Gone Tomorrow

THIRTY-SEVEN

I GLANCED AROUND THE FOUR SEASONS’ DIM TEA ROOM AND moved in my chair and said, ‘I’m sorry, hut 1 don’t believe you.’

Lila Hoth said, ‘I’m telling you the truth.’

I shook my head. ‘I was in the U.S. Army. I was a military cop. Broadly speaking I knew where people went, and where they didn’t. And there were no U.S. boots on the ground in Afghanistan. Not back then. Not during that conflict. It was purely a local affair.’

‘But you had a dog in the fight.’

‘Of course we did. Like you did when we were in Vietnam. Was the Red Army in-country there?’

It was a rhetorical question, designed to make a point, but Lila Hoth took it seriously. She leaned forward across the table and spoke to her mother, low and fast, in a foreign language that I presumed was Ukrainian. Svetlana’s eyes opened a little and she cocked her head to one side as if she was recalling some small matter of arcane historical detail. She spoke back to her daughter, low and fast, and long, and then Lila paused a second to marshal her translation and said, ‘No, we sent no troops to Vietnam, because we had confidence that our socialist brothers from the People’s Republic could complete their task unaided. Which, my mother says, apparently they did, quite splendidly. Little men in pyjamas defeated the big green machine.’

Svetlana Hoth smiled and nodded.

I said, ‘Just like a bunch of goat herders kicked her ass.’

‘Undisputedly. But with a lot of help.’

‘Didn’t happen.’

‘But you admit that material help was provided, surely. To the mujahideen. Money, and weapons. Especially surface-to-air missiles, and things of that nature.’

‘Like in Vietnam, only the other way around.’

‘And Vietnam is an excellent example. Because, to your certain knowledge, whenever did the United States provide military aid anywhere in the world without also sending what they called military advisers?’

I didn’t answer.

She asked, ‘For instance, how many countries have you served in?’

I said nothing.

She asked, ‘When did you join the army?’

‘In 1984,’ I said.

‘Then these events of 1982 and 1983 were all before your time.’

‘Only just,’ I said. ‘And there is such a thing as institutional memory.’

‘Wrong,’ she said. ‘Secrets were kept and institutional memories were conveniently erased. There’s a long history of illegal American military involvements all around the world. Especially during Mr Reagan’s presidency.’

‘You learn that in high school?’

‘Yes, I did. And remember, the communists were gone long before I was in high school. Thanks, in part, to Mr Reagan himself.’

I said, ‘Even if you’re right, why assume Americans were involved on that particular night? Presumably your mother didn’t see it happen. Why not assume your father and your uncle were captured directly by the mujahideen?’

‘Because their rifle was never found. And my mother’s position was never fired on at night by a sniper. My father had twenty rounds in his magazine, and he was carrying twenty spare. If the mujahideen had captured him directly, then they would have used his rifle against us. They would have killed forty of our men, or tried to, and then they would have run out of ammunition and abandoned the gun. My mother’s company would have found it eventually. There was a lot of back-and-forth skirmishing. Our side overran their positions, and vice versa. It was like a crazy circular chase. The mujahideen were intelligent. They had a habit of doubling back to positions we had previously written off as abandoned. But over a period of time our people saw all their places. They would have found the VAL, empty and rusting, maybe in use as a fence post. They accounted for all their other captured weapons that way. But not that VAL. The only logical conclusion is that it was carried straight to America, by Americans.’

I said nothing.

Lila Hoth said, ‘I’m telling you the truth.’

I said, ‘I once saw a VAL Silent Sniper.’

‘You told me that already.’

‘I saw it in 1994,’ I said. ‘We were told it had just been captured. Eleven whole years after you claim it was. There was a big urgent panic, because of its capabilities. The army wouldn’t wait eleven years to get in a panic.’

‘Yes, it would,’ she said. ‘To unveil the rifle immediately alter its capture might have started World War Three. It would have been a direct admission that your soldiers were in direct face to face contact with ours, without any declaration of hostilities. Illegal at the very least, and completely disastrous in geopolitical terms. America would have lost the moral high ground. Support inside the Soviet Union would have been strengthened. The fall of communism would have been delayed, perhaps for years.’

I said nothing.

She said, ‘Tell me, what happened in your army, in 1994, after the big urgent panic?’

I paused, in the same way that Svetlana Roth had. I recalled the historical details. They were surprising. I checked and rechecked. Then I said, ‘Not very much happened, actually.’

‘No new body armour? No new camouflage? No tactical reaction of any kind?’

‘No.’

‘Is that logical, even for an army?’

‘Not especially.’

‘When was the last equipment upgrade before that?’

I paused again. Sought more historical details. Recalled the PASGT, introduced to much excitement and fanfare and acclaim during my early years in uniform. The Personal Armor System, Ground Troops. A brand new Kevlar helmet, rated to withstand all ma

I said nothing.

Lila Roth asked, ‘When was the upgrade?’

I said, ‘In the late eighties.’

‘Even with a big urgent panic, how long does it take to design and manufacture an upgrade like that?’

I said, ‘A few years.’

‘So let’s review what we know. In the late eighties you received upgraded equipment, explicitly designed for better personal protection. Do you think it is possible that was the result of direct stimulus derived from an unrevealed source in 1983?’

I didn’t answer.

We all sat quiet for a moment. A silent and discreet waiter came by and offered us tea. He recited a long list of exotic blends. Lila asked for a flavour I had never heard of, and then she translated for her mother, who asked for the same thing. I asked for regular coffee, black. The waiter inclined his head about a quarter of an inch, as if the Four Seasons was willing to accommodate all and any requests, however appallingly proletarian they might be. I waited until the guy had retreated again and asked, ‘How did you figure out who you are looking for?’

Lila said, ‘My mother’s generation expected to fight a land war with you in Europe, and they expected to win. Their ideology was pure, and yours wasn’t. After a swift and certain victory, they expected to take many of you prisoner, possibly millions of you. In that phase, part of a political commissar’s duties would have been to classify enemy combatants, to cull the ideologically unretrievable from the herd. To aid them in that task, they were made familiar with the structure of your military.’

‘Made familiar by who?’

‘By the KGB. It was an ongoing programme. There was a lot of information available. They knew who did what. In the case elite units, they even knew names. Not just the officers, but the enlisted men too. Like a true soccer fan knows the perso