a judgment. Her very attempts at sophistication made her seem laughably innocent. In his room, in the wake of the first kisses, the coming to terms without words, she had done a pathetically inept striptease, making faces from a badly done film, closing her eyes in a cartoon of abandon, all the while taking obvious care not to damage any article of her clothing. In the poor light, she seemed more desperate than brazen, thin and cold in her briefs. He had taken her into his arms as much to end the embarrassment as to express his desire.

But, held against him, she came to life. In the physical acts that rampaged before sex itself, she was shameless, almost fierce. Where he might have gone slowly, gently, she hurried, despising his easiness. She seemed anxious to get through her repertoire of acquired knacks, almost masculine in her unspoken conviction that nothing short of sexual finality really mattered. Making love, she had little sense of him, as though he were a device for her to use. She bit hard and dug her strong, thin fingers into the small of his back until it hurt him so badly he had to knock her hands away. She moved herself quickly, unwilling to listen to his rhythms. It was not a challenge, as it might have been with an American girl. Rather, it seemed like a colossal hunger, driven by the fear that she might receive too little. She was a hard, bad lover. There was no luxury in pressing against her. Just the hardness of bone bruising on bone, the brief, deceptive glory and collapse. Warm, spent breathing, a shifting of hips that made them separate again. Then the feel of holding her back and rump against him, a woman so undernourished her body might have been a child's.

A sudden eruption of noise down the hall startled him. An American voice cursed harshly, and a sharp woman's voice stabbed back in a foreign language. Gently, Ryder smoothed his hand away from the woman's breast and laid it over her ear.

She was a hard, bad lover. And, sobered, he sensed that she wanted things from him that had nothing to do with his individuality. But it did not matter. In this wilderness of sheets, he was her protector. Charged to shield her from all pain.

The cursing faded off down the hall, and Ryder pitied those who had to fight in such a way. He felt peaceful, and even the bizarre scenes from the computer interrogation center had softened. He did not think of the war. The war would return soon enough. For these few hours, he simply wanted to hold this stranger and let these scraps of companionship cover him.

The woman rustled against him, realigning her bottom. His body responded and he trailed his hand down over her hair to the hard collarbones, pausing briefly at the humble softness of her breasts, then crossing the prairie of her stomach until his fingers caught at damp tangles. He slid a finger into the wetness left over from their earlier lovemaking, and the woman began to turn toward him, locking his hand in place with the swell of her thighs. In the pale darkness, he could see that her eyes were wide open. She reached her mouth up for a kiss, stale from cigarettes and sleep. She laughed slightly, and he did not know why. Then she reached for him as she freed his captive hand.

Valya had long lain awake, pretending to be asleep, trying to take the measure of this latest man to whom she had given herself. She was anxious for him to make love to her again, not at all for the act itself, but for the reassurance that she really did attract him, that there was, after all, a chance that she might have her way.

She was certain that he did not understand her. He seemed so sure of himself, taking everything for granted. He smiled too much, and everything about him seemed too young, despite their like ages. Making love, he began with a gentleness she found disconcerting. She had come to expect far brusquer treatment from her lovers. Trying to move him, she soon got lost in the act itself, and let him follow as he chose. But she worried when she could not make him finish. He seemed to want to linger over the act, making it last as long as possible, instead of simply letting go. It was a very different business, and she was not certain she would be able to get used to it. There seemed to be so little real feeling, so little passion or abandon to the American.

The worst part, however, was not his physical indifference to her efforts. Far more annoying was the sense that she had not reached him on a personal level. She scolded herself bitterly: What can you expect when you jump into bed with a foreigner like some tramp? She felt her anger growing against this man who seemed so annoyingly content to hold her in his arms. She doubted that he had ever felt any kind of physical deprivation. And whom was she trying to fool? American women were all whores, and he could have any he wanted. In fine clothes. Rich women. Perhaps, she thought savagely, she should count herself lucky that he had deigned to take her into his bed. She doubted that he had ever known real loneliness, the kind that was bigger than any single cause that could be put into words, the kind that made you into such a fool. The Americans were spoiled and insensitive, she decided. Every last one of them.

Suddenly, a vicious-sounding man's voice began to shout in another room. Or perhaps it was in the hallway, she could not tell for certain. But the sound frightened her. Then a woman's voice replied in Russian. Demanding money. Dollars. The unmistakable evidence of the company into which she had fallen chilled Valya.

Inexplicably, the American laid his hand over her ear. Why wouldn't he want her to hear what was going on? Perhaps, she thought, because the bastard didn't want her to demand money from him.

She wanted to curl up like a child. Alone. She did not know whether she was truly ashamed or merely disappointed by the situation in which she found herself. But she knew she was unhappy.

She nudged herself at the American, impatient for him either to make love to her or to go to sleep. If he went to sleep, she could eat the cookies he had left in an opened pack on the night table. If nothing else, she told herself, she should at least have a belly full of cookies for her night's work.

The American began to graze his hand down over the front of her body. He moved so that she could feel exactly what he wanted. Then she felt him working a finger inside of her.

All right then, she thought.

She turned to face the American, to open herself to him. She touched him, feeling the leftover slickness. At least he found her desirable. Worth a second time. She had been afraid that he thought she was too thin, that he had already lost interest in her.

Perhaps there was hope. Perhaps something good would finally happen. Perhaps…

Unprovoked, she suddenly thought of Yuri. Her husband. And she laughed at her utter inability to ever really enjoy anything without spoiling it for herself. The American pushed a second finger into her, and she canted a leg to accept him. She groaned, keying up to him now.

Well, she hoped Yuri was all right, anyway. With his beloved soldiers. They could keep him. She did not want to see him hurt. She simply did not want to see him at all.

She tasted the American, feeling the roughness of his beard stubble, letting her body react on its own. But she could not get her husband out of her mind. She began to grow angry, furious, flailing her hips against the American. Why did it all have to be such a mess?

You don't understand, she cried out in her native language, unsure now whether she was addressing the husband who had deserted her or this stranger who was taking her body away. You don't understand, you just don't understand….