The district commander held his newest cigarette in his hand, but had forgotten all thoughts of lighting it.
“The defection of the armies on the eastern front really was a knife in our back, but some commanders have turned this into an excuse in their minds to steer us toward passive operational policies. That has to change! Of course, it must be said that our current strength in the Moscow region isn’t enough for a total turnaround. Our hope lies in the relief forces from the Caucasus and Ural districts.”
“The closer Caucasus forces will need at least a week to assemble and advance into place. If we account for possession of the airspace, it might take even longer.”
It was past three in the afternoon when Kalina and the first lieutenant entered the city in their jeep. The air raid alarm had just sounded, and the streets were empty.
“I miss my T-90 already, Major,” sighed the lieutenant. “I finished armored-vehicle training right around the time I broke up with my girlfriend, but the moment I arrived at my unit and saw that tank, my heart soared right back up again. I put my hand on its armor, and it was smooth and warm, like touching a lover’s hand. Ha, what was that relationship worth! Now I’d found a real love! But it took a Mistral missile this morning.” He sighed again. “It might still be burning.”
At that time they heard dense explosions from the northwest, a savage area bombing rare in modern aerial warfare.
The lieutenant was still wallowing in the morning’s engagement. “Less than thirty seconds, and the whole tank company was gone.”
“The enemy losses were heavy, too,” Kalina said. “I observed the aftermath. There were about the same number of destroyed vehicles on each side.”
“The ratio of destroyed tanks was about 1 to 1.2, I think. The helicopters were worse off, but it wouldn’t have gone over 1 to 1.4.”
“In that case, the battlefield initiative should have stayed on our side. We have a sizable advantage in numbers. How did the battle end up like this?”
The lieutenant turned to eye Kalina. “You’re one of the electronic-warfare people. Don’t you get it? All your toys—the fifth-generation C3I, the 3-D battle displays, the dynamic situation simulators, the attack-plan optimizer, whatever—looked great in the mock battles. But on the real battlefield, all the screen in front of me ever showed was ‘COMMUNICATION ERROR’ and ‘COULD NOT LOG IN.’ Take this morning, for example. I didn’t have a clue what was happening in the front and flanks. I only got one order: ‘Engage the enemy.’ Ah, if we’d only had half our force again in reinforcements, the enemy wouldn’t have broken through our position. It was probably the same way all down the line.”
Kalina knew that in the battle that had just ended, the two sides had sent perhaps over ten thousand tanks into battle along the front, and half as many armed helicopters.
At that point they arrived at Arbat Street. The popular pedestrian boulevard of yesteryear was empty now, sandbags walling off the entrances to the antiques shops and artisans’ places.
“My steel darling gave as good as she got.” The lieutenant was still stuck on the morning’s battle. “I’m sure I hit a Challenger tank. But most of all, I’d wanted to take down an Abrams, you know? An Abrams…”
Kalina pointed to the entrance of the antiques store they had just passed. “There. My grandfather died there.”
“But I don’t remember any bombs getting dropped here.”
“I’m talking about twenty years ago—I was only four then. The winter that year was bitterly cold. The heating was cut off, and ice formed in the rooms. I wrapped myself around the TV for warmth, listening to the president promise the Russian people a gentle winter. I screamed and cried that I was cold, hungry.
“My grandfather looked at me silently, and finally he made up his mind. He took out his treasured military medal and took me here. This was a free market, where you could sell anything, from vodka to political views. An American wanted my grandfather’s medal, but he was only willing to pay forty dollars. He said Order of the Red Star and Order of the Red Banner medals weren’t worth anything, but he’d pay a hundred dollars for an Order of Bogdan Khmelnitsky, a hundred fifty for an Order of Glory, two hundred for an Order of Nakhimov, two hundred fifty for an Order of Ushakov. Order of Victories are worth the most, but of course you wouldn’t have one, those were only given to generals. But Order of Suvorovs were worth a lot too, he’d pay four hundred fifty dollars for one…. My grandfather walked away then. We walked and walked along Arbat Street in the freezing cold. Then my grandfather couldn’t walk anymore. The sky was almost dark. He sat heavily on the steps of that antiques store and told me to go home without him. The next day, they found him frozen to death there, his hand reaching into his jacket to clench the medal he’d earned with his own blood. His eyes were wide open, looking at the city he’d saved from Guderian’s tanks fifty years ago….”
Marshal Levchenko left the underground war room for the first time in a week. He walked in the thick snowfall, searching for the sun, half set behind the snow-draped pinewoods. In his mind’s eye, he saw a small black dot slowly moving against the orange setting sun: the Vechnyy Buran, with his son inside, farther than any other son from a father.
It had led to many ugly rumors within his homeland, and the enemy utilized it even more fully abroad. The New York Times had printed its headline in black type sized for shock: NO DESERTER HAS RUN FARTHER. Below was a photo of Misha, captioned “At a time when the communist regime is agitating three hundred million Russians for a bloodbath defense against the ‘invaders,’ the son of their marshal has fled the war aboard the nation’s only massive-scale spacecraft. Sixty million miles from the battlefield, he is safer than any other of his fellow citizens.”
But Marshal Levchenko didn’t take it to heart. From secondary school to postgraduate studies, almost none of Misha’s associates had known who his father was. The space program command center made its decision solely because Misha’s field of study happened to be the mathematical modeling of stars. The Vechnyy Buran approaching the sun was a rare opportunity for his research, and the space complex couldn’t be entirely piloted by remote control, requiring at least one person aboard. The general learned of Misha’s background only later, from the Western news media.
On the other hand, whether Marshal Levchenko admitted it or not, deep down inside, he really did hope his son could stay away from the war. It wasn’t solely a matter of blood ties; Marshal Levchenko had always felt that his son wasn’t meant for war—perhaps he was the least meant for war of all the world’s people. But he knew his notion was faulty: was anyone truly meant for war?
Besides, was Misha truly suited for the stars either? He liked stars, had devoted his life to their research, but he himself was the opposite of a star. He was more like Pluto, the silent and cold dwarf planet orbiting in its distant void, out of sight of the mortal realm. Misha was quiet and graceful. Solitude was his nourishment and air.
Misha was born in East Germany, and the day he was born was the darkest day in the marshal’s life. He was only a major that evening in West Berlin, standing guard with his soldiers in front of the Soviet War Memorial in the Tiergarten, keeping vigil for the fallen for the last time in forty years. In front of them were a gaggle of grinning Western officers; and a few slovenly, shiftless German police officers trailing wolfhounds on leashes to replace them; and the skinhead neo-Nazis hollering “Red Army Go Home.” Behind him were the tear-filled eyes of the senior company commander and soldiers. He couldn’t help himself; he, too, let tears blur all this away.