Red Moth

Having left behind the town

Having left behind the town of Chertova, the truck carrying Pekkala, Lieutenant Churikova and Rifleman Stefanov passed along a straight road bordered by tall trees with dappled bark. Beyond the trees, fields of ripened barley, left to rot, spread out on either side.

With the front line now only a few kilometres away, heavy gunfire could be heard over the rumble of the truck’s engine. In spite of the canvas roofing, dust from the road filled the air in the back of the truck. Through tears in the cloth, bolts of sunlight stabbed into the darkness.

As they jostled over the uneven road surface, Pekkala explained their mission to Stefanov.

The son of the gardener of Tsarskoye Selo listened in silence, his eyes wide with amazement. ‘Under the wallpaper?’ he stammered.

‘That is correct,’ Pekkala replied, ‘and if we are successful, that is where it will remain.’

The ZiS-5 motored over gently rising ground towards some woods on the horizon. They had just reached the crest of a thickly wooded ridge when a Russian soldier stepped out on to the road. He held up a rifle in one hand and crossed his other arm over the rifle to make an X, indicating that they were to stop.

The truck skidded to a halt.

Now Stefanov saw movement. More soldiers, dozens of them, lay on the damp ground, with rain capes pulled over their heads.

The sun was going down, detonating in silent poppy-coloured explosions through clouds on the horizon.

The man in the road lowered his rifle and walked towards them. He had a heavy, dimpled chin and dark brown eyes. A tiny pair of crossed cannons on his faded olive collar tabs marked him as a sergeant of artillery.

The driver pulled his orders from under the chest flap of his raincoat. After brushing off some flecks of mud, he handed his papers to the soldier.

As the sergeant was flipping through them, Pekkala climbed down from the back of the truck and stood on the road.

Filing past him in the opposite direction were a dozen German soldiers. At the front marched an officer, his tunic unbuttoned down to the thick black belt at his waist. Behind him walked two men in long rubberised canvas coats. Half-moon-shaped discs on chains around their shoulders bore the word Feldgendarmerie, indicating that they were members of the military police. The rest, judging from the yellow piping on their collar and shoulder boards, were a squad of reconnaissance troops. All of the soldiers moved with their fingers laced together behind their necks. A few still wore their helmets, sweat-greased leather chinstraps dangling down the sides of their faces. With the exception of the officer, who stared straight ahead as he walked, the rest looked down at the dusty-yellowed boots of the man walking in front.

The prisoners were flanked by two soldiers carrying rifles, which brought back to Pekkala memories of the guards at Lubyanka and the long, silent, dread-filled journeys he had made as a prisoner from his cell to the interrogation room.

The soldiers marched down a dirt track towards a cluster of farm buildings whose whitewashed walls glowed like glacier ice in the twilight. Still with their hands behind their necks, the soldiers were herded into a thatch-roofed barn.

‘Come with me, Inspector,’ ordered the sergeant of artillery.

The two men made their way into the pine woods. Light winked through beads of sap oozing from the green pine cones above their heads. They passed a row of six heavy mortars camouflaged under green netting. The mortar crews sat cross-legged against tree trunks, eating rations of boiled buckwheat and sausage. The odour of machorka tobacco, which smelled to Pekkala like a new pair of shoes, mixed with the sweet dry balsam of the pines.

At the edge of the trees, they came upon a man peering through a pair of large scissor-shaped artillery binoculars which had been set up on a tripod. Vines were woven around the legs to mask the tripod’s shape. The man wore a baggy pea-green smock camouflaged with brown splotches, like drops of vinegar in olive oil. Methodically, he scooped roasted sunflower seeds out of his trouser pocket and squeezed them into his mouth. Fragments of chewed shells littered the ground at his feet.

The sergeant tapped the camouflaged man on the arm. The two of them spoke for a moment. Then the man looked back at Pekkala and, with leather-gloved hands, waved him to approach. He had the look of a Frontovik — a man who had been fighting a long time. It was the eyes that gave away a Frontovik — never still, always glancing nervously from side to side. Over the years, Pekkala had encountered many such men, veterans of the Great War. Unable to settle back into civilian life, they had turned instead to crime. Too often, these men found themselves cornered in the back streets of Moscow and staring down the barrel of a Webley.

The Frontovik took off one leather glove and shook Pekkala’s hand. ‘Leontev,’ he said, ‘Captain. Glavpur.’

From far across the valley came the tearing sound of heavy machine guns and the hollow boom of tanks firing.

‘How close are we to the Catherine Palace?’ asked Pekkala.

Leontev gestured to the binoculars. ‘See for yourself.’

Pekkala set his brow against the greasy Bakelite eyepieces. What he saw startled him. There, in the distance, he could make out the rooftops of Tsarskoye Selo. At the edge of the Alexander Park, he spotted the White Tower and the Children’s Pavilion. Smoke was rising from behind the Pensioners’ Stable.

‘Are any Red Army troops still on the grounds of the estate?’ asked Pekkala.

‘None who are still breathing,’ replied Leontev. ‘The Germans’ main assault force has already moved on from there.’

‘Where are they headed?’

‘Straight for us,’ Leontev told Pekkala. ‘We are expecting an attack just after dark. The Fascists will move along the main road which cuts across this ridge. Once the attack has begun, we will take advantage of the confusion to get you through the lines.’

‘How?’

‘It has all been arranged,’ was all that Leontev would say, as he went back to peering through the binoculars.

A soldier wandered past, carrying a handful of nettles in a black handkerchief. He crouched by a smouldering fire. The cruciform bayonet of his Mosin-Nagant rifle balanced on two forked sticks. Suspended from the bayonet was a battered mess kit filled with boiling water. As the soldier sprinkled in the nettles, their serrated, pale green leaves folded away into steam.

The evening sky turned periwinkle blue as the landscape dissolved into shadows.

‘I can see them now,’ said Leontev.

Peering into the twilight, Pekkala glimpsed the lumbering hulks of tanks as they moved across the floor of the valley, squads of infantry fanned out behind them.

‘It’s time.’ Leontev tapped Pekkala on the arm and the two men made their way down through the trees towards the whitewashed house.

Churikova and Stefanov were already there, waiting in the trampled mud of the farmyard.

Setting the steel-shod toe of his boot against the door, Leontev shoved it open, leaving the dent of hobnails pock-marked on the paint.

The three of them followed him in.

Inside the house, Leontev took down a kerosene lantern from a nail by the door. After lighting it, he trimmed the wick. A warm glow spread around the sparsely furnished room, glancing off the blackened metal buttons of Stefanov’s tunic, each one of them emblazoned with a crossed hammer and sickle.

On the kitchen table, Leontev laid out a map of the Leningrad Sector.

At first, the tangle of roads and towns and thumb-print contours of the land confused Pekkala, but like a person whose eyes were growing used to the dark, familiar names slid into focus — Kolpino. Tosno. Vyrica. Volosov.

‘Here is our position,’ explained Leontev, edging his dirt-smeared thumb along a ridge which cut across the map. ‘Our mortars will fire upon the Fascists as they begin to climb the ridge. There is a small cart path to the north. It’s not on the map, so I don’t believe they are aware of it. If you follow that track, you should reach the Catherine Palace by morning. We will get you some clothes from those prisoners we picked up. Once you are beyond the lines, if anybody asks, you can tell them you’re heading back with the wounded.’

Stefanov thought of the injured Russians he’d seen streaming away from the front — on stretchers, on borrowed bicycles, slumped on the shoulders of their friends — any way they could move, towards dressing stations so crowded that they would have to wait hours before some doctor even looked at them. ‘Comrade Major,’ he pleaded, ‘I barely speak a word of German.’

‘Our intelligence reports that there are also Belgians, Danes, Dutch and Finnish volunteers among the advancing troops. Just pretend that you are one of them.’

‘But I don’t speak their languages either!’

‘Neither do most of the Germans,’ replied Leontev, ‘and do not stay one minute longer than you have to. As soon as you have your prisoner, get back as fast as you can. You will be soldiers returning to the front. No one will get in your way if you are heading towards the fighting. Once you have passed through our lines, dispose of your German uniforms as quickly as you can. Then find yourself some Russian clothes and notify Glavpur. .’

A series of muffled gunshots made them jump.

Leontev pushed back the sleeve of his camouflage smock and squinted at his watch. ‘As soon as the mortars open up, we will send you on your way. Have you had anything to eat?’

‘Not for some time,’ replied Pekkala.

From the pocket of his coat, Leontev produced a handful of dark bread cakes known as sukhavi. He handed them around.

Working their jaws, Pekkala and the others ground the flinty biscuits into paste, leaving a taste like campfire smoke in their mouths.

There was a quiet knocking on the door. Two soldiers walked in, laden down with pieces of German uniform. Boots, belts, shirts. Even underclothes. Behind him came another man, laden with Mauser rifles and two Schmeisser sub-machine guns gathered from the battlefield. After depositing the clothes and the weapons in a heap upon the floor, the soldiers saluted and left.

Then Stefanov watched as three dead Germans were dragged through the open door by their arms into the muddy street. In the darkness, their stripped bodies looked obscenely white. The soldiers pulled the corpses across the street and out into a field of barley. The executed men, their faces branched with blood, vanished into the shifting grain.