A Very Private Plot Read online

  “Oh no, Comrade Rector. None at all. Marx and Lenin divined the secrets of history, and we need now only to wait until historical evolution validates, as it must, their thought.”

  The rector eyed Nikolai Trimov. The rector was on guard. Nikolai’s responses might have been written for a student prepared to be exhibited to visiting ideologues. But there was no trace in Nikolai’s face of disingenuousness, let alone cynicism.

  “You realize that the Soviet state is being asked to bear the very considerable burden of sending you to a university where all your expenses are paid, and where you are provided with free room and board?”

  “Yes, Comrade Rector.”

  “What is it you wish most to study?”

  “Anything, Comrade Rector. I am interested in every subject, and will be glad to specialize in any field you recommend.”

  This boy is … the rector was inclined to smile, but he was accustomed to suppressing such temptations. There was clearly no point in questioning Nikolai Trimov’s capacity to mix with older students. If anything, he would find them childish.

  The rector dispatched Nikolai home to Brovary. Three weeks later, Nikolai was back in Kiev, moved into a dormitory with twenty other students, each with his own cubicle. Nikolai had his own desk and a small locker, a bed and a lamp, and this room he occupied for five years. At first he was the object of much raillery from lusty eighteen-year-olds who thought him a quaint biological anomaly, a fifteen-year-old with the manners of a confident but self-effacing young man. He accepted their taunts, but his behavior was altogether conventional. In two respects he dissimulated. When he played chess, he would often contrive to lose to his competitors. And when, at the end of the first semester, the time came for posting grades, Nikolai requested an audience with the rector. His plea was straightforward, and modestly put. Might it be contrived to reduce his grades by one or two levels? The rector’s astonishment Nikolai had anticipated. He gave his reasoning before being asked to do so. He said that at his age it was difficult as it was to be in competition with young men and women who were older. If his grades were dramatically in the first rank, this would make social adjustments even more difficult. The rector smiled inwardly—he almost never smiled on the outside.

  He said quite simply that he would confer with the relevant faculty and see what could be done. This meant, when spoken by the rector, that what would be done was what the rector ordained would be done. When the grades were posted, Nikolai Trimov got straight B’s. In fact he led his classmates in every subject. In his third year, the rector summoned Trimov and told him that as a practical matter, he needed to decide in which subject he would acquire professional accreditation. Nikolai replied that he would do as counseled: In which field of studies did the rector think he might be most useful to the Soviet state, which was treating him so generously? The rector responded that students should never forget the apothegm so firmly grounded in Soviet legend, Lenin’s doctrine that communism was Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country.

  It followed that Nikolai should become, by training, an electrical engineer. He would not be discouraged from developing his other affinities, most especially the study of foreign languages, in which he was singularly gifted.

  The years went by, and Nikolai not only was accepted by his classmates but became a favorite. He was nominated for president of his class when he was a junior but declined, pleading that he did not feel that at his age he was equipped to assume any position of leadership in dealing with his elders. His withdrawal from candidacy as president was accepted as another token of the young man’s modesty. But when time came to begin the military training in which all the students participated, he was not able to shrink from the responsibilities that attached to someone of his standing: He was required to accept officer training. He did his work as an officer candidate with characteristic calm and proficiency.

  What seemed a mere season went by quickly: five years, at the end of which he received two certificates on the same day. He was now an electrical engineer and a second lieutenant. He could not know when he would be put to work as a professional, but it was instantly clear that no time would be lost in dispatching him to duty as a soldier. The need for platoon leaders on the Afghanistan front was acute. After a two-week leave spent with Titka in Brovary, he reported for duty. He found himself, with the soldiers assigned to him, on a troop train headed for Kabul.

  It had been a tortuous journey of very nearly 4,200 kilometers, even though the distance as the crow flies was only 3,500 kilometers. Kiev, Nikolai calculated, was closer to London than to Kabul.

  The trip had begun on March 2. On March 11, 1985, Lieutenant Nikolai Trimov and his relief company of infantrymen reported for duty, and Mikhail Gorbachev, a junior official in the Kremlin, was named General Secretary of the Communist Party.

  CHAPTER 6

  MARCH 1985

  Nikolai had read reports about Soviet wounded in Afghanistan in the great military offensive under the leadership of Leonid Brezhnev that dismayed those who believed Soviet expansionism had finally ended with Moscow’s consolidation of its hold over Eastern Europe. But the reports that reached Soviet citizens were oblique and muted. At Kiev, Nikolai had seen at first hand a dozen disabled veterans. One he saw struggling across the cobbled pavement of Lenkomsomol Square, trying to get used to artificial legs. Another, a startlingly young-looking boy, blind, being led by a young woman through the market while he maneuvered his long, slender white cane, feeling out, tentatively, the contours of the ground.

  And there had been all those whispers at the university. He had enrolled in January of 1980, only one month after Brezhnev began the military operation, after solemnly announcing that the Afghan government had petitioned for help against fascist elements. It was everywhere assumed that the war would quickly be over, given the preponderance of Soviet arms. But by the third year, at the end of which Andropov succeeded Brezhnev, fighting was still going on and triumphant reports in the Soviet press about front-line activity were increasingly rare, supplanted more and more by rumors of extraordinary Afghan resistance. The students drew the obvious inferences.

  In Nikolai’s fifth year at college, Andropov died and the doddering Chernenko became General Secretary. The dominant rumors were to the effect that the old man would find a means to acknowledge that the Afghan venture was no longer, well, required, even under the Brezhnev Doctrine, which held that any land once governed by Soviet socialism would forever be socialist. But there was no sign of decreased military activity or of official irresolution, and the war went on and on, and relief units like the unit Nikolai was now attached to were sent down regularly to the front.

  As the capital city of Kabul came finally into view after the long journey from Kiev, Nikolai sensed that he might come upon discouraging sights. Carrying his full field pack, leading his platoon toward the assigned barracks, he found himself marching parallel to the hospital unit. He had been prepared for the wounded, but he now got a sensation of the scale of the suffering. The army “hospital” was one barracks building after another, converted from their use as shelters for able-bodied soldiers into shelters for soldiers who were casualties. Nikolai counted thirty-two such buildings in a row, and at that, he could not tell whether the parallel lines of barracks were also being used for the wounded. His platoon followed him, in loose formation. As they walked along the length of the barracks, Lieutenant Trimov attempted to mute the sounds they heard from within the hospital by gradually widening the distance between his unit and the hospital complex. But he had to follow the jeep with the guide from headquarters, which was showing him the way to his platoon’s quarters. He could hardly ask the driver and warrant officer kindly to move out of earshot of the moaning and screaming they now heard even through the husky wooden barracks walls, designed to shield soldiers from the fabled Kabul winter.

  They arrived at last. After seeing that his platoon was housed and that arrangements were made to feed his men, Nikolai walked
to the bachelor officers’ quarters, into the room he had been assigned. He opened the door and saw a very large figure entirely naked, straining, before a small mirror fastened to the wall, to trim his mustache. The man turned his head slightly, seeming to keep one eye on the mirror, and said, “You Trimov?”

  “Yes,” Trimov said, tossing his heavy pack on the unoccupied bed.

  “They told me I’d be sharing a room. If you don’t mind my saying so, Trimov, I rather wish you were a girl.” He laughed as he snipped the final hair on his mustache and put down his scissors. “Belinkov. First Lieutenant Andrei Belinkov, when I have my uniform on.” He extended his hand, and Nikolai took it.

  “I suppose,” Belinkov continued while dressing, “that at some point we can become acquainted. But my suggestion is that we go now to the field club and have a vodka before supper. It is quite necessary, Trimov—your first name?”

  “Nikolai.”

  “It is quite necessary, Nikolai, to have some vodka before you eat. Otherwise you will not ingest, to say nothing of digest, the food they serve here. In fact, it would be quite useful if you brought a blindfold into the mess hall. The food tastes better if you do not view it.”

  Nikolai said he would be glad to accompany Belinkov. “But I shan’t join you with the vodka. I have never taken vodka.”

  Belinkov, struggling to put on his trousers, stopped in mid-motion, unbelieving. “You have never taken vodka? Eighteen weeks of basic training and no vodka?” He paused. “What did you do before basic?”

  Nikolai explained that he was a university student, that his monthly allowance had been barely sufficient to buy him an occasional foreign book—

  “You know a foreign language?”

  Nikolai said that in fact yes, he had studied foreign languages.

  “Foreign languages? What languages have you studied?”

  Nikolai had once or twice before run into this problem. Either he would tell the truth or, for fear of being thought a braggart, he would dissimulate. The fatiguing experiences of the three hours since getting off the transport bus at Kabul impelled him to recklessness. “I have studied English and German. Also French and Italian.”

  Belinkov completed pulling up his pants, reached for a shirt, and, finally, spoke softly. “Can you understand English when it is spoken?”

  “Yes. Provided it is not too rapid.” The hell with it, Nikolai thought. He would tell the whole truth. “But even if it is rapid, I can understand quite well.”

  Belinkov leaned over to his locker, dug his large hand deep within it, and came up with what was discernibly a portable radio. “The Russian-language channels from England and America are blocked. But at ten-thirty at night and six-thirty in the morning there is a news broadcast in English. It will tell us what is going on. Or at least, that is what old Foxov told me he heard from one of the doctors who was English; the poor dumb bastard, why didn’t he stay English?”

  “Who, Foxov?”

  “No!” Belinkov exploded with frustration over such a gross misunderstanding. “The doctor who heard the broadcasts and who told Foxov—he was raised in England. Foxov is dead. Maybe the doctor is dead also. But the English broadcasts continue, they are not dead. Every now and then I tune in, just to check that they are still there.” Belinkov was dressed now, and while he talked, Nikolai had prepared himself—he threw off his bulky jacket and put on a lighter parka—to go to the club and the mess hall.

  At the club they occupied a small corner of the crowded room. Belinkov had a half pint of vodka, Nikolai a bottle of ginger beer. Andrei Belinkov was beginning his second year of duty, he revealed, and would serve as company commander of the unit, one platoon of which would be led by Nikolai. “I will not tell you about conditions out in the field, because what you are drinking is not enough to anesthetize you to what I would describe. You will of course get the regular indoctrination from General Zaitsev—you will be interested to know that officers who have been in combat not only aren’t invited to be present at indoctrinations of new officers, they are not permitted. Such … manure as they will give you. Much good it does, since it will be only a matter of weeks—who knows, maybe days—before they move us all out; and then you will see for yourself.” He stared into his glass. “But sometimes I wish to scream because the same human beings, flesh and blood, who fill those festooned uniforms know exactly what is going on, and what use is it for them to think they can hide it from such as you, when you will see it yourself, taste it yourself, in no time at all? What did you study at the university? I mean, besides Dutch, Urdu, and Romansch?”

  Nikolai laughed, and told Andrei he was now a licensed electrical engineer, and that he had done twenty-two hours of history.

  “Russian history? Or Soviet history?”

  Nikolai replied cautiously. “Both.”

  “I should have known. They do run into each other a bit, ho ho, but let’s get off that. Me, I did not go to college, I went right to the army. I was commissioned an officer in the field three months after I got here. Promoted in January. I could use the extra pay. Ah!”—Andrei wavered: Should he order another tumbler of vodka?—“Money, it is so important! If I did not have a little money, including”—his eyes widened, his hand slipped under his trousers, moving quickly from one side of his stomach to the other, a zipper unzipped—“including this! One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve! Twelve U.S. dollar bills, oh my what they will get for you! While you lie down in the room and dream of it, I will be”—he got up, closing his eyes in rapture—“experiencing it. She costs ten—ten!—rubles, or one—one—American dollar, my little dark-skinned beautiful slut, my Akta! Come along, or the mess will close down and the horse manure they serve us will poison the pigs.”

  Nikolai Trimov followed Andrei out into the dark, into the cold, past yet two more barracks-type quarters to the squat compound that served as the officers’ mess hall. Nikolai knew that his grandfather would have killed to have whatever they would be given to eat at the mess hall.

  For the thousandth time in the six years since in his teens he had pieced together his family history he felt those pulsations of fury against the system for which he was now being asked to fight, if necessary to death.

  CHAPTER 7

  MARCH 1985

  Colonel Stepan Dombrovsky addressed the assembly of regimental, battalion, and company commanders. Dombrovsky had taught at the War College. He was too young to have seen action in the Great Patriotic War against Hitler, so that when he arrived at the front he was received with some skepticism by the veteran soldiers. That skepticism went quickly, after he was observed in command of the front regiments, which he directed with bravery, assurance, and sophistication. He was promoted now to operations officer. He was entirely comfortable back at a lectern, as in the old days at the War College in Leningrad.

  The plan, he disclosed, was to drive the mujahedin resisters up to the high peak of Mountain “A”—the colonel pointed to the enlarged section of the map. “Behind it is the high range, this side of the Pakistani border. We will”—he described a semicircle with his baton—“use small arms, artillery, and mortar right along this line. The rebels will need to seek shelter in the mountain crevices. From there they have no alternative, as we keep up the fire, than to head for the range, along this line”—again he used his baton.

  “Beginning on the third day, the whole regiment is bound to seek relief. It is the toughest of the resistance units, seven to ten thousand men. But they are armed only with rifles. Then,” said Colonel Dombrovsky, who spoke with something of a lisp because two teeth were missing, as also a section of the adjacent lip, “when they begin to go for the range, our fighter planes will go to work and our bombers will drop big payloads. They will be bottled up”—he pointed to the map—“in this ravine here. There is no way to avoid traversing it when seeking the shelter of the range. With luck”—the colonel tapped his baton playfully on the head of Battalion Commander Major Lapin—“we will pu
t the Zeta mujahedin regiment completely out of business before the end of the week.”

  Were there any questions?

  There were. But it was only the question asked by Lieutenant Andrei Belinkov that rattled the colonel. “Will there be Stingers?” Andrei asked.

  “How in Hades would I know, Lieutenant Belinkov, if there will be any Stingers? In the engagement last Thursday there were no Stingers and our fighters managed to do plenty of damage to the enemy, would you not agree, Lieutenant Belinkov?”

  Belinkov said yes, he certainly agreed that there had been plenty of damage done to the enemy on Thursday. He had no problem recalling the events of the day. Soviet fighter planes had ripped into a column of mujahedin, killing and wounding over sixty rebels. The survivors of the Afghan unit, surrounded, had dropped their rifles. You could hear the clatter of steel barrels landing on the rocky soil. The cold mountain air, working on the warm exhalations, gave the impression that the rebels were all smoking cigarettes. They were led, their hands behind their necks, to the edge of the neighboring forest. At a signal from Major Lapin, a Soviet machine gunner stationed just inside the forest that gave him camouflage began firing. He mowed them all down, investing at least five bullets in each of the resisters. The major had then walked nonchalantly along the row of scattered bodies, firing his pistol into the heads of the half-dozen soldiers that showed any sign of life.

  “The Stingers are the responsibility of the air force,” the colonel explained, “with which of course our own operation is completely coordinated.”

  There being no other questions, the company commanders were told to give the appropriate instructions for the next day’s operation to their platoon leaders.

  Inside the combat zone, ten days later, Andrei Belinkov, along with Nikolai, faced the problem of the evening meal. It was necessary to eat early—in the daylight hours cooking fires didn’t attract sniper fire. Andrei took his ration of beans and rice and that evening’s fishy gruel, wrapped himself in his great coat, and sat, his back against the side of a tank, alongside Nikolai, who had not fully mastered the technique of handling his army fork while wearing the heavy gloves without which his hands would freeze in the bitter cold at 7,500 feet.