by CW Hawes
“Yes, my dear. You are a writer. And now you are a writer for Mikhail’s cause.”
“Mikhail’s cause?”
She smiled. “Yes. I like to think of it that way. Because, in truth, without him those fools in Paris would get no where. Mikhail is the mastermind of this revolution. So, yes, I like to think of it as his cause.”
“You love him. Don’t you?”
She was quiet, then shook her head. “It is all past.”
“I am so sorry.”
“Don’t be. I have you and in you I see something of my sister those bastards took away from me. And that is more important than loving Captain Mikhail Aleksandorovich Turbanev.”
I set my tea cup and plate down and took Dunyasha’s cup from her. I put my arms around her and held her. To my surprise she started crying and saying “Nada” over and over.
ELEVEN
First Blood
I looked up from my typing. The clock said the time was ten. The night was dark and cold. Much earlier I’d drawn the curtains in an attempt to stop the cold coming in through the windows. I decided to take a break. I lit a cigarette and poured myself tea from the ever present samovar. What I really wanted at that moment was a martini.
Supper had been served at eight. Not the lavish affair of the other night. This meal was simple. Cabbage rolls with buckwheat. There was tea but no wine. Although I’m not sure what wine one would serve with cabbage rolls. A lager I think would be a better fit.
Mikhail sat on my right. He was affectionate and attentive. From the looks on the faces of those at the table, it was apparent, to my eyes anyway, everyone accepted me as his new mistress. Dunyasha sat on my left and gave no indication my taking her place bothered her.
When Dunyasha got me for supper, she told me this place was not the same one I’d previously been at. She took my hand and led me from my rooms to the dining hall, pointing out markers so I could find my way back on my own.
I took my tea and sat on the divan before the fire. There I sat smoking and drinking. I’d written the note to Karl. I told him I was alright and had gotten an extraordinary opportunity to see and talk to the Russian peasantry first hand and just had to take it. I concluded by wishing him well and telling him I’d see him soon. Of course the last part was a fabrication for sure. I had no idea if I’d ever see him again. And yet I knew Karl.
So when Mikhail told me at supper my note had been delivered, I was fairly confident the situation would not end there. If Karl still cared about me he wouldn’t leave my absence go unpursued. He would move heaven and earth to find me. And if he couldn’t do so he would badger Hall Media until the communications giant moved the universe as well as heaven and hell for him. He was their star foreign correspondent after all and they wanted him happy. Mikhail might think we were safely hidden from the Communists, but nothing was hidden from Hall Media. And I mustn’t forget Kit Somers and IRIS. I didn’t know what reach IRIS had, but I was confident they’d eventually find me. If they wanted me found. And if they didn’t, I had a feeling Kit might.
The question remained, however: did I want to be found? I, Drusilla Grace Drummond Hurley-Drummond. Did I want anyone to find me now I found myself with Mikhail? That was the burning question and I was thinking perhaps not.
My tea and cigarette finished, I returned to my typewriter. There was no electricity in the dacha. Candles and kerosene lamps provided the lighting. And I was sorely missing the brightness of electric lights. Even a shaded kerosene lamp with a mantle wasn’t quite the same. My eyes and head were beginning to hurt.
I looked over the stories I had typed thus far. Dunyasha was right. The people and their litany of abuse at the hands of Stalin and his thugs. It seemed every family in Russia had been touched by the tragic calamity that was Uncle Joe. The stories and the looks on the people’s faces, for the most part blank, as though their own horror was beyond their own capacity to believe, tore my heart out and stoked the fury of my anger. How could one person inflict this much pain and suffering on his own people? The entirety of his people? It was beyond belief. And yet there it was, tale after tale of tragedy, becoming almost monotonous in the telling, stories as real as the cold brutality of the Russian winter.
There was Afanasiya. Her once pretty face now marred with ugly red scars. “We were from Chechnya. Our neighbors were suspicious of us because we aren’t Russian. One night the police came. They accuse my husband of being a traitor. They shot him in front of me, then raped me and cut my face.”
Vera told how a long time customer of her father’s shop noticed a newspaper article pinned to the wall. The pin was through the forehead of a picture of Stalin. The customer reported the offense and Vera’s father was arrested and sent to the Gulag for ten years. He was an old man and died before he’d been there a year.
“My father was a rabbi,” Dina said. “When the NKVD came into our village, they rounded everyone up and took us to the square. My father, being a rabbi and a leader in the village, they stood him in front of everyone and shot him. Then they raped all the women, making the men watch. Some women fought and were shot. Some men, too. When they were done with us, they took the men away. That was fifteen years ago. I don’t know where my brothers are or if they are even alive.”
“I was young,” Pavel said. “Six, I think. The NKVD came and took my father. I tried to stop them and they broke my arm. As you can see, it did not heal correctly. A year later they took my mother. I came home from school and she was gone. My sisters and I were taken in by relatives.”
One after the other they told their stories. Twenty-seven in all. Tales of terror, brutality, suspicion, and duplicity. All were committed to overthrowing the government. Now my job was to write a series of articles telling these stories to the world and promoting the Czarist cause. And there would be more to report, Mikhail assured me.
I rolled another sandwich of paper and carbon into the machine and began typing. A new article, a new story, yet no different from the ones I’d already typed.
The time was just after midnight and I was ready to call it quits when there was a knock on the door.
“Come in,” I said.
Mikhail entered and closed the door behind him. I ran to him, threw my arms around him, and kissed his face and lips.
“Oh, my darling!” I said.
He held me tight and said something in Russian.
“Let’s make love,” I said.
“Ah, my precious, we will have time for ‘la petite mort’ later. Right now we have an adventure. You have been a correspondent in a war zone?”
“Yes. I was with the Italian forces in the Italo-Yugoslav War.”
“Which theater?”
“I was reporting on the Kosovo front.”
“Bloody business there. So you have experience. Good. Dunyasha will bring you your clothes. We leave in an hour.”
He kissed me tenderly. “Oh delight of my heart, know this: I’d rather stay and make love to you until the sun rises. But life, she is not so simple.”
There was a knock. We parted and Mikhail opened the door to reveal Dunyasha standing there.
“Good evening, Captain Turbanev, Dru.”
Mikhail nodded to her. “I’ll leave you two.” He left and Dunyasha entered. She kissed my cheeks.
“These are for you.” She handed me clothes. “We have an adventure tonight. Get dressed and I’ll explain while you’re dressing.”
I began removing my clothes and Dunyasha spoke. “There is a small military depot one hundred sixty to one hundred eighty kilometers from here. About a hundred soldiers guard the supplies and equipment there. We are going to hit the depot. Once we’ve captured the base we will take what we can of the equipment and supplies and torch the rest.”
“Why am I going?”
“To witness and write about our victory. To tell the world the revolution has begun.”
“But what if we don’t win?”
“What are you saying? Of course we will win. We have
surprise, modern weapons, and training on our side.”
My clothes off, I put on the military outfit. Black pants and shirt. Black socks and boots. Black coat, scarf, gloves, and hat. When finished, I did a pirouette.
“How do I look?” I asked.
Dunyasha rolled her eyes, laughed, and said, “Stunning. Let’s go.”
Forty partisans, including eleven women, plus Mikhail, Dunyasha, myself, and SS-Sturmbannführer Leon Leiprecht, an advisor working with Mikhail, had surrounded the Soviet installation and at three a.m. began advancing. Mikhail was on the north side of the depot with the SS advisor. Dunyasha and I were on the south. Count Neratoff was on the west and Nestor, who had only suffered minor injuries, was on the east side of the depot.
Our group was heavily armed. Each partisan carried a knife, a pistol, and four grenades. Four of the group were armed with sniper rifles, thirteen with submachine guns, and twenty-six with assault rifles. The partisans carried as well two mortars and eight single use disposable panzerfaust anti-tank weapons. The four leaders had walkie-talkies and flare guns. Everything I saw, weapons, clothing, and equipment, were of German manufacture.
The depot was a kilometer and a half off of a dirt road. There was a gate on the north end and one on the south. The one and a half kilometer long military road entered the depot at the south gate. A chain link and barbed wire fence, four meters high, each side a kilometer long and forming a square, surrounded two buildings and several vehicles parked on a paved lot. One building held weapons, ammunition, and equipment, the other the administrative quarters, mess hall, and barracks for the one hundred soldiers.
In the four corners of the enclosure was a ten meter tall tower containing a searchlight and a machine gun. The area within the fence was illuminated by an outer and an inner circle of lights. Guards manned the towers and walked the fence. The searchlights swept back and forth in semi-circles, illuminating the terrain out to five hundred meters.
Not being a part of the fighting force I wasn’t given any weapons. With me, though, were my Colt revolver and Sauer pistol. Both are essentially belly guns. I’ll have to get up close and personal with a soldier to use them. Something I had no intention of doing.
The night was cold: -12°C. The mix of sleet and snow that fell earlier left the ground a frozen mess. We were given white coats to help us blend in better, but they weren’t heavily insulated. We low crawled through the dry, dead grass and brush, stopping every time a searchlight swept over us. When we were eight hundred meters from the fence we stopped, keeping still and low to the ground.
That’s when the snipers went to work. The crack of the rifle report and the southeast searchlight went dark in a shower of glass. Two more rifle reports on the still, cold air and the two north searchlights went dark. A siren started screaming into the night and soldiers began pouring out of the barracks. Two more rifle reports and the southwest searchlight went dark. The snipers now went after the perimeter lighting.
With the searchlights gone, the main body of partisans advanced and at three hundred meters the assault rifles began firing into the compound. We wanted to drive soldiers away from the fence, enabling us to cut through it and enter the depot.
A half-track appeared and made for the south gate. Four Soviet soldiers died trying to open the gate for the vehicle. The driver honked the horn and smashed through the gate while the machine gunner sprayed bullets into the moonless night. When the vehicle was within range, a partisan fired a panzerfaust and paid for it with his life. The machine gunner cutting him down. But the anti-tank round hit the half-track and it exploded in a ball of fire. Three soldiers tried escaping the inferno and were machine gunned down by the partisans.
Suddenly the lights went out and the camp was plunged into darkness.
“The camp commander thinks he can even things out by putting his men in the dark,” Dunyasha said.
There were two booms and the night turned to day in the light of the flares. The Soviet soldiers, caught by surprise, were shot down. I saw six fall on our side of the fence. When the flares burned out, two more were sent aloft to illuminate the night sky. And we kept advancing. We stood upright and were moving quickly. We were almost at the fence.
We stayed clear of the gap where the gate had been because a machine gun had just been set up to stop anyone coming in that way. We were going to cut our way through the fence. So the machine gun didn’t much matter.
A searchlight picked us up and a machine gun opened fire. Two of our number were hit.
Dunyasha screamed in Russian and narrowly missed being turned into swiss cheese.
The Soviet airship passed three hundred meters overhead. It swung over to the west playing its searchlight and firing its machine gun. It began a slow curve to the north when a sniper shot out the searchlight. We could see the crew in the control car. The airship was descending and crew members were shining portable searchlights from the windows. The machine gun continued to fire along the perimeter.
Dunyasha was talking on the walkie-talkie. She was furious. “That damn kraut is telling Mikhail to pull back.”
Suddenly there was an explosion and the control car was demolished. We could hear a loud cheer from the direction of Nestor’s group.
“That should show the kraut we don’t give up,” Dunyasha said.
The airship continued to slowly descend, motoring to the south. It made for a huge target. The kerchow of a mortar rang through the night. There was an explosion inside the envelope. My guess is the mortar round must’ve hit the keel. Fabric began burning and there was the whump of igniting hydrogen. In another fifteen seconds the ship crashed, a massive ball of fire.
A cheer went up from the partisans. Dunyasha fired a flare over the depot and yelled, “Shoot! Shoot!” The Soviet soldiers fell back to the barracks. We moved in riddling the towers with bullets. Even though our group was smaller, the soldiers were holed up in the cinderblock building. The soldiers were shooting out the windows to prevent us from advancing. We, of course, were shooting back.
The order came through to pull back and let the mortars go to work. We did so and mortar rounds began falling on the building. Eleven rounds hit the structure before a white flag appeared. We cautiously moved forward.
The building was a mess. The roof was mostly blown off. Sections of wall had collapsed. The dead, the dying, and the wounded were everywhere. The soldiers not wounded were marched outside and lined up against the building. There were twenty-three. Count Neratoff yelled a Russian word and five submachine guns cut down the soldiers. Two tried to make a run for it and were shot by partisans.
Mikhail ordered everyone to start loading up all the weapons, ammunition, and equipment in the Soviet trucks first. I followed Dunyasha after I saw him and the Count go back into the shelled building. Then my blood ran cold. I heard pistol shots. Lots of them.
TWELVE
I Shall Make You My Wife
He came to me in the night. His butterfly kisses on my eyelids waking me. He stripped off his clothes and got into bed next to me. The slow dance of our lovemaking began with kisses and caresses, gradually turned more urgent and insistent, and then he was in me and my legs wrapped around him. When we came, the cries of our climax were uninhibited.
We slept together and when the Monday morning sun washed the landscape with a new day, I momentarily forgot the disturbing events of early Sunday. And when he made love to me again, I forgot everything. Lost in the drunken stupor of love.
I woke up in time for lunch. Once again the meal was simple. Cabbage, boiled potatoes, and roast chicken. There was tea to drink. Mikhail was jubilant and ebullient. At the end of the meal he gave a speech in Russian. Dunyasha translated. He said,
Fellow patriots, I am pleased to announce the disarray and infighting has begun. On Saturday, the position of head of the Secretariat was taken from Georgy Malenkov and given to Nikita Khrushchev. Yesterday, after our brilliant victory over the Soviet army, Klim Voroshilov replaced Malenkov as Chairma
n of the Presidium. The absolute power vested in Malenkov when Stalin (here Mikhail spat on the floor and everyone followed suit) died has been taken from him. He is left with being Premier of the Soviet Union. This is a great day for the people of Russia! But freedom comes at a cost. We lost eight compatriots yesterday. Let us now remember them.
He recited their names and said a brief prayer. When the prayer was finished, he went on,
This is just the beginning. More blood will be lost, but in the end we will be a free people! Death to the tyrants!
The people in the dining hall began clapping, stamping their feet, and chanting in Russian. Dunyasha told me they were saying, “Long live the Czar.” Mikhail called for vodka and soon a bottle and glass were produced. Starting with Mikhail, he filled the tiny glass with the clear liquid and downed it in one gulp. Then the bottle and glass went to the next person who repeated the performance. The bottle and glass moved clockwise around the table until it came to me. I was the last one. Mikhail poured me a glass. Everyone was chanting. Dunyasha said they were chanting, “Drink! Drink!” I stood and took the glass from Mikhail. I swallowed and told myself, When in Rome, and downed the contents.
A great cheer went up and I thought I was going to die. My eyes were watering. My mouth and throat were on fire. Mikhail and Dunyasha were laughing hysterically. I managed to sit down. I couldn’t see. My eyes were full of tears. My mouth tasted like kerosene. The group got quiet. Mikhail spoke and Dunyasha translated for me, “And now we can truly say Lady Hurley-Drummond is one of us. She drinks vodka.” A great cheer went up. Mikhail pulled me to my feet and kissed me. The group went wild. Another bottle of vodka was produced which made the circuit, but only after I was given a glass and Mikhail and I entwined arms and drank together.