Chapter 13.
The Strangers Arrive and Depart.
AACHEN, FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY
It was the traffic that did it. The envelope came as promised to the proper post office box, and the key worked as he'd been told to expect. Minimum personnel involvement. The major grumbled at having to expose himself in the open this way, but it wasn't the first time he'd had to work with the KGB, and he needed this up-to-date information if his mission were to have any chance of success. Besides, he smiled briefly, the Germans are so proud of their postal service...
The major folded the oversized envelope and tucked it into his jacket pocket before leaving the building. His clothing was entirely German in origin, as were the sunglasses which he donned on opening the door. He scanned the sidewalk.
in both directions, looking for anyone who might be trailing him. Nothing. The KGB officer had promised him that the safe house was totally secure, that no one had the least suspicion that they were here. Perhaps. The taxi was waiting for him across the street. He was in a hurry. The cars were stopped on the street, and he decided to go straight across instead of walking to the corner.
The major was from Russia and not accustomed to the unruly European traffic where the pedestrians are expected to follow the rules too. He was a hundred meters from the nearest traffic cop, and the nearby German drivers could sense that the cop's back was turned. It should have been as much a surprise to the major as to American tourists that, when driving, the orderly Germans were anything but. He stepped off the curb without looking, just as the traffic started moving.
He never even saw the accelerating Peugeot. It was not moving fast, only twenty-five kilometers per hour. Fast enough. The right fender caught him on the hip, spun him around, and catapulted the major into a lamppost. He was knocked unconscious before he knew what had happened, which was just as well, since his legs remained in the street and the Peugeot's rear wheel crushed both ankles. The damage to his head was spectacular. A major artery was cut open, and blood fountained onto the sidewalk as he lay motionless on his face. The car stopped at once, its driver leaping out to see what she had done. There was a scream from a child who had never seen so much blood, and a postman raced to the corner to summon the police officer standing in the traffic circle, while another man went into a store to call an ambulance.
The stopped traffic allowed the taxi driver to leave his vehicle and come over. He tried to get close, but already a half dozen men were bending over the body.
"Er ist tot," one observed, and the body was pale enough to make one think so. The major was already in shock. So was the Peugeot's driver, whose eyes were already dripping tears as her breaths came in irregular sobs. She was trying to tell everyone that the man had stepped right in front of her car, that she hadn't had a chance to stop. She spoke in French, which only made things more difficult.
Pushing through the spectators, the taxi driver was almost close enough to touch the body by now. He had to get that envelope ... but then the policeman arrived.
"Alles zuruck!" the cop ordered, remembering his training: first, get things under control. His training also enabled him to resist the instinct to move the body. This was a head injury, perhaps a neck injury also, and those were not to be moved except by Experten. A bystander called out that he had summoned an ambulance. The policeman nodded curtly and hoped it would arrive soon. Making traffic accident reports was far more routine than watching an unconscious-or dead?-man bleed untidily on the sidewalk. He looked up gratefully a moment later to see a lieutenant—a senior watch supervisor— pushing his way in.
"Ambulance?"
"On the way, Herr Leutnant. I am Dieter, Gunther—traffic detail. My post is down the street."
"Who was driving the car here?" the lieutenant asked.
The driver stood as erect as she could and started gasping out her story in French. A passerby who had seen the whole thing cut her off.
"This one just stepped off the curb without looking. The lady had no chance to stop. I am a banker, and I came out of the post office right behind this one.
He tried to cross at the wrong place and stepped into the street without looking at the traffic. My card." The banker handed the lieutenant his business card.
"Thank you, Dr. Muller. You have no objection to making a statement?"
"Of course. I can come directly to your station if you wish."
"Good." The lieutenant rarely had one this clean-cut.
The taxi driver just stood at the edge of the crowd. An experienced KGB case officer, he'd seen operations go bad before, but this was ... absurd. There was always something new that could ruin an operation, so often the most simple, most foolish thing. This proud Spetznaz commando, cut down by a middle-aged Frenchwoman driving a sedan! Why hadn't he looked at the damned traffic?
I should have gotten someone else to fetch the envelope, and screw the damned orders. Security, he swore behind an impassive face. Orders from Moscow Center: minimum personnel involvement. He walked back across the street to his cab, wondering how he'd explain this to his control. Mistakes were never the Center's fault.
The ambulance arrived next. The sergeant removed the victim's wallet from his pants. The victim was one Siegfried Baum-wonderful, the lieutenant thought, a Jew—from the Altona district of Hamburg. The driver of the car was French. He decided he had to ride in to the hospital with the victim. An "international" accident: there'd be extra paperwork on this. The lieutenant wished he'd stayed in the Gasthaus across the street and finished his after lunch pilsener. So much for devotion to duty. Then there was his possible mobilization to worry about...
The ambulance crew worked quickly. A cervical collar was fitted around the victim's neck, and a backboard brought in before they rolled him over onto the stretcher. The broken lower legs were immobilized with cardboard splints. The paramedic clucked over them. Both ankles looked to be badly crushed. The whole procedure took six minutes by the lieutenant's watch, and he boarded the ambulance, leaving three police officers to manage the rest of the incident and clear the accident scene.
"How bad is he?"
"Probably fractured his skull. He has lost a lot of blood. What happened?" "Walked out into traffic without watching."
"Idiot," the paramedic commented. "As if we don't have work enough."
"Will he live?
"Depends on the head injury." The ambulanceman shrugged. "The surgeons will be working on him within the hour. You know his name? I have a form to fill out."
"Baum, Siegfried. Kaiserstrasse 17, Altona District, Hamburg."
"Well, he'll be in the hospital in four minutes." The paramedic took his pulse and made a notation. "Doesn't look Jewish."
"Be careful saying things like that," the lieutenant cautioned.
"My wife is Jewish. His blood pressure is dropping rapidly." The ambulanceman debated starting an IV, but decided against it. Better to let the surgeons make that decision.
"Hans, have you radioed in?"
"Ja, they know what to expect," the driver replied. "Isn't Ziegler on duty today?"
"I hope so."
The driver horsed the ambulance into a hard left turn, and all the while the two-tone siren cleared traffic ahead of them. One minute later he halted the Mercedes and backed it into the emergency receiving area. A doctor and two orderlies were already waiting.
German hospitals are nothing if not efficient. Within ten minutes the victim, now a patient, had been intubated to protect his airway, punctured for a unit of O-positive blood and a bottle of IV fluids, and wheeled up to neurosurgery for immediate surgery at the hands of Professor Anton Ziegler. The lieutenant had to stay in the emergency room with the registrar.
"So who was he?" the young doctor asked. The policeman gave the information over.
"A German?"
"Does that seem strange?" the lieutenant asked.
"Well, when the radio call came in, and said you were coming also, I assumed that this was, well, sensitive, as though a foreigner were injured."
"The auto was driven by a Frenchwoman."
"Ach, that explains it. I thought he was the foreigner."
"Why so?"
"His dental work. I noticed when I intubated him. He has a number of cavities, and they've been repaired with stainless steel—sloppy work."
"Perhaps he originally comes from the East Zone," the lieutenant observed. The registrar snorted.
"No German ever did that work! A carpenter could do better." The doctor filled out the admission form rapidly.
"What are you telling me?"
"He has poor dental work. Strange. He is very fit. Dressed well. Jewish. But he has miserable dental work."
The doctor sat down. "We see many strange things, of course."
"Where are his personal effects?" The lieutenant was a naturally curious type, one reason he'd become a policeman after his service in the Bundeswehr. The doctor walked the officer to a room where the personal effects were inventoried for secure storage by a hospital employee.
They found the clothing neatly arranged, with the jacket and shirt separate so that their bloodstains would not damage anything else. Pocket change, a set of keys, and a large envelope were set aside for cataloging. The orderly was filling out a form, looking up to list exactly what had come in with the patient.
The policeman lifted the manila envelope. It had been mailed from Stuttgart yesterday evening. A ten-mark stamp. On an impulse he pulled out a pocketknife and slit the top of the envelope open. Neither the doctor nor the orderly objected. This was a police officer, after all.
A large and two smaller envelopes were inside. He opened the large one first and extracted the contents. First he saw a diagram. It looked ordinary enough until he saw that it was a photocopy of a German Army document stamped Geheim. Secret. Then the name: Lammersdorf. He was holding a map of a NATO communications headquarters not thirty kilometers from where he stood.
The police lieutenant was a captain in the German Army Reserves, and held an intelligence billet. Who was Siegfried Baum? He opened the other envelopes. Next he went to a phone.
ROTA, SPAIN
The transport jet arrived right on time. A fair breeze greeted them from the sea as Toland emerged from the cargo door. A pair of sailors was there to direct the arrivals. Toland was pointed to a helicopter a hundred yards away, its rotor already turning. He walked quickly toward it, along with four other men. Five minutes later he was airborne, his first visit to Spain having lasted exactly eleven minutes. No one attempted conversation. Toland looked out one of the small windows available. Jane Thach followed out, the young brown haired girl looked a bit red. Sunburn perhaps. They were over a patch of blue water, evidently flying southwest. They were aboard a Sea King antisubmarine helicopter. The crew chief was also a sonar operator, and he was fiddling with his gear, evidently running some sort of test.
The interior walls of the aircraft were bare. Aft was the sonobuoy storage, and the dipping sonar transducer was caged in its compartment in the floor. For all that, the aircraft was crowded, most of its space occupied by weapon and sensor instrumentation. They'd been in the air for half an hour when the helo started circling. Two minutes later, they landed on USS Nimitz.
The flight deck was hot, noisy, and stank of jet fuel. A deck crewman motioned them toward a ladder which led down to the catwalk surrounding the deck, and into a passageway beneath it. Here they encountered air conditioning and relative quiet, sheltered from the flight operations going on overhead.
"Lieutenant Commander Toland? Commander Jane S. Thach?" a yeoman called out.
"Here."
"Please come with me, sir and ma'am."
Both followed the sailor through the rabbit warren of compartments below the flight deck, and was finally pointed to an open door.
"You must be Toland, and Thach." observed a somewhat frazzled officer.
"Must be—unless the time zone changes did something."
"You want the good news or the bad news?"
"Bad." Thach said.
"Okay, you'll have to hot-bunk. Not enough berths for all of us intel types. Shouldn't matter much, though. I haven't slept for three days-one of the reasons you're here. The good news is that you just got another half a stripe. Welcome aboard, Commanders. I'm Chip Bennett." The officer handed Toland and Thach both a telex sheet. "Looks as though CINCLANT likes you. Nice to have friends in high places."
The message announced tersely that Lieutenant Commander Robert A. Toland, III, USNR, had been "frocked" as a commander, USNR, which gave him the right to wear the three gold stripes of a commander, but not to collect a commander's pay just yet. It was like a kiss from one's sister. Well, he reflected, maybe a cousin.
"I guess it's a step in the right direction. What are we going to be doing here?"
"Theoretically you're supposed to assist me, but we're so friggin' overwhelmed with information at the moment that we're divvying the territory up some. I'm going to let you handle the morning and evening briefs to the battle group commander. We do that at 0700 and 2000. Rear Admiral Samuel B. Baker, Jr. Son of a B. He's an ex-nuc. Likes it quick and clean, with footnotes and sources on the writeup to read afterward. He almost never sleeps. Your battle station will be in the CIC with the group tactical warfare officer." Walker rubbed his eyes. "So what the hell is happening in this crazy world?"
"What's it look like?" Thach answered.
"Yeah. Something new just came in. The space shuttle Atlantis was pulled off the pad at Kennedy today, supposedly for a computer glitch, right? Three newspapers just broke a story that she was taken down for payload replacement. They were supposed to loft three or four commercial communications birds. Instead, the payload is reconnaissance satellites."
"I guess people are starting to take this seriously."
AACHEN, FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY
"Siegfried Baum" awoke six hours later to see three men wearing surgical garb. The effect of the anesthesia still heavy on him, his eyes could not focus properly.
"How are you feeling?" one asked. In Russian.
"What happened to me?" The major answered in Russian.
Ach so. "You were struck by a car and you are now in a military hospital," the man lied. They were still in Aachen, near the German-Belgian frontier.
"What... I was just coming out to—" The major's voice was that of a drunken man, but it stopped abruptly. His eyes tried to focus properly.
"It is all finished for you, my friend." Now the speaker switched to German. "We know you are a Soviet officer, and you were found in possession of classified government documents. Tell me, what is your interest in Lammersdorf?"
"I have nothing to say," replied "Baum" in German.
"A little late for that," the interrogator chided, switching back to Russian. "But we'll make it easy for you. The surgeon tells us that it is now safe to try a new, ah, medication for you, and you will tell us everything you know. Be serious. No one can resist this form of questioning. You might also wish to consider your position," the man said more harshly. "You are an officer in the army of a foreign government, here in the Federal Republic illegally, traveling with false papers, and in possession of secret documents. At the least, we can imprison you for life. But, given what your government is doing at the moment, we are not concerned with 'least' measures. If you cooperate you will live, and probably be exchanged back to the Soviet Union at a later date for a German agent. We will even say that we got all our information due to the use of drugs; no harm could possibly come to you from this. If you do not cooperate, you will die of injuries received in a motor accident."
"I have a family," Major Andre Chernyavin said quietly, trying to remember his duty. The combination of fear and drug-induced haze made a hash of his emotions. He couldn't tell there was a vial of sodium pentothol dripping into his IV line, and already impairing his higher brain functions. Soon he would be unable to consider the long-term consequences of his action. Only the here and now would matter.
"They will come to no harm," Colonel Weber promised. An Army officer assigned to the Bundesnachrichtendienst, he had interrogated many Soviet agents. "Do you think they punish the family of every spy we catch? Soon no one would ever come here to spy on us at all." Weber allowed his voice to soften.
The drugs were beginning to take effect, and as the stranger's mind became hazy he would be gentle, cajoling the information from him. The funny part, he mused, was that he'd been instructed on how to do this by a psychiatrist. Despite the many movies about brutal German interrogators, he hadn't had the least training in forceful extraction of information.
Too bad, he thought. If there was ever a time I need it, it is now. Most of the colonel's family lived outside Kulmbach, only a few kilometers from the border.
KIEV, THE UKRAINE
"Captain Ivan Mikhailovich Sergetov reporting as ordered, Comrade General."
"Be seated, Comrade Captain." The resemblance to his father was remarkable, Alekseyev thought. Short and stocky. The same proud eyes, the same intelligence. Another young man on his way up. "Your father tells me that you are an honor student in Middle East languages."
"This is correct, Comrade General."
"Have you also studied the people who speak them?"
"That is an integral part of the curriculum, Comrade." The younger Sergetov smiled. "We've even had to read through the Koran. It is the only book most of them have ever read, and therefore an important factor in understanding the savages."
"You do not like the Arabs, then?"
"Not particularly. But our country must do business with them. I get along with them well enough. My class will occasionally meet with diplomats from politically acceptable countries to practice our language skills. Mainly Libya, and occasionally people from Yemen and Syria."
"You have three years in tanks. Can we defeat the Arabs in battle?"
"The Israelis have done so with ease, and they don't have a fraction of our resources. The Arab soldier is an illiterate peasant, poorly trained and led by incompetent officers."
A young man with all the answers. And perhaps you will explain Afghanistan to me? Alekseyev thought. "Comrade Captain, you will be attached to my personal staff for the forthcoming operation against the Persian Gulf states. I will lean on you for linguistic work, and to support our intelligence estimates. I understand that you are training to be a diplomat. That is useful to me. I always like to have a second opinion of the intelligence data that KGB and GRU send us. Not that I distrust our comrades in the intelligence arms, you understand. I simply like to have someone who thinks 'Army' to review the data. The fact that you've served in tanks is doubly valuable to me. One more question. How are the reservists reacting to the mobilization?"
"With enthusiasm, of course," the captain replied.
"Ivan Mikhailovich, I presume your father told you about me. I listen attentively to the words of our Party, but soldiers preparing for battle need to know the unvarnished truth so that we can bring about the Party's wishes."
Captain Sergetov noted how carefully that had been phrased. "Our people are angry, Comrade General. They are enraged over the incident in the Kremlin, the murder of the children. I think 'enthusiasm' is not a great exaggeration."
"And you, Ivan Mikhailovich?"
"Comrade General, my father told me that you would ask this question. He told me to assure you that he had no prior knowledge of it, and that the important thing is to safeguard our country so that similar tragedies will never again be necessary."
Alekseyev did not reply at once. He was chilled by the knowledge that Sergetov had read his mind three days before, and dumbfounded that he had confided so enormous a secret to his son. But it was good to know that he had not misread the Politburo man. He was a man to be trusted. Perhaps his son also? Mikhail Eduardovich evidently thought so.
"Comrade Captain, these are things to be forgotten. We have enough to occupy us already. You will work down the hall in room twenty-two. There is work waiting for you. Dismissed."
MAGDEBURG-GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC
Army General Mikhail. Miloradovitch. Malinsky, Commander in Chief of the First Western Front, sat alone in his private office, smoking a strong cigarette. The room was dark except for a bright pool where a bank of spotlights reflected off the situation map. Malinsky sat just out of the light, staring absently at the map he knew so well. Beyond the office walls, vivid action coursed through the hallways of the bunker, blood through arteries, despite the late hour. From his chair, Malinsky heard the activity as half-smothered footsteps and voices passing up and down the corridor, resembling valley noises heard from a cloud-wrapped mountain.
And that, Malinsky thought, is what war sounds like. Not just the blasting of artillery, the shooting and shouting. But the haste of a staff officer's footsteps and the ticking of a clerk's typewriter. And, of course, the special, half-magical noises of computers nowadays. Perhaps, Mal- insky thought, this will be the last real one, the last great war fought by men aiming weapons. Perhaps the next big one would be fought entirely by means of cybernetics. Things were changing so troublingly fast.
But there would always be a next time. Malinsky was certain of that. Even if they were foolish enough to toss great nuclear bombs across oceans, Malinsky was convinced that enough of mankind would survive to organize new armies to fight over whatever remained. Mankind would remain mankind, and there would always be wars. And there would always be soldiers. And, in his heart, Malinsky was convinced there would always be a Russia.
A discreet hand knocked at the door.
"Enter," Malinsky called, leaning back deeper into the shadows.
A fan of light swept the room, then disappeared as the door shut again.
A staff major padded up to the map without a word and realigned unit symbols.
Malinsky watched in silence. Germany, east and west. Virtually his entire adult life—more, even his straight-backed adolescence as a Suvorov cadet—had been directed to this end. Elbe, Weser, Rhine and Maas. Mosel and Saar. With the low countries and the fields of France beyond, where Colonel of the Guards Count Malinsky had raised his curved saber against the cavalry of Napoleon.
Malinsky believed he knew exactly how to do it. How to apply his own forces against the enemy on the right bit of earth along the correct operational directions, in the most efficient order, and at a tempo that would be physically and psychologically irresistible. He knew where the turning movements had to come, and where and when it would be necessary to drive on without a backward glance. He even believed he knew his enemies well enough to turn their own efforts against them.
His enemies would come, at least initially, from the Northern Army Group—NORTHAG—which was, in turn, subordinate to the Allied Forces Central Europe, or AFCENT. NORTHAG was, potentially, an operational grouping of tremendous strength. But intelligence assess- ments led Malinsky to believe that NORTHAG, with its defense strad- dling the terrain compartments of northern West Germany, had three great weaknesses, none of which the Westerners seemed to recognize.
Certainly, NORTHAG was far more vulnerable than its sister army group—CENTAG—to the south. Despite possessing splendid equip- ment and well-trained cadres, the enemy leadership did not understand the criticality of unified troop control—there was reportedly so much political nonsense allowed that NORTHAG resembled a Warsaw Pact in which the Poles, Czechs and East Germans were permitted veto power over even the smallest details of military planning and operations. Compounding the first problem, the enemy clearly undervalued speed. When you watched them on their exercises, they did everything too slowly, too carefully, stubborn pedestrians in a supersonic age. Finally, Malinsky believed that his enemies underestimated their opponents, that they had hardly a glimmer of how the Soviet military could and would fight. Malinsky expected the defense by his enemies to be stubborn, bloody, and in vain. He was fond of repeating three words to his subordinate commanders, as a sort of personal motto: "Speed, shock, activeness."
"What's that?" Malinsky leaned forward, cigarette thrusting toward the map like a dagger. "What's that supposed to tell me?"
The major quickly backed away from the map, as though he had received an electric shock. "Comrade Front Commander, elements of the Seventh Tank Army have begun closing on their appointed staging areas, but, as you see, there is a conflict with the trail elements of the Forty-ninth Unified Army Corps. The Forty-ninth is behind schedule in its move to its assembly areas west of the Elbe River."
Controlling his voice, Malinsky dismissed the staff officer, a clever, crisp-talking Frunze graduate. When the door had shut behind the major's retreat, as if the fan of light had swept him away, Malinsky reached for the intercom phone.
"Is the chief of staff there? Give General Chibisov the phone."
For a moment, Malinsky listened to the faint pandemonium of the briefing room on the other end. Then Chibisov's familiar voice, ever perfectly controlled, came on the line.
"I'm listening, Comrade Front Commander."
"Is Anseev here yet?"
"He just came in."
"Tell him to come down and see me." Malinsky considered for a moment. "How are we doing otherwise?"
"A few are still missing. But they'll be here in time."
"The Germans?"
"Yes. Nervous as puppies."
"Good. I like them best that way."
"The Polish liaison officers are here from the Northern Front. You can imagine how happy they are."
Malinsky could well imagine. He was always impressed by the talent of ranking Polish officers, but he could never bring himself to trust them. He saw them as always attempting to barter their way out from under their responsibilities, and he dealt with them more harshly than was his habit with others.
"Just send Anseev down to me," Malinsky said. "And let me know when we have them all assembled."
Malinsky hung up the phone. A waft of smoke hovered between him and the brilliantly colored map, as though the battle had already begun amid the clutter of arrows and lines. Malinsky lit another cigarette.
He thought of his son. Anton. Anton Mikhailovitch Malinsky. His son was the newly appointed commander of a maneuver brigade in the Forty-ninth Corps, a youngish, handsome Guards colonel. Anton was the type of officer over whom the ladies at the Imperial Court had once swooned. Malinsky was terribly proud of his son, and although Anton was in his middle thirties, Malinsky always thought of him as "the boy," or "my boy." Anton was his only child. Malinsky had gone to extremes to insure that there was no favoritism, that Anton earned his own way. He could never be certain, of course, and no doubt the name had its effect—doubly so now that the old military families were back in style again. But Malinsky was determined not to behave like the patriarchs of so many military families, bashing down doors for their children. Anton was a Malinsky, and the traditions of the Malinsky family demanded that he be a fine officer of his own making.
They had been counts, if only of the second order, with estates not far from Smolensk. Before the Revolution, of course. Russian service gentry, with traces of Polish and Lithuanian nobility in their veins. At the hard birth of the eighteenth century, a Malinsky fought under Peter the Great at Poltava and on the Pruth. It was during Peter's wars along the Baltic littoral that a Malinsky first heard the German language spoken. Then Vassili Malinsky lost an arm at Kunersdorf in the hour of victory over the soldiers of Frederick the Great in 1759. Vassili went on to serve under Potemkin in the Turkish wars, and Catherine, the German-born czarina, rewarded Vassili's services with the title of "count." One Malinsky, the shame of the family, served with Suvorov in Italy and the Alps, only to be condemned for cowardice after the debacle at Austerlitz. But his brother rode through the streets of Paris in 1814 at the head of a regiment of lancers. Malinskys fought in the Caucasus and in Central Asia, and one claimed to have beaten Lermontov at cards. During the long afternoon of the nineteenth century, a Malinsky died of plague in camp before Bukhara, and another died of cholera in a ditch at Sevastopol. At Plevna in 1877, Captain Count Mikhail Malinsky won the George, Second Class, and as a general, he fought the Japanese in 1905. Major Count
Anton Mikhailovitch Malinsky the Elder fell before Austrian machine guns in the Carpathians in the Great War, and his brother Pyotr Mikhailovitch joined the Revolution as an engineer captain. The Malinskys had been there, always, to serve Russia, whether as diseased young Guards officers in St. Petersburg or as reformers in the officer corps and on their estates. Malinskys had drunk themselves to death and struggled to rationalize agriculture on a modern scientific basis. While some did their best to gamble away the family fortunes, others had counted Herzen and Tolstoy among their friends. It was a family full of all the contradictions of Russia, unified by a single name and the habit of wearing army uniforms. After the Revolution, it had almost come to an end. Malinsky's grandfather, Pyotr Mikhailovitch, had been eager to join the Revolution, dreaming sincerely of a new and better Russia. But the Revolution had not been so enthusiastic about the Malinskys. The nobility, progressive or regressive, were all oppressors of the workers and peasants. Making the situation worse, Malinskys appeared on both sides in the Civil War, with two cousins serving under the counterrevolutionary Denikin, while Pyotr fought against the Whites as a military specialist and adviser to an illiterate commander of more bravery than skill. Then Pyotr had been allowed his own command in the Polish War, although his young wife, son, and mother remained hostages of the careful Bolsheviks. Pyotr fought like a savage, not so much for the Bolsheviks as for Russia. The
Civil War and the fighting against the foreign enemies of the Revolution grew more and more merciless, but Russia towered over it all, absorbing the blood in her earth, relentlessly driving her sons.
In the end, it was a very near thing. Only his high level of technical expertise as an engineer and staff officer saved Pyotr. He received an assignment to the newly organized military academy, which would later become the Frunze. He taught mathematics and cartography to eager officers who had virtually learned to read and write on horseback during the Civil War.
The estates were gone, of course. No Malinsky dared go near them. But an officer's life remained a good one compared to the sufferings and dislocations Pyotr witnessed around him. At times, he considered an attempt to leave Russia with his family. But, he told himself, the Bolsheviks would pass, too, while the army would always remain. He looked for the good in the Revolution and in the strange new leaders it brought forth, still eager to believe in the good in men after swimming through seas of blood.
Pyotr's son, Mikhail, entered a military academy in 1926. The tradition had almost been broken, since the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army did not want the sons of former noblemen. But even then, there had been enough survivors among the military specialists recruited from the Czarist ranks to quietly find the boy a place.
In 1938, Colonel Pyotr Mikhailovitch Malinsky was arrested, tried, and shot by the secret police. His son, a captain, was arrested and sent to the camps near Kolyma. Captain Malinsky's wife and son remained behind with no knowledge of whether he was alive or dead until, finally, after a year, a particularly brave comrade of the captain's revealed that Malinsky was alive in a camp in the east, and his family could write to him, so long as great care was taken in what was said.
In his well-furnished office in a bunker deep in eastern Germany, the son of the captive sat now, remembering how he had scribbled notes to a distant, half-remembered father. His mother always insisted that he add something, either a note of his own or, when there wasn't enough paper, a few scratched words on his mother's neat pages.
His father survived. When the Hitlerite Germans invaded on the twenty-second of June, 1941, even Stalin was soon forced to realize the extent of his folly. Imprisoned officers who were still healthy enough and whose records were not too black were returned to service. Malinsky's father fought from Tula to Berlin. Not for Stalin. And not for the Communist Party, although he was reinstated as a member. But for Russia.
Malinsky's father had looked sixty when he was in his late forties. The camps had ruined his health, and perhaps only his strength of will kept him going through the war and beyond. He had entered Berlin as a rifle division commander, with fewer than two thousand able soldiers on the divisional rolls. He died in a military sanatorium in the Caucasus in 1959. His son had come in his dress uniform to visit him, towing his own six-year-old boy, and in the quiet of a general's sickroom, the old man had looked his son in the eyes and said, "I outlived that bastard. And Russia will outlive them all. Remember that. Your uniform is the uniform of Russia."
In the year after the invasion of Czechoslovakia, Malinsky had found himself on an inspectorate tour that took him through Smolensk. Hard drinking was still fashionable in the officer corps then, and the officers with whom he was traveling were a particularly hard-drinking bunch. One morning while they snored into their hangovers, he had taken the staff car out to the state farm where once his family estates had counted thousands of souls.
The great house was long gone, destroyed by the Germans during the Great Patriotic War. The Sovkhoz buildings were nondescript barns, shacks and sheds of tin and cinder block. Malinsky parked the car and walked beyond the litter of the state into the newly harvested fields. From a low rise he could see the chronicle of his blood stretching brown and yellow and green over tens of gently rolling kilometers. And he wept, taking off his hat. Not for the loss of land. Nor because he wasn't called a count, even though in intimate moments he thought of his wife affectionately as his countess. Rather, he wept for Russia, without understanding himself. With blurred vision, he stared off into the distance where the fields met the vast, empty sky, caught up in its timelessness, suspecting that good men had always wept for Russia, that there was no choice, ever.
The gagging of a stalled tractor roused him, and he walked back through the characterless plot of farm buildings. Upon his approach, an old woman, an eternal peasant of a woman, called out:
"No special bargains for officers here, Comrade. You can go stand in line like all the rest."
Major General Anseev came in cautiously. As he approached the island of light in front of the situation map Malinsky motioned for him to take a seat. A visitor's chair had been carefully positioned so that the guest could turn slightly to his left and address the map or twist to the right and face Malinsky, but with no possibility of comfort in either position. The chair was positioned exactly so that, whenever the guest had to turn toward Malinsky, one of the small spotlights that lit the map dazzled the subordinate's eyes. Malinsky was not a cruel man, but he firmly believed in establishing and maintaining control under all circum- stances, and he believed in precision and in the importance of the smallest detail to the greatest military operations.
Malinsky knew Anseev well enough. During Malinsky's tour of duty in Afghanistan—easily the most frustrating assignment of his life—Anseev had commanded a combined arms unit. Anseev had been bold, a great improviser, where others were routinely overcautious. Once, denied the use of mountain roads by the dushman, he had personally led his armored vehicles up a dry riverbed to relieve a besieged garrison. But he did not pay enough attention to little things, and his casualties were always high. Each of his commanders had his own peculiar weaknesses, Malinsky reflected. Anseev just needed to feel the bit now and then.
Anseev had been given the command of a corps structured to perform optimally as an operational maneuver group, with the mission of thrusting deeply and rapidly into the enemy's operational rear, unhinging the enemy's ability to reorganize his defenses, seizing key terrain or striking decisive targets, and convincing the opponent that he had been defeated before the military issue was actually settled. Anseev had been selected for the command because of his boldness and the speed with which he moved. Yet here was a situation in which one of his subunits could not even clear its staging area on time. Malinsky suspected he knew the reason, but he wanted to hear Anseev's tale.
"Wait a minute Anseev." Malinsky held up a hand and grabbed the shiny black telephone receiver with his other, placing it to his right ear. He dialed the number with the hand he had raised, it now rolled the dial to the precise number in Moscow. He was connected after a few minutes with a resounding beep.
"What is it now Mikhail Miloradovitch?" the voice on the other end, in its Moscow office sounded irate, angry, cultured, refined yet so ill-mannered at the same time. A contradiction of itself.
"Demyan Petyravich, I need Alekseyev on my command staff. Third Shock Army just reported that 20th Guards Tank Division's commander just took ill. His appendix ruptured and he is now in critical condition. I have a vaca—"
"For the last time Mikhail Miloradovitch!" the voice cut him off. "I've given you every officer you've wanted. "I even gave you Colonel General Vladimir Orlovsky, who now commands the 1st Guards Tank Division! The Navy, especially the naval infantry are absolutely furious!"
Malinsky felt his lips quirk in a fond expression at the thought of Orlovsky, with his balding hair, but a good-hearted and loving man. "I need Vladimir Vasilyevich." He said smoothly. "And now I am asking you to get me Pavel Leonidvich Alekseyev. "
"For God's sake Misha! He's CNIC-Southwest's deputy commander! We need him for our operations in the Persian Gulf!"
"Which will only occur after, we've dealt with NATO, Western Europe, and the US. Demyan, I was given the General Secretary's word that I would get everything I would need. And one doesn't make a man, like Valentin Rodya, angry."
"Fine…" the voice fumed. "I'll get you the man."
The line went silent with a click. Holding out his cigarette case, Malinsky leaned forward into the light. Anseev was normally highly self-confident, even brash, and he was a chain smoker like Malinsky. But now he waved away the proffered smoke with almost unintelligible thanks.
"Come, Igor Fedorovitch, you like a smoke."
Anseev obediently took one of the short paper tubes that bled dark tobacco from both ends.
From Anseev's behavior, Malinsky could tell that the man knew what the problem was, and that he had hoped it would slip by the front commander.
Malinsky leaned back into the shadows.
"Igor Fedorovitch," he said in a friendly, almost paternal voice, "are you aware that your trail brigade is still in its staging area, holding up another unit?"
"Yes, Comrade Front Commander."
"What's the problem there?"
"The roads are just too crowded," Anseev said anxiously. Anseev was a mongrel, with a great deal of Tartar blood and the guarded eyes of an Asian. "The supply columns from the front and army materiel support brigades are undisciplined. They act as though they are under no control whatsoever. I have tanks colliding with fuelers, and nobody can decide who has priority unless a senior officer is present. The commandant's service has not deployed adequate traffic controllers. You should see how it is along my routes, Comrade Front Commander. The river-crossing sites are an absolute nightmare."
"Igor Fedorovitch, do you imagine it will be easier to move in combat? Do you expect the British or the Germans to control traffic for you?" Malinsky paused for effect, carefully holding his voice down to a studied near-whisper that could be chilling and fatherly at the same time. "We're not in Afghanistan now. This is a real war, with mechanized opponents, with enormous mechanized armies the like of which the world has never seen in battle. Moving to war on the finest road networks in the world. And you, my cavalryman, are perhaps the most important formation commander in this front. Yet you can't move a lone brigade on time? Igor Fedorovitch, we've had reasonable weather, a little rain, but nothing to stop a good cavalryman. If the supply columns have no control, why didn't you take control? If you can't maneuver around a pack of field kitchens, how do you expect to get to the Rhine? How can I trust you even to get into combat on time?"
"Comrade Front Commander, this will not happen again. It's just—"
"No 'just,'" Malinsky said, his voice lowering in pitch and suddenly as cold as winter in the far north. "Fix the problem. And never let it happen again."
"Yes, Comrade Front Commander. By the way, I have to tell you that your son's brigade is the best in my command. Well-disciplined, and he moves his tanks like lightning."
It was the wrong approach to try with Malinsky, who instantly realized how shaken Anseev must have been to try anything so tactless and naive. Anseev would need watching as the pressure mounted.
"Guards Colonel Malinsky is no special concern of mine," Malinsky said emphatically. "He's one commander out of many. Anseev, did you personally review your march tables and routes in detail?"
"Comrade Commander, I flew the routes myself."
"Did you personally review the march tables? Was your movement plan fully cleared with my chief of the rear and my movement control officers? Or did you bend the schedule you were allowed by the front? Did you even know all that had been done or left undone in your name?"
"Comrade Front Commander, the automated support mechanism—"
"Yes or no?"
"No, Comrade Front Commander."
Malinsky drew on his cigarette, letting its glow briefly light his face. Anseev was clearly distraught. As he deserved to be. But Malinsky did not want him to return to his unit that way. And there was the final review to get through with all of the other commanders, the front staff, and the special representatives.
Anseev turned his face to the map, as though seeking a way to reach out and correct his error in front of Malinsky's eyes.
"Igor Fedorovitch," Malinsky began, weighting the paternal tone in his voice, "you are . . . perhaps the finest fighting commander I have. I frankly admired you in Afghanistan. You know that. It was a bad war for all of us, not really a war—a trial we were never permitted to win. But you did so well with what you had, under the worst possible conditions . . . we always counted on you in the desperate moments. And I am counting on you now. We're all counting on you. Of all the formations in the First Western Front, it is most critical that your corps and its brigades be responsive and exactly on time. You must always be there first." Malinsky sucked on his cigarette, blowing the smoke back out with a faint sigh. "We all have flaws, Igor Fedorovitch. And I'll be frank. Your flaw is that you see everything in bold, broad terms. This may also be your virtue. But a commander must take the time for the details. If the artillery arrives but the ammunition doesn't show up, the artillery is useless. Precision saves lives, Igor Fedorovitch. It is perhaps the most important aspect of discipline for an officer. The soldier of the Soviet Motherland will give you everything he has. I will not see his life wasted because a commander was too busy to attend to administrative details."
"I understand, Comrade Front Commander. I won't forget." Malinsky allowed a short silence to drain the tension.
"I'll see you in a few minutes then, Igor Fedorovitch. At the final review."
Anseev understood this form of dismissal. He rose sharply and presented his respects.
Malinsky nodded.
With Anseev gone, Malinsky lit a final cigarette, attempting to gather his thoughts. He wanted to keep the review short so that his commanders could get back to their formations, but he also wanted to insure that every last-minute question had been answered. There would be no time once the great machine had been set in motion. He tried to enumerate his last-minute concerns, but his mind strayed determinedly to his son, as if Anseev had cursed him. He suddenly felt as though, if he were a religious man, he would pray for the boy.
But pray to whom? To Russia? It was, Malinsky considered, the closest thing he could imagine to a god. Something so much greater than its children. Its stubborn, passionate, dreaming children, who always seemed to seek the most difficult solutions to life's problems. The idea of Russia remained hopelessly mystical, verging on melodrama. Intellectually, he could pick it apart, yet it was emotionally irresistible to him.
Spare my boy. And I will do everything for you.
And Paulina. How they had wanted more children. But those children had never come, and Paulina had endured the dreadful lieutenant's quarters on the edge of the world, with communal kitchens and the filthy shared latrines. And the separations, the lack of fine things that only those much closer to the Party, or those whose sense of duty was to themselves, would ever have. Paulina, his soldier's wife. His countess. Paulina, he thought, if I could choose, if I had to choose, I would send you back your son.
Malinsky felt ashamed of himself. He knew he hadn't a moment to squander on nostalgia and personal matters. He needed to concern himself with the movement of tens of thousands of war machines, of hundreds of thousands of men. There was no time for emotionalism.
The intercom phone rang. It was the chief of staff and first deputy commander, the newly promoted Lieutenant General Pavel Pavlovitch Chibisov. The chief was a self-contained, coldly brilliant man with an analytical bent and almost obsessive self-discipline whom Malinsky had rescued from another ineradicable aspect of the Russian character—anti- Semitism. Chibisov was an ethnic Jew whose family had long ago renounced their religion, but he still felt compelled to struggle relentlessly against every last vestige of his Jewishness. And Chibisov was correct—his Jewishness never would be fully laid to rest in the eyes of many of his fellow officers. Malinsky felt a close personal bond to Chibisov, a deep, if quiet, affection. They were both outsiders, in their very different ways. In any case, Chibisov was the perfect chief of staff, a born mathematician and organizer, leaving his commander free to concentrate more of his own energies on the military art. Chibisov was the first of his fellow officers whom Malinsky had ever trusted to the extent that he allowed himself to depend fully on another, and he smiled to think of Chibisov the man, a lifelong bachelor who could express everything except emotion with utter clarity.
"Comrade Front Commander, they're all here except the chief of the political directorate—he's still occupied at the KGB site," the familiar clipped voice reported.
"All right. Have they had their tea?"
"They're settled in. We're ready. At your convenience."
"Good. I'm on my way."
Malinsky laid the phone to rest, then crushed out his stub of a cigarette. But he did not move at once. He stared hard at the map one last time.
The deep red arrows of his plan cut through the carefully detailed hopes of his enemies. He had waited for this all his life. But he had never quite believed the day would come.
Major General Dudorov, Malinsky's chief of intelligence, described the enemy dispositions in remarkable detail. Dudorov was clever and a good student of the enemy, but best of all, to Malinsky, he had worked the enemy problem so long that he had acquired not only many Western tastes but even something of a Western outlook. To Malinsky, it was the next best thing to having an intelligence chief right from the enemy's ranks. Malinsky had a great hunger to know his opponents and to fully digest their strengths and weaknesses. He recognized that, in order to apply the precepts of Soviet military science and art to the fullest effect, detailed and accurate intelligence was indispensable. The briefing room stank with the swampy smell of wet uniforms, and the audience shifted restlessly. For many of the officers present, Dudorov's portion of the briefing had gone on far too long. Dudorov was short and overweight, and he spoke like a condescending professor— exactly the sort of figure combat commanders tended to despise. And Malinsky knew that his subordinate commanders were anxious to return to their formations in order to put last-minute corrections into effect. But he took no action to shorten Dudorov's remarks. He placed great confidence in Dudorov's professionalism, and, as with Chibisov, he had carried Dudorov along with him as he rose to positions of ever-greater authority.
Malinsky wanted his subordinates to know their enemies, whether they felt interested or not. It was a common thing for tank and motorized rifle commanders—especially those who had not served in Afghanistan —to swagger about, assuming that the enemy was merely something to be used for target practice. But Malinsky believed their level of interest would rise sharply after a taste of the battlefield.
"And so," Dudorov began his summary, "we face a partially prepared defense. Engineer preparations have been most extensive opposite the Third Shock Army in the British sector, where a unilateral decision apparently was made to execute their obstacle plan early on. The Germans, on the other hand, appear to have been reluctant to dig up their countryside, but all-out preparations are now underway. The Dutch and Belgian efforts at engineer preparations only began within the past twenty-four hours. Overall, we face a much more favorable situation than the one facing our comrades in the Second Western and Southwestern fronts opposite NATO's Central Army Group. Of course, the limited aims of the Northern Front make it a secondary consideration. All of the material aspects of force reduction have clearly favored us. Even in the British sector, our most recent calculations do not indicate that the known preparations will significantly degrade our highly favorable operational correlation of forces and means."
"Any sign of Americans supporting NORTHAG?" Malinsky asked.
Dudorov pointed at the map. From his seat, Malinsky really couldn't see the details, but he had the map memorized. "The single U.S. brigade garrisoned in the north," Dudorov stated, "has apparently been withdrawn into a deep reserve role. Their exact location is presently unknown. There are no indications at present of additional U.S. ground forces opposite the First Western Front."
Timing is everything, Malinsky thought. He was not overly fond of the General Staff, but he had to admit that their calculations on how quickly NATO would detect and, more importantly, muster the decisiveness to respond to a Warsaw Pact mobilization had been almost exactly correct. Discounting the period of discreet measures, it had taken seven days of overt activities to adequately prepare the key Soviet, East German, Czech, and Polish units and formations and to position them forward in a manner that decisively shifted the correlation of forces and means. Of the seven days of all-out measures executed by the Warsaw Pact, the first four had been almost completely free. NATO's intelligence evidently detected, evaluated, and reported the situation within twenty-four hours, but individual member governments of NATO had vacillated for several days. At his meeting with the commander-in-chief of the Western Theater of Strategic Military Action earlier in the day, Malinsky had been astonished by Marshal Kribov's stories of frantic diplomatic efforts that seemed absurd beyond belief. Kribov was not known for his sense of humor, but he had smiled as he remarked to Malinsky that, while he believed they could beat NATO's armies, he was absolutely convinced they could beat NATO's governments.
"Other questions?" Dudorov asked the assembly.
Lieutenant General Starukhin, the commander of the Third Shock Army, stood up. Malinsky smiled to himself. Starukhin always stood up, and always had something to say. Starukhin was a bully, a heavy drinker despite the change in fashion, and a brutally tough and aggressive commander. Exactly the sort of man to command in the breakthrough sector. Malinsky had known Starukhin for years, and he well knew the man's long list of bad habits. But he also knew he could trust him to fight.
"Dudorov," Starukhin began, posing for his circle of paladins, "you stand there and tell me that the British engineer preparations don't make a significant difference. Maybe you'd like to ride in my lead tank."
Malinsky watched to see who laughed along with Starukhin. The army commander's subordinates, of course, and the commander of the Twentieth Guards Army and his companions. The East German officers laughed tentatively, while the Poles appeared disinterested. Trimenko, the commander of the Second Guards Tank Army, remained stone-faced, as did his clique. Trimenko and Starukhin were long-standing rivals, as different as summer and winter. It was a rivalry that Malinsky carefully exploited to draw the best efforts from each man.
None of the members of the front staff laughed at Dudorov. Malinsky and Chibisov took great pains to build a tight, loyal staff where backbiting was not tolerated. Malinsky waited for the laughter and secondary comments to die down. Starukhin still stood posing, with a stupid grin on his face.
"If you're so worried, Vladimir Ivanovitch," Malinsky said coolly, "perhaps you'd like my chief of intelligence to command your army for you."
Now Trimenko's boys and the front staff smiled as a collective. But in the end, Malinsky did not want to further any contentiousness between his staff and his commanders. He only wanted to ensure that everyone knew who was in control.
"My chief of engineers assures me that he will get you across the initial canal line and through the British obstacles," Malinsky told Starukhin. "I certainly don't underestimate the difficulty of the Third Shock Army's mission. No one does, Vladimir Ivanovitch. But I am certain you will accomplish it." Malinsky turned to the chief of staff. "General Chibisov, review the army missions."
The chief of staff exchanged places with Dudorov at the map. The bunker's ventilation system performed sluggishly in wet weather, and tobacco smoke filled the room with dirty wisps at the level of a standing man's shoulders. Chibisov was asthmatic, and Malinsky knew he survived such briefings on sheer strength of will. The chief of staff was the only officer in whose presence Malinsky limited his smoking. But in such a forum, such niceties were impossible, a mark of weakness, and Chibisov was on his own.
"The First Western Front attacks at 0600 Moscow time to seize an initial objective line here"—Chibisov traced a line on the map that ran just west of the Weser River, allowing for operational bridgeheads— "and a subsequent objective line that includes bridgeheads on the Rhine north and south of the Ruhr metropolitan complex. Follow-on missions or additional objectives will be designated by the High Command of Forces, Western Theater of Strategic Military Action, as the situation develops."
Malinsky watched Chibisov survey the crowded room, making highspeed calculations and judgments. The issue remained open as to whether the offensive would continue into the low countries and France. Although the plans already existed, even Malinsky did not know if the final political decision had been made to implement them. The chief of staff continued in a clear, controlled voice, dominating in its self-assurance.
"The Front conducts its attack with three reinforced armies in the first operational echelon. "In the north, the Second Guards Tank Army, reinforced to a strength of five divisions, attacks in the Uelzen-Verden-Arnhem operational direction, with the immediate missions of crossing the Elbe-Seiten Canal in multidivisional strength on the first day of operations, locating and exploiting the boundary between the Netherlands Corps and the German Corps, and rapidly penetrating the Netherlands operational grouping in depth." As Chibisov reviewed the Second Guards Tank Army's mission, the formation's commander, Colonel General Trimenko, wore a mask of hard determination, but his fingernails fought anxiously with the shell of one of the pistachios that were his only public vice. "The line of Autobahn E4/A7 is to be reached by multiple forward detachments not later than local midnight on the first day of operations," Chibisov continued. "Not later than midnight on the second day of operations, initial bridgeheads will be established on the Weser line. The Second Guards Tank Army has two secondary missions. Its initial exploitation of the corps boundary is to be followed by a southerly turning movement into the tactical, then into the operational rear of the German Corps. The army also conducts a supporting attack, from the initiation of hostilities, against the frontage of the German Corps, with the objective of fixing the Germans as far forward as possible, facilitating their subsequent envelopment and encirclement. Upon the commitment of the army's second echelon, those first-echelon units not occupied in guaranteeing the flank of the breakthrough against German counterattacks and not involved in the closing of the ring behind the Germans will contain residual Dutch elements northwest of a line drawn here, from the north of Bremen to Buxtehude."
Chibisov paused for breath, disguising the break as an opportunity for the audience to ask questions. But all of this had been covered before, in much greater detail, and Trimenko and those supporting him knew the plan thoroughly.
"In the south," Chibisov continued, saving the central breakthrough operation for last, "the Twentieth Guards Army attacks in the Duderstadt—Paderborn—Dortmund operational direction, with the mission of developing a rapid penetration in the Belgian sector, thereby creating an early crisis in the vicinity of the enemy's army group boundary. In this instance, as in the example of the Second Guards Tank Army in the north, we expect that early penetrations on its flanks will force the enemy's Northern Army Group—NORTHAG—to commit its available reserves early and in a piecemeal fashion as it attempts to stabilize both of its flanks. Finally, upon receipt of the appropriate order, the Twentieth Guards Army is prepared to execute a turning movement to unhinge the British defense just to the north, should that prove necessary."
Chibisov breathed deeply, poisoning his lungs. "In the center, ultimately making the front's main attack, the Third Shock Army, reinforced with one East German division to a strength of five divisions, attacks in the Hannover—Osnabrueck—Venlo operational direction. Initially, the Third Shock Army's offensive is phased slightly behind those of the flanking armies, allowing NORTHAG to identify the threat to its flanks and commit its reserves, thus robbing the center of any depth. The initial structure of radio-electronic combat operations will allow the enemy to maintain the necessary communications to identify the threat to his flanks and to initiate the movement of his reserves. To that end, we will initially attack the enemy's air-ground and fire-support communications, but as soon as we have confirmation of the movement of the enemy's reserves to commitment, we will redirect the full weight of our radio-electronic combat effort against NORTHAG's command and control and intelligence links."
As Chibisov spoke Malinsky watched Starukhin, the Third Shock Army's commander. Starukhin was always restless, looking for a fight or for a superior's attention. Now he sat fitfully, obviously swollen with energy and nerves, rubbing at his stubbly chin and blotched nose. Malinsky knew it was only a matter of time until Starukhin opened his mouth again. Malinsky could not help feeling a personal distaste toward Starukhin, even as he valued the man's unrivaled ability to smash his way through problems.
Starukhin managed to rein himself in a bit longer, and Chibisov continued smoothly, a perfect staff officer, choosing each word exactly without losing the rhythm of his speech. "In support of the front's plan, the Third Shock Army initially structures its attack to give the appearance that all four of its organic divisions have been committed, while actually holding the bulk of the Seventh and Tenth Tank divisions and all of the attached East German division as a ready second echelon. The commitment of this second echelon is not contingent upon the commitment to battle of the enemy's reserves, only upon the confirmed movement of those reserves to the north and/or south, or upon the personal authorization of the front commander.
"Third Shock Army has the primary mission of seizing multiple bridgeheads on the Weser River not later than 0600 on the third day of the war, and of thus facilitating the immediate commitment of the Forty-ninth Unified Army Corps to breakout and exploitation operations from the Weser line. The corps functions as the front's initial operational maneuver group.
"Third Shock Army has the secondary mission of supporting the Second Guards Tank Army's encirclement and destruction of the enemy grouping in the German Corps pocket.
"In the second operational echelon, Seventh Tank Army follows Third Shock but is prepared to release one division to Third Shock Army upon order of the front commander. Seventh Tank Army also prepares for options calling for it to repel an operational counterattack launched by CENTAG to relieve the pressure on NORTHAG, or to follow the Twentieth Guards Army, should the initial success prove greater in that sector.
"In the north, the Twenty-eighth Army follows Second Guards Tank Army. The primary mission of the Twenty-eighth is to break out from the Weser line and conduct exploitation operations that culminate in the establishment of operational bridgeheads on the Rhine. Twenty-eighth Army also prepares to release one division to the Second Guards Tank Army upon order of the front commander if reinforcement of the Second Guards proves necessary to contain and reduce the German pocket.
"Other reserves or follow-on forces will be allocated to the First Western Front from the High Command of Forces based upon the developing military and political situations."
Malinsky believed it was as good a plan as could be devised with the available forces and technical support. An apparent pincer movement on a grand scale to draw off the enemy reserves, then a smashing blow to splinter a fatally weakened center. And the real beauty of it, as only Malinsky knew, was its function as a trap within a trap. Marshal Kribov expected Malinsky's breakthrough to draw off NATO's last operational reserves from the south, possibly even units stripped from CENTAG's front line. At that point, a powerful, sudden thrust would be directed against the weakened German-American defenses in the south in the Frankfurt and Stuttgart directions, employing follow-on forces that had, up until then, been portrayed as following Malinsky's armies. It was a series of blows of ever-increasing intensity, always directed at the unexpected but decisive point, on an ever-grander scale.
"Questions?" Chibisov asked.
Starukhin, the Third Shock Army commander, rose. Usually, when Starukhin got up a second time, it was to voice a legitimate concern. Malinsky watched Trimenko, the Second Guards Army commander, as Trimenko watched Starukhin. Trimenko was the type who never whined or complained, who just coldly went about the business at hand with the available tools.
"While I'm content with the allocation of indirect fire assets," Starukhin declared, "I remain troubled by the initial unavailability of fixed-wing air support. The Air Army needs to be reminded that it is ultimately under frontal control— army control. In my case—in all of our cases—it's imperative to deliver a crushing blow that reaches the enemy's tactical-operational depths simultaneously with the main assaults against his front. My attack helicopters can barely support water-obstacle crossing operations and the accompaniment of air assault missions—which are heavily scheduled. I say nothing about their use as a highly mobile antitank reserve." Starukhin paused, gauging the other commanders in the room. "The present allocation of fixed-wing aircraft allows the armies very little control over the battle in depth."
There was no question about it. Starukhin had a point. But there were never sufficient assets to please everyone. Malinsky had made his decision based on his evaluation of the situation within the constraints imposed by the High Command of Forces. In any case, he was a habitual centralizer, having experienced too much subordinate incompetence over the years, and he felt the army commanders already had more assets than they could effectively manage.
Malinsky stood up and approached the map. Both Chibisov and Starukhin took their seats, leaving the front commander as the only focal point in the room.
"Vladimir Ivanovitch has a strong case," Malinsky said, surveying them all. As his eyes passed over the East Germans he almost laughed. He doubted they were the men their fathers and grandfathers had been. They looked as though they expected to be fed to the serpents. Starukhin would insure that they were employed to the best possible effect.
"However," Malinsky continued, maintaining his straight-backed, straight-faced gravity, "I am convinced that the key to the ground war is the air battle. I fully support Marshal Kribov's decision to employ the bulk of the air and deep-fire weapons of all the fronts to support the initial air offensive. If we failed to reach a single ground objective on the first day of the war, if your units did not accomplish a single mission of the day, but we managed to destroy the enemy's air power on the ground or while it was in a posture of reaction, I'm certain we could recover lost time in the ground battle. Since the withdrawal of his intermediate-range missiles and ground-launched cruise missiles, the enemy has only his air power to rely upon to reach deep and attempt to rupture our plans. His air power is the cornerstone of his defense. Remove it, and you can knock his military structure apart with relative ease." This time it was Malinsky's turn to pause for effect, making eye contact with his leading commanders and finally settling his gaze on Starukhin. "I am committed to the initial requirement to destroy the enemy's air defense belts and his fixed-wing combat capability. Even if it meant diverting maneuver forces, I would do it. A parochial attitude begs for defeat.
"Now," Malinsky continued, stalking through the mist of cigarette smoke, "I also understand that some of you are worried about the enemy's possible employment of weapons of mass destruction. That will always remain a concern. But, as Comrade General Dudorov told us, we have no indications that we are presently in a nuclear-scared situation. If you accomplish the tasks assigned to each of you within the plan, I believe we can defeat the nuclear bogeyman. Speed. . . shock . . . activeness . . . " Malinsky surveyed the group of officers, each one a very powerful figure in his own right. "Once we are deep in their rear, intermingled with their combat and support formations, how will they effectively bring nuclear weapons to bear? The object is to close swiftly with the enemy, to achieve and exploit shock effect, to penetrate him at multiple points, and to keep moving, except to destroy that which you absolutely cannot outmaneuver." Malinsky turned to face his chief of missile troops and artillery. "I also understand that some of you are troubled by my targeting priorities. Let it be on my shoulders. However I do not believe it is possible to destroy every nuclear-capable system in the NATO arsenal. Anyway, why cut off the fingers and toes when you can more easily lop off the head? Once our trap has been sprung, the targets for the front and army reconnaissance strike complexes must be the enemy's command and control infrastructure and his intelligence-collection capability. If he cannot find us, he cannot hope to place nuclear fires on us. And without effective command and control systems, the requirements of both nuclear targeting and conventional troop control are insoluble. Yet even such targeting must be selective. For example, we know what we want the enemy to see and how we want him to respond initially. That, too, must be factored into our decisions regarding what targets to attack and when to attack them. Modern warfare is not merely a brawl. It is both a broad science and an uncompromising art. If you have not asked yourself every possible question, the unasked question will destroy you."
Malinsky considered the men before him one last time. The anxious and the stubborn, men of finesse and born savages. He never ceased marveling at the varieties of character and talent the military required or could at least manage to exploit. Ambitions as different as their secret fears, Malinsky thought.
"I know you are all anxious to return to your formations and workplaces. There's always too much to do and too little time in which to do it, I know. And every man among us has his own devils, his own worries. My concern in these last hours is that the enemy might strike first. But I know, in my mind and in my heart"—Malinsky touched his fist to his chest—"that once we have begun, no power on earth will be able to stop us. Each of you wears the trappings of tremendous power, commanders, and staff officers alike. Consider what your badges of rank represent. Each of you has come to personify the greatness, the destiny of the Motherland. And your actions will ultimately decide that destiny."
Malinsky thought of his son, a flashing instant of worry, affection, and pride intermingled. "I hope at least a few of you get a bit of sleep, too. I just want to leave you with one final caution. Most of you have heard it from me many times. If there is one area in which I profoundly disagree with the theoreticians, it is concerning casualties. I believe that none of us, on either side, is prepared for the intensity of destruction we will encounter. Not everywhere. But at the points of decision, and in priority sectors, I expect some units—on both sides—to suffer unprecedented losses. Certainly, the number of soldiers who fall on a given field will not rival the casualty counts of antiquity. However, we have not yet found the algorithm to relate modern systems losses to preindustrial manpower losses. The manpower losses will be severe enough, but the losses in what might appropriately be termed the 'capital' of war will appear catastrophic to the commander who is weak or has not prepared himself sufficiently. I hope . . . that each of you is just sufficiently better prepared than your opponent... to remain steadfast when he wavers, to impose your will on him when he takes that fatal pause to count his losses. You must be hard. Each of us will experience things that will haunt him for the rest of his days. That goes with the rank and position."
Malinsky thought for a moment, searching for the right closing words. "This is not my permission to take needless casualties. One life lost unnecessarily is too much. But . . ." He reached for words. Without sounding weak, he wanted to tell them to value the lives of their men, and without callousness, he wanted to communicate to them what needed to be done, to prepare them. "Simply do your duty."
Malinsky strode abruptly toward the door. The officers jumped to attention. Malinsky could feel the collection of emotions grown so intense in the men that it almost demanded a physical outlet. The door opened before him, and a voice barked down the hallway. Malinsky marched back toward his private office in a press of concerns that obscured the braced figures he passed in the long corridor. He wondered if any of them really understood what was about to happen. He wondered if it was humanly possible to understand.
BONN, FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY
"It's all a sham," Weber reported to the Chancellor four hours later. The helicopter he'd flown to Bonn hadn't even left the ground yet. "The whole bomb-plot business is all a cruel and deliberate sham."
"We know that, Colonel," Kohl replied testily. He'd been awake for two days straight now, trying to come to grips with the sudden German-Russian crisis, as well as the negotiation crisis.
"Herr Kanzler, the man we now have in the hospital is Major Andre Ilych Chernyavin. He entered the country over the Czech border two weeks ago with a separate set of false papers. He is an officer in the Soviet Spetznaz forces, their elite Sturmtruppen. He was badly injured in an auto accident—the fool stepped right in front of an automobile without looking—and was carrying a complete diagram for the NATO communications base at Lammersdorf. The station's security posts were just relocated a month ago. This document is only two weeks old. He also has the watch schedule and a roster of watch officers-and that is only three days old! He and a team of ten men came over the Czech border, and only just got their operational orders. His current orders are to attack the base exactly at midnight, the day after receipt of his alert signal. There is also a cancellation signal should plans change. We have them both."
"He came into Germany long before—" The Chancellor was surprised in spite of himself. The entire affair was so unreal.
"Exactly. It all fits, Herr Kanzler. For whatever reason, Ivan is coming to attack Germany. Everything to this point was a sham, all designed to put us to sleep. Here is a full transcript of our interview with Chernyavin. He has knowledge of four other Spetznaz operations, all of them consistent with a full- scale assault across our borders. He is now at our military hospital in Koblenz under heavy guard. We also have a videotape of his admission."
"What of the chance that this is all some sort of Russian provocation? Why weren't these documents brought over when they crossed the border?"
"The reconstruction of the Lammersdorf installation meant that they needed correct information. As you know, we've been upgrading the security measures at our NATO communications stations since last summer, and our Russian friends must have been updating their assault plans as well. The fact that they have these documents at all-just days old, some of them—is most frightening. As for how we happened to get hold of this man—" Weber explained the circumstances of the accident. "We have every reason to believe that it was a genuine accident, not a provocation. The driver, a Madame Anne-Marie LeCourte, is a fashion agent—she sells dresses for some Paris designer or other; not a likely cover for a Soviet spy. And why do such a thing? Do they expect us to launch an attack into the DDR based on this? First they accuse of us of bombing the Kremlin, then try to provoke us? It's not logical. What we have here is a man whose mission is to prepare the way for a Soviet invasion of
Germany by paralyzing NATO communication links immediately before hostilities commence."
"But to do such a thing—even if such an attack is planned..."
"The Soviets are intoxicated with 'special operations' groups, a lesson from Afghanistan. These men are highly trained, very dangerous. And it's a cunning plan. The Jewish identification, for example. The bastards play on our sensitivity with the Jews, no? If he is stopped by a police officer, he can make a casual remark about how Germans treat Jews, and what would a young policeman do, eh? Probably apologize and send him on his way." Weber smiled grimly. That had been a carefully thought-out touch. He had to admire it. "What they could not allow for was the unexpected. We've been lucky. We should now make use of this luck. Herr Kanzler, this data must go to NATO high command immediately. For the moment we have their safe house under observation. We may wish to assault it. GSG-9 is ready for the mission, but perhaps it should be a NATO operation."
"I must meet with my cabinet first. Then I will speak with the President of the United States on the telephone and the other NATO chiefs of government."
"Forgive me, Chancellor, but there is no time for that. With your permission, within the hour I will give a copy of the videotape to the CIA liaison officer, and also to the British and French. The Russians are going to attack us. Better to alert the intelligence services first, which will lay the groundwork for your talk with the President and others. We must move at once, Herr Kanzler. This is a life-and-death situation."
Kohl stared down at his desk. "Agreed, Colonel. What do you propose to do with this Chernyavin?"
Weber had already moved on that score. "He died of injuries sustained in the auto accident. It will appear on the television news this evening, and in the newspapers. Of course he will be made available to our allies for further interrogation. I am certain the CIA and others will wish to see him before midnight."
The Chancellor of the German Federal Republic stared out the windows of his Bonn office. He remembered his armed service forty years before: a frightened teenager with a helmet that nearly covered his eyes. "It's happening again." How many will die this time?
"Ja." Dear God, what will it be like?
LENINGRAD, R.S.F.S.R.
The captain looked out over the port side of his ship from the bridge wing. Tugs pushed the last barge onto the aft elevator, then backed away. The elevator rose a few meters, and the barge settled into place on the trolleys already set on the fore-and-aft tracks. Julius Fucik's first officer supervised the loading process from the winch-control station aft, communicating by portable radio to other men scattered about the afterpart of the ship. The elevator matched levels with that of the third cargo deck, and the access door opened to expose the vast cargo deck. Crewmen strung cables onto the trolleys and bolted them rapidly into place.
Winches pulled the barge forward into the third, lowermost, cargo deck of the Seabee—for Seagoing Barge Carrier—ship. As soon as the trolleys were over their painted marks, the watertight door closed and lights came on to allow the
crew to secure the barge firmly in place. Neatly done, the first officer thought. The whole loading process had been completed in only eleven hours, almost a record. He supervised the process of securing the after-portion of the ship for sea.
"The last barge will be fully secured in thirty minutes," the bosun reported to the first officer, who forwarded the information to the bridge.
Captain Kherov switched buttons on his phone to talk to the engineering spaces. "You will be ready to answer bells in thirty minutes."
"Very well. Thirty minutes." The engineer hung up.
On the bridge, the captain turned to his most senior passenger, a general of paratroops wearing the blue jacket of a ship's officer. "How are your men?"
"Some are seasick already." General Andreyev laughed. They had been brought aboard inside the sealed barges-except for the General, of course— along with tons of military cargo. "Thank you for allowing my men to walk around the lower decks."
"I run a ship, not a prison. Just so they don't tamper with anything." "They've been told," Andreyev assured him. "Good. We will have plenty of work for them to do in a few days." "You know, this is my first trip aboard ship."
"Really? Fear not, Comrade General. It is much safer, and much more comfortable, than flying in an aircraft—and then jumping out of it!" The captain laughed. "He is a big ship and he rides very well even with so light a load."
"Light load?" the General asked. "This is more than half of my division's equipment you have aboard."
"We can carry well over thirty-five thousand metric tons of cargo. Your equipment is bulky, but not that heavy." This was a new thought for the General, who usually had to calculate in terms of moving equipment by air.
Below, over a thousand men of the 234th Guards Air Assault Regiment were milling about under the control of their officers and NCOs. Except for brief periods at night, they'd be stuck down there until the Fucik cleared the English Channel. They tolerated it surprisingly well. Even when crammed with barges and equipment, the cavernous cargo spaces were far larger than the military transport aircraft they were accustomed to. The ship's crew was rigging planks from one barge top to another so that there would be more room for them to use for sleeping, and to get the soldiers off the oily workspaces that the crew needed to patrol. Soon, the regimental officers were to be briefed on shipboard systems, with special attention to the firefighting systems. A strict no-smoking rule was being enforced, but the professional seamen took no chances. The crewmen were surprised at the humble demeanor of the swaggering paratroopers. Even elite troops, they learned, could be cowed by exposure to a new environment. It was a pleasant observation for the merchant seamen.
Three tugs pulled on lines hanging from the ship's side, drawing her slowly away from her dock. Two others joined as soon as she was clear, pushing the bow around to face out to sea from the Leningrad terminal. The General watched the ship's captain control the procedure, as he raced from one bridge wing to another with a junior officer in tow, often giving rudder orders as he passed. Captain Kherov was nearly sixty, and more than two-thirds of his life had been spent at sea.
"Rudder amidships!" he called. "Ahead slow."
The helmsman accomplished both commands in under a second, the General saw. Not bad, he thought, remembering the surly comments he'd heard from time to time about merchant seamen. The captain rejoined him.
"Ah, that's the hardest part behind us."
"But you had help for that," the General observed.
"Some help! Damned tugboats are run by drunks. They damage ships all the time here." The captain walked over to the chart. Good: a deep straight channel all the way to the Baltic. He could relax a bit. The captain walked over to his bridge chair and settled in. "Tea!"
A steward appeared at once with a tray of cups.
"There is no liquor aboard?" Andreyev was surprised.
"Not unless your men brought it, Comrade General. I do not tolerate alcohol on my ship."
"That is true enough." The first officer joined them. "All secure aft. The special sea detail is set. Lookouts posted. The deck inspection is under way." "Deck inspection?"
"We normally check at the turn of every watch for open hatches, Comrade.
General," the first officer explained. "With your men aboard, we will check every hour."
"You do not trust my men?" The General was mildly offended.
"Would you trust one of us aboard one of your airplanes?" the captain replied.
"You are right, of course. Please excuse me." Andreyev knew a professional when he saw one. "Can you spare a few men to teach my junior officers and sergeants what they need to know?"
The first officer pulled a set of papers from his pocket. "The classes begin in three hours. In two weeks, your men will be proper seamen."
"We are particularly worried about damage control," the captain said.
"That concerns you?"
"Of course. We stand into danger, Comrade General. I would also like to see what your men can do for ship defense."
The General hadn't thought of that. The operation had been thrown together.
too quickly for his liking, without the chance to train his men in their shipboard duties. Security considerations. Well, no operation was ever fully planned, was it? "I'll have my antiair commander meet with you as soon as you are ready." He paused. "What sort of damage can this ship absorb and still survive?"
"He is not a warship, Comrade General." Kherov smiled cryptically. "However, you will note that nearly all of our cargo is on steel barges. Those barges have double steel walls, with a meter of space between them, which may even be better than the compartmentalization on a warship. With luck, we will not have to learn. Fire is what concerns me most. The majority of ships lost in battle die from fire. If we can set up an effective firefighting drill, we may well be able to survive at least one, perhaps as many as three missile hits."
The General nodded thoughtfully. "My men will be available to you whenever you wish."
"As soon as we clear the Channel." The captain got up and checked the chart again. "Sorry that we cannot offer you a pleasure cruise. Perhaps the return trip."
The General lifted his tea. "I will toast that, Comrades. My men are at your disposal until the time comes. Success!"
"Yes. Success!" Captain Kherov lifted his cup also, almost wishing for a glass of vodka to toast their enterprise properly. He was ready. Not since his youth in Navy minesweepers had he had the chance to serve the State directly, and he was determined to see this mission through.
KOBLENZ, FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY
"Good evening, Major." In a guarded wing of the military hospital, the chief of CIA's Bonn Station sat down with his British and French counterparts and a pair of translators. "Shall we talk about Lammersdorf?" Unbeknownst to the Germans, the British had a file on Major Chernyavin's activities in Afghanistan, including a poor but recognizable photograph of the man remembered by the Mudjahaddin as the Devil of the Kandahar. General Jean-Pierre de Ville of the French DGSE handled the questioning, since he spoke the best Russian. By this time Chernyavin was a broken man. His only attempt at resistance was killed by listening to a tape of his drug-induced confession. A dead man to his own countrymen, the major repeated what these men already knew but had to hear for themselves. Three hours later, Flash-priority dispatches went to three Western capitals, and representatives of the three security services prepared briefing papers for their counterparts in the other NATO countries.
