Sacrifice

by Graham Masterton

  ‘Jesus!’ roared Charles. A prayer, a war-cry, a scream of fright.

  Krov’ iz Nosu raged into the room, hurling chairs and tables aside and uttering a noise that turned Charles’ stomach upside-down. It was a strangled, baby-like mewling; a high-pitched ululation of anger from a throat stretched tight by fire, from lips that had once been burned back right to the teeth.

  Charles stood up, and swung the poker at Novikov in a sharp, sweeping, suddenly-remembered action; the action of the college baseball-hitter. Charles Krogh, Class of ‘53. The blunt sooty hook of the poker caught Novikov in the side of the neck, snagged a web of skin, tore scar-tissue and muscle, and suddenly it was raining blood. Novikov turned, swayed as violently as Frankenstein’s monster, and then flailed his arms at Charles like a torrent of Indian clubs. One blow caught Charles on the side of the face, and he was knocked flat on his back on to the floor, hitting his head on the side of the stove. He rolled over, the way his CIA instructor had taught him. ‘Never lie there, like a dummy, waiting for the next punch.’ He was still clutching the poker, and in a second he was struggling back on to his feet again, turning over a wickerwork chair and a magazine rack, and smashing some unseen china ornament, but whipping that poker from side to side and howling his war-cry at the top of his voice, scared, angry, and vengeful.

  He struck Novikov on the shoulder; lashed him across the neck; beat him mercilessly around his upraised arms. It was then that he knew that the only thing which would ever stop Novikov was a gun; and a heavy-calibre gun, at that. Because the disfigured giant suddenly lowered his arms, as if none of Charles’ blows had hurt him at all, and glowered with such malevolence that all Charles could do was toss the poker on to the floor, scoop up a stool and hurl it at Novikov’s head, not particularly caring whether he hit him or not; and then tug open the door that led to the outside patio, and run.

  He ran into a darkness that smelled of wind and sea. Øre Sund, at night; with the white horses grey and mysterious, and the grass whipping at his shins. He scaled a slanting slope, panting; crested the slope, and then headed towards the trees. Off to his right, he saw a Saab Turbo, black, which must have been the car in which Novikov had been driven here. Gasping, stumbling forward on to a slide of loose stones and sandy soil, he looked over his shoulder. Novikov had followed him: for a moment he could see one of the grey breakers blotted out by a dark bobbing shape. It could only be a matter of minutes before the Russian’s superior stamina began to tell, and then Charles knew that he was dead. He was already exhausted, and trembling with exertion. Novikov would tear him into steak tartare.

  Although it lost him vital ground, Charles lurched sharp right, and began to run towards the Saab. It took Novikov a few seconds to understand that Charles had changed direction, but when he did, he immediately turned after him, and came loping up the shoreline, his feet crashing on the shingle. He whooped as he ran, in cruel triumph. He was quite sure that Charles would never get away from him now.

  The Saab was parked further away than Charles had imagined. His chest was bursting, as if somebody heavy was sitting on it, and his legs felt as if they no longer belonged to him at all. But then suddenly he was there, colliding with the side of the car, and rolling himself around the back of it, on the ground.

  The driver must have been half-asleep, quite convinced that Novikov would go into the beach-house, finish the job, and come back with the bits. But when Charles banged into the car, he instantly opened his door, and began to climb out, reaching as he did so into his windbreaker, to tug out a gun.

  Charles hit him straight in the belly with the Chinese blow known as shui-mu, after the demon who had been persuaded to eat noodles which then turned magically into chains, and wound themselves around his entrails. The blow was advanced unarmed-combat, and didn’t always work. At least, it had only worked for Charles once before, and that was in the gym.

  Tonight, however, the driver gagged, coughed, and collapsed heavily on to the ground, his abdominal muscles locked tight in reactive spasm. Charles ducked down to pick up his gun, and then twisted himself into the Saab’s front seat. At the same instant, Novikov came running up to the car, snatched at the passenger door, and with a grating crunch of protesting metal and springs, tore it halfway off its hinges.

  There was no time to shoot. Charles turned the key, gunned the Saab’s engine, released the handbrake, and slammed his foot wildly down on the accelerator. The car bounded forward, bouncing and jostling over the rough beach, with Novikov running beside it, and the wrenched-off door clattering along like the tin-cans on a wedding-car, still attached by its electrical wires.

  Charles slewed the car around, its tyres frantically spinning for grip on the loose dry sand. Then he was heading back towards the highway, through the trees, and even though Novikov was running hard, there was no possibility that he would be able to catch up now. Charles switched on the headlamps, and narrowly managed to avoid a deep gully, and a half-hidden tree-stump.

  He glanced up at his rear-view mirror. Novikov was still pursuing him, dark and heavy, like a marathon runner out of a nightmare. Charles had almost reached the highway now, he could see the red tail-lights of a passing truck. He groped beside him for the gun which he had picked up from the driver: and lifted it up quickly so that he could see wli.it it was. An FN GP35 automatic, the Belgian version of the Browning high-power. It should be powerful enough to stop Novikov, providing the Russian wasn’t wearing body-armour. He checked his rear-view mirror again, and then jabbed his foot on the brake so that the Saab skidded to a halt, right beside the shoulder of the highway.

  Now be calm, he told himself. If you panic, you’re going to miss. He climbed out of the car, leaving the engine running, and hurried around to the far side of it. He cocked the automatic, rested his forearms on the roof of the car, and took careful aim at Novikov’s silhouette, as he came jogging up from the beach. Exhale, he told himself. Steady. Squeeze.

  One shot cracked off into the night. Charles stood with both hands raised, holding the smoking automatic, peering into the shadowy treeline to see if he could make out Novikov’s fallen body. But there was nothing now; only the darkness. He waited a moment longer, and then walked back around the car.

  A Volvo estate drew up beside him, just as he was about to start off again. The light on the roof proclaimed that it had come from TAXA-Ringbilen. The young driver got out and walked across to Charles with a piece of paper in his hand.

  ‘I’m looking for Mr Krogh,’ he said. ‘He’s supposed to be waiting for me down on the beach somewhere. Are there beach-houses down there?’

  Charles, with relief, turned off the Saab’s engine. ‘I’m Mr Krogh.’

  ‘What happened to your car?’

  Charles frowned across at the torn-off door.

  ‘Oh, that. That’s always happening. I guess I just don’t know my own strength.’

  Charles took the keys of the Saab, and walked with the driver back to the Volvo. The driver U-turned, and headed back along the forest-lined highway to Copenhagen.

  ‘You like music?’ he asked Charles.

  ‘What have you got?’

  ‘Beethoven’s Fifth.’

  ‘Sure, that sounds appropriate.’

  ‘Are you okay?’ the driver asked him, after a while.

  ‘What’s the matter, don’t I look okay?’

  ‘You look like somebody who’s seen a ghost.’

  Charles stared at his curved, distorted reflection in the Volvo’s window. Lights passed in the night like speeding satellites. ‘I never believed in ghosts,’ he said, more to himself than to the driver. Then, ‘Can you spare a cigarette?’

  Twenty-Two

  ‘General Abramov is here, comrade general.’

  Yeremenko looked up from his strategic map of Western Germany. He was sipping a scalding demi-tasse of Eastern black coffee, the Russian equivalent of Turkish coffee, and the steam from the tiny cup had slightly fogged the edge of his tinted spectacles.

 
; ‘General Abramov? What is the Commander of the Kiev Military District doing here now?’

  Colonel Khleschev shrugged uneasily. Yeremenko hesitated for a moment, his cup still raised; then he laid it carefully down in its saucer. ‘Very well, colonel, you’d better show him through.’

  It was 0127 hours; and all the way along the East German border the Soviet Army was massed like one of the great hordes of Jenghiz Khan for the launching of Operation Byliny. The 16th Air Army, over 2,000 aircraft, had been divided into two separate Air Armies in preparation for the massive advance. Under their cover, 12 tank divisions and 16 mechanized infantry divisions would be advancing in two powerful Fronts, one in the north and one in the south. With more than 10,000 tanks, 500 helicopters, 6,000 infantry combat vehicles, 5,000 armoured personnel carriers, and over 5,000 artillery guns, mortars, and salvo-firing rocket-launchers, they would pour into West Germany along the Baltic coast into Hamburg, along the Berlin autobahn into Hanover, through the Fulda Gap towards Frankfurt, and into Bavaria from Czechoslovakia.

  It was the greatest army of invasion ever assembled in the world; the lines of T-72 and T-64 tanks were so long that civilian traffic in East Germany was at a standstill 16 miles back from the border. Behind the tanks came self-propelled Akatsiya howitzers, BMD personnel carriers armed with rockets and 73mm cannon, and hundreds of trucks of infantry.

  The two Fronts could have been built up to even greater strength, if it had been necessary. Had it not been for GRINGO, and Operation Cornflower, the Soviet Army would have been able to call up thousands of reserves from Poland and Byelorussia. As it was, they expected to be able to roll through West Germany with little or no serious resistance. Any localized guerrilla attacks could swiftly be dealt with by special groups of SPETSNAZ commandoes.

  GRINGO and Cornflower in themselves were just as impressive. The withdrawal from West Germany of all the US and British Forces which had been stationed there since the end of World War Two were the two largest and most complicated exercises in military movement control ever undertaken by either country. The paperwork was mountainous; the computer programs looked like encyclopedias. The arrangements for the speedy removal of hundreds of tanks, trucks, missile-launchers, artillery and other equipment were supervised by movement-control specialists who could be numbered in hundreds. The Allied forces would run one hour ahead of the advancing Russians; that was the agreement. Any vehicles or equipment left behind would be dealt with later by special negotiation.

  The Americans alone had to drive or airlift out of their 36 West German bases more than 252,000 men and women in uniform; as well as all their tanks, vehicles, and equipment. There was a strict instruction from the Pentagon that not one of their new M1 Abrams tanks and not one of their Black Hawk helicopters and not one of their computerized Multiple-Launch Rocket Systems should be allowed to fall into Soviet hands, while the British Army were particularly anxious not to let the Russians seize any of their Chobham laminated armour.

  General Oliver had remarked, ‘It might be a bloodless invasion, but it’s still an invasion.’

  Yeremenko, as Commander-in-Chief of the Western Strategic Direction, was holding the reins of the most powerful single fighting force in human history; and he was poised single-handedly to direct the most momentous political and geographical event for 40 years.

  General Abramov saluted him, and then shook his hand. ‘Well, comrade commander,’ he said respectfully. ‘It seems that the hour has come at last.’

  Yeremenko slowly smoothed his hands together. General Abramov’s unexpected appearance here had put him ill at ease. The Commander of the Kiev Military District was, in times of war, the Commander of the South-Western Strategic Direction, with direct responsibility for taking over the armies of Sub-Carpathia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and the Black Sea Fleet. Although the armies of the South-Western Strategic Direction were not actively involved in Operation Byliny, they were all on stand-by, at full operational strength, and at the very moment when Byliny was going to be launched, Yeremenko would have expected Abramov to be waiting at his headquarters, in case he was needed. The Kremlin still did not entirely trust the Americans, in spite of the Copenhagen agreement. Supposing the Pentagon suddenly decided to hit back? The old men of the Defence Council still had a terrible fear of cruise missiles, and of sudden capitalist treachery. Remember Barbarossa!

  ‘Who is in charge now at Kiev?’ asked Yeremenko.

  ‘General Pokryshkin. He was promoted today from Byelorussia.’

  ‘Well, Pokryshkin’s a good man. A very sound young officer. He was at the Military-Political Academy, wasn’t he, once upon a time?’

  Abramov nodded. Yeremenko had never liked Abramov. He was very dark, like a Jew. Even his name sounded Jewish. Although he shaved twice a day, his chin was always blue, and there were dark curly hairs peeking out of his nostrils. His eyes always seemed to Yeremenko to be too closely-set; as if he were slightly mad. He was overweeningly ambitious, too, as far as Yeremenko was concerned, and what made this ambition worse was that Abramov was a particular favourite of the Kremlin hierarchy.

  ‘I came from Kiev by helicopter,’ said Abramov.

  ‘Ah,’ replied Yeremenko, with an exaggerated lack of interest. ‘For, ah – any particular reason?’

  Abramov suddenly smiled, and then laughed. ‘The Army has never once sent me anywhere for no reason.’

  ‘Then you are here to assist me, is that it?’

  ‘Not exactly,’ said Abramov. He looked around the room, at the lights, and the smoke, and the groups of officers who were following the progress of the assembling Soviet tank forces. A large clock on the far wall, its face dimly illuminated, announced with a juddering second-hand that Operation Byliny was one hour and ten minutes away.

  ‘Is there somewhere we can talk, for a minute or two?’ asked Abramov.

  Yeremenko looked at him intently. Abramov seemed almost embarrassed. ‘Comrade Kutakov wished me to have a word with you,’ he said.

  Yeremenko lifted his left arm as mechanically as a PT instructor, and focused on his wristwatch. ‘I’m very pushed for time, comrade general. But – well, a minute or two. No longer.’

  They went through to a small, brown-painted ante-room. There was a row of cheap varnished chairs like a dentist’s waiting room, a table stacked with files, and a portrait of Lenin. Yeremenko stood with his hands clasped in front of him, and said, ‘Well? How can I help you?’

  ‘Normally, of course, this would be done differently,’ said General Abramov. ‘But this is a critical moment; and the Stavka is anxious to cause as little disruption as possible. I am here, comrade general, to relieve you of your command of the Western Strategic Direction, and to request you to return to Moscow immediately for further instructions.’

  Yeremenko stared at Abramov as if he were unable to believe that he existed; as if he were an apparition from some long-forgotten dream.

  ‘I think there must be some mistake,’ he said, flatly.

  ‘I’m sorry, comrade general. No mistake. I have my written orders; they were brought here by helicopter to meet me when I arrived.’

  ‘But… I am the Commander-in-Chief of the Western Strategic Direction. I am the architect and chief executive of Operation Byliny. They are ready, comrade! The tanks! The infantry! Thousand upon thousand! They are out there now, in the night! They are all under my command!’

  General Abramov lifted his hands, and then dropped them again. ‘This is none of my doing, comrade general. You can take my helicopter back to Moscow. They are refuelling it now.’

  ‘Why?’ demanded Yeremenko, in a whisper.

  ‘I was told to say nothing further, comrade general. Please… you have my regrets. I can give you no more.’

  ‘Why?’ Yeremenko roared. ‘Why?’

  Abramov looked unhappy. ‘If I tell you – well, don’t repeat it. But it is all because of Marshal Golovanov.’

  ‘Golovanov? That old has-been? And, anyway, he’s gone now; probabl
y murdered, and serve him right.’

  Abramov shook his dark blue jowls emphatically. ‘No, no, comrade general, not murdered. He was interrogated, so we understand, and we also understand that he talked. The Federal German government has been told about Operation Byliny, and the Bundeswehr is apparently preparing to defend West Germany to the last, even if the British and Americans withdraw.’

  ‘Well?’ Yeremenko demanded, with extraordinary petulance. ‘What fault is it of mine, if Golovanov could not be loyal to his country? And as for the Bundeswehr, we can crush them like an egg. I am not afraid to fight! I am a soldier!’

  General Abramov laid a hand on Yeremenko’s shoulder. ‘Nobody has cast any doubts on your bravery or your capability, comrade general. That you must understand. But, the Stavka see it as an error of judgement to allow Marshal Golovanov to consort with that German prostitute. She was a double agent, working against the KGB.’

  ‘And I was supposed to know that? All I was doing was catering to the old hog’s animal appetites! What else could I do? If it was anybody’s fault, it was the fault of the Mill, lot not briefing me.’

  Abramov said soberly, ‘The KGB did not know that she was a double agent, either. There have also been some demotions at Dzerzhinsky Square. I am afraid, however, that Marshal Golovanov’s kidnapping has caused serious embarrassment in the Defence Council, and that you have been perceived as the scapegoat.’

  Yeremenko was white. He walked across the room diagonally, and then walked back again. He took off his tinted spectacles. ‘Operation Byliny,’ he said. ‘Without my direction, it could never have happened.’

  ‘I repeat, comrade general, that nobody has doubted your ability or your patriotism.’

  ‘Well,’ said Yeremenko, ‘it seems that I have no choice.’

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ said Abramov, trying to be solicitous, but secretly relieved.