leadership does little good with sullen, raw conscripts who don’t want to be led. I had to become directly involved, scramble for spare parts everywhere, then get my hands dirty out on the flight line. Took me away from admin. I’ve fallen way behind. You know how it is, sir.”
Meredov could sense the younger man shrug in semidefeat over the phone. The scourge of AIDS — spread by a lack of clean needles even in hospitals, intensified by the easing of Soviet-era travel restrictions — made it hard to find willing, healthy recruits. Other chronic diseases made the pool of viable draft-age manpower shrink even more, causing constant problems for Meredov as throughout Russian national defense.
“What’s your regiment’s operational availability?”
“Sixty percent, sir. Unlikely to improve.”
“That’s quite excellent, under the circumstances you so aptly describe, especially with the weather we’ve been having.” A strong gale had blown through, leaving clear skies in its wake, but disrupting air and ground operations at more than just the base from which this subordinate’s maritime patrol bombers flew. As regiment commander, he was telling Meredov that sixty percent of his bombers were airworthy on short notice — meaning the other forty percent were not. By some standards, forty percent out of action would be dreadful, but this was Russia.
“Thank you, sir.”
“Was there anything else?”
“No, sir.”
“Then send me your end-of-June forms filled out as soon as you reasonably can. If Vladivostok complains about timeliness, which I seriously doubt, I’ll handle those supreme bureaucrats my way.” Meredov’s double meaning, supreme bureaucrats, was intentional. The commanders at Pacific Fleet headquarters in Vladivostok were very senior, and maddeningly hidebound to go with their exalted ranks and advanced ages. Meredov was grateful that his immediate boss spent all his time down there, fifteen hundred kilometers away. “You just keep your airplanes ready, Aleksei, and your pilots sober… and the rest of the aircrews more-or-less sober.” Meredov chuckled.
“Easier said than done, sir. It’s tough on them, being stationed here.”
“Remind them there’s a war on. They’re supposed to be protecting the sacred Motherland!” He lowered his voice. “Even if we are in theory neutral in this one.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Tell them, if you have to, that they should be grateful the risks they face come from storms and their own carelessness, not combat with the Americans.”
“Understood, sir.”
“And inform me at once if your July aviation fuel allocations aren’t delivered when due.”
“Of course, sir.”
“Very well, Aleksei.” Meredov hung up.
For a moment he listened to the steady hiss of the ancient steam radiators, from which the dirty white paint was peeling in scabs. He wore his winter formal uniform, dark navy-blue wool with a double-breasted jacket, mostly to help stay warm — the temperature outside was well above freezing, but his office was drafty with the winter shutters taken down. The windows were double-glazed, but their frames were warped and loose. His jacket cuff edges were shiny from wear, and so was the seat of his pants, which he thought, as with the radiator and the ragged carpet, was symbolic:
He went to the windows, taking in the view of the snowcapped Cherskiy Mountain Range on his left, southwest, and the uninterrupted vista to his right, northward, as the land fell away toward boggy lowlands and the desolate permafrost tundra. In the foreground, silver birches soared, hardy shrubs clung to the moist and mossy taiga soil, and wildflowers bloomed in open fields that teemed with migratory birds; though six months from now the temperature would be brutally, killingly cold, at the peak of summer’s heat in August a person would sweat standing still in the shade. In the distance, scattered smoke plumes rose from wood-pulping paper factories, from coal-fired power plants, and from smelters busy purifying valuable metals from ores.
Eventually, in that same direction, north, too far to see from where he stood, mainland Russia ended, where frigid waves from the Laptev Sea and the East Siberian Sea broke against the shore. In winter, he knew from experience, those waves froze to solid ice. Now both seas were sprinkled with icebergs, and their farther sides bordered the polar cap itself. Past the New Siberian Islands was no more dry land until well beyond the North Pole, in an alien place called Canada — not much more distant from Meredov in one direction than Vladivostok was in the other.
He gazed thoughtfully to the north. Out there lay his area of responsibility. Rear Admiral Elmar Meredov commanded all shore-based and surface naval forces that defended the northeastern part of the Siberian coast against amphibious assault, and protected nearby home waters from incursion by foreign submarines.
Meredov was very used to such things. In a way, he’d started out his career as a product of the Soviet state at its best. The son of poor factory workers in Leningrad, with no Party affiliations at all, he’d excelled in mathematics in school. After he won a regional math contest against stiff competition, the communist system sent him to college at Moscow State University, where he received a superb education in the mid-1980s. As graduation day approached he was invited to join the navy, by a regime whose invitations could not be refused. Trained as a junior officer, his technical talents and resilient, even-tempered personality led him to an assignment in submarines.
The Berlin Wall fell, the Soviet Union collapsed, and Russia deteriorated into an era of experiments with democracy and capitalism — experiments that tragically failed. The Russian military dwindled, pay became increasingly irregular, but at least there was food and clean clothes. This was a lot better than most civilians had, including his parents, whom he was forced to scramble to support. He’d married a woman he met at university, a linguistics major of great inner character strength and no great beauty. But Elmar Meredov was neither charming nor handsome himself — and he knew it. In real life, love and passion had nothing to do with good looks; the marriage thrived and they raised three wonderful, bright, athletic sons. His wife’s language skills won her plenty of work as a translator, and the extended family, with her unemployed parents too, got by.
Meredov rose further in the Russian Navy based on his evident merit and persistent hard work, plus an increasingly shrewd sense of how to play the ridiculous system. He became the assistant captain of one of Russia’s handful of Project 941 subs. NATO called them Typhoons. Weighing almost as much as a World War II battleship, carrying twenty long-range missiles that each bore ten hydrogen bomb warheads, a Typhoon was immense and almost indestructible. Meredov earned another promotion, but there were too few submarines still in commission for him to get to command one. Instead, he was put in charge of a sector of Russia’s equivalent of the American SOSUS underwater sound surveillance system. The ever-adaptable Meredov adjusted quickly, making the most of his prior experience as a qualified submariner, and became a leading expert in antisubmarine warfare instead.
Russia turned autocratic again, just as tremendous oil and natural gas reserves began to be efficiently exploited — and exported — to the full. The resurgent Kremlin wanted a strong defense and suddenly had the hard currency to pay for it. Meredov made rear admiral, much higher than he ever thought he’d go. It was a symptom of his continuing lack of insider connections that he was posted to the portion of Siberia which, even for Siberia, was
