Ralph Peters

by The war in 2020

  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

  Omsk

  2 November 2020

  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 ob
tuse 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?