He stood in limbo for a moment as the inner door shut behind him. Then the outer door began to slide back, and the cool air raced in, carrying flecks of rain and a multilayered drone of constant noise from the trails and roads and highways. The forecast called for a wet first day of the war, and Chibisov felt lucky to emerge from the bunker at a moment when the rain had softened to little more than a mist. As the outer door closed Chibisov stood still, breathing as deeply as his lungs would permit, almost gasping. The nearest sounds came from the departing helicopters that carried away the more important briefing attendees. The blades hacked at the darkness to gain lift. Underlying the throb of the rotors, countless vehicles groaned toward carefully planned destinations. Chibisov’s mind filled with timetables. It had been a key consideration that the Soviet forces could not close on their jump-off positions too early. It was unthinkable to put everything neatly into place, then wait in a silence that telegraphed to the enemy that you were ready to attack, with your final deployments even telling him where the main effort would come. The plan kept forces on the move, shifting, realigning toward a fluid perfection that would appear no different than the preceding days of road marches and hasty bivouacs, but that would allow the swift convergence of overwhelming forces at the points of decision, achieving tactical surprise, and even a measure of operational surprise. Chibisov looked at his watch. If the march tables were on schedule, the noise in the distance would be from one of the divisions of the Seventh Tank Army, leapfrogging closer to the Elbe. As the lead echelons moved into the attack the follow-on forces would already be closing on their vacated positions, leaving as few exploitable gaps as possible. Chibisov had confidence in the mathematical model and in its tolerances. Yet he recognized that, to the drivers and the junior commanders out on the roads, it probably seemed like chaos. It was important to cultivate Malinsky’s talent for standing back, Chibisov thought. Not to get caught up in the frustrating details, even though you remained aware of them. From the grand perspective, the minor scenes of confusion on the roads or in assembly areas simply disappeared, consumed by the macro-efficiencies of the model.
It only seemed remarkable to Chibisov that the enemy had not reached out to strike a preemptive blow. He and Dudorov had discussed the situation at length with Malinsky. In the twenty-four hours prior to the attack, the posture of virtually all of the Warsaw Pact forces, and especially their supply and rear services deployments, was terribly vulnerable. But so far, NATO had done nothing. Dudorov was convinced that there was absolutely no danger of NATO striking first. But neither Chibisov nor Malinsky could quite believe that the enemy would passively wait to receive the obviously impending blow.
Chibisov tasted the night air. The passages of his lungs had reopened slightly, and he felt like a man reprieved. He thought that the plan for a high-powered, relentless offensive would be like depriving a man of oxygen. NATO would have its wind taken away by the initial impact, and it would never be allowed to regain its breath. The damp night air felt vivid with power; the vehicle noise sounded as if the earth itself were moving. In just a few hours, the first wave of aircraft would be on their way. And still the enemy did nothing.
A lone helicopter growled by overhead. Probably Starukhin, Chibisov thought. But the army commander had already receded in his mind.
The last faint rain stopped. Chibisov could feel that it would return, stronger than before. But for the moment, he stood peacefully in the spongy air and thought of Malinsky, who had saved him. Recovering from his collapse in the sanatorium, Chibisov found that paperwork had been initiated without his knowledge to remove him from active service. The old anti-Semitism. He struggled through the bureaucracy until he managed an interview with the deputy commander of the Transcaucasus Military District. That was the first time he met Malinsky. Comrade Deputy Commander, the army is my life. I’m as good as any officer in this uniform. Malinsky listened, watching him in silence, unlike the blustering, self-important general officers with whom Chibisov was familiar. The Starukhins of the world.
Malinsky put a stop to the separation proceedings and gave Chibisov a trial job in his operations department. They were designing contingency plans for the invasion of Iran at the time, and they needed someone with a solid background in airborne matters. Chibisov quickly discovered something new in himself. Perhaps because of his technical training, he had an eye for the telling detail, and he almost intuitively understood how to make a plan intelligible to its executors. He loved the work.
He especially enjoyed working under Malinsky. Brilliant operational concepts and dazzling variations seemed to come effortlessly to Malinsky. Chibisov had never seen anyone who could grasp the overall context and true military essentials of a situation as thoroughly and as quickly as Malinsky. The two men seemed fated to work together, Malinsky rich with ideas and Chibisov perfectly suited to turn those ideas into the words and tables, the graphics and the monumental paperwork that moved armies and brought them efficiently to bear. In the end, Afghanistan had put all of the Iran plans on hold, possibly forever. But Chibisov had gone with Malinsky to the general’s first military district command, his trial run, in the Volga Military District. Chibisov had been the most junior military district chief of staff in the Soviet Army, and he did not underestimate the jealousies, or the pressure Malinsky received over the matter. The two men had worked together almost constantly since then, and it was Chibisov’s sole regret that he was not the sort of man who could ever tell Malinsky how deeply grateful he was to him.
Breathing regularly now, Chibisov turned back toward the bunker. There was no more time to waste. Trimenko, the Second Guards Tank Army Commander, would be almost through watching the videotapes now, and Chibisov did not want to waste any of the man’s time. He had no doubt that Trimenko, whose horizons did not extend beyond the strictly military, would be angry, impatient, and skeptical by now.
The tape was still running as Chibisov entered the darkened room. He stood until his eyes adjusted to the darkness, watching the colorful footage of destruction and disaster, some filmed on rainy days, other segments reflecting good weather in order to be prepared for either circumstance. Then he made his way to the chair that had remained empty for him between Colonel General Trimenko and Major General Dudorov. Samurukov, the front’s deputy commander for airborne and special operations forces, sat on the other side of Trimenko. Colonel Shtein, the master of ceremonies, stood beside the television screen.
Chibisov had seen the footage before, but it still seemed remarkable to him. The filmed destruction of a West German town that had not yet been taken in a war that had yet to begin. Shtein had been sent to the First Western Front directly from the special propaganda subdepartment of the general staff in Moscow. As Chibisov watched he was convinced by the sights and sounds that this was, indeed, what modern war must look like. The filming was magnificently done, never too artful, never too clear. The viewer always had the feeling that the cameraman was well aware of his own mortality. Chibisov could not understand the German voice-over, but it had all been explained to him the day before, when he and Malinsky saw the film for the first time. Only then had certain directives suddenly made sense to them. Malinsky had been furious that he had not been trusted longer in advance, and he was sincerely uneasy about the whole business. There was something old-fashioned, almost gallant about Malinsky, and this particular special operation was not well-suited to his temperament. The staff called Malinsky “the Count” behind his back, half-jokingly, half in affection. Such a thing would not even have passed as a joke when Chibisov was a junior officer, and he forbade the use of the nickname. But he secretly understood how it had developed. It was not just a matter of the well-known lineage, which Malinsky vainly imagined might be ignored. There was something aristocratic about the man himself.