The Third World War - The Untold Story (69 page)

“Using all we had was in the Russian traditional mode of making war. Using none was not. Never mind that now. What happened in the event was that the really incredible decision was in fact taken to do neither one thing nor the other. We would not use the lot nor would we refrain from using any. We would instead attack an important city (though not the capital: we should want that) of a major satellite in one high-yield strike and then ask for negotiations with the United States. It was almost unbelievable. I always thought the old man had gone over the top . . .”

“Did you ever say so?” asked the former Supreme Ideologist.

“No, of course not. Neither did you, and for the same reasons. Even in his dotage he held all the strings.”

“Never embark on a journey, they used to say where I grew up, unless you mean to arrive. To go half way, or even less, and allow yourself to stop there, is asking for trouble.”

“That is precisely what got us here,” said Marshal Nastin, the former Minister of Defence.

Through the little window high up in the wall, behind its heavy iron grille, a paler shade of night heralded the approach of dawn.

“Can't be long now,” said Malinsky.

Even as he spoke boots sounded in the corridor outside and a key rattled in the lock.

There had been good times, in the past, difficult times, but good times. That was all over now.

The cell door opened.

“Come,” said a voice. “It is time.”*

* The taped record of this conversation found its way into the hands of an enterprising Italian journalist. The version given above was published in La Stampa on 25 June 1986.

Postscript II

Dimitri Vassilievitch Makarov had to find Nekrassov's father as soon as he could but he had first to make some enquiries. Soviet prisoners of war, after their surrender, were only lightly guarded, the policy of the Western allies being early controlled dispersal. For many of their guests in the concentration areas there was no great incentive to leave. Food was freely available here but very scarce outside. Considerable freedom of movement was allowed during the inevitably long delays before the very large numbers of ex-members of Warsaw Pact forces involved could be got to wherever in this huge area they wished to go, making the utmost use of what had lately been their own military transport.

Officers and men had been collected and concentrated at the places where they laid down their arms, so that the personnel of divisions remained more or less together, at least for the time being. Nevertheless, it was more by luck than good management that Makarov found the man he was after. This was Boris Ivanienko, the driver of Andrei Nekrassov's BMP who, Makarov had learned, was still alive. Dimitri Vassilievitch heard from him of many others in the battalion who were not. Andrei's old Sergeant Major from No. 3 Company, for example, Astap Beda, with whom Andrei had maintained touch till near the end, was dead. Little Yuri had disappeared. Boris Ivanienko, however, before he found transport back to his Ukrainian home in Poltava, had much to tell Makarov in his own quiet way. He had got very close to his officer. Little could be said on either side but this was a relationship in which, on his side at any rate, there had been understanding and sympathy. He felt that there had been the same on the other, too. He spoke of how a compassionate and sensitive young man, good professional though he was, seemed increasingly to suffer under the strain of the madness that had engulfed them all, so that the bmp driver sometimes feared for his reason. What Makarov heard moved him greatly.

Boris still had with him the soldier's kitbag with the drawstring at the mouth, carried by officers as well as men to hold the few little articles of spare clothing and personal possessions each carried, the whole material sum of a private life on the battlefield, which he had taken from Nekrassov's body when the cannon-shell from the American gun-ship helicopter had struck him down. He handed it over, with its meagre but highly personal contents, to Makarov.

The journey down to Rostov was not easy, nor was it easy to find the elder Nekrassov's dwelling when he got there. The habit of not answering questions from strangers, still deeply engrained everywhere, would take a long time to die away. He found where his friend's father lived in the end - not in a dacha in its own grounds, which would have been appropriate to an officer retiring as a general, but in a small apartment on the eleventh floor of one of the square, grey tower blocks, grim and cheerless, of which all Soviet cities were now mostly composed. Cats were foraging in piles of rubbish round the ground floor. Children with dirty faces were quarrelling in the stairways. From a window on the eleventh floor it was at least possible to get a distant glimpse of the River Don.

The older man stood waiting for him at the entrance, as he had done every day since word had reached him that Makarov was coming.

He knew at once who it was. It could be no other.

He went forward to embrace the younger man and turned, with an arm about his shoulder.

“Come in, my other son,” he said, “and tell me.”

Envoi

'We will bury you!' was the irritated retort of Khrushchev to an ill-considered interpolation. He was misunderstood by many, who thought he was threatening the early destruction of the capitalist West in war.

What he was doing was no more than to echo, in his own way, the prophetic words of Lenin.

'As long as capitalism and socialism exist we cannot live in peace: in the end one or the other will triumph - a funeral dirge will be sung over the Soviet Republic or over world capitalism.'

It has been sung.

The team that put together the earlier book,
The Third World War: August 1985,
has gathered again, some four years later, to take a further look at the events we imagined then and to amplify and explore them a little further. In these years, though much of what we then had to say has since become even more closely relevant to the world about us, as recent events in Poland, for example, suggest, the scene here and there has changed. The Shah has gone. Egypt is no longer dependent on the Soviet Union. The story we now offer takes account of these events. Our purpose, however, has remained the same. It is to tell a cautionary tale (with such adjustment as the passage of time suggests) in an attempt to persuade the public that if, in a dangerous and unstable world, we wish to avoid a nuclear war we must be prepared for a conventional one.

We have assembled the original group, with one or two important additions. Air Chief Marshal Sir John Barraclough brought us unsurpassed experience of air matters and cool judgement; Sir Bernard Burrows, former Ambassador to Turkey and then to NATO, had much of high value to contribute in the political sphere; Vice-Admiral Sir Ian McGeoch's long and distinguished naval career, much of it in submarines, which also included NATO command, as well as postgraduate university work on Soviet armed forces and his editorship for some years of
The Naval Review,
has been of great value; Norman Macrae, Deputy Editor of
The Economist,
enlivens and illuminates everything he does, and here has run true to form; Major-General John Strawson, a highly literate soldier, lately retired, with several books to his own credit, now working with Westland Aircraft, has given us some thoughtful and penetrating work on the peripheries; and finally, of the old team, Brigadier Ken Hunt, one of the best known of military analysts, not only makes a notable contribution to the content of this book, particularly on the Far East, but has also applied his renowned editorial skills in helping to put it together.

The most important new element in this latest book is some investigation of what it all looked like from the Soviet side. Here I acknowledge a deep debt to a new colleague in Viktor Suvorov, from whose experience and advice I have profited greatly. His own first book,
The Liberators
(he commanded a motor rifle company in the 'liberation' of Czechoslovakia in 1968), already published, demands attention. He has another book coming out soon.

I am also deeply indebted to Vladimir Bukovsky, a man who in the non-communist world rightly commands enormous respect. The advice he has given me has been most valuable. His own book
To Build a Castle: My Life as a Dissenter,
is of profound importance.

I have also to thank one of the wisest and kindest of men in Lord Caradon, a very old friend, who gave good counsel and helped us particularly over the Middle East.

I owe more gratitude than I can say to the patience of my wife in putting up with the domestic commotion caused by the creation of this book. I am also deeply indebted to Mrs Carole Beesley, without whose cheerful and efficient help it could hardly have been finished, and to my daughter Elizabeth, whose assistance was crucial. To Jane Heller, finally, of Sidgwick and Jackson, more thanks are owed than any of us in the team could adequately express.

Having said all that I have to add that, although a good many hands have shared in the preparation of this book, the responsibility for anything that may be found wrong with it rests with me.

J. W. Hackett

Coberley Mill, Gloucestershire February 1982