***
On 6 August, Chechen and foreign fighters began fighting to retake Grozny, or what remained of it. They infiltrated easily, wearing stolen or purchased Russian uniforms and equipment. Some even had genuine documents sold by Russians. By 9 August, they controlled Grozny and the Russian Army was retreating from the city it had taken and held at such cost, while Russian generals threatened to bomb the rubble into dust.
Suslov was in the habit of taking the early train down to Tula on Monday mornings, and an early evening train back up to Moscow on Fridays. Weekends were for Olivia. During the week, he lived in a room in the division’s officers’ hostel. As the brigade commander, his quarters had been a two-room flat in Aksai. He neither needed nor wanted more. Major general or not, he was used to hardship, and he saw no point in occupying a flat for even a short time when there were husbands and fathers on the waiting list. He needed only a place to sleep and wash; he could eat in the mess. Should he require anything other, he and his sister co-owned a tiny, austere dacha about an hour north of Moscow. It had been given to their mother by the Soviet government after the Great Patriotic War. He and Ira had their reasons for avoiding the place; his sister-in-law, Valentina, went there when she was in need of solitude and maintained it.
As the division’s first deputy for so brief a time, he had no real duties. Mornings, he signed whatever paperwork the divisional commander needed signed, while knowing little, if anything, about the matters involved. The dispersion of the division meant that administration was complicated; some of the regiments were hundreds of kilometers away. The rest of the day, he tended to spend with the troops themselves, including lunches and dinners with the enlisted, or board games with the warrant officers. Sometimes in Tula, other times in the Ryazan, Kostroma, or Efremovo regimental garrisons.
Tonight, the 51st, which was garrisoned in Tula, was in an uproar of officers and men, most of whom had served in Chechnya. Suslov spent the day spreading calm while controlling his inner rage and longing for Olivia. He contented himself with another thought, one that had first appeared in his mind like a cloud of dust. But like occasional clouds of dust in the universe, this one had begun to swirl and glow. It might remain forever dust. Or it might become a star.
Always, his ambition had been to become chief of Airborne. Never had he thought beyond that. But in ten years, Russia could be either a place of freedom and rebirth, or a place of oppression and squalor. Either way, perhaps he might have some part to play in that, beyond what an Airborne general might accomplish.
He and Olivia.
Perhaps.
For the moment, he had a more prosaic duty to discharge. The officers’ hostel was bound to be in a vodka-fueled frenzy over events in Grozny. He would keep it peaceful.
He could hear the noise from the hostel before he reached it. So much for that plan. He started running and flung open the door to the lobby and found himself confronted by a brawl. Drunken men were doing their best to flatten other drunken men. With predictably ineffectual results. Also without regard to rank or dignity. Which boded well for the peace-making process he decided to initiate. He grabbed the nearest man at random, his face vaguely familiar. He easily slipped the drunken man’s startled punch, jabbed him very stiffly in the solar plexus, then shoved him against the wall. “I’m talking to you because you look like you have more sense than the others.”
“Yes, Comrade General,” the man gasped, shocked, perhaps wondering what the consequences were for trying to hit a general officer.
“You’re going to help me break this up.”
“We need my cousin to help.” They fished him out of the chaos of struggling men, another thickly-muscled, sandy-haired, brown-eyed Slav whose face also tugged at Suslov’s memory. Then they were wholly occupied by peace-making, he and the two young officers pulling the combatants apart, throwing them against walls when they had to. It was as effective a cure for melancholy as Suslov could imagine. As it occurred to the officers that the deputy division commander himself was ending their fight, they gradually ceased brawling and calm returned to the lobby.
Suslov, breathing hard but undamaged, looked at his two bruised and battered deputies. Then he looked around at the abashed officers, who were likewise wondering about the consequences for starting a brawl a general had ended. “Brothers,” he said quietly. “Whatever happens in Chechnya over the next few weeks, this is a long war. There will be plenty of opportunity for vengeance. We don’t need to fight each other.”
The officers dispersed to talk, to mourn, to rage, to drink, to sleep, to give oblivion its share or memory its due. Suslov turned to his deputies. “We shall drink to your family. I have never seen you before but your faces are familiar. Perhaps we shall find some connection.”
In his room, he set out vodka and the last of the delicacies that Aunt Maria never sent him off without. Pickled asparagus and tomatoes, marinated mushrooms and onions, along with good brown bread and butter tangy from the milk she deliberately let sour. “Tell me your names, please.”
“Lieutenant Mikhail Sergeievich Surko, comrade General. My cousin, Nikolai Vladimirovich Surko, just out of the Academy.”
Surko. Yes. Afghanistan. The memory coalesced. A funny man, something like Simonov, always working to piss off the zampolit, the political officer, on the grounds of, he was in Afghanistan in an Airborne regiment, so what else could be done to him? Usually succeeding. “Whose father did I know in Afghanistan?”
“Actually, our uncle, both our fathers’ younger brother.”
“Does your uncle have children?”
“He does. A daughter, Elizabeta, and a son, Viktor.”
“Then give him, and them, my greetings. Let us drink to your families.”
“And yours, comrade General?” The elder, Mikhail Sergeievich, was well within bounds. Russians would ask perfect strangers what Americans considered intimate details of their family lives.
“Divorced and without children, sadly.”
“But surely the general has a friend.”
“I do, a wise and brave woman for whom I have very great hopes.” Now that was something different. Russians expected women to be smart, not wise, and beautiful, not brave.
“Then we should drink to your friend as well as our families.”
“Indeed. To their health.”
When the alcohol had lubricated the Surkos a bit more, they began to open up. Mikhail Sergeievich had already been to Chechnya and expected to go back, while Nikolai Vladimirovich knew he was probably going, so what else could be done to them?
Mikhail Sergeievich spoke in a rush. “Comrade General Is this what this is all about? Is this what I lost men for, and killed people for? The MVD practically gives Grozny back to the Chechens, so we have to do it all over again?”
“Unfortunately, yes.”
“You’re telling us that we’re going to have to do Grozny again.”
“Yes, Mikhail Sergeievich.”
“You don’t think that that the generals will bomb Grozny to rubble.” This would be Nikolai Vladimirovich.
Not that there was much left of Grozny that wasn’t rubble, but there were people living in the ruins. “No.”
“Do you think we should?” Both young men.
“Why don’t you tell me your own thoughts on the matter?” They stared at him. “If we live and you stay in the Airborne, you may be my colonels.”
“We argue about this a lot,” Mikhail Sergeievich said. “I’m a Communist.”
“And I’m a Democrat. And yourself, comrade General?”
Suslov shook his head, resolutely ignoring the small chill on his spine. “Irrelevant, Nikolai Vladimirovich. What do you think?”
“We should have worked with the Chechens to establish a relationship we could live with, as we have with Uzbekistan. But now, if we don’t do Grozny again, we’re going to have to watch the slow decay of Russia, and every nationality that feels like it’s getting a raw deal or wants to enforce its o
wn laws, no matter how barbaric, will do what it pleases. That’s a recipe for another Time of Troubles.”
“And if Gorbachev had been strong in the first place, we wouldn’t now be dealing with such chaos. We’re going to have to reassert order so there can be some kind of normal life for people,” Mikhail Sergeievich said.
A bickering started. Suslov decided to end it before the two young officers said things he couldn’t countenance, drunk or sober. “You know, you sound like American officers in about 1973.”
“Sir?” They both stared at him. “How,” Nikolai Vladimirovich asked plaintively, “do you know that?”
“I have American friends. We’re all shaped by the wars of our youth. After Vietnam, American officers knew they were going to have to rebuild their Army, but they could pretend they were going to fight us on the German plain, and fighting regular troops is always easier than fighting insurgents or terrorists. We have no such illusions. You’re going to have to decide if you want to make a career in an Army that is in very bad shape for many reasons. And there is a despair over killing our own, because we fear that killing our own will be our life. War is what we train for, and we want the chance to do it. But for a lifetime?”
“Did you know this when you chose this life, comrade General?”
“When I entered Ryazan back in 1973, the Army, especially the Airborne and Spetsnaz, offered a good profession. I was very idealistic and that was an outlet that didn’t require me to parrot too many slogans. In Afghanistan, I came to understand the Islamist threat, although I did not think it would be combined with the destruction of the Union. But these are the wars we’re given. I cannot foresee any other. Perhaps we dare hope that the next generation won’t have to fight them. But that’s only a hope.”
“If you were our age, would you go into the Army?” Mikhail Sergeievich asked,
“Honestly, I don’t know.”