World in Flames

it down with more vodka, and adroitly mopping the fat that dribbled over his bottom lip. “Look, Comrade, I’m not going to fuck around with you any longer. I try to be nice, but being an ace has gone to your head.” He jabbed his fork, laden with fat-soaked bread, toward Marchenko. “We are fighting a war down here as well as you are in the air.” He gobbled the bread and downed another vodka. “I heard you missed the American?”

“There’ll be more.”

“You come to the point readily,” said Nefski, turning full onto him.

“How do you mean?”

“There won’t be any more opportunities for you if you don’t convince her to spill her guts.” Marchenko sneered with derision at the threat, though his reaction was mitigated somewhat by the tenderloin — done to perfection, the best he’d ever tasted.

“Oh—” said Nefski, with his interrogator’s unnerving ability to predict his victim’s next response. “You think you are so important I wouldn’t dare? That Daddy would protect you?” He stopped eating for a moment and wiped his mouth, using his thumbnail to push a small sliver of bone from his teeth. “Listen, Colonel Hero, I, too, have connections. If push comes to shove, we could all get bruised, but comrade Chernko swings more weight than your father any day of the week. Are you so stupid not to know that? A fighter pilot is important, but if the rail lines and munitions keep getting hit, your fighter pilots’ll have no gasoline with which to fly.” He pointed his knife at Marchenko. “Besides, I don’t have to bother with any of this official nonsense, crawling around, cap in hand, like we did for a while in Gorbachev’s time. That’s all finished, my friend.” He tore off another piece of the baguette. “You know about Lieutenant Yablonski?”

“Never heard of him.”

“No, because he wasn’t around long enough, that’s why. Transferred here from the Western TVD. We asked him to help us, too, when he was here. He didn’t.”

“So?”

“A truck. The brakes failed one night. On the base.”

“You threatening me?”

“I’m telling you a story,” said Nefski, mopping up the residual fat.

Marchenko fell silent, took another vodka, and smiled. “What if I told you I’d been wearing a tape recorder?”

Nefski belched and wiped his mouth again with the stained napkin. “Don’t be childish, fighter man. You’re out of your depth. Completely.” He turned to Marchenko. “It is the first thing we check.”

“You’re bluffing.”

Nefski sat back and opened his jacket to reveal a small black box, covered with perforated black leather like a transistor radio, less than half a cigarette pack in size. “Mike detector,” he explained. “Standard equipment. As necessary to us, Comrade, as oxygen to you when you fly. If you fly again.” Nefski closed his coat and resumed eating. “I’ve tried to be nice to you, but always you want to play the big man. So now I’m telling you, hero pilot. I give you forty-eight hours. If that little cunt of yours doesn’t start telling us what we want to know, I’ll let her loose among the other scum. They’ll fuck her dead and you won’t fly again. Ever. Ofitsiant! — Waiter!”

“Sir?” The walrus was by his side.

“Telefon!”

Next minute the waiter was frantically unraveling a phone cord like a man readying to abandon ship. Nefski pushed the phone toward Marchenko. “Call your base commander. Tell him I want to talk to him.” Nefski was still chewing, staring at Marchenko, daring him.

Marchenko dialed, and when the base commander came on, his tone was terse, clipped, authoritarian, asking Marchenko what he wanted. Nefski grabbed the receiver, identifying himself brusquely to the commander, then held the receiver far enough away so that Marchenko could hear as well. The change in the commander’s tone upon hearing Nefski had been instantaneous. Marchenko was disgusted. The man was senior fighter commander TVD, yet his tone was cloyingly subservient. Nefski smiled and spoke brusquely to the commander, “I want you in my office within half an hour.”

“Yes, Colonel,” came the response. “Of course, I’ll—”

Nefski put down the receiver and stared at Marchenko. “And I want that slut talking in forty-eight hours.” With that, he left.

Marchenko sat, the vodka cupped in his hands, his eyes fixed on the little oily sea inside the glass, and waited for what he thought was Nefski’s final insult: leaving him to pay the bill. When it didn’t come, he called over the waiter to hurry it up, but the walrus informed him, “Monsieur, there is no bill for Colonel Nefski’s guests.”

“Oh,” Marchenko said, feeling momentarily like a naive schoolboy, and grabbing his cap and coat, made his way out into the blinding snow. He hailed a troika — more of them about now that gas rationing was even more severe than normal. With the harness bells jingling, the outer two horses’ nostrils flaring, the steam of their breath almost instantly frozen to icicles, Marchenko sat back into the troika’s deep embrace, pulling down his cap, and the collar of his greatcoat and the rough serge blankets up about his ears. As the shushing of the snow, like the threshing of wheat, cut through the silence of the dark streets, the old, grizzled driver, his beard a clump of watery ice, snapped the whip, driving Marchenko fast toward the Jewish sector.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

“Thank you all for coming,” said SAS Major Rye, his voice surprisingly soft, so much so that Brentwood, in the third row of the platoon, could barely hear him. “As usual, we like to bring you in on a Monday,” Rye continued, “so those who won’t be staying with us can rejoin their units next weekend.”

The Aussie put up his hand.

“Yes, Mr. Lewis?” asked Rye quietly.

The Australian was as surprised as everybody else that the major knew his name straight off. And Mr. Lewis! “Stone the crows.” said Lewis. “You blokes don’t waste any time.”

“What’s your question, Mr. Lewis?” asked Rye politely.

“You mean the course is only a week long?” asked the Aussie.

“No,” replied Rye, again not as if he were answering an NCO or “other rank” but speaking to Lewis more as an equal, a member of the same sports team. There were obviously no “Lords” and “Others” entrances to SAS cricket grounds.

“The course,” explained Rye, “normally takes several months. Naturally we’ve had to streamline this to a matter of weeks because of the difficulties over the water, but most of you have already gone through some sort of specialist training — in part. I do emphasize in part, however. As a prerequisite for volunteering for SAS tryout, you must have all seen action and be considered mature. We are not looking for, nor do we want, young men who either have not been under fire or who have what we deem to be romantic notions of combat. In all, our screening process allows us to reduce the course to five weeks, including a ‘sort out’ first week.” He paused for more questions.

“Sir,” Thelman asked, “are we being trained for any specific missions?”

“Yes and no.”

“That’s bloody helpful,” said Lewis. The major had no difficulty hearing, even if he spoke softly.

“It means, Lewis, that if you and your colleagues succeed, you will form a pool — or I should say add to a pool, albeit a relatively small one — from which we can draw from time to time should we receive specific requests. But as it is a small pool, and only those of you who pass tryout will learn the organizational structure necessitated by our limited number, we are rather particular about what requests we respond to. In short, if we think they can be handled by line regiments, we say so. Our intention here, quite frankly, is to be the unit of last resort. We do what others say can’t be done or is overfraught with risk. We do not counsel immodesty, gentlemen, but I think it fair to say SAS has a long, and I believe distinguished, tradition. You’ll hear more of that as you proceed— If you proceed.” The major paused to make sure everyone was giving his full attention.