by Ian Slater
One of the American reinforcements was slumped in a corner, and from the pinkish-white pulp that David guessed must have been bone and flesh, David could tell the SPETS had probably used high-velocity mercury or depleted-uranium tips, which would penetrate the target like a white-hot rod, exploding through the other side with the force of a sledgehammer.
“Jesus!” said Parkin softly, now entering the carriage from the far end. “Get away, you bastard!” He was waving his hand ineffectually at a large blowfly crawling, bloated, through the mash of a GI’s eye dangling by a thread. Suddenly Parkin put his hand to his mouth, and rushed back toward the toilet door. As it flung open, David heard Parkin utter another half-choked oath and saw him reappear, rushing out the doors at the end of the carriage.
As David reached the washroom, he saw the reason— another GI, crumpled against the outer wall, one leg bent impossibly between the toilet stem and sink pipe, hands protectively over his face — the impact of two SPETS bullets having blown him clean off the seat even as he’d tried to cower in the corner. Or had he simply been too terrified to move? Again it had been a head shot, and David saw the splattered slug that had ricocheted, ending up, after smashing the cistern, embedded in the copper float. There were empty nine-millimeter brass jackets all over the place — same ammunition as used by NATO forces.
David pushed open the carriage’s end door and saw Parkin, head over the rail. Beyond him David could see through the doors of the fourth carriage, another carnage of khaki bodies strewn about, several of them clustered by the water fountain. “You okay?” he asked Parkin.
“No — Jesus, never seen anything like it. Bloody slaughter. The bastards.”
David passed by him, heading for the doors of the fourth carriage, and heard ambulance men behind him starting to clean out the remaining bodies now that more stretchers had arrived. As he opened the door, he saw several bodies that had fallen from upper bunks where the wounded had been. David felt his nostrils assaulted by a stringent mixture of spilled antiseptic, saline drip bottles, medications, and excrement.
He stood still looking about for her, for any sign of movement, still having a gut feeling that as she was of slighter build than most, she could well be buried but alive under the crush of bodies. He heard something and motioned the ambulance men coming in behind him to be quiet, listening for the faintest sound of breathing — for anything. But all he could hear now was the sound of the boiler condensing, its melancholy sound still with them. Outside, more ambulances were arriving.
“Should check those who’ve been taken away,” suggested Parkin, reappearing, smelling of sick. He meant those who the Belgian had told him had been stacked earlier in the Roosbeek morgue.
“Damn it — she isn’t dead,” David said. “I just know it.” He turned, looking at Parkin. “Sorry. You don’t have to come. Wait back at the Humvee if you like.”
Parkin didn’t answer but followed Brentwood as he entered the last carriage.
She was the first one he saw — spread across a wounded youth, both his arms in casts, one eye bandaged, the bandage bloodied now and rust-colored. At the base of her head there was a small, ugly hole, the edge of her white sweater stained. David knelt down and felt her wrist. No pulse. Cold. He couldn’t breathe and tore at his collar. Parkin moved up behind him. “Oh Christ, Lieutenant! Oh, shit!”
David, biting his lip, bent over her, still clinging to hope, and saw a phantom breeze blow the soft baby hair on the nape of her neck. It was his own breath. He took her right hand in both of his, holding it gently, feeling for the faintest pulse. He doubled over, pulling her hands to his face, his head moving side to side, sobbing in desperate denial that it was Lili, that the bloody mush that had been her face was Lili. But the poppy of Flanders Field that she’d worn, like those poppies she had told him sprang form from the artillery-plowed earth after the 1914 war, was still there, crushed against her by the body of the soldier she’d been trying to protect.
* * *
David didn’t remember the walk back to the Humvee, nor much of the ride back to the convalescent military hospital in Liege where he was to await orders, possibly for light supply duties in France. Parkin had put the poppy, her ID bracelet, and a lock of her hair — he’d had to wash it first — in a white linen envelope marked “Lieutenant Brentwood — Personal” and left it at the front desk. He wanted to stay at Liege but couldn’t. In the morning he’d have to report back to Brussels as what supplies were making it through the renewed Russian sub attacks on the convoys had to be shipped up quickly to the front if Freeman’s army wasn’t to be halted, and a counterattack risked all along the line. NATO needed every driver it could get its hands on.
“You take care of yourself, Lieutenant,” Parkin enjoined.
David nodded. “Thanks for bringing me back, Corp.”
“Anything I can do, sir? I mean, if you’re not feeling up to it — someone should let your folks know.” Parkin was holding out a packet of cigarettes, momentarily forgetting that the American didn’t smoke.
“No,” said David. “They know nothing about her.” He looked up at the Englishman, his lip quivering. The corporal, embarrassed, offered him a light. Brentwood looked down, cleared his throat, and asked in a strained voice, “Can you fix me a ride to Bouillon? It’s in the Ardennes. Her parents live there. I’d like to — I mean I should—”
“No problem!” said Parkin, relieved he could do something, anything, to help. “I’ll go over to the motor pool right now.”
“Thanks,” said David.
Sitting on the edge of his bunk, eyes fixed on the drops of rain slowly making their way down the window of the Quonset hut, he felt a hollowness — a vast emptiness and the beginning of rage — that they could waste someone so young, so beautiful — so good — the best thing, he now realized too late, that had happened to him in the whole rotten war.
Parkin’s footsteps echoed on the highly polished linoleum. “Well, if you can put up with me, Lieutenant, they say I can drive you down. But I was thinking, maybe her folks wouldn’t — I mean, maybe we should wait a few days.”
“No,” said David. “I’d like to go now.”
“It’s about ninety miles. Good three hours, Lieutenant. Maybe you should rest awhile. Go in the morning.”
Parkin waited patiently for the lieutenant to reconsider, to at least put it off till the morning. Parkin knew he couldn’t appeal to the American’s convalescent status anymore either — the sister on the ward telling the Corporal that Brentwood was as fit as they could make him now and that he could certainly go to Bouillon if he wanted to. To cheer him up, the sister brought a pile of letters waiting for him from the United States. “And abroad,” she said, showing him one with a Scottish postmark.
“Thank you,” David said, looking at the bundle in his hand. He might as well have been looking at a relic from the ancient past. Right now nothing held any importance for him, not how Lana was faring in the Aleutians or Robert on the Roosevelt—if he was still on the Roosevelt—or even the state of Ray’s progress in the burn unit of San Diego Vet’s. The only thing that mattered was that Lili was gone. She had been a bright burst, a warmth in the winter of his recovery from Stadthagen. Only his anger at the Russians offered any salve for the emptiness that now engulfed him; he fed on it. On that anger and what he felt was his duty to go to Bouillon. He hoped they’d find each and every one of the SPETS and hang them. It hadn’t been a military action — what was military about hitting a train and murdering wounded in cold blood? It was butchery. He only hoped he could keep the worst of it from Lili’s father and mother.
“ ‘S all right with you, sir,” said Parkin. “I wouldn’t mind a kip before we go.”
“All right,” said Brentwood finally. “But I want to go down first thing in the morning.” It was the most dispirited voice Parkin had ever heard.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The December sun was weak in Khabarovsk, but its reflection off the snow dazzled the city,
ice crystals sparkling in the pristine air. Apart from the massive underground supply depots and the munition factories on the city’s outskirts, where the wind kept most of the industrial pollution blowing west, the city, though shabby up close, nevertheless looked stunningly clean and peaceful. Gen. Kiril Marchenko had sensed the difference in the air the moment he’d deplaned following the long, four-thousand-mile trip from Moscow.
After having received greetings from the Khabarovsk’s KGB chief, Colonel Nefski, he went up the winding stone stairs of the jail. General Marchenko took off his greatcoat, cap, and gloves, and got right to it.
“Who put you up to this?” he asked the girl, Alexsandra Malof, the moment she was brought in.
She said nothing.
“It’s a very grave matter.”
It was worse than that, Nefski knew. Even suspected sabotage carried the death penalty. Several submarine captains from the Far Eastern Fleet out of Vladivostok had reported that some torpedoes were not detonating. A serial number check showed they all came from the munitions factory at Khabarovsk.
In a perverse way, Nefski admired the woman. Dark, in her late twenties, not much over five feet, she radiated defiance, her body stiffening the moment the two burly guards held her, one on each arm, when she looked as if she was about to spit at the general. The coarse woolen prison top could not hide her beauty, her breasts more alluring each time she resisted the pull of the guards, her eyes quick with rage, her whole body tense. Proud, too — wouldn’t even acknowledge the presence of Nefski’s subaltern near the window, overlooking the courtyard, whether from fear or contempt, he didn’t know. Of course, she’d just been in the prison for a day — brought straight from the munitions factory. Anyone could act tough for the first couple of hours, and amateurs were always profligate with their resistance.
It never occurred to her interrogators that she might be innocent of any sabotage, either on the railway or in the munitions factories where the Jews were supplying what was euphemistically called “volunteer labor.” She was also one of the young Jewish women prorosili—”requested”—to entertain the pilots at Khabarovsk air base. Refusal meant family harassment or most usually what the fliers called a “surprise party”—a pogrom — when things became too dull at the base.
“Is this how you Jews repay us?” pressed Marchenko. She glared at Colonel Nefski and his assistant looking on impassively.
“We give you your autonomous regions,” said Marchenko. “Let you worship your God — and this is how you treat us?” He waited. Nefski and his assistant could see the general’s patience was wearing thin.
“There are Jews in all our armed services, you know,” continued Marchenko. “Loyal to the USSR. How do you think they must feel, knowing there are traitors among their own people?”
She smiled, but it was one of contempt, as if to say, “They are the ones who are the traitors.”
Marchenko rose from behind the colonel’s desk, put on his coat, and picked up his gloves from his cap. Holding his gloves in one hand, the general put the edge of his cap beneath her chin, forcing her to look up at him. “You think this Jewish stubbornness is a virtue?”
She remained silent, and Marchenko, sweeping the cap away, turned to Nefski. “I’m wasting my time. She’s your charge.” Putting on his cap, he gestured to Nefski with his gloves. “A moment, Comrade.”
As the two men’s footsteps echoed down the stone staircase toward the brilliant white rectangle of snow framed by the door of the KGB headquarters, Nefski’s assistant asked the prisoner if she would like some tea. She made no sign.
Marchenko began putting on his fur-lined gloves. It might be sunny outside, but it was still twenty below. “She is banking on the kosoglazy—slant-eyes — being beaten by the Americans—if the Americans cross the Yalu.”
“I think you may underestimate the Chinese, General,” said Nefski. “With all due respect. They may solve our problem for us. Look at the Americans in Vietnam. They failed miserably, and with overwhelming air superiority.”
“They failed,” said Marchenko, pulling the other glove on tightly and squinting against the brilliant reflection of the snow, “because they lacked national will, Colonel. They dropped more ordnance on the Vietnamese than in all of World War Two. But it does you no good if you don’t have national will. This war, however, is very different, Comrade. The Americans see it as a Holy Grail. Vietnam veterans were spat on. In this war, Americans think God is back on their side. Like the Jews, which is why we must break that one upstairs. A dud torpedo that does not sink an American nuclear ship, a missile that fails to bring down an American nuclear bomber, could mean the difference between victory and defeat for us. Remember, Colonel, for the want of a nail, the shoe was lost, for the want of a shoe, the horse, for the want of the horse, the rider, for the want of the rider, the battle.”
“I will get the information about the sabotage,” said Nefski confidently.
“No doubt, Comrade. But when? It’s all a matter of time. You remember the Yumashev—the best battle cruiser we had? Well, we found the Estonian bastards who sabotaged her depth charges — depth charges which might have saved her from the American Sea Wolf — the Roosevelt—that sank her.”
“Luchshie umy mysliat odinakovo”—”Great minds think alike”—said Nefski. “I was telling my assistant only this morning, Comrade General, about the Yumashev.” Nefski didn’t go on to tell the general that his mention of the Yumashev to his assistant had been used to illustrate how Moscow’s interference with local investigations could actually delay solving the problem.
“Good,” said the general, “then we are in concert on this matter.” The chauffeur opened the door of the hand-tooled Zil and Marchenko stepped into the warm, plush interior. “I will be here for another six hours before I return to Moscow with my report. I can be reached at Khabarovsk air base. It would go well for us both, Colonel, if I could tell the Politburo upon my return that the situation had been solved.”
“Of course, General. I understand.”
“I’m sure you do.” The splash-green-and-white-camouflaged Zil moved slowly out of the compound, its tires crackling on the frozen sheet, the heavily coated KGB guards coming snappily to attention, rifles at the “present.”
* * *
“You are as foolish as your grandfather, Alexsandra,” Nefski told her. “You see, no matter what the official records show, we have always known your little secret. Oh yes, your grandfather paid his fifteen rubles like a good little boy to change the family name to Russian and thought he’d bought the family protection. I admit, for some, it worked. But you see, we—” he meant the KGB “—here at the local level have always known that you were Jews. And—” said Nefski, his tone magnanimous, “we told no one outside because we wanted to give you a chance. In return, this is how you repay—”
“You told no one outside,” she said, sitting forward, Nefski’s assistant grabbing her hair, pulling her back hard against the wooden chair, “because,” she shouted, undaunted, “you were being bribed not to tell!”
Nefski pouted like a disappointed grandfather. “You see?” He turned to his assistant. “The old man’s grandchildren are not grateful for his sacrifice. The poor old fool changes his name — he knows he can’t change the noses — but the name will help. To make sure, he does not go to synagogue — for seventeen years — to show us he’s sincere.” Nefski walked over, lifting up her chin. “He does this for you. And you despise him.” Nefski let her head drop. “He surrenders his faith and you spit on him.”
“I didn’t spit on him.”
Nefski glanced at his assistant as if he could no longer be bothered with her. “She spits on him. She and her brothers.” As Nefski stood by the window, the sunbeam caught his flat shoulder boards, and Alexsandra could see his red stars vibrant, like spots of blood, the sunbeam slicing the room in two, dust particles dancing madly in the beam, their randomness terrifying her. She didn’t know how much longer she could be strong. She thou
ght of her grandfather, a good man but a compromiser, deluded into thinking he could buy respectability and safety, believing that even if the secret of the family’s origin got out, the very act of changing their name to Russian and not going to the synagogue would speak for itself. She despised Nefski and all those like him. In them, hatred of Jews ran as deep as it had in the Nazis. Gorbachev had not changed that. She remembered the resurgence of nationalism in the republics, all crying for more independence and, along with it, the wildfire of anti-Semitism. Even before that, she remembered the reports coming out of Hungary in the great days of the 1990 liberation, when at the beginning of the first big soccer game in free Hungary, the cry had gone up from the fans: “Kill the Jews! Kill the Jews!”
“You and your three brothers,” said Nefski. “You worked in the Khabarovsk munition factory. Dispatch. Correct?”
“Yes,” she said.
“The munitions are checked on the production line — so the logical place for sabotage is in dispatch. You agree?” She didn’t answer.
“Your family worked the night shift. Correct?”
“Everyone worked night shift — sometimes.”
“The midnight-to-dawn shift,” said Nefski. “Before the transport trucks arrive.”
“There are truck pickups all night,” she retorted. “Can you loosen these handcuffs?”
He had gone to the window, where he had been distracted for a moment by watching a driver from one of the red-and-cream-colored trolley cars trying to realign its poles after they had been deflected by a glistening scab of ice. “He’ll need his gloves on for that, Ilya,” Nefski told his assistant, who was still watching Alexsandra. It was a ploy for the colonel to appear unconcerned, his confidence that he would break the prisoner transferring itself to the prisoner.