'' Has anyone been monitoring the naval channel?''

  "No, sir. Colonel Lynch ordered the naval channel to be shut down after an interchange with commander Graf Spee."

  Kim, the commander Graf Spee, was known for his slashing wit. One naval rating had let slip that Rear-Admiral Irie refused to leave his cabin when Kim had the bridge.

  Sanmartin tried to hold his head steady to let the blood clear.

  I uwa, request permission to open communications immedi­ately. Something feels rank about this whole mess."

  "I shall comply with your directive, sir." There was a brief i lence. A moment later, Fuwa came back. "Sir, Colonel Lynch is not available, and Major Dong has denied rny request to open communications with the navy in absence of the Colonel."

  "Listen Fuwa, this is very important, I think. On my non­existent authority, ask the navy what's going on at Reading."

  "1 will do so, sir. One moment," Fuwa replied.

  Sanmartin said half to himself, "Lord in heaven, I hope I'm in it right.'' He looked over at the pilot of the helicopter. "Stash, hold up. Don't go any closer to the port."

  ' What?" Wojcek turned around in his seat.

  "1 said hold up, Stash. Don't go any closer to the port. How long can we hover here before we have fuel problems?"

  About ten minutes."

  "Do it."

  Wojcek acknowledged, issuing the order. For some reason, Sanmartin began working the other riddle over in his mind, the one that had mystified Rettaglia. What could be packaged in a box three-tenths of a meter on a side that weighed five hundred eighty kilograms? Why would the Boers bribe Irie a week before a war?

  A moment later, Fuwa came back on. "Sir, the navy reports that both Reading and Upper Marlboro appear to have been destroyed by small nuclear devices. They have been trying to relay this information to us for the last seven minutes, sir. Major Dong has threatened to shoot me," he added.

  "Fuwa, are any of the companies in the perimeter under pres­sure?"

  "One of the volunteer companies has stated that they are pinned down by intense fire, but all elements of Lieutenant- Colonel Higuchi's companies report nothing but noise and fireworks. They have requested permission to pursue. Permis­sion to pursue has been denied."

  Sanmartin felt his throat go dry. "Listen, Fuwa, the spaceport is about to be nuked. It's the only thing that makes sense. Get Higuchi and get Lynch. Tell them to clear whatever they can out of there immediately."

  "I will do my best, sir."

  Wojcek turned, pale as milk. "Everything that isn't in orbit is stored either in Reading or at the port.''

  Sanmartin said nothing. Instead, he found his mind dwelling on Irie's prize, wondering how well Irie had scoped the thing, what could be that dense. It was too heavy for gold, far too heavy for lead. Solid platinum? Or something that was intended to look like a solid cube of platinum.

  "Fuwa, this is urgent! Call Rear-Admiral Irie. Tell him to jettison his platinum cube immediately and clear the area. Tell him every second counts. Tell him there's a nuke inside."

  Fuwa betrayed no hesitation. "I shall endeavor to comply, sir."

  A few minutes later, Wojcek spoke up. "If we don't land at the port, we can either go back to Pretoria or divert to Com­plex."

  "Is there any fuel left in Pretoria?"

  "Some. Not much."

  "Head back. Tell the Variag we're coming. What time is it?"

  Fuwa interrupted before Wojcek could speak. "Captain San- martin, this is Fuwa. Lieutenant-Colonel Higuchi has super­seded Colonel Lynch and begun evacuating personnel. I shall stay to man the communications center. You have been given permission to divert or return. I have relayed your message to the navy with the urgency you requested. They have acknowl­edged." There was a pause. "I have shot Acting Major Dong. I have nothing further for you at this time. Good luck to you, sir. Fuwa, out."

  "Good luck to you, too, you little Jap," Sanmartin mur­mured. He looked down at his hands and noticed he was clench­ing his fists. His fingernails had broken skin.

  "It's four hours fifty-six," Wojcek stated.

  They waited as they flew. "They could have synchronized their watches a little better," Sanmartin murmured, possibly to Wojcek. Four minutes passed. Then there was a brilliant white flash, around them, behind them, that seemed to fill the sky. It was followed by a shock wave that jerked the helicopters about like little toys.

  "Any casualties back there?" Sanmartin yelled as Wojcek pulled the chopper on course with difficulty, buffeted by winds.

  "Grigori hit his head. He's out, but the rest of us are fine," someone shouted back.

  Sanmartin wiped the blood from his chin. "Stash, see if we still have communications. Call Vereshchagin. Tell him what's happened," he said quietly. For the companies that had been swallowed up, and maybe just a little for the companies that hadn't, he started mumbling the words of a paternoster he had learned as a child.

  below them in pretoria, vereshchagin was speaking to

  Haerkoennen. His voice was unnaturally quiet.

  "Timo, please contact Rear-Admiral Irie. Find out what the situation is and what his orders are." Vereshchagin had only met Irie once, during an operations briefing on Shokaku a hun­dred years in the past. The import of the tremor that passed through the building had shocked him almost beyond words.

  "Sir, commander Ajax is responding. He is requesting orders from us." Haerkoennen replied.

  "Is the navy aware that Admiral Lee is missing, presumed dead?" Vereshchagin asked.

  "Yes, sir. Wait. He says that a nuclear device, estimated to be two kilotons, has destroyed Graf Spee. The blast, coupled with the resulting fusion reaction, also eliminated units Achilles and Exeter. Rear-Admiral Irie was aboard the flagship when the device went off. He, along with Admiral Lee, is missing, pre­sumed dead. Lieutenant-Colonels Moore and Ebyl are the only senior officers to have reported in. Commander Ajax states his vessel has sustained moderate damage but is still functional. He requests orders."

  Vereshchagin felt himself laugh, until tears streamed down his face. "I am sorry, Timo. Tell Ajax to interdict any traffic coming west from Pretoria and Johannesburg along the road net, and to stand by for further orders."

  hours later, it was time to assess. "so what have we, Eva?" he asked Moore, acting commander of Complex and of odds and ends thrown off from the inferno that had engulfed the spaceport.

  Moore hesitated over her reply. "Forget Reading. Forget Up­per Marlboro. Glassy slicks, no survivors. At the spaceport, over and above the ones who got out, you have fifty-seven who are dead and don't know it yet. Most of them are from Higuchi's H Company, they were in advance of the others and fairly quick with a shovel. For the moment, they're functional. They've formed themselves into a platoon. I have sixty-seven more under treatment with varying chances of pulling through."

  Raul Sanmartin's warning had enabled Higuchi to send off most of the aircraft with a mixed bag of passengers. Character­istically, Higuchi had refused to board himself. None of the survivors knew why Colonel Lynch had failed to embark.

  "Thank you, Eva. Please tell them that I will be by to address them in an hour.'' It was a promise Vereshchagin meant to keep. It was a matter of pride that just as his battalion kept faith with the living, it kept faith with the dead.

  "One personal note, Anton, Claude Devoucoux was in Read­ing when it blew. I put him there. I sent him off to try and do something about the venereal disease."

  Moore had divined that the loss of witty, urbane Claude De­voucoux meant more than all the rest of Reading's dead. It would be better, Vereshchagin quickly reasoned, not to mention the circumstances surrounding Devoucoux's death. It was the sort of brutal irony that made a mockery of war.

  Sensing his mood, she told him quickly, "Give my love to Solchava!" and broke the connection.

  Solchava had hung the cross and crescent out at the Pretoria hospital. She had her hands full, and a little girl, a spindly thing with a thin, ferret face, had attached herself to her remaining limbs. Her immediate problem was to arrange transportation for casualties military and civilian to Lieutenant-Colonel Moore's facilities at Complex, themselves overflowing.

  She had pulled perhaps a third of the staff and was doing as well as might be expected. The Afrikaner medicos—good Brothers all—were mostly out getting themselves shot. The first one to show came as a patient with mortar fragments in his spine from leading an Oxwagonguard squad with more zeal than dis­cretion.

  Overall, the situation reported was grim. Ebyl's battalion had ridden out the storm unscathed, positioned in the backwaters of (he cowboy country. So had Higuchi's G Company. The survi­vors of Higuchi's light attack company were reforming them­selves into a reinforced platoon, heavy on Cadillacs and light on slicks. Two platoons from his Ehime Company had been left behind at Complex, his reconnaissance platoon had made it out on a heavy transport. Still another platoon had put down an uprising at the ocean tap, albeit at the cost of heavy casualties. Of the other men Higuchi had preserved, Vereshchagin could put together five or six platoons of artillerymen and engineers as garrison forces.

  His own battalion had sustained thirty-four casualties serious enough to have been reported, concentrated in B and C Com­panies. The wastage was remarkably light. Still, Vereshchagin had only the training detachment and strays to fill the holes.

  More serious was the loss of the naval units, the runway, and the supply stockpiles. A considerable number of aircraft had been saved, but munitions were short. From this day forward the war would largely be fought on prayers and meditation. On the civil side of the ledger, the cowboys had been decimated, with their leaders wasted. USS had lost more than a hundred personnel in the fireball that enveloped the spaceport.

  Vereshchagin felt it important to take a moment to reflect upon Kosei Higuchi, without whom the losses of the day would have been higher. It was perhaps fortunate, in a grotesque way, that Raul's serendipitous flash of intuition had proven out; sev­eral survivors remarked that as the last aircraft departed, Hig­uchi had been removing the ribbons from his tunic to award to the remaining members of the half section he had retained to ensure orderly evacuation.

  People reacted in unexpected ways. Certainly there had been small trace of the fearful little man with an ulcer that Colonel Lynch's staff had derided.

  Vereshchagin smiled sadly. There was something poignant and compelling about Kosei Higuchi and seven brown men bearing the last name of Gurung—as did almost everyone in that clan and that company—lined up in a row, keeping their faith to the last with the rituals of their calling.

  Haerkoennen interrupted his thoughts. "Captain Yoshida, he's very upset. If you can break for a moment, you can get him off me. Sanmartin is here, too."

  "It needn't wait, Timo. Send Yoshida," he commanded.

  Yoshida jarred him from his reverie. Haerkoennen had un­derstated. Yoshida was seething over having been relieved.

  "Lieutenant-Colonel Vereshchagin, Major Haijalo had no right to relieve me in the manner in which he did, in front of my men, he had no right to relieve me at all, he . . ."

  ' 'I believe Major Haijalo ordered you to report to me, Captain Yoshida. Do you know how to report to a superior officer, Cap­tain Yoshida?"

  Vereshchagin's voice cut Yoshida finely and deeply. Yoshida drew himself fully erect and saluted.

  "Sir, Captain Yoshida. I have been relieved of command, I am reporting as directed by my superior officer for reassign­ment, sir!"

  "Very good. I instructed Major Haijalo to relieve you, I was dissatisfied with your company's progress. I am satisfied with his actions, which were undertaken at my direction. Major Henke will take over B Company in addition to his own for the present. When we find the time, you may sign over your ac­counts and property formally. At this moment, we are in some­thing of a war. We will find something else for you in a day or so."

  "Sir, my company advanced as well as it could under the circumstances prevailing on the battiefield. I protest this action removing me from my command!"

  "Your protest has been duly noted. The action stands. Chi­haru, you have many talents, but you are not suited to field command," Vereshchagin replied dreamily, as if acting out some scene in a drama.

  "Sir, I believe I have been unfairly singled out for opprobrium and respectfully request that I be reinstated. Otherwise, I shall be forced to carry my protests to the brigade commander.''

  "Captain C, go ahead," Sanmartin commented from outside

  the door. "You've got the battalion commander, the brigade commander, and the task group commander all sitting in the same chair. The Boers made a clean sweep."

  ' 'Chiharu,'' Vereshchagin said gently, "we have been hit very hard, and we are going to have to forget about the usual nonsense lor a time in order to concentrate our efforts. You are not suited io a field command. I will find you a different manner in which to contribute."

  For all his faults, Yoshida was not stupid. For a moment, he stood there. He started to say something, but the words tripped over themselves as he tried to eject them from his mouth. It is a fearful thing, Vereshchagin thought, to see a man so naked.

  "I am sorry, sir. I do not know what came over me. I really could not have been myself," Yoshida finally said.

  The banality appealed to Vereshchagin. It seemed to repre­sent stability in a disorderly cosmos. It was, however, more than Sanmartin could stand. It had been a long day for Raul San­martin. Rudi Scheel had been shot thrice in the chest by a young boy during the mopping up.

  "Who were you, Chiharu?" he called through the door.

  "Chiharu," Vereshchagin said gently to give him some face, " I am looking for Raul Sanmartin. If you happen to notice him, please send him in."

  Yoshida excused himself to permit Sanmartin to enter. As Sanmartin dropped into the seat that fate had provided for the occasion, Vereshchagin used the opportunity to examine the steel he was forging. The tone of Sanmartin's flippancy alarmed Vereshchagin. It betrayed mental exhaustion.

  He selected an approach ruthlessly.

  "My regrets over Rudi. You have made Beregov your acting eompany sergeant. I agree. I regret that I can afford you little rest." Lightly, he dismissed the day's events.

  "You will retain your position as intelligence officer. Matti and Saki's people will assume other staff functions to the extent wc require them. Integrate Rettaglia's personnel and begin train­ing Muslar to assist you." Mizoguchi, who would have been a better choice than Muslar, had been shot through the head and had lost the sight in both eyes. A small, ivory netsuke that had been in his family for generations was in the care of Timo Haer­koennen.

  Sanmartin began to say something. Vereshchagin cut him short. "Raul, we are at a linkpoint. We dare not allow a political movement to coalesce."

  Sanmartin blinked his eyes, and Vereshchagin moved to de­flect his unvoiced questions deftly.

  "The Afrikaner masses are poised at the brink of an unknown future. Before they rally around the revolt, we must impress our will upon them.

  "It seems strange to speak in abstraction when reality has intruded so chilly, but Piotr has a theory," Vereshchagin com­mented, the gentle rain following the lightning, "that every once in a great while, an opportunity arises for a few soldiers to tip the scales while thrones and powers dangle naked."

  "Napoleon had a dictum that God is on the side of the big battalions," Sanmartin said slowly, to give himself time to think.

  "He also said that the moral is to the material in a ratio of four to one. Sometimes," Vereshchagin said carefully, "war is not a test of brute strength, a crisis of attrition, but rather a subtle matching of superiorities against inferiorities at a decisive moment. We are poised, delicately. After today, we cannot ne­gotiate, nor do we have the strength to impose a solution by orthodox military means." He opened his hands compellingly.

  "I need a touch of insanity, Raul. We can gobble up Boer civilians turned soldier by hundreds and never touch the heart of the darkness. Where is it? Find me the lever which will break it," Vereshchagin asked him, and waited cruelly while the re­solve he had calculated to impart manifested itself.

  "By the way,'' he added, ' 'I must speak with Juffrou Bruwer. Please arrange this."

  The sentence galvanized Sanmartin as the glassy sea that was the spaceport had not. Vereshchagin could almost see the inter­play of his thoughts in the rippling of his facial muscles. War stripped a man of pretense.

 

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