Prince Leon had a gentle voice. “Colonel, we began this undertaking with the understanding that it would be done within one hundred days. We expect to be in operation well within that time limit.”
“The limit has been shortened,” Buckner said flatly. “Hitler has moved faster than we had any reason to expect. We credited the Russian army with more fighting ability than it’s demonstrated.”
“No,” Leon said softly. “It was not their ability you depended on—it was their will to fight. The elimination of Stalin—the restoration of their country to its people—will rekindle that spirit.”
“I’m not sure we have time for that any more.”
Leon’s face told him nothing. It was nearly expressionless: remote, courteous, attentive. “I’m not certain I understand your position, Colonel. What is it you wish us to do—abandon the enterprise?”
“No. I’m asking you to accelerate it. To convince Danilov he hasn’t got as much time as he thought he had.”
Baron Oleg said, “There are certain things you can’t rush, Colonel. You can’t expect to make nine women pregnant in order to get a baby in one month. Nor can you execute a plan like ours with half-trained and half-equipped troops. There is no point starting the operation unless it has every possible advantage—the odds are poor enough as it is.”
Buckner shook his head. “It’s your choice, gentlemen. Speed it up or cancel it. There’s no third course.”
Count Anatol said, “That is an ultimatum, is it?”
“I’m not dictating it. The facts are.”
“No,” Prince Leon said. “It is not the facts, Colonel, it is your interpretation of them. One has the impression your President has developed—what is your expression—cold feet? The Nazis have not moved very much faster than we anticipated. They are approximately where we expected them to be by autumn—nearer Moscow than they were before but not yet at the gates of the city. We expected Zhukov to blunt their drive and he did so. We expected the rains to slow their tanks and they have done so. We now expect winter to stall the German advance and while no one can promise it there is a good likelihood it will do so. No, Colonel. The facts in Europe have not changed. It is only the facts in Washington that may have changed.”
“What are you implying, Your Highness? That we’re trying to back out of our agreement?” He could feel the blood rise to his cheeks. “My country isn’t in the habit of reneging on its commitments.”
“Oh come now,” Baron Oleg said. “You’re not in a public forum now—we are not impressed by a show of the flag, Colonel. You will renege on this agreement the moment you feel it is in your interests to do so. You have kept the bargain only because you are convinced it can still be profitable to your interests. And you are trying to increase the odds of success by shortening the schedule.”
Anatol said, “And we are trying to convince you that shortening it will do just the opposite—it will reduce the odds of success, don’t you see that?”
Oleg scraped ash out of the bowl of his pipe; when he spoke it was to Anatol. “The nearer we come to the day of reckoning the more nervous they become. It may prove intolerable—it may ruin us in the end.”
“Then we shall have to calm them down, won’t we.” Anatol turned to Buckner. “What will it take to soothe you, Colonel?”
He was beet-red to the hairline and knew it. These shrewd bastards had been weaned on Machiavelli; they were the hard realists of an old school that went back a thousand years and he hadn’t the guns for this and he knew it. But he had his instructions and he had to proceed. “I’ve told you what it will take. Move it up.”
“We can’t do that,” Prince Leon said in a reasonable way. “The timing is determined by Stalin. When Stalin moves we move. It is that simple, Colonel, and nothing you can do or say will change that.”
He watched the Peugeot turn out through the gates and then he turned to the game room and opened the side door to the chamber beyond. A thin man with short hair and a neat grey suit looked up from the wire recorder’s rewinding reels.
“Did you get it all?”
“Yes sir.”
“For all the damn good it’ll do us,” Buckner growled. “Keep it to yourself, will you? I wouldn’t like it bandied about Washington that I let three doddering old playboys make an ass out of me.”
“What now, Colonel?”
“The purpose of this little quiz session was to pry Danilov’s plan out of them. It didn’t work. There’s one more thing to try. Pack us up, Hawkes, we’re going to England.”
PART FIVE:
November 1941
1.
The pale disc of the sun was vague in the grey November sky. In the distance beyond the woods he saw the Dakotas going over, vomiting jumpers toward the fifty-foot target circle. Alex watched the jumps as he ran.
The runway was 4,800 feet long and they were running three laps today. Going into the third lap ahead of Solov’s company of troops he felt the pull of the stiffened muscle of the bullet-pinked leg.
Breathing to run: let it all out, open the mouth wide, pull in as much as the lungs can hold—and hold it there for three strides; then expel it and do it again. It had taken him two weeks of running to get his wind back but now he had the rhythm and hardly noticed the weight of the combat pack on his shoulders.
It was more of a dogtrot than a run—you didn’t sprint for two and a half miles—but they were eating up the ground at a good clip and there weren’t any stragglers. Solov ran along at the rear of the column, keeping them bunched up, running the way he walked—with a pronounced roll, as if each leg almost collapsed before the other took his weight. Now and then he would yell at them; he began yelling in earnest when they got toward the end of the lap and the company put on a burst of effort and came tumbling off the tarmac onto the grass around Alex. A good many of them were hardly out of breath.
Solov gathered them in close-order formation and marched them across the runway to where their rifles were stacked in neat pyramids, muzzles skyward. They shouldered their arms and marched quick-time into the woods to the bayonet field and Alex charged with them, roaring in his chest, heaving the deadly spear into the dummies and yanking it out and rushing on to the next.
After bayonet drill the company sprawled on the grass and Alex went around talking to them individually. “How do you feel, soldier?”
“Very well, sir. Thank you.”
He went on. There was a young man—one of the very few who had joined the regiment since the Finland campaigns-sitting on the ground cleaning his bayonet. Alex stopped by him. “Keep your seat, Zurov. How do you like the training?”
“Sometimes it gets a little boring, sir. But I know we need it.” Zurov’s unformed face did not yet contain the lines that made a whole human being.
“You find the bayonet drill boring?”
“Oh not that, sir. It’s rather fun. Bayoneting straw dummies is only playing a harmless game, after all.”
Alex nodded and moved on to the next: “Everything all right, soldier?”
Solov came across the grass toward him, head and shoulders rolling. “They’re nearly ready, General.”
“Yes, I think they are.” Alex turned his shoulder to the others and went on in a lower voice. “You’ll have to wash Zurov out.”
“Zurov? He’s one of the brightest youngsters we’ve had in years.”