Vitalik brushed the tip of his cigarette against the flame.
“Here’s how this is going to work,” he said. “Very simple. I ask questions, you answer.” He put the lighter in his pocket. He slipped Solovey’s knife from his belt, leaned very close to Tolya, smelling of makhorka, and reached around to cut the rope from Tolya’s wrists. He put the knife back in his belt and pulled Tolya’s hands across his lap, turning the palms up. He pushed Tolya’s left sleeve up to the elbow.
“This is what happens when you lie to me,” he said.
He took the cigarette out of his mouth, blew the smoke into Tolya’s face, and touched the burning tip to the inside of Tolya’s wrist.
Tolya’s hands jerked reflexively. Vitalik’s fingers tightened around his wrists.
“Now that’s clear,” Vitalik said, “we’ll talk.”
Tolya bit the inside of his cheek. There was an angry purple welt bubbling up on his wrist. “I’m not Resistance.”
“You inform for them.”
“No.”
Vitalik held the cigarette in two fingers, watching his face. “But you inform for the NKVD.”
“Not if I’m Resistance. Make up your mind.”
The tip of the cigarette dipped very close to his skin. “Why not? You’re all Red collaborators, you lyakh shit.”
“They’re disarming them. They’re sending the officers to the camps. They’re shooting the rest—the ones who won’t join the Front.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I’ve seen it. They’ve been shooting them in the square outside the station.”
“Is that why you killed your zampolit?” Vitalik said. “Didn’t like to watch him shooting Poles?”
He couldn’t answer. He blinked up stupidly into Vitalik’s face.
Vitalik let go of Tolya’s hand while he slipped the cigarette back into his mouth. He took a drag, breathing the smoke out softly through his nostrils.
“Yes—I know about Zampolit Petrov,” he said.
“Solovey got me out.” It burst out before he could stop it. He was furious suddenly. “Do you know that? Your own commander ordered him to get me out.”
“Incorrect.” Vitalik pulled on his cigarette long and slowly, working the tip to a red glow. “Command advised of the situation. Solovey made his own decision about trying to get you out—a stupid decision, but he wanted a sniper.”
“No.”
“No what?”
“That wasn’t why. That wasn’t his reason.”
“I was there,” Vitalik said. “I know it was his reason.”
“Not his only reason. He didn’t need a sniper after two nights ago. If he thought I was a traitor, he’d have shot me then, not run with me.” Tolya’s hands clenched. “Don’t try to tell me he thought I was a traitor.”
“The point of relevance here isn’t whether you’re a traitor,” Vitalik said. “You were a traitor and a collaborator the day you put on the Reds’ uniform. The point of relevance here is that Solovey is dead.”
“I didn’t betray him.”
The tip of the cigarette touched his wrist again. Tolya shut his eyes.
“This goes one of two ways, Tolya,” Vitalik said, “but you should know they both end in the same place.”
“I didn’t betray him. It had to be one of his own men.”
The tip of the cigarette paused, hovering.
“So?” Vitalik said. “Explain.”
“We weren’t going to Hruszów, first. There was a cabin. Solovey said he’d been using it as a munitions dump. He was going to hold out there while things cooled down.”
“So?”
“They were waiting for us—the NKVD. They knew to wait for us there. And Solovey said the only ones who knew about that place were the men of his squad.”
Vitalik bent his head and put the cigarette back in his mouth, holding Tolya’s wrist in his fingers. His face was expressionless.
“You’re lying,” he said. “You led him to them.”
“You can think that if you want. I don’t care.”
Vitalik let go of Tolya’s hand suddenly. He unholstered his pistol and pressed the mouth of the pistol to Tolya’s forehead.
“And now?”
The metal bushing was cold on his skin, and Tolya flinched, despite himself. Vitalik’s finger was ready on the trigger, his thumb clear of the slide, his hand steady—the precision of long practice. There was a knot in Tolya’s throat, an aching hollow where his heart should be. There were the words of the kontakion fluttering through his head: With the saints give rest, O Christ, to the soul of Thy servant, where there is neither sickness, nor sorrow, nor sighing, but life everlasting …
He met Vitalik’s eyes and shrugged.
“I don’t care,” he said. “Do it.”
And Vitalik pulled the trigger.
For a split second that lasted an eternity, Tolya was frozen, waiting, his breath caught against the knot in his throat. There would be the crack of the shot first, then the flash of light, then the world to come—but instead there was the click of the bolt on an empty chamber, and Vitalik was tapping the mouth of the pistol gently, once, twice, on Tolya’s shut lips. He holstered the pistol and tipped the ash of his cigarette onto the back of Tolya’s hand.
“Not yet, Tolya,” he said. “First we take care of your friends.”
* * *
He spent the rest of the afternoon tied to a tree at the edge of the camp, watching them clean rifles and reload cartridges and prime grenades, wondering whether it was true, after all, that Solovey was going to shoot him once Volkov was dead—whether that had been the plan right to the end—or whether at some point between here and Lwów the plan had changed.
It must have changed. Maybe not the first day. Maybe not even that next morning on the ridge. Maybe that had only been a test—all that stuff about options and educated choices. Maybe Solovey would have put a bullet in his brain then, if he’d chosen wrongly. Maybe he’d been in a marksman’s sights the whole time he’d been up on that ridge. But in the cut yesterday, when he’d asked for the truth, for Solovey’s trust, and Solovey—the mathematics student, the night porter, Aleksey Yevhenovych Kobryn, from L’viv—had given it to him, surely it had changed by then.
Surely it had changed by the streambed.
They had a smoky wood fire burning on a strip of bare dirt beneath the trees. They fed it through the afternoon. At first he thought that Vitalik must not be as careful as Solovey when it came to smoke—either because he thought they were deep enough in the hills that it didn’t matter or just because he was that stupid. Then he saw three of Vitalik’s men taking a heavy machine gun, a dashka, up through the trees to the top of the ridge, wheeling the mount and wearing the cartridge belts looped on their necks like priests’ stoles, and he realized Vitalik knew perfectly well about smoke.
Vitalik came and cut him loose toward dusk.
“I want you to see,” he said.
They went up to the ridge. There was a breath of wind rustling the pine boughs. Through the gaps in the dark treetops, Tolya could see the moon waxing bright and clear in the twilit sky. He sat with Vitalik against the bole of a towering oak, just aside from where they’d mounted the dashka—Vitalik with his rifle across his knees, his right arm resting companionably on Tolya’s shoulders. The rest of the squad were spread in a semicircle around the dashka. They waited in silence, watching the empty campsite.
Then somebody said, “Look.”
Black shapes moved in the darkness below, coming up through the trees from the streambed.
Vitalik bent his head to Tolya’s. His breath tickled Tolya’s ear.
“One sound from you,” he said softly. He slipped his hand under Tolya’s chin, crooking his arm across Tolya’s throat. He clenched his fingers to a fist. “Understand?”
Tolya watched, Vitalik’s arm tight across his throat, while the NKVD squad set a perimeter and raked the campsite with a salutatory burst of submachine-gun fire. Som
e of Vitalik’s men took advantage of the noise, fanning out quickly and silently into the trees to draw a loose cordon around the campsite. Vitalik lifted his free hand slowly, palm up, preparing to signal.
On the other side of the dashka, somebody opened up early—one short burst from a papasha as a finger twitched too soon on a trigger. Vitalik swore through his teeth, sliding his arm from Tolya’s neck. He shoved Tolya down against the base of the tree and shouldered his rifle.
The slope exploded in gunfire. The dashka opened up, pounding like a sledgehammer—thud, thud, thud. Tracers streaked up and down the slope. Somebody lobbed a grenade. It tore through the trees—bang—and for a second the whole hillside was lit up red and white, burned onto the inside of Tolya’s eyelids. Vitalik was on his feet, rifle shouldered, legs braced against the recoil, hand flying as he worked the bolt. He emptied his clip and lowered the rifle, planting the butt between his feet. He held up his left hand in a fist.
The dashka fell silent. Somewhere there was the crack of one more rifle shot, echoing away through the trees.
Somebody was whimpering in the darkness down the slope.
Vitalik slung his rifle furiously. He hauled Tolya up by an elbow and shoved him, kicking his ankles. “Walk.”
Tolya stumbled down the slope. Vitalik followed, pistol in hand. One of Vitalik’s men was coming up to them from the camp.
“Your signal—”
Vitalik swore savagely.
“What do you want to do?”
Vitalik jerked his chin. “Get the weapons and ammunition. Then we’re getting the hell out of here. They’ll be back.”
There were three NKVD dead. The fourth man, the wounded man, was kicking across the dirt at the edge of the thin firelight, trying to push himself away. He wasn’t whimpering now. He was holding his throat in his hands, gurgling blood.
Vitalik holstered his pistol. He went over to the wounded man. He knelt, prying the man’s trembling hands gently loose, speaking softly in Russian. He looked at the wound on the man’s neck. Then he sat back on his heels.
“Tolya,” he said.
The rest of the squad were coming down into the circle of firelight, spreading out to strip the dead. “Come here, Tolya,” Vitalik said. He got up, slipping Solovey’s knife from his belt. He put the knife in Tolya’s hand and brought his pistol back out.
“Kill him,” he said, and he lifted the pistol to Tolya’s face.
Tolya didn’t move. The NKVD soldier twisted and gasped on the dirt, pushing with his heels.
“Kill him, Tolya,” Vitalik said. His voice was quiet. His finger was ready on the trigger, thumb clear of the slide, hand steady—the precision of long practice.
And there was a part of Tolya that knew this soldier was going to die anyway, and maybe it was better this way, better at his hand, because Vitalik would take his time.
And there was a part of him, colder and harder, that wanted to do it—for his mother, and for his father, and for Comrade Lieutenant Spirin, and for Koval, and for Solovey, and for everyone and for everything they’d ever taken from him.
And there was a part of him that said, But they have not taken this.
He looked in Vitalik’s eyes and said, “No.”
“Kill him, Tolya,” Vitalik said again, quietly.
He dropped the knife.
“No,” he said.
For a moment, Vitalik stood very still, looking at him—eyes narrowed slightly, as though he were working out a puzzle. Then he swung his pistol smoothly down and let off a quick shot, hand jerking back tightly with the recoil. The soldier gurgled and sighed, his body going slack. Vitalik let off another shot and another, and another, and each time the soldier’s body shivered and jumped a little on the dirt. Vitalik stepped close, leaning over the body to empty the clip.
Then he straightened, turned the pistol in his hand, and smashed the butt across Tolya’s face.
23
There was darkness, for a very long time, and the smell of damp earth.
He was in a root cellar. He’d figured that out pretty quickly. It had taken him a little longer to figure out that he was blindfolded. He was standing with his back to a wooden post, his arms stretched above his head, wrists and waist and ankles roped to the post. There was cool, smooth-packed earth under his bare feet, and the groaning of floorboards above him, and sometimes the soft crackle of a wireless and the murmur of voices.
Always when Vitalik came there was first the creak and scrape of a door, then the slow clomp, clomp, clomp of Vitalik’s boots coming down wooden stairs.
The routine was always the same. First there would be questions, all manner of questions. There would be the technical questions—about his training in Moscow and his orders and whether there were any other infiltrators, and how many, and where, and for how long. Then there would be the reflective questions, such as what it felt like knowing he was going to die a coward and a traitor and a godless Stalinist whore and whether he thought anybody would care he was dead (because they wouldn’t, Vitalik said, not even his masters in Moscow)—but of course it didn’t matter, did it, because a godless Stalinist whore didn’t need anybody to pray rest for his soul.
And if he didn’t answer, or if he didn’t answer satisfactorily, then there would be pain.
There was all manner of pain as there was all manner of questions. He was never sure which it would be beforehand because Vitalik never took off the blindfold for the questionings. Most basically, and most often, there were Vitalik’s fists and boots and cigarette tips because when Vitalik lost his patience—which was regularly—those were his quickest resorts.
Sometimes Tolya was on his knees against the post while Vitalik savaged his back with electrical cables. That wasn’t often because there wasn’t much return from it relative to the effort involved—“inversely proportional,” Solovey would say. He blacked out too quickly, and he couldn’t remember things when Vitalik poured water over his face to wake him up—not the right things anyway, not the things Vitalik wanted to hear, just stupid things like the churchyard in Kuz’myn, and the closet in Ivan’s apartment in Kyiv, and the way he used to think that if you clenched your teeth and held your breath and were very careful not to make any noise, then maybe people would forget you were there. It never worked, but that didn’t stop him from trying.
Only very occasionally did Vitalik have patience and care enough to use the knife. Yakiv had been exaggerating about that.
* * *
He came down once, Yakiv. He sidled against the wall, smoking—not that he’d taken off the blindfold either, but Tolya could smell the makhorka on him.
“It doesn’t have to be like this, Tolya. I can get you out of here. All I need is a name. Do you hear me? Just a name.”
And because he’d already used up his reserves that day—that night?—facedown on the floor, biting the insides of his cheeks to bloody ribbons while Vitalik dressed his raw back with vodka, Tolya said, “What name?”
He could almost hear Yakiv smile, pleased with his victory.
“The source,” Yakiv said. “The man in the Front—the one who gave your name to the commander. Who is he?”
And he was too long in answering, too busy trying to figure out the trick—because he was sure it was a trick—so Yakiv prodded him a little, impatiently.
“The source, the source. Who requested the extraction?”
“I don’t know,” Tolya said.
“Just his name.”
“I don’t know.”
“Listen—sooner or later Vitalik’s going to realize he’s wasting his time on you, as much fun as he’s having.”
“Ask him. He was there.”
“He doesn’t know. None of the squad leaders know.”
“Ask your commander.”
“I don’t think you understand,” Yakiv said. “I’m not with the UPA anymore.”
And Tolya didn’t say anything because he did understand, all at once, in that moment—
Yakiv, wh
o’d told Solovey they couldn’t make the shot that night, because the hotel girl had said Volkov was up in Zhovkva.
Yakiv, who’d had the watch on the ridge.
Yakiv, whose finger had slipped on the trigger of the papasha, springing Vitalik’s trap too soon.
Yakiv, now, leaning against the wall, smoking carelessly, saying, “She’s still alive, you know—your girlfriend.”
“No.”
“Nataliya—that’s her name, isn’t it? The pretty little blond.”
Tolya wrenched against the post, jerking his wrists. Yakiv laughed.
“Calm down. I said she’s still alive.”
“Where?”
“Where do you think? She was insurance. They want the source.”
“I don’t know.”
“Somebody knew you shot Petrov that night. Somebody knew and didn’t talk.”
“I don’t know. I swear I don’t know.”
“Maybe if you think really hard. Think about Natalka.”
It was like a fist to the gut, hearing it on Yakiv’s tongue—the pet name he’d never dared use for her even in the safety of his head, Natalka, little Nataliya. He swallowed bile and fury in a painful, solid lump.
“Please,” he said.
And Yakiv was silent, breathing smoke softly into Tolya’s face.
“Well,” he said finally. “I’ve done in five minutes what Vitalik hasn’t been able to do in three days. I’ve made you beg.”
“I’ll tell him. I’ll tell him it was you.”
“Go ahead,” Yakiv said. He was going up the stairs—clomp, clomp, clomp. “See if you can make him believe you.”
* * *
Later, of course, when the anger had run cold, it occurred to him that Yakiv had just been a test—part of the game, Vitalik’s game.
Because it was Vitalik’s game, all of it. It was Vitalik bringing him lukewarm, metallic water in a battered canteen, or heels of dry, tasteless black bread, and Vitalik untying him from the post and slipping off the blindfold and sitting and smoking and watching while Tolya ate and drank and pissed in the pot in the corner, and Vitalik tying him up and blindfolding him again afterward, and Vitalik kneeling beside him on the packed earth when the pain was done, speaking softly into Tolya’s ear as his smooth, maimed hands cleaned and dressed and bandaged—carefully, very carefully, almost gently, because it wouldn’t do for him to die just yet. Soon, but not yet.
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