World War III

“Can your KGB guarantee it, Rudenski?” Gorny turned to him angrily. “Can the KGB guarantee no more food riots in the Ukraine? No more outbreaks in Bessarabia? No danger of the further disintegration of the Warsaw Pact? No problems with our armies in—”

“Please, comrade Chairman!” Marshal Budner rose from his chair. “The loyalty of every unit of the Soviet Armed Forces is not even open to question.”

“I question it,” Gorny shot back. “Don’t be naive, my dear Marshal. You know we have been beseiged by reports of desertions.”

“Every army has them,” Budner replied. “They are the criminals, the drunkards, the antiparty opportunists in certain units. It is nothing of great—”

“Please spare me,” Gorny said. “Sit down, Marshal.”

Budner began to object. “But—”

“Please,” said The Bull.

Budner took his seat, scratching it across the floor in childish protest.

Gorny stood, then paced behind his chair. “Comrades, you are all intelligent people. When we meet privately you are honest, frank, blunt”—he glanced at Venchikof—”and caring. Why is it that whenever you are gathered together you are mindless of mistakes, of conceding errors, of acknowledging problems?” The large room was silent as he walked to a large window and stared into the cobblestone street. “There was a time, comrades, when that square was brimming with traffic. Even in the dead of winter. People, cars, buses — activity that reflected an energetic and vigorous city. Now…” He sighed.

“Now, except for a few bundled passersby and the looming Byzantine spires of St. Basil’s, the square exudes little more than pronounced desolation.”

“Comrade Chairman.” It was Venchikof’s high-pitched voice. “When you present your redevelopment program to the Central Committee—”

Gorny swung back to face the table. “If the world perceives us as a stricken cartoon, announcements of dozens of five-year plans will not change our image.”

“There is only one perception that matters these days,” Rudenski said. He nodded down the table toward Marshall Budner. “The Soviet might. We are not simply sickle and hammer, comrade. Somehow that image is lost in your assessments. No one has any misconception of the potency of the Soviet military or its supremacy.”

“Truly spoken,” Gorny said. “But if we have to prove our military superiority, we have failed, comrade Rudenski.”

The head of the KGB nodded politely. “A matter of opinion, I think, comrade Chairman.” He glanced at Gorny with a measured look. “Have you a solution to our dilemma then?” Rudenski half smiled. He pursed his lips. “I’m working on it, comrade Chairman,” he said. “I’m working on it.”

FORT WAINWRIGHT

FAIRBANKS, ALASKA

1530 HRS

Jake Caffey stepped off the transport plane into a coldness that singed his lungs with his first breath.

Snow and wind whipped his face and caused his eyes to water as he fought his way towards the operations office. Outside the door was a sign for newcomers.

WELCOME TO FORT WAINWRIGHT HOME OF THE YUKON COMMAND

171ST INFANTRY BRIGADE GEN. G. F. ROBERTS, COMMANDING

Caffey caught his breath. When his eyes had cleared he stared through the frosted window at the desolate runway and the ominous gray clouds that seemed to hang low enough to touch. He blew on his hands. He knew it was cold in Alaska, but Jesus Christ…

“Colonel Caffey?”

Caffey turned around to find a large master sergeant standing before him.

“Welcome to Wainwright, Colonel,” the sergeant said. He handed Caffey a new arctic parka. “You’ll find you’ll need this, sir. That overcoat might be good back home, but it ain’t worth a damn up here, sir.”

“Thank you. Sergeant…?”

“Bufford, sir. Melvin Bufford. Brigade command NCOIC. I have a jeep to take you to your quarters, Colonel.”

Caffey changed from his overcoat to the parka. “Jeeps run up here, do they?” He was only half joking.

“Only for very short runs.” The sergeant smiled. “We use snowcats otherwise. It does get a little chilly in the winter hereabouts for normal vehicles.”

Caftey zipped the parka closed. “And how chilly is it now?”

The sergeant shrugged. “Not too bad, sir. About twenty-five, thirty below.”

M/Sgt. Bufford drove. The streets, Caffey noted with mild surprise, were paved and relatively clear of snow. Fort Wainwright was not a large post, and that fact was noticeable in the few buildings Caffey saw until Bufford explained that most of the operations offices and all of the personnel quarters were below ground. It wasn’t for strategic reasons, the sergeant said, it was simply for logical cost-efficiency-underground buildings were a fraction of the cost to heat than aboveground buildings. It had only taken the army forty years to see that.

Caffey’s quarters were in Sub Block B3, No. 16. It wasn’t enormous, but it was meticulously clean.