Cauldron

by Larry Bond

  That was a good question.

  All of the brigade’s battalions were badly understrength. Ending conscription had helped reconcile Germany’s neighbors to its reunification, but it had played hell with its armed forces. Budget cuts made recruiting difficult. Military pay was poor, the living conditions awful. None of their units were at more than seventy-five percent of authorized manning.

  Hard times had also caused many of the soldiers to take second jobs, working nights, or looking for work, after their duties were finished in the afternoon. Many of the men now needed for action were fanned out across a wide area, from Essen to Dortmund to Gutersloh, trying to augment their anemic paychecks. It was against regulations, but Bremer and von Seelow had both turned a blind eye to the practice. Their men had families to care for.

  Von Seelow had also authorized a lot of emergency leaves for soldiers in the brigade. Those men were trying to move their families out of Dortmund or Essen or cities further away. The large cities offered a better chance for work, but the smaller villages had food and were safer.

  With a little warning from Division, just a few hours more, he could have had virtually every man in the brigade ready to move. The alert, though, hadn’t come until five-thirty, when too many men had already left the post. Put simply, the late afternoon call had caught them completely off guard.

  “We have detachments from each company making sweeps through the local villages, rounding up stragglers. I’ve also passed word to the police to send any soldiers they find back to us.” He cleared his throat. “In addition, I’ve called the local TV and radio stations, but they’re unwilling to air the request unless we tell them why we’re mobilizing.”

  Bremer made a face. The last thing he was willing to do was tell a civilian his orders or intentions. He waited for von Seelow to finish.

  “To make up some of the shortfall, I recommend stripping all personnel from the headquarters and tank-hunter companies. Putting them in the grenadier battalions will help bring us closer to full strength. We need men for riot duty, not logistical support or antitank missiles.”

  Bremer agreed. “True. Also, take men out of two of the tank companies. We shouldn’t need more than one company of armor for this kind of work. Call the commanders and tell them what’s going on while S-1 figures out how to apportion the extra troops.”

  Von Seelow nodded in acknowledgment as Bremer glanced at the clock. It was six forty-five. “Give me a status report at 2100 hours. I’m calling Division. I’m going to find out what’s behind this business, and it better not be some kind of drill.” He grinned suddenly, including the staff in his gaze. “Maybe we can find out what idiot came up with this order and put him in the lead vehicle.”

  After the colonel disappeared into his office, von Seelow started making calls. Most of the battalion commanders, trying to solve their own problems, simply took the new personnel assignments in stride and rang off. The commanding officer of the 192nd, though, made it clear that he liked his new orders about as much as he liked foreigners, which included former East Germans. In other words, not at all.

  “I need trained infantrymen. What the hell am I supposed to do with tank gunners and vehicle drivers?” argued Lieutenant Colonel Klaus von Olden.

  Willi wanted to tell him exactly what he could do with them, but held his temper. “Use them as you see fit, Herr Oberstleutnant.”

  Like von Seelow’s, von Olden’s ancestors had been Prussian nobles, but his family had escaped to the West when Germany was divided at the end of World War II. Willi was proud of his heritage, but a lifetime in the “classless” East had taught him to keep a low profile. His father, once a colonel in the Wehrmacht, had even dropped the aristocratic “von” from the family’s name — becoming plain Hans Seelow, day laborer.

  Von Olden, on the other hand, was as arrogant as if his obsolete title still held meaning. He’d even gone so far as to paint his family’s ancestral crest on his command vehicle. He was proud of his “Germanic” blood, and very vocal about his dislike of immigrants or anything smacking of the political left.

  Von Olden’s arrogant voice taunted him. “With your broad experience in suppressing civilians at home and abroad, I was hoping you would have some suggestions.”

  Controlling his temper, Willi ignored the remark. He’d heard worse. “With these additions, how many men will you be able to field by midnight?”

  “We should be close to seventy percent.” The other man sounded faintly disappointed. He’d obviously hoped his insult would draw a less temperate reaction.

  “Very well. Good evening.” Willi hung up, trying not to slam the phone down. In truth, von Olden’s remark had hit a little too close to home. In the GDR, army units had been used to suppress civil disturbances, often brutally. The federal republic’s Justice Ministry was still trying to sort out criminal cases against border guards who’d shot their own countrymen as they tried to climb the Wall.

  Several hours later, von Seelow and Bremer stood next to their command vehicle. They were parked near the main gate to the Kaserne, watching trucks and Marder armored fighting vehicles roll out into the night. Bright lights now banished the darkness, spotlighting each vehicle as it roared out of the compound and turned onto the main road. It was eleven forty-five, and the first elements of the 19th Panzergrenadier Brigade were on the road for Dortmund.

  A cold, damp wind gusted around them, carrying the stink of diesel exhaust. Even in their winter-weather gear they could feel it. It might rain or even sleet tonight. Driving conditions would be bad, but maybe the foul weather would dampen any disturbances.

  “Good work, Willi, very good.” Bremer smiled as the vehicles roared by. Von Seelow appreciated the remark, but it didn’t lift his black mood. Even a glowing fitness report from Bremer would never get him another promotion. Skill and experience would only carry him so far up the ladder. After that his East German birth would stop him cold.

  Besides, did he want to serve in an army that operated only against its own citizens? He loved the outdoors, being in the field. But no soldier loved urban combat, and a near civil war would be the dirtiest of fighting. He missed field maneuvers, where the enemy was well defined. That reminded him of something.

  “Sir, you know what this deployment is doing to our fuel allowance. We were cutting back on exercises before this. I’ll have to look at the figures when we’re done, but we may have to restructure Cold Dragon.” Held each winter, after the crops were harvested and the ground had frozen, the exercise was the culmination of months of planning and smaller training exercises. It was the only chance the brigade got to exercise as a unit during the year.

  “Tear up the training plan, Willi, and throw it away.” Bremer met von Seelow’s surprised look with a secretive gaze. He glanced at his watch. “In twelve minutes the government is going to declare martial law throughout Germany. The French are doing the same thing. I think we’re going to be busy in the streets for a long time to come.”

  Von Seelow nodded numbly. He’d been afraid of that. Germany’s army was going to war — a war waged against fellow Germans.

  Following Bremer’s lead, he climbed into a jeep, eschewing the warmer but clumsier tracked command vehicle. It would bring up the rear, collecting vehicles that broke down or were lost.

  Willi would much rather be in the lead jeep. Its radios crackled with last-minute orders and reports, keeping von Seelow so busy that he hardly noticed the convoy pulling onto Bundestrasse 58. A thin, cold rain started falling, spattering in wind-driven sheets against headlights and windshields.

  They reached Dortmund’s outskirts at two-thirty in the morning, but they’d seen the orange glow of fires flickering against the pitch-black sky for the past half hour. It would be a long night and an even longer day.

  OCTOBER 8 — 5th MECHANIZED DIVISION, SWIECKO, POLAND, NEAR THE GERMAN BORDER

  The Oder River valley lay shrouded in a thick, slowly swirling mist. Trees and houses on the far bank were almost invisib
le. Even the twin railroad and highway bridges spanning the river seemed to hang suspended in midair — massive structures of steel and concrete floating above the gray, obscuring fog.

  Major General Jerzy Novachik lowered his binoculars, thick, bushy eyebrows crinkling as he frowned. This weather was damned odd. Poland’s autumn months were usually marked by a steady succession of cool, crisp, and clear days. But not this year. They were getting late November’s freezing rains and bone-chilling fogs a month early. He shivered and pulled his brown uniform greatcoat tighter around his shoulders.

  The sound of a hastily stifled sneeze made him turn around. “God bless you, Andrzej.”

  “Thank you, sir.” The colonel commanding his mechanized infantry regiment wiped his nose quickly and stuffed a handkerchief away out of sight.

  Novachik studied him for a moment. The man looked cold, wet, and thoroughly miserable. That wasn’t particularly surprising. After all, the colonel and his troops had spent the better part of the last two days out in the open — huddled in shallow fighting positions by day and trying to sleep inside their cramped, unheated vehicles by night.

  He glanced toward the woods stretching north and south along low hills rising above the valley. Even this close, it was difficult to see the bulky, menacing shapes of BMP-1s and T-72 tanks waiting motionless beneath autumn-colored camouflage netting. The regiment’s antitank missile teams, machine gunners, and riflemen were completely concealed. Still, a trained observer would eventually spot them all, and know that Poland’s defenders were awake, alert, and ready for battle.

  Novachik smiled grimly. That was exactly the message he wanted to send the Germans across the river.

  The Bundeswehr’s powerful divisions might be busy knocking heads together in Germany’s restive cities right now, but only a fool would think that guaranteed Poland’s peace. Throughout human history, too many governments had tried to blind their citizens to troubles at home with promises of quick, almost bloodless foreign conquests.

  So Jerzy Novachik and his shivering but determined soldiers waited on the river’s edge — deployed as a powerful sign to Germany’s problem-plagued rulers that a new war with Poland would be bloody, not bloodless.

  He only hoped they would heed the warning.

  CHAPTER 6

  Purge

  OCTOBER 9 — U.S. EMBASSY, MOSCOW

  Moscow’s gray morning skies mirrored Alex Banich’s mood as he crossed the open ground between the embassy’s living quarters and the red brick chancery building. Nightly frosts, scattered snow showers, and weeks of freezing rains had turned the compound lawn into a brown, withered quagmire. The city’s fall and winter months were always bleak and barren, but this year the weather was the worst in recent memory.

  Somehow that seemed appropriate.

  In the weeks since Len Kutner had given him Langley’s new list of intelligence priorities, Banich and his team of field operatives had been working overtime to make the new contacts they needed — with very little measurable success. It took time and a great deal of effort to find the right kind of Russian trade bureaucrats and corporate officers: the kind who could be bought. Even then, every new “recruiting” approach, however subtle, piled risk atop risk. They never knew who might get cold feet at the last minute or suddenly turn into an outraged patriot. And no matter how careful Banich and his agents were, the arrest of any one of them would help the FIS unravel their whole, painstakingly constructed network.

  To make matters even worse, the Agency’s Kiev-based cover company was having trouble acquiring the foodstuffs it sold. Crop yields in Ukraine and the other republics had been dismal. That was partly a product of the year’s freak weather and partly because the Commonwealth’s farms and transportation networks were still half-mired in socialist sloth. Breaking the bad economic habits built up over seventy years was proving an almost impossible task. Too much grain still rotted in unharvested fields and too much beef and pork spoiled in railroad cars left sitting on isolated side spurs.

  The chronic supply shortages were starting to put a crimp in the CIA’s Moscow operations. Profits from food sales covered a lot of the network’s day-to-day expenses: bribes, safe-house rents, and the like. Even more important, having food to sell gave Banich and his agents power and the freedom to wheel and deal almost at will inside the Russian Republic’s governing circles. The capital’s generals, bureaucrats, and politicians were willing to overlook a lot for those who could put hot food on their plates.

  Banich was tempted to make up the shortfall with imports from overseas, but he’d been fighting the temptation. Except for its original funding — ostensibly from a wealthy, expatriate Ukrainian — almost everything about the New Kiev Trading Company was exactly as it appeared to be. Ukrainian buyers bought Ukrainian products with Ukrainian money and then resold them for a profit to Russians, Belarussians, Armenians, and others. Going abroad for food would only increase the odds of Russia’s counterintelligence service poking its nose into the company’s lucrative and door-opening business.

  Instead, it might be better to send Hennessy and some of the others down south to see if they could shake more food loose from tightfisted farmers or other hoarders. Of course, doing that would leave him even more short-handed here. Despite Kutner’s best efforts, Langley had refused every request for more personnel. Apparently Congress was busy again, cutting the defense and intelligence budgets to fund extra unemployment insurance and federal make-work programs. Idiots.

  He entered the chancery through the rear door, signed in with a brisk nod to the marine sergeant on desk duty, and took the stairs to the sixth floor. Most embassy staffers rode the elevators from floor to floor. Climbing the stairs was one of the ways he dodged the mix of inbred speculation and gossip that passed for conversation in this isolated diplomatic posting. Besides, he thought, it helped him stay in shape.

  Banich shook his head at that. Rationalizing wouldn’t get him anywhere. The truth was that his temper was so short right now, he’d have scaled the chancery’s outside walls to avoid unnecessary contact with the embassy’s regular staff. Days filled with too much work and nights with too little sleep were starting to take a serious toll on both his endurance and his good humor.

  Coming in early paid off. The corridors and cubicles on the way to his office were still empty. Then he stopped, frowning at the pink message sheet taped to his door. Len Kutner wanted to see him again — in his office this time.

  The chief of station wasn’t alone. A young woman sat comfortably in the chair facing his desk. “Alex, come on in. There’s someone I’d like you to meet.”

  Kutner stood up, an action imitated by his visitor. “Miss McKenna, this is Alex Banich, my senior field agent. He’s the man you’ll be working with for the next several months.” He nodded toward her. “Alex, meet Erin McKenna. She’s been assigned to us as a trade intelligence expert.”

  Banich studied the woman with greater interest. She was taller than he’d first thought, with long legs and a slender, almost boyish figure. A mass of auburn hair framed her face. He was suddenly aware that she was studying him just as intently, frank curiosity clear in her bright green eyes. For some reason it was an uncomfortable sensation. He wished he’d shaved closer that morning.

  With an effort he focused on more important matters. Now that the Agency’s stateside, penny-pinching paper pushers had finally answered his request for more personnel, he’d better find out just what he had to work with. Starting with her background. Was she an agent or just an analyst? He smiled politely. “Glad you’re here, Miss McKenna. Where’d you work at Langley? Intel or ops?”

  She shook her head. “Neither. I’m not with the CIA, Mr. Banich.”

  What?

  Kutner cleared his throat. “That’s right, Alex. Miss McKenna works for the Commerce Department.”

  “For the Office of Export Enforcement. Specifically the intelligence division.”

  Banich felt himself starting to frown. A civilian. They’
d sent him a goddamned civilian. And probably one with dreams of being some kind of female James Bond. Just fucking great.

  “Do you speak Russian?” He spoke rapidly, the way a real Muscovite would.

  “I’m fairly fluent. Enough to handle most conversations.” She answered him in the same language and then switched back to English. “I’ve also got a pretty good grasp of French and German.” She smiled thinly. “I even know enough Italian to read menus.”

  The frown stayed on his face. Her vocabulary was good, but that accent would mark her as a foreigner no matter where she went inside the Commonwealth. Time to nip this thing in the bud and bundle her back to Washington where she belonged. He turned to Kutner. “I can’t use her, Len. Not out on the streets. I need trained field personnel.”

  He had an instant feeling he’d been too blunt for his own good. He was right.

  Erin McKenna’s eyes flashed fire at him. “Look, Mr. Banich, I’ve read the memos and message traffic from this station. All you’ve been doing is bitching about the new emphasis on trade intelligence. Well, that’s why I’m here.” She took a step closer. “I’ve got the knowledge and the experience to analyze the raw data you and your people collect. I can help point you in the right direction and call you off false scents. I am not here to play covert-action cowboys and Indians. Got it?”

  Banich had the momentary feeling that he’d stuck his head into a buzz saw. He tried changing tack. “It’s not personal, Miss McKenna. It’s just that we’ve been pushing hard to get this crap… this information… Washington wants, and — ”

  She interrupted him icily. “This crap, as you call it, happens to be considered vital by the people we both work for. You have some kind of problem with that?”

  Banich picked up the verbal gauntlet she’d thrown down. “Yeah, I do. While we’re busy tracking down garbage like who bribed who to get some frigging import license, we’re losing track of other things. Like who’s really got control of the Russian military. Or what kinds of weapons they’re putting into production.”