He returned to the emptied barracks after dark. On this last night before he left for home, he was notified that Misha had been born, but that his wife had died of complications from childbirth.
His life after he returned was difficult, too. Like the 400,000 army men and 120,000 administrators withdrawn from Europe, he had no home to go to, and lived with Misha in a temporary shack of metal sheets, freezing in winter and broiling in summer. His old colleagues would do any work for a living, some becoming gun runners for the gangs, some reduced to strip dances at nightclubs. But he stuck to his honest soldier’s life, and Misha quietly grew up amid the hardship. He wasn’t like the other children; he seemed to have been born with an innate ability to endure, because he had a world of his own.
As early as primary school, Misha would quietly spend the entire night alone in his small room. Levchenko had thought he was reading at first, but by chance he discovered that his son was standing in front of the window, unmoving, watching the stars.
“Papa, I like the stars. I want to look at them all my life,” he told his father.
On his eleventh birthday, Misha asked his father for a present for the first time: a telescope. He’d been using Levchenko’s military binoculars to stargaze before then. Afterward, the telescope became Misha’s only companion. He could stand on the balcony and watch the stars until the sky lightened in the east. A few times, father and son stargazed together. The marshal always turned the telescope toward the brightest-looking star, but his son would shake his head disapprovingly. “That one’s not interesting, Papa. That’s Venus. Venus is a planet, but I only like stars.”
Misha didn’t like any of the things that the other kids liked, either. The neighbor’s boy, son of the old paratrooper chief of staff, snuck out his father’s pistol to play with, and ended up shooting his own leg by accident. The general of the staff’s children thought no reward better than their papa taking them to the company firing range and letting them take a shot. But that affinity seemed to have completely skipped over Misha.
Levchenko found his son’s apathy for weapons unsettling, almost intolerable, to the point where he reacted in a way that embarrassed him to think of to this day: Once, he’d quietly set his Makarov semiautomatic on his son’s writing desk. Not long after he returned from school, Misha came out of his room with the pistol. He held it like a child, his hand closed carefully around the barrel. He set the gun gently in front of his father and said, evenly, “Papa, be careful where you put it next time.”
On the topic of Misha’s future, the marshal was an understanding man. He wasn’t like the other generals around him, determined that their sons and daughters would succeed them in the military. But Misha really was too distant from his father’s work.
Marshal Levchenko wasn’t a hot-tempered man, but as the commander in chief of the armies, he’d castigated more than one general in front of thousands of troops. He’d never lost his temper at Misha, though. Misha walked silently and steadily along his chosen path, giving his father little cause for concern. More importantly, Misha seemed to be born with an extraordinary aloofness from the world that at times elicited even Levchenko’s reverence. It was as if he’d carelessly tossed a seed into a flowerpot only for a rare and exotic plant to sprout. He had watched this plant grow day by day, protecting it carefully, awaiting its flowering. His hopes had not fallen short. His son was now the most renowned astrophysicist in the world.
By this time, the sun had entirely set behind the pine forest, the white snow on the ground turning pale blue. Marshal Levchenko collected his thoughts and returned to the underground war room. All the personnel for the war meeting had arrived, including important commanders from the Western and Caucasus military districts.
Outnumbering them were the electronic-warfare commanders, all the ranks from captain to major general, most newly returned from the front. In the war room, a debate was raging between the Western Military District’s ground- and electronic-warfare officers.
“We correctly determined the enemy assault’s change in direction,” Major General Felitov of the Taman Division said. “Our tanks and close air support had no problems with maneuverability. But the communications system was jammed beyond belief. The C3I system was almost paralyzed! We expanded the electronic-warfare unit from a battalion to a division, from a division to a corps, and invested more money in them these two years than we invested in all the regular equipment. And we get this?!”
One of the lieutenant generals commanding electronic warfare in the region glanced at Kalina. Like all the other officers newly returned from the front line, her camo uniform was stained and scorched, and traces of blood still stuck to her face. “Major Kalina has done noteworthy work in electronic-warfare research, and was sent by the General Staff to observe the electronic battle. Perhaps her insights may better persuade you.” Young Ph.D. officers like Kalina tended to be fearlessly outspoken toward superiors. They were often used as mouthpieces for tough words, and this was no exception.
Kalina stood. “General Felitov, that’s hardly the case! Compared to NATO, the investment we’ve put into our C3I is nothing.”
“What about electronic countermeasures?” the major general asked. “If the enemy can jam us, can’t you jam them? Our C3I was useless, but NATO’s worked like the wheels were greased. Just look at how quickly the enemy was able to change the direction of their attack this morning!”
Kalina gave a pained smile. “Speaking of jamming the enemy, General Felitov, don’t forget that in your sector, your people forced their own electronic-warfare unit to turn off their jammers at gunpoint!”
“What happened out there?” Marshal Levchenko asked. Only then did the others notice his arrival and stand to bow.
“It was like this,” the major general explained. “Their jamming was worse for our own communication and command system than NATO’s! We could still maintain some wireless transmission through NATO’s jamming. But once our forces turned on their own jammers, we were completely smothered!”
“But don’t forget, the enemy would have been completely smothered too!” Kalina said. “Given our army’s available electronic countermeasures, this was the only possible strategy. At this time, NATO has already widely adopted technologies like frequency hopping, direct-sequence spread spectrum, adaptive nulling systems, burst transmission, and frequency agility.1 Our frequency-specific aimed jamming was completely useless. Full-spectrum barrage jamming was our only option.”
A colonel from the Fifth Army spoke up. “Major, NATO exclusively uses frequency-specific aimed jamming too, with a fairly narrow range of frequencies. And our C3I system widely incorporates the technologies you mentioned as well. Why would their jamming be so effective against us?”
“That’s easy. What systems are our C3I built upon? Unix, Linux, even Windows 2010, and our CPUs are made by Intel and AMD! We’re using the dogs they raised to guard our own gate! Under these circumstances, the enemy can quickly figure out, say, the frequency-hopping patterns used for our intelligence reports, while using more numerous and more effective software attacks to strengthen the effects of their jamming. The Main Command suggested the widespread adoption of a Russian-made operating system in the past, but met heavy opposition from the ranks. Your division was the most stubborn holdout of all—”
“Yes, yes, we’re here today to resolve precisely that problem and conflict,” Marshal Levchenko interrupted. “I call this meeting to order!”