And Romanov had gotten his own tank, Misha remembered, staring at the Moscow skyline. At Vyasma, he’d defiantly placed it between his Captain’s disabled T-34 and an onrushing German Mark-IV, saving his Captain’s life as his own ended in red-orange flames. Aleksey Il’ych Romanov, Corporal of the Red Army, won an Order of the Red Banner that day. Misha wondered if it was fair compensation to his mother for her blue-eyed, freckled son.
The vodka bottle was three-quarters empty now, and as he had so many times, Misha was sobbing, alone at his table.
So many deaths.
Those fools at High Command! Romanov killed at Vyasma. Ivanenko lost outside Moscow. Lieutenant Abashin at Kharkov—Mirka, the handsome young poet, the slight, sensitive young officer who had the heart and balls of a lion, killed leading the fifth counterattack, but clearing the way for Misha to extract what was left of his regiment across the Donets before the hammer fell.
And his Elena, the last victim of all . . . All of them killed not by an external enemy, but by the misguided, indifferent brutality of their own Motherland—
Misha took a long last swallow from the bottle. No, not the Motherland. Not the Rodina, never the Rodina. By the inhuman bastards who . . .
He rose and staggered toward the bedroom, leaving on the lights in his sitting room. The clock on the nightstand said quarter of ten, and some distant part of Misha’s brain took comfort in the fact that he’d get nine hours’ sleep to recover from the abuse that he inflicted on what had once been a lean, hard body, one that had endured—even thrived on—the ghastly strain of prolonged combat operations. But the stress Misha endured now made combat seem a vacation, and his subconscious rejoiced in the knowledge that this would soon end, and rest would finally come.
About a half hour later, a car drove down the street. In the passenger’s seat, a woman was driving her son home from a hockey game. She looked up and noted that the lights in certain windows were on, and the shades adjusted just so.
The air was thin. Bondarenko arose at 0500, as he always did, put on his sweatsuit, and took the elevator downstairs from his guest quarters on the tenth floor. It took him a moment to be surprised—the elevators were operating. So the technicians travel back and forth to the facility round the clock. Good, the Colonel thought.
He walked outside, a towel wrapped around his neck, and checked his watch. He frowned as he began. He had a regular morning routine in Moscow, a measured path around the city blocks. Here he couldn’t be sure of the distance, when his five kilometers ended. Well—he shrugged—that was to be expected. He started off heading east. The view, he saw, was breathtaking. The sun would soon rise, earlier than Moscow because of the lower latitude, and the jagged spires of mountains were outlined in red, like dragons’ teeth, he smiled to himself. His youngest son liked to draw pictures of dragons.
The flight in had ended spectacularly. The full moon had’ illuminated the Kara Kum desert flatlands under the aircraft—and then these sandy wastes had ended as though at a wall built by the gods. Within three degrees of longitude, the land had changed from three-hundred-meter lowlands to five-thousand-meter peaks. From his vantage point he could see the glow of Dushanbe, about seventy kilometers to the northwest. Two rivers, Kafirnigan and Surkhandarya, bordered the city of half a million, and like a man halfway around the world, Colonel Bondarenko wondered why it had grown here, what ancient history had caused it to grow between the two mountain-fed rivers. Certainly it seemed an inhospitable place, but perhaps the long caravans of Bactrian camels had rested here, or perhaps it had been a crossroads, or— He stopped his reverie. Bondarenko knew that he was merely putting off his morning exercise. He tied the surgical mask over his mouth and nose as a protection against the frigid air. The Colonel began his deep knee-bends to loosen up, then stretched his legs against the building wall before he started off at an easy, double-time pace.
Immediately he noticed that he was breathing more heavily than usual through the cloth mask over his face. The altitude, of course. Well, that would shorten his run somewhat. The apartment building was already behind him, and he looked to his right, passing what his map of the facility indicated to be machine and optical shops.
“Halt!” a voice called urgently.
Bondarenko growled to himself. He didn’t like having his exercise interrupted. Especially, he saw, by someone with the green shoulder boards of the KGB. Spies—thugs—playing at soldiers. “Well, what is it, Sergeant!”
“Your papers, if you please, Comrade. I do not recognize you.”
Fortunately, Bondarenko’s wife had sewn several pockets onto the Nike jogging suit that she’d managed to get on the gray market in Moscow, a present for his last birthday. He kept his legs pumping as he handed over his identification.
“When did the Comrade Colonel arrive?” the sergeant asked. “And what do you think you are doing so early in the morning?”
“Where is your officer?” Bondarenko replied.
“At the main guard post, four hundred meters that way.” The sergeant pointed.
“Then come along with me, Sergeant, and we will speak with him. A colonel of the Soviet Army does not explain himself to sergeants. Come on, you need exercise, too!” he challenged and moved off.
The sergeant was only twenty or so, but wore a heavy greatcoat and carried a rifle and ammo belt. Within two hundred meters, Gennady heard him puffing.
“Here, Comrade Colonel,” the young man gasped a minute later.
“You should not smoke so much, Sergeant,” Bondarenko observed.
“What the hell is going on here?” a KGB lieutenant asked from behind his desk.
“Your sergeant challenged me. I am Colonel G. I. Bondarenko, and I am doing my morning run.”
“In Western clothing?”
“What the hell do you care what clothes I wear when 1 exercise?” Idiot, do you think spies jog?
“Colonel, I am the security watch officer. I do not recognize you, and my superiors have not made me aware of your presence.”
Gennady reached into another pocket and handed over his special visitors pass, along with his personal identification papers. “I am a special representative of the Ministry of Defense. The purpose of my visit is not your concern. I am here on the personal authority of Marshal of the Soviet Union D. T. Yazov. If you have any further questions, you may call him directly at that number!”
The KGB Lieutenant scrupulously read the identification documents to make sure they said what he’d been told.
“Please excuse me, Comrade Colonel, but we have orders to take our security provisions seriously. Also, it is out of the ordinary to see a man in Western clothes running at dawn.”
“I gather that it is out of the ordinary for your troops to run at all,” Bondarenko noted dryly.
“There is hardly room on this mountaintop for a proper regime of physical training, Comrade Colonel.”
“Is that so?” Bondarenko smiled as he took out a notebook and pencil. “You claim to take your security duties seriously, but you do not meet norms for physical training of your troops. Thank you for that piece of information, Comrade Lieutenant. I will discuss that matter with your commanding officer. May I go?”
“Technically, I have orders to provide escort for all official visitors.”
“Excellent. I like to have company when I run. Will you be so kind as to join me, Comrade Lieutenant?”
The KGB officer was trapped, and knew it. Five minutes later, he was puffing like a landed fish.
“What is your main security threat?” Bondarenko asked him—maliciously, since he did not slow down.
“The Afghan border is one hundred eleven kilometers that way,” the Lieutenant said between wheezes. “They have occasionally sent some of their bandit raiders into Soviet territory, as you may have heard.”
“Do they make contact with local citizens?”
“Not that we have established, but that is a concern. The local population is largely Muslim.” The Lieutenant started coughing. Gennady stopped.
“In air this cold, I have found that wearing a mask helps,” he said. “It warms the air somewhat before you breathe it. Straighten up and breathe deeply, Comrade Lieutenant. If you take your security provisions so seriously, you and your men should be in proper physical shape. I promise you that the Afghans are. Two winters ago I spent time with a Spetznaz team that chased them over a half dozen miserable mountains. We never did catch them.” But they caught us, he didn’t say. Bondarenko would never forget that ambush . . .
“Helicopters?”
“They cannot always fly in bad weather, my young Comrade, and in my case we were trying to establish that we, too, could fight in the mountains.”