Red Winter (39 page)

‘Levitsky?’

The name sent a jolt right through me, just as it had on the train when Commander Orlov had identified me. I sensed Tanya stiffen beside me. Oksana tensed under my grip.

‘Is that you?’ the man said. ‘
Nikolai Levitsky?
’

‘I . . .’ But it was too late for me to hide it; I could not deny who I was. There was nothing I could say. There was nothing I could do.

‘We thought you were dead.’

‘Do you know this man?’ Tanya said, taking a step away from me.

‘Do I know him?’ the man replied as he stood to attention. ‘Of course I know him.’ He raised a hand to his brow in salute. ‘This is Commander Nikolai Levitsky, rightful commander of this unit.’

Tanya was lost for words. She looked from me to the unarmed men standing in a line, then back to me again. She leaned away as if she was seeing me for the first time. Seeing who I really was.

‘C
ommander?
’ She knitted her brow and narrowed her eyes. ‘No, that can’t . . . I . . . You’re a Chekist? A
commander
?’

I opened my mouth, wishing there was an easy way to deal with this. Everything was going to hell now, and it felt like there was no way to stop it. There would be blood. I could see it coming as sure as I could see that winter was on us.

‘We should never have trusted him,’ Lyudmila said from the doorway behind me. I didn’t dare turn to look at her, but I knew she would be pointing her rifle at me.

‘Tell me it’s not true,’ Tanya said.

I shook my head.

‘Tell me.’

‘Let me shoot him,’ Lyudmila called. ‘Let me shoot them all.’

I knew she would do it if Tanya allowed her. She wouldn’t care that Oksana would probably die too, that in death my finger might tighten on the trigger.

The soldier was confused. This wasn’t what he had expected, dissent in our own ranks, and he dropped his hand, looking at each of us in turn, trying to decipher our relationship.

‘I
was
a Chekist,’ I said.

Tanya took another step back. ‘I
knew
there was something.’ She shook her head as if she didn’t believe it, or didn’t want to.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘And now?’ she asked. ‘What are you now?’

‘Just a man who wants his family back. You know that.’

Tanya stood with her mouth open and shook her head at me. She didn’t know what to do. She had always struggled to trust me, but somewhere inside, she had come to respect me at least. She had always suspected I was a Communist, a Red Army soldier, but she was prepared to put up with that because we shared a target and, I guessed, because she saw how I took care of Anna. She had not expected this, though. Now I represented everything she hated. I had moved from the countless ranks of the Red Army to the Cheka; the state security organisation that was the elite enforcer of Communism. And it was men like that,
Chekists
, who had murdered her family.

‘These are your men?’ she asked.

‘In a way.’

‘And Krukov? He was one of yours?’

‘Yes.’ I felt my grip relax a little on Oksana. She was unmoving now, seeing a possible reprieve, and my attention was elsewhere.

‘You were his commander?’ Tanya asked.

‘Yes.’

She shook her head in disbelief. ‘So it could have been you who came to my home? You might have—’

‘No.’ I stopped her as soon as I realised what she was about to say. She was imagining me in her village, seeing me murdering her children, her husband. ‘Not me,’ I said. ‘I never did that. Not
that
. It was Krukov, remember.
Krukov
.’

‘I should kill you right now.’ She raised her pistol and put it to the side of my head.

‘Kill him,’ Lyudmila urged.

‘Commander?’ The soldier began to move forward.

‘Move back,’ Tanya told him. ‘Now.’

The soldier stopped, looking from Tanya to me and then at Oksana. There was no hiding his anxiety, but I couldn’t be sure it was for me. He seemed more concerned that something might happen to Oksana. I still had the revolver to the underside of her chin.

‘What is this?’ he said. ‘I don’t understand. Who is this woman, Commander? I thought she was with you.’

‘She
is
with me,’ I told him.

‘But—’

‘Just do whatever she says.’

The soldier put up his hands and hesitated before stepping back. ‘Just . . . be calm.’

‘Killing me would achieve nothing,’ I told Tanya. ‘All that would be different is that I wouldn’t be here. It wouldn’t change anything else.’

‘I could live with that.’

‘Could you?’ I asked. ‘After what we’ve been through? Together? And what about my family?’

‘You might be lying about them.’

‘And Anna? Is she a lie too?’

‘You would do the same to me,’ she said.

‘No.’ I looked at her. ‘No, I wouldn’t.’

She kept the pistol steady, arm outstretched, the cold metal pressed to my head.

‘I’m on your side,’ I said to her. ‘That’s why I didn’t tell you who I am, because you’d never have trusted me—’

‘I’d have killed you the day we met.’

‘I didn’t harm your family,’ I said.

‘How can I believe you? Why shouldn’t I just kill you now?’

‘Because you won’t leave my wife without a husband and my children without a father. Because that would make you just like
Krukov
. Because you won’t leave Anna with no one to look after her. Because we are friends.’ I fixed my eyes on hers. ‘And because we’re going find to Krukov together. Is that enough reasons? And there’s another – if you kill me now, you’ll have to kill all of these men too.’

Tanya glanced away and closed her eyes. When she looked back at me, the disappointment was clear, but she took the barrel of her pistol away from my head, letting her hand fall to her side. ‘So what now?’ she said.

‘What are you doing?’ Lyudmila asked from behind us. ‘What—’ But Tanya lifted a stiff hand at her, a frustrated and angry gesture telling her to stop.

When her comrade fell silent, Tanya tightened the hand into a fist and put it to her mouth, nodding at me to go on.

‘We carry on just as before,’ I said. ‘You, me, Lyudmila and Anna.’

‘But these are your men.’

‘I don’t even
know
these men.’

‘But he said—’

‘I know what he said, but my unit was small, depleted like this man’s unit was, and we were only merged with another one after . . . after what happened at . . .’

‘After your heroism at Grivino.’ The man who had saluted puffed out his chest with pride.

But I felt no pride. The massacre at Grivino had sealed my decision to desert.

‘For which you were awarded the Order of the Red Banner,’ he went on. ‘We
are
your men, Commander Levitsky.’

He had a good-looking face with high cheekbones and fierce eyes. It was too dark to see their colour, but I imagined they would be pale and cold and blue. He might have been a little younger than me, but the difference in the years between us was emphasised by his clean-shaven skin. I remembered him as an eager soldier trying to impress me, always following my orders to the letter, but that was as much as I knew about him. By then, most of my comrades-in-arms were killed, and the ones who remained were the ones I kept close – Krukov included, which was what made his viciousness all the more distressing. But this man was one of a number who had joined my unit shortly before I chose to become a fugitive. I hadn’t fought with them or formed any bond with them. They were nothing to me but men in uniform. I couldn’t explain that to Tanya right now, though, and hoped that she would trust me a little longer.

I watched him, all of us standing in the falling snow, trying to get some measure of him, but he gave little away. I wished I could see his eyes more clearly, but the darkness conspired against me in that. I felt that if I could look into his eyes, I would know him better. Standing to attention and saluting was not enough to guarantee loyalty. I had known soldiers inform on soldiers, commanders shot simply because one of their comrades accused them of unpatriotic thoughts. This man was as likely to deceive me as he was to support me.

‘You’ll have to earn my confidence,’ I said. ‘I don’t know you, and trust is hard to come by. So for now we’ll keep your weapons, and this woman and her family will remain my hostages. You will do as I order.’

‘Of course, Commander.’

I took a few paces back, keeping Oksana in front of me, still believing that she might be the only thing keeping me alive. These men had proclaimed their loyalty to me, but words were easy to say and this was the time of lies. I couldn’t believe anything anyone told me, and if these men were my enemies, they would say and do anything to get the better of me. I couldn’t take any risks. They would be well trained and vicious.

When I reached the bottom step of the
izba
, aware of Lyudmila behind me, I stopped and turned to Tanya, speaking in a quiet voice so the soldiers wouldn’t hear. ‘You have to believe me. Whatever he says, you
have
to believe me. These are
not
my men. My unit was small, and I lost soldiers in battle, others by transfer. I was given what was left of another unit in the same state, one that had been operating for several weeks without a proper commander.
These
men. But I only knew them a matter of days, and even then it was a confusing mess. Things were complicated.’

It had been hard after Grivino. All that killing on my conscience and being called a hero for it.

‘We were given fresh orders,’ I told her. ‘Orders to . . . to do . . . terrible things.’ Worse than I had done before. Not just requisitioning food, taking conscripts and executing deserters, but to spread terror. To torture and kill and burn. To propagate fear and drive the enemy into the shadows.

‘Is that why you deserted?’

‘I don’t know these men any more than you do. I trust
you
more than them. Is my trust misplaced?’

‘Don’t pretend you didn’t hear me.
Is that why you deserted?
I have to know. I have to believe there’s something good in you.’

A few weeks ago, I wouldn’t have cared what Tanya thought of me, but now I felt a pang of disappointment. ‘Have you not seen any good in me? None at all?’

‘Answer my question.’

‘Yes. Yes, it’s why I deserted.’ The word was not easy for me to say. For Tanya, it just meant I had abandoned a heartless regime, but to me, it meant something else. It meant disobeying orders, accusations of cowardice, acceptance that my loyalties had been given to a belief I could no longer embrace. And it meant that I had forsaken my own comrades, leaving some to do terrible things, while others hunted me down.

Receiving those orders had been a trigger for all the disillusionment and exhaustion that had been building in me. The yearning I’d felt last time I was with my family. The appalling thought that my own son, Misha, wanted to follow in my footsteps. The guilt of the countless lives I’d taken, including those at Grivino. And my elevation to heroism because of it.

So I deserted not because I was a coward, but because I wanted to escape the horror, to be with my wife and sons, to protect my family from men like Koschei; men who revelled in their new orders. So while Koschei had pressed his burning, five-pointed star to the skin of helpless people in his quest to proliferate the Red Terror, so I had chosen a different path.

Tanya thought about it, looking from me to the soldier and at the revolver I still held beneath Oksana’s chin.

‘Now it’s your turn to answer
my
question. Can I trust you?’ I pressed her. ‘I need to hear it.’

‘No,’ Lyudmila said, and that half-whispered word was heavy with disbelief, making Tanya look over her shoulder to see Lyudmila standing in the open doorway. She took a deep breath and something unspoken passed between them. An apology perhaps, or a plea for understanding. Then Tanya shook her head once at her comrade and looked at me.

‘Yes. You can trust me,’ she said. ‘For now. But when this is over, you will be Red again.’

‘And you will be Green or Blue or whichever. I understand. All scores will be settled.’ That was good enough for me. I knew that, for the moment, I could rely on Tanya.

I turned back to the soldier and raised my voice. ‘Where’s Koschei? Where’s
Krukov
?’

He hesitated, glancing around at the others.

‘Don’t look at them. Where is he?’

‘He’s . . .’ He seemed almost reluctant to tell me.

‘
Where?
’

‘He’s delivering prisoners, Comrade Commander.’

‘Delivering them where?’

‘There’s a camp—’

‘You know where it is?’ I couldn’t help but feel I was getting closer.

‘No. He doesn’t tell us everything.’ He looked back at the others again. ‘But I think it’s nearby . . . He’s returning in the morning. I . . . Yes. Tomorrow.’

‘What’s your name, soldier?’

‘Ryzhkov. Grigori Ilich Ryzhkov. Our unit joined yours just a few days before you were killed. Or that’s what we thought had happened to you.’

‘I remember you.’ But I knew almost nothing about him.

‘Thank you, Commander.’

‘Tell me, Ryzhkov, why are you guarding this house? What’s so important about these people?’ I remembered the look on his face just a short while ago when Tanya threatened to kill me. I was sure his concern had been for Oksana’s life rather than mine.

‘I don’t know. All I can tell you is that Krukov ordered us to protect it with our lives. To protect the people, otherwise he would take our heads.’

‘You’re afraid of him?’ It would explain his earlier fear, his concern for Oksana, but it also brought his loyalty to me into even more doubt. How could I compete with a man who instilled this kind of reaction even in hardened soldiers?

‘Everyone is afraid of him,’ Ryzhkov said.

‘So why haven’t you run? He’s not here.’

‘Because that would make us deserters. And he always finds deserters.’