“Get ready to move! If you find anyone alive, bring them with us. We set fire to everything. Two minutes! Two minutes!”
The already burning lorry was beacon enough to anyone closing in on them, so Janina had no compunction about ordering everything else to be burnt with it.
“And our people?”
“Burn them all.”
Some lifeless forms were pulled from the third truck; the sons.
Jurgis Lukša and his cousin took one each and moved to the main group, both men clearly in the extremes of grief.
Someone, a woman, scrabbled free from the second lorry and was assisted down by two partisans. Her unsteady feet gave way and she was picked up and put over one of the men’s shoulders.
A man and a woman were pulled out of the last vehicle, both wounded and disoriented, but capable of walking.
In total, eight Lithuanian prisoners survived the ambush.
Two of the NKVD guards were found alive and dispatched with knives and without mercy.
The whistling burrowed into Janina’s conscious thoughts and she looked up.
The hand signals said it all.
They had been tricked.
Eight vehicles in total, three of them armoured.
‘Shit!’
Karelis, the woman in charge at the rear of the column, finished her work and looked up the road to Janina, seeking guidance.
Mikenas cupped her hands and shouted at the lookout.
“How far?”
The tree dweller looked to confirm his figures.
His hands did the talking.
‘One and a half.’
“Move! Move now!”
Karelis understood the gestures and ordered her group away as the tree dweller descended more in a controlled fall than by a proper descent.
The prime escape route was to the southeast, over a small watercourse and into a temporary hiding place, hidden by fallen leaves and the boughs of a dense wood.
It was two kilometres distant, and now the party were encumbered by the wounded and the dead.
“Move!”
Mikenas fell in with the rear group, jogging alongside Audra Karelis.
The older woman understood the younger’s pain.
“Shit happens, Janina. We weren’t to know… clearly we were set up. Another thing that the devils will pay for.”
Mikenas nodded, knowing the words to be fair, and knowing that they wouldn’t help.
“I left a present for the communist bastards.”
They dropped into cover both sides of the narrow path and watched to the rear as the final members of the group moved through.
Something surrendered noisily to the fires on the road and the rising smoke became thicker.
A number of shots rang out as the two young men who lead the pursuers away did their best to attract the undivided attention of the NKVD unit.
“Mines?”
“Of course. I had my people put some in the road, just in case… plus we didn’t want to carry the shitty things another metre, did we?”
Janina smiled as Karelis rose up and started to move on.
No sooner had they moved than one of the mines found a suitable weight on top of it and exploded.
A second explosion followed in quick succession.
“Just bits of the first one. We couldn’t be… can’t be that lucky!”
Janina Mikenas laughed as they ran.
‘No, we won’t be.’
But they were.
The two decoys returned to the hidden resting point almost five hours to the minute after the group had run from the ambush site.
Their news was encouraging but, none the less, Janina decided to keep the group hidden until dawn, if only to give the casualties more time to gather some strength.
There was something about two of the women that made her senses light up, a something she didn’t understand, but a something that was very real.
So much so that, under her orders, Karelis kept an eye on them at all times.
Janina Mikenas had spent some time with Lukša and consoled him as best she could, which was nowhere near enough to console the distraught father.
Her rounds took her amongst all her people, for the enormity of what they had done was now visiting every mind and bringing its own brand of torture.
Another of the ex-prisoners died but it seemed likely that the rest would survive.
The partisan leader moved amongst them, asking names and places of origin, offering encouragement but always falling short of apologising.
The examination of what had happened and how the partisan group had clearly been fed false information would come later, along with the recriminations.
For now, Janina returned with a piece of bread and sat next to Karelis.
“So?”
“I’m sure you’re right. They’re different… always aware… they miss nothing.”
That left a big question hanging unspoken in the silence.
‘Agents… but ours or theirs?’
Janina studied the pair, immediately understanding what Karelis meant.
‘Can we afford to risk it? Why not kill them both now?’
There was a presence to the two women, one that screamed that they were more than they seemed.
She immediately noticed that they watched different areas, maintaining a surveillance that had no overlap, no wasted areas.
“I’ll talk to them… but keep watching.”
‘It is decided. What they say now will determine their fate.’
Grabbing a flask, she stood and wandered over to where the pair were leant up against a tree trunk,
Both women swivelled their heads as one. The thinner-faced blonde accepted the flask and passed it to the other woman, who drank heartily.
“So… who are you two?”
Clearly the pair had discussed the matter already, as the answer flowed quickly.
“My friend is Polish, I’m Lithuanian. We’re both Allied agents captured by the Russians.”
Janina Mikenas held up her hand to interrupt.
“Your accent isn’t natural. You speak the language well though.”
“I grew up in London, but my parents were both from Kaunus.”
“And you?”
“Lublin.”
“OK, so what’s your names and who do you really work for?”
The two women had decided that the partisans were genuine, and represented their best chance of being safe, so had elected to tell the truth.
“I’m Renata Luistikaite”
“Karin Greim.”
Janina indicated the two obvious bumps but kept her thoughts to herself.
‘Sending pregnant women would be a masterstroke of course!’
Greim responded to the unspoken question.
“Women in prison get raped.”
“How long?”
“We were taken at the end of March… the rapes started straight away… minimum of five months.”
“Sorry.”
“It happens.”
Renata Luistikaite drew a quick line under the matter.
“We’re both SOE… British intelligence agents. We were based in Torun but got arrested before the landings were due. Been in prison ever since.”
“They tortured you, of course.”
“Of course.”
‘Convincing… such marks would need to be convincing.’
“And?”
“And we told them everything they wanted to know… eventually.”
The women’s distorted hands told part of the story of what they had been through, the presence of burns and bruises on their faces, arms, and legs, and the bulging bellies filled in the gaps.
Greim also bore the angry scar of a head wound that would always remind her of the nearness of her brush with death in the Torun bar.