“Sound and everything-how about that?” the projectionist said as he set things up. “Gonna look a little washed out-this room ain’t as dark as it oughta be. Well, let’s see what we got.” He clicked a switch.
The projector whirred into action. Tom didn’t think a German would have handed Ilse a dirty movie to pass on to him, but he didn’t know what else to expect. It wasn’t a sweaty kraut grappling with a buxom blond Fraulein. It was…
“My name is Matthew Cunningham, private, U.S. Army. My serial number is-”
Tom gaped while the captured American soldier poured out the German Freedom Front’s demands. Only after the short film ended did he realize he should have been taking notes. He was sitting on the biggest story of the-what? Day? Week? Month? Not the year, not in 1945. But the biggest one since the Nuremberg Palace of Justice went up in smoke, anyhow.
“Run it again,” he said urgently.
“I dunno if I oughta,” the corporal answered. “You should take this straight to the brass.”
“I will.” Tom had no idea whether he’d keep the promise. “But I’ve got to know what’s in it first.”
“We oughta kill all of them kraut motherfuckers,” the GI said as he rewound the film. “Either that or get the hell outa here and let ’em kill each other off. I sure as shit wouldn’t mind seeing Rochester again, I’ll tell ya that.”
“You and Jack Benny both,” Tom said. The corporal laughed way more than the joke deserved. After horror, that often happened. And if Matthew Cunningham’s terrified face wasn’t the face of horror…then the shambling skeletons at Dachau and Belsen and the murder factories the Russians found in Poland were. The Nazis had so goddamn much to answer for. How could anybody turn his back on that? But how could anybody keep soaking up casualties after the surrender that wasn’t, either?
“My name is Matthew Cunningham, private, U.S. Army….”
“I am Nikolai Sergeyevich Golovko, Superior Private, Red Army….”
Vladimir Bokov watched the film to the end. It didn’t take long. Then he turned to Colonel Shteinberg, who’d summoned him to see it. “All right, Comrade Colonel. There it is. What are we going to do about it?”
Moisei Shteinberg steepled his fingertips. The senior NKVD officer had a pale, thin face, a blade of a nose, and a dark, heavy beard shadow. He looked like the Jew he was, in other words. “What would you recommend?” He could sound like a bruiser, yes. But, like a lot of Jews Bokov had known, he could also use Russian like a highly educated man.
“Well, it’s tough luck for Golovko, of course.” Captain Bokov dismissed the hostage right away. The Soviet Union wasn’t going to bend because some stupid senior private let himself get nabbed. The Nazis who’d taken him had to know that, too. They wouldn’t have bent, either-they also played for keeps. “The motherfuckers must be trying to put us in fear, or else to embarrass us.”
“Yes, I think so, too.” Even though Shteinberg often sounded tough, Bokov rarely heard him actually cuss. Listening to him, you were tempted to forget there was such a thing as mat. “How do you propose to make them change their minds?”
“How many from their organization are we holding?” Bokov asked.
“Here in Berlin, or all over our occupation zone?”
“I think Berlin will do, Comrade Colonel.”
“Eight or ten we’re sure of-I know we’ve cracked a couple of the bandits’ cells. Another few dozen who may or may not be involved. You know how it is.” Colonel Shteinberg shrugged. “Once you start arresting people, you may as well keep going. You don’t want to miss anybody by mistake.”
“Da.” Bokov nodded-he felt the same way. “Well, if it were up to me, I’d kill off three or four of the real ones and leave their heads or their balls or whatever for the Nazi pricks to find, along with a message saying they can expect twice as much the next time they want to screw around with us. Best way I can think of to pay back Nikolai Sergeyevich.”
Shteinberg paused to fill and light a pipe. Stalin smoked one, so a lot of Soviet officials naturally imitated him. Shteinberg brought it off better than most, maybe because Hebraic features weren’t so different from those common in the Caucasus. After a couple of meditative puffs, the Jew said, “Fuck your mother, but that’s a good notion. Go take care of it.”
Bokov’s jaw dropped. Just when he thought Shteinberg didn’t use mat, the Jew dropped the basic Russian obscenity on him. And he used it the way a real Russian would, too: to say something like This really needs doing, so handle it.
“I will, Comrade Colonel,” Bokov said. “Give me a written authorization to take the bastards out of prison and, ah, deal with them. And where do you think I should leave the, ah, remains? We want to make sure the message gets to the right people.”
Still puffing, Shteinberg scrawled the requisite order. “Anybody asks you questions, tell him to talk to me,” he said, handing Captain Bokov the scrap of paper. Bokov nodded again. He didn’t think anybody would quarrel with an NKVD officer, but the world could be a strange old place. His superior went on, “As for the other, put the bits…Hmm. There’s a place on Stalin Allee they use sometimes. That should get the message across.”
The USSR was busily turning its chunk of Germany into a proper Socialist state. Where it could, it used German Communists who’d survived the Nazi epoch. But it changed the landscape, too. Lots of streets in Soviet Berlin-and other places in eastern Germany-had new, Marxist-sounding names. Bokov hoped Hitler was spinning in his grave because Stalin had a street named for himself here in the Fascists’ capital. And, on Armistice Day, the Russians had unveiled a huge monument in the Tiergarten, commemorating the Red Army men who’d died taking Berlin away from the Hitlerites. Adolf’s ghost could look at that as much as it pleased.
Bokov brought his mind back to the business at hand. “Give me the address, sir. I’ll take care of everything.” He wouldn’t have even wiggled without orders. Now that he had them, he couldn’t get in trouble for carrying them out.
He turned out not to need to show the jailer Shteinberg’s authorization. “Do whatever you please with those people,” the man told him. “If you need to take them all, go ahead. I don’t want them around. The anti-Soviet bandits on the outside are liable to try and liberate them.”
“They won’t liberate these four fuckers, but you’ve got to hang on to the rest,” Bokov said. “We may sweat more out of them.”
“Yes, Comrade Captain.” The jailer was the one doing the sweating.
Bokov shot the prisoners, one after the other. He was no butcher, though. At his orders, a sergeant took care of the necessary mutilation. “These cunts have it coming, eh?” the underofficer said.
“Of course,” Bokov answered. The sergeant didn’t seem to care much one way or the other. He was just making conversation while he worked.
Carrying the relevant remains in a canvas duffel-a damned heavy duffel now-Bokov went out onto the chilly streets of Berlin. A large number of the men out and about were Red Army soldiers. With padded jackets and felt boots, they were equipped for worse weather than this. Most of them also carried either a rifle or a submachine gun. If anyone gave overt trouble, they were ready. But what could you do against a fanatic with a bomb under his clothes or in a pushcart-or, worst of all, against a fanatic driving a truck full of explosives?
Most German men mooched around in shabby, threadbare Wehrmacht greatcoats. German winter gear had been a joke the first year of the war, though Bokov doubted the Hitlerites thought it was funny. They’d got better at it later on, but their stuff was never as good as what the Red Army used.
Quite a few German women wore Wehrmacht greatcoats, too. The ones in civilian clothes looked as mousy as they could. They scuttled here and there like cockroaches, trying not to get far from a doorway or alley into which they could escape. Nothing like the orgy of rape that accompanied Berlin’s fall went on any more, but the local women stayed scared. Good, Bokov thought.