The Beast in the Red Forest (23 page)

‘Oh, he won’t catch me,’ Vasko assured him. ‘You and I will see to that.’

‘You can leave me out of it!’ snapped Malashenko. ‘I already helped you. I did everything you asked of me.’ He held out one dirty hand. ‘You owe me that bar of gold.’

‘And you will have it,’ said Vasko, ‘but I require one small additional favour from you.’

‘What kind of favour?’ demanded Malashenko.

‘I would like you to bring Pekkala here.’

‘So that you can add another to your list of murders? You don’t understand. I have orders to protect the Inspector, as well as his assistant Major Kirov.’

‘Orders from whom?’

‘From Barabanschikov himself,’ replied Malashenko. ‘If anything happens to them it will be on my shoulders! In the meantime, I’m supposed to be helping them catch you.’

Vasko smiled. ‘Then they will be pleased when you report to them that you found me lying dead in your cabin.’

For a moment, Malashenko just stared in confusion, but as the seconds passed, he began to understand Vasko’s thinking. ‘The body in the cabin,’ he whispered. ‘They’ll think it’s you.’

‘When they find the pieces of my radio, along with other evidence, they’ll have no reason to think otherwise.’

‘And then you can get away clean,’ said Malashenko, marvelling at the beautiful symmetry of Vasko’s plan, ‘because nobody looks for a man they think is lying dead in front of them. Barabanschikov will be pleased, Pekkala will thank me . . .’ then Malashenko paused. ‘But how will I convince them it is you?’

Vasko thought for a second, then he removed a spare Tokarev magazine from his pocket, pushed out one of the special soft-point rounds and tossed it to Malashenko. ‘Just show him this. He’ll know what it means. Go now, and the quicker you get back here with Pekkala, the sooner that gold will be yours.’

Malashenko needed no further encouragement. He turned and started walking down the trail to Rovno. Gradually, his walking pace picked up into a steady trot. Then, with thoughts of gold swimming in his brain, Malashenko broke into a run.

From somewhere beyond the barricade came the sound of a tank engine. A moment later, a German Jagdpanzer, normally used for destroying other armoured vehicles, appeared from around a corner.

Their faces masked with plaster dust, Kirov and Pekkala began firing at the vehicle, but the bullets bounced harmlessly off its front armour.

With no support, and no anti-tank weapons, the men in the garrison knew it was only a matter of time before the enemy made their final assault on the building. In the room-to-room combat that would follow, there would be no hope of surrender. It would be a fight to the death.

‘Why didn’t you marry Elizaveta?’ asked Pekkala.

‘You want to talk about that now?’ Kirov asked incredulously.

‘There may not be another time,’ said Pekkala.

‘How can I marry her,’ asked Kirov, ‘when the odds are I’d make her a widow long before we could grow old together?’

‘Do you love her?’

‘Yes! What of it?’

‘Then let her choose whether or not to take that risk. Your job is to stay alive. Hers is to trust that you will.’

‘That’s some advice, coming from a man who sent his own fiancée away to Paris as soon as the Revolution broke out! She wanted to stay and be near you, but you forced her to go.’

‘And I have regretted it every day since. Do not postpone happiness, Kirov. That has been the most costly lesson of my life.’

The building shuddered as a shell from the tank smashed into the upper storeys of the hotel. Soldiers accompanying the armoured vehicle crouched in the doorways of wrecked buildings, shooting at anything that moved in the hotel.

The Jagdpanzer backed up slowly as it manoeuvred for another shot.

With a sound like a whipcrack, a bullet passed just over Kirov’s head and smashed what was left of the light fixture hanging from the middle of the room.

Pekkala watched the barrel of the tank rising as it took aim. It seemed to be pointing straight at him. Slowly, he lowered his gun, knowing it was useless to keep fighting against such a machine. ‘I’m sorry, Kirov,’ he said. ‘I should never have brought you to this place.’

‘I would have come here anyway,’ answered Kirov.

Then came a deafening roar, following by the squeal of the tank’s engine and then another explosion, this one more muffled than the first.

The top hatch of the tank disappeared as a bolt of fire erupted from the turret. Black smoke poured from the engine grille and fire coughed out of the exhaust stacks.

At that same moment, Pekkala caught sight of a small grey cloud sifting upwards from the rubble of a building. A man emerged, still carrying the arm-length, sand-coloured tube of a Panzerfaust anti-tank weapon. At first, Pekkala could not understand why the vehicle had been destroyed by what appeared to be one of its own people, but then he realised that the man was a partisan. Just as he was wondering where the man had come from, and where he could have come by such a weapon, a terrible cry went up from the ruins, and more partisans began to pour into the street.

‘Where did they come from?’ asked Kirov, who had joined Pekkala at the window sill.

The soldiers, who had been ready to make their final assault on the garrison, began to pull back. But they were quickly overwhelmed by the mass of charging partisans, who seemed to number in their hundreds. In minutes, the SS men were running for their lives, leaving behind the smouldering hulk of their tank.

Deafened and coughing the dust from their lungs, Pekkala and Kirov stumbled their way out into the street. The air was filled with a metallic reek of broken flint from cobblestones crushed by the heavy iron tank tracks.

All around them, Red Army soldiers emerged from hiding places behind the coils of barbed wire which marked their last line of defence.

Partisans milled about in the road. Having driven off the attackers, they seemed unsure what to do next.

Among these men, Pekkala recognised members of the Barabanschikov Atrad. But there were others, many others, whom Pekkala had not seen before. Then he knew that Barabanschikov had somehow managed to do what might have seemed impossible only days before – he had gathered the Atrads together.

The soldiers approached, stepping carefully over the smashed bricks.

The partisans watched them come on, smoke still drifting from their weapons.

Warily, the two sides watched each other.

Just when it seemed as if they might start shooting at each other, one of the Red Army soldiers slung his rifle on his back. As seconds passed, others followed his example. Some even laid their guns upon the ground and, as if driven by a wordless command, walked forward with their arms held out in gratitude to the men who had just saved their lives.

When Malashenko arrived at the safe house, he found the doors open and the building empty. There seemed to be only two possibilities, neither of them good. Either Kirov and Pekkala had been killed or captured, or else they had escaped to the Red Army garrison. From what Malashenko could hear on his way into town, the Fascists were attacking the old hotel with everything they had, including, from the sound of it, a tank, against which the garrison had no defences. The shooting had stopped. Which means, thought Malashenko, that everyone inside that garrison is probably dead by now.

But even as these thoughts entered his mind, they were interrupted by the sound of cheering, which came from somewhere over by the garrison. Malashenko listened, mystified. Russian. There was no mistake, and it dawned on him that the Red Army must somehow have repelled the German attack. Malashenko set off towards the sound, his toes half-frozen in his soaked and worn-out boots as they splashed through the ankle-deep slush.

In the street outside the garrison, there was cheering, and even music. A soldier had brought out an accordion and was sitting on top of a large pile of bricks, serenading those who stood nearby. The barbed wire had been pulled aside and, in the place where the barricades had stood, soldiers and partisans danced shoulder to shoulder, their hobnailed boots kicking up sparks from the wet road.

The first person Pekkala and Kirov ran into was Sergeant Zolkin.

‘Not a scratch!’ he shouted, as he wrapped his arms around Pekkala.

‘Yes,’ remarked Pekkala, as he untangled himself from Zolkin’s embrace. ‘You were lucky.’

‘Not me!’ laughed Zolkin. ‘The Jeep! I thought it would be blown to bits, but it came through undamaged!’ Then he ran back towards the motor pool.

The next person they found was Commander Chaplinsky who, instead of enjoying his victory, was almost in hysterics.

‘What is wrong, Commander?’ asked Kirov. ‘Surely you have cause to celebrate!’

Chaplinsky held out a scrap of paper. ‘I just received this from Moscow.’

Gently, Kirov took the paper from his hands. ‘It’s an order from Headquarters in Moscow.’

‘What does it say?’ asked Pekkala.

‘The Rovno garrison is ordered to immediately commence liquidating all partisans in the Rovno area.’ Helplessly, Chaplinsky raised his hands and let them fall again. ‘But if it wasn’t for these partisans, none of us would have survived. What am I supposed to do?’

‘Do nothing for now,’ answered Pekkala. ‘Just give me a little time to find out where we stand.’

‘Very well,’ agreed Chaplinsky, ‘but you must hurry, Inspector. They are expecting an acknowledgement of the order and I cannot delay them for long.’

At that moment, Malashenko arrived from the safe house, red-faced and out of breath. ‘I found him,’ he managed to say. ‘The man who killed Andrich and Yakushkin. He was holed up at my cabin in the woods. I went there when the fighting started and couldn’t get back until now.’

‘He
was
at the cabin?’ asked Pekkala. ‘Where is he now, Malashenko?’

‘Still there, Inspector and he’s not going anywhere. He blew himself up with some kind of explosive. It must have been an accident.’

Pekkala paused. ‘Then how do you know it is him?’

From his pocket, Malashenko brought out the soft-pointed bullet Vasko had given him and held it out towards Pekkala. ‘I found this.’

Pekkala examined the bullet. ‘The same kind that was used to kill Andrich and Yakushkin.’

‘But you must come now, Inspector,’ Malashenko said urgently, ‘before someone else stumbles across the body.’

‘For once,’ said Kirov, ‘I agree with Malashenko.’

‘You go instead, Kirov,’ ordered Pekkala. ‘Find Zolkin and his Jeep and get there as fast as you can. Malashenko, you will show them the way.’

‘Shouldn’t you come too?’ blurted Malashenko, afraid that Vasko’s plan had suddenly begun to unravel. ‘You are the Inspector, after all.’

‘You will find the major every bit as capable,’ Pekkala assured him. ‘I have to find Barabanschikov, before this victory celebration turns into another massacre.’

‘But, Inspector . . .’ Malashenko’s lips twitched as he hunted for the words which might change Pekkala’s mind.

‘Come along!’ Taking Malashenko by the arm, Kirov made his way back towards the motor pool, where Zolkin was still rejoicing at the survival of his beloved Jeep.

As Malashenko allowed himself to be led away, the lustre of the gold was already fading from his mind, replaced now by the fear of what Vasko would do to him when Pekkala failed to arrive.

The two men piled into the back of Sergeant Zolkin’s Jeep. Following Malashenko’s instructions, they drove east out of Rovno for several kilometres, before turning off the main road and continuing over a muddy trail, passing stacks of mildewed logs, readied long ago for transport to the mill, but left to rot instead.

The condition of the road grew worse and worse until at last it disappeared altogether in a large deep puddle. With water seeping into the footwells, Zolkin knew that it was only a matter of seconds before the air intake flooded, cold water poured into the hot engine and the cylinder head cracked from the sudden change in temperature. Then they would not only be stranded but the Jeep would likely be beyond repair.

‘We’ve gone as far as we can go,’ he announced. ‘You’ll have to continue on foot,’ Carefully, he backed up until the Jeep was once again on dry ground.

Kirov and the partisan waded through the deep puddle, leaving Zolkin to guard the Jeep.

Malashenko glanced about warily, knowing that Vasko must be somewhere close by.

‘Why are you so nervous?’ Kirov asked him. ‘The man’s dead, after all.’

‘If you knew what else was in these woods,’ replied Malashenko, ‘you’d be plenty nervous, too, Commissar.’

After a few minutes of tramping along the muddy path, they arrived at the cabin, which was so well-hidden that Kirov might have walked right past if Malashenko hadn’t told him where it was.

‘The body is in there?’ asked Kirov, as they approached the door.

‘Yes,’ replied Malashenko, ‘and I hope you have got a strong stomach.’

Inside the cabin, they found the body still slumped in the chair, which was tilted back against the wall. The severed head lay on the floor beside it.

Kirov reached up to the ceiling and plucked a strand of wire which had become embedded in the wood. ‘It looks to me as if he was preparing an explosive device and it went off by mistake. But who was it for?’

Malashenko shrugged. ‘It doesn’t matter now, does it?’

‘Perhaps you’re right,’ said Kirov, turning his attention to the dog tag still fastened around the dead man’s neck by a braided piece of string. Kirov removed the tag, scraped away the blood and examined the dull zinc oval.

‘SS,’ muttered Kirov. Only now did he understand who had been behind the attack on Colonel Andrich. He also understood why. The result of an all-out war between the Red Army and the partisans would have been chaos, giving the German army ample opportunity to retake the territory they had lost in this region. Kirov wondered if the agent had known how close he had come to succeeding.

As he paced nervously around the cabin, Malashenko caught sight of a Walther P38 pistol lying underneath the iron legs of the stove. It had belonged to Luther Benjamin and had been thrown there by the explosion. One of its reddish-black Bakelite grips had been cracked in the blast, but it was otherwise in good condition.