by Robert Moss
That wasn’t meant to be taken literally. When they started negotiating the day, she recited a long list of social engagements. Then she came to the point. ‘My father came back earlier than expected. But he has to leave for Prague on Friday morning. So why don’t you come round that evening? You haven’t forgotten where we live?’
The nature of the invitation wasn’t lost on Sasha.
*
He arrived bearing gifts — flowers and chocolates.
She opened the door wearing a very light, summery dress. The way her nipples were accentuated by the fabric suggested she had nothing on underneath. As soon as the door was closed, she grabbed him.
The flowers and the chocolates scattered over the floor as she propelled him backwards along the corridor, toward her bedroom, clawing at the buttons on his uniform tunic.
They tumbled straight into bed. He began to caress her, but she shuddered and drew him deep inside her. She came almost at once, and the words she gasped jolted him a bit; her father had nothing to teach her about barrack-room language.
They started over again, slower this time, until her body leaped over him like a bird startled from a thicket.
Afterward, she played shy, wrapping herself up in a long, blanketing robe. She picked up the presents abandoned in the hall and arranged the flowers in a vase. When Sasha emerged from the bedroom, buttoning his jacket, she was in the kitchen, laying out platters of caviar and buttered bread.
He kissed her lightly on the cheek. She stood back a couple of feet, inspecting him. Then she stroked one of his shoulder boards.
‘The stars are too small for you,’ she said. ‘We’ll have to do something about that.’
They reached a kind of understanding.
*
The question of marriage was first raised by Lyda, as he took to calling her, a few weeks later. It was late spring, the time of budding oaks, but cold winds snapped in the streets of Moscow like the whiplash of a winter that refused to die. They had been spending several nights a week together, usually at the Visotny Dom, but once or twice, when the general was in town, at Kolya’s. Vlassov and his wife were enjoying the role of go-between.
Sasha and Lydia were in the bath, soaping each other, when he mentioned something he had put out of his mind since the first night in her bed.
He said, ‘Of course, you’re taking precautions.’
‘Why?’ she purred langorously. ‘We’re getting married soon, aren’t we?’
There was nothing for Sasha to do except mutter assent. After all, things were going according to plan. But, as usual, she had made the first move, and he had the sensation of mild asphyxiation.
‘I told my father about you,’ Lydia went on. ‘You’re expected for Sunday lunch.’
Then she was giggling and groping for him through the soapy water.
*
General Zotov’s voice filled the apartment the way a good sergeant-major can command a whole parade ground. He was on the phone in his study, bellowing at some unknown lieutenant. Sasha heard something about an airlift to Syria as Lydia ushered him into the sitting room and relieved him of the flowers he had brought her from the stall at the Belorussky metro station. He had a gift for the general too, a bottle of Ararat five star, the best brandy he could buy at a normal store. Lydia confiscated it immediately.
‘The doctors say he has to think about his liver,’ she told him. ‘They said he had a choice. He has so many cases of good cognac ahead of him. He can drink them in one year, or in twenty.’
Sasha heard the receiver slammed down, and then a heavy tread along the corridor before Zotov lumbered out into the sitting room. He was in uniform, although it was Sunday, with six rows of ribbons on his chest. Sasha jumped from his chair and stood stiffly at attention. He felt faintly ridiculous, dressed in his one civilian suit.
Zotov stared at him for a moment, measuring him up before he stuck out his hand. He gripped like a wringer. The first thing he said was, ‘I thought you were an army officer. Why aren’t you correctly dressed?’
‘I’m sorry, Comrade General. It was a personal visit, on a Sunday, and I thought —’
‘When I was your age, we understood that an officer of the Soviet army is on duty twenty-four hours a day.’
When he scowled, his shaggy eyebrows almost met in the middle.
He was a head shorter than Sasha, but everything about him was big. He stood there, his chest thrown forward, his legs planted like tree trunks, then suddenly burst out laughing. ‘I see you don’t scare easily. That’s good. Sit down and tell me about yourself. Where do you work?’
‘I’m in Department Four Four Three Eight Eight.’ This was the military cover name for the GRU.
‘Don’t bother with all that crap,’ Zotov said. ‘What are you fishing for at the Aquarium?’
‘I’m on the American desk, Comrade General.’
‘You don’t need to call me Comrade General either. You’re not on bloody parade. You’ll call me Alexei Ivanovich. How do you get on with that woodentop Osorgin?’ General Osorgin was the chief of the GRU. Like his predecessors, he was a former KGB professional. In making such appointments, the Party adhered to the principle of divide and rule. There was no love lost between Osorgin and his army subordinates. But his old KGB confreres didn’t trust him either, now he was running a rival organization.
‘I’m afraid I’m not in a position to pass judgment on General Osorgin,’ Sasha said.
‘I see you’ve taken up with a diplomat,’ Zotov said to his daughter. ‘Bring us a little something, Lydochka. If they learn nothing else in the Aquarium, they learn how to drink like fish.’
While Lydia went to see to the drinks, Zotov said, ‘How did the GRU manage to pick you up?’
‘I was at Moscow University —’ Sasha began.
‘Ah,’ the general interrupted. ‘So you’re not a strawberry from our field. That’s how it is with the GRU. They get a lot of butterflies — zalyotniki — who think they’re going to be paid to see the world. Well, you needn’t take offense. But don’t expect a soft life. They’ll work your ass off. Now tell me about your family.’
Zotov’s interest pricked up as Sasha explained that both his father and grandfather were army officers who had been killed in action.
‘It sounds like you have quite a tradition in your family. How far does this dynasty go back?’
‘To the battle of Borodino.’
‘And all the men in this line were officers of the Russian army?’
‘Yes.’
‘There aren’t many men in our army who can say that. In my case — hah! — they were peasants and privates and bastards, more often than not. I don’t know the name of my great-grandfather, and as for the next generation, well, it depends whether my grandmother was lying or not. But your name, now, Preobrazhensky. Yes, that means something.’ He took a glass of Armenian brandy from Lydia — Akhtamar, his favorite, not Sasha’s inferior brand — and added, ‘Maybe I was wrong to call you a butterfly. You could be from our strawberry patch after all. Za vashe zdorovye!’
The lunch was relaxed, and Zotov did most of the talking, recounting wartime experiences. Afterward, he lectured Sasha about the Middle East, which had been absorbing most of his time.
‘Fifteen years ago,’ he said, ‘the economic warfare experts in your shop — Department Ten — came up with a plan to get the NATO countries by the balls by squeezing off their oil supplies from the Gulf. The key was to build an Arab power that would consistently serve our interests. So we poured weaponry into Egypt, and for a while the plan seemed to be working. Then Sadat turned against us, and those geniuses in the KGB failed to get rid of him in time. But our chance in Egypt may come again, now that the Jews have kicked them all over the map. Things aren’t altogether bad. The Arab oil embargo scared the shit out of the Americans. We can use the Syrians and that nutcase Qaddafi as long as we keep an eye on them — I don’t trust any of those black-asses. And we’ve got a big opportunity with our
friend who wears the dishrag.’
‘You mean Arafat?’
Zotov nodded. ‘The Palestinians are all over the Gulf. With a little direction, they could take over Kuwait or Bahrain like that.’ He snapped his fingers. ‘The Arab governments don’t give a shit about them, but they all have to pay up for the holy cause. The Americans can’t play with them because the Yids run their Middle East policy. They’re ours, if we know how to work them.’ He frowned.
‘So what’s the problem?’ Sasha jogged him.
‘The problem is the Americans don’t have a monopoly on the Jewish problem. We’ve got our own little clique, here in Moscow. They want to handle the Zionists with kid gloves.’ He described a couple of very senior Soviet leaders, including the head of the KGB, as ‘Yids,’ and Sasha expressed his surprise. Everyone knew that Brezhnev’s wife was Jewish. But the head of the KGB?
‘We don’t go by the passport,’ Zotov said. ‘We go by the face.’
The general drained the last drop of his brandy. ‘Well, we’re not here to complete your education,’ he said. ‘I want to know what you think you’re doing screwing my daughter.’
This was rather more direct than Sasha had expected.
‘Lydochka?’ Zotov called to his daughter, who had been sent out of the room. ‘Stop spying at the keyhole and come in here.’
She tripped in at once, confirming the general’s suspicion, and perched herself on the arm of his chair. Her hand looked like a child’s on top of Zotov’s clumsy paw.
‘Alexei Ivanovich,’ Sasha said formally. ‘I would like to ask you for Lydia’s hand.’
‘Just like that, eh?’ He turned to his daughter. ‘So the young fool wants to marry you. What have you got to say about it?’
She threw her arms around his bull neck, then rushed over to Sasha and embraced him too.
‘That’s enough of the rehearsing,’ Zotov said.
‘Papa?’
‘What do you want me to say? It’s your life.’
They celebrated with champagne. After the first bottle, Zotov said to Sasha, ‘I suppose you’re aware of the conditions. You two want to get married, so be it. But I don’t intend to lose my only child. You will both live here with me.’
‘But we’d be in your way.’
‘That’s the agreement. Now, when are you going to have children? I need a grandson so I can start a dynasty of my own.’
The following weekend, on a stroll through the white birches around the general’s sprawling dacha, Zotov said, ‘I want you to tell me, man to man. Do they treat you properly at the Aquarium?’
‘I’ve got no complaints,’ Sasha replied.
‘Well, if you need anything, I expect you to ask. I have some slight influence at Gogol Boulevard.’
‘Alexei Ivanovich, I’m grateful, but — well, the thing is, this marriage is going to cause talk, and I don’t want anyone to think I’m trying to take advantage of my father-in-law.’
‘Ne pizdi!’ Zotov interrupted. ‘Don’t talk cunt. Lyda’s always been spoiled, and you won’t be able to change that now.’
That was probably very true, Sasha thought. The reflection didn’t raise his spirits as the day of the wedding approached. Kolya Vlassov played best man, and they rode to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in a black Chaika to lay floral tributes afterward. Lydia was already pregnant, although the doctors didn’t confirm the fact until after their honeymoon, among the rose gardens of Livadia, in the Crimea.
Back in Moscow, Sasha went to General Zotov to ask for a favor.
‘Don’t tell me,’ Zotov said. ‘Let me guess. You want to go overseas. Lyda’s already talked to me about it. We’ll work something out when the baby is old enough to travel.’
‘It’s not that. I’d like to get away from headquarters for a while. I’d like some experience of active soldiering.’
‘What? You mean go to one of the provincial garrisons? You and Lyda both would be bored to death.’
‘I was thinking of Spetsnaz.’ Since he had been at the Aquarium, Sasha had met two special forces officers. One of them had returned from an undercover mission in the United States, checking out the ground defenses of strategic air bases in Colorado and Nevada. The other was an instructor at the guerrilla training school the GRU ran near Simferopol, in the Crimea. His special task was to select sabotage agents who could be used to attack command centers and vital communications in Western Europe on orders from Moscow. Both officers seemed to fit Captain Suvorin’s description of Spetsnaz: hard, intelligent men, the pick of the crop.
Zotov looked at him closely. ‘They’re tough bitches,’ he commented. ‘They’ll probably kill you. Why do you want to do it?’
‘I want to test myself.’
The general approved. ‘But there’ll be the devil to pay when Lydochka hears about it,’ he observed.
*
On the railroad between Moscow and Gorky is the smoky industrial city of Kavrov. The Klyasma River makes a southerly loop through the town on its way to join the Volga, but Kavrov is not noted for its scenic splendors. It is a place of hulking redbrick textile mills, built in the last century, and modern concrete blockhouses, one of which manufactures heavy machine guns for the Soviet armed forces. The city is best known in Russia for its motorbike factory. Life, especially for the younger generation, is drab and provincial. The boys who can’t get away to the bright lights of Moscow find release in vodka, brawling, and chasing the girls from the clothing factories. You don’t see foreigners in Kavrov. It is a closed city. Its particular secrets are to be found in the pine forests seven or eight miles north of the machine-gun plant.
Hidden among the pines and birches is a huge military complex. It includes a crack airborne division. The most closely guarded facility is the preserve of the Spetsnaz brigade of the Moscow Military District. Its men wear the same uniforms as the airborne, with a tiny difference that only a trained eye would detect. The men of the eight Soviet airborne divisions wear Guards badges, a legacy of World War II; Spetsnaz soldiers don’t, because their units are a more recent creation. There are about thirty thousand men in Spetsnaz forces in the Soviet Union and its satellites, divided up into independent companies and brigades, under the supervision of military intelligence. They are kept strictly segregated from other branches of the armed forces. There is no central command, no divisional structure, because the country’s masters are nervous that men who are schooled as an elite, and well versed in the arts of political warfare, could develop a pretorian mentality. Only their officers, who are required to be full members of the Party and are subject to extensive loyalty checks, use the generic term Spetsnaz — an abbreviation for ‘Special Detachments’ — and understand the full scope of the enterprise. Units attached in different commands use different names. In Siberia, the Spetsnaz forces are called Okhotniki, or Huntsmen. In Eastern Europe, they are Reydoviki, or Raiders. What is expected of all of them is unusual, and so are the rewards.
Over Lydia’s protests, Zotov had arranged for Sasha to attend the Spetsnaz faculty at the Advanced Parachute Training School in Ryazan. Foreign language study was compulsory, so he choose to perfect his English. The first sentence in the Spetsnaz phrasebooks gave a fair idea of the object of this part of the course: ‘Be quiet, or I’ll kill you.’ There had been a small compromise with Lydia: Sasha’s operational training would take place at Kavrov, within easy reach of Moscow.
*
The chief instructor at Kavrov was a certain Fyodor Vassilyich Zaytsev, a tough nugget of a man from a family of soldiers and peasants in the Leningrad region. He was a man of average height, but stocky, with short fair hair hacked off in a straight line along the top of the forehead, and a horseradish nose that he was given to rubbing incessantly while talking. He had the pale blue eyes of the North, and wasn’t given to saying much unless he was issuing orders. He spoke very slowly; every word seemed to be forged on a blacksmith’s anvil. But he interested Sasha, who could glimpse a quick intellect in his eyes, and
was impressed by Zaytsev’s physical strength.
Captain Zaytsev had risen from the ranks. He came to Spetsnaz the way of many conscripts, virtually by accident. When he was called up for his three years’ military service, he was pleased; it was a chance to see the world beyond the village and the kolkhoz. He went for his medical inspection to a recruitment office in Leningrad, which his parents, very conservative people, still referred to as Petrograd, in the old way. He was made to strip naked and parade in front of a doctor who seemed to take special pleasure in peering up rectums, while several officers looked on. One of them was from Spetsnaz. He appraised Zaytsev’s physique, and announced, ‘He’s for us.’
His father had prepared him well for the special forces’ grueling physical exercises. Vassily Zaytsev would take him out into the fields to scyth grass — with the warning, which Fyodor never questioned, that if he stopped before the signal, he would cut off his feet. At the end of his three years, he held the rank of sergeant — makaronik, his comrades dubbed him, because of the stripes — and his commander called him with a proposal. ‘How’d you like to be the first officer in your family? It’s better than going back to the village to die of cirrhosis, isn’t it?’
So Zaytsev signed on. He was wary of this young cub Preobrazhensky, who came from a different world. What was he doing at Kavrov, this university graduate, this generalski synok, this little general’s son? He saw Sasha as some kind of joyrider, a weekend soldier who wanted to impress the Moscow girls. The fact that the brigade commander had told him, straight out, that Sasha was to be looked after because he was General Zotov’s son-in-law didn’t make Zaytsev feel any better disposed toward him. If Preobrazhensky wanted to play at being in Spetsnaz, fine. He, Zaytsev, would see him sweat.
There was an important exercise coming up, a simulated attack on a mobile NATO command post. Men from the Strategic Rocket Forces — tough bastards, like Spetsnaz — would be playing the defenders, and the chief of Moscow District would be attending in person. The attackers were divided into four-man teams, and Zaytsev picked Sasha for his own group.
