argued Lieutenant Colonel Klaus von Olden.
Willi wanted to tell him exactly what he could do with them, but held his temper. “Use them as you see fit, Herr Oberstleutnant.”
Like von Seelow’s, von Olden’s ancestors had been Prussian nobles, but his family had escaped to the West when Germany was divided at the end of World War II. Willi was proud of his heritage, but a lifetime in the “classless” East had taught him to keep a low profile. His father, once a colonel in the Wehrmacht, had even dropped the aristocratic “von” from the family’s name — becoming plain Hans Seelow, day laborer.
Von Olden, on the other hand, was as arrogant as if his obsolete title still held meaning. He’d even gone so far as to paint his family’s ancestral crest on his command vehicle. He was proud of his “Germanic” blood, and very vocal about his dislike of immigrants or anything smacking of the political left.
Von Olden’s arrogant voice taunted him. “With your broad experience in suppressing civilians at home and abroad, I was hoping you would have some suggestions.”
Controlling his temper, Willi ignored the remark. He’d heard worse. “With these additions, how many men will you be able to field by midnight?”
“We should be close to seventy percent.” The other man sounded faintly disappointed. He’d obviously hoped his insult would draw a less temperate reaction.
“Very well. Good evening.” Willi hung up, trying not to slam the phone down. In truth, von Olden’s remark had hit a little too close to home. In the GDR, army units had been used to suppress civil disturbances, often brutally. The federal republic’s Justice Ministry was still trying to sort out criminal cases against border guards who’d shot their own countrymen as they tried to climb the Wall.
Several hours later, von Seelow and Bremer stood next to their command vehicle. They were parked near the main gate to the
A cold, damp wind gusted around them, carrying the stink of diesel exhaust. Even in their winter-weather gear they could feel it. It might rain or even sleet tonight. Driving conditions would be bad, but maybe the foul weather would dampen any disturbances.
“Good work, Willi, very good.” Bremer smiled as the vehicles roared by. Von Seelow appreciated the remark, but it didn’t lift his black mood. Even a glowing fitness report from Bremer would never get him another promotion. Skill and experience would only carry him so far up the ladder. After that his East German birth would stop him cold.
Besides, did he want to serve in an army that operated only against its own citizens? He loved the outdoors, being in the field. But no soldier loved urban combat, and a near civil war would be the dirtiest of fighting. He missed field maneuvers, where the enemy was well defined. That reminded him of something.
“Sir, you know what this deployment is doing to our fuel allowance. We were cutting back on exercises before this. I’ll have to look at the figures when we’re done, but we may have to restructure Cold Dragon.” Held each winter, after the crops were harvested and the ground had frozen, the exercise was the culmination of months of planning and smaller training exercises. It was the only chance the brigade got to exercise as a unit during the year.
“Tear up the training plan, Willi, and throw it away.” Bremer met von Seelow’s surprised look with a secretive gaze. He glanced at his watch. “In twelve minutes the government is going to declare martial law throughout Germany. The French are doing the same thing. I think we’re going to be busy in the streets for a long time to come.”
Von Seelow nodded numbly. He’d been afraid of that. Germany’s army was going to war — a war waged against fellow Germans.
Following Bremer’s lead, he climbed into a jeep, eschewing the warmer but clumsier tracked command vehicle. It would bring up the rear, collecting vehicles that broke down or were lost.
Willi would much rather be in the lead jeep. Its radios crackled with last-minute orders and reports, keeping von Seelow so busy that he hardly noticed the convoy pulling onto Bundestrasse 58. A thin, cold rain started falling, spattering in wind-driven sheets against headlights and windshields.
They reached Dortmund’s outskirts at two-thirty in the morning, but they’d seen the orange glow of fires flickering against the pitch-black sky for the past half hour. It would be a long night and an even longer day.
The Oder River valley lay shrouded in a thick, slowly swirling mist. Trees and houses on the far bank were almost invisible. Even the twin railroad and highway bridges spanning the river seemed to hang suspended in midair — massive structures of steel and concrete floating above the gray, obscuring fog.
Major General Jerzy Novachik lowered his binoculars, thick, bushy eyebrows crinkling as he frowned. This weather was damned odd. Poland’s autumn months were usually marked by a steady succession of cool, crisp, and clear days. But not this year. They were getting late November’s freezing rains and bone-chilling fogs a month early. He shivered and pulled his brown uniform greatcoat tighter around his shoulders.
The sound of a hastily stifled sneeze made him turn around. “God bless you, Andrzej.”
“Thank you, sir.” The colonel commanding his mechanized infantry regiment wiped his nose quickly and stuffed a handkerchief away out of sight.
Novachik studied him for a moment. The man looked cold, wet, and thoroughly miserable. That wasn’t particularly surprising. After all, the colonel and his troops had spent the better part of the last two days out in the open — huddled in shallow fighting positions by day and trying to sleep inside their cramped, unheated vehicles by night.
He glanced toward the woods stretching north and south along low hills rising above the valley. Even this close, it was difficult to see the bulky, menacing shapes of BMP-1s and T-72 tanks waiting motionless beneath autumn-colored camouflage netting. The regiment’s antitank missile teams, machine gunners, and riflemen were completely concealed. Still, a trained observer would eventually spot them all, and know that Poland’s defenders were awake, alert, and ready for battle.
Novachik smiled grimly. That was exactly the message he wanted to send the Germans across the river.
The Bundeswehr’s powerful divisions might be busy knocking heads together in Germany’s restive cities right now, but only a fool would think that guaranteed Poland’s peace. Throughout human history, too many governments had tried to blind their citizens to troubles at home with promises of quick, almost bloodless foreign conquests.
So Jerzy Novachik and his shivering but determined soldiers waited on the river’s edge — deployed as a powerful sign to Germany’s problem-plagued rulers that a new war with Poland would be bloody, not bloodless.
He only hoped they would heed the warning.
CHAPTER 6
Purge
Moscow’s gray morning skies mirrored Alex Banich’s mood as he crossed the open ground between the embassy’s living quarters and the red brick chancery building. Nightly frosts, scattered snow showers, and weeks of freezing rains had turned the compound lawn into a brown, withered quagmire. The city’s fall and winter months were always bleak and barren, but this year the weather was the worst in recent memory.
Somehow that seemed appropriate.
In the weeks since Len Kutner had given him Langley’s new list of intelligence priorities, Banich and his team of field operatives had been working overtime to make the new contacts they needed — with very little measurable success. It took time and a great deal of effort to find the right kind of Russian trade bureaucrats and corporate officers: the kind who could be bought. Even then, every new “recruiting” approach, however subtle, piled risk atop
