Chapter 563: Barracks on frozen soil
Early December 1991.
Leningrad Oblast, south of Krasnoye Selo, at the garrison barracks of a certain motorized infantry regiment.
It had been snowing heavily since three days ago.
At first, it was just dry snowflakes swirling close to the frozen-hard ground, but by last night, it had suddenly turned into heavy, goose-feather snowflakes filling the sky.
The temperature plummeted below minus twenty degrees, and the lead-gray clouds pressed down extremely low, as if they wanted to crush the entire barracks, along with the distant bare birch forest, into this boundless permafrost.
Heavy and sluggish footsteps of military boots echoing in the snow resonated down the corridor at the end of the second floor of the regimental headquarters.
Major Viktor Alexeyevich Morozov stopped in front of his office door.
He raised his hand to tug at the collar of his coarse woolen military coat, and the hot breath from his mouth had barely exhaled before it condensed into fine white frost on his eyebrows and the circle of stiff, short stubble on his chin.
The door was not locked, nor did it need to be.
The cast-iron radiators in the barracks had long since gone completely cold, and the pipes emitted hollow, dry “clicks”—the heavy oil allocation for the boiler room had bottomed out last week, and the logistics warrant officer could only rely on chopping the wooden snow fences around the perimeter of the barracks every day to barely keep a fire going for two hours; the lukewarm water spewed out couldn’t even reach the pipe bends on the second floor.
“Твою мать! (Damn it!), even the heating oil can be cut off.”
Morozov cursed in a low voice, reached out to touch the freezing radiator by the wall, and couldn’t help muttering: “When everyone is frozen to death, let’s see who Moscow will have stand guard for them.”
He pushed the door open and walked in; the room was permeated with the smell of cheap makhorka low-grade tobacco.
On the desk sat half a cup of overnight black tea with a thin layer of ice, next to a thick stack of reports waiting for approval.
At the very top was a military dependents’ resettlement registration form.
“Resettlement again…”
Morozov picked up the form, casually flipped through two pages, and looking at the densely packed names on it, his brow furrowed tighter and tighter.
“We don’t even have housing, what are we using to resettle them? Stuff them all into my office?”
Two months ago, following the successive independence of the three Baltic countries, as a batch of troops transferred back to the Russian mainland ahead of schedule, they were hastily stuffed into this World War II-era old barracks whose roof had not even been fully repaired yet. (On September 6, 1991, the Soviet Union formally recognized the independence of the three Baltic countries. Subsequently, the Soviet troops stationed locally gradually withdrew, and the withdrawal was not basically completed until 1994.)
There were no extra family dormitories in the barracks, so the regimental headquarters could only use wooden boards and plastic sheeting to partition the abandoned soldiers’ communal bunks, cramming three or four officer families into a single bay.
Morozov pulled out the creaking wooden chair and sat down, feeling out a crumpled shopping coupon from his coat pocket and smoothing it out in his palm.
That was what his captain and deputy battalion commander had shoved into his hands early this morning.
“Comrade Major, there’s no way to queue up.”
The deputy battalion commander’s bloodshot eyes flashed in his mind.
“There are more than four hundred people lined up in front of the district cooperative. When the van drove over, before the doors could even be pulled open, the vodka and rye flour were snatched away… The store simply won’t take this new batch of coupons printed by Moscow; they only want U.S. dollars or West German marks.”
Morozov closed his eyes and took a deep breath, the icy air stinging his lungs with a sharp pain.
The troops had not received their full military pay for three whole months.
After the failure of the September coup, the red star of Moscow completely lost its color.
The Supreme Soviet, the Ministry of Defense, the liaison offices of various union republics… the telegrams from above could change their tune three times a day.
Today they were ordered to “stand by in place and strictly maintain combat readiness,” tomorrow another directive came demanding “downsizing and preparing for discharge,” and the day after that, the General Logistics Department responsible for material allocation simply changed to the official seal of a liquidation committee no one had ever heard of.
Everyone was issuing orders, yet no one could manage their unit, which had been abandoned in the wind and snow.
“Cough, cough… cough…”
From outside the thin prefabricated concrete wall next door, a weak and violent child’s choking cough came through.
Listening to the coughing from next door, Morozov slowly tightened his hand resting on the desktop.
That was his six-year-old son, Andrei. The child had caught a cold on the way retreating from Lithuania, and his high fever had dragged on intermittently for half a month, eventually turning into bronchitis.
In the hands of the accompanying medical officer, besides two packs of expired aspirin, not even a single bottle of children’s fever-reducing syrup could be produced.
Last night, his wife Elena sat by the camp bed, wrapping the burning child in that washed-faded old military blanket, tears falling silently.
She did not complain about Morozov, but that extreme, repressed despair felt even more like a blunt knife than accusations, scraping at his chest stroke by stroke.
He was a major, a major with the Order of the Red Banner hanging on his chest, a special operations officer who had led a reconnaissance company in the Panjshir Valley of Afghanistan.
On the battlefield, he could lead his brothers forward against snipers and mortars, but in this frozen winter, he couldn’t even get a box of amoxicillin, nor five liters of heating diesel to keep the room warm for a few hours.
“Comrade Major.”
A short knock suddenly came from the doorway.
Morozov reined in his thoughts, opened his eyes, and said: “Come in.”
The on-duty sentinel pushed the door open, looking somewhat strange, and stepped aside to make way: “There is a visitor looking for you. He is holding a special pass from the Leningrad Garrison Command, and also… this.”
The sentinel handed over a folded piece of official paper.
The paper was stamped with an old blue official seal of the Leningrad Friendship Association, followed by a line of scrawled Russian handwriting, signed with an old name Morozov vaguely remembered—Kozlov.
That was an old bureaucrat responsible for foreign liaison back then, who in the late 1980s had handled several reception tasks with Western trade groups in the Baltic military district.
Morozov frowned slightly: “Let him in.”
The curtain was lifted, and a gust of wind and snow accompanied by the outdoor severe cold poured in.
Walking in was a slightly plump middle-aged man wearing an impeccably tailored dark gray woolen coat made in Finland.
The man wore a mink fur hat on his head, gold-rimmed glasses on the bridge of his nose, and his leather boots were polished to a spotless shine, without a speck of the muddy frozen snow in the barracks.
Compared to this drafty barracks permeated with poverty and a musty smell, his whole person looked like a creation that had walked out of a world that had already achieved communism.
“Major Morozov, I’ve heard a lot about you.”
The man took off his gloves, revealing a pure gold ring, and politely extended his hand, “Just call me Grigori.”
Morozov did not extend his hand, but just looked at him coldly: “A pass from the Garrison Command, Kozlov’s old seal. You’re neither a soldier nor a special envoy sent by Moscow. What are you looking for me for?”
Grigori didn’t feel awkward at all; he pulled out the opposite chair and sat down on his own, casually placing his leather gloves on the thin-iced coffee table.
“I represent some… friends with greater purchasing power than Moscow.”
Grigori smiled slightly, lowering his voice, “However, I think we should talk about you first.”
“Major Morozov, Afghanistan veteran, former battalion commander of the 45th Guards Independent Special Forces Regiment. Withdrawn from the Baltic coast two months ago, currently resting and regrouping here with this elite force forgotten by the Ministry of Defense, or rather—waiting here to die.”
Morozov’s brow furrowed even deeper.
“Watch your phrasing, civilian.”
He looked at the insolent stranger in front of him, clearly quite dissatisfied with the words just spoken.
“If it’s a civilian’s disrespect toward an officer, the major can feel free to pull out his Tokarev pistol and shoot me.”
Grigori’s expression was calm, even carrying a hint of pity, “But what about after shooting me? Will your son’s pneumonia improve because of it? Can the boiler room boil hot water?”
“Next month, after your designation in Moscow is canceled, how do the two hundred families of returned officers and soldiers plan to survive this January’s big freeze?”
Morozov glanced at him, and his expression finally changed somewhat.
This stranger actually knew about Andrei’s condition.
Grigori didn’t give him time to pause and think; he unzipped the inside of his coat and took out a heavy kraft paper envelope from inside, placing it directly on the freezing desktop.
The envelope was unsealed, revealing a thick stack of green hundred-dollar bills inside.
Those were brand-new Franklin portraits.
“Here is ten thousand dollars.”
Grigori extended a finger, gently pressing on the envelope, “For you and the key officers you trust.”
“There’s no need to exchange it at a bank. In any black market in Leningrad or foreign currency stores run by people from Finland, this stack of paper can be directly exchanged for white bread, canned beef, whole milk powder, and three boxes of the purest Polish vodka.”
Morozov looked at that stack of green banknotes, his breathing growing a fraction heavier, but his gaze quickly recovered a soldier’s cold hardness.
“Put your money away. If I were a traitor who could be bought off for a few thousand dollars, back in Lithuania in 1989, the British and Swedes would have already written me checks.”
“I know you’re not greedy for money, Major Morozov.”
Grigori’s smile faded, and his gaze turned extremely serious.
“Money is just a deposit, an insignificant thing used to prove credit. My employer knows what you need, so—please listen to the real terms.”
He pulled out an exquisitely printed brochure and planning drawing with blue and white markings from his briefcase, pushing it in front of Morozov.
“This is the port area of St. Petersburg, on the south side of Gutuyevsky Island.”
Grigori pointed to the area on the drawing adjacent to the deep-water berths.
“A modern bonded warehousing and logistics center invested by Far East capital is being expanded there. On the northern edge of the logistics park, a low-density staff residential area has already been demarcated.”
“Four-story apartment buildings with red-brick structures, double-laminated thermal insulation glass, and independent gas central heating running continuously twenty-four hours a day.”
Morozov’s gaze involuntarily fell onto the drawings.
“Whose is that for?”
“For you,” Grigori said slowly, “for every officer and non-commissioned officer willing to leave this quagmire with you, one independent apartment per family.”
“Please don’t imagine the apartments over there as the barracks here, Comrade Major.”
Grigori pointed to the buildings on the drawing, “Those are proper residences, with independent bathrooms and gas stoves in every household, and hot water supplied all day. You and your subordinates can all bring your wives and children to live in them comfortably.”
Morozov’s lips trembled slightly.
“Not only that.”
Grigori turned to the next page of the brochure, which was printed with a neat, modern white building, “This is Municipal Hospital No. 15. You should have heard this name in Leningrad.”
“Since last April, this hospital has been integrated into the direct foreign exchange pharmaceutical supply chain of a Japanese consortium. There are the most advanced imported antibiotics from West Germany, Japanese fever-reducing medicines, and respirators, all of which will be preferentially allocated to park employees and contracted dependents.”
“As long as your son’s pneumonia is sent in this afternoon, tomorrow morning he can be treated with the best imported cephalosporin.”