“Neither will the STAVKA,” put in Sergei. He said it without rancor but as a matter of fact.
Kiril saw a guard at the door, silhouetted against a faint glow from the officers’ mess. He called out to the man, reminding him it was an air raid precaution violation and to have the shutters drawn securely.
“Sergei, I wouldn’t be surprised if Comrade Nefski gives you a call — to warn you off this woman. Try not to be rude. It won’t do you any good. Just accept you’ve made an error.” The general hurried on. “You can find another outlet for your passions — you understand, eh?” He slapped Sergei on the back. “Find a good Russian girl or one of the brown-skinned ones, eh?” He paused at the entrance to the mess.
“My plane leaves in half an hour.” Sergei still said nothing. It was Sergei’s worst failing, in his father’s view. On the battlefield his son had distinguished himself more than once, but he had retained a childish propensity to sulk. Or was it only with his father that he behaved so? “Look,” said Kiril. “A man must be sensible about these things. If you need more money in order to—”
“Huh — so I can buy a woman?”
“If necessary, yes,” said Kiril Marchenko. “If you go to a clean place, at least you know what you’re getting. You’re not the first soldier to—”
“I don’t need money,” said Sergei. “I have enough.” His father hadn’t even used her name. Again there was a long, awkward silence between them. Finally Sergei murmured, “Don’t worry. I’ll be careful.”
“Good,” said the general. They hugged.
“Write to your mother.”
“Yes.”
In the officers’ mess, Sergei was flipping through a finger-worn copy of a German pornographic magazine, lingering over a blonde, tarted up in a top hat and tails, no shirt — her long, red-nailed fingers clasping the silver top of a long walking stick. Sergei and his wing man, Boris, were trying to discover whether the blonde’s attributes were natural or silicone-assisted. Such procedures were rare in the Soviet Union but apparently quite common in Germany.
“Our women have bigger breasts than that,” said Boris.
“And bigger bottoms,” countered Sergei.
“So what’s wrong with that?” parried Boris. “I like something you can grab on to.”
“All I want to grab,” put in the ground crew captain, “are enormous, great, pendulous—”
“Major—Major — Marchenko!”
“Da?”
“Telefon.”
When Sergei heard Nefski’s voice, he was immediately on guard, at once struck by his father’s warning that his association with the Jewess was bound to incur a warning from the KGB to stay away from the Yevreysk autonomous region.
“Major. We believe you know the girl Alexsandra Malof?”
“Yes,” Marchenko said, then, as he was wont to do in a dogfight, seizing offense as the best defense, added, “She’s a Jew.”
“Ah — now, there you are. You see—” The KGB colonel seemed to be talking to someone else at the other end, then came back on the line. “—I was just telling my assistant, Major, that you are just like your father. A man who gets straight to the heart of things.”
No, thought Sergei, I am not like my father. I won’t do a dance around it. The Jewess was the best lay he’d had during the entire war. Besides, what could Nefski do to an air ace? It would make the local KGB boss very unpopular, not only with the STAVKA HQ in Moscow but with all the propaganda cadres throughout the sixteen military districts and the four air armies.
“I would like to talk to you,” said Nefski, his tone upbeat, casual.
“Yes?” said Sergei guardedly, waiting.
“No, no,” said the colonel. “Not on the phone. Let us have a meal — dinner — at the Bear Inn?”
Marchenko knew the place in Khabarovsk. It specialized in Yakut food.
“What is there to talk about, Comrade Colonel?”
“Let’s talk.”
“I can’t tonight.”
“I realize that,” said Nefski, Marchenko surprised that the colonel apparently knew about “Operatsiya otmorozhennaya”—”Operation Frostbite”—the planned intercept of the plane that reportedly would be flying the legendary American General Freeman across the Sea of Japan to Korea. But then, Sergei told himself, he should have guessed that Nefski would have spies everywhere — probably knew what the base commander had for breakfast.
“Tomorrow night then,” said Nefski congenially, “when you return.”
Marchenko knew that what Nefski meant was “Ifyou return.” Or had he merely guessed that Sergei had volunteered to go on the mission? No, Sergei concluded, the colonel would know not only that he had volunteered but was also leading the mission.
“Major? Would sixteen hundred hours be satisfactory?”
“Yes,” agreed Marchenko.
“Good,” said Nefski. “I hope you understand we have no objections to our men in uniform going out with the Jewish faith. Such prejudice is against Soviet law.”
“I know,” said Sergei pointedly. It wasn’t that he loved Alexsandra. He didn’t. She was merely an attractive brunette, her figure enough to satisfy even his ground captain’s more outrageous fantasies. It would be easy for him to ditch her— there was a lot more pussy around Khabarovsk. Besides, being an ace meant having the highest pay scale of any field combatants — he could buy what his uniform and medals couldn’t attract. No, what he objected to was the politicos like Nefski telling him whom he could screw and whom he couldn’t. The odd thing, however, was that Nefski’s tone, despite his parroting official policy of nondiscrimination against minorities, made it sound as if the colonel didn’t really hate Jews. Which was unusual.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
During the retreat from the frozen jumble of ice that was the Yalu River, its chopped-up appearance due to sections refreezing after American 105-millimeter artillery shells had holed it, the Third Infantry Division, under Gen. Arthur C. Creigh, now in full retreat from the river, was encountering the worst Korean winter for the past seventeen years. Medics were carrying their morphine ampules in their mouths in order to keep the morphine warm enough to pass through a syringe. Many of the wounded, waiting in the heavy snow for the “khaki angels,” the helo Medevacs, died before the choppers could reach the besieged Changsong Road that lead back from the river toward the MASH units of Kusong. Many of the wounded, covered with snow, slipped into the warm sleep of hypothermia as plasma froze solid, drip pouches split open, and the men still able to march discarded everything nonessential, including mess kits, using their helmets instead. Others ate the freeze-dried emergency C ration as it was, unable to get hot water except for rare moments when a tank, or rather those tanks still moving, could provide the heat from their engines.
While the freeze-dried food kept some of the troops going, many of the wounded, who normally would have survived the relatively quick Medevac, ate the food, using snow to wash it down, and in doing so, reduced vital body heat before the consumed food had time to do any good. Since coming under heavy fire from the Chinese artillery, much of which had been carried piece by piece by the Chinese and Korean infantry to the ridges overlooking the road, Creigh’s division had suffered over four thousand casualties.