The Cardinal of the Kremlin - Tom Clancy [19]
The thought boiled within his breast, and his fingers were pale around the pen. It still surprised him that love and hate were emotions so finely matched. Misha returned to his diary
An hour later he rose from the desk and walked to the bedroom closet. He donned the uniform of a colonel of tank troops. Technically he was on the retired list, and had been so before people on the current colonel's list had been born. But work in the Ministry of Defense carried its own perks, and Misha was on the personal staff of the Minister. That was one reason. The other three reasons were on his uniform blouse, three gold stars that depended from claret-colored ribbons. Filitov was the only soldier in the history of the Soviet Army who'd won the decoration of Hero of the Soviet Union three times on the field of battle, for personal bravery in the face of the enemy. There were others with such medals, but most often these were political awards, the Colonel knew. He was aesthetically offended by that. This was not a medal to be granted for staff work, and certainly not for one Party member to give to another as a gaudy lapel decoration. Hero of the Soviet Union was an award that ought to be limited la men like himself, who had risked death, who'd bled-and all too often, died-for the Rodina. He was reminded of this very time he put his uniform on. Beneath his undershirt were the plastic-looking scars from his last gold star, when a German 88 round had lanced through the armor of his tank, setting the ammo racks afire while he'd brought his 76mm gun around for one last shot and extinguished that Kraut gun crew while his clothing burned. The injury had left him with only fifty percent use of his right arm, but despite it, he'd led what was left of his regiment nearly two more days in the Kursk Bulge. If he'd bailed out with the rest of his crew- or been evacuated from the area at once as his regimental surgeon had recommended-perhaps he would have recovered fully, but, no, he knew that he could not have not fired back, could not have abandoned his men in the face of battle. And so he'd shot, and burned. But for that Misha might have made General, perhaps even Marshal, he thought. Would it have made a difference? Filitov was too much a man of the real, practical world to dwell on that thought for long. Had he fought in many more campaigns, he might have be killed. As it was, he'd been given more time with Elena that could otherwise have been the case. She'd come nearly every day to the burn institute in Moscow; at first horrified by the extent of his wounds, she'd later become as proud of them as Misha was. No one could question that her man had done his duty for the Rodina.
But now, he did his duty for his Elena.
Filitov walked out of the apartment to the elevator, a leather briefcase dangling from his right hand. It was about all the side of his body was good for. The babushka who operate the elevator greeted him as always. They were of an age, said the widow of a sergeant who'd been in Misha's regiment, who also had the gold star pinned on his breast by this very man.
"Your new granddaughter?" the Colonel asked.
"An angel," was her reply.
Filitov smiled, partly in agreement-was there any thing as an ugly infant?-and partly because terms like "angel" had survived seventy years of "scientific socialism."
The car was waiting for him. The driver was a new draftee fresh from sergeant school and driving school. He saluted the Colonel severely, the door held open in his other hand. "Good morning, Comrade Colonel."
"So it is, Sergeant Zhdanov," Filitov replied. Most officers would have done little more than grunt, but Filitov was a combat soldier whose success on the battlefield had resulted from his devotion to