“Vent? They show no respect for the Soviet Union.” The swarming crowd forced Gurko to drive at a crawl. “We should’ve clamped down on these people many years ago, like we did the Poles.”
Dal glanced over his shoulder. “And you, private? Are you comfortable with unruly crowds?”
Potapov sat with a stony expression and gripped his rifle. “We have deadly work to conduct this morning, comrade colonel. I am just eager to pull the trigger.”
The villagers had surrounded the slow-moving truck by the time the priest approached. “The mayor is a pillar in the community,” Father Sudek was saying, keeping pace on his cane. “His incarceration is unjust. Don’t you see?”
From the onset, Dal had anticipated this confrontation with the holy man. “I understand your concerns. I really do. However at the moment I am preoccupied with official state business. Let’s have a chat later this afternoon. I will gladly move you to the head of the line.”
“The mayor is loved by everyone.”
“His condition is out of my hands.” Dal cleared his throat. “Move away from the vehicle.”
“He has children.”
“As do I,” Dal admitted. He threw out their names as though naming excuses, “Anna, Marc, Pavel, and Konstantin, all waiting for me at our home in Stalingrad.” He refused to call his childhood city Volgograd, its new name since 1961.
“Couldn’t you make an exception? And release him?”
“This is difficult for me, Father. Consider for a moment that I might rather be at home with my wife and children, enjoying the family life.” The priest seemed befuddled. “I, too, am a victim of the politics. We must be strong. The community is depending on our mutual strength in order to get through this difficult time.”
When the vehicle stopped, Dal fitted his sunglasses, took hold of the windshield, and stood on the seat. It was his first opportunity to address the concerns of the townspeople. Undoubtedly, they had questions. He viewed the crowd for several moments before speaking to them with an authoritative tone. “Comrades of Mersk,” he began, holding up his hands to quell the voices. “I have an important announcement . . .” He was comfortable in the spotlight and well-practiced with civil confrontations, having previously faced down student protests in Romania and in Bulgaria. Today’s village square gathering, however, was on a much smaller scale. Today he was dealing with rural workers, people tied to agriculture, not the textbook, which made them less inquisitive of policy and law. Unlike students, farmhands did not have time to sit in the coffee houses to discuss politics and philosophy. They were oblivious to the pulse of what was happening in Prague, at the Castle, and in the presidium. With this knowledge, Dal had chosen to dress with pageantry, so everyone could appreciate his medals. His military accomplishments demanded respect.
“Comrades of Mersk,” he said again, “upon invitation by your government, the Warsaw armies have come to the aid of the working class to defend years of socialist gains. We have heard your voices, the masses, the workers, the citizens who stand united. Your call for protection from corrupt ideas has been received with the gravest of concern in Moscow. I stand before you as proof. My name is Colonel Grigori Dal.” The men responded with a mixture of thunderous boos and disruptive groans. Raising a hand to calm them, Dal resumed with confidence, “I have been assigned to this district as the new public administrator. As I believe transparency is the hallmark of trust, my credentials are posted at the villa. I encourage you to read them.”
“Where is the mayor?” Emil asked.
Pavel raised a hand, and said, “Why has Ma-ma-mayor Seifert been im-im-imprisoned?”
Groans and angry accusations filled the air. There were concerns that Zdenek Seifert had been mistreated, or worse, beaten. Dal took their unfriendliness in good spirit and like a speedy tennis ball served over a net, he returned their anger in a sincere voice. “Your mayor has penned his name to a document of anarchy. For that reason, he has been charged with conspiracy and relieved of his official responsibilities.”
“Anarchy?” Oflan said. “It can’t be true.”
Potapov had jumped from the truck. With his training in the martial arts, crowd control was his specialty. Prior to Dal plucking him from a military prison in Odessa, where he was considered one of the finest guards in the service, he had been the Division karate champion, having killed two men in the ring. With a tightened grip on his AK, he nudged people away from the vehicle.
“Listen to me,” Dal said. “This is a serious situation. Moscow has been watching. There has been much discontent in Czechoslovakia. Jazz music? Rock and roll? Miniskirts?” The public horde became quiet, perhaps a reflection of their guilt. “This behavior has been frowned upon. Maybe none are culpable in Mersk, but in the cities, in Prague, in Pilsen, in Ostrava, the moral decay is rampant. As a precaution, until I am convinced the village is not a breeding ground for more anarchists, I have instituted Martial Law.” He examined the sea of bewildered faces, many of them bemoaning his speech. “What does this mean, you people ask? It means a curfew is in force, from sunset to sunrise.”
Josef shook a rolling pin above his head. He had arrived at the last minute, his long apron covered in sugar and jam. With his thick forearms, he had a bruising way of drawing attention to himself. “A curfew?” he said, standing next to Emil. “You must be kidding? I have important deliveries to make. I can’t possibly work around your stinking curfew.”
Dal held the official edict. “This validates my authority . . .” He gave the paperwork to Father Sudek, while Potapov shoved and bumped shoulders with the angry protestors, maintaining a safety zone around the truck. “I expect farmhands and shopkeepers to register for exempt status. This way production will move forward. You do not need me to lecture you on the importance of production. Cooperate, good citizens of Mersk. And this will make for an easy transition. However be warned: my men have orders to take any precaution necessary to protect themselves from enemies of the regime, as well as to implement my initiatives, which come with full support from the National Committee in Prague.”
“Prague?” a lone voice cried out. “Don’t you mean the politburo in Moscow? Your regime is a lie.”
There was a flurry of groans.
When the mob became obnoxious and more hateful with their insults, Dal held up his hands to calm their hostility. It was Sascha Boyd who had spoken. He realized this, yet pretended ignorance, an attitude learned as an actor.
“Who speaks?” Dal asked. From the corner of his eye, he caught Potapov ready with the rifle.
Sascha stood tall. “You and your Stalinist pigs aren’t welcome on these streets.”
Dal looked at the redheaded Sascha. “Is that so?”
“If your goal is to establish a Soviet protectorate, I warn you, we will not follow in the fate of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. I’d advise you to pack up and leave, before this protest becomes your Waterloo.”
There was a long interlude while Dal stepped down from the truck and walked through the parting crowd. In the early days of the Hungarian uprising of 1956, he had entered a similar mob, equally boisterous in its cry against Soviet authority, and was sliced in the stomach by a radical wielding a knife. The wound required forty-eight stitches and was poorly sewn by a young Soviet doctor, leaving a horrendous scar like an animal had bitten him. Dal made the best of the near death experience, telling his children the teeth marks on his skin were where a great white shark had attacked him off the coast of Indonesia. They believed everything he told them, especially Konstantin, the youngest at twelve. Having survived the vicious stabbing in Budapest, he lived with a sense of untold destiny, accepting his importance in Russian military lore alongside other heroic soldiers such as Field Marshal Mikhail Kutuzov, who defeated Napoleon’s Grande Armée during the French invasion of 1812. Like Kutuzov, he believed it was important to show strength when engaging the enemy, in particular when confronting a mob.
Dal stopped in front of Sascha, removed his sunglasses, and l
ooked fiercely down on him. Even up close, the young man’s facial features were strikingly similar to the American POW. Like brothers, he thought coldly. Could they have found a more suitable body double?
“What is your name?” Dal asked.
“Antonin fucking Dvorak,” Sascha said. “But that’s maestro to you.”
Several men laughed.
Dal welcomed the young man’s confidence, relishing the chance to stir up his emotions. He thought of fencing, of saber play, and looked for an opportunity to score points against his ego. After the boom of a MiG jet flying overhead faded, Dal said, “You must be a student, no?”
“Charles University.” Sascha was full of ludicrous pride. “I’m working on an advanced degree. Economics.”
Dal considered his next move. He glanced at Janus, then to the priest, before he asked Sascha, “Do you respect my legal authority on behalf of the Czechoslovak government? It is a simple question, one which requires either a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’ answer.”
“To hell with you. And your October Revolution.” Sascha shook with adrenaline. His voice was choked up in the way angry men often get when they lose control of their emotions.
Dal leaned hard against him. “Obviously, you have little respect for socialism.”
“Socialism? You know nothing about my politics . . .” Sascha heaved a chunk of mucus and spat on Dal’s cheek.
A long, stunned silence fell.
Dal kept his cool, wiping away the glop with slow, deliberate movements. He recalled a play where he had portrayed a Bolshevik, and drew upon this early experience as an actor, which had been met with thunderous applause in the theatre. “Already you must have regrets over that poor decision to spit on my face,” he said, recognizing the livid Czech was primed for a fight. He calmly took a pack from his breast pocket and lit a cigarette. “Where I come from, you would be in some serious trouble with your piss-poor attitude. Most military officers aren’t as tolerant as I am.”
Dal blew smoke into the young man’s face. If anything, he needed Sascha Boyd to throw the first punch.
A FEW BLOCKS away, Ayna was walking to the marionette theatre when she encountered a group of young women──the very same girls she had despised since grade school. The rumors they once spread about her stuffing tissue in her bra and having multiple sexual diseases was printed on her mind in permanent marker. All these years later, she thought, they were still trite and immature.
Someone whispered, “Ayna’s curse has brought the Russians to Mersk.”
Another girl mentioned her father’s Azerbaijani heritage, adding, “Her grandfathers are Muslims. What do you expect from someone who doesn’t believe in the same God we do?”
Ayna shook her head. It was just like them to mention the curse and the Russians in the same breath. And then blame her distant relatives in the Azerbaijan SSR for the recent troubles in Mersk.
It was not any big secret that three of Ayna’s boyfriends had died under unusual circumstances. Most recently, it had been Peter. Before him, it was her first love Daniel, who had drowned in a pond. Then Dominik, a bricklayer who was kicked in the head by a horse. Their sudden deaths were heartbreaking; but the girls were heartless. They had never shown any compassion for her misfortunes, or for the dead boyfriends. Instead they used it like ammunition and flung the hate back into her face.
One of the girls commented on how “pretty” Ayna was, though another muttered, “Maybe these days she is pretty. But who cares? She is cursed. She will never find a man to love.”
When Ayna was younger and had a shorter fuse, she often snapped and charged after them for making such vicious comments. Thanks to Josef’s boxing lessons, she had learned to defend herself in grade school. All these years later, after the fist fighting and hair pulling had ceased, the mean-spirited whispers persisted.
She kept her head up and brushed past them. Ignoring a final, chasing insult, “face like a Muslim abortion.” Further down the street, at the square, she heard people yelling and ran toward the disturbance.
“You don’t know what you’re doing,” Nadezda warned, reaching for Ayna’s arm when she arrived at the fountain. “The KGB colonel is angry today. Stay away from him.”
Ayna ignored the warning and threaded her way through the rowdy mob. A few steps later, she found herself entering an open circle, and standing next to Dal. “What the hell,” she said, when she got a look at him. He was blowing cigarette smoke into Sascha’s face.
After a pause, Dal asked, “And you would be?”
His eyes were gray and wolf-like. Worse than anything else, he was checking her out with a seductive gesture. She wanted to stare him down, instead glanced away. “I’m one of the many who despise you,” she finally said.
“Let’s not get off on the wrong foot.”
“Do you plan on staying long? In Mersk?”
“I know you must have many questions.”
“When are you leaving?”
“When the work is done.” After a pause, he added, “And we have much work to do.”
Sascha moved in front of Ayna, and said to Dal, “This is between you and me. Leave her out of this quarrel.”
“So . . .” Dal puffed his cigarette. “This must be your little sweetie?”
“She’s my friend.”
“Gypsy?”
“No.”
“Your friend’s a real catch.”
Now she flung a look of scorn, closer yet to punching him. There was a heavy, sick feeling in her stomach along with a feeling that a fight was about to erupt. With her. With Sascha. With whomever the soldiers picked on next. Instead of defusing the conversation, she said, “You. Are. Rude.”
Ignoring the comment, Dal leaned over and whispered into Sascha’s ear.
She overheard words like “sex” and “whore” and “rousing good time.” What a disgusting pig, she thought, clapping her hand over her mouth when Sascha suddenly, most unexpectedly, punched the colonel in the stomach.
Then someone yelled, “Fight.”
Bystanders in the crowd began to push forward. Some of them were standing on their toes, trying for a better view. Others threw fists in the air and hollered, “Punish him,” and “Don’t back down,” and “For Czechoslovakia.”
A feeling of elation surged through Ayna’s veins. “Hit him hard,” she said. “Knock his block off!”
Sascha lurched forward and took hold of the colonel’s throat, choking him.
Could he win this fight? Would the people stand behind her best friend and push the foreign mongrels out of town? She watched with mixed emotions. It was dangerous for Sascha to confront the Soviets like this. Stupid, even. He was a star debater, not a warrior.
A second later, Potapov stepped forward and slammed the butt of his AK into Sascha’s shoulder blades.
Sascha fell.
She rushed to his side, slightly panicked. Picking a fight with the Soviets had been a mistake. “It’s useless,” she insisted, trying to prevent him from standing up. “They have guns. You can’t win.”
He brushed her aside, scrambled to his feet and charged after Potapov. “Nazis,” he was shouting, attempting to commandeer the rifle. But the Ukrainian was waiting for him and pulled the trigger. The deafening ack, ack, ack, ack of the assault rifle exploded and sent a shockwave rippling through her body.
She stood there. A few seconds of confusion took hold. A sense of where was she? And what had happened? It was followed by a full-throttled ringing in her ears. Had she been shot? No. She saw people screaming and crying but their voices were muffled. When she looked at her feet, she found Sascha lying on the ground, blood oozing from his chest. “Oh, Sascha,” she said urgently, kneeling by his side. “Hang on. We will take you to the hospital. You won’t die.”
She was aware of Dal standing nearby.
He staggered with a handgun above his head and fired several times into the air. “Stand down,” he demanded. “I order you. Stand down.”
People gave him r
oom. Many ducked for cover or ran away.
She cradled Sascha’s head in her lap and Josef had his wrist, searching for a pulse. Tad crawled over next to her and attempted to stop the bleeding.
“He’s dead,” Josef said, weeping.
She looked into her friend’s lifeless eyes. Josef must be lying. Dead? Josef doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Sascha can’t be dead.
Father Sudek shook his head mournfully.
But it was true. Dreadfully true. She looked at the colonel. He was breathing deeply through an open mouth. “Why?” she asked. “How could you do this?”
Dal gave an unapologetic expression. “I didn’t start this fight,” he said, turning to the crowd. “Nevertheless I warn you. Each and every one of you. Don’t push me. The rest of your countrymen have capitulated in Prague. Why not you?”
“Murderers,” she said.
Dal turned to the priest. “With you as witness, this anarchist assaulted one of my men. His death will be reported as an act of self-defense.”
“Self-defense?” Father Sudek said doubtfully.
“Get control of your parish, Father. Next time, the blood will be on your hands, not mine.”
“Yes but─”
“Tomorrow morning, after we file our official report concerning the day’s tragic incident, this man’s body will be returned to the church, at which time you may give him one of your proper Christian burials.”
“But──”
“But nothing.” While Dal spoke, his soldiers took Sascha’s body from her grasp and like a sack of grain dropped it in the back of the truck.
After they drove away, she sat on the bloody cobble with her head down; her bloodshot eyes were dry and burning. She refused to shed more tears. What good would crying do now?
Father Sudek, Josef, Emil, and Tad stayed with her. She shunned them away. She did not need their sympathy. Her mind was like a broken record, replaying Sascha’s words from the other day: Even if the soldiers come here, what can they do?
She felt a cramp in her side, as if a seed had taken root.
PRIOR TO PROVOKING the hotheaded Sascha, Dal had been firm with Potapov, instructing the sharpshooting private to aim for the redhead’s heart. Two, three bullets shot in rapid succession will kill him instantly, he had explained. Like flipping a light switch.
The Thin Wall: A POW/MIA Truth Novel Page 7