Tin Sky

by Ben Pastor

  He stretched his left arm, reaching out and groping for the pistol holder on the floor by the bed; he lifted it noiselessly and unlatched it. The heft of steel hardened his wrist as he passed the weapon into his right hand; in a single motion his fingers moulded around the grip and released the safety catch. Tensely he elaborated on thoughts of what was needed to prepare for every eventuality, without giving himself to dangerous flights of fancy. The entire building was untenanted; this much he knew. The block it belonged to, damaged during the battle of the spring, had been evacuated and the German authorities had kept it empty for future use.

  From downstairs another distant sound came, consistent with the previous one – the click of a bolt as the door shut automatically. Bora sat up. There’s a difference between the sound of someone exiting and pulling the door behind him and the small noise of the mechanism when, from the inside, someone gently pushes it closed. This sound was of the second kind. Had the flash-lit window been a mouth panting in suspense, it couldn’t have better matched his state of mind. The thunder was like thunder in dreams. Bora rehearsed the familiar layout of the entryway to determine and anticipate the movements anyone would have to make in order to reach this floor.

  His sense of a soldier’s dignity could be impractical at times. I’m not about to be shot in my underpants, he thought absurdly, and felt around for his breeches. The time it takes him to climb to this level trying not to be overheard is the time I need to button them and pull up my braces.

  He’d gone through the process of clothing his lower half and retrieving his gun when the light in the third-floor hallway was turned on. Bora got to his bare feet at once, too highly strung to feel the glass shard he’d stepped on, a remnant of Khan’s ornate goblet. Downstairs, steps moved around, the progress of someone who walked from room to room, looking inside, searching. One man, wearing boots. Bora reached the threshold and listened. I made the same sound when I walked to Platonov’s door – that’s Platonov’s door he’s going to. It’s as if my own ghost were moving downstairs.

  Having seemingly completed his search below, the booted man resumed his climb. Steadily he trod the steps to this level, a careful but secure soft thud of footfalls. Bora counted. There were eight steps to each flight of stairs, two flights per floor.

  Someone who slept more heavily than me would have noticed neither the glare from below nor the sound of his climb. Best not reveal I’m here. He’s searching, but doesn’t necessarily know there’s anybody in the building. Bora leant out of Khan’s room aiming the P38 at the top of the stairs, ready to open fire.

  “Major Bora, are you up there?”

  Bora raised the muzzle of his pistol as he released the trigger. “Doctor Bernoulli! For God’s sake, I was about to shoot you!”

  Bernoulli found the light switch in the fourth-floor hallway. “I can’t believe you left the street door unlocked, Major. It was hugely imprudent.”

  “I thought – I’d have sworn – I’d locked it. But how did you possibly —”

  “How? I billet here. This building is now being used as temporary quarters: weren’t you told? You wouldn’t have found electricity and running water otherwise. On the second floor, the rooms are all furnished – you’d be more comfortable in one of them, I’d say.” The judge seemed urbanely amused by Bora’s confusion. “You’re not as mysterious as you think, either, Major. I was driving by as you walked in from the street earlier this evening. You didn’t see me, and I didn’t care to make myself known. Until a few minutes ago I was dining with colleagues. When I returned and found the place unlocked – well, I imagined that you or another officer rooming here had forgotten to bolt the door. An army vehicle with a different licence plate from yours was parked in the courtyard below, so I deduced it might or might not be you. Then I noticed that on the second floor none but my room was occupied, which made me curious to know where the other tenant might be. I didn’t think you’d choose to sleep up here in an unmade bed. Sorry if I alarmed you.”

  “Not at all. I – didn’t realize the rooms below had been refurbished.” His foot hurt. Bora looked down, and saw blood on the floor tiles.

  Bernoulli shook his head. “I did startle you, didn’t I? You’ll need a plaster on that heel. Come; I have a small first-aid kit below.”

  The incident turned into a chance to talk. Bernoulli had a Thermos full of strong coffee, and after they had downed a couple of mugs each, sleep didn’t seem important to either of them. They sat in what had been the guard room on the ground floor, a square whitewashed space that doubled as a kitchen, with a table and chairs. The judge sounded well informed about the building’s previous designation and its inmates. Without asking, Bora volunteered that he’d conferred with Colonel Bentivegni, and very recently too. Why not? They both serve in Greater Berlin; their duties are to an extent contiguous. It means he knows far more about me than I imagined: that’s why he brought up the St Petersburg Paradox. The fact could be dangerous or consoling, depending.

  Unlike Bora, who drank out of an aluminium mess kit cup, Bernoulli sipped from a ceramic mug with a Greek fret on it. He said, “I’m looking into the episodes we discussed when we first met, Major Bora. I’ve requested the support of Judge Knobloch, who is, however, busy dealing with the reported February killings of German prisoners at Grischino, and the murder and rape of Red Cross nurses. It will take time, and you may never actually hear what our findings are.”

  “I’m not in the position of being in a hurry, Dr Bernoulli.”

  “The Bureau is. It is fair to let you know, nonetheless, that your immediate superior in the Abwehr doesn’t seem particularly in favour of your photographic hobby.”

  Bora would not have expected the close-mouthed Bentivegni to have let out that much to a military judge, but stranger things happened at central office level. “I’m sorry to hear it,” he noted. “Because I intend to keep it up.”

  The guard room had no windows. A sense of privacy and isolation – again the image of a confessional came to mind – was derived from the lack of openings. The sound of thunder came muffled from outside; from time to time the overhead lamp flickered as lightning struck the line somewhere. With the coffee mug between his hands Bernoulli sat across from Bora, who had insisted on dressing fully in his superior’s presence. Whether reacting to the young man’s words or to the tone in which they were pronounced, he assumed the frown of a disappointed teacher. “Allow me the privilege of age and experience, Major: it’s this elitist cavalry mode, this Junker mode, that gets many of you into hot water in times when circumspection is called for. You’re not as pristine as you pretend, either. I listened carefully to your report when we first met. My observation is that you’re aggravated when things don’t go the way you think they should.”

  “I follow my sense of ethics.”

  “Ethics? Need I remind you of the root of the word? Ethos is man’s attitude before hardship. Don’t take the word in vain, Major Bora.”

  “I know what ethics means in philosophy, sir. I grasp what it means in the religious sense. Please do not patronize me to this extent.”

  Impertinent as it was, Bora’s reply must have betrayed his concern at not being taken seriously. The judge could have reprimanded him for it. He chose instead to indulge in the paternalism that had caused the reaction to begin with. “I was told you travel alone across distances in an occupied country —”

  “I notice the Heeresrichter does the same.”

  “— and you do not shrink from open conflict with political colleagues. There is a difference between loving risk and ignoring it: didn’t your stepfather instruct you in that regard?”

  “The general and I do not see eye to eye on many things. We don’t speak much.”

  Bernoulli poured the last of the coffee first into Bora’s mug, then his own. “So long as you know that the object’s value, its utility, might demand a very high price. Turning in other Germans for what appears to have happened at the Pyatikhatky forest and Drobytsky Yar e
xceeds risk; but it may be your way of following ethics. As for Colonel Bentivegni, I believe he’s getting bored with his charge and may ask for front-line duty before year’s end.”

  “Well, he’ll get there as a major general.”

  “Yes. All things considered – it is technically none of my business, but judges do dabble in ethics themselves – it would help your credibility with your superiors if you were able to offer them a clear theory on Commander Tibyetsky’s death, which was such a serious loss to your agency. It’s irrelevant how I know, Major: suffice to say I’m fully informed. And I heard you were encouraged to look into it.”

  I was told to solve the problem and tidy up afterwards. Bora gave up trying to fathom the judge’s sources. The quivering light bulb, a reminder of the precariousness of his holed-up Stalingrad days, when a man could count on nothing and darkness was frightful, put him in a strange state of compliance. He said, “There isn’t much to build a theory on, I’m afraid. Two groups credibly claim his assassination; the supposed culprit is dead, and her companions are out of my reach. I came here tonight because… I don’t know what I was hoping to discover, to understand. If only Khan Tibyetsky had given me a clue.”

  “To what? Why should he? A defector takes into account that he’s forfeiting his life.”

  “Precisely. A man who played as complicated a game as I believe he played, and probably for quite some time, is a man who on the one hand asks for collateral, and on the other keeps something that will serve him as security, if not as life insurance.”

  “My understanding is that the tank model he came in was Tibyetsky’s security.”

  “His iron horse: right.”

  There’s something in a judge – if he’s an able judge – that invites disclosure. I shouldn’t trust him before (or until) I learn his motives. The oilcloth on the table, held in place by tacks, had a faint criss-cross of cuts on it, caused by those who’d sliced bread or other food on its surface. Heedful of signs and meanings (and portents, at times), Bora ran his eyes over the faint lines. The world was readable: or else it was his mental habit to think that he could read it. Everything was significant; coincidences ceased to be such when the latent design was exposed. Sitting here, lowering his defences… He felt the small sting of the wound on his heel as a marker of sorts. I, too, am written upon. He said, “You might know Tibyetsky was distantly related to me.”

  Bernoulli nodded. A shadow of stubble on his razor-bald head betrayed a receding hairline, an antithesis to Bora’s thick skullcap of dark hair. “I was told, yes. We’re not liable for our relatives. Why, sometimes we can’t be held liable for the friends we have. Are you sure Tibyetsky gave you no hints during his residence here?”

  “None that I caught. Neither of us was ready to acknowledge our connection.”

  “Would he have mentioned his collateral to the RSHA?”

  “I doubt it. Over there he refused to talk altogether. The fact that while in their custody he asked for Colonel Bentivegni – and for me, too – made me hope. Now it’s too late.”

  The storm was directly above Kharkov. Thunderclaps boomed close enough to indicate that lightning must be striking the neighbourhood. The metal-roofed sheds where Kostya had stolen gasoline came to mind, lined up along the river south-east of here. In the muggy guardroom, Bernoulli unhooked the clasp of his collar, revealing a dazzlingly white shirt. “I needn’t tell an interrogator that lack of oral communication can be replaced by the written word.”

  “Tibyetsky had no time. His forcible removal from this centre —”

  “Yet even under great duress those who want to leave a clue will try to scrawl it quickly on virtually any surface, using any means available. I speak from courtroom experience, and you yourself showed me the prayer pencilled on a scrap of paper by the Alexandrovka Mennonites.”

  “I went through Khan’s room carefully, tonight for the third time. Wallpaper, furniture, even the door: there’s no message scribbled anywhere.”

  Bernoulli sighed; or else let out a deep breath. “Right. And the room was not his security. His tank was.”

  Rain had begun to fall outside, hopefully breaking the lightning storm. Slowly the two men finished their coffee; when the light went off, they sat in silence with their thoughts (Bora wondering whether he should mention Taras Tarasov, and deciding against it).

  “I’m back where I started from, Dr Bernoulli.”

  In the morning, the military judge left before Bora got up. When they’d parted ways five hours earlier, he’d said he had several matters to look into, and would start in good time. By 8 a.m., through flooded streets, Bora drove to divisional headquarters, where a still-drowsy von Salomon received him, signed not one but two authorization sheets and dismissed him, having exchanged no more than a “Good day” with him.

  Outside the colonel’s office, the paper-pushing lieutenant supplied Bora with the most recent map of the minefields between Kharkov and the river. “We can vouch for those we laid, Herr Major. The wooded areas by the Donets remain iffy even after clearing. Partisan gangs are known to switch around our actual and dummy minefield signs often enough, so you can’t really trust them. Same for the right bank of the Udy, too.”

  “Not the Udy at Kharkov, I take it.”

  “No, sir. Much further down, past Borovoye and Schubino.”

  The meandering, boggy course of the Donets tributary, full of islets and false rivers, bordered Krasny Yar from a west-north-west direction. Bora scanned the map and told himself he’d worry about it when he got there. Meanwhile, before heading for the Kombinat, there was enough time for him to drive to the northern suburb of Pomorki.

  Just before the turn-off from the Belgorod road, across a field smothered by wild hyacinth, he saw the wooded rise where a half-hidden cluster of small novyi burzhuy villas stood, built in the ’20s for the members of a reborn commercial and artistic middle class. Most had fallen into disrepair, but Larisa’s less than others. Bora entered (in low gear) her overgrown garden, marked by a narrow corduroy path that allowed him not to get stuck in the muddy grass. A lean-to hut of unpainted logs had been added to the one-floored dacha, and deeply contrasted with it. The side of the original house was graced with a wooden terrace; only part of its trellis remained standing, but even the segment that had collapsed was covered with blooming vines.

  In front of the log cabin, a florid young woman in a white kerchief was tending chickens. She froze with her hands full of feed at the arrival of the German vehicle. Not wanting to alarm her even more, Bora stopped several metres back and addressed her in Russian. It took a few minutes for the girl to feel safe enough to answer his questions and let him in.

  At the Kombinat, Russian prisoners poured buckets of crushed bricks out at the edge of the green in front of Stark’s office, where puddles gaped in the dirt of the parking spaces.

  “Wipe your boots on the rag out there, will you?” was the first thing the commissioner said, the moment he heard the front door opening. He read the paperwork Bora had delivered, told his assistant to process it, and resumed what he’d been doing: applying his signature in indelible pencil onto blank documents. “I don’t have much time, Major, as we’re beginning to gear up: I’m expecting my agriculture and forestry specialists to report in at last. But do sit down a moment. You’re doubly in luck today. There are two hundred horses in this shipment, a good part of them Budenny and Chernomor breed or half-breed, the tough rangy mounts you want to have on this terrain. Even though you have to thank that old bastard Russki marshal for it, he always did know his cavalry animals.”

  Bora declined a seat. “It didn’t do him any good when the Poles bowled him over at Komarov, Konarmiya or not. But I’m very grateful to Budenny for breeding mounts we’ll use against him.”

  “And that’s not the best news. Or rather, given that someone’s death is somebody else’s gain – how do you say it in Latin? You young intellectual officers were given the opportunity of studying these fancy sentences, while in m
y time we had to make do with business school.”

  “Mors tua vita mea, Herr Gebietskommissar?”

  “Exactly. The mors in question is Brigadeführer Reger-Saint Pierre’s. His staff car struck an anti-tank mine near Mirgorod two days ago. He’s done with this vale of tears, horses included: the biggest piece of him left is a booted right foot.”

  “That’s highly unfortunate.”

  “Why, did you know him? Before expressing your sympathy, consider that I’m having the Karabakh stallion, barely arrived in Mirgorod, shipped back here. I can, I can – of course I can! What am I district commissioner for, if I can’t pull strings the way I see fit? The two general officers next in line to receive him don’t need to hear about it. Turian-Chai is getting an Olympic equestrian to ride him, or he becomes horse stew.”

  “Don’t even say it in jest. How soon can he be here?”

  “It might be ten days to two weeks.” Stark drove his pencil into a tabletop sharpener, and quickly turned the wheel. “I’ve got some pull, but I’m not a miracle-worker. And so that you’re not tempted to take it as a favour, I expect you and your army colleagues to think and speak well of this administration. Now that Army Group Kempf is moving to Kharkov, we politicians need all the military support we can get.”

  Bora hadn’t heard the news; a clear sign that the attack on the Kursk salient was drawing near. The possibility secretly electrified him.

  Glancing at his out-mail basket, Geko Stark checked the end of his pencil with the tip of his tongue. “Are you bound back to town, by any chance? If so, I’ll entrust you with hand-delivering these letters at your earliest convenience to the Southern Railway Station Feldpost. They’re important, and you’ll notice one of them is going to the General Army Office Medical Inspectorate, Personnel Branch, to track down that medic of yours.”