Red Army

The accusations about the child hurt him most. Even though he could not accept them as true. It was Yelena who showed little concern for the infant. At times, she seemed to regard their son's care as nothing but a loathsome duty to be discharged with as little effort and conviction as possible. She was not even very clean about it all, and their cramped apartment grew slovenly.

Yet her threats about leaving him reduced him to panic. He had long loved her, and he had never wavered in that love. Now, at the revelation 195

Ralph Peters

of her betrayal—a betrayal she had not tried very seriously to hide—he felt his love for her overripen to desperation. He hated the humiliation of it. And he loved her anyway. She let herself go. In a matter of months, she looked ten years older than her age. She painted herself with far too much makeup, becoming a cartoon of a Western harlot. And, as she took from him, he only wanted to give her more. He wondered how he could possibly make a contribution to saving the world if he could not even save the woman he loved. He begged her not to leave him, to give him a chance, leaving all of his accustomed notions of manliness in ruins.

He promised he would leave the army. He would do everything she wanted him to do. But it was too late to avoid a last posting. He had a commitment to fulfill, and even Yelena's father could not move the Soviet bureaucracy with the requisite speed. And he went to the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany. Alone.

Yelena went to live with her family until his tour ended. She wrote decent, even loving letters, and sent him snapshots of his son. He tried not to think of the men with whom she might be betraying him. Because, he told himself, they did not matter. The weakness and error of the flesh was a minor concern. It was only the future, the better future, that mattered. There would be a tomorrow of decency, fairness, and love.

There would come a future without betrayals.

"Comrade Political Officer?"

It was Dunaev, a lieutenant from Third Company.

"Over here."

Dunaev searched the cavernous room with his pocket lamp, finally slapping its light across Levin's face. Then he respectfully lowered the beam.

"Comrade Political Officer, the battalion commander has sent me to relieve you. He wants you to report to him at the hospital."

"Is something wrong?"

"I don't know. He just told me to relieve you."

Levin brushed the crumbs from his hands and slung his assault rifle onto his right shoulder. "All right. Let me walk you around our positions.

There's plenty of food here, by the way. The soldiers have already eaten.

Just keep them away from the liquor."

"Yes, Comrade Political Officer."

Levin took the lieutenant on a tour of the platoon perimeter. The buildings, both new and old, were extremely well constructed, and the ring boulevard and the park beyond offered a perfect break where overlapping fields of fire could be established. Most of the soldiers were 196

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awake and alert, the noncommissioned officers seemed to be firmly in charge, and no one had wandered from his assigned position. Levin suddenly felt very proud of them all, proud of how much they had already achieved.

He left Dunaev back at the ad hoc command post in the restaurant and walked briskly down the main street, keeping well under the shadows of the overhanging buildings. From behind a line of gabled rooftops that paralleled the river up ahead, a vibrant glow lit the sky. The section of town on the far side of the river was burning. But the old town remained safe, even strangely peaceful, as Levin made his way through its heart.

The refugee traffic had long since stopped attempting to pass through Hameln. The next wave of traffic would undoubtedly be combat vehicles attacking to dislodge the Soviet defenders. Levin marched along, review-ing the ranks of shops. The fire's glow sent just enough light into the street to hint at inexhaustible riches. Levin had thought himself prepared for the inequitable wealth of revanchist West Germany. But now, in the bloodstained darkness, he could only wonder at the material splendor of this small city. He had studied the problem, and he knew that, somewhere, there must be horrid slums where the exploited were contained, where imported Turkish wage-slaves clung to one another in a desperate attempt to survive. Yet this casual display of riches, these shops bursting with merchandise of undeniable quality, troubled him profoundly.

Above the modern shop displays, handsomely preserved and restored medieval buildings leaned over the street, as if peering down at him. It would be criminal to destroy this, he thought. He recognized the necessity of seizing the bridges for the passage of Soviet forces, however.

Now, he reasoned, it was really up to the NATO commanders as to whether or not all of this would perish. He himself had no wish to fight here, to risk the destruction of such monuments without necessity.