The woman was already interviewing a soldier at the edge of the semicircle around Andre. They hadn’t wasted their precious batteries getting any shots of Andre doing his job. But he knew now that he might get in the picture. Or that his voice might be heard by his family. ‘Bej-gro-wicz! You still ain’t changed that to English?’
The laughter pleased Andre. He handed the letter over and looked at the camera.
‘But don’t you normally ride around in Bradley armored vehicles?’ the reporter asked. She tilted the microphone toward the soldier’s lips.
‘Yeah, well, usually. But they ain’t got enough to go around. They dropped us off up here and went back to pick up some more people at the airport. We ain’t seen ’em since then.’ Andre handed the mail out, but listened to the woman’s questions. And the soldier’s answers. He had wondered himself where all the armor was.
‘So you’re just up here by yourself with no support?’ she asked. ‘Chinese combat troops outnumber UNRUSFOR’s by twenty to one. I thought the arrival of “heavy” units like the 2nd Infantry Division was supposed to cut down on the high infantry casualties?’
The guy’s face — which moments before had shone with happiness at Andre’s arrival — now reflected deep concern. He was greatly relieved when Andre called out his name and gave him his letter.
‘Were you told that you would have to fight right here — from these holes — without your armor and other vehicles?’ the woman asked another soldier.
The microphone was stuck in his face. He arched his eyebrows and shrugged. ‘I dunno. We’ll fight when we see any Chinese, I guess.’
‘But you’ve dug holes and put out landmines. And you do know that the Chinese have eleven divisions headed down this way to try to take the port at Vladivostok. That’s over a hundred thousand men. They’re going to hit these lines, right here, in a few days.’ Andre was almost done. He stood there looking at the woman, as did everyone else. ‘How does that make you feel, knowing what you’ve got coming your way?’
The soldier’s face said it all. But she held the microphone to his mouth nonetheless. ‘Wolfson!’ Andre called, and handed over the package. ‘That’s it!’
The soldier never did reply. Andre hoisted his ever lighter load onto his shoulder. The soldiers who had not gotten any mail still stood there, as always, with a hang-dog look. This time, however, even those who held their cherished letter or package remained there. They all had a look of profound dread on their faces. They’d been robbed of the cheer that Andre felt it was his job to dispense. That pissed him off. A sadness.
They walked on toward the next platoon. Again the news crew trailed him and jabbered.
‘Plus’ the woman said, ‘those poor guys are being sent out here to get slaughtered, and they don’t even know it! Ifs criminal! They take these kids, and they brainwash them so they don’t think. They don’t question. They just trundle off to their deaths without a care in the world!’
Andre spun around. The woman jumped in surprise. He stared at them — stared at her in particular — his jaw set in anger. The white vapor shot out of his nostrils. They shut the fuck up. He turned and headed on to the next unit.
The heavy lunch and warm tea cast a blanket of drowsiness over Valentin Kartsev. His eyes drooped as he reclined in the chair behind his desk. It was time for his nap. Although his mind felt like mush, he tried one last time to come up with the words that eluded him. The concept he was trying to express. They were words to describe a process. Like the complexity of balls’ motion on a billiards table. You excite them all into motion. They would begin to strike cushions and each other. Newtonian physics described perfectly the forces at work. A supercomputer could predict the balls’ travels for the next thousand years. But to the naked eye their motions would quickly seem impossibly complex. There were so many variables that affected the outcome.
Kartsev had excited all the balls on the world table. He had stirred the political pots of dozens of major powers. He had known that there would be motion. But he still had no idea what the outcome would be. It was all so interesting.
He yawned. The sofa beckoned.
But there were three new messages in the Priority One folder on his computer. Every time he cleared them out, new ones appeared. He clicked on the mailbox icon. The first two messages both contained long lists of names. The previous day, he’d put two men on Schedule A. That sentenced them to death. But he’d had them watched for twenty-four hours. These were lists of people with Whom the two had made contact in their last day on earth.
Kartsev’s vision blurred with tears as he yawned again. He checked boxes with clicks of the mouse. A check by a name meant death. Short descriptions of the contacts were all Kartsev had to go on. ‘Lunch in Kremlin cafeteria.’ Too public, Kartsev thought. They’d never conspire together there. Ah, but dinner in a private restaurant, Kartsev thought. He checked the next box beside the name ‘Chapaev, Stepan.’ He’d never heard of the man.
Rare was it that he’d heard of anyone whose name he saw on these lists. Such was the price of power. He walled himself off even from his closest aides. Computers helped. These e-mails allowed him to do his work at a distance. It was a distance he imagined his staff greatly appreciated.
Such were his thoughts as he checked or skipped the boxes absentmindedly. Kartsev admitted to himself that the process was arbitrary. But he did try to be fair. He even went back and checked the box by the woman who’d had lunch in the cafeteria. After all, lunch — dinner — what’s the difference? Besides, what better place to plot his demise than the middle of the Kremlin cafeteria?
The third e-mail was a refreshing change. There were no tedious lists. No boxes to check or skip. Just a short message and a video attachment. He clicked ‘Play’ with his mouse. A video window appeared.
‘Is there anything you’d like to say to your folks back home?’ Kate Dunn asked. In the dim, flickering light, Kartsev smiled. There was Miss Dunn’s freshness — even when she asked tired old questions. She stood in snowy woods.
The soldier struggled with his reply. ‘Well… Hey, I guess. I’ll be all right. Don’t worry.’ The soldier’s weak reassurances dimmed Kartsev’s smile.
The camera switched to Miss Dunn. The young interviewing the young. ‘How’s the battery, Woody?’ she asked. ‘Woody,’ Kartsev wrote on a pad. She turned to the next soldier. ‘How about you?’ It was a young black soldier with a rifle and heavy bag. ‘Where are you from?’
‘The Bronx,’ he replied.
‘Do you know what you’re fighting for?’ she asked. The question was posed so forthrightly that Kartsev loosed a brief chuckle. The soldier looked at the others gathered around. ‘Do you know why you’re here?’ she persisted.
He shook his head slowly, then shrugged. ‘I’m s’posed to deliver the mail.’
All the others laughed, to the kid’s embarrassment. The satellite feed was replaced with color test bars. Kartsev drew a deep breath which he let out with a sigh. He lifted the remote and turned off the TV. The office was lit now only by the lamp on the table next to him.
All was still and quiet. He could write, or not. He looked at his watch. It was four in the afternoon. A chain dangled beneath the stained glass lampshade. Kartsev yanked it, and the room fell dark with a click.