The Cardinal of the Kremlin - Tom Clancy [30]
After which, Misha did not say aloud, we'll withdraw another ten kilometers. Ten kilometers only-if we're lucky again, and if regimental headquarters manages to control things better than they did this afternoon. In either case, this farm will be behind German lines when tomorrow's sun sets. More ground lost.
It was not a thought on which to dwell. Misha wiped his hands carefully before unbuttoning the pocket on his tunic. It was time to restore his soul.
A delicate one, the corporal observed as he looked over his Captain's shoulder at the photograph for the hundredth time, and as always, with envy. Delicate like crystal glass. And such a fine son you have. Lucky for you, Comrade Captain, that he has his mother's looks. She is so tiny, your wife, how can she have had such a big boy as that and not be hurt by it?
God knows, was his unconscious reply. So strange that after a few days of war even the most adamant atheist invoked the name of God. Even a few of the commissars, to the quiet amusement of the troops.
I will come home to you, he'd promised the photograph. I will come home to you. Through all the German Army, through all the fires of hell, I will come home to you, Elena.
Just then mail had come, a rare enough occurrence at the front. Only one letter for Captain Filitov, but the texture of the paper and the delicate handwriting told him of its importance. He slit the envelope open with the bright edge of his combat knife and extracted the letter as carefully as his haste allowed so as not to soil the words of his love with grease from his battle tank. Seconds later he leaped to his feet and screamed at the stars in the twilight sky.
I will be a father again in the spring! It must have been that last night on leave, three weeks before this brutal madness began
I am not surprised, the corporal observed lightly, after the fucking we gave the Germans today. Such a man leads this troop! Perhaps our Captain should stand at stud.
You are nekulturny, Corporal Romanov. I am a married man.
Then perhaps I can stand in the Comrade Captain's stead? he asked hopefully, then handed the bottle down again. To another fine son, my Captain, and to the health of your beautiful wife. There were tears of joy in the young man's eyes, along with the grief that came with the knowledge that only the greatest good fortune would ever allow him to be a father. But he would never say such a thing. A fine soldier Romanov was, and a fine comrade, ready for command of his own tank.
And Romanov had gotten his own tank, Misha remembered, staring at the Moscow skyline. At Vyasma, he'd defiantly placed it between his Captain's disabled T-34 and an onrushing German Mark-IV, saving his Captain's life as his own ended in red-orange flames. Aleksey Il'ych Romanov, Corporal of the Red Army, won an Order of the Red Banner that day. Misha wondered if it was fair compensation to his mother for her blue-eyed, freckled son.
The vodka bottle was three-quarters empty now, and as he had so many times, Misha was sobbing, alone at his table.
So many deaths.
Those fools at High Command! Romanov killed at Vyasma. Ivanenko lost outside Moscow. Lieutenant Abashin at Kharkov-Mirka, the handsome young poet, the slight, sensitive young officer who had the heart and balls of a lion, killed leading the fifth counterattack, but clearing the way for Misha to extract what was left of his regiment across the Donets before the hammer fell.
And his Elena, the last victim of all All of them killed not by an external enemy, but by the misguided, indifferent brutality of their own Motherland-
Misha took a long last swallow from the bottle. No, not the Motherland. Not the Rodina, never the Rodina. By the inhuman bastards who He rose and staggered toward the bedroom, leaving on the lights in his sitting room. The clock on the nightstand said a quarter of ten, and some distant part of Misha's brain took comfort in the fact that he'd get nine hours' sleep to recover from the abuse that he inflicted on what had once been a