she was trying to decide if he was kidding. "Oh, Pete," she sighed, "how can you can talk like that? Surely you realize..." But she stopped herself. Touched his arm and walked away, head down. Acting like she'd just met a man who still believed in the Easter Bunny. Trying not to pity him but, at the same time, recognizing that he was too far gone to help, his delusions too deeply rooted...
He didn't have much of an opportunity to ponder whatever was eating Marla. Mulvaney, his PA, was signaling him from over by his cubicle. A meticulous man who wore a watch on each wrist, Mulvaney hated it when Pete was last one in. Claimed it made him look bad. Occasionally tried to lay a guilt trip on him but Pete wouldn't bite. Mulvaney did a quick check of his vitals, thumbed back his eyelids, examined his pupils. Aware of doors closing around them as the other watchers took their posts.
"No alcohol or illicit drugs in the past twenty-four hours?"
"Nope."
"Any changes in your physical health?'
"None."
Only then did the PA relax. Switching the clipboard to his other hand, he clapped Pete on the back. "Nice to have you back."
"I was only gone three days. Not much of a holiday."
"No rest for the wicked."
"At least I got to see the sun."
"Anybody else around?"
Pete grimaced. "They must have cleared the beach. Had it to myself for as long as I wanted it."
Mulvaney laughed. "Without broads? No chicks in bathing suits? What's the point?" Then he saw Pete's face. "Er, sorry, Pete. I guess it's, y'know, national security or whatever. Can't take any chances."
Pete stepped past him, jerked open the door. "Thanks for being so understanding about it," he cracked.
Slamming the door behind him to punctuate his complaint.
He brought home another headache, a real doozie this time. Aspirin wouldn't touch it and two gin and tonics only made it worse. Pete was reduced to getting an ice pack from the freezer and gingerly resting it on the back of his skull. A spot the size of a quarter throbbed with each beat of his treasonous heart. In desperation, looking for something to distract him, he turned on the TV.
Two channels came in reasonably well but he wasn't sure how much of it was edited and doctored before it got to him. Did that sound paranoid?
But I'm their golden boy, they wouldn't mess with me, would they? Would they? General Murray is a good man, the one person who's believed in this program all along. He had to put up with a lot of crap, endure the taunts of "voodoo science" and, meanwhile, the space nuts were collaborating with Nazis and passing off science fiction as science fact. Murray heard about people like me, recognized the possibility for a whole new branch of human endeavor and now look at us! The guardians of the frontier, the first line of defense against the Red hordes. Ever vigilant, fearless and omniscient, never allowing our enemies a chance to sneak up on us again...
It had been a good night, he knew that. He handed over his notes and watched as Colonel Frers, Murray's adjutant, scanned the raw data, his expert eye quickly plucking out the best nuggets. Finally, he looked up at Vukovich, grinning wolfishly. "Those Commie bastards. Thought they'd pull the wool over our eyes. Got it into their stupid heads that if they snuck around at night we wouldn't notice. Real smart, doing it under cover, using rail lines." Tapping the sheaf of papers. "But you can see, it's plain as day: they're massing troops near the border, threatening ol' Tito again. Telling him in no uncertain terms to start toeing the party line, or else."
"D'you think they're bluffing? Is this a genuine threat or are we getting our socks in a twist over nothing?"
The Colonel, who had somehow missed action in both theaters of operation during the previous war, gave an impatient shrug. "Who cares? It'll give us a chance to demonstrate our level of preparedness, or lack thereof. Goose those boys up on the Hill, come appropriations time. Besides, with the Ivans, you don't want to show weakness. Gotta let 'em know we're out there, eyeballing them, our finger on the trigger." He hurried away to brief his superior. It was the kind of intel guaranteed to get the old man's juices flowing.
So orders would go out, troops placed on alert, a few pawns moved about on the great checkerboard known as Europe. Would it amount to anything? Secure the peace by alerting the godless Bolsheviks that their schemes had been uncovered and they should tread carefully, the eyes of the Free World were upon them? It was a dangerous game, hide and seek with global implications.
Sometimes, when he was having trouble sleeping, Pete told himself he was helping maintain deterrence, averting a calamitous clash between the two super-powers. There were nights, increasingly rare, when he could almost bring himself to believe it.
Nobody wanted another war. Not really. The man in the White House, the brass at the Pentagon, the Reds and their minions and apparatchiks, these weren't stupid people. They knew the score. And most of the time they played by the rules. After all, there were certain formalities to be observed. Two societies, divided by history, language, ideology; two armies, poised for war. You had to strike a fine balance. Know when to call and when to fold. Sometimes things got tense. On the other hand, the on-going state of crisis quelled dissent and solidified popular opinion. Which simplified governance and helped keep their respective populations in line. It also fed endless streams of dollars (and rubles) into military-industrial combines that measured their worth in billions and corrupted every single politician they touched, left, right and center.
It was up to the spies and watchers to keep everybody honest.
Ludmilla's beloved Sergei was killed during the assault on the Japanese home islands in October, 1945. The war was supposed to have been over by then. They should have been married, preparing for the arrival of their first child. There would be ample food and little Tatyana (her choice) or Fyodor (his) would never want for anything. Their children would grow into a bright future, educated in the finest universities, traveling around the world, experiencing many diverse cultures, representing a new generation, with exciting new ideas...
At Potsdam, the Americans promised to produce a miracle weapon, a device so powerful, they assured Comrade Stalin, that a single demonstration would convince the Japanese to sue for peace. But two test runs in early August finally forced the Americans to admit that their much-vaunted super weapon had fizzled. A billion dollar bust. Scientifically unsound, wholly impractical. A much-ballyhooed fiasco it would take the imperialists many years to live down.
And so, while MacArthur pored over plans for "Operation Downfall" and Truman dithered, spooked by the massive casualties an invasion of the Japanese mainland would incur, the Great Helmsman acted. Two hundred and fifty thousand Russian soldiers splashed ashore near Otaru and one of them was Sergei. My first hours have been charmed, he wrote later, while others drop around me, I carry on without a scratch. He didn't paint a very romantic view of his fellow soldiers. That fateful morning, half of them were drunk and the landing craft awash with sick, everyone desperate to be off, even if it meant wading out into machine gun fire.
They landed virtually unopposed and the Soviet juggernaut sped swiftly inland, whipped on by a leadership that wanted a fait accompli before the Americans got wind of what was going on.
It was a brutal, ugly campaign, no quarter given on either side. "I can't write in detail of some things," one of Sergei's notes went, "but let us just say that old scores are being settled." No one could forget the disgrace of 1905, the Czarist navy, grown fat and complacent, relentlessly pursued and pummeled, out-sailed and over-powered by the crafty Nips. "The yellow man will pay the price for his aggression and cruelty."
One of the last letters she received from him and it was nothing but patriotic platitudes. It didn't sound like Sergei at all, the confidences and intimacies they had exchanged, the risks they'd taken together and damn the consequences!
Finally alerted to what they were missing, the Amer
icans began a horrific aerial and naval bombardment of Japanese targets, including major population centers. It was the kind of total war they had perfected, along with the Brits, in the skies over Germany. These, of course, were the same Yanks who had waited until the last moment, with the German army literally at the gates of London, before declaring war and launching a counter-invasion, appropriately enough, from Plymouth. Too bad Churchill was already dead. He always put great faith in his American cousins. Refusing to believe they would betray him...
The drunken old fool.
All the histories and accounts Ludmilla read were unanimous on one point: the Japanese defended their homeland with a ferocity and determination that shocked their adversaries. They died en masse rather than surrender, and that went for civilians as well as soldiers. Even after the high command conceded defeat and the Emperor abdicated, many Japanese refused to capitulate. The fighting was savage, barbaric, rural farmers brandishing sharpened bamboo stakes, city-dwellers erecting barricades, fighting house to house, yard by yard.
The Japanese propagandists had done their job too well, the ordinary men and women thoroughly indoctrinated, imbued with a contempt and fear of the invading horde, the atrocities committed by enemy soldiers feeding the jingoism