Impasse (The Red Gambit Series) (81 page)

“
Enough, Comrade Orderly. I do not remember any of this,” she held up her hand to silence his protestations.

She gathered her thoughts, dealing with it as best she could.

“I do not remember this… but it has happened… and I’m sorry for it. I will always be sorry for it.”

She shook her head, speaking in a way as if she was almost trying to convince herself.

“Maybe it was the drugs and the alcohol?”

More than one eyebrow rose in agreement.

“Possibly I drank too much, maybe the food was off… but for you and me it never happened, nor as far as anyone else is concerned. I must make that clear, Comrade Orderly.”

Stranov
’s wounded face was worthy of an Oscar.

“
But our love? What we had last night?”

“
We had nothing last night, nothing at all, am I clear? It never happened… and it will never be spoken of.”

She took the plunge.

“My position offers some advantages, and I can be of use to you after this war has concluded. Your silence will ensure my support. Are we agreed?”

“
If there’s no chance for our love t…”

“
None. Never, Comrade Orderly. There’s no future in this. I have a husband.”

Behind the mirror, there were smiles, as the husband might one day have a front seat at a special film show, depending on how his wife responded to certain suggestions in
the future.

“
Then I agree, Comrade General, but I wish it was otherwise, for I’ve never made love with a more desirable woman.”

“
Enough. Now, get out and never speak of this.”

Stranov couldn
’t resist a sneaky look towards the mirror as he left the room, pausing only to pick up his shreds of clothing.

Truly, the show was now over and the three NKVD officers removed themselves and the equipment as Nazarbayeva
showered, painfully scrubbing away the residue of her night of ‘passion’.

In the confines of the bathroom, she cried
. Tears of anger for the abuse she had suffered; tears of hurt for the pain that wracked her every movement; tears of grief for the husband whose trust she had dishonored.

And then she cried no more.

“Good morning, boys.”

The nurse
’s smile always brought joy to the small ward simply known as number twenty-two. It was her domain, eight beds filled with what was left of men retrieved from the horrors of the front.

Not a man was intact, with wound
s ranging from single amputations up to the loss of three limbs.

Chiseldon Camp
’s medical facilities had been established in 1915, to help deal with the huge influx of battered soldiers from the Great War.

In the Second World War
, it became a focus for US units training to join the fighting in Europe and, on 7th June 1944, the 130th arrived and set up a receiving station for battle casualties that were to be flown in from the Normandy beaches.

The arriving
wounded were assessed, treated, stabilized, and sent on, if it was safe to do so, a string of hospitals in and around the area set up to receive men for specialist treatments.

Most of the camp had been returned to civilian use after May 1945, but the 130th remained in its base, expanding
again when the violence recommenced.

Ward twenty-two had started as an experiment, providing early intervention in amputation cases, dealing with the mental
, as well as physical, aspects of the injuries.

The experiment had been successful
, and there were three other such wards on the site, each with a dedicated team of nurses to bring the wounded through the traumas of their loss.

Twenty-two was now an
‘Officers only’ unit, and the nurse who they all called ‘Florence’ was a Major with a bedside manner similar to an unsympathetic poor house manager, an attitude that her patients all saw through.

Her first port of call was the man who had only lost one leg; an artillery major who had just stepped on the wrong piece of Germany and detonated a mine.

The explosion had ‘only’ removed his foot, but the explosive blast had done awful work, travelling up inside his leg and degloving the bone, forcing gaps in the tissue all the way to the  thigh, gaps which accommodated the expanding explosive gases.

The chances of saving the limb
had been next to nothing, but that had not stopped the130th trying.

Major Jocelyn Presley administered the pain relief and checked the dressings on the Artilleryman
’s leg, knowing that the efforts had failed. She wrote her findings on the chart in the clipped non-descript words that clinicians always use around bad news.

The doctor
’s rounds would confirm her fears soon enough and the middle-aged national Guardsman from Virginia would lose his limb all the way to the hip.

Moving on,
she found the armless bomber pilot still asleep. The rules of Ward 22 were to let people sleep unless the medication was time critical, so she marked the chart that the pain relief had not been administered.

As always, t
he eyes of patient three burned brightly.

“
Good morning to you, Major.”

“
Good morning to you to, Florence.”

She feigned anger.

“How often do I have to tell you guys? It’s Major Presley to you. Strictly formal, no nonsense, even for our British cousins!”

Ramsey grinned, understanding that the normal morning routine would not be the same without the
‘name game’.

“
So, how are the twins this morning?”

It was part of the psychology of the ward that the loss of limbs was dealt with up front, without avoiding the issue. Ramsey called his stumps the twins as, after skilled work by the surgeons at an anonymous casualty clearing station in Holland, the remaining parts of his legs were identical in every way.

“Well, I know they are there, Major Presley.”

By Ramsey
’s standards, that was almost a desperate cry for pain relief.

Presley prepared some oral analgesia.

“Your wife is coming to visit today. I thought you would like to know so you can tidy up a bit.”

Ramsey
’s smile almost needed stitches, it was so wide.

“
She badgered the War Department apparently. Didn’t take no for an answer.”

Ramsey choked a
nd spluttered as he consumed the pain killer.

“
That would be her for sure, Major Presley.”

Making more notes on Ramsey
’s sheet, Jocelyn Presley cracked one of her rare grins, as she was truly happy for the delightful English officer.

“
Well,” she made a deliberately studious examination of his paperwork, “Soon enough, you’ll be able to go home to her and leave this horrible war behind you.

Ramsey looked at her in a way that made her wonder exactly what she had said.

“Major Presley, nothing could be further from my mind. I
will
walk again, and I
will
contribute again… and there’ll be no argument on the matter either!”

The grin was there
, but she could see his eyes.

Normally full of mischief, they were
now hardened, and she knew that behind them lay a brain resolved to somehow return to the war.

She returned the silent stare, sending her own message to the Black Watch officer.

‘You’re a goddamn solid gold hero, man! You’ve done your bit and paid a heavy price, John Ramsey. Please, let it go now and return to your loved ones, eh?’

His eyes sent back a silent reply.

‘I’ve lost my legs, not my mind. There’s work I can do… and I
will
do it!”

The medication started to kick in and he felt drowsy.

“Sleep well, Major Ramsey.”

Nodding at
‘Florence’, he fell asleep.

Presley dwe
lt by the bed for just a moment, looked at her sleeping charge and whispered her thoughts to sleeping ears.

“
Actually, I don’t doubt that you will, John. Wouldn’t bet against it, and that’s a fact.”

Which, for Jocelyn Presley, was actually quite sad.

We draw our strength from the very despair in which we have been forced to live. We shall endure.

Cesar Chavez.

They had been arriving for the past two days, trains and trucks bringing the rag-tag assembly of men together in the one new facility.

Actually, facility
was an overstatement.

The handful of huts,
each built to house forty men, thus far contained an average of one hundred and ten souls each. Simple maths brought the number of POWs to at least seven-hundred and fifty, and the new guests were arriving every hour.

Old tents were available for the late-comers
, and these were pitched, despite the best efforts of the growing storm.

The NKVD officer in charge of camp security sat on his verandah, rocking
backwards and forwards absent-mindedly as the vodka seared his throat, his eyes seeking out every detail of the panorama laid out before him.

Ou
t of the corner of his eye, he saw the previous commander approaching.

“
Comrade Kapitan Durets, to what do I owe this pleasure?”

“
Comrade Mayor, the latest transport has deposited two hundred and three prisoners here. This brings the number assigned to this camp to…” he checked the figure to get it absolutely right, “Nine hundred and seventy-three.”

“
Excellent, Comrade Kapitan.”

The look on the man
’s face told the security commander that was not necessarily the case.

“
Go on, Comrade.”

“
Even with our present arrangements in the huts… and the old tents you were able to secure, we will come up short on accommodation… by my calculations… by forty-three places, Comrade Mayor.”

Skryabin gave the matter a moment
’s thought, grimacing as an icy blast hit both men full on.

“
Then we must either find more places, or fewer bodies to fill them.”

Another draught of warming vodka hit the spot and his face creased in genuine mirth before becoming business-like again.

“Seeing as I cannot produce more tents out of my arse, then I shall have to whittle away at the bodies. Roll call parade, Comrade Kapitan,” Skryabin checked his watch and made a mental calculation.

He drained the last of the vodka and set the glass down hard, the rifle shot sound making more than Durets jump.

“Six minutes.”

The NKVD Captain threw up a salute and trudged back through the snow and icy water to get the guard prepared for a spot
roll call.

Skryabin
’s reputation had come before him; both that of the bravery, as well as that of the cruelty, and it appeared to Captain Durets that it would be the latter on display today.

“
Attention!”

The tired and freezing men made a valiant effort to present themselves as a group of soldiers, but the cold cut through their rags like a knife and they soon hunched or grouped again, driven apart or upright only by the butts of rifles as the Guards counted them off.

After eleven minutes the figure came back.

‘
Nine hundred and seventy.’

“
Incorrect. Do it again.”

The counting resumed, hand in hand with an increase in the cut of the wind, with those on the northern edge of the assembly area worst affected.

Skryabin looked on in satisfaction as two men dropped into the slush.

‘
Nine hundred and seventy-one.’

“
Wrong, you fucking oaf! There’s two of the bastards lying dead there. Did you count them? Well? Did you?”

The Senior Sergeant overseeing the
roll call turned to get the answer from one of his subordinates, but Skyrabin was on a roll.

“
Right! Enough of this shit. Comrade Captain. Name and rank parade, left to right. No-one leaves the parade ground until it is correct. Understand?”