Ralph Peters (38 page)

"
All right,
"
he said.
"
I just . . .
"

"
It is not important. Tell me about your wife, Valya said, although she did not want to hear about the woman at all.
"
I think she must be a very bad woman. Then she slipped another piece of beef into her mouth, convinced that he would talk for a while.

"
Jennifer?
"
the American said.
"
No, Jennifers not a bad woman. She just sees the world differently than I do.
"
He smiled.
"
There's a joke in America that everyone is authorized one trial marriage. I guess that was mine.
"

Valya swallowed hurriedly.
"
Then you will marry again, Jeff?
"

"
I don't know. Maybe. If the right woman comes along. I don't think about it.
"

"
Perhaps you still love this woman?
"

The American thought for a moment.
"
No. I'm pretty much over her, I think. I mean, I'll always remember the good times we had. And I think I kept on loving her a long time after she stopped loving me. But it's all over now.
"

"
I think you must find a very good woman.
"

The American smiled. He had a wonderful boy's smile.
"
Or hope that she finds me.
"
He poured more wine, leaving her glass a bit too full.

Without the least warning, Valya felt her stomach cramp. The pain was brutal and very sharp. She stopped chewing, and her eyes opened wide. Then the pain receded, leaving her shocked and numb in the torso, with sweat jeweling on her forehead. Her right hand clutched the tablecloth.

She forced herself to continue chewing.

"
Are you all right?
"
the American asked.

Valya nodded.
"
I am fine. There is no problem.
"
She reached for the overfilled wine glass.
"
I think it is hot in here.
"

Just as she lifted the glass, a second blade of pain ripped through her belly. She moaned slightly, absolutely helpless. The first shock had opened her eyes. Now she had to close them. She swallowed, miserable. Cursing to herself as bitterly and horribly as she had ever done.

"
Valya?
"

She felt cold sweat on her forehead and temples. Then another bigger, sharper pain cut through her, and she realized that everything was coming apart.

"
Please. You will excuse me.
"
She had to hurry, she could not worry about correct stress and pronunciation now. She got up, unsteady, ready to weep, hoping only that she would not embarrass herself too badly. She reached for her purse with a blind hand, but felt only the
confusion of the tablecloth and the hard line of her chair.

There was no time. She marched herself quickly across the room, with the desperate, stiff dignity that teeters on the edge of shame, heading for the nearest waiter, to whom she could speak in her own language.

The waiter coldly gave her directions, not interested in being polite to her now that she had separated from her foreigner.

She walked swiftly, growing dizzy and faint, trying to find the way. She sensed that she did not have the spare
seconds a wrong turn might cost.

Shadowy hall, buckled carpet. Blistered paint on an old, huge door. She charged inside, past the thick, middle-aged woman who sat guarding a pile of towels and a little plate of coins. As she flashed by, Valya saw quick changes pass over the woman's face. First disapproval, then the forced, begrudged smile that hoped for a tip, then anger.

Valya rushed toward the first stall. Anxious to get down on her knees, yet not quite sure what to do first. In the background, behind an invisible membrane that separated her from the rest of the world, Valya could hear the attendant cursing her. The woman had followed her, and a part of Valya sensed her hovering over her as she shouted insults. But it was all too distant for real concern. There was only the immediacy of sickness, terrible sickness. The burning in her stomach and the strain in her throat existed outside of time.

Then everything grew slow and rancid. The attendant had given up on her and returned to her perch, muttering. Valya sat down on the cracked tile, unable to care now what happened to her precious dress. With all available energy, she reached up to release a gush of fresh water to cleanse her world. Then she sat back down hard.

The physical sickness decayed, leaving her with a different sort of discomfort. Thinking over her folly. She had eaten like an animal. The food had been too rich, too much. It was heartbreakingly good food, and, even now, in the acidic wake of her sickness, she could only hope that there would be more such food in her life.

She breathed deeply. Several times. Finally, she stood up. Her legs felt unsteady at first. But it was evident that
the sickness was not serious. Sheer gluttony. Like a child gobbling down sweets.

She lifted her skirt to fix her hose. And the legs that had seemed so long and lovely to her in the mirrors of her life now seemed to have grown too thin. Her wrists showed too much bone. In a world, in the very city, where there was such hidden bounty. Valya caught a glimpse of her body, of her life, wasting.

She approached the attendant, who was sitting sullenly at her post.

"
Please,
"
she said, all the while trying to iron her dress with the flat of her hand.
"
Please give me a towel. I left my purse outside. I was sick.
"

The woman, mighty in her authority, looked Valya up and down with disapproval.

"
The towels,
"
she said,
"
are fifty kopecks.
"

"
I know,
"
Valya begged.
"
I understand. But please. I have to clean myself. I can't go back out there. I have to wash.
"

The attendant laid a hairy wrist across her stack of towels and looked up at Valya with a lifetime's accumulated hatred.

"
Fifty kopecks,
"
she said.

Surrendering, Valya stripped off her watch. The marvelous Japanese watch that Naritsky had given her on his return from one of his business trips. For being good, he had said. Naritsky the pig.

She tossed the watch at the woman's swollen waist. It caught, then slipped as the woman grabbed for it, settling in the well of skirt between her legs.

Valya took her towel.

She washed hurriedly. She tried to rinse out her mouth, to fix her hair as best she could. In the mirror, she appeared very pale. But not so very bad, she told herself. She simply felt acid and empty. With the sickness hardly ten minutes behind her, she could already feel her hunger returning. She told herself she would sit down calmly, smile, and pretend nothing had happened. Even if the American had been put off, she would at least finish her meal. She would have that, if nothing else.

She breathed deeply one last time. By the door, the
attendant was struggling to close the watchband over her thick wrist. Valya launched herself back toward the dining room.

To her immense relief, the American was still sitting at the table, and he brightened unmistakably when he caught sight of her. She straightened her back and slowed her step, feeling a surge of confidence that everything just might be all right after all.

Then she noticed that the food was gone. The table had been cleared, and all that remained was the wine. And the half-empty packet of cigarettes she had ravaged in her nervousness.

The lovely, heartbreakingly lovely food was gone. Valya continued her march toward the table, struggling to smile, to assure her American that everything was all right. He stood up clumsily and hastened to draw back her chair for her, and she sat down like a mechanical doll. She stared in disbelief at the white desert of the tabletop. The beautiful food was gone. Her belly felt emptier than it had ever felt in her life.

She began to cry. Helplessly. She did not even have the strength left to be angry with herself. She simply sat and wept quietly into her hands, overcome by her weakness and certain that her life would never be fine again.

"
Valya,
"
the American said in his flat, flinty voice,
"
what's the matter? Can I do anything for you?
"

Take me away. Please. Take me away to your America and I'll do anything for you. Anything. Anything you want.

"
No,
"
Valya told him, mastering her sobs.
"
No, please. It has no meaning.
"

His jaw no longer worked properly and it was hard to push out the words through his swollen lips. He stared up at his tormentor through the pounded meat around his eyes. The light was poor to begin with, and the beating he had taken made it almost impossible to focus in on the KGB major who paced in and out of the shadows, circling the chair where Babryshkin sat with his hands bound tightly behind him. The man was a huge thing, a monster in uniform, a devil.

"
Never,
"
Babryshkin repeated, struggling to enunciate,
determined not to yield his last dignity.
"
I . . . never had such contacts.
"

The great shadow swooped in on him again. A big fist rushed out of the darkness and slammed into the side of his head.

The chair almost tumbled over. Dizzy, Babryshkin struggled to retain an upright position. He could not understand any of this. It was madness.

"
When,
"
the KGB major shouted,
"
did you first make contact with the faction of traitors? We're not trying to establish your guilt. We know you're guilty. We just want to know the timing.
"
He slapped the back of Babryshkin's head in passing. This time, it wasn't a real blow. Just a bit of punctuation for the words.
"
How long have you been collaborating with them?
"

Damn you, Babryshkin thought, hating. Damn you.

"
Comrade major,
"
he began firmly.

An open hand slapped his burst lips.

"
I'm not your comrade, traitor.
"

"
I am
not
a traitor. I fought for over a thousand kilometers
...
"

Babryshkin waited for the blow, tensing. But this time it failed to arrive. It was so unpredictable. It was amazing how they established control over you.

"
You mean you
retreated
for a thousand kilometers.
"

"
We were ordered to retreat.
"

The KGB officer snorted.
"
Yes. And when those orders finally came, you personally chose to disobey them. Shamelessly. When your tanks were needed to reestablish the defense, you purposely delayed their withdrawal. In collaboration with the enemy. The evidence is conclusive. And you've already admitted disobeying the order yourself.
"

"
What could I do?
"
Babryshkin cried, unable to control himself. He could hear that his words, so clear in his mind, slurred almost unintelligibly as they left his mouth. He tasted fresh blood from his lips, and shreds of meat brushed against his remaining teeth as he spoke.
"
We couldn't just leave them all. Our own people. They were being massacred. I couldn't leave them.
"

The major slowed his pacing. The desk lay between him
and Babryshkin now, and the major walked with folded arms. Babryshkin was grateful for even this brief, perhaps unintended, pause in the beating.

"
There are times,
"
the major said firmly, when it is important to consider the greater good. Your superiors recognized that. But you willfully chose to disobey, thereby endangering our defense. What to disobey? And, in any case, you
can't
hide behind the people. You feel nothing for the People. You purposely delayed, looking for the opportunity to surrender your force to the enemy.
"

"
That's a lie.
"

The major paused in his journey around the cement-walled office.
"
The truth,
"
he said,
"
doesn't have to be shouted. Liars shout.
"

"
It's a lie,
"
Babryshkin repeated, a new tone of resignation in his voice. He shook his head, and it felt as though he were turning a great, miserable weight on his shoulders.
"
It's a lie. We fought. We kept on fighting. We never stopped fighting.
"

"
You fought just enough to make a good pretense. Then you willfully exposed your subordinates to a chemical at-tack in a preplanned strike zone where you had gathered as many innocent civilians as possible.

Babryshkin closed his eyes.
"
That's madness,
"
he said, almost whispering, unable to believe how this man in clean uniform, who obviously had been nowhere near the direct-fire war could so twist the truth.

"
The only madness,
"
the KGB officer said,
"
is to
li
e to the People.
"

Shots sounded from outside. The shots came intermittently, and they were always exclusively from Soviet weapons. Babryshkin realized what was happening. But he could not believe, even now that it might happen to him.

"
So,
"
the KGB major said after a deep breath. I want you to tell me when you first established clandestine contacts with the cadre of
traitors
in your garrison...
"

Babryshkin's mind searched through the scenes of the past weeks. A newsreel, eccentrically edited, played at a desperate speed. The first night the indigenous garrison stationed side by side with his own had almost overrun the
barracks and motor parks of Babryshkin's unit. Men fought in the dark with pocket knives and their fists against rifles. All of the uniforms were the same in the dark. The fires spread. Then came the armored drive into the heart of the city to try to rescue the local headquarters staff, only to find them butchered. The repeated attempts to organize a defense were always too late. The enemy was forever on your flank or behind you. He remembered the terrible enemy gunships, and the wounded lost in the swirling confusion, the murdered civilians whose numbers would never be figured exactly now. He recalled the sudden death of the last refugees, and the bone-thin woman with her louse-ridden offspring in his tank. Valor, incompetence, and death. Fear and bad decisions. Desperation. It was all there. Everything except treason.

He had finally brought his shrunken unit into the hastily established Soviet lines south of Petropavlovsk, pulling in under the last daylight, radioing frantically so his battered vehicles would not be targeted by mistake. And then they were behind friendly lines, marching to the rear to rearm, perhaps to be reorganized, still willing to turn back and fight when needed. But the column had been halted at a KGB control point several kilometers to the rear of the network of defensive positions. Who was the commander? Where was the political officer? Where was the staff? Before Babryshkin could make any sense out of the situation, he and his officers had been gathered together and disarmed, while his vehicles continued to the rear under the supervision of KGB officers who did not even know how to give the correct commands.

No sooner had the vehicles departed with great plumes of dust than the assembled officers were bound, blindfolded, and gagged. Several officers, including Babryshkin, protested angrily, until a KGB lieutenant colonel drew his pistol and shot one recalcitrant captain through the head. The action so shocked the men, who had believed that they had finally reached some brief, relative safety, that they behaved like sheep for the rest of the journey to the interrogation center. Made to jump off the backs of trucks still blindfolded and with their wrists bound together, officers who had survived twelve or fifteen hundred kilo
meters of combat broke arms and legs. Their blindfolds were finally removed to achieve a calculated effect: they were marched into the courtyard of a rural school complex and the first sight that met them was a disordered mound of corpses—all Soviet officers—that had grown up against a wall. Those who had broken limbs in exiting the trucks were forced to drag themselves, unaided, past the spectacle.

Everyone understood its implication.

Babryshkin had heard that one of the rules of interrogation was to keep everyone separated. But there were not enough rooms in the building. They were herded en masse into a stinking classroom, already crowded with earlier arrivals. The windows had been hastily boarded shut, and no provision, not even a bucket, had been made for the waste of frightened men.

At times, the officers were not even kept separate during their interrogations. Babryshkin's first taste of the questioning began when he was thrust into a room where his political officer was already seated. The political officer's eyes were unbalanced, and he recoiled from the sight of Babryshkin as if from the devil himself.

"
It was him
,
"
the political officer cried.
"
It was all his doing. I told him to obey the order. I
told
him. And he refused. I told him and he refused. It was his fault. He even carried a woman on his tank for his personal pleasure.
"

"
And why didn't you take command yourself?
"
the interrogator asked quietly.

"
I
couldn't,
"
the political officer answered, terrified.
"
They were all with him. I tried to do my duty. But they were all in it together.
"

"
He's a liar,
"
Babryshkin said quickly, breaking his resolve not to speak out until he better understood what was happening.
"
I take full responsibility for the actions of my officers. The actions of my unit were the results of my decisions and mine alone.
"

The interrogator struck him across the face with a calloused hand that wore a big ring.
"
No one asked you anything. Prisoners are only to speak when they are asked a question.
"

"
They were all in it together,
"
the political officer repeated.

But the interrogator's focus had shifted.
"
So ... a commander who even carries a woman with him for his pleasure. It must be a fine war.
"

"
That's nonsense,
"
Babryshkin stated coldly.
"
The woman was a refugee. With a baby and a little boy. She was at the end of her strength. She would have died.
"
The interrogator raised an eyebrow, folding his arms.
"
And you decided to rescue her out of the goodness of your heart? But why this woman, out of so many? What was special about her? Was she an agent too? Or was she merely pretty?
"

Babryshkin thought of the dreadfully emaciated woman, remembering her screams when she emerged to see the devastation of the chemical attack. Well, at least she was safe now, deposited at a refugee collection point with her starving infant and the louse-ridden, broken-armed boy. And, as he thought of her, he found that her ravaged face grew indistinct, becoming Valya's fine, clear, lovely features. Valya. He wondered if he would ever see her again. And, for a moment, she had more reality for him than any of the surrounding madness.

"
No,
"
Babryshkin said flatly.
"
She wasn't pretty.
"

"
Then she was an agent? A contact you were to meet and evacuate?
"

Babryshkin laughed out loud at the folly of such a thought.

The KGB officer did not need any underlings to do his dirty work for him. He landed a square blow on Babryshkin's mouth that knocked in his front teeth. Unlike in films, where men fought forever without really harming one another, this man's fists did real damage each time they landed. First on the mouth, then on the side of the head, on the ear, beside an eye. In a flash of confusion, the chair toppled over, and Babryshkin found himself lying sideways on the floor. The major kicked him in the mouth. Then in the stomach. It was at that point that Babryshkin realized that he was, indeed, going to die, and he resolved at least to die as well as possible.

Through blood-clouded eyes he looked up at the cring
ing political officer. And he smiled slightly through his broken lips, almost pitying the weaker man in the knowledge that they would soon be together on the growing heap out in the courtyard, that nothing would save either one of them. The system had gone mad. It had begun eating itself like a demented animal.

Another kick left Babryshkin unconscious for an indefinite period, and when he awoke, he was alone with his interrogator. They were all wrong. Babryshkin decided. There
is
a God. And this is what he looks like.

Babryshkin had been set upright on his chair, and his hands had been rebound behind its straight back so that he could not slump and fall. The questions began again, insane, twisted questions, beginning with the truth and butchering it beyond all logic, making out of it a sinister new calculus that was so perverse it was almost irresistible.