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"The front is making every effort to locate the American grouping, if such a force is actually out there," the corps commander said. "If anything critical comes up, I'll personally open the long-range net. You may, of course, open up the net upon initial contact. But I don't think there will be a problem before daylight, at the earliest. The Americans couldn't move that fast." The corps commander stroked his mustache.

"In the meantime, go like the wind. Speed is the best security."

Anton nodded. A part of him hoped with the hope of a child that the corps commander would see how ill he was and relieve him of his responsibilities on the spot. But the corps commander seemed totally immersed in the military problem.

Anton braced himself. He told himself that his diarrhea was slacken-ing, although he knew he was running a high fever. How would it do, he asked himself, for the son of General Malinsky, the privileged son of the great General Malinsky, to miss the war because he had a case of the shits? But the sarcasm did not work. And Anton knew that he would keep on going until his body physically quit on him, paying the price of his father's terrible love.

Anton cared less and less for his personal pride now. But he could not imagine letting the old man down. Not without absolute physical failure.

Or death, Anton thought, before dismissing the notion as the morbidity of illness.

He wished he were home, in bed, with Zena caring for him. He could 293

Ralph Peters

lie propped up in his bed, drinking tea, and Zena could read to him.

Perhaps a lesser tale by one of the giants whose pens had swept across the Russian earth before the Revolution. And he could draw Zena close to him, until her straight thick red hair blazed on the white of the bedclothing.

I'll do this for my father, Anton thought, growing undisciplined in his mental processes. I'll do this for him. Then that's the end. Then it will be my life, the days will belong to me . . . and to Zena. But he refused to trace his fantasy through its practical dilemmas.

The corps commander flew off into the clear night. Anton dispatched his couriers, then he remounted to leap along the column with the core of his staff. They erected a temporary command post in an abandoned German house that stood by yet another crossroads. Anton felt magne-tized by the inevitability, the irony of that. It was as though the war were all about roads, and no matter the obvious vulnerability, crossroads determined all events of significance.

His officers, as they filtered in, appeared both tired and anxious. Yet there was a reassuring readiness in them, a clumsy energy that was largely nerves, and the determination to get into the fight. Anton wondered if any of the rest of them were ill. He had had his share of experiences in training areas and on maneuvers with diarrhea, even dysentery and hepatitis. But somehow, he had assumed that those were peacetime problems, and that the seriousness of war would make them go away.

Now he wondered if he alone was suffering, or if other men were similarly weakened by sickness.

Anton had always been fastidiously clean, with scrubbed nails and well-fitted uniforms. Now he sensed that he must stink of his own waste as he moved about the room full of officers, and he felt as though this, too, made him smaller and less capable.

His officers wanted to get back to their units, to prepare for combat.

They had felt cheated in their waiting impotence, remaining in the rear as their comrades died and the war raced on without them. These were largely picked men, the best the Soviet army could offer. There was a bit of nervousness about the Americans, since they were, after all, the great, almost mythical enemy behind all of the other enemies. But there was a willingness, too, even a desire, to get right to the heart of the issue with the ultimate opponent. The thing that most bothered them was the restriction on employing radio communications prior to contact with the enemy. They felt, as a body, that here in the enemy's heartland, west of the Weser River, speed alone could provide sufficient security. They complained of columns breaking up and units lost on the wrong routes.

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Anton disagreed. He reiterated his position, backed as it was by the corps commander, that radio transmissions were not allowed prior to contact with fresh enemy forces of at least battalion strength. Anton knew that some of his subordinates had already broken the rules in the confusion of minor skirmishes, but he ignored the violations. He, too, missed the ease of coordinating through the airwaves. But he still wanted to take every possible measure to conceal the brigade. To hide, he told himself frankly, no matter how hopeless the attempt might be. To hide against the terrible magic deaths of a new age.