Red Sky at Noon

I

Benya awoke with a start. A safety catch had been clicked off, and the pistol was now so close to his forehead that he could feel the cold metal and smell the oil and the presence of strangers. He had expected this all along, seen it in his mind, and now here it was. But he was so weary that he did not care any more. Let them shoot me, he thought; a man can only run for so long. He feared to open his eyes, expecting to see Malamore’s scaly face. He waited for the impact, flinching. But nothing happened and then he heard another sound. God, it was laughter.

‘Morning, dedushka! It’s me, Granpa, wake up!’

Benya sat up and looked into the bright blue eyes of Prishchepa, who was beaming at him, fresh as a chaffinch, his blond hair standing up like a haystack.

‘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.

‘Only a Cossack could sweet-talk a horse like I did with that German horse,’ boasted Prishchepa, ‘and only a Cossack of the Don could steal it right under their noses.’

‘Shut up, magpie,’ said Garanzha.

‘Brothers, now we have to decide what to do,’ said Panka. ‘Decisions are like the carp in the Don!’

‘Slippery and full of bones,’ explained Prishchepa.

‘You decide, Sergeant Panka,’ suggested Benya.

‘I shall, with pleasure,’ said Panka. ‘It will be good to see the Don. I can smell it. Our mother river, our darling gentle Don.’

‘Even if we might drown in it,’ said Benya.

‘Well, yes,’ agreed Panka affably. ‘But it’s always sunny on the Don.’

V

They were riding towards the front line. Panka was in the lead followed by Benya with Prishchepa and Spider Garanzha bringing up the rear. The cannons fired relentlessly and each blast shook the air and made their eyes ache; the roar of tank engines ground forward, planes flew low overhead and, around them, black smoke was blanketing the blue sky. In Benya’s nostrils, on his clothes even, hung the reek of cordite and burning diesel.

They rode down a hillock and across a plain and down its banks, and there it was. The Don. It seemed an age since they had crossed the great river seven days earlier, and Benya felt he had lived a lifetime since then. As they rode towards it, the water, fringed with foam, seemed to steam as smoke rolled over the sheening shallows, and the grass of the chalky cliff on the far bank gleamed an emerald green. They rode along the beach where old nets and a Cossack fisherman’s rowboat lay abandoned. Further up, a dead Russian soldier was being picked at by greedy seagulls, his brainpan open, empty, bone-white. In the river, a half-submerged ferry lay empty, a direct hit. The seagulls, grown fat and truculent on the decay of war, swooped over them with a shrieking keow, sometimes so close Benya felt the wind of their wings.

They said little, knowing that if they were unlucky, they would simply be hit by a blast of shrapnel and know nothing more. If they even located the Russian front lines, they might well be shot down by trigger-happy outposts. They just had to be lucky – but Panka had decided the beach of the Don was the best way to approach, partly because the pickets would be able to see them clearly. There would be less chance of mistakes.

As they rode, the horses became increasingly tense, skittering, fretting and dancing, or champing and refusing to go forward. Benya held Socks on a tight rein, and talked to her: ‘I’m here with you, girl,’ he said. A volley of artillery, apparently fired by the Russians though it was hard to tell, made him jump and Socks reared. Benya gripped her with his legs and leaned over her mane and soothed her. She went on.

‘Who goes there? Identify yourself or we shoot!’ There it was, a voice from a position right ahead, a concrete bunker overlooking the beach.

‘Sergeant Pantaleimon Churelko and three men, Second Cavalry Shtrafbat.’

‘Never heard of you,’ said the voice. ‘Which Shtrafbat?’

‘Second Cavalry Shtrafbat,’ said Panka. ‘We have intelligence materials for the general.’

‘We still haven’t heard of you!’ said the voice.

‘Are you crazy riding along the beach? We might have shot you!’ said another.

‘We still might shoot you, motherfuckers!’ said the first, harsher voice. ‘Take off your weapons and throw them down! Tether your horses! And walk up the bank towards us with your hands up!’

They dismounted and, as they set off, Benya looked back at Silver Socks. He wondered if he would see her again.

‘Walk slowly! No tricks! No fast moves or we’ll shoot!’

Moments later, they were in a small blockhouse overlooking the river. Four soldiers, teenagers in uniform, were searching them.

‘Welcome back, friends,’ said the gentler one. ‘Are you hungry?’

‘Volodya, keep your bread till we know who they are,’ the harsher soldier said. ‘We’ve called the Organs, and the Special Section’s waiting for you. I’ll take you there now. Keep low.’

‘What about our horses and weapons?’ said Prishchepa.

‘Just worry about keeping your head with the Chekists,’ said the harsh boy. ‘That’s my advice to you.’ He levelled his rifle at them. ‘You go first. Head down and run!’ They crouched down and ran to the next stronghold and then on to the next. Finally they reached a larger bunker dug into the side of the hill. Outside the bunker there was an officer waiting for them with four of his men, Chekists from the Special Section, all wielding Papashas. ‘You’re back,’ said Senior Lieutenant Mogilchuk.

‘Oh thank God, you know us! You know who we are!’ cried Benya. He had once been interrogated by Mogilchuk, but now the sight of him was as reassuring as that of a parent claiming a lost child.

The Cossacks hugged each other. ‘We made it, brothers,’ they said. Prishchepa was weeping.

‘Enough now, men!’ said Mogilchuk. ‘Yes, I know who you are, Shtrafniki. We didn’t think we’d see you Dead Ones again. We don’t know where you’ve been. We have to check you out. How long have you been out of sight? A week? More than enough time to become German agents.’ He gestured towards a nearby cottage. ‘You’re under arrest. Take a seat in there,’ he said. ‘We’ll question you separately. Answer our questions frankly and all will be well. And don’t even think about lying. Lie and it will be worse for you, understand? The Camps will be the least of it. Proceed!’

It was not a warm welcome but it was what they’d expected, Benya told himself.

Mogilchuk took him into a small room. ‘Let’s start with names and units and then we’ll find out if you’re collaborators and traitors. Shtrafniki, eh? We’ve hardly had any of you Smertniki back. All dead, we thought.’ He wrote some notes, which he handed to an assistant. ‘A single hole in your stories and you’ll all be shorter by a head!’

‘Permission to speak, senior lieutenant?’ Benya said. Mogilchuk nodded. ‘I have here intelligence materials taken from a traitor we assassinated, as stated in the orders of our original mission. I believe these top-secret maps need to be seen urgently by the general at once. They were stolen and handed over to the Germans by this traitor. We also took part in the assassination of the traitor Mandryka five days ago. We hope that these will earn us our redemption.’

‘Give me these materials,’ said Mogilchuk.

‘I wish it to be stated in my notes that these were handed to you by the Shtrafniki Golden, Churelko, Prishchepa and Garanzha.’

‘Don’t get above yourself, prisoner,’ replied Mogilchuk. ‘I’ll decide what goes into your service record. Hand over these papers or I’ll beat them out of you.’

Twenty minutes later, a more senior Chekist with a squint, a Colonel Spassky, was perusing the maps and the notebook, and listening to Benya’s story. He seemed more impressed. ‘All right.’ He nodded, sighing loudly, clicking his tongue. ‘I think you’ve done well. We need to check up on you but your part in the Mandryka operation is confirmed by Comrade Elmor. We’ve already reported this incident to our superiors.’

Benya was returned to his small room, before being called back again for a third time to see an army general named Chernyshev who received him with the divisional commissar and Spassky.

‘Well, Shtrafnik,’ said Spassky briskly but with a kind blink of his eye, ‘you might just have earned your redemption. We know you’ve been through a lot. Good work. We’re just waiting to hear from our superiors. There’s a general based in Stalingrad who knows about the traitors Mandryka and Kapto and it happens he’s in this sector. He’s coming across to sign off on you.’ He called in Mogilchuk: ‘Their stories check out. I think they’re clean.’

General Chernyshev stood up and shook Benya’s hand. ‘I would be happy to recommend them for redemption. Draw up the documents, comrades, and I’ll sign it. Give them a proper meal, a hundred grammes of vodka and a wash. And for God’s sake, get the lice off them!’

Benya was so relieved and overjoyed he could hardly speak. Smiling to himself, he followed Mogilchuk back to the cottage where he found the others. After bolting down kasha and black bread and goat’s cheese, and even some fresh tomatoes, as much as they could, and a hundred grammes of vodka, they looked at one another, feeling human.

‘Will we be signed off as Shtrafniki so we can join a regular unit?’ asked Prishchepa.

‘I think so,’ said Benya. They had said it: Happy to recommend them for redemption. ‘Yes, yes, we will.’

There were mattresses on the floor, and Garanzha and Panka were both fast asleep. Benya lay down and savoured the way sleep was creeping up on him. They had been through a great deal, and now it was over, all over.

VI

Feeling sick, Svetlana picked up the wad of papers that her father had thrown down.

‘You see what these are? They’re telephone transcripts of your conversations with your so-called lover!’ Stalin grabbed the papers out of her hands and started to read, his hands actually shaking: ‘“Svetlana Stalina: Hello, Lion, I long to kiss you, I can smell you, I can feel your lips on me, Lev, and I want more…” How can you say such things? You disgust me,’ he shouted. ‘“Shapiro: Darling Lioness, is it you? I can only just hear your voice. I can feel you in my arms. We’re going to meet again in that apartment. I am not going to waste time just talking, I am going to kiss your hair and your sweet freckles and hold your hand and…”’

Stalin threw down the papers again as Svetlana started to sob.

‘Do you recognize these words? Lioness? What is this? Don’t you know who you are? Filth! Where did you learn such things? Oh, I know! From your idiotic brother! He’s spending a week in the guardhouse. Now give me all his letters. Hand them over! No doubt you have them hidden away somewhere in here. Your Shapiro’s not even a writer. He’s a hack! He’s not what you think he is, I can tell you that! We’re checking him out.’

‘But I love him,’ cried Svetlana.

‘Love!? LOVE?’ yelled Stalin, spitting the word with hatred.

Svetlana tilted her chin at him defiantly. ‘Yes. Love! I love him!’

Stalin’s lips turned white and he slapped her twice across the face. He spun around to the nanny. ‘Just think how low she’s sunk. Don’t you think I’ve got enough to worry about? There’s a war going on – oh yes, we’re fighting for our existence, and she’s busy fucking!’

‘No, no, no, it’s not like that!’ the nanny tried to explain, wringing her hands.

‘It’s not?’ said Stalin, sounding slightly calmer. He turned back to his daughter. ‘You fool! Don’t you know who Lev Shapiro is? He’s forty years old and he’s got women all around him, and he’s fucking all of them. You’re nothing to him. Take a look at yourself! You’re plain as a plank! Who’d want you?’

VII

‘Get up, Golden!’ Mogilchuk was back. The Cossacks stirred from their mattresses.

‘Do we come?’ asked Garanzha.

‘You wait here, Cossack,’ said Mogilchuk. ‘Golden, you come with me. Look at you! A week’s beard and food all over you. First wash your face.’

Benya did as he was told; then he walked with Mogilchuk back to the command post.

‘You’re lucky,’ Mogilchuk continued. ‘General Petrov is senior enough to sign off on your entire case for all four of you.’

Benya swallowed hard, experiencing the panic of happiness. Could he really be safe? Fabiana came to him suddenly, quite real, right there. He prayed she was alive and safe. He owed her so much, and now she was a secret, so deep, so incriminating, that he warned himself never to think of her – until he was clear. He had slept with the enemy; no one must ever know.

He was shown into an empty room and sat at a table and rested his face in his hands. Happy to recommend them for redemption. Happy to recommend them for redemption. These joyful words were echoing in his ears.

‘General Petrov!’ said Mogilchuk, saluting.

Benya stood up, his heart beating. He had survived Kolyma and the Shtrafbat and seven days behind enemy lines. Now he would be rewarded.

‘Remember me, Benya Golden?’

He’d recognize that voice anywhere, the bulk and the laminated skin like glossy chocolate, and the sausagey fingers aglint with rings, all enveloped in his eau de cologne that was based on cloves. This was no front-line general, no ‘Petrov’ either; ‘General Petrov’ was Bogdan ‘the Bull’ Kobylov, Deputy People’s Commissar for the Interior and Commissar-General of State Security (Second Degree), who had interrogated him once in Lubianka Prison three years earlier. You don’t forget anyone you meet in hell, and a man never forgets his torturer: it is an intimate relationship.

‘A lot can happen in three years, eh, Golden?’ said Kobylov as soon as they were alone. ‘I remember you well.’

‘Thank you,’ said Benya, not knowing what to say.

‘I don’t often get thanked by the men I beat with my truncheons, but that’s kind of you,’ Kobylov boomed jovially and mellifluously. ‘But time is short so let’s get down to business.’

Benya prayed that Kobylov would sign off on the redemptions. He had the power; he was Beria’s special henchman. When Beria had been summoned to Moscow in 1938, he’d brought his own men from Georgia, led by Kobylov.

‘I’ve examined your materials,’ said Kobylov in his clotted accent. ‘I’m impressed that you have recovered these top-secret documents and even more astonished that you personally claim to have liquidated the traitor Kapto.’

‘We, my fellow Shtrafniki and I, also played a key role in the liquidation of the traitor Mandryka,’ Benya pointed out.

‘A key role? Don’t over-egg the pudding, Golden. But I am only concerned with Kapto. Let me ask, firstly, what time precisely did you shoot Kapto and take these documents?’

Benya blinked. He wasn’t at all sure.

‘Think, Golden.’

‘Maybe… ten a.m.’

Kobylov looked at his watch: it was now 5 p.m.

‘Why are you asking—’

‘Don’t rile me today, Golden. Unless you want a smack? I thought not. How long did it take you to ride from there to our front line here?’

Benya tried to think: ‘Not long. We came slowly. We didn’t know where our lines were. Maybe a couple of hours.’

‘Did you speak to Kapto before you shot him?’

‘No.’

‘You just killed him?’

‘Yes.’

‘Where did you pick up such ruthlessness? From the brigands in the Camps? From Jaba? You didn’t know how to kill a fly when we last met. You could join us in the Cheka!’ A joke. Kobylov switched off the smile. ‘The materials were to be collected by officers of the Intelligence Section of the German Sixth Army. Did you know that?’

‘Yes.’

‘How?’

‘Kapto was accompanied by two officers.’

‘Ah yes, you were efficient enough to bring their papers. Captain von Manteuffel and Lieutenant Kreutzer. You killed them too, right?’

‘Yes, the Cossack Garanzha killed them.’

‘Very good, Golden. Did either of them speak before they were killed?’

‘I wasn’t there. I was with Kapto…’

‘Do you have any idea who’s coming to collect them? From the Sixth Army?’

Now Benya was worried. Where were all these questions going? He thought quickly. ‘Could it be Schwarzer? No, Schwerin? That’s it.’

‘Colonel Gerhard von Schwerin. Very good. When was Schwerin due to collect the maps and Kapto? Think hard, Golden. Did any of them say anything?’

‘No, I don’t think so. Hang on, yes, whilst Prishchepa was stealing the horse, the German captain called out that Schwerin would come… sometime later – perhaps in the night.’

Kobylov gave him his hairdresser’s smile and he sat back, lit a Belomorkanal cigarette and gave it to Benya before lighting his own. Benya watched the Bull inhale his slowly, closing his eyes under black eyebrows, thick as grubs, and blowing the blue smoke into Benya’s face. A long silence. Then suddenly he banged his fist on the table. Benya jumped.

‘You have fucked up an intelligence operation sanctioned at the highest fucking level by the Instantsiya. Yes, the Instantsiya! The highest! You’re not in line for redemption, Prisoner Golden. Your recruitment into the Shtrafbat was against regulations. We’re investigating this and if you survive this conversation, you’ll be returned to the gold mines of Madyak-7.’

Benya felt cold suddenly. Cold and sick. ‘Oh God,’ he groaned.

‘But you won’t even get that far. Your death penalty is hereby reinstated owing to your treasonable actions on the Don steppe. Prepare yourself, Prisoner Golden, for the Eight Grammes, you and your three donkey-fucking villagers!’

Benya bent double, sure he was going to vomit. How could this have happened? He was going to die!

But Kobylov was still speaking. ‘Wait! Pinch yourself! You’re still alive and I’m still talking to you. What does that signify?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t understand.’ Benya was shivering, red specks whirling behind his eyes.

Kobylov spoke very quietly now: ‘Every word I tell you is secret, you understand. You were not meant to kill Kapto. He was one of our agents, trained for months for this task. You were not meant to reclaim the maps. They are the creation of our counter-intelligence services.’

‘But Kapto was a traitor,’ Benya protested. ‘He was in the Camps with me. He looked after me but I learned later he was an invert. There was a little girl…’

‘A child? No surprise there. He was in the Gulags for child rape and murder.’

‘But he was a paediatrician…’

‘A doctor?’ Kobylov grinned. ‘No, no, he was never a doctor. He studied to be a vet, but he didn’t even qualify to treat dogs. The doctoring was all lies. But he had connections to Mandryka and nationalist White elements which made him perfect.’

‘Perfect? You used scum like that to work for you?’

‘Scum like Kapto? Yes, and scum like you too, Golden. He was ours. Ours! And you wiped him out! I’ve been down here for ten days waiting for news of this and then you turn up thinking you’ve done us a favour and we’re going to pat you on the head. Do you understand, prisoner?’

‘I am beginning to…’ Now Benya thought about it, what were the chances of Kapto turning up with his maps in the same sector as Mandryka? It was not a coincidence. Perhaps the entire Shtrafbat charge had been devised just to get him there; eight hundred Shtrafniki sacrificed for this mission. And he had ruined it. ‘Oh God!’ he groaned again.

‘Do you know what Lavrenti Pavlovich said? He said: “If you find the man who fucked up this operation, beat him to a pulp until his eyes pop from his head. Punch him so hard he swallows his own teeth.”’

Benya was shaking.

Kobylov paused. ‘But here’s the thing. It’s now five oh five p.m. You left Kapto and Manteuffel dead at around ten thirty. Schwerin is not expected until, shall we say, around midnight. Do you see what I am getting at?’

‘I am not sure I do.’

‘You and your horse-riding clods. Don’t you remember, Golden, who you are?’

‘I’m a writer, that’s all. And we fought the Fascists, we did our best, but I’m no soldier. Just a writer…’

‘A writer? No, no, prisoner. You are a convicted terrorist and British–Japanese spy, found guilty of the gravest and most shameful crimes, including planning to murder Comrade Stalin and our leaders, in conspiracy with your mistress, the spy Sashenka. Yes, I remember her all right! Quite a beauty.’

Is she alive? wondered Benya.

‘You are a terrorist sentenced to death, and you already have Eight Grammes lodged in your head. It’s just unfired. You have helped our enemies. If you resist me in any way, you and your Cossacks will be nothing more than smears on a wall within a few minutes. I’ll do it myself’ – and Kobylov slapped his pistol on to the plywood table like a gambler throwing down his money.

Benya flinched.

‘Ah yes,’ said Kobylov. ‘But there’s another way. Do you want to hear it?’

Benya tried to speak.

‘Do you know what we believe in? Watch me say it. Re-demp-tion, Golden, re-demp-tion! Do you know what that means for you?’

Benya shook his head.

‘If you correct your mistake, you may be redeemed. Not just sent back to the Camps but truly redeemed! I can’t promise anything for your donkey-humping bumpkins. They need to be checked out. But for you, that’s a promise! Golden?’

‘You want me to…’ Benya was overcome by a new panic. ‘I can’t go back. I can’t! I will die out there.’ He was shivering, beyond tears. ‘You don’t know what we saw out there!’

Kobylov glanced at his watch again, bejewelled fingers drumming. Then he lost patience and slapped Benya across the face. Benya saw a rain of red stars behind his eyes, and his face was burning. He touched his lip. It had a pulse of its own, it was ballooning, and there was blood on his fingertips.

‘Pull yourself together, Golden, and stop pitying yourself,’ Kobylov roared. ‘We’re in a desperate war. The Motherland is in peril and our great Soviet State is in jeopardy. Don’t you know the Germans are killing the Jews? Golden, listen to me. It’s just a few hours more and when you return, you will be redeemed.’

‘I’ll never return… I’m not sure I can do this. I mean I want to…’

‘You have every chance of succeeding and you’ll be helped by your Cossack pals. You’ll have new guns and ammo; fresh horses. Do this and you will return to normal life, to your cafés, your bookshops, your girls, all those girls who love writers – do you remember the old life, Golden? Good. Now, what do I want you to do?’

‘You want me to go back and replace the maps?’

Kobylov flashed his dazzling teeth. ‘You’ve got it! Get those three sheepfuckers. Mogilchuk rides with you. You leave in fifteen minutes.’

‘One thing.’

‘Speak.’

‘I want my horse, Silver Socks.’

‘Is that all? Done. Your nag awaits!’

VIII

‘Getting out was easy,’ said Panka when they reached the office of the Sergei Kirov Collective Farm 23 some hours later. ‘It’s getting back that will be difficult.’ Behind them the sun was sinking over the Don, the light sticky.

Just as they had done that morning, they dismounted and tied up the horses and lay in the grass and watched. The Germans’ horses were still where they’d been tied up. Around them, they could hear the cawing of crows; and a vulture on a branch like a priest in his cowl.

‘No one’s there,’ said Panka. ‘Over to you, Benya.’

‘Go on, Granpa,’ said Prishchepa.

‘Do your duty and we can get back,’ said Spider.

A pause. ‘Garanzha, I need you to come up with me,’ said Benya.

‘Afraid of stiffs?’ asked Garanzha.

Benya nodded.

‘Come then,’ said Garanzha, waving his fingers like a magician.

‘Wait,’ said Mogilchuk. ‘I give the orders here.’

‘What are your orders?’ Benya sighed. It was all going to be much more difficult with Mogilchuk watching them.

‘Right, let us proceed!’ ordered Mogilchuk.

They had to humour him. If they made it back, he would decide their destiny.

Garanzha smirked. ‘Good, let us proceed.’

Panka remained on watch, covering the hut with his Papasha as the others approached the door, Mogilchuk creeping up as if playing grandmother’s footsteps. Garanzha winked at them.

As they scaled the steps into the office, Benya tentatively looked round the corner to the couch and Kapto was there, untouched, paler and chalkier as if made of plaster. He already looked deader than he had appeared before. As if he had subsided a little.

‘There’s our friend,’ said Garanzha.

‘Right,’ said Mogilchuk, trying to assume the gravity of command. ‘Shtrafnik Golden, proceed to replace the documents.’

Benya hesitated, still unwilling to touch the body.

‘Get on with it, Golden,’ said Garanzha. ‘He won’t bite. Or maybe he will – ha!’

Benya unstrapped the satchel around his neck and put it on the table, taking out the maps, the notebooks. He opened the maps, laid out the pencils, positioned the notebook open at Manteuffel’s neat notes. Then he took out the ID papers of the dead men.

‘Put them back in their pockets,’ ordered Mogilchuk, wiping his forehead.

Benya moved closer to Kapto’s body. ‘I can’t,’ he said.

‘Mother of God!’ Garanzha took the papers.

‘Make sure you put the right papers in the right pockets,’ said Mogilchuk.

‘Mother of God!’ Garanzha said again. He slipped them into Kapto’s pockets and then, to shock the others, kissed him on the forehead and rolled his eyes like a clown as the body slipped slowly sideways.

‘Done,’ said Benya thankfully.

‘Shtrafnik Garanzha, how dare you fool around with official business!’ said Mogilchuk.

‘Who’s going to believe these maps are real when there are three dead bodies here?’ asked Garanzha, going outside to replace the papers in the pockets of the two Germans.

‘Don’t ask, Spider, don’t think,’ said Benya. ‘We’re just screws in the big machine. They must have thought of that…’

‘Shtrafnik Garanzha, this is your second and last warning!’ blathered Mogilchuk from behind them. ‘You are prohibited from speculating on this top-secret mission. And, Shtrafnik Golden, that applies to you too.’

‘Are we finished here, senior lieutenant?’ asked Panka. ‘The shooting has increased over at the Don and I really think we should try to get home…’

‘Yes, yes, let us proceed, Sergeant Churelko.’

‘Let us proceed up my arse,’ leered Spider Garanzha to Prishchepa behind Mogilchuk’s back. Prishchepa grinned.

The sun was almost gone now but the sky was cloudy for the first time Benya could recall. The air wafting over the Don was burning and dusty. Ahead of them, the artillery was thundering. Benya was relieved. Tiredness was making his vision blur and he swayed in the saddle. Twice, Prishchepa nudged him. ‘Wake up, Granpa.’ But he drifted off again and then he froze.

The men around him in the greyness were no longer Garanzha and Prishchepa but other horsemen, one or two, then more, phalanxes of them, ghostly squadrons in the grainy red twilight. The Italian cavalry were moving up to the front line. Benya could hear swear words in Italian and the sounds of hundreds of horses on the move, snaffles clinking, the creak of leather. Men whispered to their horses, and all around Benya was the smell of horse shit. Silver Socks nuzzled an Italian horse, and Benya caught his right spur on an Italian spur and he heard the clacketing of the steel. His body stiffened and poured sweat as he looked straight ahead. A single word and it would all be over but he kept riding through them, Socks making her way towards the horses she knew who were standing, waiting under the trees ahead.

‘Thank God!’ said Panka.

‘Thank Silver Socks!’ They turned silently and glanced back. The air around them was the colour of good coffee, the sky a gaudy, blood-spattered crimson with new terraces of backlit clouds through which shone stairways of sun-gold, the Day of Creation one minute, Apocalypse the next. The countryside itself was alive with the grit of a thousand hooves, the chink of spurs; and on another, aural level, the gunning of engines, tanks on the move, the crump of howitzers.

Panka raised his hands: Don’t move; they can’t see us here; wait. Then he pointed. On the hill a few hundred yards behind, illuminated by one of the day’s last sunbeams, they could see the Italian command in a heartbreakingly beautiful square of golden light. A few horses stood towards the front, commanders watching their squadrons coming up. Benya took Panka’s binoculars, knowing what he would see: and there he was, the hunched shoulders, and that way of leaning in the saddle like a fearsome but half-collapsed castle. It was Malamore, and behind, one hand on Violante’s mane, right there where he knew she would be, was Fabiana.

IX

Svetlana climbed the steps to her Kremlin apartment fearfully. At least her father would be in his office, she told herself. It was late evening, and he’d still be working in the Little Corner. But she halted at the top of the steps. Four uniformed Chekists – she knew their names of course – stood outside with their Papashas on their arms.

‘It’s going to be OK, Svetlana Josefovna,’ General Vlasik whispered, breath fishy and spicy. Unmistakably ukha soup.

‘How long has he been here, Uncle Kolya?’

‘All day. He hasn’t even been to the Little Corner yet.’

‘All day? Is he still furious, Uncle Kolya?’

‘A little, yes, but it will pass. Daughters fall in love, fathers are angry! It’s the order of things. But, Sveta, you’ve been a bad girl! If it was my daughter, well, I’d give her more than a slap… He’s a Georgian and Georgian fathers reach for the shotgun even before Russian ones. And he’s under unspeakable pressure. Don’t make it worse, Sveta. Be calm. Go in.’ And he took her by the shoulders and guided her through the front door.

Inside the sound of papers being torn, the smell of pipe smoke. In the sitting room stood her father ripping up Shapiro’s love letters while Svetlana’s nanny watched miserably.

Stalin looked up at her. ‘Calls himself a writer, does he? I found his letters. I’ve read them.’ He was speaking calmly, tearing Lev’s letters into little pieces and sprinkling them around the table, barely looking at her. ‘There’s the war on. Every family has lost someone. Have you any idea what I am going through? In the south? And this hack is sending messages to a schoolgirl in his newspaper reports! Oh, that playboy played you all right, didn’t he? You fell for it, you fool! What kind of writing is this? It’s repulsive claptrap. And what does he want you for, did you ask yourself that? Only one reason. To get close to me. Yes, to worm his way to me! And if you wanted a filthy writer, couldn’t you have chosen a proper Russian? This one’s a Jew. Out of all the filth in Moscow, and the scum around Vasily, you had to choose a Jew. Yes, a Jew!’

With this, Stalin walked out of the room, leaving Svetlana standing there looking at the shreds of her love letters from the Lion all over the carpet.

The moment he was gone, she threw herself into the arms of her nanny, who kissed her hair.

‘There there, bright one, it’s going to be OK,’ said her nanny.

‘Is it over now?’ Svetlana sobbed.

‘I think so.’

‘Will he… will he punish Lev?’

‘Of course he won’t,’ answered her nanny. ‘Your father would never do such a thing. But, Svetlana Josefovna?’

‘Yes?’

‘Promise me you will never contact him again. You can’t. It’s over. Your father is calmer because I’ve promised him that. Promise me!’

‘Of course! I promise,’ said Svetlana through her tears. ‘Never again!’

X

Panka tapped Benya on the shoulder and they rode on towards the Don. Another field and they looked back again. Malamore was still on his hill with Fabiana behind him.

A bolt of pain coursed through Benya as he thought about Malamore and Fabiana together. In the shrouding darkness, the countryside, the grasses, the trees, the sibilant wheatfields all seemed alive with men and machines. By now they were close to the river, and Benya could see the muzzle flashes of big guns and the tracers of small ones zinging through the dusk as the Germans, Italians, Romanians and Hungarians threw their forces against the last, beleaguered Russian positions on the west bank of the Don. In front of them, the Russians were lobbing shells over the river, each one sending waves of vibrations pulsating through them. Flashes lit up hillsides, and explosions rendered cottages and vehicles and running men as light as day before darkness washed back over them. How would they ever get back now? Benya thought.

A shell whistled right over them. Panka turned back – and so did Benya – and suddenly they were all looking at the Italian group on the hill as the shell hit its mark. In a halo of orange brilliance, a doll-like figure was tossed in the air, and then nothing, nothing but horses running, dead animals scattered and people on fire. Garanzha and Prishchepa were cheering, and Mogilchuk was staring wide-eyed at the scene. There was no sign of Fabiana.

Benya knew she was gone. In that moment, he felt a little piece of him wither and die. They had loved each other ‘somehow forever’ but his ‘somehow forever’ never once envisaged that it would be she who was gone. He had always assumed it would be he. He saw her quite clearly at her most beautiful, her eyes honey-coloured in the sunlight and burning with indignation, her chin raised and hands open – until her fury was breaking into the widest laugh, and she was raising her eyes to him, and he was kissing those soft lips with the slight twist, smelling her amber skin, seeing her dark hair unbraided and flowing.

Now he stared at the hillside, almost reclaimed by darkness except for small fires burning on the grass where Fabiana had been just a few minutes earlier, and the strange thing was he was glassed off, feeling and hearing nothing, nothing at all. She was no longer amongst the living and he was utterly blank.

Panka grabbed him by the collar, telling him to ride on – now was their moment. Benya didn’t care what happened now. That was his last investment in the world and he was nearly fearless, careless, heedless. Panka was explaining what lay ahead to Mogilchuk, who managed, even now that things were dire, to rustle up a last reserve of pomposity. ‘Let us proceed, sergeant.’

They couldn’t get back along the beach, Panka was saying, and German armour was crushing the last Russian positions on the bend. The stronghold they had been in that morning had been abandoned, and the advance of the Italian cavalry could only mean a charge against Russian lines was imminent. What was left? There was only one course of action.

‘We must embrace our darling mother,’ said Panka, spurring Almaz forward.

‘What’s he talking about?’ asked Mogilchuk.

‘Follow me,’ said Panka. Up the bluffs they galloped and down the chalky escarpment of the high bank, down a thin snaking path that led to the River Don. Here they could see the battle, a multi-faceted panorama across the mirror-like expanse of the great river, reflected in the water and in the sky above it, as were the muzzle flashes of the Russian guns fired from the other bank. Suddenly the sky went dark, and now the clouds were right above them, rolling over the riverbanks, and they too were jet black. It was, Benya thought, as if they were riding inside a black drum.

‘Perfect timing,’ said Panka as forks of lightning hit the water. ‘A Don fury.’

The horses were stamping and pacing and snorting. ‘I hate the rain, I hate the rain,’ said Garanzha, whipping his rearing horse. Panka rode down to the water, Benya following as foamy waves lapped Silver Socks’s hooves.

‘What now?’ shouted Mogilchuk.

Prishchepa threw his head back and started to sing, ‘I fell in love on the night of a Don storm…’ A red wall of fire illuminated the bank for a moment as a fuel tank exploded; then glimmers of orange flickered behind the clouds as the rain started, dense pails of rain, slanting in to burn and lash their faces and necks, blinding them. Benya was soaked instantly. The world was ending, and he was so tired that he might as well slip off his horse and die right here. But he was brought to by a sting of pain: Panka’s whip on his hand.

‘Come on, Granpa! This storm is a fierce bitch and every Cossack knows the bitches are fiercest on the Don. It’s our chance. We cross the Don here!’ shouted Panka over the deafening rain, lightning, guns. ‘Ride right in, look neither right nor left. Tighten your reins and say your prayers!’

‘But the horses…’ cried Mogilchuk, trying to hold the reins.

‘Reins tight! They’ll be fine, dear boy,’ replied Panka.

‘I can’t swim,’ said Mogilchuk.

‘This is the Don,’ Panka shouted. ‘The sun shines yonder on the far bank!’ And he spurred Almaz straight into the river. A shell landed ahead of them, and Almaz balked but Panka whipped him on.

Benya knew he was going to die in the waters. He and Mogilchuk peered at one another, petrified, wiping their eyes, fellow Muscovites now, townies, sharing the same fear.

‘I can’t!’ cried Mogilchuk.

‘Me neither!’

But Speedy Prishchepa had galloped in with an escort of foamy spray, one hand raised as if he was riding a bronco in some Western rodeo, and he was singing right into the storm.

Benya leaned over Silver Socks’s neck, throwing his arms around her, burying his face in her mane, talking to her and Fabiana all in a seamless stream of love and fear and fury. Socks reared up again and again, trying to avoid the water, but she went deeper with each leap. Spider Garanzha leaned over and whipped her so hard that she bled and she bucked into the frothing water, now up to her knees and then her shoulders.

An explosion rocked them forwards, and Silver Socks stepped deeper into the river. By now Benya’s boots, and then his britches were in the water, its coldness soaking up his legs. Prishchepa was ahead, the water around his waist and then his chest as his horse started to swim, her head thrashing, her eyes frantic. Mogilchuk was beside him, shaking with fear.

Benya pivoted and saw a riderless horse, so he turned Socks around, riding back up the bank. Spider Garanzha was on the ground and Benya jumped down beside him. Spider looked up at him with those surprisingly goo-goo eyes first pleadingly then defiantly, his bulging face mushroomed with sweat and pale as paper. Benya saw his belly was open, and a mass of blue and red guts lay smoking, jerking and stirring on the stones of the beach. He raised his eyes to Spider’s, eye to eye as if quite alone, two wolves on a wide steppe. He knew that if Spider had ridden straight in with Prishchepa, leaving him and Mogilchuk to die on the bank, he’d be halfway across now, and living. Poor Spider, Benya thought, he must be cursing his one kindness: staying behind to whip them in, a Zhid and a secret police bastard!

Benya pulled the saddle off Spider’s horse and put the shabraque under his head. Garanzha gave him his hand, squeezing it like a child. He peered up at Benya and his eyes – one minute they looked back at him and the next they didn’t. That was all it was, a slither of a second and Garanzha seemed part of the bank, of the mud, the hulk of an old wreck half sunk in the sand.

Benya took a breath, remounted Silver Socks and spurred her forwards, whipping her once with Garanzha’s quirt so that she bucked and reared right into the water, splashing his face, and then she was up to her girth again, higher, as the black water enveloped him amid the sheeting rain that was so thick it seemed as if the river itself was raining upwards into the clouds. Socks was in the river up to her point of shoulder, her withers and croup, and he was leaning forward, holding her mane, and then she was swimming, her head high, her legs pumping, pumping under the water, thick veins pulsating in her neck.

‘Go on, Silver Socks, go on, good girl…’ Benya was saying close to her ears. Something heavy touched him and he flinched. Socks was thrashing beneath him, and he was gulping water, about to flounder – was it a snake, a crocodile? Then he saw the arm and the blue face of a Russian soldier floating downriver, swollen like an overstuffed sofa. They were in the middle of the Don, the banks as far behind as ahead, and a shell flashed whining over their heads, the banks whorling and erupting and churning in yellow and orange. Machine-gun fire raked the water, and a dancing line of serpentine splashes spanged around him again and again.

‘You fools, we’re Russians!’ Benya shouted but no one could hear him; he couldn’t hear himself. Then Socks’s hooves found the solid riverbank, the water washed off them with a swish, and they were out of the water on the stones of the Don beach. Alone. Machine-gun fire chugged across the stones, so close he felt it punch him. Benya leaned forwards and hugged Silver Socks. Panka and Prishchepa were calling him up the bank. Silver Socks fell to her knees suddenly, Benya collapsing beside her.

It was pitch dark now, almost midnight, and Socks was holding her head up high, rocking back and forth, and Benya was beside her on the stones of the riverbank, stroking her neck, her mane, her satiny muzzle.

‘Silver Socks, how I love you, darling friend, darling friend,’ he sobbed. ‘Thank you for all you’ve done for me, for saving me a thousand times. No man ever had a better friend than you and I didn’t think… I just didn’t think…’ He remembered the glow of her four silver legs at the stud farm, and the starflash on her face. ‘You chose well with that one, brother,’ Panka had said. ‘Tend her like a wife. Respect her like a mother. Feed her like a daughter.’ But she’d been more than all those things to him. He remembered the charge against the Italians, the way she’d watched as he made love to Fabiana… Then her head was down, and a shudder ran through her, and Prishchepa and Panka were pulling him up the bank until all three were lying at the top, panting, their horses standing nearby.

‘Mogilchuk?’ asked Benya.

‘Down the bank somewhere. He’s OK. I saw him ride out.’

‘Silver Socks?’

‘Gone, my brother,’ replied Panka.

‘Shot?’

Panka nodded. ‘One in the neck. She was quite a horse. Not many born like that. Even on the Don.’ He handed Benya the flask. They stood up, swaying. Benya was half mad with grief, scorched and desolate, and he felt his midriff and saw the blood on his finger.

‘I’m hit,’ he said, remembering the punch.

Hands gripped him.

‘Hold it,’ said Prishchepa, his eyes utterly cold, his dagger in his other hand. ‘Mogilchuk’s coming for us now. We’ll be checked out by the Cheka. You need to vouch for us. Say that this week we were with you every minute. Or they’ll shoot us. Swear it, Zhid, or I’ll cut your throat now and we’ll say what we need to say about you. Say it right now!’

Benya shook him off. He didn’t care where they’d been for those days; he guessed they had been somewhere, guessed they had played some double game out there with the Nazis, but right now he was too tired and angry to be spoken to like this. He’d lost Fabiana; Silver Socks had died in his arms; now these goons were threatening him, and they had no idea that he was way past rock bottom. ‘I can do better than that… Drop the knife. Step back!’ he said.

‘We know where you were too,’ said Prishchepa. ‘You weren’t alone. We know things too…’

Benya sank to his knees, weakness creeping up on him in flickerings of dizziness, but a hopeless and doom-laden fury made him fearless. How dare they threaten him with Fabiana? He pointed his pistol at them, keeping them covered, feeling the power within him. Beside Prishchepa, Panka mouthed his prayers, touching his necklace, serene, always himself: ‘I’m not going anywhere,’ he said.

Prishchepa switched on his happy-go-lucky bandit’s charm. ‘Wait a moment, dear brother Golden—’

Suddenly Benya could not tolerate any more.

‘I’m not your brother,’ he said, raising his pistol and firing twice.