The Target

by Saul Herzog

  “They’re really coming,” Greenfeld said.

  Lance nodded. “They’re really coming,” he said.

  71

  By the time Prochnow arrived in the village of Ziguri it was just a few hours before dawn. He did a circle of the village, checking to make sure that there was no military presence, then drove into the village square and pulled over.

  The village did not interest him in the least.

  It was like a thousand other villages, in a dozen other countries. A square at the center, a church, a bar or two, a hotel.

  It was late, but there were still some men gathered around the bar. They were very drunk, and stumbled on the snow-covered sidewalk, wailing things at each other.

  There were no women.

  In the square, some geese were huddled by the fountain. Prochnow wondered if it was strange that they hadn’t flown anywhere more hospitable for the winter, but didn’t know.

  He pulled a silenced pistol from the glovebox and stepped out of the car. The snow crunched satisfyingly beneath his boot.

  He looked around the square to see if anyone was paying attention to him.

  They were not.

  The snow on the ground was pristine, everything white and clean. There hadn’t been time yet for people to leave their tracks in it.

  He walked away from the square down the main village away from the bar. As the men receded into the distance, everything grew unnaturally quiet.

  Kirov had filled him on the plans for this place, and as he walked along in the snow, he imaged all that white turning to red.

  All that silence turning to screams.

  It wouldn’t be so strange, he told himself.

  Not if one took a long enough view of things.

  Massacres had happened in this region before.

  Not even that many years ago.

  There were men alive in that village now who had witnessed what had come before.

  Nothing under the sun was new. It had all be done before.

  And nothing Kirov had planned hadn’t been done there before. It had been done by the Soviets, by the Germans, even by the Latvians themselves.

  The orders he’d been given were as old as man himself.

  Prochnow was a soldier. And tens of thousands of men before him, men just like him, had carried out orders just like the ones he’d been given.

  “Everything that’s about to happen has happened before,” he said to himself as he walked up to the police station. There was a single lightbulb on above the front door, and he didn’t walk up to it, but went around the building toward the back. “And everything that’s happened before, will happen again.”

  There were specific incidents he could point to, to show that what he was doing was just more of the same. He was no different from the soldiers who’d come before. They all did the things he was about to do.

  Not so far from where he stood, in a single week at the end of November, 1941, Germans just like him from Einsatzgruppe A, with the help of Latvian auxiliary police from the Arajs Kommando, unloaded a thousand German Jews from trains that had arrived directly from the Reich. They marched the Jews into a forest known as the Rumbula.

  That day, like today, the commanders brought in an outsider. Today, it was Prochnow.

  That day, it was a man named Friedrich Jeckeln.

  Both had shown themselves to be capable killers, although Jeckeln had killed more than Prochnow ever could have imagined. In a brutally efficient massacre in the Ukraine known as Babi Yar, Jeckeln, with just fifty men, had killed thirty thousand Jews without incident.

  Next to that, what was the happen here in Ziguri was mere child’s play.

  Prochnow wasn’t in charge of the massacre that was to take place here, that distinction fell to a man named Oleg Zhukovsky from the GRU’s First Directorate in Moscow.

  Prochnow was just there to facilitate.

  To make sure that things went according to plan.

  But like Jeckeln before him, Prochnow appreciated the need to pay attention to practicalities.

  If the massacre was to go off without a hitch, Zhukovsky would have to arrive before dawn, before the village came to life and the people had their wits about them.

  The element of surprise was needed.

  As was order.

  When there was order, the people would obey almost any orders.

  Jeckeln had planned everything.

  He knew the distance he needed to march the Jews was eight kilometers.

  He knew that in Latvia in November, he would have about eight hours of daylight during which to perform his grizzly work. He grouped the Jews into batches and made sure that the path they were to march along was lined with soldiers to prevent escape.

  When they arrived at the forest, six large pits, mass graves sufficient to hold twenty-five thousand bodies, were already waiting for them. The pits were dug in levels, like inverted pyramids, with the broader levels at the top, and a path that went down to the bottom. That way, the victims could be marched down into the pits, down to the level at which they were to be buried.

  Prochnow doubted Zhukovsky had planned things down to that level, but then, he didn’t need to be as tidy. His job was to create an atrocity that would attract the attention of the world. Russian television crews would follow him, filming the results of the massacre and claiming that it had been carried out by the Latvian government.

  The people in this village were Russians.

  No one would believe the Russian army had invaded Latvia in order to kill ethnic Russians.

  It was remarkable how many people could be killed, and how easily, when everything was planned out ahead of time.

  With just twelve men from the Einsatzgruppe, Jeckeln mangaged to kill thousands in the eight hours of daylight available to him. The twelve men were all German.

  No Latvians were selected.

  It was thought they lacked the necessary skill.

  To save ammunition, the victims were killed with a single bullet to the back of the neck. Genickschußspezialisten, or Neck-shot Specialists, were needed to do it, and Jeckeln used men he trusted.

  Twelve Germans.

  That was all he wanted, and that was all he used.

  The massacre was carried out using a Sardinenpackung, or sardine-packing, system. It was cruel, because it required the victims to lie down directly on top of those killed just before them.

  But it saved Jeckeln’s men the heavy labor of moving the bodies into the graves after death.

  To create a veneer of deniability should the mass graves ever be discovered, the final step was to spray the bodies with Russian submachine guns.

  Prochnow entered the police station through the back door, and a small bell chimed above his head.

  A sleepy officer in uniform looked up from his desk, roused by the sound.

  “Can I help you?” he said in Latvian.

  “I think you can,” Prochnow said, drawing his gun.

  The policeman simply looked at the gun and sighed, as if his corpoulent mass had been deflated by a pin.

  “What’s your name?” Prochnow said.

  The man shrugged, as if he didn’t know the answer. “Why do you want to know my name?” he said.

  He seemed resigned to his fate.

  As if it didn’t surprise him.

  As if he knew what Prochnow knew.

  That everything that had happened in the past, could happen again, and in deed, would happen again.

  Prochnow let out a little laugh, mostly to himself. “I guess I’m just curious,” he said.

  The cop let out a long, sad sigh. “My name is Baskin,” he said.

  “Baskin,” Prochnow repeated.

  “Why are you here?” Baskin said.

  “You know why I’m here.”

  “No,” Baskin said, his eyes fixed on the barrel of the gun. “I do not.”

  “You know,” Prochnow said again.

  “Your accent,” Baskin said. “You’re German.”
r />   “Yes,” Prochnow said.

  “What is a German doing here?”

  “Only what’s been done before.”

  “I see,” Baskin said.

  There was a certainty in his voice. As if, after a lifetime if slow, country policeman’s work, he’d always known this day would come.

  “You’re a German” Baskin said, “but you work for the Russians.”

  “Yes I do,” Prochnow said.

  Baskin nodded. Very sadly, he said, “You know, we’re all Russians in this village. The older ones, they don’t even speak Latvian.”

  “That’s why you’ve been chosen,” Prochnow said. “That very reason.”

  Baskin didn’t have time to nod, to acknowledge the brutal fact of what was going to happen, because Prochnow pressed the trigger and a bullet hit him right between the eyes.

  72

  It was just an hour before dawn when Zhukovsky finally received the order to proceed. He was livid that he’d been forced to waste the night.

  Kirov wasn’t a military man. He didn’t appreciate the impact of such delays.

  Zhukovsky’s men had been sitting around all night, losing focus.

  That could be the difference between success and failure on a mission like this.

  They were the best of the best, but a butchering job like this required a very specific mindset.

  They were being sent across the border in false Latvian uniforms.

  They were going to kill ethnic Russian civilians, their own people, women and children. They all knew it was a dishonorable mission. They knew it was a cruel mission.

  Evil.

  And Kirov had just given them all an entire night to sit and think about it.

  If they failed to carry out the mission, it would be Kirov’s fault.

  He had his men assemble in front of the their vehicles and prepared to address them. They stood erect in their stiff Latvian uniforms, lined up in the cold, the air from their breaths billowing in front of them.

  The uniforms hadn’t been easy to come by. They’d been stolen from a Latvian laundry contractor in Riga a couple of weeks previously. Kirov then ordered that the laundry facility be burned to the ground so that it would be impossible to know if any uniforms were unaccounted for.

  “All right men,” Zhukovsky bellowed. “I know you’re wondering what you’re doing in foreign uniforms, and I’m not going to lie to you. The Hague Convention makes the wearing of false uniforms a war crime.”

  He looked at the men. He knew he wasn’t telling them anything they didn’t already know. They didn’t care about the Hague Convention. After the training he’d just subjected them to, they should have been ready to break every rule of war, every law of man and God, every protocol of every statute, if he ordered them to.

  It was a waste.

  Kirov had personally made the arrangements for after their return. There would be no celebration. No breaking out of beers and music.

  They were to be gassed in the back of a helicopter.

  Zhukovsky couldn’t say they deserved better, they were about to commit an atrocity on a scale Europe hadn’t seen in decades, but he still felt a loyalty to them.

  They were his creation.

  “We’re going to commit a war crime, today,” he said. “A crime against humanity.”

  They’d known it was coming. Their faces didn’t betray even the slitghtest response.

  “When you return from this mission, you are all going to be made officers of the Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation.”

  Their faces were as immovable as statues.

  “And that is what I want you to concentrat on while we carry out our orders.”

  He paused, reaching into his pocket for a pack of cigarettes.

  “You will no longer be green recruits,” he said. “You will be hardened men. Tested men. The Western Military District will immediately begin to rely on you, and given the operation that we are spearheading, it is no edaggeration to say that careers will be made in the coming months, gentlemen. Heroes will be made. And fortunes will be made.”

  He stepped closer to them.

  “What we are about to launch is the full-scale invasion of Latvia, a NATO member, and while that may seem like an action that would spark off World War Three, our leadership has determined that the West will not respond in force. What that means, for our nation, for our Motherland, is that we are about to embark on nothing less than the complete reconstitution of the USSR, in all her former glory.”

  He put his cigarette in his mouth and began inspecting the men from close range.

  “And it is in recognition of the historic nature of this mission that I am going to do something I’ve never done before.”

  He lit the cigarette and blew out his smoke at them.

  “I’m going to give you this one chance to opt out of the mission.”

  They were so young. Some of them weren’t even old enough to shave.

  “I make no apology for this, gentlemen, but this mission will seem an ugly one. The word used in the Hague Convention is perfidy. Do you know what the word perfidy means?”

  Not one of them moved a muscle.

  “It means treachery, gentlemen. It means deceit. It means faithlessness.”

  He’d seen these men torture animals. He’d seen them execute prisoners. They didn’t care about this warning, but he had to be certain.

  “The military manuals of two hundred nations, including Russia,” he said, “going back two centuries, call what we are about to do a War Crime.”

  Zhukovsky lowered his voice. “So, any man here who does not want to take part, step forward now.”

  No one moved.

  That wasn’t surprising.

  He’d already shown them what happened to those who backed out. He’d unloaded a dump truck’s worth of corpses in front of them.

  They weren’t stupid.

  They knew what he was offering them.

  “Last chance,” Zhukovsky said. “Step forward now, or forever hold your peace.”

  No one moved.

  “Because, gentlemen, if any of you balks once the operation has begun, the punishment will be meted out not against you, but against your families at home. Your parents, your brothers and sisters, your girlfriends, everyone you’ve ever loved. Am I understood?”

  The man he was standing in front of caught his eye.

  “You look like you have something to say,” Zhukovsky said.

  To Zhukovsky’s surprise, the man stepped forward.

  Zhukovsky couldn’t believe it.

  “You’re refusing the mission?” he said.

  The man didn’t make a sound, but almost imperceptibly, he nodded his head.

  Zhukovsky knew this was a moment when the entire mood of the group could change. Morale was a delicate thing.

  “You unpatriotic swine,” Zhukovsky said, and he pulled his service weapon from his coat and shot the man in the skull.

  The man slumped to his knees and then fell forward, facedown in the snow.

  “Gentlemen,” Zhukovsky said to the remaining men, “what you are about to do can never be undone. We are at war. Make no mistake. And the steps you take today are the beginning of Russia’s journey to reclaiming all of the glory lost in the past. Now, let’s roll.”

  73

  Prochnow leaned on the side of his vehicle and inhaled deeply from a cigarette. He’d pulled over to the side of the road on a small rise overlooking a stretch of forest that extended eastward from the vilalge of Ziguri toward the border. Through his binoculars he could see nothing but trees, even with night vision, but he knew they would be there soon.

  Zhukovsky was personally bringing two squads of men across the border, dressed in Latvian uniforms.

  According to Kirov, he was a competent commander and a man who could be trusted to get the job done. With the Latvian monitoring positions abandoned, and the US Keyhole satellite compromised, there was nothing in Z
hukovsky’s way.

  All communications were down across the entire country, so even if someone saw them now, there was little they could do about it. Even the village’s only policeman was dead.

  It was almost dawn and a redness brushed up against the underside of the clouds to the east.

  As the first beams of light began cutting through the trees, Prochnow saw something, two squads of twelve men each. They rode in GAZ Tigrs, the Russian equivalent of humvees.

  They were armed with Heckler and Koch G36 assault rifles chambered for a 5.56 NATO round. Each had two thirty-round magazines, but the men also carried one-hundred-round drum C-Mags. The guns were a compact sub-carbine variant, the same one used by Latvian ground forces.

  In addition to the G36’s, each man also carried a Heckler and Koch UMP, or Universale Maschinenpistole. It was the standard issue submachine gun of the Latvian Army and was chambered for a 9x19mm Parabellum. Everything was designed to be traced back to the Latvian army.

  They also carried Heckler and Koch 40 milimeter grenade launchers, and M2 variant Carl Gustavs, whose 84mm shell could take out any tank used by the Latvian army. It was unlikely they’d be needed, but they were on hand if necessary.

  It was not lost on Prochnow that the weapons were mostly German. The German chancellor would protest this atrocity vehemently, and yet, German factories provided the guns.

  The population of the village of Ziguri was over a thousand souls. In a shockingly short time, the massacre would be complete. The pictures would then be sent to every newspaper and outlet on the planet, and Russia would have a pretext for the quickest invasion in its history.

  By noon of that very day, the tanks of the Second Guards Tamanskaya Motor Rifle Division would be in central Riga. With the riots, the protests, the lack of a communications system, the country would be on its knees.

  Kirov already had news crews from Moscow and Saint Petersburg waiting by the border. As soon as the massacre was complete, they would flood into Ziguri and their version of events would be the first, indeed the only, to hit international media outlets during the critical timeframe.