Novikov understood Bykov’s dissatisfaction. Bykov did not like him. When Novikov was being considered for the position of Bykov’s second in command, Bykov had said, “Well, I can’t say that would be wrong. Novikov knows what he’s doing. Still, he is rather quarrelsome. And conceited. Not a man who knows how to get the best out of people.”
And when Novikov was put forward for the Order of the Red Banner, Bykov had said, “Give the man a star—that’ll do.” And Novikov had indeed only been awarded the Order of the Red Star. But in winter, when there was talk of Novikov being transferred to one of the Army HQs, Bykov had been very upset, saying he’d never be able to get by without him. And when Novikov asked to be transferred to a front-line unit, Bykov’s refusal had been no less categorical.
Whenever anyone in the section was asked a difficult question, they always replied without hesitation, “Go straight to Novikov. Bykov will just keep you for an hour and a half in his anteroom. He’ll be in a meeting, or listening to a report, or having a rest. And when you get to speak to him, he’ll just say, ‘Ask Novikov. I’ve delegated this to him.’”
It was out of respect for Novikov’s abilities rather than for his rank that the commandant usually assigned him one of the best billets at each new location. The head of the service section, a man with few illusions about people, always gave Novikov the best cigarettes and the best gabardine for his uniform. And even the waitresses in the canteen used to serve him out of turn, saying, “The colonel never has a spare moment. We mustn’t keep him waiting.”
Battalion Commissar Cheprak, the secretary of the military soviet, once told Novikov that the Front second in command, looking through the list of commanders to be called to an important meeting, had said, “You know what Bykov’s like. Get hold of Novikov.”
Bykov was clearly aware of incidents like this, and he did not like it when Novikov was invited to meetings of the military soviet. Recently he had been more irritated than ever; he had heard about the memorandum Novikov had filed. As well as outlining plans and ideas of his own, Novikov had volunteered his criticisms of an important operation—and Bykov knew that the commander-in-chief had been impressed. He felt upset that Novikov had not even consulted him; he should not have bypassed his immediate superior.
Bykov saw himself as an experienced and valuable commander, with an exceptional knowledge of military regulations and an equally fine grasp of the complex system for the classification of documents. His files and archives were in perfect order and his staff carried out their duties with impeccable discipline. Making war, Bykov believed, was simple enough; getting people to understand the rules of war was a great deal harder.
Some of the questions Bykov asked were very strange indeed: “But how come they had no ammunition?”
“Their own dump was blown up and there had been no deliveries to the support-services dump.”
“Well, it makes no sense to me. It’s just not the way to go about things,” Bykov had replied with a shrug. “It’s every commander’s duty to keep a full stock and half as much again in reserve.”
Noticing Bykov’s sullen expression, Novikov thought about how, in matters of more personal concern, this man could show considerable flexibility and resourcefulness. When it came to imposing his own authority, he adapted only too well to changing circumstances. Military regulations might have nothing to say about such things, but he certainly knew how to get rid of someone unwanted, how to find an opponent’s weak spot and how to present himself in the best possible light.
After quickly sizing him up, Novikov concluded that even Bykov’s areas of expertise were of doubtful value.
“Afanasy Georgievich,” Novikov began, “may I ask you about another matter?”
By using Bykov’s first name and patronymic, he was intimating that he now wanted to speak about something quite different. Bykov gestured to him to sit down.
“Please do. I’m listening.”
“Afanasy Georgievich, it’s about Darensky.”
“Darensky?” replied Bykov, raising his eyebrows. “And what exactly about Darensky?”
Novikov could see at once that he was not going to get anywhere. This angered him.
“I think you already know. He’s a gifted commander. Why have him kicking his heels in the reserves when he could be doing something useful?”
Bykov shook his head. “I don’t need him myself, and I think you can get by without him too.”
“But Darensky did, the other day, prove to be right as regards the point under discussion.”
“That’s beside the point.”
“But it’s precisely the point. Darensky has a remarkable gift for divining the enemy’s intentions from only minimal data.”
“Then he should transfer to intelligence. I’m not interested in fortune-telling.”
Novikov let out a sigh. “I don’t understand. The man’s a born staff officer—and you don’t want to use him. And I’m not a staff officer at all. I’m a tank man—I apply for a transfer, and you won’t release me.”
Bykov grunted, took out his gold pocket watch, wrinkled his brow in surprise and held his watch to his ear.
“He wants his supper,” thought Novikov.
“Well, that’s all,” said Bykov. “You can go now.”
25
NOVIKOV was summoned towards eleven o’clock in the evening.
A tall guard with a sub-machine gun asked in a friendly yet respectful voice, “Whom do you wish to see, comrade Colonel?”
Whether Front HQ was in the sombre halls of some old palace or in a little cottage with a pretty front garden, the atmosphere in the commander-in-chief’s anteroom was always the same. The curtains were always drawn, it was always half dark and everyone always spoke in a whisper, glancing every now and then at the inner door. The waiting generals would be looking anxious and even the telephones would seem to have a muted ring, as if afraid of disturbing the general solemnity.
Novikov was first to arrive. Cheprak, the secretary of the military soviet, was sitting at his desk; frowning a little, he was reading a book. He had the sallow face of a man who works all night and sleeps during the day.
An orderly covered in medals was eating his supper, his plate on the windowsill. Seeing Novikov, he sighed and got to his feet. Taking his plate with him, his medals tinkling sadly, he walked lazily into an adjoining room.
“Not here yet?” asked Novikov, nodding in the direction of the inner door.
“No, he’s here all right,” said Cheprak, speaking normally, as if they were in the canteen—not in his usual anteroom voice. He slapped his hand down on his book and said, “What a life we once had, back in the days of peace!”
Cheprak stood up and walked about the room. He went over to the windowsill and beckoned Novikov to join him. Then he switched into Ukrainian, which Novikov had never heard him speak before, and asked, “What do you make of it all?”
Novikov looked at him questioningly. Cheprak returned his look. His eyes, as always, were intelligent and sardonic. “Do you happen to know,” Cheprak continued, “who’s the commander-in-chief of the Southern Front?”
“I do.”
“You may have known once, but you don’t know any longer. The commander-in-chief has just been replaced.” Cheprak went on staring at Novikov, as if wondering whether he would be taken aback by this news. Novikov was not taken aback, but he could see that Cheprak was agitated and he understood why.
He could also see that Cheprak was expecting him to ask questions. But he did not respond.
“Goodness knows what we’re in for now,” Cheprak continued, looking bewildered. “Apparently we’ve all got too used to yielding ground: all the way from Tarnopol to the Volga. Retreat, retreat, retreat—they say we’ve developed a psychology of retreat. Our Front’s been renamed now. Since the twelfth of the month, it’s no longer the Southwestern Front but the Stalingrad Front. There’s no longer any such thing as a south-western axis.”56
“Who told you all thi
s?” asked Novikov.
Cheprak smiled. Without answering, he went on, “We may all get sent back beyond the Volga. The Don may be entrusted to a new Front, with an entirely new HQ.”
“Is that what you think?”
“Well, there was a radio communication, but just who said what I can’t tell you.”
Cheprak looked around him. Perhaps aware that he too might soon be transferred to some other position, he said, “Remember how you came out from the operations room in Valuiki and said cheerily, ‘We’ve won the battle for Kharkov!’ And it was just then that the Germans broke through from Barvenkovo and attacked Balakleya.”
“What makes you bring that up?” Novikov retorted. “Anything can happen, as you well know. And I was hardly alone—one or two people rather more important than me were saying just the same.”
Cheprak shrugged. “It just came to mind . . . And we had some fine men. Gorodnyansky and Lieutenant General Kostenko, the Front C-in-C . . . And divisional commanders Bobkin, Stepanov and Kuklin. And there was a splendid journalist, Rozenfeld—he could tell stories all day and all night. Not one of them still with us—it hurts to think of them.”
The meeting of the military soviet was clearly going to start late.
There were so many important figures in the anteroom that even major generals remained on their feet. Not daring to sit on the chairs and sofas, they stood by the windows, chatting quietly and glancing now and again at the commander-in-chief’s closed door. Ivanchin, the soviet’s political member, walked briskly in, merely nodding in response to greetings. He looked troubled and exhausted.
In a loud voice, he asked Cheprak, “Is he in?”
Cheprak replied hurriedly, “Yes, but he’s asked you to wait for a few minutes.” He said this with the respectful look of a subordinate obliged to repeat the words of his boss: had it depended on him alone, he would, naturally, have shown Ivanchin in straightaway.
After looking around the waiting room, Ivanchin turned to an artillery general. “Well, are you all right in your city billet?” he asked. “No problems with malaria?”
The artillery general was the only man present not to be speaking in a hushed voice. Another general, recently arrived from Moscow, had been whispering something to him and he was laughing loudly. “Everything’s all right so far,” he replied to Ivanchin. With a nod towards the general standing beside him, he went on, “And I’ve met a friend. The two of us served together in Central Asia.”
He walked over to Ivanchin and they exchanged a few more words—the kind of brief remarks that make sense only to people who see each other at work day after day.
“And yesterday’s?” Novikov heard the artillery general ask.
“To be concluded in the next issue, as they say,” Ivanchin replied. The artillery general laughed once again, covering his mouth with a large, broad hand.
People were, of course, trying to guess what the two men were talking about—but it could have been almost anything. Before an important meeting, no one wants to talk prematurely about what really matters; they prefer to discuss trivialities.
“And as for the local hospitality!” said a deep voice. “I heard my men say that the Military District canteen was checking their ration cards and refusing to serve them. ‘If you’re from the front line,’ I kept hearing, ‘they turn you away. But if you’ve been safe in the rear all the time, that’s fine!’”
“It was scandalous,” said someone else. “I telephoned Ivanchin. It turned out that everything had, in fact, been agreed with Gerasimenko, the Military District commander. But those idiots in the canteen had ideas of their own. And they made out they couldn’t cope with the numbers—it meant that commanders were getting back late from their lunch break!”
“So, how does the story end?” asked a short, pink-cheeked intelligence general. He had returned from the front only an hour ago and all this was new to him.
“Simply enough,” replied the previous speaker. “A certain person,” he gestured discreetly towards Ivanchin, “picked up his phone and said a few words to Gerasimenko. And after that the commandant was waiting in the doorway, greeting everyone from the front with bread and salt!”57
The intelligence general asked Bykov, “How’s your new billet? All right?”
“Yes,” replied Bykov. “There’s a bath—and south-facing windows.”
“I’d forgotten what it’s like to sleep in a city apartment. It seems strange now. As for baths—who needs baths? The moment we got here, I went straight to the bathhouse. That’s good enough for us soldiers!”
“So, how was your journey, comrade General?” asked the commander with the deep voice.
“All I can say,” the intelligence general replied, “is that it’s the last time I’ll be driving anywhere in the daytime.”
“What, did you have to bale out into the ditch—as my driver likes to put it?”
“Don’t ask,” the general replied with a laugh. “Especially as we were approaching the Don. They could hardly have flown any lower. I had to leap out of the car three times. I really thought I was done for.”
Just then the inner door opened, and a quiet, slightly hoarse voice said, “Comrades, this way.”
Everyone fell silent, looking intent and severe. The banter of the last few minutes had provided a necessary respite, but it was instantly forgotten.
Marshal Timoshenko’s head was closely shaved. Even in the brightly lit room it was impossible to tell where his bald patch ended and the shaved parts began.
He walked around the room, glanced quickly but keenly into the faces of the generals standing to attention before him, reached out to touch the blackout curtain, paused and sat down. Resting his large peasant hands on the map, he thought for a moment, shook his head a little impatiently—as if, rather than him keeping the generals waiting, it had been the other way round—and said, “Well, it’s time we got started!”
The first speaker was Bykov, his deputy chief of staff.
“A pity it’s not Bagramyan,” whispered the intelligence general, who was sitting beside Novikov.58
Bykov began with the question of supplies. The railway lines across the steppe were being bombed regularly and German planes had also begun laying mines in the Volga. A cargo ship had been lost between Stalingrad and Kamyshin. It was, in principle, possible to transport both supplies and reinforcements along the Saratov–Astrakhan railway, the far side of the Volga. But this too was within range of the German bombers. Moreover, everything would need to be conveyed in three stages: along the railway to the Volga, across the Volga into Stalingrad, and from Stalingrad to the front line. The various crossing points on the Don were also being bombed repeatedly. There would clearly be problems with transport for some time to come.
“All too true,” said Ivanchin with a sigh.
Bykov was not spouting platitudes; he was speaking the language of a professional soldier. Everything he had to say about the situation of the Soviet people and state was concrete and specific and his analysis of the military situation was unsparing. Nevertheless, Novikov frowned. Bykov was still not hitting the nail on the head.
“When, in the late afternoon of the day before yesterday, enemy mobile units appeared in his rear, the army commander took up a defensive position on the banks of the watercourse,” Bykov went on calmly. Turning to the map, he casually outlined the combat zone with a pale, short-nailed finger. “But the army commander’s HQ had been subjected to intensive air raids for the previous twenty-four hours, his telephone lines had been severed and his radio transmitter had also been out of action for four hours; as a result his orders failed to reach the commander of the division constituting his left flank. The army commander also sent signallers, but they too were unable to get through. The only line of communication had been straddled not only by enemy tanks but also by infantry, evidently brought up in trucks.”
“Anything new to report?” Timoshenko asked curtly.
“Yes, comrade Commander-in-Chief, th
ere is something new.” Bykov glanced quickly at Novikov, who had briefed him an hour earlier. “Permission to continue, comrade Commander-in-Chief?”
Timoshenko nodded.
“The divisional staff lost contact with the regiments yesterday morning. German tanks broke through to the command post. The commander suffered severe concussion, but he was evacuated by air ambulance. The chief of staff had his legs crushed; he died then and there. There was no further communication with the regiments.”
“Hardly surprising,” said Ivanchin, “given that the divisional command post no longer existed.”
“What was the name of that chief of staff?” asked Timoshenko.
“Comrade Commander-in-Chief, he hadn’t been here at all long,” said Bykov. “He’d just been transferred from the Far East.”
Timoshenko went on looking at Bykov expectantly.
Bykov narrowed his eyes. His face took on the suffering look of a man struggling to find the right word. He fluttered his hand and tapped his foot on the floor, but this did not help.
“Colonel . . . Colonel . . . The name’s on the tip of my tongue . . . A new division.”
“The division no longer exists, the men are all dead, but you still think of it as a new division,” said Timoshenko. With a weary smile he went on, “Names, names—how many times must I say this? You must know your men’s names!” Turning to Novikov, he asked, “Do you know his name, Colonel?”
Novikov named the man who had died: “Lieutenant Colonel Alferov.”
“Memory eternal!” said Timoshenko.59
After a brief silence, Bykov gave a little cough and asked, “Permission to continue?”
“Please do!”
“And so, with this division now dispersed and fragmented, the army was severed from immediate contact with the army on its left flank.” This was Bykov’s delicate way of saying that the Germans had breached the Soviet front line and that their tanks and infantry had then streamed through this breach. “Twenty-four hours later, however,” Bykov continued, now speaking a little more loudly, “the integrity of the front line was re-established thanks to a skilful and energetic counter-attack by an infantry division under the command of Colonel Savchenko.” Bykov looked Timoshenko in the eye as he pronounced the name Savchenko, as if hoping to compensate for having forgotten Alferov. Pointing to the map, he then said, “And this was the configuration of the front line at sixteen hundred hours.”
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