them clearly in the picture.”
Brigadier Soames felt it his duty to voice his skepticism.”Mr. President, I really don’t think the Siberians would have gone on the offensive against our troops in the Urals in the western sector if they didn’t think they could win this thing. And if we use nuclear weapons no one wins. I don’t think they’re bluffing, Mr. President. I didn’t want to unduly depress anyone, but my aide informs the that I’m also incorrect in my estimate of how many divisions the Siberians have at hand. It is in fact in excess of sixty-five. That’s well over a million and a—”
“Yes, yes, I know, Brigadier, but threatening to use the MX doesn’t mean we have to. Our bluff could work. They might just cave in when they see our determination.”
“I beg to differ, sir. I think—”
“Well, let’s give it the old college try, shall we, Brigadier?”
“By all means, sir. By all means.”
Just as Press Secretary Trainor had never heard the president take, as Mayne would have put it, “the Lord’s name in vain,” neither had he heard the president use “shall we?” before. The president, he thought, had handled the brigadier — and thus in effect the joint Allied high command’s anticipated criticism— rather well. “Shall we?” had just the right tone to it — one of confident authority, unbowed by the frightening possibility of having to confront more man sixty fresh, highly trained Siberian divisions — twice the total number of U.S. divisions. Perhaps the president
The president’s message was transmitted in plain language so that all the Siberian forces would be aware of it. A smart move, Trainor acknowledged, in that there might have been some Siberian units reluctant to go along with Novosibirsk’s decision to attack the Allied forces east of Moscow.
Though he didn’t know it, Trainor was right. There
Novosibirsk’s Central Committee said it respected his loyalty to Moscow but appealed to Cherlak to place his responsibility to the United Siberian Soviet Republics above any personal loyalty to a defeated Moscow. Cherlak replied that his hesitancy to throw in his lot with Novosibirsk was not merely a matter of personal loyalty but one stemming from the oath he had taken to the Russian federation which Chernko now headed.
Novosibirsk decided there were only two ways of dealing with Cherlak: shoot him as an example to any other undecided officers or show him Chernko’s plan. They sent an emissary to Tyumen. Cherlak was notoriously self- centered — some said he was so full of himself he must think himself a czar. But he knew when he had met his match, and upon seeing Chernko’s plan was unabashedly awed.
“It’s brilliant,” he conceded. “Tell Novosibirsk the Third Motorized is with them.”
CHAPTER FOUR
As Freeman walked toward his house, the wind, cold for Monterey, carried with it the invigorating tang of sea air mixed with the oppressive smell of a high-sulfur-content oil, the lower grade of crude still being rationed for civilian use, while consumer and antipollution groups pressed hard for the less sulfurous grades previously reserved for the military to be released for the domestic market now that the war was over. Freeman saw that the man spread-eagled in the sand and dune grass was dead, his T-shirt dark cherry red, a Beethoven motif faintly visible in the clinging stain of blood. Freeman heard the sound of sirens in the distance; seemed to be one coming, one going. His battle-trained hearing was acute; he did not make the mistake of confusing the echo for its origin — a mistake that had proved fatal for those troops during the war who had come up against the five-truck platoons of forty multiple-layered BM-21 Katyushas — truck-mounted rockets — for the first time.
“General Freeman?”
“Yes?”
It was a young female police officer, — short-cropped blond hair, sky-blue eyes, her khaki uniform smart, creases crisply ironed, green side piping without a wrinkle, the Smith and Wesson.38 high on her left side, he noticed. “My wife?” he said, the smile he’d had for the welcome-home crowd now gone. He could have been back at Minsk asking for SITREPS on unit deployment, his tone concerned, his control born in part from having witnessed what the Russians had called the
“Is she all right?” asked the general, a cheek muscle taut, his gloved right hand now a fist.
“Critical, sir, I’m afraid. She’s en route to Peninsula Hospital.”
“What happened?” A young boy, smiling, grasping a tiny stars and stripes, started beneath the ribbon toward the general. One of the MPs gently cut him off.
“We’re not exactly sure, General,” the female officer told him.”We got a 459 in progress — breaking and entering — about eighteen minutes ago. When we got here—” The officer turned, Freeman’s gaze following her outstretched hand, her notebook obscuring the man’s legs for a moment. “We found the front gate open. Back door was closed but not locked. Apparently he entered that way — round the back. We found some blood on the back pathway. It looks as if your wife fired two shots, but he made it to the sidewalk before he collapsed.” She paused. “He’s dead.”
Freeman turned back toward the army car, its khaki/black/green wave camouflage paint dulled even further by moody stratus threatening the coast as far up as Santa Cruz. His driver was pale, waiting anxiously, the situation obviously beyond her experience.
“General, sir—” said the policewoman. “I know it’s inconvenient, but could you identify the weapon your wife fired?”
“What?”
“The weapon your wife fired, sir. The man who broke in — well, he — he used a knife, General. We assume that Mrs. Freeman was the one who—”
Freeman seemed to be looking through the crowd, through the house, his right fist balling in his left. “Walther,” he said. “Nine millimeter.”
“This it, sir?” asked another police officer, holding up a Ziplock plastic bag containing a nine-millimeter automatic.
“Looks like it,” said Freeman, glancing at the gun. “Serial number’s in safety deposit.” He was looking out to sea, eyes squinting in the metallic glare that was still present though the sun was covered with cloud. “First Savings and Loan,” he told them. “Duplicate license at the base. Fort Ord.”
“Registered in your name, General?”
“Yes. Look, I’d like to get to the hospital. If there are any more questions you can—”
A flashbulb popped. He froze — first rule for any combat soldier caught in a flare. Natural instinct was to dive, but movement was what the enemy was looking for. If you could steel yourself to stand perfectly still, chances were they either wouldn’t see you or would mistake you for something else. It was only a second, but to the crowd outside his house it looked as if the general were momentarily transfixed with fright. Freeman sensed it and glowered furiously at the photographer.
Before Freeman arrived at the emergency ward at Peninsula Hospital there was a story on all the networks that the wife of General Douglas Freeman had been the victim of an attempted burglary gone wrong, was critically wounded, and that the general was — as the still photo accompanying the sound bite seemed to indicate—”visibly shaken.” The photo was also picked up by Reuters and UPI, and the implicit suggestion, made explicitly in the tabloids of the La Roche chain, was that the reason Freeman had been recalled in such haste after the Moscow surrender was due to the “hard-to-disguise fact” that the general’s nerves were already shot.
