7
Viktor Kozlov's teeth ached. He wanted to show the American officers, with their fine, strong, white teeth, how effectively a Soviet officer could perform in a critical situation. But he had to struggle to remain clearheaded. Each exchange he translated for General Ivanov, each small detail, had to be conveyed exactly to the impatient Americans. Yet, as he spoke Kozlov imagined he could feel his bad teeth shifting in his gums, and intermittent streaks of pain tightened the skin around his eyes. The combined staff meeting had dragged on through the night, under tremendous pressure, as the front dissolved more thoroughly with each incoming intelligence report. Kozlov felt bleary, hungover from the lack of sleep. He had made the mistake of eating iced salmon and caviar from the buffet table that had been erected and adorned with edible treasures to impress the Americans — and the cold had bitten into his sick gums. He had told himself that he needed food, that fuel was necessary for the body to continue under stress, without sleep. But he recognized now that it had been greed, jealousy, even malice that had made him select the specialties that had grown so hopelessly rare and expensive, even for a Soviet lieutenant colonel. The Americans had munched casually, uncaring, unaware of the effort that had gone into the provision of such a wealth of food. Many of them left their little plates half full of the snacks, in obvious distaste. It was difficult, very difficult to like the Americans. With their bright animal teeth.
He looked at the American colonel with the horrendously scarred face and the black major who made such a show of speaking Russian. Kozlov was certain that the black officer had been sent simply to insult the Soviets. In the U.S. Army nowadays, the Russian language was only worthy of the attentions of blacks. And the remarkable fluency with which the black major spoke only made it worse. Kozlov wondered how much the man could pick out from the hidden meanings skulking behind General Ivanov's admissions and omissions. No, Kozlov decided, he would never be able to like the Americans. He almost suspected that they had picked out officers with the very best teeth to send on this expedition. To offer one more small lesson in humiliation to their Soviet — their Russian—hosts.
"General Ivanov assures you," Kozlov translated to the colonel with the nightmare face, "that you will have no problems in such ways with our air defense forces. In the time of your movement to contact, these forces will be under the strictest of orders not to fire unless attacked. There will be absolute safety for you."
Kozlov's teeth felt brittle against his spongy gums, and the slow miserable aching between the jolts of lightninglike pain made him want to drink enough hard liquor to numb himself. But he could not and would not do such a thing, and all he could do was attempt to lull himself with the imagined relief. He wondered if these rich, hard-toothed Americans had some sort of dental officer with them, and if there might be some way to receive treatment without suffering too much humiliation.
He quickly dismissed the notion. Any amount of pain was better than further admissions of inadequacy in front of the Americans. The situation was bad enough. It was shameful that his country had come to such a pass, to require the help of the old enemy, to be reduced to the quality of an international beggar-state. No, it was better to lose all of your teeth than to admit even the slightest additional failure.
"It's of the utmost importance," the American colonel, this famous Colonel Taylor, replied. "There's no way our target acquisition programs can distinguish between your systems and the rebel systems. To our sensors, they're identical. Obviously, it's not a problem with the Arabs or the Iranians. The Japanese gear is easy to spot. But with Soviet-built systems, we can only rely on geography to tell friend from foe. We'll need the very latest information you have before we lift off — and in the air, if we can work it out. We just don't want to hit your boys by mistake."
Kozlov listened as the black major translated for Taylor. It was the exact opposite of the way dual translations should work, but Taylor and General Ivanov had agreed on the backward arrangement between them. He watched the general's face as he listened to the translation, wondering how much the man's expressions gave away to the Americans. The whole situation was made even more difficult by General Ivanov's constant stream of lies. Kozlov knew that the Americans, with their magical systems, knew a great deal more about the situation than they let on. And General Ivanov's deluge of untruths and half-truths was simply embarrassing, even when they were told with the best of intentions. The need to translate those words, to pass on those lies directly to these Americans who knew them for what they were, made him want to grind his teeth. But that was out of the question.
At the very least, Kozlov knew, it would be impossible to reach all of the Soviet air defense elements. Communications were erratic, almost impossible, and the Soviet forces east of the Urals were in such disarray, so fragmented across the enormous, gashed front, that no one knew their strength any longer. The Soviets could not even use their own space intelligence systems to locate friendly forces because the Japanese-built weaponry of the enemy had destroyed them at the start of hostilities. The Soviet forces were reduced to striking wild blows in the dark, unaware of the precise locations of the enemy, unaware even of the current friendly situation at any given time, and all they knew for certain now was that the enemy had almost reached the border between Kazakhstan and western Siberia in a breakthrough between Atbasar and Tselinograd, and that only tattered remnants of the Soviet 17th Army stood in their way in a frantically arranged defense just south of Petropavlovsk. The enemy forces had moved methodically over the last weeks, advancing and consolidating, then advancing again. But now the situation had gone utterly out of control. The intelligence briefing offered to the Americans had stated the enemy situation as clearly as possible. But Kozlov had been able to tell by the facial expression of the black major a man who for some reason was addressed as "Mary" — that the Americans knew far more than the hapless Russian briefer. Kozlov wished he could get just one look inside the American regiment's field intelligence center. Not to spy — he was past that. Just to find out what in the name of God was really going on out there on the Central Asian steppes.
Everyone knew that it was bad, of course. But there was such a tradition of lies, of glossing over all but the most evident failures, that Kozlov's countrymen could not quite bring themselves to admit to foreigners — even to allies in a desperate hour — how dismal the situation had become. General Ivanov was perfectly willing to admit there had been a breakthrough. But the desperate request for an American commitment to battle a full week ahead of schedule was excused as necessary only to guarantee the success of a planned Soviet counterattack. While the general knew very well that the closest the Soviet forces could come to a counterattack would be to hurl empty shell casings in the direction of the enemy. Ivanov, in fact, considered two real possibilities. First, the Americans, with their secret wonder machines, might actually achieve some degree of success. In which case, the Soviet defenses would be shifted southward, creating a larger buffer south of the border of Western Siberia and, in a sense, constituting something that almost qualified as a counterattack in a very liberal interpretation of the term. More likely, the American commitment would simply buy some time to sort out the incredible mess out there on the steppes. Moscow, of course, hoped that the shock presence might bring about a ceasefire. But that was a desperate hope. General Ivanov had long since stopped speaking to Kozlov or any of the staff about victory. Now they all simply fought on from day to day, struggling just to gain a clearer picture of the situation. For weeks, they had lived and worked in a mist. It was only with the Americans that General Ivanov still spoke as though he really commanded a wartime front, with all its units and support, when, in fact, the battlefield had collapsed into anarchy.