A Peacetime General
Short story
The white hot glare of cloud broke across the plane sending his cortex reeling into consciousness. Below, Finland spread out in a patchwork of charcoal and umber, littered with skeleton trees and lonely farmhouses. He hadn’t slept well, a couple of hours at best, and yet the day had begun here under a white winter sun.
His wife
Yes, that was why he felt a low hard sadness in his chest. His wife, his wife, his soft warm wide armed white-toothed wife with those round wise eyes the color of spring and fall. The still of her in his mind was almost photographic, her body relaxed over the couch with her large hands spread out on her knees. He knew she was leaving. The flickers of goodbye laced their calls now, an unspoken nostalgia in the corner of her mouth as they stared into eachother’s faces down a video call. Love had rotted away and he was part of another time, now. An unwanted relic of a relationship without a future, without hope of recovering the euphoria that had been. “I love you,” he has said truthfully. “You too,” she had replied after a pause, with an insincerity that wounded him. It was a matter of time, he mused, until she said it. The d word.
The plane rattled down now, hard against the shuttering rush of snow and arctic winds. Perhaps they would crash, the slow fall of the engine rushing to a hard impossible dive into the black earth and frozen ice below. A relief, he thought, with sadness. A relief to not live to move through the shadows to what had to come. But the plane did not crash, and he found himself skidding with a disappointing assuredness across the level tarmac to the military base. The skies were impossibly wide, white, hard, bright. It was like standing under the eye of God and being unable to meet the gaze of his disapproving pupil. God was far from this place. God was far from all places, now.
“It’ll be a few minutes until we complete the taxi to Stełlberjn, commander,” the assistant called over the seats ahead. “Security is tight. They are verifying all arrivals.” He nodded, pulling down at his cuffs and settling back into the chair. He needed to sleep, rest, cut out the sharp pain behind his eyes and the hard tightness in his chest.
Not now, rypka, not now, he had wanted to plead with her. Any time but now. Don’t do this to me now. But the very act of acknowledging the decay between them was an opportunity for her to make it real, to say it, to open those lips and cut deep and cleanly into his chest. No, he would deal with it when he was home, when this was over. For now, the rare luxury of no signal protected him from the reality of her indifference.
They pulled in hard against the base, the guards scrambling with a disorganised collection of privates to assemble a salute and carry the briefing boxes from the safe. He greeted them numbly, noticing for the first time the youth on their faces. “Are we recruiting kindergarteners now? What are you, seventeen?” He joked to a pale faced boy. “Eighteen, commander,” the boy had replied without a hint of irony.
That sent him into a sobering silence, nodding and moving down the line without more than a handshake. Eighteen. He’d been in West Berlin, making clumsy love to faceless women in the wet grass and smoking stolen cigarettes in an underground jazz club called the Green Dragon. The light had been yellow and the sun had scorched his forehead red as he slept through long afternoons on the roof of a cavernous hostel carved out of a bombed museum. Another time, another kid. This boy would bleed red on the white snow.
The number of conscripted soldiers rang intrusively in his head. 918,014. The sharpness of the digits, the exactness in their pragmatism, itched at him. He wasn’t cut out for this. He was a sensitive guy, a good guy, an artist and a diplomat. The military uniform was a costume to wear, a prop to wave a large stick with soft words. He was a peacetime commander, a warrior in slacks talking freely in casinos to visiting officials. He’d never felt the cold tang of metal in his lungs and the hot shudder of a missile roaring up from the earth, not in real life, not beyond the war games of the Air Force and the tactical practices of college. War was impossible. That’s why he had got into it, when the Cold War thawed into the drunken antics of Yeltsin. It promised boyish adventure without the realities of battle. Or so it had seemed, for so many decades before.
Nine One Eight and Fourteen. That was the number. Old men, grey haired, sons, brothers, fathers, uncles. Farmers and cobblers and salesman and thieves. All swarming into the barracks and camps of the borders, festering like flies and larvae over the corpse of Europe. A war no one wanted, a war no one needed. The legacy of a mad man who drank the blood of young men in battle to sustain the glory of his eternal legacy. Little boys marched into the sweltering horrors of the ugliest glory. He just wanted to paint, he thought numbly, making his way through the waiting lines of uniform to the war room. He wanted to paint landscapes in West Berlin and marry a blonde American girl called Hannah and buy records when it rained from the blue bookshop on Hettelstrasse. What went wrong?
“War,” said a red faced general sharply, rousing him from his thoughts. “Is not a game for children.” He slammed his hand down over the map of Moscow, as if extinguishing a fly. “It is not a game fought with tin soldiers, nor is it a game to be fought by armchair nationalists.” The room mumbled in agreement, too frightened to say anything as brave or critical of the president. The general guffawed. “Children, the lot of you. Too scared of the president’s bare arse to say what you’re all thinking. And to think you’re the men leading these boys to battle.”
“They aren’t going to battle,” An un-uniformed woman said coolly, smoothing the edges of the map. “There’s no need for hyperbole. War isn’t what war once meant.” She stood up and made her way over to the general, the crowd of officials and officers avoiding her gaze. Even the general looked alarmed.
“Who are you? A president’s lackey?” He spat, squaring his shoulders. “No politicians in the war room. Go get a coffee and write your speeches elsewhere.” But he looked more than frustrated. He looked frightened. The woman didn’t react, taking a chair to his right.
“I’m from the Department of Biological Technologies,” she replied with a false brightness. “And we have been working very hard to ensure you’re all going to win this war and unite us under the president’s vision.” She pulled some papers from her folder and looked directly into the commander’s eyes.
“I gather the conscripts are assembled? As many as possible? What was their number again, Asminov?” She asked, folding her hands in front of her as if she’d asked about the weather.
918014
“Nine hundred and eighteen thousand, and fourteen, Doctor.” He said weakly. Boys who had dreamt of flying planes and being heroes. Boys sold a delusional lie on a road to death.
She smiled. “Perfect. It’ll take about that number, if we assume a fatality rate of 13%.”
The general spluttered. “I assure you a million untrained conscripts will not win this war if NATO and the US-”
“They aren’t going to fight, they don’t need to.” She said sharply, drumming her fingers on the table. “I told you. Wars have changed.”
The commander felt far away now. Cold. He wanted his wife, his warm armed white-toothed wide eyed-
“Look at Commander Asminov,” she said lightly, as the room turned and stared at him. Their gaze was intent, frightened. “He seems unwell, no?”
He stumbled against the table. Everything ached. “Everyone in this room,” she said loudly, “Has been exposed to a mild form of V1-CoSd14–1z over the last week. You won’t have noticed. You are all safe. All Russians will be in a few hours.” She rose to her feet, walking over to him. He was shaking violently, the nausea unbearable. “But Commander Asminov has been exposed to V1 for around fifty eight minutes from an infected private. Without having had any exposure to the mild variant.” He retched, the intense pain causing him to double up on the floor. The room watched in silent horror.
“With a 98% fatality rate after direct transmission within an hour, V1 will eradicate opposition forces with ultimate efficiency. We don’t need soldiers. We need 103, 081 V1 infected conscripts – around 13% unprotected carriers – at the right locations.” She beamed, raising her hands as if to start applause. There was only a stunned silence as Asminov fell on his back, convulsing.
“Asminov was leaking military secrets to NATO officials in Minsk, you understand. His wife informed us a few days ago. He always was a man of little national loyalty,” she said coldly. “I hope no one else has any further moral queries.”
