“Za vashe zdrovye. Another seventy-four to come.”
“Bullshit. Za vaslze zdrovye.”
Both men threw back the liquid in one, paused, grunted as it hit the spot.
Above the bar at the Boyarsky Zal is a gallery from which the diners are serenaded with traditional Russian songs. That night the singers were a statuesque blonde in the robes of a Romanov princess, and a man in tuxedo possessed of a rich baritone voice.
When they finished the ballad they were performing as a duet, the male singer stepped forward alone. The live band at the end of the gallery paused and the deep, rich voice launched into the soldier’s love song to the girl he left back home, “Kalinka.”
The Russians stopped chattering and sat in silence; the foreigners followed suit. The baritone voice filled the hall … “Kalinka, Kalinka, Kalinka maya …”
When the last chords died away the Russians rose to toast the white-moustached man seated with his back to the tapestries. The singer bowed and took his applause. Viktor was next to a group of six Japanese diners.
“Who is old man?” asked one of them in English.
“War hero, Great Patriotic War,” replied Viktor.
The English speaker translated for the rest.
“Ah, so,” they said, and raised their glasses. “Kampei.”
Uncle Kolya nodded and beamed, raised his glass to the singer and the room, and drank.
It was a good meal, trout and duck, with Armenian red wine and coffee to follow. At the Boyarski’s prices, it was costing the major general a month’s salary. He reckoned his uncle was worth it.
It was probably not until he was thirty, and had seen some thoroughly bad officers, not a few in high office, that he understood why his uncle had become a legend among tank men. He possessed something bad officers never had, a passionate concern for the men serving under him. By the time he got his first division and his first red tab, Major General Andreev, looking about him at the shambles in Chechnya, recognized that Russia would be lucky to see another like Uncle Kolya.
The nephew had never forgotten something that happened when he was ten. Between 1945 and 1965 neither Stalin nor Khrushchev had thought fit to erect a cenotaph to the war dead in Moscow. Their own cults of personality had been more important, despite the fact neither of them would have been on top of Lenin’s Mausoleum to take the salute on May Day had it not been for the millions who died between 1941 and 1945.
Then in 1966, with Khrushchev gone, the Politburo had finally ordered the construction of a cenotaph and an eternal flame to the memory of the Unknown Soldier.
Still, no open space was employed. The memorial was tucked away under the trees of the Alexandrovsky Gardens, close by the Kremlin wall, in a position that would never catch the eye of those in the endless queue to see Lenin’s embalmed remains.
After the May Day parade that year, when the wide-eye ten-year-old cadet had watched the rolling tanks, guns, and rockets, the goose-stepping troops and the dancing gymnasts pouring across Red Square, his uncle had taken him by the hand and led him down Kremlev Alley between the gardens and the Manege.
Under the trees was a flat-topped slab of red polished granite. Beside it burned a flame in a bronze bowl.
On the slab was written the words: Your grave is unknown, your achievement immortal.
“I want you to make me a promise, boy,” said the colonel.
“Yes, Uncle.”
“There are a million of them out there, between here and Berlin. We don’t know where they lie, in many cases who they were. But they fought with me, and they were good men. Understand?”
“Yes, Uncle.”
“Whatever they promise you, whatever money, or promotion, or honors they offer you, I don’t want you ever to betray these men.”
“I promise, Uncle.”
The colonel slowly raised his hand to the peak of his cap. The cadet followed suit. A passing crowd in from the provinces, sucking ice cream bars, watched curiously. Their guide, whose job was to tell them what a great man Lenin had been, was clearly embarrassed and shooed them round the corner toward the mausoleum.
“Saw your piece in Izvestia the other day,” said Misha Andreev. “Caused quite a stir on the base.”
General Nikolayev stared at him keenly.
“Didn’t like it?”