Peter Sasgen - War Plan Red

He appraised her with cold objectivity. “You said you were not afraid to die.”

“I’m not. I chose this, so what is going to happen to me doesn’t matter as long as our mission succeeds; but even so, I want to know if you… I want to hear you say…”

“Don’t…” He got up and turned his back. Yes, he loved her, but could admit it only to himself. If he said the words she wanted to hear, everything would change. “Don’t ask; don’t say any more. We agreed not to. It’s all arranged and nothing can happen to change it. Litvanov and his men are waiting for us.” He faced her. “Now it’s time for you to prepare.”

She rose silently from the bed and went into the tiny bathroom. A naked bulb hanging from a twisted wire in the ceiling provided weak illumination. For a long time she stood looking at herself in the tarnished flyspecked mirror over the rusty sink. Then she picked up a pair of scissors and began cutting her hair, the long, silky strands falling like black rain.

Zakayev turned up his coat collar. A sharp wind laced with the stink of dead fish and diesel fuel sent paper and debris corkscrewing down a deserted wind tunnel of a street lined with ship chandleries and warehouses, with old packing cases, cargo pallets, and rubbish of all sorts. The wheels of heavy trucks had carved ruts in the frozen snow, which made footing treacherous. The girl slipped and almost fell but Zakayev caught her arm.

They turned off the main street into a narrow alley between darkened warehouses that rose on either side like the walls of a canyon. Zakayev found the battered wooden door, which he identified by the heavy iron crossbraces bolted to its face. The door was set into the brick wall of a warehouse over three crumbling concrete steps. He looked down the alley and saw a Guards stake body truck parked where he was told it would be, beside the seawall fronting the harbor.

Zakayev withdrew the H&K P7 from the pocket of his overcoat and tightened his fingers around the grip, cocking the pistol. He banged on the door and waited. A gust of wind plastered the skirt of his overcoat between his legs.

Heavy boots tramped over a plank floor. Bolts snapped open and door hinges squealed. A heavyset man in shabby work clothes, a greasy cap on his close-cropped head, stood in a rectangle of light spilling into the alley from the open door.

“Were you planning to shoot me, Ali?” said Kapitan Third Rank Georgi Litvanov.

Zakayev lowered the pistol. “You look well, Georgi Alexeyevich.”

They entered and Litvanov closed and bolted the door behind them, then looked them up and down. “Here, let me see you.”

Zakayev shrugged out of his overcoat. The girl handed him a traditional Russian Navy garrison cap, which he put on his head at a rakish angle.

Litvanov stepped back and regarded Zakayev dressed in the uniform of a Russian kontr-admiral—rear admiral—complete with gold shoulder boards on the tunic and gold stripes on the sleeves.

“It’s perfect!” Litvanov said. “You look just like a Russian flag officer.”

Litvanov’s attention swung to the girl in her peacoat, jumper, and flat hat. He inspected her outfit, nodding approval. Her big eyes and full lips, triangular face, and short hair gave her an androgynous look that was strangely appealing.

“My men could take some pointers from this one, Ali, on how to wear their uniforms properly. Ha! You are both a credit to the Russian Navy.”

The girl didn’t speak but smiled to show she was pleased that she’d passed muster with the captain of the submarine K-363.

Litvanov beckoned they should follow him up a flight of stairs to a makeshift office that had a view from a pair of dirty windows onto the darkened warehouse floor below. Litvanov had laid out black bread, salted herring, and a bottle of vodka on one of the desks.

“You had no trouble finding the place?” Litvanov said.

“No, your instructions were clear,” Zakayev said. “We took an electrobus from the hotel and got off three blocks away.” Zakayev looked around the office at file cabinets and equipment that included modern computers and printers. “How did you come by this place?”

“I do a little business with the owner,” Litvanov said. “He’s always in the market for surplus goods the Northern Fleet has no use for. Particularly titanium and stainless steel. He was in a generous mood and lent his office for our meeting. Eat.”

The girl declined but Zakayev sampled the salted fish and nodded approval. “Your boat is set for departure?”

“Of course, General.” Litvanov paused to light a cigarette. “The schedule is tight. I’ve timed our departure so we won’t run into any vessels patrolling the main channel out of the Tuloma River or around Kil’din Island. Procedures have broken down and the harbor control units don’t keep track of ship arrivals and departures like they used to, but now and then you get a new skipper who goes by the book. Do you follow?”

“Of course. And your crew?”

“Handpicked,” Litvanov said, his voice thick from cigarette smoke, “stripped to only essential personnel. In other words, enough to operate the boat. The crew has trained nonstop for over a week while we’ve sat moored to a dock in Olenya Bay. They’re eager to get under way. They are good men. All the high-flown lectures they receive about duty, honor, and the Motherland can’t change the fact that life at sea in a submarine is hard, that we have lousy food, live among the unwashed, breathe one another’s farts and smelly feet, and sleep in soggy bunks. And for this privilege we arc not paid. But now that will change.”

“Then there is no question that they are fully committed,” Zakayev said.

Litvanov’s face hardened and his eyes narrowed. A boot sole ground his cigarette into the rough floor. “Are you questioning, General, whether these men, whom I myself have trained, will follow orders?”

“It is not a question of following orders, it’s a question of how dedicated they are to the cause.”

Litvanov, eyes blazing, said, “I, Georgi Litvanov, kapitan third rank of the Russian Navy, commanding officer of the K-363, assure you that each of them is willing to give up his life for the cause. These men come from towns and villages all over Chechnya. There isn’t a man that hasn’t had a family member murdered by the Russians. I don’t have to tell you, General, that if I hadn’t offered them a chance to strike at the heart of Russia, they would have deserted to fight on the ground in Chechnya.”

“And you, Georgi Alexeyevich?”

Litvanov lifted and dropped his shoulders. “What have I to lose? Tell me?” His eyes searched Zakayev’s face. “I have a photograph of my wife and children in their coffins. My cousin sent it to me. At first I thought it was a cruel joke somebody was playing, and I wish to God it was. I had to beg for leave and even then I was granted only three days. Three days. My cousin had them buried in Sernovodsk, our ancestral village, the same as yours, General. When I got there and saw their graves, I was sick. A pile of rocks—not even a proper marker.”

Litvanov downed vodka and wiped his mouth with a hand, which he then ran over his close-cropped skull. He turned his gaze on the girl. “I serve in the armed forces of a country that killed my family. I thought I had a good job, one of the best Russia could offer. I was blind to what was happening in Chechnya.” He reflected for a long moment, then said, “But now I have the means to strike back— hard. So, like you, I made a decision and here I am.”

Through all of this the girl said nothing even though Litvanov spoke directly to her because he knew she understood the horror of Russian occupation in Chechnya. And because he had had a daughter her age.