“That’s nonsense. The Germans will hold on too far forward and too long. It’s a given. And if they hit anybody, it’ll be Trimenko.”
“A few damned aircraft, Chibisov.”
Chibisov could tell now that Starukhin was sorry that he had initiated the exchange and that he was looking for a token prize so that he would not be embarrassed in front of his officers.
“Comrade Army Commander, as the aircraft become available, I promise you will have priority.”
“But I need to plan.” Suddenly, Starukhin lost his temper. “Listen, I don’t have to beg you, you little…”
Say it, Chibisov thought, looking Starukhin dead in the eyes. Go ahead, say it, you Cossack bastard, say the word. Chibisov knew Starukhin better than the army commander realized. Dudorov had a finger in everything — he was a superb chief of intelligence — as a result of which Chibisov knew that Starukhin strongly encouraged his officers to affiliate with Pamyat, a right-wing nationalist hate group that wanted to revive the days of the Black Hundreds and to rid the sacred Motherland of Asians and other subhuman creatures, such as Chibisov himself. Oh, he knew the bully with the big cigar. His grandfathers had come for a drunken frolic in the ghetto, coming by the hundreds, to cut a few beards and perhaps a few throats, to rape the women… and to steal. The Slav was a born thief. And Chibisov’s ancestors, but a few generations removed, would not have resisted. They would have bowed and prayed.
Those days were over. And the Starukhins of the world would never bring them back. Even for officers who were not Party members, such affiliations were illegal. Pamyat had even reprinted The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the infamous Jew-baiting book of the Czarist Okhrana so beloved of the Hitlerite Germans. Chibisov needed all of his self-control now not to spit in the army commander’s face. He consoled himself with the thought that he could destroy Starukhin, if it proved absolutely necessary.
“You were about to say something, Comrade Army Commander?”
“Pavel Pavlovitch,” Starukhin began again, switching suddenly to the ingratiating tone that Russian alcoholics always kept at the ready, “our concerns should be identical. The Third Shock Army has a terribly difficult mission to accomplish under unprecedented time constraints. I only want to insure that we have covered every requirement.”
He would really have to watch Starukhin now, Chibisov realized. Now and forever. In a moment’s embarrassment, they had become eternal enemies.
No, Chibisov corrected himself, the enmity between them had merely been uncovered. The Starukhins and the Chibisovs of the world had always been enemies.
“Comrade Army Commander, I am convinced that our concerns are truly identical. As soon as ground-attack aircraft become available, you’ll have your fair share of sorties.”
Staruhkin looked at him. Chibisov had great faith in Starukhin’s ability to bully his way through the enemy. But just in case there were problems, he wanted to be certain that they fell on Starukhin’s shoulders, and that there were as few excuses as possible available to the man.
“About the ammunition,” Chibisov went on, “I believe I can help you with that. Front can provide an additional point-five units of fire for your heavy guns, and perhaps even for your multiple-rocket launchers, if we can align the transport. There’s a projected movement window opening up behind your divisions in midafternoon. Have your chief of the rear call Zdanyuk and tell him where you want it delivered. We’ll bring it right to the divisional guns. And the best of luck tomorrow, Comrade Army Commander.”
Starukhin went off without thanks, without even an acknowledgment, like a man turning away from an empty shop window. When the army commander’s entourage had left the room, Chibisov turned to one of his staff assistants.
“Tell Colonel Shtein that I’m a bit behind. Then see that Comrade Army Commander Trimenko has some refreshments and ask if he needs access to any communications means. Have Shtein begin the tapes as soon as General Trimenko has settled in. I’ll be down in a few minutes. Oh, and make sure Samurukov knows he’s to sit in.”
The staff officer turned smartly to execute his mission. The handful of technical and service officers remaining in the room had no immediate call on Chibisov’s time, and he went out into the hallway, fighting back his cough.
Even the stale air in the corridor felt refreshing after the smog of the briefing room. Chibisov strolled down the hall to the main tunnel corridor, not allowing himself to hurry. The officers and men of the front staff were careful to allow plenty of room as Chibisov passed. But the chief of staff was not prowling for defects tonight. He just wanted to breathe.
As soon as he reached the backup stairwell and found it deserted, he nearly collapsed with pent-up coughing. He felt as though his face must be changing color with the intensity of the struggle for breath. He went up the stairs slowly, lungs clotted shut. With no one to see him, he spit as though ridding himself of wreckage. He hurriedly took one of his steroid pills, which were only to be used in emergencies, washing it down with his own saliva. In the cemented stairwell, his coughing sounded especially destructive.
What did that bastard Starukhin see when he looked at him? An asthmatic little Jew? Chibisov had come up through the airborne forces, and he had been a martial-arts specialist as a young officer. He had done everything possible to toughen himself, to reject every weak, infuriating image clinging to him from a thousand years of pathetic East European Jewish history. He resolutely turned his back on all aspects of Jewishness. He worked to be a better Soviet patriot than any of them, a better Russian patriot, as had his father and his grandfather, the first enlightened members of a fiercely traditional family. He even downplayed his intellectual abilities when it came to studying the theoretical aspects of socialism and communism, since he felt it was too Jewish to overly master political philosophy. Instead, he had turned to military engineering and mathematics, to cybernetics and troop control theory. Then they tried to turn him into an instructor, the star young theorist on the staff of the Ryazan Higher Airborne Command School. But he maneuvered his way back into a fighter’s job, even volunteering, although already in his middle thirties, for training as a special operations officer.
Accepted despite his age, he survived the agonizing training only to be defeated by an unreasonable and unexpected enemy: asthma. It was as though a millennium of weak-lunged Jewishness, of reeking ghettos, had taken their revenge on him, as though some bitter and malicious Jehovah were having his little joke. He completed his training only to collapse and end up in a military sanatorium in Baku. His jumping days were over.
But he refused to give in. He fought to remain an officer, obsessive in his determination to wear the uniform. He knew they did not understand him. He had never in his life attended a Jewish service. He had no understanding of the Jews who wanted to leave the Soviet Union, to leave Russia, their home. To Chibisov, the émigrés were incomprehensible, weak, and selfish. For him, Israel was a distant land of superstition and fascist enthusiasms. And yet he knew that his fellow officers always saw him as the little Jew, a born staff” man, perhaps meant to be a senior bookkeeper in some great Jewish banking house, or a student of arcane texts, shut in a musty study. Chibisov, the little Jew who wanted to be a Soviet paratroop officer.
Chibisov left the stairwell, sweating, near exhaustion. He labored up the ramp to the massive blast-proof entry doors. The interior guards saluted with their weapons, and, behind a glass panel, the duty officer jumped to his feet. Everyone knew the little Jew chief of staff, Chibisov thought bitterly.