Warshot

“Minus forty,” said Norton, handing the general the SITREP, the buff-colored situation report folder with a crimson stripe across the right-hand corner and marked “Top Secret.” It told Freeman there was marked activity all along the Siberian-Chinese border. The Chinese had been moving up the Shenyang army at night, but here and there in gaps through the cloud cover infrared satellite photos had detected them.

“Only thing we can do, Dick, is to keep a close eye on it. I want to see all SITREP reports over China, Secret and above. Hopefully, of course, everyone else is right and I’m wrong and the cease-fire’ll hold. Maybe the Chinese are just being prudent — taking precautions. As I would. But if it doesn’t hold, I don’t want to be caught with my pants down.”

“No, sir.”

“Meanwhile — long as the Chinese keep out of it, we won’t bother them.”

The door flew open. A sergeant, his voice muffled by the khaki scarf that hid his face up to his eyes, staggered in, dusted with snow. Not bothering to look up, and certainly not expecting the general to be up and about at this hour, he stamped the snow off his boots, proclaiming to the skeleton headquarters staff, “I don’t think this fuckin’ berg’ll ever thaw out!”

“Good!” answered Freeman to the startled soldier. “If we have to engage, son, I want hard ground under our tracks!”

CHAPTER TEN

“I must be sure,” insisted Yesov.

“I promise you, Marshal.” It was Kirov, head of the KGB’s “new and improved”—as Novosibirsk sarcastically put it — First Directorate, covering Canada and the U.S. “Once the signal arrives in—”

“Yes, yes, I know all that. But this is not enough, that your people are ready. The point is, your operation must precede my operation. That is vital. For me to begin ‘Concert,’ the American convoys must lose their ability to reinforce Freeman’s Siberian garrison.”

“Marshal, I can assure you — everything’s in order. You can start Operation Concert as you have planned. My people will already be doing their part. This I guarantee.”

“What is the code name you’re using?” inquired Yesov. He wanted no mistakes, no matter how remote the possibility of two operations being accorded the same name.

“‘Ballet,’ sir,” said Kirov, smiling.

The marshal was not known for his sense of humor, and in any case looked blankly then sternly at Kirov, who seemed very pleased with himself with the joining of his, Kirov’s, Operation Ballet with Yesov’s Concert. “This is no joking matter, Kirov. My intention is to kill every American in my sight. Gorbachev — the fool — might have liked them. I do not.”

“Nor I, comrade.”

With that, the marshal of all the armies in the United Siberian Republic abruptly left. He was ready. Despite the sudden drop to minus forty degrees reported in the American sector, the long-range forecast was for a dramatic warming within the week, and only then another plunge in temperature.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The two Black Berets were having a little fun with the Jewess on the way, one holding her tightly in the back of the police van, the other feeling her beneath the long Mongolian peasant skirt she’d worn on the escape route from Baikal through Mongolia to Harbin. Only now did Alexsandra realize why Latov, without as much urging as she had thought would be necessary, had told her about the troop buildup on the Siberian-Chinese border and the movement of troops from the southern military regions across the Yangtze at Nanking, the approach roads to other bridges over the great Yellow River effectively useless because of the early spring floods in the warmer south.

Cold, she was shivering as much from fear as from the musty, bone-eating dampness of the cell in the Gong An Ju’s — Public Security Bureau’s — so-called new jail on Zhongyang Street. The Songhua River that ran past the jail was still frozen, but water beneath the ice seeped into the cells from around the embankment and from Stalin Park. For some reason she didn’t understand, instead of immediately dwelling on her situation — indeed, as she later realized, as a way of denying the terror her capture now held for her — she found herself thinking about how ironic it was that the Chinese, who took such pride in their self-reliance, insisted on retaining and paying homage to two foreigners: parks and streets were still being named after Marx and Stalin when the rest of the world, including the new CIS and the other Soviet republics, had torn down the demagogues of Marx-Leninism.

A Mr. Lo, a PLA guard behind him, turned up promptly, officiously flashing his ID from Harbin’s Public Security Bureau. He asked her, “Ni hui shuo Zhongwen ma?” Do you speak Chinese?

“Hui, yidian.” I can, a little. Her accent was not good.

“Ni hui shuo Yingwen ma?” Do you speak English? Mr. Lo asked.

“Shide,” she replied, and completely disarmed him by asking, “Why can’t China think for herself? Why do you import foreigners to revere?” Not once, she pointed out, had she seen even a small park named after Mao. Mr. Lo, scrambling for an answer, explained that unlike the “running dog revisionists” of eastern Europe who had “betrayed” Marxism, China had remained loyal. As for her insult that China could not think for itself, he said China had always thought for herself. Mr. Lo explained that the Great Helmsman had expressly forbidden personality cults and the deification of any particular leader. This is why she had seen no Mao parks or statues.

“Did the Great Helmsman tell the Central Committee,” Alexsandra asked, remaining seated calmly on the wooden stool, looking up at him, “to let Novosibirsk push you around? To send troops at their bidding?”

Mr. Lo struck her once, knocking her off the stool. His voice, if anything, was quieter than before. “You are a stupid woman. We do this as a protection against the American imperialists.”

“The Americans won’t invade China,” Alexsandra shot back contemptuously. She had learned enough from her previous interrogations to know that weakness only made them recognize their bullying for what it was, and in their guilt they lashed out — often more viciously than if you stood up to them. The guard hauled her roughly to her feet, putting her back on the stool.

“Ha!” said Lo. “Insolent! You are a stupid woman. You should have babies and concern yourself with wifely duties.”

“One child per family, comrade!” retorted Alexsandra, but Mr. Lo was long experienced, too, in interrogation, and he suspected that her initial defiance was only gongfen—a centimeter — thin. The file he had been sent from her Lake Baikal interrogation had revealed the same pattern: a brazen attempt to tough out the questioning right from the start.

Very well, Mr. Lo thought. He did not have time to mess around with stupid foreigners. The Public Security Bureau had instructed him to find out who were her “cohorts” in Harbin.

She told him there were none. She had come all this way on her own.

Mr. Lo spoke to the guard, who answered respectfully and immediately left the cell, only to return a minute later with another guard, the second man carrying a wooden chair, to which they tied her and proceeded to beat her legs about the shins with split bamboo cane. She did all she could to withstand the pain but soon was biting her lip, tears running, whimpering like a whipped puppy.

“Who are your cohorts?” asked Mr. Lo quietly.

Alexsandra didn’t answer.

“You are a bad woman!”

She said nothing.

“If you do not tell me in five minutes, I will turn you over to Black Berets. You understand?”

She understood it would be much longer than five minutes — any earlier and he’d lose face.

“You are a spy,” said Mr. Lo. “Who are your cohorts?”

She could hear the slow drip of water from the wall nearest the river, the cell so dark she could only make