Red Sky at Noon

I

An hour out of the village, the dawn sky began to lighten into lilac and then pink, and they saw a dead horse lying on its back, its hooves sticking up towards the sky. ‘Eaten itself to death,’ commented Panka wryly.

A few minutes later, they rode past a dead Russian run over by a tank. The body was shapeless, totally flat, just green fabric and pink flesh woven like a carpet. There was a smell of burning and Benya remembered the smoke of battle the day before. As they rode on, the stench grew stronger, the men grew quieter, three hundred riders, horses’ tails swishing, the bits clonking between teeth, the creak of leather, clink of spurs.

‘If you’re scared, don’t do it,’ Zhurko had said as they moved off. ‘If you do it, don’t be scared!’

And Benya found he was not as scared as he had been before. He was more afraid of capture. Death seemed easier now; it was merely the agony in between that he feared. He rode in his place between Spider Garanzha and Prishchepa, noticing that Dr Kapto had the little girl, all cleaned up now, riding on his horse in front of him. Melishko loped up and down the squadrons, a word here, encouragement there, to make sure the men understood that this was the way they would win their freedom. But the men were muttering. They had heard something back in the village, the poison spread by Mandryka’s traitors, that the war was lost, and that their fellow Cossacks had joined the Germans. ‘Join our brothers!’ a few of the soldiers were whispering.

Panka shook his head when he heard this: ‘Careful, brothers, I saw the German promises last time. Hear me say this,’ he said emphatically. ‘I’m not going anywhere!’

The scouts rode back: ‘Village ahead. Clear,’ they called.

They approached, walking slowly into the village’s only street. Every house in it was a blackened shell, and the barn was still smoking.

Suddenly a voice cried out, ‘Klop, klop!’ as an old-fashioned tarantass, a buggy pulled by an aged horse, trotted right into them. Benya and his comrades raised their guns at the old peasant holding the reins. He wore a Tsarist braided tunic with shoulderboards and a medal on it; an old hunting rifle lay across his knees. Seeing them, the old man jumped down and tried to run but Smiley shot him in the ankle and they brought him back.

Melishko dismounted and looked inside the smoking barn. Inside were the blackened forms of men and women, roasted with their hands raised and white teeth showing through wide-open mouths, wizened as small as children.

He looked back at Prishchepa and Benya, still on horseback in the little street.

‘What happened here?’ Melishko said as the peasant was brought to him. ‘What happened, Cossack?’

Smiley gave the peasant a shove and he groaned, clutching at his ruined ankle. ‘Mandryka’s Schuma police came here,’ he said.

‘Where’s the rest of the village?’

Smiley hit him with his rifle butt and the peasant whimpered, ‘Don’t hurt me again. Don’t hurt me.’

Melishko ordered a half-burnt chair to be brought out so the peasant could sit.

‘Are you working with the traitor Mandryka?’ Melishko asked.

‘No, but we’re doing some spring cleaning for him.’

‘What’s that uniform?’

‘His Majesty’s Ataman Lifeguards Regiment. I served the Tsar in the Great War.’

‘And fought for the Whites against the Communists?’

The peasant nodded.

‘Where’s everyone else?’

The peasant looked side to side as if playing the fool, like a child in a play. ‘Some have joined Mandryka.’

‘Why are you here?’

‘To check the field. To tidy the barn. To see the sights.’

‘What sights? What field?’

‘The sown field. I’m also looking after the guests in the barn.’ The rosy-cheeked old peasant grinned, opening his gaping well of a mouth. Benya noticed just the black stumps of teeth.

Melishko looked over the man’s shoulder at Panka who made a ‘he’s insane’ gesture.

‘Who are the guests?’

‘They were the strangers amongst us. They came from the cities…’

‘And what do you do to them?’

The peasant looked right into Benya’s eyes. ‘You’re one of them,’ he said, pointing at him. ‘That’s one of them! A Christ-killer. Right amongst you!’

Benya felt the primitive impudence of evil, and shivered.

‘Answer me,’ insisted Melishko, still puffing on his cigarette. The smell of burning and of something infinitely more terrible was becoming unbearable and the men tied kerchiefs around their faces.

The peasant licked his lips and opened his mouth in what passed for a smile. ‘We make them welcome,’ he said.

To Benya this mouth was the sinkhole of death.

‘A devil,’ Panka murmured. ‘Possessed by the midsummer moon.’

‘One more thing,’ asked the general. ‘What’s the traitor Mandryka’s next task?’

‘It’s special work. Those strangers are running from the west, Odessa and Kishnev, and seeking sanctuary in the villages. That’s where he picks them up. So we can welcome them in our special way.’ Again the open gape.

Melishko nodded, rubbing his moustache with his hand. ‘So this is Mandryka’s work. See this, Cossacks! Here is our mission. Here is how we win our freedom back!’ He turned and mounted Elephant. ‘We ride on.’

Ganakovich still stood over the peasant.

‘Shall we…?’ said Smiley.

Benya rode on, waiting for the shot, not flinching when it came.

The field outside the village had been ploughed with rags but when they got closer, Benya saw a white hand first, a perfect white hand, and then a bare foot and then a collage of gabardine and linen and then more flesh, a complete face. Silver Socks reared at the sight, snorting, spooked. The rich black earth had been freshly turned but now they were close Benya could see that it scarcely covered the bodies that lay in rows, intertwined, half-naked, indecently twisted. He and the men stared; their horses champed, their ears flattened back, the whites of their eyes showing – and a host of black wings beat the air before the birds returned and hopped closer and closer.

Melishko dismounted again, sighing with the effort, and gestured to Benya to do the same. ‘I was in Spain, like you, and we saw things there. They shot the priests and nuns in the village square. But nothing like this. You must live to witness this, you before all the others,’ he said gruffly.

‘Why me?’

‘You’re our only writer. Who are they? Can’t you see? Look more closely at these people.’ Melishko knelt down and pushed aside the soil. The field seemed to emanate a sugary miasma even though the bodies were so fresh and Benya realized that death smelled of sweet blackberries gone bad. Vultures leaned their crooked necks from the closest boughs and the crows cawed, eyes glittering sharp and yellow as citrines. Benya’s companions had dismounted and were kneeling, brushing aside the earth so they could see the bodies.

Each person had been shot in the back of the head: here was a girl with clear eyes, here a man’s face where a leg should be, here a child as if asleep, all mixed up together with a horrible negligence. Melishko picked up a Soviet identity card, then another. ‘They’re not all from here. Look! They’re all Jews, your people.’

Benya knelt down too, looking at the ID cards and seeing the Jewish names and their home towns: Paltrovich of Nikolaev, Greenbaum of Kherson, Jaffe of Mogilev. They were Jewish refugees, overtaken by the German advance. Frantic suddenly, he threw aside those and picked up more, tossed carelessly around the field. And then he found one – a family from Odessa…

‘My parents lived in Odessa after leaving Galicia,’ he said, his voice cracking. ‘They could be…’

‘Come on, lad,’ said Melishko, hefting him up and steadying him. Benya saw Melishko’s face was exhausted, noticed the dust in the crow’s feet around his eyes. ‘I’ll wager your family are safe somewhere. But wherever they are, the best we can do is meet Mandryka with our sabres drawn.’

Benya wanted to weep as he looked at this field, this Jewish field, sown with Jews, scarcely buried. He’d often wondered – what was life for? For joy – and for this just war. How could he have done anything else but fight these monsters? He felt his own frailty beside these Nazi fanatics who were winning the war, but he could still do his bit. Today. That was what this mission was all about.

He heard shrieking and turned. The little girl on Kapto’s horse was crying and pointing and the doctor was covering her eyes. Maybe this was where her parents were, whence she had escaped out of the earth – or somewhere like this. The Cossacks were crossing themselves. None of them had ever seen anything like this before.

Panka shook his head and rubbed his whiskers. ‘The wolves have gone mad.’

II

When the normal order of life is shattered, thought Benya as he rode on, no one can predict where those fragments will fly, whose life will be spared, whose throat they will cut. There was only one certainty: the old world can never be put together again.

They had been riding since 4 a.m., and Mandryka’s village was right ahead of them. The sky was a brightening lavender with white contrails, Benya noticed, and just a smudge of sun so far; this was going to be another beautiful day. The men were drawn up in two companies: orders were whispered; cigarettes put out.

At one point in the early morning, Benya had fallen asleep in the saddle, and when he awoke he had found himself alone with Silver Socks cropping grass at the roadside. He’d turned and just behind him were two strange horsemen. For a moment, he’d panicked and reached for his PPSh. ‘You want a Daddy?’ Panka had asked, handing over the weapon just after the first charge. My ‘Pe-pe-sh’, the soldiers called it, my Papasha – Daddy! Now he levelled it at the riders, ready to shoot.

Then he saw the fluorescent moons of the little girl’s eyes. She was riding in front of Dr Kapto, his arm around her belly, so she would not fall, his curved and symmetrical face close to her hair. Tonya rode next to him, and perhaps Benya had scared them because Kapto was pointing his Parabellum right back at him.

‘What are you doing? It’s me,’ Benya said. ‘Put down the pistol. Are you lost too?’

‘Easy, now, Golden, easy. Yes, we’re lost,’ said Kapto, not holstering the pistol, just holding it.

‘How is she?’ Benya looked at the child.

‘She’s going to be fine. No amount of care is too much for her. A doctor’s duty doesn’t just end with saving a life, we must nurture, we must tend—’

‘Ah yes: those we heal we must also cherish,’ Benya quoted Kapto’s motto back to him.

Kapto gave a lineless smile above his heart-shaped chin.

‘I fell asleep in the saddle,’ said Benya. ‘Stupid of me. But the unit must be just across this field. Are you coming?’

‘Good luck, friend,’ said Kapto. ‘Ours is another way…’ And he nodded at Benya, and rode on.

Ten minutes later, Benya met up with Prishchepa and took his place. Melishko rode out in front to meet the scouts coming back from reconnaissance, headed by Panka.

‘How many men in the village?’ asked Melishko. Ganakovich and Zhurko were beside him.

‘A few hundred,’ replied Panka, saluting.

‘Mandryka?’

‘He’s there, ruling his men like a Tartar khan.’

‘Are there Germans there too?’

‘We saw special SS task groups,’ Panka said.

‘Why are you alone, sergeant? What happened to the Cossacks I sent with you? Where are Delibash and Grishchuk?’

Panka looked awkward and said nothing.

‘Speak up, sergeant.’

Panka patted his horse.

‘They defected?’

He nodded.

‘Ah. Well, they won’t be the last,’ said Zhurko.

Benya turned in his saddle, looking for Kapto with the queerest feeling in his belly.

‘Where’s the doctor?’ he asked Prishchepa.

‘Don’t you know? He defected with the nurse, Tonya.’

Abruptly Benya understood their encounter. ‘Good luck, friend,’ Kapto had said. Was he mocking him? Tonya’s stare had been contemptuous, he now realized. Benya was bewildered. Simple Cossacks and boneheaded villagers might join the Nazis – but the Baby Doctor, his friend? How could he join the Nazis after seeing the massacre? And what would happen to the child? For some men, war was a liberation that allowed them to become whomsoever they wanted, to play out infernal fantasies and unbridle unspeakable passions, Benya thought. Men without nerves would enjoy short reigns of glory before the world tilted back but quite long enough to destroy so many lives… Yet Kapto had never uttered a word about politics. So who was he really? There was something else. If Kapto and the others had defected to the Nazis, Mandryka would be expecting them…

Ganakovich drew his Nagant and turned to the men: ‘Any traitors will be hunted down and executed! Their families arrested. Ride, motherfuckers, or I shoot…’

‘Not now.’ Melishko put his hand on Ganakovich’s arm, and summoned Panka. ‘Sergeant, do we have any Product Sixty-One?’

‘Yes sir. The usual hundred grammes?’

‘No, distribute it all right away.’ At a nod from Melishko, Panka rode through the ranks, ladling out the vodka in a steel thimble hanging from his belt. Benya downed three of them, feeling the molten lurch as the alcohol kicked in. Then Melishko himself rode down the line on Elephant.

‘Remember,’ he told the men. ‘The war’s not lost. Russia is vast, and Hitler’s a madman if he thinks he can defeat us. Napoleon took Moscow but Tsar Alexander rode his Cossacks all the way to Paris. Yes, to Paris! This offensive is Hitler’s last gamble. You’ve already beaten the odds. We broke through, didn’t we? This is our mission against the men who killed those people – and if we succeed, I will recommend every one of you for redemption, I promise. We give no quarter to traitors, and we ride to kill Mandryka. We’ll make it, bandits. YOU CAN’T GET ME!’

In this scruffy, brusque growl of a man, Benya sensed the noble and fathomless depths of Mother Russia.

‘Bandits!’ Melishko drew his sabre and raised it. ‘Squadrons, forward at the trot! Draw sabres! Forward…’

The Cossacks were standing high in their stirrups; Benya raised his sabre and felt his blood changing, almost frothing in his veins with anger, with exhilaration. For a man who often couldn’t decide whether to order absinthe or cognac, and even sometimes which girl to choose, war granted simplicity: advance, retreat; live, die. Around him was the rhythmic thud of hooves as they changed from trot to lope to canter to gallop. He recited Gorky to himself: ‘Those who are born to crawl cannot fly.’ Now he was flying!

Then all of it was drowned out by something cruder and louder and for a second Benya could not understand what it was – and then he felt the force of it and heard the chugging as the belts worked their way through the heavy machine guns in the nests hidden in the rye of the fields. Next to Benya, Lover-boy Cherkashkin was trying to hold on to his horse’s mane but, as the animal fell, he came out of his saddle, catapulted high into the air and over the rump, his sabre flying, his rifle tangled round his neck, his mouth a perfect ‘O’ of surprise. Men were falling all around him. Shundenko was being dragged by his foot behind his horse. He saw Cut and Run Ivanov riding on but with a chunk taken out of his face. Clinging on to Silver Socks, one foot out of his stirrups, he noticed that many of the horses around him were riderless. Amid the machine-gun fire, Socks reared up and tried to turn and Benya, having lost both his stirrups now, somersaulted right over the horse’s head.

It was a relief to lie there in the sweet rye and imagine that he was about to die and that all this striving and gunfire was almost finished. Weariness like warm water rose within him, a benumbed heaviness. He feared Silver Socks was hurt and wished he could find her but she was gone. He knew he had been hit, and was surprised he wasn’t in more pain as the deep metallic crack of the guns kept raking over him, and blood ran down his forehead into his eyes.

In front of him, he could hear voices in German and Russian talking between bursts of the big guns. Soon the men would come out and walk through the field, mopping up, and these irregulars were notoriously cruel. It was unlikely they would leave anyone alive.

Benya lay back and looked up at the long teal sky, but unlike earlier that morning, the blueness seemed utterly bleak and stark. He passed out, and when he awoke, he was being half pulled, half lifted backwards. The process was agonizingly slow. There was a burst of machine-gun fire, lighter this time, and the man pulling Benya gasped for a second, shook then went on. Soon they were in higher steppe grass beyond this blood harvest, and someone was giving Benya water. He sat up and wiped his face, but he saw they were tending another man right beside him, the man who had saved him, who had dragged him to safety. They were working on him, opening his shirt, but Prishchepa shook his head.

‘He’s gone,’ he said and they laid him down. It was Ganakovich.

‘Him…?’ Benya was confounded: the Politruk who had executed an innocent boy was the same man who had sacrificed his own life to save Benya?

‘Sometimes a crow flies as an eagle,’ said Prishchepa, looking at Benya now.

Benya felt fireworks exploding behind his eyes, silver hammers beating in his temple and he fell sideways.

‘You have a bang on your head, and a cut on your forehead. You’ll be OK in a minute,’ said Zhurko.

‘We have to go right now,’ Spider Garanzha told them. ‘I have horses for all of us and a surprise for you, Golden.’ Spider was holding Socks by the reins. ‘She found us. She’s unscathed. Even her stitches are almost healed.’

Getting to his feet, Benya took Socks’s reins and kissed her neck, burying his face in the mane. Never had he been more relieved to see anyone. Then they heard a voice from out on the field, a voice they all knew.

‘Don’t leave me! Give me some water, for God’s sake!’

‘It’s Melishko.’ Benya would recognize that voice in his dreams.

‘Dear bandits, some water please! Or finish me off! I can’t reach my gun. I don’t want these bastards near me…’

‘We just can’t leave him,’ said Benya. ‘He’s our father-commander!’

‘We help him – we all die,’ Garanzha muttered.

‘He’s right,’ said Zhurko sadly. He too loved Melishko.

‘But we’ve got to help him,’ insisted Benya.

Zhurko rubbed his chin, thinking, then looked towards Panka.

Panka, showing nothing on his face, shook his head.

Zhurko sighed heavily. ‘You’re right. He’d be the first to tell us that.’

Zhurko and Panka crawled forward, and Benya watched Zhurko raise the binoculars in the direction of Melishko’s voice.

‘I see him,’ said Zhurko when they were back. ‘He’s out there. His legs are crushed under Elephant and he’s wounded in the gut. Elephant’s done for too. We’re not going to get him out of there.’

‘Finish me off, if any of you motherfucker bandits are still out there!’ came the voice again across the field. ‘Don’t forget! YOU CAN’T GET ME!’ They smiled a little at this; even Panka.

‘I can do it,’ said Panka after a while. ‘As to a wounded mare, beloved after many seasons.’

‘I’ll do it properly,’ Spider Garanzha said, taking the Simonov sniper rifle. ‘He’s not far away.’

Panka patted his shoulder but could not speak.

‘You set off,’ said Garanzha, ‘and I’ll join you when you’re away. One shot, I promise. And one for Elephant. Two shots, no more. I’ll see you at the’ – he was going to say the barn but no one could go there again – ‘at the millhouse.’

They mounted the horses amongst the high steppe grass and rode back the way they had come. When they reached the mill in the burnt village, they watered the horses in the stream and waited for Spider. In the distance, they had heard one shot, then the second for Elephant. Panka crossed himself and looked away, very still for a moment.

Now in the safety of the mill, Benya lowered his head, then he cleaned his face in the cool stream.

III

It was lunchtime in the Kremlin and Stalin, who had just woken up, was hearing the first reports from the fronts. He had been up until 6 a.m. trying to organize the defence of the Don River, and Russian forces were just hanging on to the western bank. If the Nazis managed to cross the Don, then they would be just sixty miles from Stalingrad, Stalin’s city on the Volga River. Meanwhile, further south, they were rifling towards the oil fields of the Caucasus.

Molotov, sitting stolidly at the table, flanked by an overweight younger comrade, Malenkov, and the rangy and dark-eyed Armenian, Mikoyan, listened to Chief of Staff Vasilevsky’s report.

‘And Operation Pluto?’ Stalin asked.

‘The Shtrafniki charged German positions,’ Vasilevsky said.

‘They were wiped out,’ stated Stalin, his voice entirely neutral.

‘Yes. They were charging heavily fortified German positions. The First Cavalry Shtrafbat has ceased to exist as a unit.’

Stalin broke a cigarette in half, took out the tobacco and stuffed it into the bowl of his Dunhill pipe (a gift from the British). ‘Totally annihilated.’ He lit the pipe, sucking the flame of the match into its bowl. ‘But did the Shtrafniki distract the Germans sufficiently to ensure the success of Operation Pluto?’

‘Operation Pluto failed to drive back the German advance though there was a slight weakening as they now regroup.’

‘So the Shtrafniki did their duty. They died. But they fought. The idea works.’

‘Yes, Comrade Stalin. Shtrafbats are being formed and trained on all fronts. These convicts fight to the last man in the hope of redemption.’

‘Were any redeemed?’

‘No. As far as we know there were few survivors. Now, moving on to Stalingrad itself, Gordov reports the Germans are bombing the city…’

‘I know about that. I was just talking to Satinov by phone.’ Stalin seemed distracted. ‘But the Shtrafniki – that Melishko is a good officer. I remember him from the thirties.’

‘Ah, yes, Comrade Stalin, I hadn’t mentioned the Second Battalion.’

‘Report.’

‘Well, this is a very minor engagement. We have a lot to get through… The Stalingrad, Southern, Don Fronts and the Leningrad Front, not to mention the Central—’

‘Report on Melishko’s Shtrafbat.’

‘They were not totally wiped out. The Germans are deploying Italians in these sectors to free up their resources for the offensives, and the Second Cavalry Shtrafbat, the one under Melishko, faced mixed Italian units of the Alpine Tridentine, Bersaglieri and Blackshirts, and two squadrons actually broke through into the Hitlerite rear.’

Stalin was silent. He tapped the pipe on the desk, relit it, and then sucked flame through once again. The general and the three civilians watched the match flare, the tobacco take light and heard the wheeze as Stalin inhaled. Then he raised his hazel eyes. ‘Where are they now?’

‘We’re not sure.’ Vasilevsky checked his notes. He was accustomed to Stalin taking an interest in small engagements and kept all the reports with him. ‘Ah yes, we believe they drove the Italians out of the village of Little Yablako where they called for backup. They were given no logistical support – but all units are ordered, during their briefings, to destroy the traitor Mandryka and his units if they break through. If they still exist as a unit, they may be pursuing this mission.’

‘Did Melishko survive?’

‘Apparently yes.’

‘If he returns, he is to be reinstated as a general.’

‘I’ll make a note of that.’

‘Did any of Melishko’s bandits win their freedom?’

‘One Shtrafnik was executed by their Special Unit before the entire regiment right before deployment according to Order 227. Another five were shot by the Blocking Unit on the battlefield. But since there was no logistical backup, it was impossible to remove the wounded. We do not know if any earned redemption by the shedding of blood. They were also told if they managed to liquidate traitor Mandryka, they would be redeemed.’

Stalin rested the pipe in the ashtray, lit a cigarette – a sign of intense focus – and smiled for a moment, or at least the muscles of his face creased like an old tiger, and the men in the room smiled grimly back at him. ‘I have a question about Melishko’s bandits. Shall we help them?’

IV

Dr Kapto was sitting under a canopy at the priest’s house in the pretty village of Shepilovka. Beside him was a neat, red-faced man in German feldgrau uniform and boots, and with his head shaven on the sides. The glare of the sun was almost blinding even in the shade.

Kapto had crossed the lines a few hours earlier and been welcomed like the other defectors. ‘Surrender your arms, dismount and lead your horse!’ You could read the fortunes of war in the number of defectors. Nine overnight, the pickets were saying, and more coming, all signs that the Germans were winning. But this one had a child on his saddle and a nurse with him. He was different, obviously educated, a doctor, he said. And he told them he knew their commander from their schooldays. ‘Take me to Mandryka,’ he’d said. They weren’t going to fall for that one. Mandryka was protected. ‘All right,’ said the doctor. ‘Tell Mandryka this: A friend from Briansk has come to visit with Sleepy Tonya. Say that the Soviets will attack in a few hours at first light. Be ready!’

‘Why should we believe you?’

‘Tell him now, fast, or you’ll be sorry.’

So they took the doctor, the nurse and the child to Major Shavykin, and when Shavykin told Mandryka, their commander did a dance: ‘It’s him! I thought he was dead. It’s my best friend from Briansk. The Bolshevik bastards sent him to the Camps. But here he is.’

‘And what about the nurse, and the child?’ asked Shavykin, who had a bullet scar on his face that looked as if a red worm was tunnelling under his cheek.

‘He cares for children,’ said Mandryka, buttoning his tunic and putting on a Wehrmacht forage cap and round dark glasses. ‘That’s it. From now on, Kapto joins us! Give him a uniform and a captain’s pips. Tonya will be his lieutenant. She gets anything she wants. Bring Kapto to me. Meanwhile, prepare the men for the attack.’

‘Right, chief.’

Now Mandryka poured a cup of ersatz coffee and another shot of Armenian cognac for his friend from Briansk, and they started to catch up on many years apart.

‘One thing,’ said Kapto after they had exchanged their experiences in Soviet jails. ‘I have something for our allies.’

‘The Germans?’ Mandryka asked.

‘Yes.’ Kapto took the satchel off his shoulder and spread out a map. ‘This will be useful to them.’

‘Always resourceful.’ Mandryka smiled. ‘Shall I look?’ But the maps were marked with complex symbols and signs that meant nothing to him – he wasn’t a soldier; he had been a dentist in Briansk.

Kapto lit up a cigarette and leaned in to Mandryka, speaking confidentially. ‘This isn’t for any of the special task forces or police battalions. It’s for the Wehrmacht. I need to give this to the staff of the army – the Sixth, isn’t it? – further north, who are preparing to cross the Don and maybe push towards Stalingrad? It will come from you and me, Mandryka. It will help you. They’ll be impressed.’

Mandryka nodded slowly.

‘Obviously it’s urgent,’ added Kapto. ‘It could really help our side.’

‘We’ll get it to them as soon as we can,’ said Mandryka. ‘Now tell me about the little girl?’

V

‘Have you ever met Shapiro?’ Svetlana asked. Her best friend Martha Peshkova had come to the Kremlin apartment for chai.

‘Well, no, but I have seen him.’

‘What’s he like?’

‘He’s very tall. He has black hair with grey streaks, big dark eyes and he looks very…’

‘Very what?’

‘Turbulent – passionate!’

‘Oh my God.’ Svetlana fanned her face with her hands.

‘But, Sveta?’

‘Yes?’

‘He’s forty and he’s married.’

‘Oh,’ said Svetlana. Dammit! Married, she thought, I have no chance. But she was Stalin’s daughter. Anything was possible to her. She knew how to give orders.

‘He’s quite famous, you know,’ Martha went on. ‘His scripts have been filmed. He’s a certain sort of Jewish intellectual. He’s talented.’ Martha knew about writers. Her grandfather was Maxim Gorky, the greatest Soviet writer. ‘But, Sveta, he’s forty. That’s ancient! He’s an antique. And he’s a playboy. I’ve heard he’s a notorious skirt-chaser!’

‘Oh no,’ said Svetlana very primly, but she was really thinking, Thank God. If he’s a playboy I have some chance. If only I was as beautiful as Martha. She can have anyone she wants… She felt despondent suddenly.

‘He’s a married playboy!’ Martha giggled. She was getting more amused by the minute. She savoured the smell of pipesmoke in the apartment. Then she looked serious, grabbed Svetlana’s shoulders and whispered, ‘What would your father say? Think about it!’

‘Ugh, he’s busy with the war, I hardly see him,’ Svetlana replied. ‘Besides, I have to live too.’

‘I must go home,’ said Martha, kissing Svetlana and going to the door. There, she hesitated. ‘Oh, wait – I’ll tell you who knows Shapiro.’

‘Who?’ cried Svetlana, running at her and hugging her. ‘Tell me!’

‘You’re serious about this man, aren’t you, dear?’

‘Yes! As serious as you can be without actually knowing someone at all. But yes, I’ve written to him.’

‘And you signed it?’

‘Yes, from Stalina of the Kremlin!’

Martha’s laughter pealed through the gloomy apartment. ‘That will give him a shock. But he’s arrogant. There are writers who think they are God’s gift to women and he’s one of them. He’ll think it’s his due and he deserves your favour.’

‘Cut to the chase, Marthochka: who knows him?’

‘Your brother Vasily, silly. He knows all the movie people. I saw Lev Shapiro at one of Vasily’s parties at Zubalovo…’

It’s going to be so easy, thought Svetlana. Alone in the apartment once again, she sat down and started to scan the pages of today’s Red Star, looking for his name – and there it was: the latest article by Lev Shapiro. Where was he? She longed to know. Had he yet received her letter? Surely not, and even if he had, he was much too busy to read her silly note. From his articles, she could tell he was a man of the world. A playboy! A skirt-chaser! But it was just possible he had got the letter because she had given it to her bodyguard Klimov yesterday and he had managed to send it down on the Stavka plane to Stalingrad. If Shapiro was in the city, he could have read it. She blushed at the thought. Then another anxiety: had she made a fool of herself? Suppose he told his friends and mocked her? What would her father say if he heard of this?

The door opened.

She hid the paper, and jumped up: ‘Papa, have you eaten?’

‘Hello, my little sparrow. How’s moia khozianka, my little housekeeper,’ said Stalin and kissed her forehead. ‘Just wanted to see you. I’m working the rest of the night out at Kuntsevo.’

‘Goodnight, Papa. Get some rest!’

He turned and left, calling for his driver outside the front door.

She was alone again.

VI

While they waited for Garanzha, old Panka knelt beside Benya and probed his head wound.

‘If it’s a sabre cut, swords are dirty; if it’s shrapnel, cleaner; if a stone, cleaner still, but you can take no chances with a head wound. We need a poultice.’ He was treating Benya just as he had treated Silver Socks.

He took out one of the cartridges and carefully broke it, taking out the black gunpowder. Then, as Benya lay on the ground in the shade, he walked to the nearest tree, scanning its branches until he reached for something. ‘A spider’s web,’ he said, gathering it with surprising delicacy in his huge hands. He took his dagger and cut into the bark of the tree, collecting some resin; next he dug up some earth with his knife, mixed it around, and then popped it all into his mouth. Finally he leaned over Benya, placing his mouth close to his forehead, and regurgitated this sticky mess right on to the wound, plastering it down so it was level.

‘Shame we have no honey but this makes a poultice that will heal you fast,’ Panka said, taking a bandage out of one of his saddlebags and deftly wrapping it round Benya’s head before fastening it in place with a pin. ‘Always sunny on the steppe,’ he said, smiling again.

He moved on to the next task: ‘Everyone drink water. Eat one tack biscuit. Water the horses,’ he ordered. ‘Garanzha and Prishchepa, you take on guard duty. Golden, shut your eyes.’

The men were talking around the fire they’d made, mostly about Kapto. Had he always been a traitor? What about Tonya? Who else had gone with them? Nyushka – had anyone seen her? Koshka was another one who’d vanished. But no one would be surprised if Koshka was a snivelling traitor, and it would be no loss either because Uzbeks were the worst soldiers in the Red Army. But they kept coming back to Kapto – and so did Benya.

He remembered that morning back in Kolyma, recuperating in Kapto’s clinic when his bed had shaken abruptly. He’d opened his eyes to find a man with a heavily tattooed face and head – a green bullseye encircling his skull and making his cranium look like some sort of instrument – standing over him. ‘Get up,’ said the man, clearly a Criminal. ‘The Boss is waiting for his first lesson.’

The blizzard, perhaps the last of winter, ripped into the Camp with such blasting force that Benya, wrapped up in a felt hood, padded coat and felt boots, and trying to follow the Criminal along the walkways, had to hold on to the ropes to find his way. The Criminal, shrouded in furs, walked stiffly with his legs and arms straight like a mechanized Golem. The wind drove the snow at such a slant that it tore into his hood and almost blinded him and the temperature was something extreme, minus thirty or more.

Benya just thanked God and Dr Kapto that he was not working that day: he knew his brigade, which would have been up at the mine since 4 a.m., would lose men today. His guide disappeared inside the barracks next to the dining block, and Benya followed him.

Once inside, he was amazed by the light and the warmth. This barracks was quite unlike any of the others. The men who slept in these wooden bunks were lucky: this was the best-kept dormitory in the Camp. It still stank of sweat and bodies and disinfectant but also something resinous and heavenly. Perhaps it was the smoke of a woodburner mixed with stale, overcooked vegetables – what luxury! Most of the bunks were empty as the brigades were working but as he followed the Criminal up the central aisle, he saw the brazier up ahead and it got warmer as he approached.

‘Here he is! That’s him. The storyteller,’ said Smiley, looking at him with his red eyes beneath his slightly pointed brow. Benya had guessed that ‘the Boss’ would be Smiley but he was wrong.

‘Benya Golden? Is it really you?’ said a much older man, who was sitting in reindeer fur boots, military britches and no shirt, in a half-gutted leather chair, right next to the brazier. The accent was Georgian, more particularly Svanetian, the remotest and most ungovernable province of Georgia. He was holding a dumb-bell and doing curls with one bicep while a girl, a young nurse from the clinic, was rolling a bandage around his shoulder. ‘I strained it,’ he said. ‘It happens at my age.’

He handed the dumb-bell to Smiley who bore it away into the shadows as if he was solemnly carrying the scrolls of the Torah through synagogue. The girl finished her bandaging.

‘All right, Bunny, go,’ the older man said. The nurse, Nyushka, had a soft, bruised Russian beauty, and Benya noticed her feathery auburn hair, tied loosely back, and her peachy skin. But such beauty was a curse in here, and he realized she must need a strong protector in order to survive.

The muscular older man turned his attention to Benya. ‘I’ve read everything you ever wrote. I have a proposal for you.’

Benya was so surprised that he didn’t reply.

‘Hey, Deathless, give him a pew,’ said the older man to the thug who had escorted Benya to the barracks. Deathless, who moved as if wrapped in bandages like an Egyptian mummy, pulled up a chair and Benya sat down. A pot of soup bubbled behind them.

‘Cigarette?’

‘Yes please.’

‘Smiley, roll him a makhorka, will you? He still looks frail. Mamekta, give him some soup.’ Smiley lit his cigarette; a tiny ratty boy with oversized lips, was stirring the soup. He ladled out a bowlful and gave it to Benya, who gulped it from the bowl without a moment’s hesitation, licking it clean.

‘Better?’ said the Boss. ‘Now… do you know who I am?’

Benya spluttered at the pungent tobacco but the cigarette, expertly wrapped in Pravda newspaper, warmed him as did a tot of vodka. He had an idea who this was but he was not foolish enough to risk a guess.

‘I am Jaba,’ said the Georgian, leaning forward to examine Benya closely. He was perhaps the only prisoner in the entire Camp who had hair, grey, thick and spiky, and it was clear that even here, somehow, he was clean and groomed. His Roman good looks were only spoiled by the tattoo that lapped up his neck like a sinister tide. His bare shoulders were inked with eagles’ wings, his nipples eyes within stars, shoulder blades bleeding crucifixes on which a nude woman was nailed, a voluptuous female Jesus complete with stigmata. On Jaba’s stomach, which was muscled and creased like that of a retired boxer, a tumescent penis thrust towards his sternum emblazoned with the words RUSSIAN GIRLS WORSHIP MY GEORGIAN COCK.

‘You have heard of me,’ Jaba stated as if checking an unimpeachable truth.

‘Yes I have, of course.’ Benya knew that Jaba Leonadze was one of the leading Criminals of the Kolyma Zone, a Mafia boss, a Brigand-in-Power who was entrusted by the Commandant to make the mines achieve their quotas.

Jaba beamed at this. ‘Most people have. As for you, Smiley told me how you entertained him with your stories all the way across the Sea of Okhotsk and I’ve read your Spanish Stories. Am I a surprise for an old bandit?’

Benya admitted he was indeed a surprising bandit.

‘You see, Golden, life is like a plate of lobio beans. I missed school but now I want to write. You will teach me to write like Shakespeare, Pushkin, Balzac. Every day for an hour. And then there’s something else. Prishchepa!’

A young man, blue-eyed and baby-faced and startlingly pretty, appeared from the back of the barracks, where he had apparently been manning a kettle, bearing a pile of papers which he handed to Jaba.

‘Can you guess what this is, Benya? It’s my play, based on my life. Entitled Bank Robbery ’37.’ Benya knew that Jaba’s most outrageous exploit had been his Kharkov bank robbery in 1937. As Stalin purged the Communist Party, this bank robber had dared to defy him and steal his money. That was courage! He pulled off three or four of these heists, stealing the entire payroll of bureaucrats in Tashkent, Odessa, Baku. For years, he’d lived in luxury, bribing the militsia to turn a blind eye – until a shootout at the State Bank in Kharkov when he’d been captured. ‘Ah, Benya, I put my heart into this work.’

Benya took the manuscript, noting that the script was typed. One of the Commandant’s typists in the office must have typed it up, he thought. Jaba’s influence was usually defined in violence and the availability of food but this typed play was a rare demonstration of pure power.

‘You are to read it and criticize it.’ Jaba took a shirt from Mametka and pulled it on, doing up the buttons as he gave Benya his orders. ‘Didn’t Gorky read your stories? Well, you’re going to be my Gorky. In return, you get to work in the clinic and when we get out of this hell and back to Magadan, you’ll come with me. Now, don’t be afraid to tell me the truth; I can take criticism. You see, professor, it’s a masterpiece and no one but me could have written it. Now, do we have a deal?’

VII

‘Horseman approaching!’ Spider Garanzha called out quietly. They grabbed their guns while Zhurko looked through his fieldglasses. ‘At ease. That’s the Cat. Koshka’s back.’

‘I thought he—’ started Little Mametka.

‘Perhaps the Germans didn’t want him,’ said Benya. The Cossacks snickered at this.

‘The Germans always say: Can we swap our Romanians for your Uzbeks?’ Little Mametka agreed.

‘Shall we question him?’ asked Garanzha.

Zhurko raised a hand. ‘Gently does it. We are now only seven, eight with Koshka. We don’t have the luxury to launch a witch-hunt. No, we welcome him and watch him.’

Koshka rode in. He was, Benya knew, one of those tedious men who thought it was his duty to tell others the truth about their lives such as whether their wife was secretly unfaithful or how they should become better at their jobs. ‘Just saying,’ he usually concluded.

The men gathered round him.

‘I was thrown from my horse and then lost her for a while…’ Koshka said. No one looked particularly convinced but they let the twitchy Uzbek sit with them and share the food they had gathered in the Italian village.

‘What do we do now?’ Garanzha said after they had eaten.

Captain Zhurko cleared his throat. ‘I was waiting for others but… it seems no more of us are coming in,’ he said in his plain way. ‘We need to make a plan.’

‘You’re our officer,’ said Benya.

‘If you wish me to command you, I shall,’ replied Zhurko, stroking his strong chin. ‘But I think our circumstances are a little unusual.’

Panka spoke up: ‘I propose we form ourselves into a circle in the old Cossack tradition,’ he said, ‘and that we elect Zhurko as our ataman, our chieftain. What say you, brothers?’

Everyone agreed.

‘What are our options?’ asked Spider Garanzha.

‘Well, I think we have five options,’ said Captain Zhurko. ‘One, fight our way back to our lines. Travel at night. Find a quiet sector, preferably Italian or even better Romanian…’

‘What? After we’ve offered them Koshka as a present?’ joked Mametka in his high voice. The men chuckled.

‘They’d prefer you, Bette Davis,’ replied Koshka.

‘Not funny,’ said Mametka. Benya remembered what had happened to Fats Strizkaz and held his breath.

‘Enough,’ said Zhurko. ‘Cut it out. Mametka, you asked for that. Koshka, you have my protection.’

‘Carry on,’ said Smiley.

‘Then we’d report back to our forces at the last strongholds in the bend of the Don or ford it somewhere and rejoin the Stalingrad Front. Find our units.’

‘What unit? We’re Smertniki – the Dead Ones – and we’re damned whatever we do,’ said Koshka.

‘We all know what would happen,’ Smiley agreed, gravely.

‘We can’t go back,’ said Benya. ‘We’d receive the Eight Grammes before we’d even given our names.’

‘True,’ Zhurko said. ‘As a Russian patriot and a good Communist, death, for me, is better than defection and I propose surrender is out of the question. That’s our second option.’

‘We’re stranded behind enemy lines. Our army has collapsed. Come on, fellows. Be honest. Is anything out of the question?’ said Koshka. ‘Just saying.’

‘Surrender is impossible for me,’ replied Benya. ‘You’ve seen the things the Germans are doing here.’

‘You say that because you’re a Jew, right?’ said Koshka. ‘We can’t listen to you.’

‘Permission to shut him up?’ said Smiley, those hornlets rising on his forehead.

‘Wait,’ said Benya. ‘I am a Jew, it’s true: I can’t surrender. But I’ve heard too the Germans simply starve their Russian prisoners to death.’

‘Some Russians surrendered to the soft-hearted Italians,’ Koshka pointed out. ‘Or we could defect to Mandryka and join the Schuma. They get good food. And girls, lots of girls.’

‘If you wanted to join them, why didn’t you?’ asked Little Mametka softly.

‘I don’t want to. If I did want to, I wouldn’t be here,’ protested Koshka.

Sergeant Panka stood up. ‘We’ve heard enough now, and I can tell you this, boys: I am not going anywhere! Captain, what are our orders?’

‘I think there is a right thing to do,’ opined Zhurko earnestly, looking at them through his steel-rimmed spectacles and lighting up a cigarette. ‘But we could also hide out here and hope to be liberated.’

‘But that might never happen,’ said Koshka. ‘Right now, we’ve got to face the possibility that we’re going to lose the war. Just saying.’

‘No, Koshka, we will win the war,’ answered Zhurko. ‘I am certain. I was an economist at Gosplan. That was my job in Moscow. We did the Five-Year Plans.’

‘A great success!’ said Benya.

‘Is that Odessan humour?’ asked Zhurko.

‘If you’re that clever, captain,’ asked Smiley, ‘how did you end up here?’

Zhurko grinned, cleaning his spectacles. ‘I predicted a recession, but a recession is impossible in our Socialist Paradise. Anyway we, on our own, will out-produce the Germans this year. With the Americans, we are unbeatable. If Hitler didn’t win in the first year, he can’t win the war.’

‘So he’s gonna lose?’ piped up Mametka.

‘Exactly. All the laws of science confirm it but it will take years and we don’t have the luxury of time. Next option, we find our Soviet partisans, who are fighting the Germans behind their lines, and join them.’

‘But where are they?’ asked Koshka.

‘Honestly? We don’t know and the steppe has been so swiftly overrun, it is possible there aren’t any partisans here.’

‘So far, these are not tempting options,’ Koshka observed.

‘Who are you to judge anything?’ Garanzha glared at the little Uzbek. ‘Where did you suddenly arrive from, Koshka?’

‘I got lost, I told you. I looked for you. Finally I found you.’

‘Got lost, found us? Hmm. It stinks,’ said Spider Garanzha. ‘Just saying!’

‘Enough, both of you,’ said Panka, suddenly drawing his sword. Panka never fooled around. He was straight as a lance. The two Shtrafniki stopped arguing.

‘The last option is this,’ said Zhurko, even-toned and sensible. ‘We were told to eliminate the traitor Mandryka. If we kill him we are redeemed. If we are wounded, we are redeemed. We know where Mandryka is. That’s our mission.’

‘You’re suggesting a few horsemen ride into his stronghold?’ said Koshka. ‘We tried that earlier and it was madness. Think of all the men we lost.’

‘We’re on a suicide mission after all.’ Benya smiled as he spoke.

‘More Odessan irony?’ said Zhurko. ‘We’re still alive and I plan to stay alive. We don’t attack the village of Shepilovka, which is crawling with Mandryka’s men and a unit of Germans. We know though that he rides out each day with German colleagues to organize anti-partisan aktions. Let us ambush him when he ventures out of his stronghold. If we die in the attempt, so be it.’

‘I agree,’ said Panka. ‘We have our horses; we are still Cossacks. I am not going anywhere! You’ll see: it’s always sunny on the steppe.’ He got up, slid his sword back into its scabbard and started to build a fire.

‘That was a cheerful talk.’ Prishchepa chuckled. ‘Who’s gonna sing me my lullaby? I know. I’ll sing my own.’ As Prishchepa sang, Garanzha, half-lit by the orange flames, danced slowly around the fire swinging his meaty limbs in giant arcs, rising and falling, mouth wide open, eyes closed, yet finding a sort of grim, grinding rhythm all of his own.

Prishchepa sang in an angelic tenor:

And then Panka replied in a baritone: ‘His home village he left forever.’

And they all supplied the chorus:

When Benya lay with his head on his saddlebag and observed Panka’s long foxy nose and little eyes as he sang, he was amazed to see that tears ran down his face. They had chosen the most dangerous mission. How many of them would be alive to sing their songs when the sun went down tomorrow?