If she needed proof.
‘What have I done? Oh, my husband, what have I done!’
As if on cue, Stranov awoke and cupped her breast playfully.
She pushed his hand away and got out of bed.
Naked.
Her ravaged state was recorded in still and movie formats. Clearly the participant in a sexual adventure of some sort, the GRU officer looked like she had been through a hurricane, which, in some ways, she had. But, each man conceded to himself, she had lost none of her sexual charm.
“Comrade General… Tatiana, my love…”
She turned on him, her eyes flashing with anger.
“What has happened here, Comrade Orderly? Tell me truthfully.”
Stranov gave his best hurt and puzzled look.
“My Princess, my Tanyushka, wh…”
His use of the endearment blew her fuses.
“Silence! I want to know what happened here!”
Feigning more confusion, Stranov stumbled through a brief résumé.
“You came back early, feeling unwell, Tan… Comrade General. You went to bed and I left you alone.”
He rolled over, revealing his continued and growing interest in the woman in front of him.
Tatiana snatched a curtain off the pole and wrapped herself in it.
“Show’s over,” she said emphatically.
“Show’s over,” agreed the cameraman.
“Maybe. Keep the thing running, just in case, tovarich.”
Sarkisov adjusted the focus, now that natural light was filling the room.
“Carry on,” Tatiana demanded.
“Well, you rang the bell for my attention. It was my fault, I suppose, Comrade General. I had no time to dress properly and, as I knew you were unwell, I came as quickly as I could. I was wearing only my underwear.”
“What did I want?”
“Water. You said you were thirsty and wanted water.”
“And?”
“I filled a glass for you… and then it happened.”
“What happened exactly, Comrade Orderly?”
“You grabbed me, Comrade General.”
“Go on.”
“You grabbed me and pulled me towards the bed… I didn’t know what to do, Comrade General.”
He lowered his voice, acting his heart out, portraying a mind that had been caught between a rock and a hard place.
“You’re a General… I’m a Serzhant. I didn’t know what to do; you wanted to suck me, so I let you. I don’t see that I had any choice, Comrade General.”
Those secreted in the special room were glad that they had continued filming, the celluloid preservation of Nazarbayeva’s look being priceless beyond measure.
“Go on.”
“You were wonderful, Tat… Comrade General, truly you were… are! What a woman! Your brea…”
“Shut up! Shut up!”
She now fully understood that the aches and pains she felt had been earned in close coupling with the hugely endowed orderly.
She slipped into language normally beneath her.
“So we fucked. You fucked me?”
“No, no, Comrade General. It was lovemaking. You were wonderful, so passionate, so responsive.”
Nazarbayeva’s mind was spinning, partially as a result of the narcotic residue in her system, partially because she would never do such a thing. But Tatiana could not deny the evidence offered by her aching and battered body.
“Enough, Comrade Orderly. I do not remember any of this,” she held up her hand to silence his protestations.
She gathered her thoughts, dealing with it as best she could.
“I do not remember this… but it has happened… and I’m sorry for it. I will always be sorry for it.”
She shook her head, speaking in a way as if she was almost trying to convince herself.
“Maybe it was the drugs and the alcohol?”
More than one eyebrow rose in agreement.
“Possibly I drank too much, maybe the food was off… but for you and me it never happened, nor as far as anyone else is concerned. I must make that clear, Comrade Orderly.”
Stranov’s wounded face was worthy of an Oscar.
“But our love? What we had last night?”
“We had nothing last night, nothing at all, am I clear? It never happened… and it will never be spoken of.”
She took the plunge.
“My position offers some advantages, and I can be of use to you after this war has concluded. Your silence will ensure my support. Are we agreed?”
“If there’s no chance for our love t…”
“None. Never, Comrade Orderly. There’s no future in this. I have a husband.”
Behind the mirror, there were smiles, as the husband might one day have a front seat at a special film show, depending on how his wife responded to certain suggestions in the future.
“Then I agree, Comrade General, but I wish it was otherwise, for I’ve never made love with a more desirable woman.”
“Enough. Now, get out and never speak of this.”
Stranov couldn’t resist a sneaky look towards the mirror as he left the room, pausing only to pick up his shreds of clothing.
Truly, the show was now over and the three NKVD officers removed themselves and the equipment as Nazarbayeva showered, painfully scrubbing away the residue of her night of ‘passion’.
In the confines of the bathroom, she cried. Tears of anger for the abuse she had suffered; tears of hurt for the pain that wracked her every movement; tears of grief for the husband whose trust she had dishonored.
And then she cried no more.
“Good morning, boys.”
The nurse’s smile always brought joy to the small ward simply known as number twenty-two. It was her domain, eight beds filled with what was left of men retrieved from the horrors of the front.
Not a man was intact, with wounds ranging from single amputations up to the loss of three limbs.
Chiseldon Camp’s medical facilities had been established in 1915, to help deal with the huge influx of battered soldiers from the Great War.
In the Second World War, it became a focus for US units training to join the fighting in Europe and, on 7th June 1944, the 130th arrived and set up a receiving station for battle casualties that were to be flown in from the Normandy beaches.
The arriving wounded were assessed, treated, stabilized, and sent on, if it was safe to do so, a string of hospitals in and around the area set up to receive men for specialist treatments.
Most of the camp had been returned to civilian use after May 1945, but the 130th remained in its base, expanding again when the violence recommenced.
Ward twenty-two had started as an experiment, providing early intervention in amputation cases, dealing with the mental, as well as physical, aspects of the injuries.
The experiment had been successful, and there were three other such wards on the site, each with a dedicated team of nurses to bring the wounded through the traumas of their loss.
Twenty-two was now an ‘Officers only’ unit, and the nurse who they all called ‘Florence’ was a Major with a bedside manner similar to an unsympathetic poor house manager, an attitude that her patients all saw through.
Her first port of call was the man who had only lost one leg; an artillery major who had just stepped on the wrong piece of Germany and detonated a mine.
The explosion had ‘only’ removed his foot, but the explosive blast had done awful work, travelling up inside his leg and degloving the bone, forcing gaps in the tissue all the way to the thigh, gaps which accommodated the expanding explosive gases.
The chances of saving the limb had been next to nothing, but that had not stopped the130th trying.
Major Jocelyn Presley administered the pain relief and checked the dressings on the Artilleryman’s leg, knowing that the efforts had failed. She wrote her findings on the chart in the clipped non-descript words that clinicians always use around bad news.