Night Soldiers

by Alan Furst

  He went back to work on the bottle, at last getting it open and taking a few delicate sips, then offering it to Khristo. The brandy tasted like fire, but the bitter strength of it kicked some life back into him.

  “Why do you not run away?” Khristo asked quietly.

  “Yes, it occurs to one. But it would be futility itself to try. They hunt you down, my friend, they always hunt you down. And before they dispense with you, they make you sorry you ran. They brought one fellow back to Moscow and let us see him in the morgue, just his face, mind you. One would not think it physically possible to open a mouth that wide.”

  Khristo watched him carefully, but his face, coated with oily dirt, was empty. “What has happened,” he said, “is that Yagoda is finished. Now it is Yezhov, the dwarf, who runs the service. Yagoda has been accused of murdering the writer Maxim Gorky by spraying poison on his walls. Also, he is accused of complicity in the affair of Kirov. Rumor has it that the scythe is out in Moscow for real—this one will make the events of '34 seem like the nursery. So, fine fellow, what you've seen of Sascha's useless life is what there will be.”

  Khristo tried to take this in. The utter lack of drama in Sascha's demeanor somehow acted to balk understanding. “A dwarf,” Khristo said.

  “Yes. The Great Leader exceeds himself in whimsy.”

  “My God.”

  “The curious part is that I don't care. Oh, later on, in the Lubianka, I shall kick and scream and plead for mercy—hug their boots and all of it. It is expected of one to do that—they demand their theater. But now, right now, I feel nothing at all.”

  “Sascha, this cannot be.”

  “Don't worry, I'll await you in hell. There we will keep track of the devils—who works, who doesn't, who makes secret plots with angels. You shall see, it won't be as bad as you think.”

  At last the old Sascha. He was relieved. “Those devils must be watched—they stab the Revolution in the back! Perhaps I should accompany you?”

  Sascha smiled gently at his efforts to play along with the mood. “Application refused,” he said, “reapply in thirty days.” He thought for a moment. “Thirty days in truth, Khristo Nicolaievich. I am only the first to go—there will be others. Many others.”

  “You are serious?”

  “Yes. In their eyes we have been ruined, you must understand. We have seen the world, and we must not be allowed to tell others what we have seen. Or perhaps we have consorted with the enemy. Who among us has remained pure? Impossible to know, so safety lies in throwing out the whole batch and starting anew.”

  Khristo felt his pulse quicken. This was not Sascha the mad poet spinning dreams. This was the Sascha who told the truth. He turned to look back at the river for a moment but heard an odd noise and saw that Sascha was crying, hiding his face in his hands. Beyond him, out on the road, the policeman was watching them. His eyes met Khristo's and he shook his head, slowly, back and forth. He did not understand them, or the world, or the carnage on the road. Nothing.

  “You have achieved virtually nothing, Lieutenant Stoianev.”

  Colonel General Yadomir Bloch—Yaschyeritsa—touched the tip of his index finger to the end of his tongue and turned the page. It was brittle, transparent paper that crackled as he smoothed it down on the left side of the file folder.

  “Not here,” he said, eyes running over the print. Moistened the finger again, “Nor here.”

  The rezidentura was in an old hotel near the docks, and though the drape was closed Khristo could hear bells and whistles as the night stevedore crew unloaded cargo. The boat had been there for two days, a rusty old Black Sea freighter, its name swabbed out with gray paint.

  “As you have no doubt heard, Colonel Alexander Vonets has returned to Moscow at the request of the Directorate, so you will have to carry on, but …” Finger to tongue, a new page. “Mmm … yes.” It was dark in the office, lit only by a tiny bulb in a desk lamp. Shadow hardened the planes of the face, sharpened the angles, cloaked the slanted eyes set deeply in the head.

  “Such praise. ‘Attentive.' ‘Meticulous.' ‘Intelligent.' ” A new page, turned back for a moment, then turned again. “I don't believe it,” he said. He closed the file, rested his chin on folded hands and stared into Khristo's eyes.

  For a long time there was only silence, intensified by the low rumble of noise from the docks. “We have problems, Lieutenant,” he finally said. “You agree?”

  “I am not aware of the problem, comrade Colonel General.” “Problems, Lieutenant, the plural. Don't fence with me.” “I am not aware of any of the problems, comrade Colonel General.”

  “You consider yourself an able officer?”

  “I am doing my best, comrade Colonel General.”

  Colonel General Bloch seemed to be sitting still, then Khristo noticed that his body rocked slightly, back and forth, as the last answer hung in the air. The longer he rocked, the less true the answer seemed, as though the credibility of the statement melted away with the motion.

  “Very well. I choose to believe you, and we have seen your best. The air is cleared, the mystery resolved, this attentive, meticulous, intelligent, able officer has given us his best effort. One cannot ask for more.” He glanced at his watch. “It is now fourteen minutes after two. The Neva will be ready to sail at six-thirty this morning. You will gather your effects and be on it. I will have my aide assign you a berth. Good evening, Lieutenant. I appreciate your frankness.”

  With long, thin hands he squared the file, opened the bottom drawer of the desk, and set it carefully among others. Looking up, finding Khristo still staring at him in apparent disbelief, he seemed surprised. “Dismissed, Lieutenant,” he said and kicked the drawer shut with his boot.

  “Comrade Colonel General,” Khristo cleared his throat, “I believe your criticism would enable me to improve my performance.”

  “What performance? You fucking parasite, get out of my office before I have you thrown out!”

  Crawl, Khristo's mind told him. Crawl for your life. He stood up, came to attention. “Colonel General Bloch, I entreat you to assist me in the better performance of my duties, that I may better serve the objectives of my service. I entreat you, comrade Colonel General.”

  Bloch stood and leaned across the desk. “How you whine,” he said, “like your friend Sascha Vonets, of the prominent Vonets family. You are all boot-kissers at the last, aren't you. Self-satisfied little kings who drive about the countryside in fine clothes and fuck the Spanish whores, while in Moscow people eat potato peels and give thanks for one more day of existence. Oh you should have heard him. The intellectual. What promises he made. The moon and the stars. But it was too late. Too late. Your Armenian spy, Roubenis, sits in Madrid with his American girlfriend and reports on morale. Morale? What morale? These odious little Spaniards have lost their war. They're finished, done with. Because all they've ever done is hold their pricks in their hands and dream of their freedom and liberty. Generalissimo Franco will give them freedom, all right, he'll free them of their mortal souls and they'll go dreaming to their Spanish heaven. Morale, indeed. Is that what you think we are here for? Is that why Russia feeds you and clothes you with roubles it does not have? You foolish boy, to think we don't know such tricks. At the age of seventeen, I led a mutiny aboard the battleship Sevastopol. We chained the officers to their steamer trunks full of uniforms and threw them into the sea. They too pleaded. A great deal of pleading in 1917, one grew bored with it.”

  Abruptly, he sat down. Swiveled his chair away from Khristo and pulled the curtain back from the window. The Neva, working lights fixed to her booms and superstructure, stood hawsered fore and aft to the dock. A wooden platform on cables slowly lowered a JSII tank to the quay.

  “Sit, Lieutenant,” he said. “You wish not to sail on the Neva? It is not uncomfortable. You might spend a day or two in Odessa before transit to Moscow. No? Not appealing?”

  “Comrade Colonel General, my brother was murdered by the fascists.”

 
“So it says in your file. But then, both my parents were knouted to death by the White Guard. Your parents, on the other hand, have found it expedient to connect themselves to the fascists, by way of your sister's marriage. This too it says in your file. Come to think of it, expediency rather defines you, doesn't it. It was expedient for you to leave Bulgaria in her agony. Expedient to do well at Arbat Street. Expedient to serve Sascha Vonets in his drunken self-pity. Very well. Look out the window. See where expediency leads.”

  “What must I do, comrade Colonel General, to improve my performance?”

  “Go to Madrid. The time for safe houses is over. Find this Roubenis and put your boot up his ass. He attends these Cagoulard meetings—the Falange in their hoods. Well, enough of that. Put some men in the street. Find out who these people are, where they live, get their names. Wire those names to me—there must be ten, at least. Use the wireless at our consulate, in Gaylord's Hotel near the Retiro Park. We'll take care of it from there, believe me. The American girl. I want to know who she is, what of her relationship with Roubenis. Take her to bed if you have to—if Roubenis objects, tell him to get out of your way. She must have American friends, or English. Get me something I can use. I wish to hear no more meowing about morale. Is this understood?”

  “I understand, comrade Colonel General. I will do it.”

  “When? How many days?”

  “Twenty days. A fortnight.”

  “I will hold you to that.”

  “It will be done, comrade Colonel General.”

  “You leave here at five o'clock sharp this morning. I will assign you a sublieutenant—observe his commitment, you can learn something from it. Now, before you go, one small matter. Tell me, Stoianev, you have heard me referred to by a certain nickname?”

  “No, comrade Colonel General.”

  “A stupid lie, but let it pass. The name in question refers to a particular reptile. Let me just point out to you that it depends, for its survival, on a special principle, which is that its prey always believes itself to be beyond reach. Keep that in mind, will you?”

  “Yes, comrade Colonel General.”

  “Now get out.”

  By the time Khristo reached his tiny room, in another dockside hotel, his hands were shaking. Looking in the mirror, he saw that his face was gray with fear. He sat on the edge of the bed, drew his Tokarev from its holster and stared at it for a time, not entirely sure what he meant to do with it. He noticed, finally, an unusual lightness to the weapon and ejected the magazine. Sometime in the last twenty-four hours somebody had unloaded it. He ran the bolt back and inspected the chamber. It was empty as well. In the Guadarrama, Thursday had come to be known as Día de las Esposas, Wives' Day, in the course of which the guerrilla band of Lieutenant Kulic did those chores that, in normal times, would have fallen within the province of their wives—excepting, of course, the happiest chore of all, which would have to await their return to home and the marriage bed. They shook out and aired their blankets, sand-scrubbed the cooking utensils, washed their clothing and hung it in the trees to dry, and for the grand finale washed themselves—swearing a blue streak in the icy mountain water and splashing each other with childish glee. Kulic's time in the Serbian mountains had taught him the critical importance of domesticity in the context of partizan operations. Being dirty and uncared for, men quickly lost respect for discipline, and operations suffered accordingly. As Kulic phrased it to himself, the more you lived in a cave, the less caveman behavior could be tolerated.

  They had found the deserted village quite by accident, but it was perfect for a guerrilla base: no road led there, the approaches were well covered by dense tangles of underbrush, and it lay high enough in the mountains that radio communication with Madrid Base could be maintained on a more or less regular basis.

  There was not much left of the village: a few huts—all but three open to the stars—built of dry-masoned stone native to the mountains. They often speculated about the place—perhaps it had been the home of the early Visigoths, western Goths, who had populated Spain in ancient times. It was not difficult to imagine. They would have hunted bear and wild pig in the mountain forests, with spears and dogs, and worn wolf pelts against the weather. Or perhaps another race, unrecorded and unremembered, had died out in the village, the last survivors wandering down onto the plains to become part of other tribes. In any case, with time the piled stone walls and weedy vines had achieved a harmonious truce, leaving the village a sort of garden gone wild and an excellent hideout.

  On the Thursday following the destruction of the Nationalist armory, while most of the band was occupied with housekeeping, there was a small commotion at the perimeter of the camp. Kulic, walking down the hill to see what the shouting was about, found his two sentries with rifles pointed at Maltsaev, the political officer from the Madrid embassy.

  He was a dark, balding young man with bad skin and a sour disposition, a man much given to sinister affectations. He wore tinted eyeglasses and a straw hat with top creased and brim turned down, and spoke always as though he were saying only a small fraction of what he actually knew. He had arrived alone, on horseback, having left his car in the last village before the mountains, some twenty kilometers distant. Thus it was immediately apparent to Kulic that this was anything but a casual visit. To protect his city clothing during the journey, Maltsaev had worn an immense gray duster coat, which, with the hat and glasses, gave him the look of a Parisian artiste of the 1890 s. An appearance so strange that Kulic was a little surprised his lookouts had not dispatched him on the spot.

  They sat together on a fallen pine log at the edge of a small outcrop above the village. From there, they could watch the guerrilla band shaking blankets and capering in the stream, and strident voices—cursing, laughing, joking—rose to them. This was Kulic's thinking place. When the sun came out, the scent of pine resin filled the air and blue martins sang in the trees.

  “You don't have it so bad,” Maltsaev said, looking about him.

  “It is Día de las Esposas today,” Kulic answered, taking off his peaked cap and smoothing his hair. “We rest and gather our strength. It is a little different when we fight.”

  “One would suppose so. Now look here, Kulic, I won't beat about the bush with you. My mission is not a happy one.”

  “It's a long ride up here.”

  “Too long,” Maltsaev said ruefully. “And I'm a city boy, a Muscovite, I admit it.”

  He took off his left shoe and pulled the laces apart. From the pocket of his duster coat he produced a razor blade and began cutting open the leather tongue, finally revealing a yellow slip of paper. “And I had to come through the fascist lines,” he added, in explanation.

  “A nervous time for you, then,” Kulic remarked.

  “Yes. And I am unappreciated,” Maltsaev said. “My poor backside has no business on a horse.”

  He handed the paper to Kulic, then pressed the layers of the shoe tongue back together again as best he could. “Of course,” he said, almost to himself, “one may not carry glue.” Kulic noted that he wore fine silk socks.

  “What's this?” Kulic asked, studying the paper. There were four names on it. Four of his men.

  “We have discovered a plot,” Maltsaev said.

  “Another plot? Shit on your plots, Maltsaev, these men are not Falangistas.” He thrust the paper back at Maltsaev, who was busy putting on his shoe and declined to take it.

  “Nobody said they were, and please don't swear at me. Give me a chance, will you. You field commanders have short fuses. A little bad news—and boom!”

  “Boom is what it will be,” Kulic said.

  “Shoot me, comrade, by all means. There'll be ten more tomorrow, Spetsburo types, Ukrainians—just try reasoning with them.”

  “Very well, Maltsaev. Say your piece and ride away.”

  “If that's how you want it. These four are members of POUM—there's no question about it, we have copies of the lists, right from Durruti himself.”


  “Durruti? The anarchist leader? He claims these men?”

  “Well, from his office.”

  “And so?”

  Maltsaev made his hand into a pistol—bent thumb the hammer, extended index finger the barrel—then pulled the trigger with his middle finger.

  “Are you insane? Is Madrid? Moscow? These men are fighters, soldiers. You don't execute your own soldiers. Only for cowardice. And these are not cowards. They've stood up to gunfire, which is more than I can say for some people.”

  “Yes, yes. I'm a coward, please do abuse me, I don't mind. But you must take care of the problem—that's an order from Madrid.”

  “Marquin, the second name on this list, climbed to the roof of a convent and poured gasoline down the chimney, which enabled us to blow up a Falangist armory. Is this the behavior of a traitor? Besides, all these men are of the UGT, not the POUM.”

  “Kulic … no, Lieutenant Kulic, you've been given an order. Have a trial if you like—just make sure it comes out right. The sad fact is that the POUM—Trotskyites, to give them their proper name—are fouling up this war. Sometimes they refuse to fight. They won't take orders. They roam about like a herd of wild asses and cause everybody trouble. Generalissimo Stalin has determined to purify the Spanish effort, and Director Yezhov has ordered that the POUM be purged. These four men claim UGT association, but their names appear on POUM membership lists obtained by our operatives in Barcelona.”

  “You're ruining me—you know that, don't you?”

  “Four men amount to nothing.”

  “You believe the other sixteen, having witnessed their comrades' unjust executions, will fight on?”

  Maltsaev thought about that for a time, studying the ground, pushing a pebble around with the toe of his shoe. “Your point has merit,” he said. Then he brightened. “One could report, ahh, yes, well one could report that the disease has spread throughout the group, and it was determined to be of no further operational use. I could try that, Kulic, if it would help you. They would transfer you elsewhere, but your record would be clean at least. Better than clean, now that I think about it. Fervor. That's what it would show. It's just the sort of thing Yezhov likes, you know, going it one better.”