He had finally brought his shrunken unit into the hastily established Soviet lines south of Petropavlovsk, pulling in under the last daylight, radioing frantically so his battered vehicles would not be targeted by mistake. And then they were behind friendly lines, marching to the rear to rearm, perhaps to be reorganized, still willing to turn back and fight when needed. But the column had been halted at a KGB control point several kilometers to the rear of the network of defensive positions. Who was the commander? Where was the political officer? Where was the staff? Before Babryshkin could make any sense out of the situation, he and his officers had been gathered together and disarmed, while his vehicles continued to the rear under the supervision of KGB officers who did not even know how to give the correct commands.
No sooner had the vehicles departed with great plumes of dust than the assembled officers were bound, blindfolded, and gagged. Several officers, including Babryshkin, protested angrily, until a KGB lieutenant colonel drew his pistol and shot one recalcitrant captain through the head. The action so shocked the men, who had believed that they had finally reached some brief, relative safety, that they behaved like sheep for the rest of the journey to the interrogation center. Made to jump off the backs of trucks still blindfolded and with their wrists bound together, officers who had survived twelve or fifteen hundred kilometers of combat broke arms and legs. Their blindfolds were finally removed to achieve a calculated effect: they were marched into the courtyard of a rural school complex and the first sight that met them was a disordered mound of corpses — all Soviet officers — that had grown up against a wall. Those who had broken limbs in exiting the trucks were forced to drag themselves, unaided, past the spectacle.
Everyone understood its implication.
Babryshkin had heard that one of the rules of interrogation was to keep everyone separated. But there were not enough rooms in the building. They were herded en masse into a stinking classroom, already crowded with earlier arrivals. The windows had been hastily boarded shut, and no provision, not even a bucket, had been made for the waste of frightened men.
At times, the officers were not even kept separate during their interrogations. Babryshkin's first taste of the questioning began when he was thrust into a room where his political officer was already seated. The political officer's eyes were unbalanced, and he recoiled from the sight of Babryshkin as if from the devil himself.
"It was him," the political officer cried. "It was all his doing. I told him to obey the order. I told him. And he refused. I told him and he refused. It was his fault. He even carried a woman on his tank for his personal pleasure."
"And why didn't you take command yourself?" the interrogator asked quietly.
"I couldn't," the political officer answered, terrified. "They were all with him. I tried to do my duty. But they were all in it together."
"He's a liar," Babryshkin said quickly, breaking his resolve not to speak out until he better understood what was happening. "I take full responsibility for the actions of my officers. The actions of my unit were the results of my decisions and mine alone."
The interrogator struck him across the face with a calloused hand that wore a big ring. "No one asked you anything. Prisoners are only to speak when they are asked a question."
"They were all in it together," the political officer repeated.
But the interrogator's focus had shifted. "So… a commander who even carries a woman with him for his pleasure. It must be a fine war."
"That's nonsense," Babryshkin stated coldly. "The woman was a refugee. With a baby and a little boy. She was at the end of her strength. She would have died." The interrogator raised an eyebrow, folding his arms. "And you decided to rescue her out of the goodness of your heart? But why this woman, out of so many? What was special about her? Was she an agent too? Or was she merely pretty?"
Babryshkin thought of the dreadfully emaciated woman, remembering her screams when she emerged to see the devastation of the chemical attack. Well, at least she was safe now, deposited at a refugee collection point with her starving infant and the louse-ridden, broken-armed boy. And, as he thought of her, he found that her ravaged face grew indistinct, becoming Valya's fine, clear, lovely features. Valya. He wondered if he would ever see her again. And, for a moment, she had more reality for him than any of the surrounding madness.
"No," Babryshkin said flatly. "She wasn't pretty."
"Then she was an agent? A contact you were to meet and evacuate?"
Babryshkin laughed out loud at the folly of such a thought.
The KGB officer did not need any underlings to do his dirty work for him. He landed a square blow on Babryshkin's mouth that knocked in his front teeth. Unlike in films, where men fought forever without really harming one another, this man's fists did real damage each time they landed. First on the mouth, then on the side of the head, on the ear, beside an eye. In a flash of confusion, the chair toppled over, and Babryshkin found himself lying sideways on the floor. The major kicked him in the mouth. Then in the stomach. It was at that point that Babryshkin realized that he was, indeed, going to die, and he resolved at least to die as well as possible.
Through blood-clouded eyes he looked up at the cringing political officer. And he smiled slightly through his broken lips, almost pitying the weaker man in the knowledge that they would soon be together on the growing heap out in the courtyard, that nothing would save either one of them. The system had gone mad. It had begun eating itself like a demented animal.
Another kick left Babryshkin unconscious for an indefinite period, and when he awoke, he was alone with his interrogator. They were all wrong. Babryshkin decided. There is a God. And this is what he looks like.
Babryshkin had been set upright on his chair, and his hands had been rebound behind its straight back so that he could not slump and fall. The questions began again, insane, twisted questions, beginning with the truth and butchering it beyond all logic, making out of it a sinister new calculus that was so perverse it was almost irresistible.
When did you first think of betraying the Soviet Union? Who were your earliest coconspirators? What did you hope to accomplish? Did you act out of ideology or for material gain? How long have you been plotting? With how many foreigners did you have contact? What are your current orders?
There was never any attempt to establish guilt or innocence. Guilt was assumed. Babryshkin had heard stories about such things happening back in the old days, in the darkest years of the twentieth century. But he had never expected to encounter such a thing in his own lifetime.
He sought to tell his tale honestly, in an unadorned, believable manner. He tried to clarify the simple logic of his actions, to explain to this starched creature from the rear area what combat was like, how it forced men to act. But his words only met with more blows. Sometimes the KGB major would hear him out before attacking him. At other times he would squeeze his swollen, ring-speckled fingers into a fist and bring it down hard at the first words out of Babryshkin's mouth.
Babryshkin tried to maintain his focus. He set himself the goal of ensuring that no blame passed to any of his subordinates, of establishing that each action had been the result of his personal decision. But it became harder and harder to form the words. And the intermittent shooting outside tripped his thoughts. As the questions were repeated to him again and again, he found it ever more difficult to focus. And the interrogator exaggerated the smallest grammatical inconsistencies in his story.