Arctic Front wi-4

by Ian Slater

  The Siberian was utterly unafraid.”You have radio? You hear war is over?”

  “When was it over?” Aussie shot back.

  “This last night.”

  * * *

  It was three hours before they could pick up the BBC overseas broadcast, a mood of unhappy suspicion hanging over the S/D team as well as the hapless prisoners, their hands tied in a rope chain as they sat glumly in a circle.

  When the S/D team heard the news of the cease-fire, the mood was more relief than exhilaration. Now they could break silence and call for pickup.

  Aussie threw the Siberian captain a packet of cigarettes, but he was still morose. He’d never know for sure, but for now he believed the captain’s story. They sure as hell weren’t SPETS— no blue-and-white striped T-shirts to start with. And they didn’t have the look. He only really hated the SPETS.

  David made the call for pickup, and after waiting for an hour they started the purple smoke flares. David, seeing Aussie was still grumpy, embarrassed now by his outburst with the knife, looked over at Choir Williams. “Hey, Choir. How long you think it’ll be till pickup?”

  “An hour,” said Choir.

  “Salvini?” asked David.

  “The same I reckon,” answered Salvini, somewhat nonplussed.

  “Gimme the map!” said Aussie. David let him study it for a moment or two, then asked casually, “Well, Aussie? How long do you say?”

  “Forty-five minutes. Maximum.”

  “Ah, too soon,” said David confidently.

  “All right, Nostradamus,” challenged Aussie. “Put some money on it. Ten to one?”

  “Rubles?” inquired Choir.

  “Fuck rubles,” said Aussie. “Dollars — U.S.” He looked around, indelible pencil in hand. “Who’s in?”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  When colonel Nefski surveyed the rubble that had been the old library and hotel at Port Baikal, it was a wonder to him that any of them had survived the SAS/Delta commando attack. Half the prisoners had gone, vanished in the taiga, but he had little doubt that most, if not all, would be rounded up again. Top priority, he told his subaltern, was to be given to finding Alexsandra Malof. It was possible that the Jewish underground, using her as exhibit A, would try to reach the Americans, moaning again about “civil-rights abuses” and starting some damned UN investigation.

  “We won’t take a chance with that,” Nefski told the corporal. “Shoot her on sight.”

  “What about the Jewish underground? She can still give us information—”

  “If you find her, shoot her,” snapped Nefski. “Where’d you get that bruise?”

  “Ah, bit of wood, I think. Ricochet.”

  “Better get it seen to,” advised Nefski, an unusual moment of concern for the well-being of the junior ranks. He felt more magnanimous now he’d cheated death, and more emboldened, determined to root out the undesirable elements now his efforts could turn away from what had been the wartime concerns to those of the cease-fire, to getting back to his old haunts in Khabarovsk.

  As he walked toward the entrance to the hotel, its fairy-tale dome of snow sparkling in the sunlike sugar icing, he glanced at its ruined facade, shot through by SAS/Delta Force small-arms fire and the odd LAW round. But even among the ruins, the golden glints of sunlight off the ice along the eaves gave beauty to the place. He took it as a good omen; already he was thinking about hopes of promotion in the spring, though he would have to greatly increase the estimated number of American commandos that had attacked Port Baikal so as to further enhance the report of his vigorous defense.

  His first step on the snow-laden steps of the hotel crunched in the warm winter sunshine. It was the vibration of his second step that proved too much for the fifty-pound icicle. Its stem snapped — and its long needle plummeted, smashing Nefski’s skull like an eggshell. As he lay crumpled on the snow, “bez priznakovzhizni”—”dead as a doornail,” as his subaltern said, everybody was already blaming everyone else for not having cleared the icicles, all and sundry later telling Novosibirsk HQ that under attack they’d had better things to do than look after the eaves.

  * * *

  Aussie lost sixty dollars — U.S. — because the Chinook helo, having spotted three figures moving north along the edge of the lake — Robert Brentwood and his two crewmen — had gone out to pick them up. It made the Chinook over an hour late. Aussie argued that “crook helicopters” rendered the bets null and void but he was howled down by his three compatriots whom he delicately called “fucking Ned Kellys,” after the infamous Australian highwayman.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Two weeks later

  Georgina had chosen Lake Louise in the Canadian Rockies because as a child she had fallen in love with the grand, unabashed magnificence of the Canadian Pacific Hotel, the stolid, imposing holdout of what was commonly, if erroneously, thought to have been an easier and gentler age. David, to be truthful, didn’t care where they got married — it was the marriage that counted. As it turned out, the small and cozy snow-covered Episcopalian — or, as Georgina called it, Anglican — church of St. George’s in the Pines in Banff was perfect. And if Georgina’s parents were prevented from attending because of the combination of cost and uneasy skies between Europe and North America, then at least David’s mother and father were able to attend.

  Standing ramrod straight, as became his rank, Admiral John Brentwood, Retired, said little during the ceremony except to advise his wife, “For Heaven’s sake, Catherine, it’s not a funeral. Keep on like this, and we’ll have to start the bilge pumps! “Catherine took no notice and was smiling beneath the intermittent tears. The admiral snuffled a lot, complaining later that the air was “too damn dry up here. Plays hell with my sinuses. ‘‘ When he shook David’s hand he mumbled an advisory-no one knew exactly what, except it had something to do with ‘decks” and “heading into the wind.” To Georgina he was positively grandfatherly and endearing, having decided in their brief meeting that her being a student of the London School of Economics and Political Science did not pose any immediate threat to the North American Alliance. What made his day complete, however, was the news, broadcast to his great satisfaction by the CBN network, which he detested, that his youngest son, along with several others, had been awarded the Silver Star for “action above and beyond the call of duty” around Lake Baikal.

  During the fifty-mile drive from the small, private reception at the Banff Springs Hotel to Lake Louise for their honeymoon, they were as moved as a million tourists before them had been by the majestic sweep of blue sky and towering, snow-covered mountains. Mount Eisenhower was particularly impressive with its ramparts thrusting heavenward from the forests girding it around the frozen course of the Bow River.

  * * *

  “Another medal?” Georgina said it to David in that insouciant English way that admires the very thing it pretends to be mocking.

  David shrugged bashfully, folding his pants neatly, SAS inspection-style, knifelike edges carefully aligned, before he draped them over the plush recliner set before a window that looked out on the dazzling turquoise edge of the Victoria glacier, astonishingly beautiful in the twilight. Georgina, fully clothed, keeping her coat on despite the heat of the room, watched him against the Rocky Mountain vista. “Stunning, isn’t it?” she said.

  “Sure is.”

  “That’s why I chose it.”

  “Must have cost your dad a packet,” said David, shaking his head in awe. “I chose the right father-in-law!” He turned from the awesome glacier — intent now on another view and just as impressed. It was going to take some time — longer than the brief wedding ceremony in Banff. Or could he wait? He reached for the cord to close the drapes.”Leave them open,” said Georgina cheekily. “I’m sure the glacier won’t mind.”

  “Tourists will.”

  “There are none, silly. Not this time of year. It’s not exactly spring yet.”

  “I’d rather them closed,” he said, pulling the cord, walking to
ward her, unbuttoning his shirt. “I’m going to do terrible things to you.”

  “David! You promise?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Apart from the obligatory wedding peck in Banff--he didn’t like making it a public spectacle — it was the first time they’d kissed, really kissed, since he’d left for the Ratmanov mission that now seemed so long ago. They lingered as long as breath would allow and then some, his hand slipping beneath her dress, sliding along the firmness of her thigh, pulling down the panty hose slowly. She pressed against him, his arm sliding between her legs, then his hand cupping, lifting her up and onto the bed, her soft murmur enticing him, her rose perfume washing over him, the tight, smooth V of her panties now moist, she feeling for him, squeezing him, her nipples engorged. He could restrain himself no longer, her sudden gasp one of pleasure, the feel of her gripping him, pulling him, engulfing him, filling him with a happiness he’d dreamt of in the past few months but doubted he’d ever experience again. She arched, her head moving from side to side, lips insistent, auburn hair a sheen in the soft, peach glow. She stopped — dead still. Waiting.

  “What’s wrong?” asked David, alarmed.

  She was trying to speak, her throat parched, her smile the most beautiful he’d ever seen. “I want to start all over again.”

  “Holy dooley!” he said, the cornseed expression making her chuckle, making her even more desirable. They began again, and all he could hear was her whispering with terrible, loving urgency, “Harder, David — harder!” and he, wanting to make it last, to draw out the ecstasy, switched his thoughts to something distant — to Lake Baikal and the men who were gone and would never feel the pleasure he was feeling. Away from her for a moment, when he returned it was as if they were together for the first time, ready now to let go utterly.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  “Oh, that’s lovely, that is!” proclaimed Aussie to the British liaison officer in Freeman’s Khabarovsk HQ. “Very bloody nice. You mean we’ve gotta stay in this burg for another six weeks. Bloody Brentwood, he’s home. Probably dippin’ his wick for all I know.”

  “Your papers haven’t come through,” said the British liaison office sergeant coolly. “That’s all.”

  “That’s all! This bloody Welshman here—” He turned, his thumb jerking at an amused Choir Williams. “He’s on his way home. On one of your plurry Hercules, and here’s me — the bloody hero of Baikal — don’t even get my picture in the local rag.”

  “Stars and Stripes,” corrected the sergeant. “Anyway, they’ve got bigger news than you. Bigshot La Roche is up on stock market charges. Inside trading for army supplies.”

  “Who the hell’s La Roche?” said Aussie disinterestedly.

  “You carryin’ any aspirin?” the sergeant asked him.

  “What?”

  “Well, if you are, he probably sold ‘em to the army. Supplied everything from chemicals to shoelaces. Could be put away in the slammer for ten years.”

  “Hey, hey,” interrupted Aussie. “I don’t give a fig about La Roach or who the hell he is. What I’m worried about is while Williams here is about to shove off back to friggin’ Wales, I’m stuck here on friggin’ cease-fire duty.”

  “Not to worry, Aussie,” said Choir. “Salvini’s pulled the same duty. They’ll have you back in Wales soon enough, boyo.”

  “This might surprise you, boyo,” said Aussie, “but I don’t like bloody Wales.”

  “You volunteered, boyo.”

  “Yeah, so I’m a mug.”

  “Ah; don’t fret, lad,” said Choir, winking at the duty sergeant, without Aussie seeing it.”You’ll probably be here in time for the Amur caper.”

  “What the hell’s that?”

  “Come spring, summer,” explained Choir, “lot of nude sunbathing on the banks of the Amur, I ‘m told.”

  “Yeah?” said Aussie.

  “Isn’t that right, sergeant?” Choir asked.

  “That’s right. Tits from here to the sea.”

  “Camping sites,” added Choir, “all along the river.”

  “You lyin’ bastard!” charged Aussie.

  “No, no,” said Choir seriously. “True, boyo. Siberians love the sun. Now, you could get a Humvee from the car pool… That a possibility, Sarge?”

  “I suppose,” said the sergeant, “it could be arranged for the ‘Hero of Baikal.’ “

  “Fair dinkum?” asked Aussie, meaning, was it true or were they pulling his leg. “They go topless?”

  “No!” said the sergeant, going over a “lost property” report. “They take it all off, old son. That’s what I’m told.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Well, I might stay, then,” said Aussie.

  “Course,” added Choir, “you don’t have to go to the river beaches to find it, I’m told. Place in Khabarovsk—’Bear’ Restaurant. KGB used to use it, so they say. Lot of crumpet there now, I’m told.”

  “Hey, I’m loaded for Bear, fellas!”

  “I know,” said Choir.

  The sergeant wasn’t listening any more. The quartermaster in one of the Second Army’s supply battalions had sent a fax saying that enough American artillery uniforms had been stolen to equip a whole battery of 155 howitzers. Someone said the uniforms had probably ended up being flogged on the black market south of the Siberian-Outer Mongolian border, in Ulan Bator. The Mongolian party officials, always much closer to the Soviets than the Chinese, whom they hated, were apparently allowing a lot of free enterprise these days — or at least what they thought was a lot of it.

  “Hell,” one sergeant said, looking at the fax, “we’re selling army surplus stuff all the time anyway.”

  “Yeah, but not stolen stuff. Anyway, it’s the wrong time of year to be flogging off winter gear — soon be spring. Strange.”

  * * *

  An hour before he was to leave Irkutsk, after three days of having to perform what he called one of the most distasteful duties “of my career,” shaking hands with Siberians and officers from the Outer Mongolian garrisons, Freeman took time off, sightseeing, with Norton accompanying him.

  From the frozen onion dome of Irkutsk’s Church of the Crucifixion, they gazed out over the ancient city of the Transbaikal city. The church from which they were admiring the sight, Freeman informed Norton, had been the administrative center for all the Russian Orthodox churches in Russkaya Amerika—”Russia-America.”

  “Irkutsk,” he told Norton, “was also the most important trading center on Baikal on the way to Russia-America-Alaska. That is, before some congressman, who everyone thought was nuts, bought Alaska.”

  Freeman was squinting against the brilliant white light of the snow-covered chimneys idly issuing curlicues of smoke into the pristine winter air.

  “You know where the Alaskans would be if we hadn’t bought it?” Freeman answered his own question. “In the silver mines of Nerchinsk — slaves of the tsar. Huh. Tsars were almost as bad as Stalin when it came to slave labor in the mines. Usual flogging was a hundred strokes with the plet—three-strand rawhide. You had to walk there from here — Irkutsk — and if you faltered and fell, you died where you fell. Hell, in the mines they didn’t even note a prisoner’s death. In World War Two we sent Wallace, the vice president, over to Magadan in the northeast to have a look at their gold mines there.

  “Well, of course they did a Potemkin village on him — all the prisoners were well fed, looking great. They should have been. Bastards were members of the NKVD — secret police before they changed the name to KGB.” Freeman shook his head disbelievingly. “Unbeknown to the vice president, it was the head thug of the camp, the director — and his wife, as much a thug as he was — who had shown them around. It was pathetic. The VP’s sidekick, a professor, went back to Washington, said the head of the camp they’d toured was a man who had ‘a deep sense of civic responsibility.’ Thug had another job — people’s representative of Birobidzhan. Jewish autonomous region. Some of the Jews fig
ured it was time to leave.” Freeman turned eastward and from the tower looked over the taiga beyond the city in the direction of Lake Baikal. “Can’t imagine why, can you?

  “You see,” Freeman’s voice echoed as he walked down the steeple’s stairwell, “that’s what continues to amaze me, Dick. They send over intellectuals with the naïveté of a four-year-old to assess the situation. No wonder we have to end up fighting them. It’s the four-year-olds who are dictating the cease-fire.”

  Norton didn’t answer. Politics was deep water in the army, something the general was blindly naive about, for all his sophistication in matters military. It wasn’t until they were out of the church, walking toward the general’s staff car, four U.S. outriders starting up their motorcycles, that Freeman, seeing trucks of the Siberian Fifth Army rolling past the Cathedral, said, “To think we came so far, Dick. Over a thousand miles in from the Siberian coast, damned near past Baikal, which,” he added, “we wouldn’t have if I hadn’t authorized that FAE strike on Ratmanov.”

  Norton nodded his assent.

  “And,” continued Freeman, “had it not been for those Brentwoods and other men…”It was then that Norton saw tears in Freeman’s eyes. “Freedom,” he told Norton, “sometimes exacts a terrible price but in my heart of hearts, in this Freeman that only Freeman sees, Dick — I believe that ultimately we have to pay for it, buy it in blood.” He exhaled wearily. “So that bloodless gentlemen can call the a ‘warmonger’ without the shooting the sons of bitches.”

  On the way out to the airport, U.S. MPs flanking him, their motorcycles throwing up fine trails of snow, Freeman glanced back and pointed out the frozen fountain in front of the Angara Hotel. “In spring, they tell the they swim in that fountain.” He turned back to Norton. “I was struck by that fact, because it shows how they use everything they have. Tough, too, swimming so early in the thaw.”