Red Winter (37 page)

Lyudmila said nothing, but she crawled to her comrade and put her arms around her in as firm a show of solidarity and love as I had ever seen.

I watched them find comfort in each other, rocking together in the darkness, like children afraid of the forest terrors, and I turned my mind to other things. I ran through a thousand possibilities for the soldiers’ actions, mulling them over, dismissing them, reassessing them and dismissing them again. Nothing made any sense, but I had the feeling that the answer to the Chekists’ hesitation was right in front of us, hiding in plain sight.

‘You think they’re waiting for something?’ I thought aloud. ‘Reinforcements?’ It was possible they had found out who I was and had chosen to wait for more men, but I could think of no way
how
they would have found out. I had only given my first name to Sergei, and even if they did know who I was, a single grenade would clear the
izba
in one easy throw.

The women had separated now, Lyudmila returning to her post by the window. Tanya remained where she was, but now she shifted to make herself more comfortable. She sniffed and wiped her coat sleeve across her eyes, then reached for her rifle. She made no apology for her actions or for those of her comrade. She made no attempt to offer an explanation. Instead she reverted to the thing that had kept her moving ever forwards in the hunt for Krukov. She went back to thinking like a soldier. Like a commander.

‘Maybe they’re conscripts,’ she said. ‘Maybe they don’t
know
what to do.’

The change in her impressed me. The way she could switch from one thing to another, it was as if the past few minutes had never happened. I wondered which was the real Tanya, but I didn’t insult her by asking if she was all right. She and Lyudmila were thinking straight again and that was all that mattered. We each had our burdens, things that tugged us towards our own madness, but we had to stay strong.

‘Conscripts?’ I said. ‘Without a commander? I don’t think so.’ I edged back from the window and stretched my cramping legs out in front of me. ‘It has to be something else. Keep watching.’

I crawled to the heavy wooden table that lay on its side, top towards the front of the house. We had turned it over when we came in, knowing it would give us some protection from the bullets of the men outside. We could shoot from the windows and retreat behind its solid shield if necessary, providing as good cover for us as the brick front of the space above the
pich
was for Oksana’s children. For now, though, the only person behind it was Anna.

‘Are they going to kill us?’ she asked, as I slipped in beside her.

‘No.’ It was a lie and Anna knew it. I had no idea what the men were going to do or what they were waiting for.

‘I’m scared,’ she said.

‘Me too, but we’ll find a way out of this.’

Anna looked at me with expectation, as if she thought I was going to divulge a foolproof plan for our escape, but I had nothing to tell her.

‘You know, she’s not a witch,’ I said, looking over at Sergei and his wife.

The old woman was sitting on one of the chairs that had been at the table. Her husband sat beside her with his hands on her forearm. Oksana sat on a third chair, all of them at the back of the room, arranged round the base of the ladder to the top of the
pich
where the children were hiding. It was odd that they had chosen not to avoid the soldiers’ guns by taking cover behind the table with Anna, but were sitting as if protecting the children from
us
.

‘I know that,’ Anna said. ‘There’s no such thing as witches.’

‘No.’

‘But there’s worse things, aren’t there? There are things
much
worse than witches.’

‘Yes, there are.’ And maybe I was one of them. Those men outside instilled the same fear that I had instilled in people. If Anna knew who I was, what I was, would she be afraid of
me
?

Anna sat up and crossed her legs. ‘Maybe they were just scared,’ she whispered.

‘Hmm?’

‘The old woman. Maybe she was afraid
not
to tell them we were here. Afraid of what would happen if they found out.’

‘You could be right.’ But I was sure it wasn’t her fear of the Chekists that had made the old woman inform. It was more likely to be her patriotism. The way she acted when we ate with them – clipping sentences, covering things up, silencing the boy, Nikolai, when he mentioned his father – and then she had been prepared to close the door on Oksana, to leave her out in the cold to face the Chekists alone. She wouldn’t have done that unless she didn’t care about Oksana or . . . or unless she thought she wouldn’t be in any danger.

Tanya came and crouched beside me. She leaned close and spoke into my ear. ‘I need to talk to you.’

‘Then talk.’

‘Over here.’

There was concern in her voice; something was bothering her. She wanted to speak to me where the others wouldn’t hear, but we needed to watch the old woman. Neither of us trusted her, and she had made it clear what she thought of us, so we couldn’t risk letting her out of our sight. Lyudmila’s attention was focused on the windows, watching the men outside.

‘They can’t hear us,’ I said, ‘and we can trust Anna to keep a secret, can’t we?’

‘Of course.’ Anna sat up a little straighter, displaying the importance she felt at being included.

‘All right. I’ve been thinking about why they haven’t done anything . . .’

‘Me too.’

‘. . . and the only thing that makes any sense is that there’s something important inside this house,’ Tanya said. ‘That’s why they’re just sitting out there. They’re trying to decide what to do.’

‘Or maybe they made some sort of agreement with these people?’ I gestured at Oksana and the others.

‘Agreements can be broken,’ Tanya said, ‘but if there’s something here they want . . .’

‘Something important.’ I nodded, glancing around the room. ‘But what? It would have to be something that can’t withstand bullets, otherwise they’d kill us and come in to get it.’

‘I’m not sure, but it’s the only explanation. There’s something here, something we’re not seeing.’

‘They’re calling,’ Lyudmila said. ‘They want to talk.’

While Tanya and I were discussing her idea, the men outside gave the first indication that they were even there. Until now, they had remained quiet. We had not attempted to speak to them, nor they to us, but now a voice shouted out in the night.

To my ears, the words were muffled and I couldn’t make them out, but as soon as I heard them, both Tanya and I stopped.

‘Sh.’ I put a finger to my lips and looked at Anna. She had pushed back her cap and her hair had fallen from beneath the cloth in places, greasy and matted. In the gloom of the
izba
, I could see it was twisted and clumped, as if it hadn’t been washed in a long time. Her pale face was streaked with dirt, and there was a dark band round her forehead, left by the ancient cap.

Lyudmila was closer to the window, able to make out the words. She beckoned us over.

‘Stay here,’ I told Anna.

Tanya and I returned to the window. The men were in the same positions as before. They had made no attempt to retreat or attack. They had not laid down their weapons, nor had they used them against us.

‘What did he say?’ I asked. ‘Exactly?’

But before Lyudmila could reply, the voice shouted again.

‘Send out the family,’ the man said. ‘Send them out and I’ll let you go.’

Tanya opened her mouth to reply, but I stopped her, saying, ‘Don’t answer. Don’t communicate with them at all. We need to think about what we’re going to do.’

I sat on the floor and rested back against the wall, hearing the man shout again.

Send them out and I’ll let you go
. There was something odd about that. It wasn’t what I had expected. A demand for us to surrender made sense, but these men were calling for us to release the old woman and her family.

‘They think these people are our hostages,’ I said.

‘What are you talking about?’ Lyudmila watched the yard, ready to smash the cracked glass in an instant. Ready and willing to kill.

‘They think these people are our hostages,’ I repeated. ‘That’s why they haven’t done anything. They’re protecting
them
.’ I looked at the far end of the room where Oksana and her family remained quiet.

‘Them?’ Lyudmila asked, turning round. ‘Why?’

Outside, the voice called to us again, but we refused to answer.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Maybe they’re not Chekists out there?’ Tanya suggested. ‘Maybe they’re Blues . . .’

‘Oksana called them Chekists,’ I said. ‘I don’t think she was lying.’

‘Maybe she was wrong.’

‘Or maybe there’s something important about these people,’ I suggested. ‘Maybe
that
’s your “something valuable”.’

All three of us now turned to look across the room at the family. Oksana held her hands tight together, one clasping the other as she stole glances at the top of the
pich
, where her children, Nikolai and Natasha, were hiding. Sergei still sat with his head hung low and his shoulders hunched. He looked even older now, as if the last few hours had stolen years from him. He kept his eyes to the floor.

His wife, though, sat upright, her head turned in our direction, glaring at us.

‘What’s so important about you?’ I asked. ‘What do you mean to those men?’

Her lips parted in a grin that would have sickened Baba Yaga’s stomach. Dry and thin and cracked, they peeled back to reveal her blackened teeth and empty gums. ‘You
can’t
stay in here for ever,’ she said with a sneer. ‘You’ll have to leave sometime, and they’ll be waiting for you.’

‘You might be right,’ I said, getting to my feet. ‘We can’t stay in here for ever, but those men out there don’t want to hurt you, so maybe you can help us get out.’

‘I won’t help you,’ she said. ‘
We
won’t help you.’

‘You don’t have any choice.’

‘Wait,’ Tanya stopped me. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘We’ll use them as cover,’ I said. ‘If they’re important in some way, let’s use it to our advantage.’

‘We can’t—’

‘I agree with him,’ Lyudmila interrupted.

‘Twice in one day?’ I said.

She ignored me. ‘Take them with us until we’re out of danger. It’s the only way.’

Tanya looked at the floor for a moment before turning her attention to the family at the back of the room. ‘If we do that, we’ll be no better than Koschei. Using women and children.’

‘We’re not going to hurt them,’ I told her.

‘But we’re going to use them as a shield. And how do we even know it will work? You really think they’ll just let us go because we have them?’

‘We
don’t
know.’

‘So we just take a risk? We just put their lives in danger?’

‘Their lives are already in danger – that was their doing, not ours.’

Tanya pushed to her feet and stood in front of me, a head shorter than I was, but she seemed taller when she turned her face up to look into mine. We were close enough that I could feel her breath on my skin when she spoke, her voice an urgent whisper but growing louder. ‘What if it’s nothing to do with these people, Kolya? What if . . . ?’ She put out her left hand and touched the revolver in my right. ‘What if you’re wrong?’ She kept her hand there as if to stop me. Her skin was clammy, her temperature raised by the warmth inside the room, coupled with the tension in her body. Her voice was pleading. ‘What if you’re
wrong
?’ She was feeling doubt now; it was consuming her. The family, the mother, the children, they were all worming into her thoughts and making her doubt; weakening her. ‘What if it doesn’t stop those men out there? What if they . . . ? Lyudmila –’ she turned to her comrade for support ‘– you have to know this is wrong. You
must
. We can’t do this.’

But Lyudmila shook her head. ‘I’m sorry.’

With my free hand, I peeled Tanya’s away from mine. She didn’t resist much, just enough to register that resistance, and I knew what she wanted – for this to be my decision. She knew that using the family was the only option left open to us, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. She had come here for revenge, but there were lines she was not prepared to cross. If something happened to any of them, she didn’t want it to lie on her conscience.

My conscience was already as black as the darkest corners of the forest, though. A few more lives would make little difference to mine, and I had come here for more than revenge. I was here to find my family, and I would do whatever I had to, anything to stay alive long enough to find Marianna and the boys. I would kill anyone who stood in my way. And there was Anna too. If I let this family walk out of here, as the men were demanding, there might be nothing to stop them from burning the
izba
to the ground and shooting us like a farmer shoots rabbits running from the burning stubble of last year’s crop.

‘There’s only one way for us to find out if we’re wrong,’ I said, still holding her hand, looking into her eyes.

‘We’d be no better than them.’

‘But I’m
not
any better than them, so you can blame me if anything goes wrong.’

She looked at me for a long while, as if she was trying to see something she had missed before. ‘Who are you, Kolya?’

‘I just want to find my family,’ I said.

‘And you’re prepared to do anything to find them?’

‘Anything.’

I saw in her face what a detestable notion she thought that was, and I even felt it myself, but I saw something else too. Understanding.

I let go of her hand and went to Anna.

‘I want you to stay where you are,’ I told her. ‘Don’t come out unless I or Tanya tell you to. Do you understand?’

She nodded and I began to turn, but stopped.

I crouched down and brushed a stray hair from her face. ‘I’m going to do something not very nice, but whatever happens, I don’t want you think badly of me. I’m doing this for us. To get us out of here. Can you understand that?’