he got close to the crews’ quarters, the one-story building, anchored to the ground with steel cables, protected him from the wind. Now able to walk upright, Leonid continued on. The major was well aware that the freighter, which had picked up its cargo of scrap iron along the coast of the Sea of Okhotsk, was no spy ship. The reefs off Korsakov had brought many a vessel into distress, either because the ships lacked the necessary navigation equipment or because they were overloaded and could no longer be steered. By this time of year, it was possible that the sea a few hundred miles to the north would be unnavigable for a vessel without ice-breaking equipment, so the stop in Korsakov was to have been the last for the cutter with the scrap-iron cargo before her return journey; but the Three Brothers had seen to it that this would be the freighter’s last journey of all.
The technical section’s offices were located off to one side of the post. The advantage of this position was that the soldiers of the unit could guard their camp themselves. Had the guard detachment been under company command, it wouldn’t have been long before individual pieces of equipment started to appear on the black market. The disadvantage of the little cluster of huts was that they stood so close to the edge of the cliff; one false step or strong gust of wind, and one could vanish into the void. Leonid grasped the steel cord that served as a handrail and moved along it, hand over hand, taking care to avoid the slippery seaweed that the storm tide had washed up three hundred feet high.
The technical service considered itself an elite unit. Its personnel, exclusively seamen, had managed to acquire, piece by piece, the most modern equipment for their detachment. The fact that Leonid, the landlubber, was their commanding officer had to do with the death of Captain Ordzhonikidze, who’d fallen off the cliff during a risky operation; the search for his body had only recently been called off. The Korsakov military base was chronically understaffed, it hadn’t been possible to mobilize a specialist from any other garrison, and so Captain Leonid Nechayev had been transferred there, temporarily, it was said. Leonid knew that such temporary arrangements sometimes lasted until the soldier in question retired from the army.
The transfer to a unit that actually had a mission was a surprise and even an irritation to him. Monotony had been the most characteristic feature of his previous years of service. While many officers suffered from such a state of affairs, Leonid had found it to his liking. Not out of dullness or laziness, but because symmetry, equilibrium, fascinated him. Even though he didn’t think in terms of such comparisons, he experienced the daily repetition of life as a monkish activity and the barracks as the scene of a cloistered existence: the early morning siren, like a gigantic rooster; the men standing shoulder to shoulder and washing themselves; the indistinguishable, dull gray, badly shaved faces in the mirrors; the preapportioned breakfasts. The sausage rounds on each plate were as identical as the men who swallowed them. At morning roll call, officers stood on one side and men on the other, but these could not exist without those, and vice versa. There were indeed differences in the work—one man sat in the supply room, another was assigned to the paymaster or performed guard duty—but, strictly speaking, what did they do? They punched holes in papers and filed them away in pasteboard binders, or someone drew up lists, another checked them, and a third checked the checker. Lunch, dinner, latrine break one hour after each meal, Party indoctrination in the evening, close of duty, taps: The same sequence was followed today, as it would be tomorrow and the rest of the week, of the winter, of the year. Even the nightly booze-up brought the day to an end in friendly monotony; everyone drank his half-liter bottle, became mellow and jovial, spoke sentimentally, and fell onto his bunk in a daze. It pleased Leonid to see so many men, different in age, temperament, and nationality, welded together into a single cohort. Their thoughts and hopes—pay, women, leave, family—resembled one another like eggs in a basket. Everywhere outside of the army, results had to be achieved and plans carried out; jobs were specialized and required individual commitment. The Red Army defined itself through its steadfastness. Its task consisted in being