Red Winter (42 page)

And then I knew the truth.

I raised my pistol and pointed it at Ryzhkov. ‘It’s you,’ I said. ‘
You’re
Koschei.’

The room was silent. The accusation of Koschei’s identity was like casting a spell inside the
izba
, As if time had stopped to allow us to process this new revelation. No one spoke; no one moved; hardly a breath was taken.

Marianna. The boys. I was close now. So close. I had to keep my nerve. I couldn’t fail now. Not now.

‘You?’ Tanya broke the silence. ‘
You’re
Koschei?’

Ryzhkov inflated before me as he sucked a long breath into his nostrils. He held it for a moment, then let it out as the grin returned to his lips. He kept his eyes on me, only me, and there was a disturbing glint in them, which he had hidden well when we met. He had played the part of the honourable soldier; the man who had followed the orders of a maniac because he was too afraid to disobey, but he had been unable to maintain the charade for long. He was too full of conceit, and now the spark was there that made him more alive than any of us.
My
eyes felt dull and tired and weary of the things they had seen, but his were glittering with expectation and excitement. He was glad to be himself again, the perfect tool of the Cheka. A man who enjoyed his work.

He straightened, throwing back his shoulders and lifting his arm. He raised it slowly, finger and thumb formed in the way a child would pretend he was holding a pistol. When the finger was level with me, he was a mirror image, standing with his make-believe weapon outstretched, as I stood with my real one.

His sudden composure was chilling. One moment he was raising his voice and ranting like a lunatic, and the next he was almost serene.

‘No.
You’re
Koschei,’ he said, dropping his thumb to fire an imaginary bullet into my head. ‘And him.
He’s
Koschei too.’ He aimed at one of the men at the table and did the same. ‘And
him
.’ He pointed at another, firing a third, silent, invisible bullet.

‘Where is my wife? Where are my sons?’ My words came out as a whisper, but they were easily audible in the quiet room.

Ryzhkov spread his hands wide. ‘We’re
all
Koschei. Don’t you see that? Every one of us tasked with spreading the terror that keeps the enemy in the shadow is Koschei. We’re a whispered promise of death.’

‘Where are they?’ I asked.

‘I’m a
monster
, and you are too. Don’t you understand that? That’s what they want us to be, the men who give the orders. They want people to tell stories about us for years to come. They gave you a
medal
for it.’

‘Tell me where you took them.’

Ryzhkov rolled his eyes in exasperation as if his mask of calmness were about to crack and fall from his face to reveal the true evil beneath.

‘Think about it, Nikolai. Mothers and fathers tell their children the
skazkas
to teach them not to go into the woods, not to steal, not to curse, to . . . to do as they are told.’ He waved a hand. ‘To obey. And that’s what we do for the people – we give them a symbol of what can happen if they don’t obey. They’ll be afraid for a long time – for years to come. They’ll talk about us in whispers, Nikolai. We make them afraid.
You
make them afraid.’

‘Where are they?’ I thumbed back the hammer of my pistol, aware of the men at the table. They were unarmed, but they were still dangerous. Four loyal, well-trained, experienced and obedient men. I could not afford to dismiss them as subdued.

Ryzhkov shook his head in disappointment. ‘You can’t shoot me, Nikolai, you know that. Kill me and you’ll never know where my prisoners went. Or . . .’ the grin returned, ‘. . . or maybe you
can
just shoot me. I mean, how do you even know they’re still alive? Maybe they’re dead already. I’ve killed so many people I’ve lost count and probably wouldn’t even remember which village it was. Isn’t that a wonderful irony? That I found your family without even knowing it?’

It was clear that Ryzhkov was a madman. Whatever he had done, whoever he had been and whatever he had believed, it had driven him to this. Turned him into
this
.

‘One of your men will tell us,’ Tanya said.

‘Perhaps they don’t even know.’ He turned to Tanya with an expression of mock sympathy. ‘Sorry. It looks like we’ve reached a stalemate. There’s nowhere to go from here. So what do we do? What do you want to do?’

Tanya didn’t reply. Instead she approached Ryzhkov, coming close enough to press the barrel of her pistol against his heart. ‘I want my husband and my children back.’

Behind me, Oksana and the old woman said, ‘No,’ in unison, and the men at the table made a move to rise, but Ryzhkov held out a hand to them, signalling them to stay where they were.

‘Tanya.’ I called her name, letting her hear the warning in my voice. I needed Ryzhkov to tell me where Marianna was.

Ryzhkov pushed against the pistol, forcing it harder into his chest as he leaned his face close to Tanya’s. ‘Did I take them too? Your husband and children. I’ve taken so many, you know.’

‘You murdered them.’

‘Oh well, I can hardly bring them back from
that
.’

Her left hand darted out and gripped his throat, her fingers tight. Her face was a tortured picture of pain and fury.

Ryzhkov didn’t flinch. ‘Are you going to let her kill me, Nikolai?’

‘Tanya,’ I warned her again.

‘You hear how afraid he is?’ Ryzhkov said, staring into Tanya’s eyes. ‘How desperate?’ The sinews bulged in his neck.

‘Tanya.’ I shifted my pistol to aim at her now, then at Ryzhkov once more. There was so much confusion in her, so much conflict. I understood what she was feeling, but I couldn’t let her do this. ‘Tanya, please.’

‘You kill me and he might never see his family again. Would you do that to him?’ His eyes slipped to the side so he could look at me and I saw that, despite his predicament, he was enjoying this.

Tanya squeezed harder and Ryzhkov’s face began to change colour. Her fingertips dug into his skin as if she intended to tear out his throat, but Ryzhkov did nothing to prevent it. He let his arms hang by his sides as she crushed his life.

‘And then you’ll be just like me.’ Ryzhkov’s voice came in a hoarse whisper. His breath was failing, his life hanging on the edge. ‘You will have condemned Nikolai’s family. You will be like us. You will be
Koschei
too. Just another monster.’

‘She’s killing him,’ the old woman said behind me. ‘Don’t let her kill him.’

I heard Oksana saying something too, but the words were lost on me. There was too much happening, too much to think about. Ryzhkov was letting Tanya choke him – he was far more powerful than she was, yet he did nothing to retaliate. He was using his own mortality to manipulate us.

‘Are you going to let her do this?’ Ryzhkov asked me. His voice was tighter, and his eyes were wide and red.

I trained my gun on Tanya now, began to tighten my finger on the trigger. It wasn’t what I wanted. I didn’t want to kill her, but I would have to.

‘You have to stop,’ I warned her. ‘Please. If you make me do this, he’s one step closer to getting what he wants.’

Ryzhkov dropped to his knees now, his face bright red, his mouth open in a desperate attempt to draw breath. Still his men did nothing. They obeyed his order, sitting by and watching as Tanya squeezed with one hand and held a pistol to his heart with the other.

‘Don’t make me kill you, Tanya. Don’t let him use me to do this.’

Finally I broke into her rage and she turned to me as if woken from a dream. She blinked, looked down at her hands, at Ryzhkov’s bloated face, then released her grip.

Ryzhkov bent double, head to the ground, coughing and gasping for air, but as soon as his lungs were full, he pushed Tanya’s pistol away and got to his feet in front of her. The redness began to drain from his skin, and he lifted a hand to his throat, rubbing at the spot where Tanya’s fingers had marked him.

His grin returned and he looked from Tanya to me and then back again. ‘You can’t kill me,’ he said, voice rattling. ‘I’m deathless.’

I remembered that Galina had put her knife in him and all he carried was the ghost of a limp.

‘No one’s deathless,’ Tanya replied.

‘But you can’t kill me. You can’t let me live, and you can’t kill me, so what do you do?’

Ryzhkov had backed us into a corner, but he had a weakness. I had seen that already, and I wondered if we could play him as he had played us.

‘You found my family,’ I said, ‘but you’re forgetting that I found yours too. Maybe we
can’t
kill you –’ I stepped to one side and swivelled to point my pistol at Oksana ‘– but I can kill
her
.’

Immediately the smile dropped from his face.

Oksana was standing at the base of the ladder to the place where her children were hiding, exactly as she had been since I had allowed her back into the house. She had hardly moved. The old woman, though, was on her feet, hands to her mouth, and I realised the question of whose mother she was had been settled. Her fear was for Ryzhkov: he was her son.

The old man remained in his seat, head bowed as if he was trying to ignore it all, and now I understood the reason for his behaviour. While the mother was proud of her Chekist son, the father was ashamed. The revolution had split this family as easily as it had split the country.

‘Come here,’ I said to Oksana.

She hesitated, looking at her husband. ‘Tell them it’s not true,’ she said to Ryzhkov. ‘Tell them they’re wrong. You didn’t do all those things.’

So now I knew.

‘Come here,’ I said again, and this time she shook her head.

‘Would you rather I used one of your children?’ I asked, hating the dreadful nature of my threat. Ryzhkov had forced me to behave like him and I couldn’t help looking over at Anna, sitting in the corner watching me. I wished there was a way to let her see that I wouldn’t do it. I wanted her to know I would never hurt Oksana’s children, but there was no way to do it without warning the others too.

‘Which one will it be?’ I asked.

‘I’ll come,’ Oksana said, and when she was at arm’s length, I reached out and pulled her towards me, jamming my pistol under her chin as before.

I looked at Ryzhkov. ‘Your wife, I presume?’

I saw from his expression I was right.

‘Tell them it’s not true, Grigori,’ she pleaded with him. ‘Those things they say you did. Tell them it’s not true.’

But he couldn’t deny it. Not in front of his men, not in front of us. And when I looked back at the old woman, I saw sorrow replace pride, as if she had rejected the possibility of her son’s madness until this moment, but
now
she knew the reality of what he was.

Beside her, Sergei had his head in his hands.

‘Your mother and father,’ I said. ‘See how ashamed they are of you.’

‘They should be proud. I’m making our motherland better. More powerful.’

‘No, you’re just a murderer.’

‘I’m a
patriot
.’

‘Who drowns women and beheads old men.’

‘Enemies,’ he said. ‘The ones who can’t be taught. They have to be rooted out like weeds – you said so yourself. The weak and the unwilling. The others, I send for labour so they can learn to love the revolution; to fight for it.’

‘You didn’t do this for the revolution,’ I said. ‘You did it for yourself. Because you enjoy it. Because you’re a monster.’

‘Grigori,’ Oksana said, ‘tell them it’s not true.’

He turned up his lip at her. ‘Are you not a good Communist?’

‘Of course, but—’

‘Then you’ll find nothing wrong with what I’m doing. It’s these people who are killing our country with their false ideas and desertion.’ He looked right at me. ‘Kill her. I don’t care.’

Oksana tensed and then slackened in my arms as if she had been slapped. She couldn’t believe what her husband was saying. The father of her children.

‘Do it,’ he said. ‘Go on.’

I tightened my grip on Oksana and pressed the gun barrel harder, but my finger froze on the trigger.

‘Do it,’ Ryzhkov said again. ‘See what
I
will sacrifice for the cause.’

‘No,’ Oksana begged. ‘Please.’

I looked across at Anna, seeing how afraid she was of what I was doing.

‘Do it.’ Ryzhkov’s demand made me turn my attention back to him and I could see from his expression that he thought he had won. ‘You can’t,’ he said. ‘Can you?’

I wasn’t going to murder Oksana, and Ryzhkov had known that right away. He had seen my care for Anna and the way I had allowed Oksana to go to her children. He knew I was incapable of killing her. I was not the man he was, and now Oksana was of no use to me as a hostage because he understood that. There was nothing to stop him from doing what he wanted. I had no hold over him. Unless I told Tanya to do it her way.

‘Shoot him,’ I said.

‘What?’

‘Shoot him. Make it hurt, but don’t kill—’

‘That damn dog of yours wouldn’t let me into—’ Lyudmila was saying as she pushed the front door inwards, bumping against Tanya’s shoulder.

Distracted for a fraction of a second, Tanya flinched and began to turn her head towards the intrusion, but Ryzhkov saw his chance.

It was all the edge he needed.

Raising his left arm, Ryzhkov pushed Tanya’s hand to one side, brought up his right elbow and slammed it hard into her nose. She fired but was too late. The deafening shot cracked in the dead air of the
izba
, filling the confined space with sound, releasing a cloud of acrid smoke that dispersed around them. The bullet went wide and low, thumping into the man who had been sitting beside Ryzhkov. At almost point-blank range, it hit him under the right armpit, knocking him sideways. He put his hands out to stop himself from falling off his chair, but already the bullet had done its work. He would be dead in a few minutes.