Vorishnov, overwhelmed, said nothing. Seeing that Uvarov was finished, Vorishnov stood. "One final question, Comrade General. The name of the operation — why Winter Tempest?"
Uvarov turned back to Vorishnov. "Why not? Isn't that what we are about to stir — a winter tempest?"
The name was familiar to Vorishnov and just about every officer in the Red Army. He was about to point out that the last operation that had been so named had been a dismal failure, but didn't. He had already pushed his luck too far. Still, why anyone in STAVKA would want to name any operation "Winter Tempest" was beyond him. Coming to attention, Vorishnov clicked his heels and saluted. "Permission to leave, Comrade General." Uvarov dismissed him with the wave of his hand and a nod.
As he left the general's office and entered the outer office, Vorishnov noticed Anna putting on her coat. Pausing for a moment, he helped her. Anna gave him a timid smile and thanked him as she grabbed a tattered string shopping bag stuffed with a dozen rolls of toilet paper. Desperately wanting to talk to her, Vorishnov casually commented that she had been quite fortunate in her shopping. Anna smiled again. "Yes, Comrade Colonel — fortunate for myself and a friend in the Ministry of Tourism. I queued up for the paper last night while she went looking for shampoo. She just called. She found a really good buy — East German shampoo."
Vorishnov folded his arms and, like a father interrogating his teenage daughter, asked, "And I suppose you're on the way there now to make your trade?"
Playing the game, Anna replied, "But of course, comrade. If I don't hurry, my friend may find someone who has something far more attractive than toilet paper to trade for."
Vorishnov smiled. "True. But I doubt if your friend could find someone that had something as vital as what you have. After all, we all know that any job is never complete until the paperwork is finished."
Anna laughed at Vorishnov's off-color joke. For a moment, Vorishnov forgot the task that awaited him. The pleasure of entertaining this lovely young girl was far too enjoyable. "May I escort you to the subway, Comrade Secretary?"
"It would be a pleasure, Comrade Colonel."
As Anna trudged through the snow not yet cleared from the narrow path, her thoughts kept turning to the colonel of tanks who had walked her to the subway, and to her own father. Her father had been a brave and kind man, not unlike the colonel of tanks. Anna's mother, a simple woman from a small farm in Belorussia, had worshiped him. News of his death, as hard as it was for both Anna and her mother to bear, was not nearly as hard on them as the public reaction to the Soviet defeat. Rather than being consoled by family and friends in their time of need, they were shunned. Public condemnation for the misconduct and failures of the commanders in Iran proved to be too much for Anna's mother. Less than a year after the war was over, Anna's mother was dead. Left without a family and treated as an outcast, Anna decided to take her revenge. Any system that, in the name of the revolution, so easily threw its youth away in a war and then so callously turned its back on those left behind, deserved to be punished.
That what she was doing was treason never occurred to her. The occasional passing of information that came across her desk to her "friend" in the Ministry of Tourism was the only way Anna could strike back at the system that had claimed her parents. She never accepted money and never asked what became of the information. Just the thought of doing something to hurt the faceless bureaucrats that ran the country was reward enough.
Up ahead, a female voice calling her name brought Anna's thoughts back to the matter at hand. On a park bench, a tall redheaded woman, well dressed and tastefully made up, waited. It was important to dress properly when dealing with Westerners. Like Anna, she had a string bag, only hers was filled with shampoo. As Anna approached, the redhead stood up and called out, "You've got it— good! Look what I have." The redhead held up a bottle of shampoo. "From East Germany."
Like an excited schoolgirl, Anna ran up and took the bottle, cooing and gibbering. Putting the bottle on the bench, Anna reached into her string bag and pulled out four rolls of toilet paper. "Here, four rolls for one bottle."
The redhead insisted that three rolls were enough, but Anna insisted. After a few minutes of haggling, the redhead gave in. Anna reached in and pulled out the four rolls of paper — the ones stuffed with copies of Vorishnov's deployment plan and a hand-scrawled note listing the M-day sequence.
From across the way, two militia officers watched Anna and the redhead go about their business. "The redhead is a fool. Imagine, not only did she not hold out for a fifth roll, she fought to take less. If I caught my wife doing that, I would make her use old copies of Pravda to wipe her ass for a week."
The second militia officer, cupping his hands and blowing into them to warm them, sighed. "Women, haggling over shampoo and toilet paper. We should have such worries."
Slapping his friend on the back, the first militia officer laughed. "Don't begrudge them their role. The next time you take a crap, try hard to imagine where you would be without the paper. Perhaps then you will be more tolerant."
Laughing, the two militia officers turned away as they went about their business, leaving the women to finish theirs.
With little more than a phone call and twenty-four hours' warning, Dixon was informed that his family would be arriving in country on the seventeenth of November. In a flash, all his well-laid plans and ideas of properly preparing his wife and two boys for life in Egypt were trashed. Instead of staying in the States until after the upcoming exercise was over, Fay Dixon had unilaterally decided to come early so that, as she explained in the phone call, they could spend the holidays together.
Dixon had just overcome the effects of jet lag and started finding his way around. He had returned from four days in the desert the day before and had not begun any serious efforts to secure proper quarters for the family, check on schools for the boys, or even find out where the other American families went shopping for food. Such mundane chores had been low on Dixon's priority list. Fay's appearance changed that.
In a beat-up secondhand Volkswagen van with no shocks, bought from a sergeant assigned to the Office of Military Cooperation in Egypt, Dixon went to the airport to pick up his family. This turned into an ordeal in itself. Dixon was not ready for the chaos and pandemonium that characterizes Cairo traffic. If there were traffic laws in Egypt; they were not in evidence in Cairo. It took him less than ten minutes to become disoriented and an additional fifteen to become totally lost. Efforts to get directions from a traffic policeman were frustrated by Dixon's ignorance of the language and the policeman's half-hearted efforts to establish some semblance of order to the traffic. In desperation Dixon stopped in front of a first-class hotel and hired a taxi to lead him to the airport. Though the Egyptian really did not understand Dixon's plan or logic, thirty Egyptian pounds bridged the communications gap. After a drive through the city in what resembled a high-speed chase, the taxi finally led him to the international terminal.
Exasperated and already in a bad mood, Dixon rushed into the arrivals terminal and began to look for his family. He was over an hour late. Even taking into account the long wait for customs, Fay and the boys would no doubt be waiting somewhere. As he moved through the crowded terminal at a pace just short of a trot, Dixon looked to his left and his right. It wasn't until he heard a familiar voice yell "Daddy!" that he slowed. Turning in the direction of the voice, Dixon looked for Fay. The first person he saw was his older son rushing at him in a dead run. The younger boy was immediately behind his brother. In their usual manner, the two boys plowed into their father with the finesse of a nose tackle taking out a quarterback.