Ralph Peters

by The war in 2020

  "I never cared for Baku," Kozlov said. "I always thought it was dirty."

  "Oh, yes. But you're from a different generation. You have different eyes."

  "I think of the heat. And dust. And the refineries."

  "Yes, yes," Ivanov said. "And it's just as well. You don't feel the loss that way. In any case, lend the Americans your knowledge of the setup in Baku. Let them make their plans. I don't think it will come to very much."

  "Anything else, sir?"

  There was so much he would have liked to tell the younger man. Poor Kozlov, with his diseased gums and his passion for plodding staff work. Ivanov felt the old Russian need to talk, to confess, growing stronger and stronger in him. He had seen so much in his day. And it was all disappearing in the dust. He would have liked to order up a bottle of vodka and regale the younger man with all the lost possibilities, the things that might have been. But there was no time.

  "No. Nothing else, Viktor Sergeyevich. Just keep your eyes open."

  Kozlov snapped his heels together and raised his right hand, offering a soldier's respect. Suddenly, Ivanov lurched forward, drunk with memories. He embraced Kozlov, kissing him on both cheeks. Ivanov knew that the two of them were unlikely ever to meet again.

  Kozlov had been surprised by the generosity of the gesture, and he only managed to brush his lips across the older man's jowls. Then Ivanov released him.

  When Kozlov had gone, Ivanov turned his attention back to the portrait of Suvorov. It hung crookedly, when you looked at it straight on. Well, Ivanov thought, I never made it. Didn't even come close. I was going to be another Suvorov. Instead, it's my lot to preside over defeat and capitulation.

  He closed his eyes. And he could hear it. The sound of the beginning of the end. Nineteen eighty-nine. That enormous, irresistible chanting of the East Germans in the streets. Even after he and his fellow officers had been restricted to barracks, they could still hear it. Every Monday night. Echoing off the glass and steel facade of the vast train station, resounding down the boulevards and alleyways of Leipzig. It seemed to him now that he had known that it was all over then, and that the remainder of his life had merely been a long rearguard action, waged more out of obstinacy than in hope. He had only understood the most rudimentary German, but he had gotten the meaning clearly enough. The hammering waves of words had been accusing him and his kind, flooding down the crumbling streets, splashing up over the barracks walls, impervious to the witless guards and barbed wire, a torrent of rage. The individual slogans did not matter. They changed. But their meaning could invariably be translated as, "Failure, failure, failure."

  Kozlov did not mind the cold. He did not even think about it. Even the misery of his teeth, gums, and jaw seemed to have declared a truce. Soon, the aircraft would arrive to take him away. To join the Americans. He was glad he was going.

  He still did not like the Americans. But he was even less comfortable with Ivanov's despair. And he was ashamed. For all their faults, the Americans had behaved honorably, had done their best. And they were still willing to carry on the fight. While his side had withheld key information, while his people were even now looking for ways to undercut the American effort instead of aiding it. Perhaps it was biological, Kozlov thought. The result of all the years of deception, of lies told to one another. Perhaps deceit had been bred into the substance of Soviet man.

  And the Americans had come so close. Really, there was no substance left to oppose Soviet forces on the ground. Even in their battered condition, they could begin to sweep back to the south, through Kazakhstan. And beyond. The Americans, with their wondrous machines, had done the enemy coalition irreparable harm. The correlation of ground forces had shifted remarkably.

  The only problem was the new Japanese terror weapon. Still, it was unthinkable to Kozlov that his people would let a single tool deprive them not only of victory but perhaps of their national independence. What had happened at Orsk? A terrible thing. Gruesome. But it was nothing compared to the sufferings of the Great Patriotic War. What had happened to the Russian character? To the spirit of sacrifice?

  Kozlov refused to feel beaten.

  The reserves of strength he found in himself surprised him a little. He had always considered himself a top-notch staff officer—but he had never cast himself in the role of a particularly brave man. Often he had been afraid to speak up in front of his superiors—even when he knew them to be dangerously wrong.

  It was time to make up for those errors now.

  He did not know what he would do. But, if the Americans had not yet given up hope, then he saw no reason why he should be the first to quit.

  The Americans. They were simply impossible to like. He remembered when he had been a cadet in Moscow during the long twilight of the nineteen nineties. His girl of the moment had been obsessed with paying a visit to the McDonald's restaurant that had opened on Pushkin Square. He had resisted the idea, out of the sort of self-righteous patriotism only a cadet could feel—and because the prices were painfully high on his allowance. But the girl had been pretty. Irina was her name. And his teeth had not been so bad then. They had kissed, and she had nipped his tongue, accusing him of stinginess and cruelty. So they had gone. To McDonald's.

  There was a line, of course. But it moved with remarkable speed. The employees behind the clean, brightly lit counter smiled, and he assumed that they must be foreigners. That led to his first shock. The salesgirl greeted him with a lilting Moscow accent, asking after his desires. He stumbled over the peculiar names—his military English classes had not included these "Bik Meeks." With startling speed, the meal appeared before him on a tray, artfully packaged. His money was taken and change returned, and the smiling little Moscow girl repeated her greeting to the next citizen in line.

  It had been indescribably painful to sit in the spotless, bustling restaurant, eating the delicious sandwich with helpless appetite and watching his girl gobble and smile, with little bits of America clinging to the spaces between her teeth. They had still played staff war games against the Americans in those days, it was an old habit that died hard, and the dexterity with which this American system had maneuvered him through a restaurant, ambushing him with food and fizzy cola, controlling his every action—it was an unnerving experience. If the Americans were this good at so trivial an endeavor as running a restaurant ... you had to wonder whether they might not be considerably better at military art than his superiors were willing to credit. It went back to the Marxist dialectic and the laws governing the conversion of quantitative change into qualitative.

  After finishing the last seductive bite, he dragged his girl from beneath those golden arches of triumph. Out in the street they began a loud and too public argument as he vowed never to set foot in this restaurant of McDonald's again. She called him a pompous ass and a little shit. The skirmish took place in front of an extremely interested crowd, several members of which were anxious to take sides, and, in the end, the trip to McDonald's not only failed to result in a trip to Irina's bed—its outcome was his immediate and irrevocable expulsion from the beachhead he had battled to establish in her heart. She did not even return his calls, and the last time he caught a glimpse of her it was purely by chance. He was strolling through Moscow's broken heart, passing along the windows of the fateful Capitalist trojan horse. And there, imprisoned beneath those merciless golden arches, he saw his bright little Irina, driving her little white teeth into a hamburger sandwich and sharing her fried potatoes with another man.

  The powerful drone of aircraft engines called Kozlov back to the present. Siberia. The razor's edge between victory and defeat. The immediacy of history in the making. And he realized that poor old Ivanov had picked the wrong man for this job.

  It was impossible to like the Americans. But he had begun to suspect that they were not without honor. And courage. Overcoming his ferocious prejudice as best he could, Kozlov had decided to cast his lot on the side of the Bik Meek after all.

  Valya stared at the san
dwich in disgust. The protruding comers of cheese ran from yellow to brown and the bread looked dusty and withered. She did not even want to touch the food, much less eat it. Neither could she drink any more of the tea in which she had nervously and too readily indulged herself across the endless afternoon.

  "Really, Citizen Babryshkina," the interrogating officer said, "you must eat something. To keep your strength up."

  "I'm not hungry," Valya said.

  The officer sighed. "I'm sorry we can't offer you something tastier. But, after all, this is not a luxury hotel of the sort to which you have become accustomed."

  "I can't eat."

  The officer threw up his hands in a motherly gesture. He was a very large man, with white indoor skin and colorless hair. Except for his size, he would have been invisible in a crowd.

  "Citizen Babryshkina—Valya, may I call you Valya?" he asked, glancing at the stack of photographs that lay in slight disorder beside the plate. Valya's eyes automatically followed those of her interrogator. "After all," the big man said, "I don't think it would be too great an intimacy, under the circumstances."

  Valya said nothing. She looked at the top photograph. Even in the bad light, the details were all too clear.

  "Yes, Valya," the officer continued. "You're known to have quite an appetite. And you mustn't get sick on us. You're really—" he picked up a photograph, then discarded it again "—quite thin. Please do have a bite or two."

  An obedient child, Valya took up half of the sandwich. But that was as much as she could manage. She could not raise it to her lips.

  The officer came around the table, rushing to her assistance. He closed a big soft hand over Valya's fingers, pressing them into the staleness of the sandwich, and he helped her find her mouth.

  "No," she muttered. Then she felt the stiffened edge of cheese, the sharp crust pushing against her lips. The big hand crushed it ever so gently into her face, and the stink of the cheese made her feel faint.

  Abruptly, the officer gave up on her. He let go of her hand and the crumpled sandwich slipped down over her chin, leaving a trail of odor and crumbs.

  The officer sighed again, a disappointed parent. "You're such a bad girl, Valya. I worry about you."

  The big man moved back to his seat across the little table. For a moment, it seemed as though he had forgotten her. He took up the top few photos, inspecting them one after the other with the expression of a stamp collector paging through an unsatisfactory catalog. There wasn't the least hint of sexuality in his features.

  "Hard to fathom," he said softly, as if to himself. "Now this, for instance"—he suddenly remembered Valya—"do you honestly enjoy that sort of thing?"

  He thrust the picture at Valya. It was as if the picture, too, had a foul smell to it, an odor far worse than the rancid cheese that lay broken on the plate.

  "I'm just curious," the officer went on. "I'm afraid I'm not a very imaginative man. When it comes to that sort of thing." He fumbled for a moment, hunting a specific photograph. Then he smiled and shook his head, offering yet another snapshot to Valya. "This, for instance. It never even occurred to me that people did such things to each other. I'm afraid I'm not much of a man of the world." Valya considered the photo. Herself. And Naritsky. One of Naritsky's little games. It seemed so long ago now. How had they known? How long had they been watching her?

  They had photos of her with years of lovers. With every one except Yuri. Only her husband seemed to hold no interest for them.

  The interrogator made a little scolding noise, then tossed the photo back on the pile with all of the others.

  "Now the American," he began, "in a way, I can understand that one. They're so rich—how much did he pay you, by the way?"

  Valya looked up in horror.

  "I'm just curious," the officer said.

  "Nothing," Valya cried. "For God's sake, what do you think I am?"

  The officer looked at her for what seemed a terribly long time. Then he said:

  "What should I think, little Valya? Surely, you don't expect me to believe that an attractive young woman— well, perhaps not so young anymore—but let's say 'an attractive Russian woman,' shall we?" He looked from Valya's face down to the line of her breasts and back up again. But there still was no trace of desire in his eyes. He might have been appraising an animal at a market. "Now you don't expect me to believe that you're so ... so indiscriminate . . . that you would simply throw yourself into bed with a foreigner whom you had met hardly an hour before without receiving some sort of . . . compensation?"

  Valya felt her cheeks burning. She recalled with piercing clarity the voices in the hotel night, the bellowing American beyond the thin wall, and the Russian woman cursing and demanding money.

  "I am not a prostitute," Valya said quietly, as if trying to convince herself.

  "Oh, now. I never used such a word." The interrogator smiled, more paternal than maternal this time. "Far from it. You're just a girl who likes to have a good time. And who, occasionally, runs a bit short of money."

  "I'm not a prostitute, " Valya screamed. She gripped the sides of the flimsy table, even rising slightly from her seat.

  The interrogator was unruffled. "Of course not. If you say so. In any case, I'm not a stickler about terminology."

  Valya collapsed back into her chair. "I'm not a prostitute," she repeated, with a noticeable catch in her voice.

  "Now, Valya," her tormentor continued. "Little Valya. Let's look at the facts." He glanced back toward the litter of photographs but made no move to consult them again. "You were a married woman. Nonetheless, you carried on a virtual carnival of affairs behind your poor husband's back. Why, when he was off supposedly defending the motherland, you even had to abort your child by a notorious black marketeer. Now let's see—that was your third abortion, correct?" He took up his pencil.

  "Second," Valya said icily.

  He made a tick in his notebook. "No matter. You aborted the child with which you had been impregnated by a public criminal. For whom you did . . . favors. Favors of the most questionable sort." The officer looked up from his papers, bright-eyed. "I don't suppose you would be interested in reviewing any of the photographs from the abortion clinic? No? Of course not. Anyway. You were married to a Soviet Army officer. You whored all over Moscow with a black marketeer—"

  Valya caught the sudden hardening in the man's voice. And there was something else, something else. He had said something wrong—what was it? She was so tired. She could not think clearly.

  "—got pregnant, aborted, then dropped your carcass into bed with a foreign spy. Without remuneration, of course."

  "What?"

  The officer appeared genuinely surprised at her outburst.

  "What foreign spy?" Valya cried. She felt a terrible chill slither over her skin. The word spy had been haunted into her consciousness, into the genes of her race. The lonely syllable made her instantly afraid.

  "Why, what should I call your American?"

  "He's ... he's a businessman." Even now, she wondered if he was waiting for her at the hotel. They had an appointment for dinner at eight o'clock. Had she seen a way, she would have burst free and caught a bus or a trolley . . . she would have even run all the way ... to hurl herself into Ryder's arms, and into the embrace of the hopes he represented.

  The interrogator laughed. He positively shook. Reaching clumsily for his glasses, he took them off so that he could dab at his tiny eyes.

  "Oh, Valya," he said. "My little Valya. Surely, you don't expect me to believe that you—that you, of all people—could be so naive?"

  Valya looked at him in confused horror.

  "Why, my little angel," he continued, "your latest customer—excuse me, your latest lover—is a warrant officer in the United States Army. A reconnaissance man, no less. Oh, Valya, you have to be more careful. You need to construct better stories to cover your tracks."

  Valya sat. Frozen. Oh, no. No, no, no, no, no.

  "Now why don't you just tell m
e," her interrogator went on, "what sort of information you passed to him? What messages did your husband give you for the American?"

  "You're mad," Valya declared in an awkward, stunned voice. "That's insane. Why Yuri . . . Yuri would never ..."

  "I'm just trying to keep the names straight," the officer said. "Now this particular Yuri would be your late husband?"

  Valya stopped breathing. Everything stopped. The blood had gone still in her arteries and veins. Then her eyelids blinked.

  "Yuri?" she said.

  "Why, Valya—surely this doesn't come as a surprise? Surely you knew?"

  "Yuri?"

  "Oh dear. Oh, Valya. I am sorry. I thought you'd been informed." The officer ruffled through his file of papers. "Now where is it? Oh, I can't believe I'm so clumsy. Forgive me. Please."

  "Yuri?"

  The officer looked up to meet the change in her tone. He looked genuinely ill-at-ease. "Of course, one understands how such oversights occur. I mean, it was, of course, quite recent. But, even in cases of espionage, one would think ... a basic respect for the decencies ..."

  ". . . Yuri? ..." Valya began to sway sideward in her chair. When she closed her eyes, she smelled the ghost of the cheese sandwich on the hairs above her lip.

  The officer jumped up from his chair and caught her. "Now, now," he said. "This must be a terrible shock. Why, I'm almost convinced you're not mixed up in any of this."