Tin Sky (29 page)

So far, it’s all information I can use: if Tarasov is an example, the long-standing grudge against Khan’s lifestyle could well have exploded into ideological hatred after he defected to the enemy. What’s more, both the local Bolsheviks and the Ukrainian nationalists had excellent reasons to assassinate him.

One last detail: during the NEP years, at least once every summer Khan visited Krasny Yar. How does Tarasov know? His family lived in Schubino at the time, within walking distance of the woods. The excursions could have been made to reminisce about the Red October glory days, but I doubt it. Tarasov himself doesn’t know. Then, one fine day in the mid-1920s, it was Gleb Platonov who arrived without Khan at Krasny Yar, in the company of a stranger. Given the bad name the Yar already had, the locals were curious about this and the other tours, but it ended there. The stranger remains unidentified; the motive for his trip to Krasny Yar also. Tarasov is convinced that Khan (and perhaps also Platonov, I might add) profited during or right after the guerrilla war against Makhno. This is what incenses him to this day. When asked why he didn’t act on his suspicions, he gave no answer. It seems obvious he was afraid: brilliant career officers pulled much more weight than a former comrade who’d gone back to book-keeping.

Back to my initial observation: is it purely for military reasons that Platonov was flying a plane in this area when he crash-landed, and is it by accident that Khan crossed the Donets no more than twenty kilometres from Krasny Yar? What is – or was – in those woods that lured the two officers back here through the years? Are the deaths there in any way related? Too bad the date of the last visit by one or the other, or both, is unknown! I will not build hypotheses on shaky premises, but I am intrigued. How intrigued? Enough to secure an updated map of the mined sections of the woods, and plan a trip to Krasny Yar myself.

Meanwhile, time permitting, I will follow up on Khan’s NEP years’ frequentation of famous theatre performers, stars of the Kharkov opera and the handful of well-heeled foreigners in town, including some Americans. The seemingly auxiliary titbit gives me in fact a precious clue, thanks to which, if I know how to go about it, I might find out much more than I expected. As Bruno Lattmann says, I should no longer delay my visit to Larisa Malinovskaya.

7

FRIDAY 14 MAY, FORMER
ABWEHR
SPECIAL DETENTION CENTRE IN KHARKOV

At half past midnight, Bora had just fallen asleep. What awoke him was the clicking open of the street door, four floors down. Heard despite the distance, not imagined, it roused him completely so that he went from deep dreamless slumber to a state of lucid alert. Darkness was unbroken in the building. Outside, sheet lightning briefly drew the rectangle of the window grille high on the wall, against a night sky where clouds scudded in front of the stars. On the opposite side of the room, Bora perceived – dark on dark – the crooked rim of the damaged door open on the hallway.

He stretched his left arm, reaching out and groping for the pistol holder on the floor by the bed; he lifted it noiselessly and unlatched it. The heft of steel hardened his wrist as he passed the weapon into his right hand; in a single motion his fingers moulded around the grip and released the safety catch. Tensely he elaborated on thoughts of what was needed to prepare for every eventuality, without giving himself to dangerous flights of fancy. The entire building was untenanted; this much he knew. The block it belonged to, damaged during the battle of the spring, had been evacuated and the German authorities had kept it empty for future use.

From downstairs another distant sound came, consistent with the previous one – the click of a bolt as the door shut
automatically. Bora sat up. There’s a difference between the sound of someone exiting and pulling the door behind him and the small noise of the mechanism when, from the inside, someone gently pushes it closed. This sound was of the second kind. Had the flash-lit window been a mouth panting in suspense, it couldn’t have better matched his state of mind. The thunder was like thunder in dreams. Bora rehearsed the familiar layout of the entryway to determine and anticipate the movements anyone would have to make in order to reach this floor.

His sense of a soldier’s dignity could be impractical at times.
I’m not about to be shot in my underpants
, he thought absurdly, and felt around for his breeches.
The time it takes him to climb to this level trying not to be overheard is the time I need to button them and pull up my braces.

He’d gone through the process of clothing his lower half and retrieving his gun when the light in the third-floor hallway was turned on. Bora got to his bare feet at once, too highly strung to feel the glass shard he’d stepped on, a remnant of Khan’s ornate goblet. Downstairs, steps moved around, the progress of someone who walked from room to room, looking inside, searching. One man, wearing boots. Bora reached the threshold and listened.
I made the same sound when I walked to Platonov’s door – that’s Platonov’s door he’s going to. It’s as if my own ghost were moving downstairs
.

Having seemingly completed his search below, the booted man resumed his climb. Steadily he trod the steps to this level, a careful but secure soft thud of footfalls. Bora counted. There were eight steps to each flight of stairs, two flights per floor.

Someone who slept more heavily than me would have noticed neither the glare from below nor the sound of his climb. Best not reveal I’m here. He’s searching, but doesn’t necessarily know there’s anybody in the building
. Bora leant out of Khan’s room aiming the P38 at the top of the stairs, ready to open fire.

“Major Bora, are you up there?”

Bora raised the muzzle of his pistol as he released the trigger. “Doctor Bernoulli! For God’s sake, I was about to shoot you!”

Bernoulli found the light switch in the fourth-floor hallway. “I can’t believe you left the street door unlocked, Major. It was hugely imprudent.”

“I thought – I’d have sworn – I’d locked it. But how did you possibly —”

“How? I billet here. This building is now being used as temporary quarters: weren’t you told? You wouldn’t have found electricity and running water otherwise. On the second floor, the rooms are all furnished – you’d be more comfortable in one of them, I’d say.” The judge seemed urbanely amused by Bora’s confusion. “You’re not as mysterious as you think, either, Major. I was driving by as you walked in from the street earlier this evening. You didn’t see me, and I didn’t care to make myself known. Until a few minutes ago I was dining with colleagues. When I returned and found the place unlocked – well, I imagined that you or another officer rooming here had forgotten to bolt the door. An army vehicle with a different licence plate from yours was parked in the courtyard below, so I deduced it might or might not be you. Then I noticed that on the second floor none but my room was occupied, which made me curious to know where the other tenant might be. I didn’t think you’d choose to sleep up here in an unmade bed. Sorry if I alarmed you.”

“Not at all. I – didn’t realize the rooms below had been refurbished.” His foot hurt. Bora looked down, and saw blood on the floor tiles.

Bernoulli shook his head. “I did startle you, didn’t I? You’ll need a plaster on that heel. Come; I have a small first-aid kit below.”

The incident turned into a chance to talk. Bernoulli had a Thermos full of strong coffee, and after they had downed a couple of mugs each, sleep didn’t seem important to either of them. They sat in what had been the guard room on the ground floor, a square whitewashed space that doubled as a kitchen, with a
table and chairs. The judge sounded well informed about the building’s previous designation and its inmates. Without asking, Bora volunteered that he’d conferred with Colonel Bentivegni, and very recently too.
Why not? They both serve in Greater Berlin; their duties are to an extent contiguous. It means he knows far more about me than I imagined
:
that’s why he brought up the St Petersburg Paradox
. The fact could be dangerous or consoling, depending.

Unlike Bora, who drank out of an aluminium mess kit cup, Bernoulli sipped from a ceramic mug with a Greek fret on it. He said, “I’m looking into the episodes we discussed when we first met, Major Bora. I’ve requested the support of Judge Knobloch, who is, however, busy dealing with the reported February killings of German prisoners at Grischino, and the murder and rape of Red Cross nurses. It will take time, and you may never actually hear what our findings are.”

“I’m not in the position of being in a hurry, Dr Bernoulli.”

“The Bureau is. It is fair to let you know, nonetheless, that your immediate superior in the
Abwehr
doesn’t seem particularly in favour of your photographic hobby.”

Bora would not have expected the close-mouthed Bentivegni to have let out that much to a military judge, but stranger things happened at central office level. “I’m sorry to hear it,” he noted. “Because I intend to keep it up.”

The guard room had no windows. A sense of privacy and isolation – again the image of a confessional came to mind – was derived from the lack of openings. The sound of thunder came muffled from outside; from time to time the overhead lamp flickered as lightning struck the line somewhere. With the coffee mug between his hands Bernoulli sat across from Bora, who had insisted on dressing fully in his superior’s presence. Whether reacting to the young man’s words or to the tone in which they were pronounced, he assumed the frown of a disappointed teacher. “Allow me the privilege of age and experience, Major: it’s this elitist cavalry mode, this Junker mode, that gets many of you into hot water in times when circumspection is
called for. You’re not as pristine as you pretend, either. I listened carefully to your report when we first met. My observation is that you’re aggravated when things don’t go the way you think they should.”

“I follow my sense of ethics.”

“Ethics? Need I remind you of the root of the word?
Ethos
is man’s attitude before hardship. Don’t take the word in vain, Major Bora.”

“I know what ethics means in philosophy, sir. I grasp what it means in the religious sense. Please do not patronize me to this extent.”

Impertinent as it was, Bora’s reply must have betrayed his concern at not being taken seriously. The judge could have reprimanded him for it. He chose instead to indulge in the paternalism that had caused the reaction to begin with. “I was told you travel alone across distances in an occupied country —”

“I notice the
Heeresrichter
does the same.”

“— and you do not shrink from open conflict with political colleagues. There is a difference between loving risk and ignoring it: didn’t your stepfather instruct you in that regard?”

“The general and I do not see eye to eye on many things. We don’t speak much.”

Bernoulli poured the last of the coffee first into Bora’s mug, then his own. “So long as you know that the object’s value, its
utility
, might demand a very high price. Turning in other Germans for what appears to have happened at the Pyatikhatky forest and Drobytsky Yar exceeds risk; but it may be your way of following ethics. As for Colonel Bentivegni, I believe he’s getting bored with his charge and may ask for front-line duty before year’s end.”

“Well, he’ll get there as a major general.”

“Yes. All things considered – it is technically none of my business, but judges do dabble in ethics themselves – it would help your credibility with your superiors if you were able to offer them a clear theory on Commander Tibyetsky’s death,
which was such a serious loss to your agency. It’s irrelevant how I know, Major: suffice to say I’m fully informed. And I heard you were encouraged to look into it.”

I was told to
solve the problem
and
tidy up
afterwards
. Bora gave up trying to fathom the judge’s sources. The quivering light bulb, a reminder of the precariousness of his holed-up Stalingrad days, when a man could count on nothing and darkness was frightful, put him in a strange state of compliance. He said, “There isn’t much to build a theory on, I’m afraid. Two groups credibly claim his assassination; the supposed culprit is dead, and her companions are out of my reach. I came here tonight because… I don’t know what I was hoping to discover, to understand. If only Khan Tibyetsky had given me a clue.”

“To what? Why should he? A defector takes into account that he’s forfeiting his life.”

“Precisely. A man who played as complicated a game as I believe he played, and probably for quite some time, is a man who on the one hand asks for collateral, and on the other keeps something that will serve him as security, if not as life insurance.”

“My understanding is that the tank model he came in
was
Tibyetsky’s security.”

“His
iron horse
: right.”

There’s something in a judge – if he’s an able judge – that invites disclosure. I shouldn’t trust him before (or until) I learn his motives
. The oilcloth on the table, held in place by tacks, had a faint criss-cross of cuts on it, caused by those who’d sliced bread or other food on its surface. Heedful of signs and meanings (and portents, at times), Bora ran his eyes over the faint lines. The world was readable: or else it was his mental habit to think that he could read it. Everything was significant; coincidences ceased to be such when the latent design was exposed. Sitting here, lowering his defences… He felt the small sting of the wound on his heel as a marker of sorts.
I, too, am written upon
. He said, “You might know Tibyetsky was distantly related to me.”