The Red Eagles

by David Downing

  “Moscow?”

  “Just another city.”

  Another country boy. But she felt like a child with this man. He couldn’t be more than ten years older than she, but it was like what she’d always imagined talking with a father would be like. Stern, distant, wise, sure of himself, above all, sure of himself. The way adults were supposed to be, the way so few were.

  They were coming into Bridgeport. He stopped a block down from the hotel and got out. “Take care driving back,” he said as she slipped across behind the wheel. “I’ll see you later.”

  “Good luck,” she said, not sure that he’d consider luck relevant.

  He was already walking away, turning into the shambling bear once more. She turned the car and headed back out of town. It was four o’clock – nine hours to go. She’d often wondered how soldiers felt waiting to make an attack and now she knew – a mixture of impatience, terror, and curiosity.

  And in nine hours she’d say good-bye to Paul again. Siberia, she’d go to Siberia, where the past was weaker.

  At ten o’clock Kuznetsky put a call through to a hotel in Knoxville. The telephone rang only once. “How is Rosa’s uncle?” he asked.

  “Fine. She took the train this evening.”

  “And her cousin?”

  “I’ll be seeing him tonight.”

  “Good.”

  He went back up to the familiar room, studied the yard through Markham’s binoculars for the last time, and then hid them under the mattress, taking care to leave the cord visible. He left by the fire escape and followed the preplanned route through the darkened back streets and alleys to the perimeter of the freight yard. There was no sign of life. He climbed through the rail fencing, under a couple of Pullman cars, and found himself forty yards from the solitary boxcar. Still nothing. He darted across the open space and took up position underneath it. It was 10:20. If everything went well, they’d be at sea in just over twenty-four hours.

  Kuznetsky felt intense relief at the thought. Was it only two weeks ago that he’d been considering espionage one of the lesser forms of endeavour? Well, he’d be glad to get back to where the enemy wore a different uniform and openly challenged you. Deception was a tiring business, and, he thought, probably as self-damaging as anything he’d ever done. He didn’t know how Amy had held herself together all those years. With people like Richard Lee, he supposed. And a capacity for self-delusion.

  The noises of the town slowly died down and the lights finally went out on Main Street. It must be the war – Friday nights in St. Cloud had never been so quiet. He had a fleeting image of Nadezhda at a barn dance, smiled to himself in the gloom. America! So much energy so ill-directed. He was glad he’d come back, glad he’d seen the Minnesota plains again. It seemed like an end, a welcome end. The war would soon be over, and they could start to build again, this time with the people as one. Taming the wildernesses, the one outside and the ones within.

  He heard the sound of a car approaching. He mentally ran through the sequence of events Amy had written out, as he watched the state troopers, both of them this time, walking across to the depot. He heard the rap on the door, the greetings, a laugh. The lights went on, brighter than he’d expected. Three men came out, lit cigarettes, and gazed hopefully down the track. The train was late. They sat down on the edge of a loading platform, their voices unnaturally loud in the overall silence.

  Then the toot of a whistle, the distant chuffing of the engine. Kuznetsky watched it pull around the curve into the station and stop at the predicted place. Damn. He had miscalculated the length of the train: the caboose didn’t cut off his line of approach from the group of men. He would have to cross the first ten yards in clear line of sight.

  The fireman stood atop the tender, holding the hose as the water glugged through. As he disappeared over the other side, the meeting began to break up. Now or never. He crawled across the rail, out from under the cover of the boxcar, and wriggled his way across the first ten yards. There were no shouts. He got to his feet and sprinted the remainder, drawing the Walther as he did so. Hauling himself up the cab steps, he found himself face-to-face with the fireman, who had just lifted a sandwich to his mouth.

  “Silence or you’re dead,” he whispered harshly. The sandwich dropped as the man lifted his arms, shock giving way to indignation on his face.

  The engineer was coming, shouting something back to the men he’d left. “I mean it,” Kuznetsky said, maneuvering himself into position for the driver’s appearance. At least the engine was making enough noise to half-drown a shot. But the fireman’s face relaxed; the moment of immediate danger for him had passed.

  “Keep coming,” Kuznetsky said, holding the automatic a foot from the engineer’s face as he climbed into the cab. “Now let’s go,” he said, moving back to where he could cover them both.

  “Hey …!”

  “Do it. Your life is hanging by a thread, mister. Believe me.”

  The two men stared at him, found nothing in his eyes to doubt. The engineer opened the regulator, and the engine began moving forward. “There’s easier ways to get a ride, bud,” he muttered.

  “Just drive the train. Normal speed, normal everything.”

  “Can we talk?”

  “Just drive the train.” Kuznetsky shifted position to allow the fireman to shovel some coal while he watched the engineer’s actions. “Now slow down slightly,” he ordered. The man did so. “Okay, back to the usual speed.”

  “What sort of game are you playing, bud?” He sounded curious rather than belligerent.

  “No games. I wanted to know how to slow this thing down if you two happen to meet with an accident.”

  The two men exchanged glances. The train rattled across a bridge. Kuznetsky lit the cigarette he’d been wanting for two hours.

  “Where are you heading, bud?”

  “Down the line. Shut up.”

  Behind him, as if in pursuit, the half-moon was rising.

  * * *

  Fifty feet farther back, and considerably closer to the ground rushing by, Bob Crosby was tightening the strap that held him to the girders beneath the boxcar. He’d run away from home that evening and was already beginning to regret it. The noise was unbearable, his mouth seemed choked with dust, and he felt as if his bones were all being wrenched loose from their sockets.

  He’d boarded the train at Chattanooga, more from desperation than choice. He’d expected a long train of boxcars with straw-filled interiors and sliding doors, not this strange short train with one car and a cargo that seemed to consist solely of policemen. But he’d had to get away before his father alerted the local cops, and at least he’d done that.

  There were probably better places to travel; he’d learn as he went, he supposed. God knew where that guy at the last stop had ended up. He’d watched him crawling, then running toward the locomotive. There must be places to hide there too. He’d have to find out. There was lots of time: he was only fourteen. He’d go back home in a few years, when he was big enough, and show his father what a beating was really like. The bastard. He couldn’t understand why his mother stayed with him.

  The train approached Scottsboro. “We stop here,” the engineer shouted over his shoulder.

  Not according to Melville’s information, Kuznetsky thought, and there’d been no other way of checking. If the driver was telling the truth, and they went straight through, then the wires would start humming, to the north at least. If they stopped, and the driver was bluffing, the guard and the troopers would get suspicious. He had to trust Melville.

  “We go straight through,” he shouted over the noise of the engine.

  The engineer turned to protest, but Kuznetsky could see the bluff in his eyes. “Straight through,” he repeated. It was the correct decision: Scottsboro station was dark and deserted.

  The driver spat over the side, an empty gesture of defiance. “Huntsville, then,” he shouted.

  “Okay. Huntsville.” The train climbed away from the valley flo
or, bellowing smoke across the stars. Another ten miles. The road on their left was devoid of traffic, the houses dark. Kuznetsky felt a sense of rising exhilaration, swaying with the passage of the train, feeling the warm gusts of air from the firebox whipping past his face.

  At the spur turnoff Amy stood by the car, straining her ears for the sound of the approaching train. Her eyes had grown used to the darkness since their arrival an hour before, but even so she could barely make out the line of the main road two hundred yards away. Paul and Gerd had taken the camper up the valley. The switch had been thrown.

  She gripped the tommy gun in one hand, hoping she wouldn’t have to use it. If Kuznetsky had failed, if the train failed to slow down, there was every chance that it would come off the rails at the turnoff, and she alone would have to take on the occupants, at least until Paul and Gerd arrived. And it would all be in full view of the main road. Only one car had passed in the last hour, but it needed only one at the wrong time. That car had swept past only seconds after Paul had finished cutting the wires above the road.

  An orange glow could be seen in the distance, climbing the valley toward her. For a moment it disappeared, sheltered from sight by the invisible buildings of Lim Rock, and there it was again, growing larger and brighter. Now she could see the long, moving shadow that was the train, now she could hear it above the natural sounds of the night.

  “Slow down,” Kuznetsky said.

  “On this grade – you’re crazy!”

  Kuznetsky moved forward, immediately behind the engineer, jamming the Walther into the back of his neck. “We’re taking the spur. Slow down.”

  “We’ll have to throw the switch.”

  “It’s already thrown.”

  At least he hoped it was. There was a sudden movement behind him; he ducked by instinct, glimpsed the shovel flash past his head. Straightening up, he put a bullet through the fireman’s face, reached out too late to catch his body as it tumbled from the cab, and turned the gun quickly enough to stop the engineer in his tracks.

  “Slow it down,” he screamed, and the driver, his mouth hanging open, turned to obey.

  It was almost too late. The locomotive’s wheels screeched as they hit the points and the whole train swayed alarmingly. Beneath them the trestles of the river bridge creaked and snapped, but they were across, moving up the narrow valley.

  Amy watched the train rock its way through the points and the bridge, saw a silhouetted guard emerge from his lighted sanctum and apply himself energetically to the hand brake on the rear platform. Blue-white sparks flashed across the valley as the braked wheels ground against the rails, but the train kept moving away as the engineer overrode the hand brake. The noise seemed deafening. She looked up and down the road – nothing.

  Half a mile ahead Paul and Gerd heard the train, stamped out their cigarettes, exchanged grim smiles, and moved to their positions. Soon they could see it rounding the bend in the valley, first the glow from the locomotive, then the sparks from the wheels at the rear. The train’s shape slowly swam into focus, and two figures were visible in the engineer’s compartment. And one on the roof of the boxcar! Someone was going forward to see what had gone wrong.

  Suddenly the boxcar door slid open, throwing light across the road and the valley. The train pulled to a halt, and as the engine subsided into relative silence, the noise of the man running along the car roof mingled with shouts from the men hanging out of the boxcar door.

  The first rattle of Paul’s tommy gun blew the man off the roof and out of sight; simultaneously Gerd sprayed the open door, knocking at least two troopers back across the car.

  Out of the corner of his eye he saw the engineer kneeling as if in prayer, Kuznetsky standing above him, holding the gun to his head and pulling the trigger.

  Paul and Gerd reached their positions on either side of the open door. They could hear talking inside, frightened, bewildered talking, then the rasp of the other door being pulled back. At a signal from Gerd they moved forward in unison, firing as they went. Two bodies plummeted out through the far door, thumping into the gravel. Kuznetsky stepped past them, pulled himself up into the car. Inside, one man was dead, another whimpering from wounds in his thigh and chest. Kuznetsky walked behind him, placed the gun to the back of his head, and fired. The man slumped forward across the makeshift table of crates, scattering cards and quarters.

  His face blank, Kuznetsky turned to look down at the Germans. “Check the others,” he said.

  Paul walked around the train muttering “Ja, mein führer” under his breath. The two other troopers were dead, and so was the guard, lying face down in the stream, the rippling waters pulling his hair above his head. Murder or an act of war? Paul was damned if he knew.

  Amy pulled the car up by the camper, walked across to the scene of carnage. Kuznetsky and Gerd were already moving the crates to the door, easing them down to the ground.

  “Thrown the switch?” Kuznetsky asked her.

  “Of course,” she replied coldly.

  “Open the camper doors,” he ordered.

  She walked across, passing Paul, who smiled bitterly at her. She slammed the doors open, the sound echoing from the valley sides. Gerd staggered across with the first of the crates, and she helped him load it.

  In the darkness under the boxcar Bob Crosby watched the unloading. Who were these people? They sounded like Americans, but the thin one had muttered something in German. And they had killed everyone, everyone but him.

  Not three feet away from his hiding place, within reach of a lunge, one of them had placed a fearsome-looking machine gun, leaned against the rail beneath the door. The shiny metal had an almost hypnotic appeal lying there, just lying there, but he silently fought the desire to make that lunge. What business was it of his? But he liked guns, had always been fascinated by them …

  No, they’d soon be gone—“One more” someone had just said. Then he’d be gone, too, far away from all this. He could see the upturned face of one of the troopers lying by the track, the hole where his left eye should have been.

  They were standing in a group now, over by the camper, talking. Eight legs in all. Perhaps they’d forgotten the gun, would leave it behind, and he could try it once before taking off. He could even sell it – no, that was stupid. There was movement now: one pair of legs had disappeared. He wriggled his body around to get a better view and his leg slipped off the girder. For a second he teetered, thought he was going to fall, but with a supreme effort managed to lower himself to the ground, causing only a soft thud as his legs dropped onto the ballast between the tracks.

  They’d stopped talking. Had they heard anything? His breathing sounded too loud. Shit! One pair of legs walked back toward the train; he had to do something fast. He squirmed across the rail and took the gun in his hands. The legs stopped their approach; the stream gurgled in the silence. He got to his feet, leaned against the side of the boxcar, wondering how to do it. He remembered the Marines training film – run, roll, and fire. Surprise was everything. He could do it.

  Taking a deep breath, he took off, rushing along the back of the train, conscious of shouts and other feet running after him. Bursting into the field of light at the rear, he threw himself into a perfect roll, just the way he’d practiced in the garden at home, and pulled the trigger. He had a flashing glimpse of people falling, could have cried out with exaltation. Run, roll, and fire. His chest seemed to burst with burning pride.

  Gerd walked over to the body, rolled his victim, face up, with his foot. A freckled adolescent face stared past him, an obscene smile creasing its lips. “Jesus,” he muttered, “Jesus Christ.”

  “Gerd.” It was Amy’s voice, soft, shaking. He ran across to where she and Paul had collapsed against each other. She was holding her right side, just below the breast, blood trickling between her fingers. Paul was unconscious, and for a second Gerd feared the worst, but he couldn’t find any bullet wounds. Gerd pulled him forward, found a lump still growing on the back of his head
. Something had hit him but good.

  “Is he dead?” she whispered.

  “No, just unconscious.” He moved on to Kuznetsky, who was lying a few feet away. A bullet had plowed a furrow across the side of his head, just above the left ear. It had probably thrown him back against the camper door, and it was the door, Gerd guessed, that had hit Paul. Some luck, but it could have been worse. None of them was dead – yet.

  He got the flashlight from the car and went back to Amy. “He’s out cold too. Let’s look at you.” He gently pulled her hand away and lifted the blouse. It was a nasty flesh wound, but not serious.

  “There’s a first-aid box in the front,” she said.

  He found it, soaked a cotton ball in disinfectant, and applied it to her wound and then to Kuznetsky’s. Then Gerd wound bandages around his head and her lower chest. Time to go, he told himself, and it looks like I’ll be driving.

  She was on her feet, somewhat unsteady; the blood was already seeping through the bandage. “Get in the front,” he said.

  “But …”

  “Get in the front. I don’t want to carry three bodies.”

  She seemed to smile at some private joke, then did as she was told.

  He lifted Paul into the back, laying him out alongside the crates. He then pulled Kuznetsky up on the other side, folded the steps up, and closed the doors. “Jesus,” he muttered again. Now for the car. He took off the emergency brake, turned the wheel, and shoved. It stuck against the near rail; he’d have to use the motor. He climbed in, switched on the ignition, and forced the car back over the rails, too far almost – the rear wheels were left spinning in space above the stream. But the road was now clear.

  He clambered aboard the camper. Amy didn’t look too bad; her face was pure white, but there was life in her eyes. He pulled away down the valley, trying to remember the route. Left at the end.