Final impact

“No,” Stalin said. “They wish us to do their dying for them. Churchill thinks like us in many ways. He does not have our power, but he sees the same basic truths. This war is no longer about defeating Germany. It is about dismembering the carcass of Europe. I do not think we can expect much relief from them. Marshal Timoshenko, they have not yet come to our aid in the Pacific, have they?”

Timoshenko shook his head and looked over at the people’s commissar of the navy, Admiral Kuznetsov, a relatively young man in this group of aging party members.

Beria felt confident enough in the change of dynamics to quietly take his seat again. It felt like slipping into a hideout.

“The Americans have made no move toward cooperating with us,” Kuznetsov responded. “In fact, they seem to have ceased offensive operations around the Japanese Home Islands. There has been no indication of any Allied submarine activity in the last forty-eight hours. It is almost as though they have decided to leave the Japanese alone.”

“Good,” Stalin said. “Then we shall take the islands from under their noses. The postwar correlation of forces in the Pacific will be much more amenable that way.”

His gaze fell on Beria again.

“Do not imagine that you have escaped my wrath, Laventry Pavlovich. I want my bombs, and I want them yesterday. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” he said in return, and his voice cracked somewhat. “Yes, Comrade General Secretary.”

“And now,” Stalin said, “let’s have some soup, shall we?”

Beria’s heart sank. He still had too much work to do.

“Oh, not you, Beria,” the Vozhd said. “You are excused. Get the hell out of here and go do your job for a change. No soup for you.”

D-DAY + 39. 12 JUNE 1944. 0006 HOURS.

KORYAK RANGES, FAR EASTERN SIBERIA.

In the week and a half they had been away, there had been a noticeable increase in traffic around the giant Sharashka.

Just before they had left, Ivanov had watched two silver MiG-15s come in to land at the airfield a few miles to the west of the facility. Now it looked as if an entire fighter wing was based there. Lumbering transport planes-C-47 knockoffs by the looks of them-glided in and out almost constantly during the daylight hours. Ivanov checked the time hack in his night vision goggles.

Just after midnight.

Of the forty-three fighters who were hunkered down on the ridgeline above the road that snaked all the way down to the Communists’ research base, only he and Vennie were equipped with NVG. The others in his tiny band-Sergo the Cossack, Ahmed Khan, and Kicji their guide-made do with whatever vision nature gave them. As did the three dozen or so guerrillas they’d brought back from the Chukchi lands that lay to the north.

Ivanov was impressed with the reindeer herders. They moved through the mountains like snow leopards, and he had no doubt of their hunger for vengeance against the Bolsheviks who had all but wiped out their tribesmen. They had been eager recruits even before Ivanov had supplied them with British-made Kalashnikovs.

The Russian Spetsnaz officer wormed his way up the hard rocky surface and into a small, natural bowl-shaped depression. He pulled up his goggles and used a pair of LampVision binoculars. The approaching convoy was still a few minutes away, with more than a few switchbacks to negotiate before it would reach the ambush point. He handed the glasses to Vendulka, and after a moment’s observation she passed them onto Khan and Sergo. The two men had stayed behind when Ivanov journeyed north looking for allies. They had been watching the newly built road, recording vehicle activity.

Ivanov was convinced something pivotal was happening. Even in his own time, the Kamchatka Oblast was an isolated backwater. The provincial capital, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy, a small industrial and scientific center on Avacha Bay, was entirely surrounded by volcanic mountains and could not be reached by road. Indeed, even by 2021, no roads ran into Kamchatka.

So this two-lane highway hacked out of the rock and leading up from the Sharashka had to be significant. He had no trouble imagining that thousands of lives had been lost in its construction. Sergo and Khan hadn’t been able to follow the road to its destination, but they had observed enough traffic to insist there was a better than even chance that high-value targets would be passing through the ravine between midnight and 0200 hours.

Ivanov checked the position of the convoy again. It was hidden now behind a series of switchbacks, but he could tell from the way the glow of headlights leaked upward that they were close enough. He nodded to Kicji, holding up three fingers. The wizened guide slipped away to tell the leaders of the Chukchi that they were three minutes away.

“Sergo. Be ready. Remember, I take the lead vehicle. You take the last one.”

Wrapped in a dusty cloak, the huge Cossack was a green-tinged rock monster in the LampVision goggles. He nodded once…