Cold Allies (30 page)

“What is it?” she asked. “What’s happening?”

Bitterly, the officer laughed. “The fall of Warsaw,” he said.

EASTERN RADAR ARRAY, WARSAW, POLAND

“Sir?” a tech said. “We are experiencing ECM.” Baranyk wiped his face. His palms came away greasy with sweat. Czajowski stopped his incessant silent praying to lean over the tech’s shoulder. On the screen, too many bogeys, appearing and disappearing. A green fishbowl of fireflies that came and went.

“It has been a pleasure to serve with you both,” Baranyk told his aides.

The major nodded. His face was puffy and bruised, his russet eyes resigned.

The room was deathly silent, all the people in it still, as though awaiting the glare of the flashbulb. The Arab AAA started up again, furiously this time. Its glare lit the room. In his corner Jastrun sat huddled, a toddler playing hide-and-seek, his face in his hands.

“Sir?” Zgursky asked, grabbing Baranyk’s arm. “Do you think it will be fast, sir?”

The general put his hand on the aide’s. “Very fast No. Don’t look out the window now. Look at the wall there. See the places where the pictures were? Those pale squares?”

“Yes, sir?”

“I want you to look at them very hard, Yuri Vassiliyevich. Stand right by me and look. I want you to tell me what sort of pictures you think they were. Shcheribitsky?” he asked. Lowering his voice to the point of halting affection he said, “Genya? Will you not tell me what pictures you see?”

“Flowers, sir,” the major said in a squeezed voice. “I think there was probably one of flowers in a meadow.”

“Yura?” Baranyk asked gently, “What are the paintings?”

The aide’s voice came out in staccato gasps. “I don’t know, sir.”

“Look!” Baranyk’s voice was made so harsh, so loud, by his own terror that Czajowski glanced up. “Look at the wall, Yura, and imagine the paintings. One of a troika in the snow, don’t you see it? Don’t you see how the woman is laughing, how the man shouts to his horses? Look! There is a picture of a family, can’t you see? The frame done up in gold leaf? There is the father, and there the pretty mother in braids, and there ...”

His desperate words died heart-shot. Outside the window came a low bass boom.

The aide began to pull away, but Baranyk held his fingers tight. “Quick! Look there, Yura. Look at the wall. See the flowers? The laughing people? There is a dog there beside them, can you see that? A spotted dog, a small one. See how the child reaches down ...”

A boom so loud, it shook the building’s foundations. The cross swayed on its perch and fell.

“We should not be hearing this!” Baranyk shouted. “Why are we hearing the bombs?” He dropped Zgursky’s hand and turned, Shcheribitsky snatching at him. Baranyk turned, thinking that the flash would strike him blind.

The horizon was aflame. Bombs were falling, bleeding fire into the night.

“Oh, look,” Baranyk whispered.

No flash. No blinding light.

In hushed wonder he breathed, “Look. Lauterbach lied again.”

TRÁ-OS-MONTES, PORTUGAL

Momma’s going to be mad at me. It hurts. When Momma finds out, she’s going to be mad.

Pain brushed them. Death perfumed the wind.

Don’t touch anything, Momma told me, but when I picked up the funny green ball, it bit me. It bit me because I was bad.

The need became louder as they drifted through the early morning fog and the trees. In the glade the grass was empty except for a little girl, and she was dying.

It hurts,
the little girl thought

Bleeding stumps where her hands should have been. A carmine ruin of a chest below round, childish cheeks. The little girl sensed their approach and turned her face, their blue reflected in her eyes.

They hoped she would think of something else now, something other than her terror at seeing them. Dying had a rich flavor when mixed with memory; and a bitter one when mixed with fear.

Tender as air, light as a last breath, they settled. One acrid taste of fear, and then—

Watching the goats leap over each other in the meadow. Bouncing like balls. Like furry balls. How funny. If goats could laugh, they would
—

Her thoughts were on the goats when they took her. A ripple moved through the gathering, a shock wave of satiation. A moment later, they rose from the husk and hovered, the sweet aftertaste lingering. Some small, nearly forgotten chore nagged at their minds.

Moving down now, down through the mist-choked mountains, not savory death drawing them, but something almost as powerful. Something alien.

Faster. Need building to an ache. Flying through fields and pines and cow-dotted meadows.

Exotic things. Familiar things. Buildings that were barracks. Men who were prisoners and men who were not.

They-he-suddenly remembered who he had been. Cramping desire rocked him. He saw faces like moons in the windows of the mess hall. He heard screams from the Arab prisoners and shouts from the MPs.

Two men on the porch: a tall man the color of chocolate; a short man with onyx eyes. There was something he should remember, he knew, but recollection came slow.

It was Toshio who came forward across the yard, even though Pelham put out a hand to stop him.

“Gordon?” he whispered, putting his hand into Gordon’s blue, glowing flesh.

Gordon shied from the touch of Toshio’s longing.

I’ll tell you what you’d taste of,
Gordon thought.
Sushi and incense and calm rivers. Pelham would taste bitter-sweet.

The colonel was coming down the steps now, striding out to the gravel where Toshio stood. Gordon felt an undefined, paralyzing need, one as strong as the thirst he was learning.

“It is Gordon,” the Japanese told Pelham. “He has come to say goodbye.”

That was it, Gordon thought. Yes. That was what had brought him. He had come to say goodbye.

Satisfied now, he melted into the ranks of the community.

Small chore done, they moved away, gaining speed over the gravel, hurrying through the wire barricades and up into the waiting sky.

WARSAW, POLAND

No one spoke. In the silence of the room, Baranyk’s thoughts lost direction, bent back on themselves and strayed.

Toward dawn the bombs stopped. Gray smoke feathered the peach horizon.

Baranyk glanced at Zgursky, who was running his palm monotonously up and down his thigh, up and down, reading the warm, living Braille of his own body.

“Who are they?” Zgursky asked. No one answered.

“Are we all right now?” Zgursky asked.

A fluttering rumble snapped Baranyk’s attention back to the window. When he caught a glimpse of the helicopter speeding toward them, he stiffened. Grabbing his coat, he ran down the stairs, Czajowski behind.

In the cold, late-morning air he halted. Not a Chinook, he saw with troubled confusion. A Hind.

The huge chopper settled on its landing gear like a brown dragonfly. Through the rotor-driven blizzard Baranyk caught a glimpse of a figure walking, head ducked, coat flapping. Baranyk squinted, furiously wiped the blown snow from his lashes, and looked again. A Russian general emerged from the maelstrom, brushing fussily at his coat.

“Oleg Tolmachov at your service,” he said in passable Polish as he approached. His heavy, peasant’s face was high-colored from excitement and cold. He pulled off his gloves, shoved them in his pocket, and held a hand out to Czajowski.

The Pole’s inattentive eyes drifted toward the helicopter, toward the curling smoke of the Arab emplacements. After an awkward moment, the Russian dropped his hand.

“We caught the Arabs squatting over the shit-hole, bare-assed and mouths open,” Tolmachov said. “The early snow scared them, it seems. The prisoners tell us there were mass desertions ever since the cold snap. Like fleas off a dog, you’ll be plucking Arabs from the woods for years.”

“Did you see no other planes?” Czajowski asked.

“Other planes?” The Russian general cocked his head to the side and blew on his cupped and reddening hands. “We sent a high-altitude recon through before the airstrike. That one?”

“Other bombers,” the Pole whispered.

Tolmachov glanced at Baranyk and gave the Pole a curious look. “A pilot reported sighting a B-2 above him, between him and the moon. But if it was there, it left during the bombing runs.”

“I see,” Czajowski said, nodding vaguely. “Thank you.”

The Russian stamped his feet to get the circulation going.

“A long night,” he said in a subdued voice. “I wouldn’t mind a glass of something. Tea. Vodka would be better yet. I’ll take you to our headquarters. I have a surprise waiting for you there. We can celebrate.”

“Yes,” Czajowski said absently. “Perhaps we can celebrate.” Not looking at either man, the Pole plodded to the chopper.

Tolmachov took Baranyk’s arm. “Everything is all right now. You understand?” he said, switching to Russian.

Russian made the words nearly credible. The sound of the language was as cozy as Baranyk’s old feather bed, his goose-down comforter. He watched Czajowski, hunchbacked with exhaustion, climb into the Hind. Baranyk took a deep breath that tasted of ashes.

Suddenly he felt hungry and remembered that he had missed breakfast. Missed dinner the night before. So many months of stingy meals. His uniform hung on him, not like the well-tailored uniform of the Russian. He felt ashamed and touched at the same time, as if his wealthy, estranged mother had picked him up from the orphanage to enjoy a pleasant day in the country.

Remember the good times, he thought.

“Does the Pole think we invade?” Tolmachov asked. “We have no intention of that.” He shook Baranyk’s arm. “What is the matter with you people? Listen to me. The war is over.”

No,
Baranyk thought.
It cannot be as easy as this.

“You are Lieutenant General Baranyk, are you not?”

Baranyk caught himself tugging painfully at his ear, as if milking belief from his skeptical body. He stopped himself and nodded.

“President Pankov sends you a message.”

The Russian’s epaulets were a crisp blue. His brass buttons gleamed. There was not a speck of dust on his coat; not a rent; not a worn patch. Not a drop of blood anywhere.

“He wanted me to tell you that he has looked up into the sky as you told him to do. He says he has seen the early snow and asks if the American general will put in a good word for him now. Do you know what he means?”

Baranyk’s lips twisted. “I will take that vodka now,” he said.

They waded through the snow and got into the Hind. The chopper lifted with a scream of turbines and banked east. Staring out the window, Baranyk saw smoldering emplacements pimpled by black craters. Nearby, Arabs stood knee-deep in snow, dirty sheep abandoned in a meadow. Their camouflage uniforms were gray with frost, and they huddled together for warmth. Thousands and thousands of them, waiting motionlessly, their rifleless arms wrapped around them, their blank faces upraised.

By an outlying country house, the Hind landed. Baranyk followed Tolmachov out into the stinging, snow-blown wash.

“Their supply lines, their logistics were shit!” the Russian shouted gleefully. “Their trucks broke down miles back in the snowfall. Stupid Arabs. They hadn’t planned for the sudden winter. They were using the wrong antifreeze, the wrong grade of oil.”

In the yard, Russian soldiers were stacking corpses. The Arab bodies had stiffened into improbable, puzzling positions: a brittle hand upraised there, a knee bent as though in sleep, an open mouth gorged with snow. A few wore frozen blood on their cardboard clothes like spills of cherry jam. Most bore no mark at all, no sign of what had killed them, other than the frost veining their blue-marble flesh.

“Where are their coats?” Baranyk asked.

Tolmachov cupped a hand to his ear. “What? Yes. A grand victory.”

“No. I asked about the Arabs’ coats. Their gloves.”

In front of the piled corpses young Russian boys were laughing. Callous as children, they brandished unfired rifles and posed for heroic pictures to send home.

“Oh,” Tolmachov said gruffly. “That, The coats went the way of their food: caught in transit, as I told you. If we wait a few days longer, the Arab question will be solved, don’t you think?”

Should he tell him? Baranyk wondered. Is it possible he didn’t know? Such a grand victory it was: Tolmachov bombing the dead.

After a final look at the corpses, Baranyk trudged into the warmth of the house. In a quiet back room a fire crackled in the grate. On the table stood a tray piled with poppyseed cakes; a platter burdened with sliced sausage.

“Vodka, then?” Tolmachov asked as he shrugged out of his coat.

Baranyk watched the amazed Czajowski pause at the table, saw his gloved hand go out and snatch at the tray of meats. Mechanically, without a hint of delight, the Pole shoved slice after slice into his mouth.

A frown crossed Tolmachov’s face. “Vodka!” he shouted.

An aide came in toting a heavy silver tray. Baranyk downed his offered shot glass and waited until the Russian placed the bottle on the table. With trembling hands Baranyk picked up the bottle and drank from the neck.

“I had intended a toast,” the Russian said in quiet disapproval.

“A toast!” Baranyk cried. Feeling dizzy, he held the bottle up and saw he had drunk nearly a quarter. “A toast, Andrzej,” he said brightly, nudging the Pole so hard in the ribs that Czajowski stopped chewing.

The Pole picked up his glass and drank. Then reached for the sausage again.

Tolmachov turned away. “Well,” he muttered, as if Baranyk and Czajowski had ruined the party. He shouted to the closed door, “Bring in the generals’ surprise!”

Sharp clicks of polished boots on a polished floor. The door swung open, and two smartly dressed officers marched in, herding a bearded, sniveling ragamuffin.

The man’s cheeks were flushed with fever, his feet swaddled in stained cloth. A Russian Army blanket hung around his shoulders. Baranyk saw the uniform under the folds of olive wool and caught his breath.