“Keep them digging.” Placing a scrap of torn cloth over the face, Revell addressed the instruction to Old William, but it was Grigori who chimed in with a response.
“I will get them on it right away, Major, right…”
“You’ll get your fat ass down there with the others.” Revell rounded on the elderly Dutchman in charge of the excavation. “Keep them working, especially him.”
Old William looked up from where he sat cross-legged on the ground. Slowly and very methodically he was filling a meerschaum pipe. His Russian workers would frequently snatch a greedy and envious glance at him, as the best part of half an ounce was gradually thumbed into the capacious bowl.
“Ya.” He nodded in agreement and went on with his private labours. “It would speed things up if we took more men off the road.” Hyde knew that was already in his officer’s mind. “If the general was right about the truce, and we are going to be here for a while, it can’t do any harm.” He saw Revell was undecided. “I and the men want to know who did it, as well.”
“Take another twenty. Concentrate most of them here, and have her buried and the grave marked.”
“Not much to put on the cross.” Hyde was grateful for once that he had no sense of smell.
“Just the cross will do. It’ll be more than she had before.” Grigori sorted through the pieces of paper on the map table. Some were no more than torn scraps, others were creased and dirty larger fragments, edges darkened and made brittle by flame that had licked them.
“This is not much with which to work, Major.”
“Those fragments are all we’ve got so far, maybe all we’ll get. Make as much sense out of them as you can.”
The Russian bent to scrutinize the finds by the harsh glare of a single unshaded bulb.
Into the confined space of the lean-to tent, slung against the side of the Hummer, had crowded Revell and Vokes, along with Sergeant Hyde, as well as the Russian deserter.
“Ah, these are all a part of a single document.” With purpose now, no longer moving the pieces at aimless random, Grigori began to assemble the parts of a torn message pad leaf.
“Yes, it is an order to withdraw. See, here is the time of transmission and receipt, the time withdrawal is to commence…” Peering over the top of wire-rimmed bifocals, Grigori scanned the other fragments. “Some of it is missing.”
“Well tell us what we’ve got. Who is it addressed to, for a start.” Revell was impatient with the man’s fussing.
“Of course, Major. It is addressed to the commander of a unit…” Snatching off his glasses, folding them with a snap, Grigori tried to push his way out.
Revell grabbed him. “You’re not diving out now. What does it say? What unit?” Failing in a second attempt to escape from the canvas shelter, Grigori allowed himself to be pushed back to the table. It was as if he had shrunk within himself. The overlay of brash self-confidence had been torn away.
“You don’t want to know, Major. Let us just get on with the task we have. I will work especially hard…”
That the man was scared was all too obvious. He wasn’t acting. It was hard for Revell to imagine what could have such an effect on such a tough character.
“Tell us who the message was for.”
“It was… It was for a Colonel Tarkovski.” Grigori crossed himself as he uttered the name.
“This is no time to be reverting to religion.” In a dim recess of his mind Revell vaguely recalled the name, but couldn’t quite place it. “So what unit is it?”
Grigori lowered his voice to a hoarse whisper, so that the three of them had to bend close to catch his words.
“It is addressed to Colonel Tarkovski, commanding officer of Disciplinary Battalion 717. They have a private name for themselves, Beria’s Sons.”
“Means nothing to me.” Vokes had noted the awe, amounting almost to fear in their Russian’s voice, and the looks Hyde and Revell had exchanged. “What can be so special about them? Surely a punishment battalion would be employed by the Soviets simply as cannon fodder.”
“Not this one.” Revell handed Grigori a dusty roll of adhesive tape. “Piece it together as best you can with that.”
“Who is Beria?” Vokes persisted.
Taking a bottle from a locker, Revell poured three glasses, and then as an afterthought a glass for the Russian. “He was Stalin’s head of secret police. Almost grabbed power when his boss died. It’s suspected he helped Stalin on his way. Didn’t do himself any good though. He was shot in one of the cells of the Lubyanka eventually.”
“That still does not explain what is special about this battalion.”
Hyde downed the gin in one go, not tasting it until it touched the back of his throat, and then only as a mildly burning sensation. “For a start, Lieutenant, it’s the KGB’s own punishment unit. Run by them, for then. All of them, even officers, are men who have just avoided being shot or hung, or were reprieved to make up numbers when the battalion fell below strength. Between them they committed every crime and every atrocity you can imagine, and if you’re lucky, a lot that you can’t.”
“I had imagined the KGB was above the law.” Vokes held out his glass for an offered refill.
“They are.” Grigori had finished his drink and now rolled the glass between his palms. “But they have a system of internal discipline to take care of those who do not fit. They are men who even among the company of executioners and perverts stand out. I think in many cases they are hardly human.”
“Do you think our high-powered visitors knew of this?”
“Whether they did or not, Lieutenant,” Revell hesitated, then sent Grigori out, with a warning to keep quiet. “Whether they did or not, I don’t think it would have made a blind bit of difference. All that matters to them is the truce. That’s why they brought no press, no PR men with them. As far as they’re concerned the incident is closed. Two thousand civvies, so what, sometimes ten times that number have died in a day, caught up in a battle.”
“Nothing we can do about it?” Picking up a sheet of graph paper with the fragments stuck to it, Hyde reread the transcription their translator had scrawled in the margin. Turning to a plastic overlaid wall map, he traced the KGB unit’s known withdrawal route.
“We lack the resources, even if we knew where they were.” Revell switched on a second lamp for a better view of the map. “OK, so we know the way they went, but not where they stopped. They could be just the other side of the demilitarized strip or back in Moscow by now.”
“Would it be so difficult to find out?” Revell considered Vokes’s question. “At this time, yes. With no fighting going on and no fresh prisoners coming in, tactical intelligence gathering will have come almost to a stop. As far as I’m aware, even reconnaissance flights are forbidden, manned or unmanned. I presume the satellites will still be gathering more information than anyone can use, but among the mass of Warpac troops a comparatively small unit like the 717th will be undetectable.”
“What about electronic intelligence gathering?” Hyde persisted. “They can often pinpoint who is where. HQ should have access to the data; haven’t we got any contacts?”
With the tip of his forefinger Revell obliterated the fibre-pen marked track that Hyde had added to the map. “I know what you’re thinking, but we’ll have to forget it. For the duration we’re road menders, nothing more. Tarkovski and 717th are probably a long way from here. They’re nothing to do with us now.”