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 atta
cks 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 lik
ely 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.
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