a snow-dazzling embankment, the sky the bluest he’d ever seen. Smacking the
Norton looked stunned.
“They talk about the Treaty of Versailles,” thundered Freeman, frightening a bird from a nearby perch, the bird startling Norton, who reached for his sidearm. “Remember what Churchill said about the Treaty of Versailles?” said Freeman. “It was an armistice, he said, for twenty years. It’s the same here, goddamn it! Dick, if we don’t run with the bit while we have it between our teeth, we’ll have to fight these jokers again. Didn’t we learn anything from that bastard Hussein?” Freeman was beside himself, right glove smashing into his left. “Why don’t they let the do it, Dick? What the hell’s the matter with them back there at the White House?”
“President’s under an awful lot of pressure, General, for this cease-fire. Nobody wants any more fighting.”
“Neither do I, damn it! But can’t you see? Can’t anybody see that if we don’t finish it now, we’ll have to finish it somewhere else — forced into a rematch at a time and place of
Norton, quite frankly, didn’t have the courage to show the general the copies of the other newspapers’ headlines. “BRING OUR BOYS HOME!” the La Roche papers cried. “ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!”
“They’re praising you a lot, General. Saying if it hadn’t been for your brilliance, your planning—”
Freeman wasn’t listening. “They must be made to understand, Dick. I want you to send a message to the president. Immediate. ‘Strongly suggest we finish the job. Do not trust Siberian offer, which I see as merely an opportunity to regroup — especially given their strong position on the western front. Please let my views be known to the Joint Chiefs. Sincerely, General Douglas Freeman.’ “
It was of no avail. President Mayne agreed with the American public: it was time to bring the boys home.
“YOU ARE ORDERED,” President Mayne’s reply message read, “TO CEASE ALL MILITARY OPERATIONS AT A MUTUALLY AGREED-UPON TIME WITHIN THE NEXT TWENTY-FOUR HOURS. REPEAT TWENTY-FOUR HOURS. THE NATION IS GRATEFUL FOR YOUR BRILLIANT LEADERSHIP. NOW IS THE TIME TO LEAD THE PEACE.”
Norton received the response from the White House and immediately went out to give it to the general. Freeman read it, crumpled it, and thrust it deep into his greatcoat pocket. He looked down the snow bank on the gaggle of press types trying to negotiate the slope in their frantic eagerness to interview “Dogged Doug,” a sobriquet he abhorred as much as he disliked the unwillingness of the press pool to go back to Khabarovsk now and interview some of the individuals — everyone from supply officers to grunts — who had made it possible. No, now they all wanted to be up at the front, now that it was all quiet.
“Look at ‘em!” Freeman told Norton. “By God, I’d like to bulldoze all of them into Baikal! You see, Dick? That’s how short a step it is from hosanna to hoot.”
“General, if you don’t feel up to it, perhaps we can arrange another— “
“Don’t fret, Dick. I won’t disgrace Second Army. Let the bastards come up and take their pretty pictures. Look good against the skyline, don’t I?”
“Yes, sir. It’s terrific.”
“All right then. Send ‘em up.”
The first of the press corps to make it was a woman reporter from Detroit who, barely able to get her breath, asked the general, “It’s said, General, you wanted to drive on once you’d turned the battle. Is that true?”
“I did.”
Norton looked skyward in exasperation.
“However,” continued Freeman, looking as happy as a father who’s been told his daughter has just become engaged to a parolee, “the U.S. Second Army is an instrument of national policy. I do what I am told. That is all.”
“But General—” Freeman walked through the rapturous acclaim back into his headquarters, urgent messages already coming through from the Joint Chiefs that he was, as soon as it could be arranged after the cease-fire, to make himself “available” to return to Washington for consultation.
“Ah,” he told Norton disgustedly.”Clear as the nose on my face. Far as the White House is concerned, the war is over. By God, they think it’s finished, Dick.”
At the signing of the cease-fire at Irkutsk, a dour Freeman shook hands with a dour Yesov, both flashing a smile for the cameras, Norton careful to keep Freeman out of mike range, which was just as well. “I tell you, Norton, there’s not one of them,” he said, smiling icily across the table at the Siberians, “you can stand near. Breath stinks like a goddamn—”
“General.”
Yesov was smiling again, this time for the French press.
“I don’t trust those Frogs either,” said Freeman. “They let us down when we wanted to overfly France — get that son of a bitch Khaddafy.”
“They helped us in the Iraqi war, General,” Norton whispered.
“At the last goddamn minute. Not like the Brits.”
“It’s over, General. In a few days we’ll be flying back to Khabarovsk and—” He was interrupted by applause as Yesov was acclaimed by the Siberian press — the marshal’s grin at the camera so transparently insincere, Norton thought, that it would need drastic touching up if the Siberian propaganda ministry was going to use it.
“It’s over,” Lana told Frank Shirer.
“I know,” he said, holding her, trying to feel good again. “You know that young cockney guy — all the facial burns and-”
“Yes,” she said, trying to hold her impatience, wanting to put any talk of wounds and hospitals — her work — behind her. It was time to celebrate.
“He says,” continued Shirer, stroking her hair but his mind clearly elsewhere, “that I should try for a transplant.”
She knew he could. One grisly fact about the war and the abilities of the Americans to get their wounded back more quickly than anyone else was that organ donor banks — and most servicemen were donors — were full of spare parts.
“Well, tell him you don’t want to — not now. Your fighting days are over, mister. Everyone’s fighting days are over, thank God,” she said, her hand holding his, guiding it to where she wanted it. It was the only magic that could overcome his depression at the prospect of no longer being a pilot.
“God, I love you,” he said.
“You, too.”
“Problem is, not everyone’s compatible.” For an instant she thought he was talking about them, but then realized his preoccupation about losing the eye — and a transplant — was still with him.
“All depends,” she said, “on whether you’re a candidate in the first place. Priorities.” She hesitated, then thought she might as well say it. “Some people can’t even see, honey.” But for all Shirer’s maturity, it was about as effective as telling a child to eat his broccoli because thousands were starving in Ethiopia. But for the moment, with the help of her professional knowledge of anatomy, the admonition was working, and soon she felt the hardness growing. “Nothing wrong with this,” she said, looking up, giving him the sweet, full smile that had first attracted him to her.
“No,” he said. “It’s ready for takeoff.”
“Looking for somewhere to land?” she asked, snuggling in closer.
“Have to do some maneuvering first,” he answered with a grin, and she knew that for the time being the horror of what they had done to him would abate.
“God, I love you,” he told her.
“You, too. Oh now, sweetie, we can have time for each other instead of this damn war.”
“Yes,” he said. It was almost disappointment.
“Hold me,” she said. He took her in his arms.
