The West German government had declared a unilateral cease-fire and had demanded that all NATO forces halt offensive actions on German soil in a bid to conciliate the Soviets. All NATO combat forces were to withdraw west of the Rhine within ninety-six hours, and to leave German soil entirely within fifteen days. Intact Bundeswehr units would also withdraw west of the Rhine. Numerous Bundeswehr commanders had resisted the cease-fire, but their rank and file had proved unwilling to follow them. And as the NATO armies withdrew, Soviet tanks closed the rest of the distance to the Rhine without firing a shot.
And that was it, Chibisov believed. There was no point in going any further. The Rhine was the natural Soviet western frontier, and the control of Germany meant the control of the rest of Europe. The French would ultimately accommodate themselves to the new order. An occupation of France would have been far more trouble than it was worth. And the British could remain an American outpost, for all the effect that would have on the new Europe.
Some high-ranking officers within the Soviet military wanted to drive on. Most of them had not experienced the war firsthand, and they spoke more blithely of resuming the offensive than did those who had gotten a good taste of the battlefield. The most worrisome estimate making the rounds prophesied that the Americans did not regard the war as finished but were preparing to strike elsewhere. And there were clouds on the eastern horizon. Would the war enter an Asian or Pacific phase? Personally, Chibisov hoped it was over. He hoped the Americans would have the good sense to turn their backs on a Europe that took their lives and money and gave them nothing in return. He could not quite believe the Americans would find any of this worth fighting over any more. But he wondered. The Americans remained an enigma.
Intellectually, Chibisov appreciated that the Soviet way of war was scientifically correct, integrating the military and political elements into one overwhelming program. Unity of effort at the highest levels. But in the end, it was not so much the Soviet tanks that had defeated NATO, but NATO’s own foolishness. Watching the progress of the war from his unique perspective convinced Chibisov that the issue could very easily have gone the other way. For instance, the surrounded German operational grouping northeast of Hannover was currently being disarmed, with its soldiers and limited support equipment allowed to move west of the Rhine. But the Germans might easily have been the captors. NATO had the combat power but lacked unity of purpose and strength of will. On a practical level, their lack of a cogent and unified military doctrine had destroyed them. The tools and the workers had been available, but everyone had insisted on using his own blueprint. Chibisov was grateful.
A black bird settled into a splintered tree, and Chibisov thought of Malinsky’s son. The remnants of his brigade reported that Guards Colonel Malinsky had been killed by an air strike. But no body had been recovered, and the old man refused to accept his son’s death. The general went forward in person to conduct the search.
Chibisov felt deeply sorry for his protector and comrade. It seemed stupidly ironic that he, of all men, should lose so much at such an hour. Chibisov did not know the young colonel well enough to feel much sorrow for the fallen officer. The elder Malinsky drew all of his emotion. In a way, he knew, the loss of his son would be harder for Malinsky to bear than defeat on the battlefield would have been.
Of course, plenty of sons had died. Chibisov tried to rationalize the old man’s misfortune away. But the image of Malinsky would not leave him. He pictured the old man stepping over the blackened waste that had once been a forest, peering into the gutted shells of command vehicles. Blinking his eyes to control any sign of the intensity of his feelings, Chibisov realized, helplessly, how much he loved the old man. How much better if an asthmatic renegade Jew, who could not find a home in any camp, had died in place of the cherished son.
Chibisov remembered his mother. His father, a determined communist, had tolerated no mention of religion in their home. But his mother had wrapped her child in the wonder of fairy tales and remembrances. Chibisov had not realized until much later that some of the fairy tales had been stories from the Old Testament. He smiled the smile of middle age at this bit of maternal deviousness, recalling how he had been terrified by the story of Abraham and Isaac. As a boy, Chibisov had had no doubt that his father would have sacrificed him, had the modern gods demanded it.
His thoughts returned to Malinsky and his son. A perverse twist on an old tale, in which God does not relent, or forgive, or show mercy. A god for the world as it is, rather than as it was supposed to be.
Of course, it did no good to romanticize death. Chibisov looked up at the crow on the broken limb. The bird immediately spread its wings and rose skyward, as though Chibisov’s gaze made it uncomfortable. Chibisov took a deep breath, filling his withered lungs. And he turned back to the bunker to sort out the combat statistics.
“They cut us off,” Seryosha told the little crowd of soldiers gathered around his bunk. “We were entirely cut off. Enemy tanks everywhere. You can’t imagine it. But we held out. We held our assigned position for two days, and we killed every German soldier who came near us.”
Leonid accepted the tale. Seryosha had told it so many times now that it had acquired a truth of its own. He and Seryosha never exchanged a word about the incident in the basement in the little German town. When they left the house, it was as if they had signed a compact never to speak of it. And really, there was nothing to say that would change anything. They had simply hidden in a barn until Soviet forces returned. The unit had been a fresh organization from the Soviet Union and had not arrived in time to see any combat. The unit sent the two veterans to the rear, to a holding facility for soldiers who had become separated from their units. They were quartered in a large barracks near the town of Bergen. The barracks had been hit by shells a few times during the fighting, but the quality of everything, from bunks to plumbing, remained amazingly good. Leonid did not mind the arrangement at all.
Two separate groups of soldiers existed within the holding area. The larger group, containing Leonid and Seryosha, was assigned to crowded barracks where they underwent nearly constant roll calls whenever they were not out in the countryside on work details to recover military equipment or to load or unload trucks. Every day, shipments of soldiers left to rejoin their units, while fresh herds of lost privates arrived. The food was not bad, and the officers stayed so busy doing whatever officers had to do that there was even a little bit of free time to sit around the barracks and swap war stories.
The smaller group of soldiers lived in barracks behind barbed wire. Armed guards patrolled the perimeter. These soldiers, the political officer warned the more fortunate, were deserters, men who had thrown down their arms or fled from battle, who had betrayed the sacred trust of the Soviet soldier. They were all to be charged under Article this or Article that. Every time the topic came up, Leonid went cold inside. He suspected that the difference between deserters and soldiers such as he and Seryosha was perilously slight. One rumor held that the difference was whether or not you still had your weapon when you were picked up, but Leonid trusted there was a little more to it than that.
“Anyway,” Seryosha went on, “we finally ran out of bullets. There was nothing to do but go to ground and be prepared to fight with our fists, if it came to that. We thought it was all over. Then our troops came back up, late as usual. They told us we held the farthest point inside the enemy lines. No one else had been able to hold out.”