by Ken Follett
Zoya came back to bed. Volodya said: ‘When we first met, you didn’t seem to like me much.’
‘I didn’t like men,’ she replied. ‘I still don’t. Most of them are drunks and bullies and fools. It took me a while to figure out that you were different.’
‘Thanks, I think,’ he said. ‘But are men really so bad?’
‘Look around you,’ she said. ‘Look at our country.’
He reached over her and turned on the bedside radio. Even though he had disconnected the listening device behind the headboard, you couldn’t be too careful. When the radio had warmed up, a military band played a march. Satisfied that he could not be overheard, Volodya said: ‘You’re thinking of Stalin and Beria. But they won’t always be around.’
‘Do you know how my father fell from favour?’ she said.
‘No. My parents never mentioned it.’
‘There’s a reason for that.’
‘Go on.’
‘According to my mother, there was an election at my father’s factory for a deputy to attend the Moscow Soviet. A Menshevik candidate stood against the Bolshevik, and my father went to a meeting to hear him speak. He did not support the Menshevik, nor vote for him; but everyone who went to that meeting was sacked, and a few weeks later my father was arrested and taken to the Lubyanka.’
She meant the NKVD headquarters and prison in Lubyanka Square.
She went on: ‘My mother went to your father and begged him to help. He immediately went with her to the Lubyanka. They saved my father, but they saw twelve other workers shot.’
‘That’s terrible,’ Volodya said. ‘But it was Stalin—’
‘No. This was 1920. Stalin was just a Red Army commander fighting in the Soviet–Polish War. Lenin was leader.’
‘This happened under Lenin?’
‘Yes. So, you see, it’s not just Stalin and Beria.’
Volodya’s view of Communist history was badly shaken. ‘What is it, then?’
The door opened.
Volodya reached for his gun in the bedside-table drawer.
But the person who came in was a girl wearing a fur coat and, as far as he could see, nothing else.
‘Sorry, Volodya,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know you had company.’
Zoya said: ‘Who the fuck is she?’
Volodya said: ‘Natasha, how did you open my door?’
‘You gave me a pass key. It opens every door in the hotel.’
‘Well, you might have knocked!’
‘Sorry. I just came to tell you the bad news.’
‘What?’
‘I went into Woody Dewar’s room, just as you told me. But I didn’t succeed.’
‘What did you do?’
‘This.’ Natasha opened her coat to show her naked body. She had a voluptuous figure and a luxuriant bush of dark pubic hair.
‘All right, I get the picture, close your coat,’ said Volodya. ‘What did he say?’
She switched to English. ‘He just said: “No.” I said: “What do you mean, no?” He said: “It’s the opposite of yes.” Then he just held the door wide open until I went out.’
‘Bugger,’ said Volodya. ‘I’ll have to think of something else.’
(ii)
Chuck Dewar knew there was going to be trouble when Captain Vandermeier came into the enemy land section in the middle of the afternoon, red-faced from a beery lunch.
The intelligence unit at Pearl Harbor had expanded. Formerly called Station HYPO, it now had the grand title of Joint Intelligence Center, Pacific Ocean Area, or JICPOA.
Vandermeier had a marine sergeant in tow. ‘Hey, you two powder puffs,’ Vandermeier said. ‘You got a customer complaint here.’
The operation had grown, everyone began to specialize, and Chuck and Eddie had become experts at mapping the territory where American forces were about to land as they fought their way island by island across the Pacific.
Vandermeier said: ‘This is Sergeant Donegan.’ The marine was very tall and looked as hard as a rifle. Chuck guessed that the sexually troubled Vandermeier was smitten.
Chuck stood up: ‘Good to meet you, Sergeant. I’m Chief Petty Officer Dewar.’
Chuck and Eddie had both been promoted. As thousands of conscripts poured into the US military, there was a shortage of officers, and pre-war enlisted men who knew the ropes rose fast. Chuck and Eddie were now permitted to live off base. They had rented a small apartment together.
Chuck put out his hand, but Donegan did not shake it.
Chuck sat down again. He slightly outranked a sergeant, and he was not going to be polite to one who was rude. ‘Something I can do for you, Captain Vandermeier?’
There were many ways a captain could torment petty officers in the navy, and Vandermeier knew them all. He adjusted rotas so that Chuck and Eddie never had the same day off. He marked their reports ‘adequate’, knowing full well that anything less than ‘excellent’ was, in fact, a black mark. He sent confusing messages to the pay office, so that Chuck and Eddie were paid late or got less than they should have, and had to spend hours straightening things out. He was a royal pain. And now he had thought up some new mischief.
Donegan pulled from his pocket a grubby sheet of paper and unfolded it. ‘Is this your work?’ he said aggressively.
Chuck took the paper. It was a map of New Georgia, a group in the Solomon Islands. ‘Let me check,’ he said. It was his work, and he knew it, but he was playing for time.
He went to a filing cabinet and pulled open a drawer. He took out the file for New Georgia and shut the drawer with his knee. He returned to his desk, sat down, and opened the file. It contained a duplicate of Donegan’s map. ‘Yes,’ Chuck said. ‘That’s my work.’
‘Well, I’m here to tell you it’s shit,’ said Donegan.
‘Is it?’
‘Look, right here. You show the jungle coming down to the sea. In fact, there’s a beach a quarter of a mile wide.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘Sorry!’ Donegan had drunk about the same amount of beer as Vandermeier, and he was spoiling for a fight. ‘Fifty of my men died on that beach.’
Vandermeier belched and said: ‘How could you make a mistake like that, Dewar?’
Chuck was shaken. If he was responsible for an error that had killed fifty men, he deserved to be shouted at. ‘This is what we had to work on,’ he said. The file contained an inaccurate map of the islands that might have been Victorian, and a more recent naval chart that showed sea depths but almost no terrain features. There were no on-the-spot reports and no wireless decrypts. The only other item in the file was a blurred black-and-white aerial reconnaissance photograph. Putting his finger on the relevant spot in the photo, Chuck said: ‘It sure looks as if the trees come all the way to the waterline. Is there a tide? If not, the sand might have been covered with algae when the photograph was taken. Algae can bloom suddenly, and die off just as fast.’
Donegan said: ‘You wouldn’t be so goddamn casual about it if you had to fight over the terrain.’
Maybe that was true, Chuck thought. Donegan was aggressive and rude, and he was being egged on by the malicious Vandermeier, but that did not mean he was wrong.
Vandermeier said: ‘Yeah, Dewar. Maybe you and your nancy-boy friend should go with the marines on their next assault. See how your maps are used in action.’
Chuck was trying to think of a smart retort when it occurred to him to take the suggestion seriously. Maybe he ought to see some action. It was easy to be blasé behind a desk. Donegan’s complaint deserved to be taken seriously.
On the other hand, it would mean risking his life.
Chuck looked Vandermeier in the eye. ‘That sounds like a good idea, Captain,’ he said. ‘I’d like to volunteer for that duty.’
Donegan looked startled, as if he was beginning to think he might have misjudged the situation.
Eddie spoke for the first time. ‘So would I. I’ll go, too.’
‘Good,’ said Vandermei
er. ‘You’ll come back wiser – or not at all.’
(iii)
Volodya could not get Woody Dewar drunk.
In the bar of the Hotel Moskva he thrust a glass of vodka in front of the young American and said in schoolboy English: ‘You’ll like this – it’s the very best.’
‘Thank you very much,’ said Woody. ‘I appreciate it.’ And he left the glass untouched.
Woody was tall and gangly and seemed straightforward to the point of naivety, which was why Volodya had targeted him.
Speaking through the interpreter, Woody said: ‘Is Peshkov a common Russian name?’
‘Not especially,’ Volodya replied in Russian.
‘I’m from Buffalo, where there is a well-known businessman called Lev Peshkov. I wonder if you’re related.’
Volodya was startled. His father’s brother was called Lev Peshkov and had gone to Buffalo before the First World War. But caution made him prevaricate. ‘I must ask my father,’ he said.
‘I was at Harvard with Lev Peshkov’s son, Greg. He could be your cousin.’
‘Possibly.’ Volodya glanced nervously at the police spies around the table. Woody did not understand that any connection with someone in America could bring down suspicion on a Soviet citizen. ‘You know, Woody, in this country it’s considered an insult to refuse to drink.’
Woody smiled pleasantly. ‘Not in America,’ he said.
Volodya picked up his own glass and looked around the table at the assorted secret policemen pretending to be civil servants and diplomats. ‘A toast!’ he said. ‘To friendship between the United States and the Soviet Union!’
The others raised their glasses high. Woody did the same. ‘Friendship!’ they all echoed.
Everyone drank except Woody, who put his glass down untasted.
Volodya began to suspect that he was not as naive as he seemed.
Woody leaned across the table. ‘Volodya, you need to understand that I don’t know any secrets. I’m too junior.’
‘So am I,’ said Volodya. It was far from the truth.
Woody said: ‘What I’m trying to explain is that you can just ask me questions. If I know the answers, I’ll tell you. I can do that, because anything I know can’t possibly be secret. So you don’t need to get me drunk or send prostitutes to my room. You can just ask me.’
It was some kind of trick, Volodya decided. No one could be so innocent. But he decided to humour Woody. Why not? ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I need to know what you’re after. Not you personally, of course. Your delegation, and Secretary Hull, and President Roosevelt. What do you want from this conference?’
‘We want you to back the Four-Power Pact.’
It was the standard answer, but Volodya decided to persist. ‘This is what we don’t understand.’ He was being candid now, perhaps more than he should have, but instinct was telling him to take the risk of opening up a little. ‘Who cares about a pact with China? We need to defeat the Nazis in Europe. We want you to help us do that.’
‘And we will.’
‘So you say. But you said you would invade Europe this summer.’
‘Well, we did invade Italy.’
‘It’s not enough.’
‘France next year. We’ve promised that.’
‘So why do you need the pact?’
‘Well.’ Woody paused, collecting his thoughts. ‘We have to show the American people how it’s in their interests to invade Europe.’
‘Why?’
‘Why what?’
‘Why do you need to explain this to the public? Roosevelt is President, isn’t he? He should just do it!’
‘Next year is election year. He wants to get re-elected.’
‘So?’
‘American people won’t vote for him if they think he’s involved them unnecessarily in the war in Europe. So he wants to put it to them as part of his overall plan for world peace. If we have the Four-Power Pact, showing that we’re serious about the United Nations organization, then American voters are more likely to accept that the invasion of France is a step on the road to a more peaceful world.’
‘This is amazing,’ Volodya said. ‘He’s the President, yet he has to make excuses all the time for what he does!’
‘Something like that,’ Woody said. ‘We call it democracy.’
Volodya had a sneaking suspicion that this incredible story might actually be the truth. ‘So the pact is necessary to persuade American voters to support the invasion of Europe.’
‘Exactly.’
‘Then why do we need China?’ Stalin was particularly scornful of the Allies’ insistence that China should be included in the pact.
‘China is a weak ally.’
‘So ignore China.’
‘If the Chinese are left out they will become discouraged, and may fight less enthusiastically against the Japanese.’
‘So?’
‘So we will have to bolster our forces in the Pacific theatre, and that will take away from our strength in Europe.’
That alarmed Volodya. The Soviet Union did not want Allied forces diverted from Europe to the Pacific. ‘So you are making a friendly gesture to China simply in order to conserve more forces for the invasion of Europe.’
‘Yes.’
‘You make it seem simple.’
‘It is,’ said Woody.
(iv)
In the early hours of the morning on 1 November, Chuck and Eddie ate a steak breakfast with the US Marine 3rd Division just off the South Sea island of Bougainville.
The island was about 125 miles long. It had two Japanese naval air bases, one in the north and one in the south. The marines were getting ready to land halfway along the lightly defended west coast. Their object was to establish a beachhead and win enough territory to build an airstrip from which to launch attacks on the Japanese bases.
Chuck was on deck at twenty-six minutes past seven when marines in helmets and backpacks began to swarm down the rope nets hanging over the sides of the ship and jump into high-sided landing craft. With them were a small number of war dogs, Dobermann Pinschers that made tireless sentries.
As the boats approached land, Chuck could already see a flaw in the map he had prepared. Tall waves crashed on to a steeply sloping beach. As he watched, a boat turned sideways to the waves and capsized. The marines swam for shore.
‘We have to show surf conditions,’ Chuck said to Eddie, who was standing beside him on the deck.
‘How do we find them out?’
‘Reconnaissance aircraft will have to fly low enough for whitecaps to register on their photographs.’
‘They can’t risk coming that low when there are enemy air bases so close.’
Eddie was right. But there had to be a solution. Chuck filed it away as the first question to be considered as a result of this mission.
For this landing they had benefited from more information than usual. As well as the normal unreliable maps and hard-to-decipher aerial photographs, they had a report from a reconnaissance team landed by submarine six weeks earlier. The team had identified twelve beaches suitable for landing along a four-mile stretch of coast. But they had not warned of the surf. Perhaps it was not so high that day.
In other respects, Chuck’s map was right, so far. There was a sandy beach about a hundred yards wide, then a tangle of palm trees and other vegetation. Just beyond the brush line, according to the map, there should be a swamp.
The coast was not completely undefended. Chuck heard the roar of artillery fire, and a shell landed in the shallows. It did no harm, but the gunner’s aim would improve. The marines were galvanized with a new urgency as they leaped from the landing craft to the beach and ran for the brush line.
Chuck was glad he had decided to come. He had never been careless or slack about his maps, but it was salutary to see first-hand how correct mapping could save men’s lives, and how the smallest errors could be deadly. Even before they embarked, he and Eddie had become a lot more demanding. They asked for blurred
photographs to be taken again, they interrogated reconnaissance parties by phone, and they cabled all over the world for better charts.
He was glad for another reason. He was at sea, which he loved. He was on a ship with seven hundred young men, and he relished the camaraderie, the jokes, the songs, and the intimacy of crowded berths and shared showers. ‘It’s like being a straight guy in a girls’ boarding school,’ he said to Eddie one evening.
‘Except that that never happens, and this does,’ Eddie said. He felt the same as Chuck. They loved each other, but they did not mind looking at naked sailors.
Now all seven hundred marines were getting off the ship and on to land as fast as they could. The same was happening at eight other locations along this stretch of coast. As soon as a landing craft emptied out, it lost no time in turning around and coming back for more; but the process still seemed desperately slow.
The Japanese artillery gunner, hidden somewhere in the jungle, found his range at last, and to Chuck’s shock a well-aimed shell exploded in a knot of marines, sending men and rifles and body parts flying through the air to litter the beach and stain the sand red.
Chuck was staring in horror at the carnage when he heard the roar of a plane, and looked up to see a Japanese Zero flying low, following the coast. The red suns painted on the wings struck fear into his heart. Last time he saw that sight had been at the Battle of Midway.
The Zero strafed the beach. Marines who were in the process of disembarking from landing craft were caught defenceless. Some threw themselves flat in the shallows, some tried to get behind the hull of the boat, some ran for the jungle. For a few seconds blood spurted and men fell.
Then the plane was gone, leaving the beach scattered with American dead.
Chuck heard it open up a moment later, strafing the next beach.
It would be back.
There were supposed to be US planes in attendance, but he could not see any. Air support was never where you wanted it to be, which was directly above your head.
When all the marines were ashore, alive and dead, the boats transported medics and stretcher parties to the beach. Then they began landing supplies: ammunition, drinking water, food, drugs and dressings. On the return trip the landing craft brought the wounded back to the ship.
