‘Why so sad?’ Prishchepa said. ‘You’re alive, Benya, and that’s quite something. And look who’s with me?’
Benya peered behind Prishchepa and there was Spider Garanzha – and the old teak-skinned sergeant, Panka.
‘Are you unhurt, lad?’ asked Panka, his small eyes scanning Benya and his dressing curiously.
‘My shoulder – now its fine. I am just tired.’
‘Tired? This is no time to be tired,’ said Panka. ‘Don’t give in to it. Don’t even use the word. You were fast asleep. Cheer up! We’re close to our beloved mother river and it’s always sunny on the Don. We can’t boil water here, we can’t risk a fire, but eat some bread and have a sip of this’ – and he handed Benya some Borodino bread and a flask of cognac. ‘Then we must move.’
‘Where to?’ asked Benya, looking around for Fabiana.
Garanzha just observed him coldly. Prishchepa smiled. ‘Home of course.’
‘Where might that be?’ asked Benya, without thinking.
‘I told you,’ said Spider Garanzha, those deceptive goo-goo eyes looping in his two companions.
Benya refocused quickly. If and when they got back to safety, they would all be questioned, and if Benya said he didn’t know where the Cossacks had been, they’d be shot as traitors. The Spider was watching him, very still, and Benya knew what that stillness meant. The crouch of the hunter before the spring of the kill.
Benya understood that the calculations required of any soldier on the steppes that summer were laden with agonizing twists, but for the Shtrafniki, who had already crossed to the other side of the river, in every sense, the choices were bleak. His three Cossack companions were there not just to rescue him but to save themselves, either by joining up with him – or liquidating a dangerous witness. If circumstances required it, Garanzha, the man who unsettled the horses, would cut his throat with pleasure, and Benya recalled how his leaden tread had quickened into an almost feminine dance step as he killed the Kalmyk traitor. Prishchepa, the thoughtless golden boy with the light lope and appetites of a carefree wolf, would finish him with even less thought. Only Panka would hesitate.
Benya was aware that troops lost behind the lines were deemed to be traitors unless they could prove otherwise; it was how decent men like Captain Zhurko had ended up in the penal battalions. If these Shtrafniki were suspected of the slightest sin, they would simply get the Eight Grammes – without even facing the tribunal. But here was the difficulty: Benya did not know where these men had been for the last few days. Had they defected temporarily to the Fascists? Had they waited to see how quickly the Germans smashed through to Stalingrad and the oil fields? Or had they decided that the Soviet Union was not collapsing as fast as it seemed when Rostov fell and changed their minds, seeking a way to cover their tracks? And if they had, did they know about his secret, Fabiana?
‘Wait,’ he said, holding up his hands. ‘I ask no questions. We fought, we were cut off and found our way back to the Don.’
‘We killed Mandryka. We’ve earned our freedom – it’s simple!’ It was always simple for Prishchepa.
‘The partisans will remember we were there,’ said Benya. ‘Unless … we could do something more to earn our redemption …’
Prishchepa waved his hand. ‘The Zhid’s always worrying.’
Garanzha started to scratch his back, always a sign that he was beginning to relax.
‘So all is well,’ Prishchepa said. ‘I’m happy our brother Benya is still alive – but then you learned from the best riders on the Don. This Zhid can certainly ride, eh, Panka?’ He embraced Benya. ‘Let’s eat and sleep and then maybe swim in the Don. Have you ever swum in the Don, Benya?’
‘No time for that, brother,’ said Panka, spitting. ‘Prishchepa, you’ve forgotten where we are. The Don is a cauldron. The Fritzes are searching this village for us right now.’
‘Let me go scout,’ said Prishchepa, always keen to volunteer for the most dangerous jobs. They went outside, and Panka saddled Silver Socks. There was no sign of Violante, Fabiana’s palomino.
‘Just this once, I’m doing it for you, brother,’ said the old Cossack – and Benya noted the compliment.
Garanzha scratched, picking lice out of his clothes, and sharpened his dagger until Prishchepa returned.
‘They’re getting near,’ he said breathlessly. ‘Let’s go.’
As Benya rode out with his three companions, heading towards the Don and the Russian lines, he knew what he had known even as Prishchepa pointed the gun at his head. That he had awoken alone, quite alone. It was as if she had never even been there.
II
Svetlana never saw her father in the morning – except on Black Sea holidays. But now he was right here, standing over her. She was getting ready for school when her father burst into her bedroom, something he had never done before in her entire life.
She looked into his face and she knew she was in terrible trouble. He was blazingly furious and the nanny, who was standing behind him, was so terrified that she couldn’t move. Svetlana had never witnessed her father like this. He had almost never lost his temper with her but now he was white-faced and nearly speechless with rage. He was waving some rolled-up papers.
‘I’ve punished Vasily for his antics,’ he said. ‘I’ve had him thrown in the guardhouse for behaving like a fucking disgusting baron’s son! But your behaviour is as repulsive as his. When our men are dying in their thousands, this is what you do?’
‘Father, what do you mean?’ Svetlana knew exactly but was stalling for time.
‘Don’t play the idiot, girl!’ he said. ‘Where are they then? Your filthy letters from your “writer”? Your so-called writer! Where are those letters?’
‘I don’t know, Papa …’
‘Of course, you know – don’t take me for a fool. Well, I’ve read them too!’ He tapped the pocket of his tunic. ‘I’ve got them all right here. What filth! I know everything. You don’t believe me? What’s all this then?’ He threw a wad of typed papers at Svetlana’s feet and she jumped. ‘Go on. Take a look! See all your filthy words right here! Pick them up. Read them. Go on, read them!’
III
Lieutenant Brambilla brought Malamore a cup of ersatz coffee as Dirlewanger joined him. He was, noticed Malamore, already reeking of schnapps, sweating, blinking, fritzing as the meths surged.
‘Is Montefalcone up?’ Malamore asked Brambilla.
‘Yes, sir. I woke him.’
Then they heard a shot. He and Dirlewanger caught eyes and they hurried to the next-door hut. Fully dressed, his feathered cap and his papers laid out, Montefalcone sat at the table with his head in his arms. The pistol was in his hand, and a finger of blood ran down his temple.
‘Fuck!’ said Dirlewanger. ‘This war …’
Malamore shook his head. ‘He was no soldier.’ He lit a cigarette. Brambilla stood behind him.
‘What shall we do, sir? What shall we say?’
‘The major died in battle on an anti-partisan mission. I’ll write up the report on our return. Bury him here in the yard. Quietly. Fast.’ He paused. ‘And, Brambilla?’
‘Sir?’
‘We ride out in one hour.’
The single shot rang out over the village, echoing back off the hills, but the four riders paid no attention.
‘I saw an old friend of ours,’ said Prishchepa. ‘Right here. Riding over this very hill.’
They halted in the trees on the hill outside the village. Below them, in the limpid light of dawn, they could see Malamore’s men amongst the houses, the horses all tied up outside the church. Behind them smoke rose from the rising uproar of the battle of the Don Bend: the shells bursting over the river, now so near they felt the earth shake. Benya could smell the Don itself, the salt and the rotting reeds, and the water close to them: the border they had to cross.
‘Garanzha, ride ahead and take a look,’ said Panka. ‘Let’s rest here a moment while I have a chew.’ As Spider Garanzha trotted off through the
poplars, Panka swung off Almaz and absentmindedly stroked the animal’s withers as he chewed some makhorka. Benya knew this meant he was deliberating. An observer might think Panka was having a rest but his decision would settle their fate. Benya let Silver Socks graze and Panka came over and stroked her neck.
‘You chose well with that one, brother,’ he said. ‘I always loved her too. She’s got firm feet, that girl.’
Benya kissed Socks’s white muzzle. He was sorry he had ridden her into this war. She deserved to be free on the grasslands, serene and happy.
‘Sergeant, what do we do now?’
‘Well, my boy … it’s simple really.’ Panka chuckled, meaning it wasn’t simple at all. ‘Either we cross the Don here or we join our soldiers at the bridgehead,’ he said. ‘Here we’d have to swim the river and it’s wide and, if I recall this place where I once caught a pike this long, the currents are strong. They can shoot us in the water and we might lose the horses. But if we approach the lines further up, it’ll be like going hunting with my Uncle Prokofei, who once shot my cousin Grishaka in the behind when he was aiming at a bear beside the Vieshenska stream. What I mean is there’ll be crossfire and our own people might well shoot us by mistake.’
‘I once had a girl beside that stream,’ said Prishchepa. ‘And that friend I saw last night – it was Dr Kapto.’
‘Where?’ asked Benya sharply.
‘He was riding out of the village with two Fritzes. Wehrmacht officers.’
‘And the little girl?’
‘Yes, the child was on his saddle.’ Prishchepa turned to Benya. ‘You care for that child?’
‘I fear for her,’ Benya said, but then he remembered the crone’s prophecy of the child and the doctor riding happily into the steppes.
‘They were riding through these woods.’
Panka chewed hard, his small eyes twinkling like jewels in his wise face. ‘They must be going to the Sixth Army headquarters. But why?’
Benya pictured the doctor, and remembered the satchel around his neck. Now he realized it surely didn’t contain medicines but some sort of papers. But before he could say anything, Garanzha was back. ‘The two Germans are waiting at the office of the collective farm. And Dr Kapto is back with them.’
‘Back with them? Where was he?’
‘How should I know? He was in the woods and he came back,’ Garanzha replied. ‘We could take the three of them if we wished.’
‘Brothers,’ warned Panka, ‘we don’t stop for anyone, and we take no unnecessary risks. Mount your horses.’
‘Three?’ Benya asked. ‘You mean four? With the child.’
Garanzha shook his head. ‘The child’s not with them.’
‘You’re sure? The two officers. The doctor. And the little girl?’
‘I told you, silly scribbler,’ said Garanzha, swinging his leg across the saddle of his horse. ‘The little girl isn’t there.’
Benya flinched and a jet of anger coursed through him. Of course the girl was gone. Kapto had saved her, kept her and then discarded her. She was out there, somewhere, lying on the ground, and it was over, as indeed it could be for Fabiana, who would be on her own with no one to protect her. He began to sob in spasms of despair, resting his face on Socks’s neck. The horse turned her head and nuzzled him, her whiskers tickling his face.
‘Now look what you’ve done,’ Prishchepa teased Garanzha.
Panka shook Benya. ‘Come on, Golden. We’ve all had to harden our hearts, dear boy. We’re almost there.’ He offered the flask and Benya took it and drank too deeply. He coughed but the cognac steadied him.
‘Listen,’ he said to the three Cossacks. ‘We have nothing to show for our time behind enemy lines. We need a prize.’
IV
‘Lieutenant Kreutzer, the horses are restless. Check they’re watered or maybe there’s an animal out there,’ said Captain von Manteuffel of Intelligence, Sixth Army, as he sat on the bench in the office of the collective farm granary. He was reading the Soviet General Staff maps in front of him with a rising excitement. ‘Schwerin will be here later tonight. Kreutzer, get some cigarettes and the schnapps from the saddlebags.’
‘Jawohl, Herr Captain! On my way.’
The office of the manager of the Sergei Kirov Collective Farm 23 was spartan and messy. The walls were plywood, the floor was made of old planks and the room was decorated with a faded print of Stalin and a map of the huge farm that lay alongside the Don. There was a rough bench, wooden chairs, a couch where the managers must have napped after vodka-fuelled lunches with other local apparatchiks, and a gas-ring for heating chai.
Manteuffel was waiting for Colonel von Schwerin, who had selected this place for their meeting. ‘You’ll find it serviceable,’ he’d said. ‘I will rendezvous with you by twenty-four hundred hours at the latest. Prepare your report.’
Dr Kapto lay on the only couch, smoking a Belomorkanal cigarette. ‘Are you impressed, captain?’ he asked in his precise, velvety voice. ‘Are they useful?’ Then, after an interval: ‘Will I get a little pat on the head from the general? I better think of a reward, eh? I can think of a thing or two …’
Manteuffel was still horrified by the events of the morning, the way the doctor had come back, with his glib smile and his pride in his facility of fixing things neatly. He realized that intelligence was a dirty game in which one had to deal with all manner of freaks and mountebanks. He understood that this was a filthy war against a repellent enemy, that the Führer was waging a savage campaign of annihilation against the Jews – men, women and children – and that this had to be conducted by Himmler’s ‘specialists’ like Dirlewanger who were not much better than beasts and certainly not men whom he would ever entertain at home at Schloss Manteuffel. But that child …
After an initial interview with Kapto to ascertain his credentials and how he had procured the materials, taking meticulous notes in his oilskin notebook, Manteuffel had concentrated on the maps, the importance of which dawned on him gradually. He was aware of the danger of Soviet disinformation, and of course he recalled the recent case of Major Reichel whose plane had crashed behind Soviet lines with the full operational plans for the Führer’s Case Blue offensive. That paranoid peasant Stalin had believed this was German disinformation and ignored it. Fortunately so, because the plans were genuine and they were currently winning this offensive that would probably secure victory. Such a prize was not always a trick.
If Dr Kapto’s maps were genuine (and several factors, which could not have been fabricated, made Manteuffel lean towards this view), they must be flown directly to the Führer’s headquarters as soon as possible. If he was lucky, Schwerin would take him along on the trip. The maps he was now holding could change the Führer’s plans for Stalingrad and the Caucasus oil fields.
‘Captain von Manteuffel!’ It was that fool Kreutzer.
‘What?’
‘One of the horses is missing.’
‘How can that be? Hornochse! You ox with horns! Weren’t they hobbled? Weren’t you watching them?’
‘Yes, captain, yes. I can’t understand it …’
Manteuffel followed the plump lieutenant out of the hut. He looked around. The hills, the woods: all was still.
‘You didn’t tie it up properly, Vollidiot! Total idiot! Your work is shoddy. Be more precise. Now go and find it! I’ll be right there …’ He watched Kreutzer’s flabby arse bouncing down the steps to the horses, then went inside to fold up the maps. ‘The fool has lost a horse,’ he told Kapto, who sat up, about to speak, but Manteuffel didn’t wait for him.
He ran out of the office again, swearing at the lieutenant, ‘Kreutzer, you Höllenhund! Hellhound!’ He was still cursing when he found the lieutenant lying full length between the two remaining horses.
‘Jesus Christ!’ Manteuffel said, and when he looked up, he found himself looking right into the Nagant barrel of a very blond youngster in Soviet uniform and boots who was singing to himself.
But I am flying to
the Führerhauptquartier tomorrow so nothing can happen to me today, thought Manteuffel, when something shiny and almost blue flashed so fast in front of his chin that it almost hissed. Reaching up to touch his throat, he was surprised to find it was soaking wet. And then he was falling back into the arms of another man who caught him and laid him on the ground. He was sure that this could not be happening to him because he had been so full of life just moments earlier and because he was so alert even now. He had been looking forward to a cigarette and a shot of schnapps, and there was the appointment with Colonel von Schwerin later, not to speak of the flight to the Führer’s headquarters. He was looking up into the face of a man with an oversized jaw and a wide slit of a very scarlet mouth with scarcely any lips. Above was a bleakly cloudless sky. He should have suspected something when the horse disappeared, that was obvious. A shot rang out close by but Manteuffel was not alarmed; it came from another realm.
Garanzha knew Manteuffel was dead. He could see the cornflower-blue sky in the glaze of his open eyes. Brandishing his Papasha, he walked round to the door of the foreman’s office, but then he relaxed. Panka was coming out. ‘Time to ride on,’ he said. Inside, Prishchepa was laughing: ‘You can’t leave our writer for a moment,’ he said. ‘He’s become a menace. I think he’s spent too much time with you, Spider.’
Benya was still holding his Parabellum over Dr Kapto, who had been shot cleanly in the forehead. Now Kapto was dead, he was afraid to touch him. Garanzha searched the doctor for his papers. He found Kapto’s new ID as an officer of the Schuma, in German. Benya gathered up the maps that lay on the table, along with Manteuffel’s notebook, and put them all in the original satchel which he hung over his shoulder.
When they came out of the building, Panka was helping himself to tinned meat, chocolate and ammunition from the Germans’ saddlebags. The four mounted their horses. Benya’s hands were shaking: he couldn’t believe what he had done. He’d shot a man in cold blood. Without a word. Just like that. It was over. And now he rode on, untarnished. And yet the child – a little Jewish girl – was gone; she lay nearby somewhere on the rough ground, and he ached with sadness, for her, for his family, for Fabiana, and for all the others wounded in this cruel, cruel war.
Red Sky at Noon (The Moscow Trilogy) Page 24