“That’s quick enough. The other half won’t be so easy. I want a man with experience in covert operations and the sort of loyalty rating that Comrade Beria would envy. Plus, he must be completely fluent in American English.”
“And you need him tomorrow, I assume.”
“Of course.”
Olgarkov examined the bottom of his glass, then looked up. “Is the NKVD cooperating?”
“So I’m told.”
“Then I know one possibility,” he said, holding out his glass.
After making the drop, the pilot wiggled his wings in farewell and disappeared over the trees.
“What the fuck do they think we’re doing out here?” Kuznetsky shouted angrily, kicking the half-open crate. “Holding nonstop parties?”
Yakovenko groaned. “Not more vodka?”
“Enough to keep the brigade drunk for a week.”
“Maybe there’s food in the other crate.”
The two men walked around the edge of the clearing, dousing the circle of fires as they went. The other crate had also broken open, spilling chocolate bars across the damp grass.
Yakovenko took the wrapping off one and bit into it. “Better than nothing,” he said. “In fact it tastes good.”
“Chocolate and vodka,” Kuznetsky said disgustedly. “Moscow’s idea of a balanced diet.”
“Imported chocolate at that,” Yakovenko added, passing him the wrapper. “Where’s it from?”
“Made in the U.S.A.,” Kuznetsky translated, “For Military Personnel Only.”
“That’s us. Should make you feel young again.”
Kuznetsky grunted. “Come on, let’s load this up. Plus a few bottles of vodka, say fifty. We’ll leave the rest here.” They picked up the crate and carried it across to their vehicle, a T-34 tank that had clearly seen better days. The bodywork was pitted with the scars of battle, and the gun barrel was missing. But it still moved as long as there was gas in its tank.
“How are we going to carry the vodka?” Yakovenko asked as they lashed the crate behind the turret.
Kuznetsky’s reply was drowned by the sound of another plane, this time unmistakably German, passing overhead at about five hundred feet.
“Good thing we had the fires out,” Yakovenko said placidly, opening up another bar of chocolate.
“That’s three tonight—”
“It’s only the second.”
“I was talking about German planes. There’s going to be another sweep soon.” He stared up at the sky. “The full moon’s due in a couple of days… Forget the booze. We’re going back.”
Driving the T-34 through the forest was a slow, nerve-racking business, but Yakovenko enjoyed the challenge, and Kuznetsky, on the rim of the turret, was left to his thoughts. He wondered whether it would be better to go back underground this time rather than move the whole brigade east for a few weeks. Surely the Germans couldn’t spare that many men anymore, not with the offensive that everyone knew was coming in June. Yes, they should go underground and sit it out. In two months they’d be behind their own lines again. And he’d have to find a new job. And make a decision about Nadezhda.
The first light of dawn appeared through the trees ahead; the birds seemed to be clearing their throats for song. Kuznetsky loved this time of day: its sense of promise was indestructible, immune to human realities. He would miss the forest, really miss it. He’d have to join the bigwigs and get a dacha in the woods, somewhere like Zhukovka but farther out.
They were nearly home now, though no outsider would have noticed signs of habitation. The brigade, some eighty strong, lived in a connecting series of camouflaged dugouts beneath the forest floor; fires were lit only at night, and then only underground. Even the T-34 had a subterranean garage. The lookouts, Kuznetsky noted with satisfaction, were as alert as ever, signaling them in from their perches in the trees. He was reminded yet again of the tales of Robin Hood, which he’d read as a boy.
Nadezhda was still sleeping, her long black hair falling across her face. As he lay down beside her, determined to get an hour or so’s sleep, she snored gently and placed her arm protectively around his chest. He smiled and stroked her hair.
When he was her age he’d been playing hookey from school in Minnesota, bad-mouthing his parents, feeling up Betty Jane Webber in the hay loft, ignoring stupid questions like “What are you going to do when you grow up, Jack?” He had known nothing, experienced nothing, done nothing.
This sixteen-year-old lying beside him had seen her parents and brothers hanged, had killed at least three Germans, and had had at least one lover before him. It was only in sleep that she still looked a child. In sleep she almost had enough innocence for both of them.
He was wakened by Ovchinnikova less than an hour later. “We’ve got a visitor,” she said.
It was a young girl, seven or eight years old, from a nearby village. She was sitting with Yakovenko eating a chocolate bar. “They’ve got an informer,” Yakovenko explained. “They were going to string him up right away, but Mikhailova — remember her? — insisted that they follow all the proper procedures and have a trial. So Liliya here was awarded the fifteen-mile walk to fetch you.”
Kuznetsky groaned.
“Breakfast?” asked Yakovenko, holding out a chocolate bar.
It was a beautiful spring morning, a bright sun warming the air and flooding the eyes with fresh colours. Swiveling his head around, Kuznetsky couldn’t find a single wisp of cloud in the sky.
He was sitting on a piece of rubble waiting for the trial to begin. He’d given Morisov half an hour to put together the evidence, and it seemed like longer. He opened his pocket watch and was caught as usual by the beauty of the face that stared out of the photograph inside the lid. Anna, he called her, but he had no idea what her real name was. The only thing he knew about her was that the man who’d carried her picture had died in a ditch outside Lepel, with both hands vainly trying to stop the hole where his throat had been.
It was almost eleven. “Grigory,” he shouted.
“Ready,” Morisov shouted back. “Bring out the accused,” he said to Mikhailova, who stood holding a pitchfork.
The man was brought out. He was about thirty, with a broad face that seemed ill at ease with his emaciated body. His face was covered in red welts; obviously not everyone had been prepared to wait for the proper authorities. He was clearly terrified.
The same old scene, Kuznetsky thought. The same circle of cottages, the same ring of onlookers, eyes bright with fear and lack of food. The crimes had changed, and the names of the criminals. Counterrevolutionaries, saboteurs, kulak profiteers, Nazi informers. His duty was the same. Liquidation. He listened to Morisov.
“… the accused was seen entering and leaving the Fascist administrative headquarters in Polotsk. That afternoon a Nazi punishment detail arrived here, where they immediately discovered a clearing sown and cultivated against their orders by Comrade Poznyakov. After piling the clearing with loose branches and setting fire to it, they hanged Comrade Poznyakov, his wife, and two children. The accused returned later that day, feigning ignorance…”
Why had he come back? Kuznetsky asked himself. What stupidity.
The accused sat on the ground, his head bowed, his right arm twitching. Kuznetsky wondered which of the stock explanations it would be.
Morisov had finished and was now joking with one of the village women. The other partisans looked bored; they’d seen this play too many times before. “Do you still deny collaboration?” Kuznetsky asked.
The man spoke without raising his head, a torrent of words. “I had to do it. They have my daughter in the brothel at Polotsk. She’s only eleven and they promised to let her go. I only informed on Poznyakov, no one else…”