Authors: Ben Pastor
“Well, my men killed or injured two-thirds of them. They don’t avail us much, dead. Alive, you can do something with
them.” Bora spoke lightly as he countersigned a receipt, no differently from the day he’d been on the receiving end of the cavalry remounts. He raised his eyes, handing back the sheet. “I left saddle and harness in your assistant’s office.”
“I saw you. Make an appointment with him for tomorrow before you leave. He’ll tell you when the transport with Turian-Chai is due in.”
“I don’t know how to thank you.”
Stark settled even more comfortably in his chair. How old was he? Mid-fifties, Bora judged, which meant he’d been a few years older than Bora was now at the time he’d hung around with Khan and Platonov. In honour of Magunia’s visit, he was wearing medals and ribbons too, though none as prestigious as a Knight’s Cross. All the same, power and connections surrounded him as pieces of furniture and knick-knacks did Larisa – reefs behind which he felt safe. His friendly stare betrayed security. It said, without voicing the words,
I’m sure you’ll think of something
.
“So, Major.” He placidly chose to raise the ante. “You’re also here to secure the goodies you went through so much trouble to obtain the other day, and didn’t. What happened? Is she playing hard to get, that elderly girlfriend of yours?”
Bora smiled. He often relied on his smile; the army surgeon was right in that. He smiled to hide anxiety and irritation, because they were getting close to the target now. “My late father’s, actually – not mine. It’s an old story, Herr Gebietskommissar.”
“I love old stories.” The commissioner observed him, seeing nothing but a smiling young officer. On both sides, serenity of expression belied lack of scruples and a measure of anger moulded into pragmatism. Stark summoned and directed his assistant upstairs with the name list for retyping. “And who is she?”
“A world-famous soprano: or she was once.” The necessity of remaining one-on-one during this part of the conversation did not escape Bora. He faced the desk aware that the day was taking a new, dangerous turn; events would soon need controlling.
If I
don’t tell him her name, he’ll either have to ask for it directly so that he can track her down, or will try to be oblique in his enquiry.
“A world-famous soprano in downtown Kharkov, Major?”
“Not exactly downtown: she lives in Pomorki.”
Stark swivelled the chair around and glanced at the street map of Kharkov behind him. “And you travel all the way to Pomorki to bring her goodies!”
“My father left her at the height of their relationship – it’s the least I can do.”
“An interesting devotion on your part. I approve. The only thing is that you’ll have to wait until tomorrow to get the special permission for extra butter and sugar rations. I’m very busy, and you’ll be returning here for Turian-Chai anyhow.”
“That’ll be fine. I plan to secure first-rate fodder at the Lissa Gora army park today.”
He’ll check on me after I leave to see if I’m really going there. Fine: I’m going there. After all, the district of Lissa Gora is nowhere near Pomorki
.
The phone rang again, a call from Rogany airfield. Bora availed himself of the interval to take his leave. In the hallway, at the foot of the stairs he met Stark’s assistant, who pencilled him in for an appointment at 9.30 a.m. the following day.
From Merefa the route to Pomorki was very easy: first Moskalivka and then Sumskaya, little more than ten kilometres across the city, plus five more outside the city’s northern limits, past the Aerodrome and the abandoned leather works, and into a wooded area. Bora knew where the checkpoints were between downtown Kharkov and Pomorki. After stopping at Lissa Gora, the only way to avoid them was to take the second-northernmost bridge on the Lopany River from the Vaschtchenkivska Levada district and follow one of the long north–south streets beyond, cutting across to Staraya Pavlivska towards the Dynamo stadium and the public park around it.
At this time – 9.30 a.m. – along Sumskaya, Bezirkskommissar Magunia’s arrival had brought about the usual orgasmic
activity of flag-waving, security troops and armoured cars. Bora followed the alternative route automatically, sliding from one minute to the next, careful not to think past the single physical gesture he was performing at any one time.
The park around the stadium had gravel paths, narrower than lanes. Past the Sokolniki settlement, deep in the woods, even the paths ended. Closer to Sumskaya, where past the Aerodrome the boulevard became the road to Pomorki (and also the highway to Moscow) there would be security troops, but not above Sokolniki. It was possible to drive up one of the northbound, grassy bridle tracks. However, the lengthy
balka
parting the forested area between here and the Biological Institute was insurmountable on four wheels. Bora returned to the highway for the time needed to travel on the pavement across the dip, and headed back into the park.
The grounds of the Biological Institute stood forlorn; trees besieged its paved piazza when he reached it. Still, he parked the GAZ out of sight. Three hundred or so paces separated him from Pomorki’s
novyi burzhuy
little villas. After a look around, Bora transferred what he needed from his briefcase to a canvas haversack, removed the Knight’s Cross from around his neck and pocketed it, and continued on foot towards the residential area. He approached it across the field of wild hyacinth, mostly faded now, swarming with small insects. The empty dachas on the rise were all blooming creepers and fallen-down wire fences. Bora laid down the tightly rolled-up tarpaulin he carried underarm to put his gloves on, stepped over the closest fence and through overgrown flowerbeds into the garden next but one to Larisa’s, and across that to Larisa’s broken-down enclosure. Every yard was similarly criss-crossed by corduroy paths in the tall grass and abundance of rank flowers.
Through the gap in Larisa’s wire fence, he noiselessly entered her property from the south side. Clothes hung on the clothes line; chickens clucked somewhere, but Nyusha was not around. The front door might be closed, but surely not locked. Quickly
feeling around in the thick of leafy shrubs, Bora found the sniper rifle. Making sure that Larisa would not talk was far too easy. That she shouldn’t be given a chance to meet Stark, much less speak with him, was a given Bora had coolly considered in all its implications. Had he been a man who liked to choose the easiest option, he could have ended matters here and now. Instead, after duly inspecting his weapon, he walked to the open garden gate and, lifting it from a crusty ledge of dirt and weeds, leant it across the path. The rolled tarpaulin he set in the ferns just inside the gate. Larisa’s house seemed asleep as he paced back through the shrubbery; there, protected from view, he rested the haversack at his feet and stood waiting by a sturdy pomegranate tree.
If his reckoning was correct, the time needed for Geko Stark to carry out his duties in relation to Magunia’s visit, check the accuracy of Larisa’s address as given him and drive here varied between two and three hours from now. Waiting could sometimes weigh heavily, but for once Bora was not in a hurry. The warmth of the day, drifting clouds over the tangle of leaves, marked the passing minutes; insects darted all around like specks of bronze and gold. Squinting in the sun, Nyusha came out for a moment to feel the clothes on the line for dryness; went back indoors. With his boots in the shady grass, Bora waited as one who has peeled the thoughts from his mind until only the bare essentials are left.
The highway to Moscow, a short tract of which was perceivable through the foliage, lay empty of traffic at this hour. Magunia was due to leave at noon from the Rogany airfield; if it hadn’t already, all the security apparatus would migrate to the eastern end of town, past the Russian army graveyard and the Tractor Works. Slowly a supply truck went through, heading for Kharkov under the escort of a motorcycle and machine-gunner in the sidecar. Then nothing for a long time, during which whatever Bora was – or had been – lost contours and importance. Becoming his own acts, or quiescence itself in wait of carrying them
out, was the prerequisite of success. A temporary dissolution, the discomposing of a mosaic that granted freedom from all trammels, including conscience.
Factum mutat facientem
: every action changes he who commits the action. But only afterwards.
Nyusha briefly stepped out of the door, called the chickens, threw feed around. From within the house, Larisa’s powerful voice said something incomprehensible in a peevish tone. A
tachanka
, a peasant cart mounted on tyres, travelled north. Barking from invisible dogs on the other side of the highway, where farms had been torched in February, sounded muffled as though coming from creatures of the netherworld. At this hour, by Bora’s watch, most army units would be camped down or sitting in their barracks for the noon meal. The shade of trees moved over him, creating a different pattern of speckled light. 1 p.m. At Rogany, Magunia’s plane must have taken off for Zaporozhye. Manstein’s table, set with porcelain and silver, would grant the illusion of stable normality, as if Ukraine should be German forever. Bora felt neither the heat nor the weariness of immobility. The words
we’re all flyspecks on the map of history, but think of ourselves as essential
drifted through his mind.
When at last the glossy black staff car, like a shellacked porpoise, pulled from the highway into Pomorki Bora went from calm to absolute calm. Impossible to judge until it drew closer whether there was a chauffeur at the wheel or not, or how many people sat in the vehicle. The well-balanced Russian rifle was in no more haste than the hand holding it.
Beyond the green filigree of branches the car approached, slowed to a halt and revealed a single occupant in a pheasant-coloured uniform. It stopped a few metres outside the garden gate; the squeal of gravel under the wheels and the sound of the door opening would not be overheard from the house. Gentle dust, thinner than face powder, twirled and hovered behind it. Bareheaded, visibly flushed by the heat, Geko Stark left the driver’s seat and closed the door without slamming it. The motion of his right arm was to unlatch his pistol holster. He
listened and looked around. The stillness in Larisa’s property, in the abandoned gardens right and left, seemed to reassure him. Walking with gun in hand to remove the small impediment of the gate set ajar, he came into full view for a second. At that distance, under ten metres, Bora wouldn’t miss with a weapon of far lesser quality.
The silenced SVT-40 went off once. Stark dropped, felled like hefty game. Unlikely the women would hear more than an indistinct
pop
from the dacha, if they even noticed a noise. The garden gate stood in a particularly secluded spot; you couldn’t see it from the door. Bora lowered the rifle.
Keep it together. Keep it together. Don’t wonder if his eyes are open because he isn’t dead. Don’t worry, keep it together
. Shooting to kill was lesson number one. Rifle strap across his shoulder, Bora stepped out to check his work. Geko Stark lay curled in his beautiful gold livery, looking as it seemed at the gravel around him through his lenses. The clean, slowly bleeding hole between his brows added a blind third eye to his smooth marzipan face, where neither surprise nor anger had had time to stamp themselves.
The eyes were blind, no life signs whatever. Bora retrieved the pistol from his hand, wiped it clean of dust with his handkerchief, replaced it in the holster and latched it.
Martin, keep it together
. From the bed of ferns by the gate he lifted the tarpaulin, untied and unrolled it, laid the body on it and after folding it in quickly, tied it head and foot. Counting on muscular strength and impeccable coolness, he lifted the heavy burden enough to carry it inside the garden. Doing this outside Larisa’s windows, without her knowing, should have prompted in him a mix of emotions, from relief to satisfaction to sweet revenge to self-righteousness, but emotions were a luxury precluded to Bora right now. Adjusting rifle and haversack so they wouldn’t encumber his movements, he heaved Stark’s body over the corduroy path to the broken fence, through the gap in it, on to the next garden’s narrow planking, and without halting across the next forsaken garden to the grounds of the Biological Institute. The
gruelling flesh-and-bone effort made three hundred metres feel like three thousand. At the end of the trail the large building, with its barred windows, slept a complicit sleep. Bora laid down his burden under the trees, where grass became a leaf-strewn cement slab around the sealed shafts to the interred gas pipes.
Once loosened with a spanner, the bolts on the nearest iron lid came up easily. From below, a warm odour of clean earth wafted to the surface the moment the covering was pushed aside. Stripping Geko Stark of identification papers, expensive wristwatch and car keys was a matter of less than a minute. The wallet, Bora would look into later. He dragged the tarpaulin wrap to the mouth of the shaft, finding that he had to force the commissioner’s meaty bulk into it head first. Down it went, more than seven metres to the dirt floor and pipes below. His gold–yellow cap followed, and the Russian rifle. From the haversack Bora extracted a timed charge, already secured to the string Lattmann had given him. He held the ball in his left fist while slowly lowering the explosive pack down the centre of the hole, gradually unwinding its length until the bottom was reached. Then he let go of his end of the string. Thoughts and motions still coincided; reasoning shrank to necessity. Shaft. Lid. Bolts. No room for errors or regrets.
Returning and tightening the bolts over the lid, sweeping dead leaves across it and righting the stalks of grass disarranged at the sides of the corduroy paths from one garden to the next, Bora returned to Larisa’s property, lifted the gate to push it into its original position and walked to Stark’s car parked in the lane. He made sure no bloodstain was visible on the gravel. With the handkerchief he rubbed the soles of his boots to cleanse them of grass and bits of dirt before entering the staff car. He then sat in the driver’s seat and backed out of Pomorki.