The Beast in the Red Forest (11 page)

Humiliated, the men lowered their heads and scowled at the ground.

That was in the early days, when Barabanschikov’s Atrad was not a fighting force, but just a group of terrified and haphazardly armed people who had fled into the forest and were simply trying to stay alive. It was only later that they managed to acquire enough weapons to defend themselves.

Before the war began, the Red Army had not prepared for any kind of partisan activity. Those who had proposed training soldiers in guerrilla tactics on Russian soil, in the event of an invasion, were condemned as being defeatist. Teaching Russian soldiers to fight behind enemy lines assumed that Russia could be successfully attacked, and Red Army generals had assured Stalin that this was impossible. Any officers expressing doubts were shot, with the result that, when German troops poured across the border in the summer of 1941, the Soviet High Command had no idea how to combat the enemy in territory which had been overrun.

That was left to men like Barabanschikov and the hundreds, later thousands, of Red Army stragglers, known as
okruzhentsy
, who fled into the dense forests of Ukraine. Filling the ranks of these partisan bands were escaped Red Army prisoners of war, and other soldiers who were lucky enough to have avoided the vast encirclements which trapped and then annihilated entire Soviet army groups. Many were civilians, with no military training at all. Barabanschikov himself had been a school teacher in Rovno, before his school was converted into the headquarters of the German Secret Field Police. Together, this assortment of men, women and children began to organise themselves into bands united either by race or politics or simply the need to seek vengeance.

Few of them lasted for long.

In August of 1941, an SS Cavalry Brigade infiltrated the Pripet marshes and killed more than 13,000 partisans at the cost of only two men dead.

In the winter of that year, which was one of the harshest in living memory, most of those who had escaped the massacre either froze or starved to death, because the Red Army had scorched the earth as they retreated, burning homes and crops, killing livestock and poisoning wells. Their aim had been to leave nothing but a wasteland for the enemy, but it also left nothing for those who were just trying to survive. Nor was the landscape the only thing the Red Army devastated in the path of their flight. Mass executions took place in almost every city that would fall into enemy hands. On the orders of Lavrenti Beria, head of NKVD, over 100,000 Soviet civilians were shot as the Red Army decamped from Lvov.

By the time the Germans arrived, only those who had retreated deep into the hinterland even stood a chance. But those who did soon learned how to stay alive, and to fight back.

By the spring of 1942, stories had begun to spread of a solitary beast, which roamed through the Red Forest lacquered with the blood of its prey. Some said that the stories were just that – legends fabricated by Barabanschikov himself to strike terror into those who strayed into his territory. But there were others who, with fear-softened voices, uttered the name of Pekkala, as if to even to pronounce it might call forth the monster which they said lurked inside him. They said that Pekkala was dead, killed somewhere far to the north, and that Barabanschikov himself had conjured his spirit back to life out of the black earth and twisted vines and all of the assembled horrors lurking in that wilderness.

And there were men who heard these stories, having returned home from Siberia after years of captivity in the Gulag known as Borodok, who spoke of a similar creature, known to them as the Man with Bloody Hands, which had ranged across the forest in the valley of Krasnagolyana.

Making their way through the streets of Rovno, Kirov and Pekkala located the bunker without difficulty. The burlap curtain still hung in front of the door, speckled with burn holes made by embers coughed up from the blazing ruins. But when they reached the bottom of the stairs, following the beam of Pekkala’s torch, they found both rooms were empty. The desks, ammunition crates and stacks of firearms had all been spirited away.

‘It’s all gone,’ muttered Kirov. ‘Everything.’

‘Not everything,’ replied Pekkala, shining the torch on the gore-splashed walls and ceiling.

As they inspected the room, Kirov described what had taken place.

Their search produced several empty cartridges, trampled into the dirt floor by whoever had cleaned out the room, as well as a torn and bloody bandage, which appeared to be the same one the assassin had been wearing to cover his face.

Pekkala examined the cartridges carefully. ‘From a Tokarev.’

‘That’s right,’ said Kirov. ‘The missing man was carrying one in a holster.’

Pekkala held out the cartridges on the flat of his palm. ‘But these are not ordinary Tokarev casings.’

‘How can you tell?’

‘They have been reloaded,’ explained Pekkala, pointing to the base of the cartridge, which was ridged with several tiny nicks, as if some minute creature had sunk its teeth into the brass. ‘You can see extractor marks. There are also crimps along the side of the cartridge, where it has been held in a vice. But the strange thing is that the primer cap doesn’t appear to be a replacement. It hasn’t been fired before.’

‘Then why would someone bother to reload it?’

Pekkala shook his head in bewilderment. ‘It’s as if the bullet has been rebuilt for some reason, but as to why . . .’

‘Maybe this will help to explain,’ said Kirov, retrieving the fragment of lead and copper which the doctor had given him as a souvenir. ‘The surgeon  pulled it out of me.’ He dropped the flattened round into Pekkala’s open palm.

With his face only a hand’s breadth away, Pekkala pushed the bullet around with his finger, like a cat toying with an insect. He raised his head suddenly. ‘You are lucky to be alive, Kirov.’

‘That’s what the doctor said.’

‘Trust me, you are even luckier than he knows. This was no squabble among the partisans. Whoever shot you and those other men was a professional assassin.’

‘But how can you tell?’

‘This is a specialised bullet, Kirov. It’s known as a soft point. The rounds in your gun are standard issue 7.62 mm Tokarev ammunition, in which the lead portion of the bullet is completely encased in copper. Check your own weapon and you’ll see.’

Obediently, Kirov removed his Tokarev, slid out the magazine and, using his thumb, pushed out a copper-jacketed round. ‘You’re right, Inspector. These are different.’

Now Pekkala held up the fired bullet, pinched between his thumb and index finger. ‘This bullet, however, is only half sleeved in copper. The front part is left open, exposing the lead core. Once it leaves the gun, the soft point collapses into the centre, causing the bullet to expand. It shortens the range, but produces greater impact strength than a regular bullet.’

‘The doctor said it was a ricochet,’ said Kirov. ‘I thought it looked this way because it was damaged by whatever it hit before it struck me. But now that you mention it, I can see the line where the copper jacket ends. So that’s why he rebuilt the cartridges, replacing regular bullets with these soft points. But if they are so effective, then why aren’t they standard issue for all Tokarev pistols?’

‘The exposed lead leaves a residue in the barrel which, if the gun is not constantly cleaned, can lead to jamming and misfires. The fully jacketed bullets are more practical for use in the field. Whoever this man is, he came prepared to do his killing at close range, and he worked hard to make sure that his identity could not be traced. Even the markings on the base of the cartridge have been filed off.’

‘Very thorough,’ agreed Kirov, ‘which makes me wonder what he had to gain by allowing me to live.’

‘And you say he wore the uniform of a captain?’

‘An army captain. Yes.’

‘Was he wearing any service medals?’

‘None that I saw.’

‘Did he say anything at all?’

‘When I mentioned your name, he asked if I was referring to the Emerald Eye.’ Kirov shrugged. ‘That was the only time he spoke, and his voice was muffled by the bandages.’

Although they continued to hunt for any trace which the killer might have left behind, the bunker yielded no more clues.

‘It’s time we left this butcher’s shop,’ said Pekkala.

‘We should make our way to the Red Army garrison,’ added Kirov.

‘The only Red Army garrison in Rovno is Yakushkin’s Counter-Intelligence brigade. They are quartered at the old Hotel Novostav, which the Germans used as the headquarters for their Secret Field Police until they pulled out last week.’

‘That will be the safest place.’

‘Not necessarily,’ Pekkala cautioned him. ‘Other than the partisans themselves, the only people who knew where and when that meeting was taking place were members of Yakushkin’s brigade. Until we have established the identity of this assassin, there is no one we can trust.’

 They climbed up to the street.

A bank of clouds was closing in, as if a stone were being dragged across the entrance to a tomb, extinguishing the stars which lay like chips of broken glass upon the rooftops of abandoned houses.

Kirov raised his hands and let them fall again. ‘Then where are we to go, Inspector? There’s a storm coming in and I’d rather not sleep in the street.’

‘Luckily for us,’ replied Pekkala, ‘I know the finest place in town.’

Two hours after Kirov had checked himself out of his room at the hospital, a stranger appeared at the top of the stairs, dressed in the uniform of a Red Army officer.

Except for the splashing of sleet against the windowpanes, it was quiet in the hallway. The patients had been ordered off to sleep or drugged into unconsciousness. The night orderly lay dozing in his chair, cocooned within a pool of light from the candle which burned upon his desk. The young man’s name was Anatoli Tutko and he had been released from military service on account of blindness in one eye and a haze of cataract across the other.

Reaching down, the stranger slowly placed his hand upon Tutko’s forehead, the way a parent checks for fever in a child. So gently did he raise Tutko’s head that the orderly was only half awake when the stranger whispered in his ear, ‘Where is the commissar?’

Tutko’s eyes fluttered open. ‘What?’ he asked. ‘What’s going on?’ Then he felt the pinch of a knife held to his throat.

‘Where,’ the stranger asked again, ‘is the commissar you brought in here last night?’

‘Major Kirov?’ whispered Tutko, so conditioned not to wake the patients after dark that even now he did not raise his voice.

‘Kirov. Yes. Which room is he in?’

Tutko tried to swallow. The knife blade dragged against his Adam’s apple. ‘At the end of the hall on the left,’ he whispered.

‘Good,’ said the man. ‘Now you can go back to sleep,’ said the man.

Tutko felt the stranger’s grip loosen. A sigh of relief escaped his lungs.

In that same moment, the stranger slipped the knife blade into Tutko’s neck, then twisted it and, with one stroke, cut through the windpipe, almost severing the young man’s head. He laid the body face down on the desk as a wave of blood swept out across the wooden surface.

The man replaced the knife in its metal scabbard, which was clipped to the inside of his knee-length boots. Treading softly, as if the floor beneath his hobnailed soles was no more than a sheet of glass, he moved on down the hallway until he came to Kirov’s room.

But it was empty.

A whispered curse cracked like a spark in the still air.

‘You’re too late,’ said a voice.

The stranger whirled about.

Dombrowsky, unable to sleep as usual, had just wheeled himself into the hallway.

‘Where is he?’ asked the man.

‘Gone,’ Dombrowsky rolled his chair forward, the heel of his palm dragging on the wheel until it brought him to a stop before the man. ‘Earlier tonight, a visitor appeared and spoke to him.’

‘What kind of visitor?’

‘A man. More like a ghost, the way he moved.’

‘Yes,’ muttered the stranger. ‘That sounds like him.’

‘They spoke,’ said Dombrowsky, ‘and then they left.’

‘Do you know where they were going?’

‘I don’t, but nurse Antonina might. The major talked to her. He must have told her something.’

‘Where is this nurse?’

‘Gone home, but she lives at the end of this street, in a house with yellow shutters. I can see it from the window in my room. But you shouldn’t go there, Captain. Not if you value your life.’

‘And why is that?’

‘She’s a friend of Commander Yakushkin. His “campaign wife”. That’s what they call them, you know. He showed up here about a week ago, along with a battalion of Internal Security troops. Yakushkin came in here to get medicine for a stomach ulcer and she’s the nurse who treated him. Since then, from what I hear, Yakushkin has practically been living at her house. She’s a good cook, you see, and Yakushkin likes his food. But even if you were foolish enough to go there at this time of night, you wouldn’t get past Yakushkin’s bodyguard, who is with him wherever he goes.’

‘Thank you,’ said the man. ‘You have been very helpful. Now let’s get you back where you belong.’ Taking hold of the wheelchair’s handles, he turned the chair around and began to wheel him down the hall.

‘My room is the other way,’ said Dombrowsky.

‘Yes,’ said the man. ‘Yes, it is.’

They moved by the night orderly’s desk.

In the rippling light of the candle, Dombrowsky saw what had become of Anatoli Tutko. The thin wheels of his chair rolled through the blood which had cascaded from the desk and pooled across the floor. ‘Why are you doing this?’ he whispered frantically, his hand skidding uselessly upon the rubber wheels as he tried to slow them down. ‘I won’t say a word. No one believes me, anyway.’

‘I believe you,’ said the man and, with one sudden, vicious shove, he pushed Dombrowsky’s chair over the edge of the stairs and sent him tumbling to his death.

‘And what is the finest place in this town?’ asked Kirov, as he followed Pekkala through the bombed-out streets. ‘From what I’ve seen, that isn’t saying much.’

‘I am taking you to a safe house which was used during the occupation,’ answered Pekkala.

‘But I thought the Barabanschikovs lived in the forest.’

‘They did, and they still do, but Barabanschikov made sure that he still had access to Rovno. It was important to keep an eye on those who came and went from the headquarters of the Secret Field Police. Several of the merchants in this town – tailors, cobblers, watchmakers – were actually members of the Barabanschikovs, and the Field Police officers became their best customers. Some of them liked to talk while their watches were being repaired or the hems taken up on their trousers and any piece of information they let slip would find its way to Barabanschikov. Many important meetings were held here between the various partisan leaders, right under the noses of the police, which was the last place they ever thought to look. Barabanschikov himself chose this house, and when we get there, you’ll see why.’

By now, the sleet had turned to hail, stinging their faces and rattling like grains of uncooked rice upon the frozen ground.

The cold leached its way through Kirov’s tunic and up through the soles of his boots. He hoped the house was comfortable, with soft beds and blankets and a fire. Perhaps there might even be food, he thought. Fresh bread might not be too much to ask.

Pekkala ducked into a narrow alleyway, which was flanked on either side by tumbledown wooden fences, some of them held up only by the weeds and brambles which had grown between the slats.

By following this maze of paths, Pekkala was able to stay clear of the streets, where people gathered around oil-drum fires and dogs fought in the dirty snow for scraps of rotten meat.

Opening an iron gate, Pekkala stepped into an overgrown garden and beckoned for Kirov to follow.

Through tall, dishevelled grass, each strand bowed with its minute coating of ice, the two men crept towards the house.

The back door had been boarded up and the shutters on the windows fastened closed with planks of wood

‘How do we get inside?’ asked Kirov.

At that moment, Pekkala seemed to vanish, as if the earth had swallowed him completely.

Rushing forward, Kirov found himself at the edge of a deep but narrow trench which had been dug against the outer wall of the house.

‘Come on,’ Pekkala called out of the darkness of the trench, ‘unless you want to stay out there all night.’

Before he jumped, Kirov turned and looked back in the direction from which they had come. He could make out little more than the silhouettes of houses and the tumbledown fences which separated their gardens. Wind slithered through the grass, whose brittle strands crackled like electricity. Just then, Kirov caught sight of a dog, loping along the alleyway. As the animal drew close, Kirov realised that it was, in fact, a wolf. It stopped at the end of the garden, then turned and looked at him, its mean, thin face spliced by the iron railings of the gate. They watched each other, man and beast, breath rising like smoke from their nostrils. There was something about its stare which snatched the last faint trace of warmth from Kirov’s blood and he felt colder than he’d ever been before, as if a layer of frost had formed around his heart. The wolf moved on and Kirov scrambled to catch up with Pekkala.