Fortunes of War (25 page)

The XO called down a heading change, and more speed. With the main periscope out of action, he kept the boat on the surface.

With her diesels driving her at twenty knots,
Admiral Kolchak
went southward down the bay, charging the batteries as she went. When the first light of dawn appeared in the eastern sky she was rolling in the Pacific swells.

Askold took her under. She was a tiny little boat, swimming through a great vast ocean, so when she disappeared beneath the surface it was as if she had never been.

The weeks following the disaster in Tokyo Bay wore heavily on Prime Minister Atsuko Abe. At least 155,000 people died in the explosions and fires that raged out of control for two days in Yokosuka. Emergency workers estimated that 100,000 were injured; at least half the injuries were burns.

Obeying standing orders, when the Yokosuka refinery fire was reported, the duty officer in the war room in the basement of the defense ministry called both Prime Minister Abe and the chief of staff of the Japanese Self-Defense Force at their homes. Both Abe and the general were in the war room when the LNG tanker exploded.

They sat there saying little as the reports came in. A television station quickly launched its helicopter. Soon the stunning visual panorama played endlessly from large-screen televisions mounted in strategic places throughout the room.

Garish, ghastly fires everywhere, a sea of flame and destruction—these were the images burned into the minds of the men watching in the war room, and of the Japanese public, because these scenes were also playing live on nationwide television.

Although Abe did not want the public to witness this calamity, he was powerless to prevent the television stations from showing what they pleased unless he wished to declare martial law, and he didn't. He wasn't about to admit that the situation in metropolitan Tokyo was beyond the control of the civilian government. Not yet, anyway.

The prime minister's first instinct was to blame the catastrophe on an earthquake. A tremor caused fatal damage to the refinery, which finally blew up disastrously. This would have been a good story and certainly plausible, but unfortunately the videotape from the television helicopter proved conclusively that the fire had started in several different places, as many as eight, and spread at least a half hour before the explosion that flattened the refinery and several square miles of nearby city.

Worse, the cameraman in the helicopter managed to get footage of
the Russian submarine several minutes before the fatal detonation. She was lying on the surface near the LNG tanker, a recognizable black shape quite prominent against the reflection of the fire in the black water.

When the LNG tanker blew, the helicopter was dashed to earth and shattered as if it were a toy in the hands of some horrible Japanese movie monster. Of course, the television station made a tape of the video feed; they played the footage of the submarine over and over and over. The boat looked evil lying there in the darkness, its decks awash, its silhouette an ominous black shape amid the reflected glare of the holocaust.

The public mood, somber enough after the invasion of Siberia was announced, turned even more gloomy. The racial memory of the B-29 firebombings of World War II was too fresh. Television pictures of burning cities, with the nation again at war, mesmerized the Japanese. The business of the nation ground to a halt as they watched in horror.

Who was responsible?

“Atsuko Abe is responsible for every dead Japanese and every scarred, mutilated survivor.”

A senior member of an opposition party voiced this obvious truth; that sound bite was also carried nationwide by the television stations.

Another senior politician added soberly, “It appears that our leaders have underestimated the Russians' military capacity.”

Abe's reaction to this criticism was to cast about for ways to end the public's unhealthy fascination with the submarine raid, the burned-out city, and the victims. He demanded legislation to censor the press, to put a stop to the public airing of negative comments. His party had a sufficient majority in the Diet to carry the day. At his insistence, the television went back to baseball and dramas; the newspapers avoided all mention of the war except when running news released by the defense ministry, which they published without comment.

While he got his way, Abe was enough of a politician to realize that he had expended valuable political capital that he might need later, but he saw no alternative. If the public lost faith in the war effort now, before the conquest was assured, he and everything he had tried to achieve would be doomed.

The one bright spot in the censorship fiasco was the removal of the daily list of casualties from Siberia from the nation's front pages. Troops were encountering unexpectedly heavy opposition from ill-equipped Russian units, units that could almost be categorized as guerilla irreg
ulars. Even without the daily butcher's lists, however, the public seemed to sense that all was not going well.

“Where will the Russians strike next?”

All over Japan, people asked that question. There were, of course, no answers. Abe supporters accused the doubters of being unpatriotic. The mood grew even uglier.

Part of the problem was the economy. Japan's stock market was quickly closed by the Abe administration when war broke out. In the real economy, things went rapidly to hell. Demand for Japanese goods in the United States, Japan's largest foreign market, dropped dramatically. After the submarine disaster, shipowners refused to transport the raw materials and manufactured goods that kept the factories running and people eating. Idled factories laid off workers in huge numbers.

Atsuko Abe wrestled with these problems, too. He and General Yamashita, the military chief of staff, believed that the military should take over the nation's factories and shipping assets. This step was bitterly resisted by key members of Abe's party, who pointed out that the war was supposed to stimulate the economy, not kill it.

“Why is it,” Abe demanded of his party's senior members, “that everyone is a patriot when patriotism is free, yet when it has a price, it has no friends?”

 

In western Russia life had become even more severe than it was before the Japanese invasion. Great masses of people were still hungry, factories still idle, and civilian construction projects stalled. Everyone was being squeezed as the military slowly and inexorably took control of every aspect of the nation's life. Every man between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five who could pass a physical was being drafted and sent to recruit depots, there to wait for arms and equipment from obsolete, worn-out factories that were being restarted by decree. Everything—food, fuel, clothing, housing, everything—was being rationed. The censored media printed only propaganda. A people with little hope could see that their country had gone from bad to worse.

The news of the devastation in Tokyo Bay caused by a Russian submarine hit this Russia with a stupendous impact. Pictures of
Admiral Kolchak
and a file photo of Pavel Saratov in his dress uniform were printed in the newspapers, made into posters, and displayed endlessly on television. The meager facts of Saratov's life from his navy personnel file were expanded into a ten-thousand word biography that was
printed in every newspaper in Russia west of the Urals. The loss of innocent life in Japan was horrific, frightening, but the image of a few brave men in a small submarine sneaking into the Japanese stronghold to cripple the arrogant, swaggering bully struck a deep chord in Russian hearts starved for good news. The press in Europe, in North and South America, and in Australia picked up the stories and broadcast them worldwide. Within four days of the disaster Pavel Saratov was the best-known Russian alive.

During this orgy of patriotism Marshal Oleg Stolypin was trying to find the wherewithal to defend the nation. As he lay in bed at night trying to sleep, Stolypin had visions of Japanese armored columns following the railroad west all the way to Moscow. He would awaken with the nightmare of Japanese tanks in Red Square fresh in his mind. There weren't enough troops to stop the Japanese if they really made up their minds to do it.

Apparently the Japanese weren't bold enough to risk everything on one wild lunge westward. Or foolish enough. Going blindly where little was known did not appeal to Stolypin's military mind, either. The old gray marshal did not believe in luck. Unlike the late Marshal Ivan Samsonov, Stolypin was not a brilliant man. He was smart enough, but he had to look situations over carefully, weigh all the risks, ponder the possibilities. Once he was sure he was right, however, he was an irresistible force.

Stolypin had quickly assembled and put to work an experienced staff that knew the true state of the Russian army. Armed with presidential decrees and newly printed money, military arms and equipment were broken out of storage and issued to the troops and new recruits, new equipment was rushed into production, and the transportation system was drastically and ruthlessly overhauled.

The marshal concentrated on building his military strength. Any plans he made were going to hinge on the forces at his disposal. Increasing those forces was his first priority.

His second priority was augmenting those forces in Siberia that could hurt the Japanese now. Men, weapons, ammo, and food were sent east by truck, train, and airplane. The marshal well knew that the meager forces in Siberia could not defeat the Japanese, but for the sake of the nation's soul, they had to fight.

One day Stolypin called on Aleksandr Kalugin to discuss the military situation. He found the president sifting through newspaper clippings and watching three televisions simultaneously.

“Saratov has united the Russian people,” Kalugin muttered, waving a fistful of clippings. “They adore him.”

A few minutes later, apropos of nothing, the president remarked, “The man who crushes Japan will hold Russia in the palm of his hand.”

He listened distractedly to Stolypin's report.

“We're losing, aren't we?” he demanded at one point.

“Sir, the Japanese are setting up military defenses in depth to protect the oil fields around Yakutsk and Sakhalin Island. They are digging in to stay around Khabarovsk and stockpiling men and equipment for a push up the Amur valley. My staff and I believe they intend to advance as far west as Lake Baikal before winter sets in, set up their first line of defense there.”

During most of this, Kalugin was shaking his head from side to side, slowly, with his eyes closed. “Questions are being asked in the congress,” he said. “The deputies want to see progress toward military victory. Our present small-unit actions merely harass the Japanese. Surrendering half of Siberia is not one of our options.”

“Mr. President, we do not have the forces to—”

“The people demand action! The deputies
demand
action!
I demand it of you!
”

Stolypin didn't know what to say. He didn't panic—panic wasn't in him. He repeated the truth to the president. “We are doing all we can. Every day we grow stronger; every day we are one day closer to victory.”

Kalugin rose from his chair, shouting, “Lies, lies, lies! Every day the Japanese army advances deeper into Russia. I have listened to your lying promises long enough.”

He spun on the aging marshal, confronted him. “We must seize the moment. This moment in history is a gift; we must face it with bold resolve. We must not shrink from our duty.” Kalugin lifted his hand before his face and stared at it. “We must strike with all the might and power we possess. The man who strikes first will conquer.”

He smashed his fist down on a glass table, which shattered into a thousand pieces.

“The prize is Russia, all of Russia. The man who refuses to be reasonable will triumph. That is the way of war. Atsuko Abe knows that. He is also a student of Genghis Khan.”

“Mr. President, we are striking the Japanese with all our strength.”

“No! No, Marshal Stolypin, we are not. We have ten nuclear weapons. When these weapons are exploding on Japan, then…” Kalugin
drew a ragged breath. “
Then
will the victory be ours. We must apply overwhelming military force. Weakness merely tempts them, sir. I have studied these things. I know I am right. We must annihilate our enemies.
Then Russia will be mine
.”

 

One of the people Stolypin made time for every day was Janos Ilin. Ilin briefed him on the extent of the Japanese penetration of Siberia. Ilin was remarkably well informed. Extraordinarily so. He had the names of the Japanese units, how many men, how much equipment, even the names of the commanders. He used all of this to annotate tactical maps for the marshal, who spent spare moments studying them.

Once the marshal questioned Ilin. “Where does all this information come from? I never realized the Foreign Intelligence Service was such a font of knowledge. I can't even communicate with my units on a timely basis, yet you seem to be getting these maps from Tokyo every morning.”

“Sir, you know full well I cannot answer that question. If I start telling secrets, I soon won't have any.”

“You are much better informed than the GRU.” The GRU was the army general staff's intelligence arm.

“We work different sides of the street.”

That was the last time the marshal brought up the subject.

When the business of the day was over, Ilin usually lingered a few moments to chat. He was, of course, younger than the marshal and had never worked with him before.

“Are you one of those,” Ilin asked, “who longs for the old days of glory?”

“Alas, no. The old days were not glorious. Corruption, selfishness, incompetence, blighted, drunken lives, universal poverty, pollution, wastage…Believe me, those days are best behind us.”

“But the army? It was huge, capable, the pride of every Russian.”

“The Kremlin gave us plenty of money and we shook our fists in the world's face. The world trembled, yet the real truth was that the Soviet Union was never able to do more than defend itself. The nation was always poor. Our forces were designed for defense, not offense. For example, we had no ability to mount an invasion of the United States, although the Americans thought we could. Invading Afghanistan was the limit of our capability, and we lost there because we couldn't force a quick decision.”

“So what is Russia's destiny?”