What do I say? What can I do? This is my friend.

The former Commander-in-Chief of the Western Theater of Military Operations said it for him: "Good-bye, Pasha."

They took the General out. Alekseyev watched him go, then stop at the door. He turned with a look of hopeless fatalism before proceeding. Alekseyev's last sight was of the General's pistol belt, the leather flap loose over an empty holster. He turned away and saw on the desk a telex confirming his command status. It told him that he had the complete confidence of the Party, the Politburo, and the People. He crumpled it and threw it against the wall. He had seen the same words on the same form a few brief weeks before. The recipient of that message of confidence was now in a car heading east.

How long do I have? Alekseyev summoned his communications officer.

"Get me General Beregovoy!"

BRUSSELS, BELGIUM

SACEUR allowed himself a meal. He'd lost ten pounds since the war had begun by subsisting on coffee and sandwiches and stomach acid. Alexander had commanded armies in his teens and twenties-maybe that's why he did so well, the General thought. He was young enough to stand it.

It was working. The Cav was at Alfeld. The Germans were firmly in control of Gronau and Bruggen, and unless Ivan reacted quickly, his divisions on the Weser were in for a very nasty surprise. The door to his office opened. It was his German intelligence officer.

"Excuse me, Herr General, I have an naval intelligence officer here."

"Is it important, Joachim?"

"Ja."

SACEUR looked down at his plate. "Show him in."

The General was not impressed. The man was dressed in his shipboard khakis. Only a very sharp eye could see where the creases used to be.

"General, I'm Commander Bob Toland. Until a few hours ago, I was on the threat team with Strike Fleet Atlantic-"

"How's it going on Iceland?"

"The air attack on the fleet was chewed up, sir. There's still the submarine problem to deal with, but the Marines are moving. I think we'll win this one, General."

"Well, the more subs they send after the carriers, the fewer go after my convoys."

That's one way to look at it, Toland thought. "Admiral, we captured a Russian fighter pilot. He comes from an important family. I interrogated him; here's the tape. I think we know why the war started."

"Joachim, did you check his data?"

"No, sir. He has already briefed COMEASTLANT, and Admiral Beattie wanted the data to come directly to you."

SACEUR's eyes narrowed. "Let's hear it, son."

"Oil."

41 -Targets of Opportunity

Three copies were made of the tape. One went to one of SACEUR's intelligence staff for a separate translation to be checked against Toland's. Another was taken to French intelligence for electronic analysis. The third was analyzed by a Belgian psychiatrist who was fluent in Russian. While that was going on, half of the intelligence officers at NATO headquarters updated all their information about Soviet fuel consumption to date. CIA and other national intelligence services began a frantic investigation into Soviet oil production and utilization. Toland predicted the outcome hours before it came in: insufficient data. The range of possible conclusions predicted that the Russians had enough fuel for several months--or had already run out!

SACEUR took his time before accepting the data at face value. Prisoner interrogations had given his intelligence people a wealth of information-most of it patently false or contradictory. Since supply officers naturally lagged behind the fighting troops, few of them had been captured. It was the Air Force that bought the story first. They knew that enemy fuel-supply dumps were smaller than expected. Instead of the One Big Facility so prevalent throughout Russian society (and after the big dump at Wittenburg had been blown up), the Russians had gone to small ones, accepting the price of increased air-defense and security requirements. NATO's deep-strike air missions had been concentrating on airfields, munitions dumps, transport junctions, and the tank columns approaching the front... more lucrative targets than the smaller-than-expected fuel depots, which were also harder to spot. The traffic signatures associated with the large fuel-posts usually showed hundreds of trucks cycling in and out. The small ones, with fewer trucks involved, were harder for the look-down radar aircraft to locate. All these factors militated to a different targeting priority.

After fifteen minutes' discussion with his Air Chief, SACEUR changed all that.

STENDAL, GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC

"I can't do both things," Alekseyev whispered to himself He'd spent the last twelve hours trying to find a way, but it wasn't there. It was a marvel what it meant finally to be in command himself, no longer the aggressive subordinate. He was now responsible for success or failure. A mistake was his mistake. A failure was his failure. It had been much more comfortable the other way. Like his predecessor, Alekseyev had to mark his orders, even though his orders were impossible. He had to maintain the salient and continue the advance. He had the resources to do one or the other, but not both. You will advance northwest from the Weser, cutting off the forces on the right-flank of the advancing troops and preparing the way for a decisive attack into the Ruhr Valley. Whoever issued the orders either didn't know or didn't care that this was impossible.

But NATO knew. Their air power had smashed convoys on every road between R?hle and Alfeld. The two B tank divisions guarding Beregovoy's northern flank had been caught off-balance and routed. Battalion-sized blocking forces occupied the major crossroads while the NATO commanders reinforced the regiment at Alfeld. Probably two full tank divisions lurked in the forests north of R?hle, but for the present they had not attacked Beregovoy. Instead their inaction both dared him to cross and invited him to counterattack north.

Alekseyev remembered an important lesson from the Frunze Academy: the Kharkov Offensive of 1942. The Germans had allowed the advancing Red Army forces to penetrate deep-then cut them off and chewed them up. High Command [meaning Stalin] ignored the objective realities of the situation (hence violating the Second Law of Armed Combat), concentrating instead on subjective perceptions of apparent progress that unfortunately proved false, the lesson concluded. The General wondered if this battle would be an object lesson for some future class of captains and majors who would then write their test answers and essays in bluebooks, pointing out what an ass General Colonel Pavel Leonidovich Alekseyev was!

Or he could pull them back... and admit defeat, and perhaps be shot, and then be remembered, if at all, as a traitor to the Motherland. It was so fitting. After sending so many thousands of boys into fire, now he faced death as well, though from an unexpected direction.

"Major Sergetov, I want you to go back to Moscow to tell them in person what I am. up to. I am going to detach one division from Beregovoy and drive it east to open the way at Alfeld again. The attack on Alfeld will be from two directions, and after it succeeds, we will be able to continue the Weser crossing without fear of having our spearhead cut off."

"A skillful compromise," the major said hopefully.

That's just the thing I need to hear!