Traitor

by Amanda McCrina

  “It’s not your war to lose,” she said.

  He didn’t say anything. What was he supposed to say? They weren’t his people. It wasn’t his war. It had never really been his war.

  Janek came over from the woodshed, carrying an armful of split logs.

  “Enough to start with,” he said.

  He paused in midstep, noticing Tolya.

  “What’s he doing down here?”

  “Fresh air,” Lena said blandly, stubbing out her cigarette on the step. “Does him good.”

  “He shouldn’t be down here.”

  She shrugged.

  Janek gestured brusquely with his armful of logs. “Here. I’m going to finish the rest, just to have it done.”

  “Come in to dinner,” Lena said when Janek had clomped off again to the woodshed.

  “I’ll go up,” Tolya said. He’d seen the anger in Janek’s face.

  “You’re down here anyway,” Lena said. “I’ll put out another plate.”

  * * *

  He’d been downstairs before, twice to have a bath in the swimming-pool tub and once to have his hair cut in the kitchen, but he’d never been down there to eat. He perched on the edge of a chair, looking intently at his hands in his lap—peasant hands, Koval would say—to keep from staring at all the crystal and silver. Mrs. Kijek must have noticed his discomfort because after a while she gave him a bowl of boiled potatoes to cut up for a salad while she finished mixing the mayonnaise.

  Lena had a newspaper in pieces at the head of the table.

  “Moscow’s trying to claim it’s only their puppet ‘People’s Army’ fighting,” she said.

  “The ink, dear,” Mrs. Kijek said mildly. “That’s Great-Grandmother Helena’s silk tablecloth.”

  “It’s lasted seven wars.”

  “I’d like it to last eight.”

  Janek came in from the yard, shutting the door quickly and locking it. He had his pistol out.

  “Lena, get away from the windows.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Get away from the windows.” He came around the table and snapped the heavy draperies shut. “NKVD—up in the wood. They must have left a signalman watching the house.”

  Without a word, Mrs. Kijek doused the lamp on the table. Lena scraped her chair back, unslinging her submachine gun.

  “How many?”

  “At least six. Two gun crews—they’ve got machine guns covering the yard. I saw them setting the mounts.”

  “Go get Jerzy. We’ve got time. Go out through the cellar—it’s unlocked. I’ll cover you to the wood.”

  “Leave you here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Like hell I’m leaving you here. We’ll all make a break.”

  Lena shook her head. “We’ve got time, unless you keep arguing about it. They’ll negotiate. They’ll want us alive.”

  “They only need one of us. If they storm the house—”

  “We’ll barricade ourselves in the attic. We could hold them off for a week from that attic.”

  “Unless they burn you out.”

  “Look—”

  “I’ll go,” Tolya said.

  They all looked at him. He put down his knife and potato.

  “I’ll go,” he said. “I’ve just got to get to the wood.”

  “What are you talking about?” Janek snapped. “You don’t even know where the camp is.”

  “I’ll take out the guns.” He slipped the sling of the German rifle over his head. “I can cover you from the high ground when the nests are clear.”

  Machine-gun fire tore through the windows, shredding the draperies.

  He hit the floor with the rifle beneath him, curling up to shield himself against the needle-sharp flecks of shattered glass and the chewed-up splinters of paneling. Bullets spattered over the walls—one long burst, then silence.

  Somebody shouted across the yard.

  “Lay down your weapons and come out! You’re surrounded!”

  Tolya lifted his head. Clay dust hung on the air like smoke, drifting on the breeze through the broken windows. The shadows of the ripped draperies jumped across the walls.

  “Cover me,” he said to Lena. “I’ll go.”

  “You’re not going anywhere,” Janek said. He was on his stomach in the kitchen doorway, propped up on his forearms, his pistol in his hands.

  “Cover me from the attic.” He reached into his pocket for the cartridge box, careful to avoid Janek’s eyes. “You can come out by the roof when I’ve cleared the nests.”

  “Janek.” Lena jerked her chin. “You and Mama in the attic. I’ll cover from the cellar until he gets across the yard.”

  “He’s one of them,” Janek said.

  “Don’t be an idiot.”

  “He’s one of them.” Janek lifted his pistol. “He’s afraid they’re going to cut their losses.”

  “Lower the gun, Janek.” That was Mrs. Kijek, speaking quietly from against the wall. “It’s not helping.”

  “Lena,” Janek said, appealing.

  “He might as well go,” Lena said. Her eyes held Tolya’s evenly. “He’s not much good as a hostage, even if he is theirs. There are three of us and only one of him. I doubt they’ll make that trade—or any kind of trade we’d want.”

  Tolya popped the bolt on the German rifle. Janek was still holding the pistol on him. He pretended not to notice, focusing on the rifle. The action was very much like that of his Mosin. He stripped a five-round clip into the magazine and shoved the bolt in, glad they couldn’t see the way his hands were shaking.

  “Janek,” Lena said.

  There was another spray of machine-gun fire through the shattered windows.

  “Last chance, ublyudki! Lay down your weapons and come out!”

  “Janek,” Lena said through shut teeth.

  Janek shut his eyes briefly. Then he lowered his pistol and shoved it into his holster. He pushed up on his hands.

  “All right,” he said, “all right, but I’m taking the cellar. Give me your gun.”

  “I’m the better shot.”

  “I know. I’m no good for distance, but I can lay down covering fire. Give me your gun.”

  Lena locked the bolt and shoved the submachine gun to Janek across the paving stones. “Only because I’m not going to waste ten minutes arguing about it.”

  “Later,” Janek said. “Go.”

  35

  Tolya followed Janek in the half-light through the kitchen and down into the cool, damp darkness of the cellar. He stumbled a little at the smell of raw earth, remembering. Just for a second, panic slid over his throat like cold fingers, tightening like a fist in the pit of his stomach. He had the sudden urge to curl up small and invisible there on the steps, covering his head with his arms.

  Something bowled into him from behind, carrying him up off his feet and flinging him down the steps with a bang.

  He landed on his hands on bare dirt, his ears ringing, his breath snatched away. Pinpricks of white light scattered into the darkness. His head spun. He tasted smoke and blood. He tried to move. Something big and solid and heavy was pinning him flat to the floor.

  Janek bent over him. “Are you all right?”

  “I can’t move.”

  “You’ve got the door on top of you—luckily. That was a grenade. Here, give me a second.”

  Distantly above, there was a spattering of gunfire.

  “Listen,” Janek said, dragging the door off him and pulling him up by an elbow. “Maybe you’re theirs. Maybe you’re not. I don’t know.” He pushed Tolya down at the base of the steps going up to the outside doors. “The thing is, they won’t know either—and the difference is that they won’t care. Do you understand? They’re going to be shooting, not asking questions, whoever goes out these doors. Understand?”

  “Yes.”

  Janek shoved his pistol at him. “Keep that rifle slung. Use this to the wood—it’s handier. Mind the crossfire. And mind I’ve got a gun on your back in case you
get any funny ideas.”

  “Where are the nests?”

  “One at the edge of the wood—eleven o’clock, so you’ll want to keep on this side of the barn. One at the side yard, toward the road. That’s the crossfire you’re minding.” Janek unlocked the bolt of the submachine gun. “Are you ready?”

  “Yes,” Tolya said.

  “Prove me wrong,” Janek said.

  He flung open the doors. He sprawled flat on his stomach across the steps, keeping his head low, bracing the barrel of the submachine gun on the top step.

  “Now,” he said, “go now”—and then he was shouting to Lena and Mrs. Kijek: “Już! Już! Now! Now!”

  He opened fire in a sweeping arc. Tolya pushed up on his hands. He lunged up the steps. It was twenty meters across the yard to the barn, then ten meters over open ground from the barn to the wood. He ran, veering from side to side. The yard had cleared quickly when Janek opened fire. There was one NKVD soldier dead at the kitchen step, two more between the henhouse and the toolshed. The rest had scattered for cover, diving behind the woodpile and the raised garden beds.

  Bullets snapped and sang across the yard. A rifle shot whined past his ear, very close. Submachine-gun fire spattered over the barn doors. He heard the thud, thud, thud of the machine guns. The tracers swung toward him in two long, white streams. He ducked, gasping, into the shadow of the barn, under the long northern wall.

  A grenade roared somewhere behind him. The shiver of the concussion ran through the soles of his shoes. The barn wall shuddered under his hand. He looked back. Two NKVD submachine gunners stood at the cellar doors, silhouetted against the flame and ash and curling smoke, firing in tandem down the steps.

  No—please, God, no.

  And then: Please, let me prove him wrong.

  He bolted for the wood across that last ten meters of open ground. The machine gun on the slope above the barn picked him up again. The muzzle flashed. Bullets cut across his path, kicking up dirt in little plumes. He dove on his face into the cover of the trees. The bullets hissed and snarled after him, thudding into the tree trunks. Bark and leaves and bits of twig showered down on him. He crawled up the slope, belly down, pulling himself along on his elbows, pushing with the sides of his feet, until the gunner gave him up in the darkness of the trees. Then he got up and ran.

  Two of them followed him, crashing through the underbrush up the slope behind him. He swung around behind a fat beech tree, braced his shoulder on the trunk, and cupped Janek’s pistol in his hands. He shot the first man squarely in the chest, just under the second of the three brass buttons down the placket of his tunic. He wasted two more shots on the other because this one slid behind a tree when the first man fell. The bullets glanced uselessly off the trunk. He didn’t have time or ammunition for this game. He stuck the pistol in his waistband, unslung the German rifle, and shot through the fuze cap of the F1 grenade on the dead man’s belt. Then he ran again, because the explosion had given away his position.

  He cut across the shoulder of the hill, southward, moving quickly and quietly from tree to tree, until he was straightaway up the slope from the barn—two hundred meters, maybe. He could see the first nest below, just to the right of the barn, and the second in the old, flat ricks of unbaled hay past the yard gate, where the road from Zarudce ran to nothing in the tall grass. There were three men to each nest—gunner, loader, spotter. He couldn’t see any NKVD still in the yard except for the three dead men, but gunfire echoed distantly across the yard from somewhere inside the house. Muzzle flashes glinted on the windowpanes.

  He rested the barrel of the German rifle on a fallen log. He stretched out carefully on his stomach, shouldering the butt. He leaned his cheek on the stock and shut his left eye. The Zeiss scope gave him six-power magnification, and he could see the nest very clearly in the moonlight. The gunner’s head was bent to the sights, his shoulders straining against the jerk of the gun. He was shooting at the windows in intermittent bursts.

  Tolya sighted—distance two hundred meters, negative-elevation differential of thirty, half wind from five o’clock, off the ridge. He squeezed the trigger. The rifle jumped lightly against his shoulder. The bullet sparked off the wheel of the mount, just clear of the gunner’s left hand.

  The spotter’s head whipped around. Tolya slipped the bolt back and ejected the spent cartridge. He adjusted quickly for wind, fumbling with hasty fingers. The spotter lifted a submachine gun and let off a blind, wild spray of bullets into the trees down the slope, fifty meters short.

  Tolya bent his cheek and shut his eye. He brought the back of the gunner’s head into the crosshairs. This time when the rifle jumped under his hands the gunner lurched and fell forward across the barrel of the machine gun. The loader pushed the gunner’s body off and dragged the machine gun around, and Tolya shot him in the forehead as he turned.

  The spotter stumbled up jerkily and ran for the nest in the hayricks. Tolya followed him through the scope. His hands were steady now, his head cool and clear. He dropped the running man just outside the yard gate. He pulled the bolt, ejected the cartridge, and shoved the bolt back in, lifting his head to gauge the distance to the second gun. Six hundred meters, or very nearly, across the wind—and the thing about shooting at machine guns at six hundred meters, Comrade Lieutenant Spirin would say, was that machine guns could shoot back at six hundred meters, with a comparative minimum of effort.

  He adjusted the knobs on the scope. The gun crew in the hayricks had seen the spotter fall. Through the scope, Tolya watched them wheel the machine gun around to face the hillside. He could see the pale, moonlit blur of the gunner’s face above the barrel of the gun. He pressed his cheek to the stock and squeezed his eye shut, curling his finger over the trigger.

  The mouth of a pistol pushed cold and hard against the base of his skull.

  He froze. A quick, rough hand pried the rifle from his hands, slinging it away. Fingers tore Janek’s pistol from his waistband.

  “Tell those idiots we’ve got him,” a voice said in Russian over Tolya’s head, “before they shoot us all to shreds.”

  A booted foot jabbed Tolya’s ribs. “Up, you bastard—slowly. I’ll blow your brains out if you so much as twitch.”

  An electric torch flashed in Tolya’s eyes. The voice barked a harsh laugh. The pistol slid under Tolya’s jaw, forcing his chin up, turning his face directly to the light.

  “Tasha, look. It’s your boyfriend.”

  The second soldier had stooped to pick up the German rifle. Tolya saw her face as she straightened—her eyes mothy-green in the glare of the electric torch, her smooth blond hair slipping its neat bun in the breeze off the ridge—

  Koval, alive.

  Koval, wearing the uniform of the NKVD.

  36

  Koval lifted the German rifle and put a bullet between the first soldier’s eyes.

  His head snapped back. He reeled and flopped over the log at Tolya’s feet. Koval lowered the rifle. She came over and nudged his body away with the toe of her boot. She knelt, propping the barrel of the rifle on the log. She pulled the bolt. The spent cartridge spun out. She looked up.

  “Do you have another clip?”

  He blinked at her.

  “Tolya,” she prompted, “another clip.”

  He moved somehow. He crouched beside her. He gave her the cartridge box from his pocket wordlessly. His hands were numb. He didn’t trust himself to speak. He wasn’t sure in that moment that she was really there. He watched her push the new clip into the magazine and shove the bolt home with her palm. She shouldered the butt and sighted, breathing long and slowly through her nose, biting her lower lip in concentration as she always did when she was shooting. Her arm just brushed his arm as she crooked her elbow on the log. The loose strands of blond hair whipped this way and that in the breeze off the ridge.

  She was there, beside him, alive.

  She was wearing the uniform of the NKVD.

  Solovey had lied.

  These
three things spun around in his head, crashing into each other and breaking apart again, while Koval cleared the machine-gun nest. She did it with three quick shots, sliding the barrel of the rifle smoothly along the top of the log. Then she threw back the bolt and sat up, lowering the rifle to her lap.

  “You’re hurt,” she said.

  “What?” Like an idiot.

  She jerked her chin. He looked down. There was blood on Adrian Kijek’s trousers, soaking the cuff where it bunched up at his right ankle. He leaned back, shifting his weight off his toes. Blood squelched under his heel. He pulled up the trouser leg with stumbling fingers. Shrapnel, not a bullet—there was a jagged metal splinter the width of his thumb sticking out below the ankle bone. There was no pain. That was shock. There would be pain later.

  The blood cleared his head a little. “Koval.”

  “Sit down. Let me see it.”

  “I need the rifle,” he said.

  She held the rifle for him while he eased himself stiffly down onto his forearms and stomach.

  “You move like a grandfather,” she said.

  He didn’t say anything. He still didn’t quite trust himself to speak. He shouldered the butt and sighted the attic window. He watched through the scope, finger on the trigger, while they opened the window and came down the mossy shingles—first Lena, then Mrs. Kijek, following the roof down to the low drop by the kitchen step.

  Koval took his shoe off and rolled the trouser leg up his calf.

  “Listen,” she said, “I’ve got to radio this in, but I can buy you some time. There’s a car down the road—pulled off on the shoulder about a kilometer out of Zarudce. The ignition’s unlocked. All you’ve got to do is flip the starter switch.”

  He was keeping the window in the crosshairs, watching the kitchen door peripherally, while Lena and Mrs. Kijek crossed the yard to the barn. It took him a second to really hear what she was saying.

  “Radio this in,” he repeated.

  “To headquarters.” She tore off a strip of trouser leg. “And then I’ll have to hunt you.”