The Hutong Stank, the truck which normally collected the night carts’ cargo delayed because of the snowfall. From the tiny window, Alexsandra could see two-wheel pushcarts sitting forlornly at the end of the hutongs, abandoned. The granny brigade seemed oblivious to the stench. Much more offensive to them was the odor of their Siberian allies, many of whom were now in Harbin, frequenting the unofficial brothels that lay in the clutter of dwellings along the riverbank. Like most whites, the Siberians smelled of old, wet dog, and this morning, as the granny brigade — its three members’ red armbands vivid against the snow, their aged backs bent like vultures looking for carrion — made their way up the hutong, soldiers, both PLA and Siberians, descended to assist in the continuing search for the spy, Alexsandra Malof.
The underground had managed to hide her successfully from the granny brigade so far by keeping her in the claustrophobic room which she had since discovered lay in the rear of a small bicycle repair shop, one of those allowed under the party’s “liberalization” program. The alleyways had remained choked with snow, and piles of it were accumulating at the end of the alley, as one of the wonders of China — complete snow removal by hand — took place each day as people emerged silently from the hutong’s hovels to clear the narrow byways on command of the local committee. The grannies as usual were supervising, noting who was where, who was absent, stopping every now and then, assiduously sniffing the snow-cleansed air for the taint of wet dog.
“There’s a foreigner here!” announced the smallest of the grannies, all three dressed in identical padded and faded navy-blue Mao suits. It was an announcement clearly meant for everyone to hear, the three of them turning crooked necks, watching the two dozen or so people from their hutong silently busy with wooden push shovels and bramble brooms, the latter whisking against the bare flagstones, long crystals of ice snaking along in crazy patterns.
“There’s a foreigner here!” The brooms kept whisking, as if no one could hear her, save for an old man who, straightening up, looked about, confused, unsure of whether he’d heard a command.
The few children who had been playing quickly disappeared, swallowed by the hovels as if struck by some silent, felt message from their parents. The grannies also split up, their heads moving now with an extraordinary agility for their age as they shuffled along, noting the numbers of the houses, the smallest granny blowing her whistle shrilly.
Within minutes the street security committee arrived: three young zealots, their gender hidden under identical Mao suits, red armbands at large. They had a right to inspect each house indicated by the granny brigade. A policeman would normally accompany them — at least, this was the party regulation — but with a war going on against the American imperialists, the security committees had assumed greater authority, engendering more fear than usual in every soul in every hutong in the city of 2.7 million.
Soon an army policeman, his thick, cotton-padded, olive-green winter uniform flecked with snow, appeared, walking in from the direction of the main road.
There were no histrionics for the Lings, who ran the repair shop. Besides, there was nowhere to go. As Mr. Ling looked out the window of his cramped kitchen, he spotted a khaki truck, its tire treads choked with packed snow, PLA troops spilling out of it, a dozen heading left down the main road, another dozen or so to the right, encircling the hutong. Directly behind Ling’s repair shop lay more cluttered, snowcapped hovels leading down to the frozen river. Ling knew it was quite hopeless. He was surrounded. Besides, if there was the slightest opposition, they’d take his eight-year-old son, his only child, away as well. He went in and told Alexsandra they had discovered her. He was sorry. Their eyes met only for a moment in the grim morning light, and in that moment they both understood there was nothing they could do. To run was futile; she might as well save her strength.
The charges were that she and Ling, as “running dog jackals” of the “fascist pro-democracy movement,” were guilty of treasonous “antirevolutionary” activity.
“I could smell her!” pronounced the diminutive granny victoriously. “I could smell her!”
Mr. Ling looked at the old woman with quiet contempt. “You smell nothing but your own fear.”
Within minutes the Public Security man arrived and Alexsandra and Ling were shackled, hands behind their backs, the chain passing around the front of the waist between their legs and back up to a metal collar. She was taken out to the PSB car, a battered blue Fiat, Ling to a police motorcycle and sidecar nearby. “Someone has betrayed us!” he yelled back at the hutong.
The PSB rider slapped him across the ear with a rough suede driving glove. “
The moment Alexsandra felt herself pushed into the small blue Fiat, its upholstery a dusty faded-gray velour, she experienced a strange sense of relief — the warmth of the car’s heater was luxurious. It was the warmest she’d been for days, and in her relief came the sudden smothering fear that if she was so weak as to have already surrendered to this slight creature comfort, what would she tell the PSB interrogators once faced with another bone-aching cold cell? Even the Yakuts of her native Siberia, who lived in the region where the temperature often dropped below minus sixty, grudgingly admired the legendary ability of the northern Chinese to endure the cold. Her fear of dying cold was, she knew, as irrational as having hoped she would ever be free. Her rape by the Siberians at Baikal had never left her.
And what was it all worth — her silence? She didn’t even know whether the message about the Nanking Bridge had gotten through. Yet all this now paled next to her simple but overwhelming desire to be warm again, her craving for even the smallest candle subduing all reason, all prior resolve. For now she knew it would almost certainly end with a bullet in the neck, the traditional party execution for counterrevolutionaries. Most likely it would be a public affair, as public and as exaggerated as her arrest, a warning to all those who might have sympathy with the pro-democracy movement. And if she was cold, she would shiver as she knelt and they would think it was fear. If only to deny them that, she longed to be warm.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
As Freeman finalized preparations for his attack on Nizhneangarsk, Major Truet’s Charlie Company, cut off from the main body of III Corps, waited anxiously at the southern end of the lake, still dug in, facing westward, the rail tracks and concrete tunnels atop the cliff overlooking the lake a hundred yards behind them. In the night the moonlit fringe of the boreal forest stood like an impenetrable curtain barely a hundred yards in front of them, the snowdrifts so high they’d climbed halfway up the trunks of the trees whose branches were now stiff to breaking point from the weight of snow.
Despite Thomis’s incurable pessimism, the rest of second platoon remained confident that Freeman would eventually get evacuation choppers across the lake from the east. But for now all they could do was wait, all available choppers busy ferrying what men they could find in the hell that lay beneath the cloud covering the lake. The sound of Yesov’s juggernaut was still rolling and thundering, the Siberians now getting behind as well as in front of III Corps to finish off what was left of the American retreat. Though knowing this, Thomis remained bitterly disappointed at the choppers’ failure, so far, to rescue him, and he continued to argue forcefully that they should move back to the cover of the tunnels.
When it came, the weak, creaking sound of the Siberian reserve armor no more than half a mile away sounded like unoiled rail cars, the occasional clankiness of more tanks moving through the forest belying the awesome power of the main battle tanks. Each T-72 weighed 49,000 pounds and was outfitted with a 125mm smoothbore, one of the largest tank cannons in the world. They moved at no more than fifteen miles per hour, until General Minsky gave the order for a thirty-five-mile-per-hour burst of speed as they approached the edge of the treeline beyond which lay C Company. Cold was seeping down from the forest’s edge, pouring into the foxholes and trenches around Thomis and his buddies like dry ice, at times obscuring the slit openings between the log-raft cover of some of Charlie Company’s trenches.
What Thomis, Valdez, Emory — the Georgian — and others couldn’t figure out was how, with the treeline so thick at the forest edge, the tanks could hope to exit directly in front of the trenches — unless the Siberians intended bringing bulldozers forward. But this would give Charlie Company time to triangulate mortar attacks which, while they mightn’t harm the tanks, would give C Company’s antitank crews more time and pin down the Siberian
