Ian Slater - Rage of Battle

“Oh Lord—” said Georgina sympathetically. “Tell her she’s not here, Mother.”

“Well I am here, aren’t I?” snapped Rosemary, instantly regretting her riposte. And then something else flew into her consciousness, like a bat suddenly exploding out of a deep, dark cave in a storm. It was the realization that Georgina’s beauty would unquestionably overwhelm Robert. Americans, she knew, were obsessed about large breasts, and Georgina was far better endowed than she. Like a Jersey cow.

“Hello,” she said, unknotting the head scarf as she took the phone. “Mrs. Wilkins—” Georgina saw her sister pale.

In Leningrad’s immaculate and cream-colored Nakhimov Secondary Naval Academy, whence he could smell the cold freshness of the harbor and see the historic cruiser Aurora tied up nearby, Admiral Brodsky watched the ruffles of wind racing over the surface of the Neva River, a burst of sunlight changing it from slate gray to Prussian blue. As chief liaison officer between the Northern Fleet, based in Severomorsk just north of Murmansk on the Kola Peninsula, and the Baltic Fleet, Brodsky seized any opportunity to visit the city, its czarist beauty so stunning that he had long ago decided that upon his retirement in another three years, he and his wife would move here when the Soviet forces were victorious.

Sitting by the second-story window facing the Neva, Brodsky had taken a break from signing the latest authorizations for merit-earned transfer for able-bodied soldiers and sailors who, after distinguishing themselves at the front, had been recommended for entry into the elite Fleet Air Arm.

One such applicant was Sergei Marchenko, a tank battalion commander whose leadership in the surprise, and massive, Soviet breakthrough at the Fulda Gap on NATO’s central front had earned him high marks, as did his later performance when the “river of Soviet T-90s,” as the Western press had called it, split into two, one stream heading south toward Munich to link up with the armored spearheads rumbling west from Czechoslovakia along the fertile Danube Valley, the other stream wheeling to the right of Fulda, racing toward Germany’s Northern Plain. Here the Soviet divisions had smashed through to Schleswig-Holstein, capturing the vital NATO ports of Bremen, Hamburg, and Antwerp, and were presently closing the pincers about the trapped British Army of the Rhine and elements of the U.S., German, and Dutch armies. To Brodsky’s displeasure, Sergei Marchenko’s name had been submitted to Brodsky by his father, Kiril Marchenko, a senior advisor to the Politburo, and there was no doubt that on the surface the applicant clearly deserved the chance to join the air arm. But Brodsky had refused. There had been the problem of a slight deficiency in the vision of his left eye. Despite the fact that he wore corrective contact lenses, which had obviously been more than adequate for duty in the tanks corps, the Fleet Air Arm demanded twenty-twenty vision. Kiril Marchenko had appealed the decision, using Politburo letterhead, brusquely pointing out that if Adolf Galland, Nazi Germany’s top air ace, could fly with only one eye, surely the Fleet Air Arm could accept a man with two!

Brodsky refused. Now Marchenko’s father had written Brodsky again, a little more contrite, saying that the operation to correct his condition was available in Moscow’s famous vertyashcheesya kreslo —”revolving chair”—clinic, recognized before the war, even by the Americans, as one of the best in the world.

Brodsky moved away from the window and returned to his desk. He paused, gold Parker in hand, his aide, a captain, entering the office impatiently but stopping abruptly when he saw the pen wavering above the authorization form. Kiril Marchenko was a powerful main, twice denied. Then again, the captain knew the admiral was right not to sign anything without ruminating on it. You could end up as latrine inspector in Mongolia, signing things in too much of a hurry; a general, or rather ex-general, whom both of them knew had lost his dacha in the forest of Nikolina Gora outside Moscow because he’d hastily signed requisitions for three large American freezers and four hundred pairs of imported British shoes for a unit that didn’t exist.

When Brodsky did sign the authorization, he added a rider that, as per regulations, his permission for Sergei’s transfer to Fleet Air Arm school was conditional upon written confirmation from the eye clinic that not only had the operation been performed, but it was satisfactory.

Brodsky wrote slowly, as if, the captain mused, he were creating a work of art for the Leningrad Museum.

The admiral sat back, admiring his work and recapping the pen. “No more transfer requests, I hope. Someone has to get NATO dirt in their contacts.”

The captain smiled dutifully, though he didn’t get the connection. Nor did he care; the message just decoded from the Yumashev was alarming. No more than 20 percent of depth charges — RBU rockets and drum charges alike — had detonated during an attack on what was believed to be a U.S. nuclear submarine.

“What class?” asked Brodsky.

“Sea Wolf Two, I think, Admiral. We’re not positive, but time/speed calculations make it possible it is an American submarine out of Holy Loch.”

Brodsky pressed him on this, for while the Yumashev was important, the location of forty-eight independently targeted reentry warheads was infinitely more pressing.

The aide unrolled the chart of the North Atlantic. “We’ve dispatched three Hunter/Killers to the area,” he assured Brodsky.

“In two hours it can be a hundred miles away in either direction,” said Brodsky, waving his arm, the weak afternoon sun reflecting off his sleeve’s four gold rings.

“The Yumashev thinks it inflicted damage on the sub, Admiral. There was a dramatic change in the sub’s noise signature following the attack.”

The admiral grumbled, grateful for small mercies. If the Yumashev was correct, this information would at least narrow the search area. “Have we aerial reconnaissance on this?”

“A long-range Badger with fighter cover, sir. The only plane available at the moment. Later today we might be able to request—”

“No — we can’t wait,” said the admiral, putting out his hand for the Yumashev’s message. “If they think it is a Sea Wolf, I don’t want any time wasted. Order in-flight refueling for the fighters.”

“Yes, sir.” The captain had already done this, knowing he could always rescind the order if the admiral hadn’t agreed.

Brodsky’s heavily lined face beneath the thick, black hair that belied his age became a scowl as he read the message, jaw clenched. “Where were—?”

The aide handed him a sheet of the buff-colored top secret forms listing all RBU antisubmarine warfare rockets and drum charges as a batch originating from one of the armament factories in Tallinn, the Estonian capital.

Brodsky was sitting back as if to get away from the information, snaking his head. He blamed Gorbachev, as so many other senior officers had. Glasnost and perestroika were responsible. Gorbachev had given the upstarts in the Baltic states economic independence when any fool could have told him this would soon amount to de facto political independence and give encouragement to the Baltic resistance groups, especially those in Estonia.

“Find them,” the admiral ordered, handing the captain back the papers.

The captain was pleased. Estonians had always considered themselves a cut above everyone else. It came from being too close to the capitalist nations, which exported disorder along with their technology to the USSR’s Baltic states. Time the Balts were taught a lesson.