He had stood in a bitter wind on a viewing platform and could have wept at what he saw. He had asked the General commanding the division what message should be carried back to the minister in Moscow, and the response of the General had been to gather a group of officers into a small room off the mess. The whisky had been put on the table and the carton of cigarettes had been ripped open. What hurt most was that each of the officers, the most senior to the most junior, spoke as if he believed that Pyotr Rykov had the power to change a situation of desperation. It was as if a message had been telegraphed ahead of him, that he was a man of unrivalled importance.
‘It was a live fire exercise, Colonel, an exercise for the division in manoeuvre, Colonel, but the tanks were static. Why? Because, Colonel, we had enough fuel to send the armoured personnel carriers forward with the infantry, but the tanks use more fuel. We do not, Colonel, have sufficient fuel for the armoured personnel carriers and for the tanks. What is the point of a divisional exercise where the tanks do not move?’
There was a small paraffin heater. He was their guest, and he had brought whisky and a carton of cigarettes, and was given the place of honour closest to the heater. Even the small warmth that it threw was insufficient to stop the shivering tremble in his legs. He thought them proud men. Some wore the ribbons for gallantry in Afghanistan, as he did, and some wore more ribbons for bravery in the pointless farce of Chechnya.
‘When the division attacks, Colonel, there should be supporting fire from the mortar units and from the RPG-7 and the Schmel and Falanga missile units. There was none. May I tell you why they did not fire, Colonel? There are no mortar bombs and no rocket- propelled grenades and no ground-to-ground missiles in the division’s arsenal store. We have sold them, Colonel. The divisional commander ordered it, and I arranged it. Perhaps, now, they are in Palestine or in Somalia or in Iraq, I do not know and I do not care. They were sold so that the division could buy heating oil, so that our soldiers did not die of hypothermia in the winter. I offer no apology, because that is what we are reduced to.’
He had written the statement of concern for his minister, given at a news conference. He listened. He had not known the half of the Army’s despair. It would have been better than anything his minister could have uttered if he had brought these officers to Moscow, given them a bottle of Scotch whisky and then wheeled them in front of the television cameras to speak to their countrymen. The Army had been the strength of Russia, her defence, and now it was humiliated. Pyotr Rykov felt the sting of the shame.
‘We sell, Colonel, to anyone who can pay. If the man who can pay is a criminal, then so be it. Where did the weapons of the Chechen bandits come from, Colonel? Why did they always have adequate reserves of ammunition when they fought us? They had our weapons, Colonel, they had our munitions. Our own weapons and our own munitions, sold to those shit bastards, killed our own troops.’
He was humbled by their belief in him. There was an Antonov transport waiting at the airfield for him. The ground crew, on the apron spraying the de-icing fluid on the wings, could wait. They believed him all-powerful and able to fashion change. He did not interrupt. He did not tell them, look into each of their faces and tell them, that he was now a target for surveillance, or that his driver, waiting for the arrival of the Antonov at Moscow Military, had told him that they waited to see how he responded to a given warning. He did not tell them of the fear that had settled at his back, lain on his stomach, the same fear he had known in the street markets and bazaars of Jalalabad and Herat.
‘My own unit, Colonel, in the exercise today, performed poorly. I can admit that. It performed poorly because it is short of officers. On paper I have under my command forty-seven officers. In the exercise, today, I was deprived of the use of fourteen. They were at work, Colonel. They are attempting to feed their families. They are many things – market traders, salesmen, security guards, taxi drivers – but they are not, any more, soldiers. In addition, adding to my shortage, three of my officers, in the last eight months, have shot themselves because of their sense of humiliation at the state to which the Army is reduced. Do they care in Moscow, Colonel, what they do to the Army?’
Outside the door of the small room off the mess was an armed corporal of the Mifitary Police. Invitation to the room was personally given by the divisional commanding officer. At Kubishev, old practices in new times, there remained the political officers. They would be in their heavy coats with their vodka at the bar of the mess. They would know that Pyotr Rykov listened to chosen officers, and they would report that. It would be known in Moscow before the morning how Pyotr Rykov responded to a warning.
‘I read, Colonel, that when I was a captain we were the equal of the Americans in military technology and we were superior to the British and the French. I was a captain ten years ago. Where are we now? It is not just that we are behind the Americans, we are out of sight. We are no longer on the same playing field. We are the Army of a republic that grows bananas.’
The whisky was finished. The ashtrays were filled. He stayed silent. If he had interrupted, Pyotr Rykov could have told these men that their arsenals were empty, their weapons obsolete and their troops starved because of the cancer of corruption that had eaten at the body of the state. With the cold and the whisky and the cigarette smoke a great tiredness came to Pyotr Rykov. They told him what he already knew, and what they added was only the passion of detail.
‘I do not believe, Colonel, that the Army will mutiny. It has lost even the cohesive organization to take such dramatic action. It will melt away, it will go home, it will cease to exist, it will be snow in sunlight.’
The paraffin heater spluttered, gurgled, coughed, and went out. They did not attack him. If any of them had accused him of complicity in the catastrophe, the litany would have been easier for him to accept.
It was their trust that weighed him down.
He could fly back to Moscow through the night and be at his desk in the morning. He could seek out his minister and report that the division at Kubishev was guilty of gross defeatism, and he could walk away from the trust. But they knew he would not betray them. He stood and rubbed his hands together for warmth. They pushed around him.
‘Colonel, you have the influence to force through change. How long before we see that change?’
‘When does that cesspit in Moscow get cleared out, Colonel?’
‘They say, Colonel, that you control the minister. They say you are not afraid to fight the enemies of the Army. What do you offer us?’
Finally, Pyotr Rykov said, ‘I offer you my respect. I offer you my guarantee that each word you have said will be reported to my minister. I offer you my promise that the scum who betray the Army will not sleep easily. Trust me..
He walked out into the night to the car that would take him to the airfield. The evening frost glinted under moonlight.
They drove into the small community of Warnemunde. It was the last throw, the last chance. They were quiet in the car and they harboured their own thoughts. It was the same small community, pretty and tidy, where he had saved her from the sea crashing over the rocks of the breakwater and the same small community to which she had come with her boy, so many years before, to build the boy’s strength and to give him courage. If he touched her, as he believed he did, then she would now be thinking, quiet in her mind, of when she had come here with her boy. He loved her as she had loved her boy…