guard stepped forward, driving the Kalashnikov’s butt into Ivan’s stomach. As Ivan fell, the officer kicked him hard on the back, keeping him down in the snow.
“You bastard!” she shouted at Nefski.
Nefski opened the window and made a sign to the officer, and a squad of six of the nine guards marched Alexander and Myshka back toward the cells. The officer had drawn his pistol. Now Nefski knew that Alexsandra finally understood her lover’s name wouldn’t protect her — or her brothers.
“She’s tough,” Nefski said to Ilya in mock admiration, while lighting a second cigarette from the first. It was starting to get dark, the jagged ice at the confluence of the Amur and Ussuri rivers now silhouetted like black daggers as it broke up the dying sunlight. The officer in the courtyard, his foot still on Ivan, looked up at Nefski again, waiting.
“Well?” Nefski asked Alexsandra. “What’s it to be?”
She said nothing, her gaze below transfixed, her knees shaking.
Nefski dropped his hand. The officer fired at point-blank range. She screamed, hands leaping to her face, then turned to attack Nefski, but Ilya held her, dragging her back into the chair. Nefski turned his back on her and walked to the window, smoking his cigarette. Two guards entered to return her to the cell.
“Next time,” Nefski told her without turning around, “it will be the second oldest, Alexander, and then Myshka.”
With her screams reverberating down the stairwell, she was taken away. Ilya asked Nefski when they would try again with Alexsandra. Nefski said nothing.
“Do you think she’ll crack?” Ilya asked him.
“Possibly.” He paused to draw heavily on the cigarette. “There’s more than one way to skin a cat.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
David and his driver, Parkin, had arrived in Bouillon, where Lili’s parents lived, only minutes before the first salvo of long-distance Russian SS-11s crashed into the ancient town. The SS-11s, designated “rockets” by NATO, rather than “missiles,” with their nuclear warhead connotation, made a strange shuffling noise in the air. The first rocket had exploded high up on the spur of Ardennes woodland upon which the ancient castle of Bouillon sat, overlooking the confluence of the two flood-swollen arms of the Semois River that embraced the ancient Walloonian town.
David had come to tell the Malmedys about Lili, but within minutes, people were rushing for shelters, Parkin and David finding themselves separated, calling out, agreeing to meet back at the Humvee parked outside the Cafe Renoir. Soon they lost sight of one another, Parkin finding himself carried by the crowd into a shelter holding about sixty people. Mostly locals, they went out of their way to make Parkin feel welcome, telling him, as if it were somehow a comfort, that the Russians launched their rocket attacks only in bad weather when Allied bombing of their launch sites was limited, and that the Russians were not really trying to hit Bouillon but the Fabrique Nationale small-arms complex north of Liege and Allied supply depots that had been identified by SPETS dropped behind Allied lines into the Ardennes. The CEP — circular error of probability — one of the elderly Bouillonese told him, was plus or minus two hundred meters, “well over,” the man explained to Parkin slowly in English, “how do you say, monsieur — over ‘alf a mile, eh? Bah! The Russians cannot hit anything.”
“Then, monsieur,” said another elderly gent, “why are we in here?”
They had to remain in the shelter for over an hour, and with the sharp splitting sounds of wood exploding in the Ardennes and the earth-shuddering thumps of hits on Bouillon, Parkin, pushing his schoolboy French to its limit, asked if anyone knew of Monsieur Malmedy and where he lived.
When the “all clear” sounded, even before Parkin helped the frail Monsieur Malmedy up the stairs to street level, they could hear a commotion. People were pouring out of the shelters, but suddenly all movement seemed to cease, many standing with mouths agape — like stunned mullet, thought Parkin. A huge cloud of dust and smoke obliterated the castle, its eastern ramparts no more than an avalanche of smoking rock and debris that had cut a great swath out of the forest beneath the castle, some of the rubble having taken out a dozen or so trees and houses along the esplanade. Fire trucks were already screaming across both bridges, and over the river they could see trees near the railway station aflame, despite the drizzling rain. Parkin looked about for the Humvee, relieved to see it still there, but Brentwood was nowhere in sight. “Bloody hell!”
“Where are the other shelters?” Parkin asked him, gesticulating back to the one they had just emerged from, but Malmedy was unsure of what he meant, another man helping out, pointing to the white office building off to their right. Parkin indicated to Malmedy that he should follow him. Malmedy hesitated.
“Lili,” said Parkin.
“Ah!” the old man happily exclaimed, and graciously motioned Parkin to go before him.
Bloody hell, thought Parkin. He thinks I’m taking him to Lili. Parkin looked about for Brentwood but couldn’t see him. Surely he couldn’t be far from the Cafe Renoir. Policemen were already on duty on the nearest of the two bridges, stopping outgoing traffic from the old part of the town to allow an ambulance, its siren blaring, to pull out of the congested line leading from the rail station.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Deep in the Montana missile silo, it didn’t matter whether it was night or day. Only the clock told Melissa Lange and her co-team member, Shirley Cochrane, that it was 1730 hours. Having received the command, Melissa sat in the high-backed, red upholstered chair, slid it forward on its glide rails and buckled up, waiting for Shirley. When Melissa heard the click, she began the litany. “Hands on keys. Key them on my mark. Three — two — one — mark.” Both watched the clock, its long, white second hand having passed zero and now sweeping to ten seconds before 1731.
“Light on,” confirmed Shirley. “Light off.” The second ten seconds passed, both women tense. “Hands on keys,” instructed Melissa.
“Hands on keys,” came Shirley’s confirmation.
“Initiate on my mark. Five, four, three, two, one. Now, I’ll watch the clock.”
“I’ve got the light,” said Shirley. “Light on. Light off.”
“Release key,” ordered Melissa.
“Key released.”
They waited for the launch code to come in, their one-crew key-turn having initiated only one “vote” in the launch process. The ringing, indicating “launch message coming through,” sounded like an old telex chattering inside a metal box. They were now on “standby,” requiring another vote from another LCC — launch control center — in order to go to “strategic alert,” the yellow lights changing to white as they moved from the “key release” waiting mode to “launch-fire-release” mode, after which the five nuclear warheads would be sent streaking toward their targets, their “infinity” delay shifting to a ten-second delay from target, each of the two women praying for the ILC — inhibit launch command’—to be activated instead of the “valid” word/numeral message for Armageddon.
They began to relax, waiting for the instructor to call it off and tell them it was a drill. Suddenly there was a high-pitched electronic tone and a man’s even, modulated voice above a sizzle of static. “Charlie… Tango… Papa… Sierra… Oscar. Stand by. Message follows.” Then came the repeat, “Message follows.”
Both women, heads bent, pencils poised, waited, then they began to copy. “Victor… November… Uniform… Oscar… Charlie… Tango… Hotel… X-ray… Sierra… Papa… Papa… Lima… Two… Seven… November. Foxtrot… Echo…
