Lenins roller coaster, p.24
Lenin's Roller Coaster, page 24
The shouted order came from behind them, and far as McColl could see, there was nobody up ahead. Several thoughts crossed his mind—that refusal might be fatal, that surrender might be too, that the border might be only minutes away. “Get your head down!” he told Fedya, lowering his own and ramming his foot down on the accelerator.
One second, two seconds. There were no shots.
Why the hell not? He glanced at the side mirror, expecting only darkness, but a light was moving on the road behind. Were they being chased?
He turned his eyes back to the road just as it vanished from sight. For a few split seconds, the airborne Pathfinder seemed confident of leaping the river but just as abruptly gave up the ghost, plunging nose-first into the glinting waters.
There was enough depth to cushion the car’s encounter with the solid bed, but not enough to prevent their being thrown forward over the bonnet. After hitting bottom himself, McColl floundered around for several seconds and finally managed to get himself upright. The water came up to his chest, and there was no sign of Fedya.
A torch was waving to and fro on the broken end of what had been a bridge. “Put your hands up!” a voice cried in German.
The rear end of the car was still just above the surface. McColl waded back toward it, hoping against hope that the boy was still in his seat.
“Put your hands up or I shoot!” the man on the bridge shouted, just as Fedya broke surface with a cry of panic a few yards away.
“I must save my son!” McColl shouted back in German as he frantically waded toward the spot where the head had again disappeared. He was just thinking that the only way he’d ever find the boy was to walk into him when he did just that. Fedya seemed determined to fight him, but he finally managed to get the boy’s head clear of the water.
Several torchlight beams were now focused on them. Fedya was breathing again, but there was no chance of escaping. As McColl carried the badly shaken boy to the riverbank, his thoughts turned to the possible consequences of their capture. He mentally ran through his options. Having spoken in German, could he claim to be one? No, because then his son would speak that language, and Fedya didn’t. And since the Germans might retrieve Khristian Vissotsky’s papers from the river, he needed to stick by that name. So . . . a photographer returning home to Moscow with his son after visiting an ailing sister in Kiev. It sounded feasible enough. But how had he come by the car, and why had he tried to run? What was he doing with the German gun, which they’d probably find in the driver’s-side door?
His Service instructors had recommended keeping as close to the truth as possible. So his sister had a friend who had worked for the British consul, and the friend had told her about the car sitting in its garage, and what with the lack of trains . . . well, the consul had left it behind when he fled, and he’d seen no harm in borrowing it. Surely his German captors wouldn’t get unduly upset on an Englishman’s behalf?
As for trying to run away, who would stop for strangers in 1918 Ukraine? And he’d bought the gun for protection from some grand duke’s nephew who’d run out of money, weeks ago in a Kiev bar. Yes, it was a German gun, but these days you could find a Mauser almost anywhere.
There were four soldiers waiting up above, all of whom looked on the wrong side of forty. “Keep your hands in the air,” McColl told the boy. Their captors didn’t seem trigger-happy types, but he didn’t want to give them the slightest excuse.
Two of the men were gazing down at the almost-submerged automobile, already discussing how it might be salvaged. “Who are you?” one of the others asked, rifle raised.
McColl gave their names and confirmed that they were father and son.
“You are Russians?” the man asked, clearly surprised.
“Da.”
“You speak German?”
“Da.”
“But you are Russians?” he asked again, just to be sure.
“Da.”
While one man covered them with his rifle, the other searched their soaking clothes for weapons. He found none but took the purse of coins that held all the money they had. Satisfied, he dried his hands on the front of his tunic. “Now you will come with us.”
They were marched back to the church, then down a long side street until they reached a pair of railway tracks. Beyond these McColl could see nothing but trees and open country, and for a minute or two he feared the worst. He was still wondering how to handle the situation—what should he say to Fedya?—when a light appeared ahead. It was a brazier full of blazing wood, at the gate to a newly built stockade.
One of the two men on guard was asleep, but other unlocked the padlock securing the latch, and McColl and Fedya were prodded inside. “We have done nothing wrong,” McColl said in German, lest his silence be taken as an admission of guilt.
The Germans ignored him. The two who’d brought them walked off toward town, and the conscious guard started picking his nose.
Looking around, McColl could see tens of bodies spread across the beaten grass. All he could smell was shit, so he guessed they were sleeping rather than dead.
Two fresh soldiers came to collect McColl next morning. They didn’t say what for, but since they’d emerged from what looked like the local command post, he assumed it was for questioning. “I won’t be long,” he told Fedya, hoping it was true.
Dawn had come an hour before, and McColl had been able to count his fellow detainees. There were almost a hundred inside the stockade. All were male as far as he’d been able to tell, but ten at least were boys of fourteen or less. Talking to some of the older inmates, he’d learned that most were peasants rounded up to do forced labor. The few whom the Germans had arrested for suspected involvement in resistance activities were also required to work but would probably be shot if and when their usefulness expired.
Most of the other prisoners were watching through the palisade as he was led toward the building. It was a combined cottage and barn, the latter containing a field kitchen and an open-sided dormitory for the men, the former an administrative office and living quarters for the man in charge. He was a young lieutenant, flaxen-haired and fine-boned, who looked like he wished he were somewhere else.
McColl was not offered a seat. “You speak German,” the lieutenant said. It wasn’t a question.
“Yes.”
He answered the questions that followed with what he hoped was sufficient, but not excessive, humility. His name, his son’s, his learning of their language while working for a German employer in Kiev. His and Fedya’s reason for being on the road, and the parentage of the automobile now rusting in the river.
The lieutenant was interested in only one thing. “Your German will be useful,” he said. “We have Russians we need to question,” he added, “and if you help us in this regard for a week or so, then you and your son will be free to continue your journey.”
McColl thought about asking whether his money would be returned but decided not to bother. He knew that the lieutenant had no intention of letting him go. “What about my son?” he asked. “Will he have to work?”
The lieutenant shrugged. “Some boot cleaning, laundry, cooking. Nothing too arduous. We are not savages.”
Back at the stockade, McColl found that though one work party had already been taken out, the lean-faced Bolshevik named Ostrov was still there. He had come to introduce himself—and, McColl guessed, find out what he could—soon after their arrival the previous night. He seemed to exercise some authority over the other detainees, and McColl thought it prudent to explain what the Germans had asked him to do. “I agreed because I don’t see what harm it can do and because they might take it out on the boy if I don’t.”
Ostrov gave him a long look, then nodded. “Some won’t like it, but you knew that already.”
“I won’t let any Russian condemn himself,” McColl promised. “Or betray anyone else.”
McColl spent that day and the next with a work party, felling and chopping a line of trees a couple of versts to the north. On the third day, he was waiting to board the cart when one of the sergeants came to collect him, and McColl saw the looks of suspicion on his fellow prisoners’ faces as the man led him away.
The lieutenant was sitting behind his desk. He gestured McColl toward a wooden chair, and a few moments later the sergeant returned with a well-dressed Russian couple. They looked around for seats and seemed surprised not to find any. The man was gray-haired and probably in his sixties, the woman about half that age with a mass of blonde curls that badly needed attention.
“Names,” the lieutenant asked, with a nod toward McColl.
“Names,” McColl repeated in Russian.
The man supplied them. Both, it turned out, were more than happy to share their life stories, particularly the most recent part, in which Bolsheviks had robbed them of everything they had. Except, that was, for the suitcases full of clothes and personal possessions that were still in the carriage on the other side of the river. Could the Germans bring the carriage across? If so, they would be on their way.
The lieutenant heard them out, his obvious boredom tempered only by fleeting sneers of contempt. “Tell them they can walk to Kiev,” was his final ruling, one that McColl passed on with rather more joy than he should have.
The twosome looked stunned, and when the man opened his mouth to protest, McColl was fully expecting two new recruits for the work parties. But somehow the Russian managed to hold his tongue. A stiff bow, a curt word to the woman, and they were gone.
The newspaper on the lieutenant’s desk reminded McColl that he had no idea how the war was going, and while they were waiting for another prisoner, he took the risk of asking. “It is almost over,” the young German said shortly. “We will enter Paris in a few days.”
“And then we can all get back to our families,” McColl suggested, wishing he hadn’t asked.
“Yes, of course.”
A man was brought in, one whom McColl recognized from the stockade. Apprehended near a railway bridge by a German patrol, he claimed he’d been walking to the next town by the straightest route. As for the Bolshevik leaflet found in his bag—he couldn’t remember where he’d picked it up, but he had to wipe his ass with something. The lieutenant was clearly suspicious, but if the Russian had followed the tracks with sabotage in mind, he obviously wasn’t telling. McColl rather suspected he had been and did his best to edit out any telltale strains of defiance in the Russian’s answers.
The next day McColl was back with a work party, this one charged with laying carpets of logs where autumn would turn the roads to mud. Despite the lieutenant’s optimism, it looked like the Germans planned on staying awhile.
The sun was hot and the work physically taxing, particularly for men who hadn’t seen a decent meal in months. McColl was in better shape than most but still felt like collapsing the moment they got back to camp. Fedya, by contrast, seemed healthier and was eager to discuss his day. One reason for his fitness was the food he was scrounging and stealing, and after another boy was caught and flogged for bringing out bread for his older brother, McColl forbade Fedya to do the same.
One thing the boy could do in safety was keep his eyes open. Away from the camp all day and dead to the world all night, McColl had little chance of working out the German routines. And he needed to know them to plan their escape, to get the boy and himself out of danger. The camp regime could seem almost benign, but only because those in charge didn’t yet feel threatened, and that might change at any moment. A local attack, news of major setbacks in France . . . who knew what might rouse the devil within? He’d seen it more than once in Belgium, seen it again at Chaplino Junction—he didn’t want to see it here.
Any escape would have to be planned and executed under the noses of the other prisoners, and McColl wasn’t sure how they would take it, or whom to approach for some sort of blessing. Having shared two work details and several conversations with Ostrov, he had gotten to know the Bolshevik better than anyone else. And it was Ostrov’s influence, he suspected, that had saved him from suspicion, censure, and worse over his work for the Germans. If he was going to approach anyone, the Bolshevik seemed the best candidate.
$ $ $
He and Ostrov were on different details next day, and McColl was collected from his in midafternoon. One of the sergeants came for him on the unit’s motorcycle, bouncing back along the dusty tracks with McColl’s arms wrapped around his waist. McColl thought about throwing the man off but knew that his chances of keeping the bike upright would be minimal. And he couldn’t leave Fedya behind.
This interrogation was conducted outdoors. The man to be questioned—a young Russian with floppy blond hair, a face set in stone, and a body that looked like it hadn’t seen food in a week—was tied to a corner post of the barn, naked save for a pair of badly worn boots.
“At last,” the lieutenant said, glancing up from his newspaper. “This man was caught with a bag full of dynamite. I want to know who he got it from and what he intended to do with it.”
McColl put the questions into Russian.
The young man just looked at him, eyes brimming with contempt. He said nothing.
McColl repeated the question.
The Russian shook his head, and at a signal from the lieutenant the sergeant’s bullwhip swished down across his back.
After the wince of pain, the slightest shake of the head.
“Again,” the lieutenant said.
Rivulets of blood flowed on either side of the jutting shoulder blades. One of the watching German privates let out an audible snigger.
“Tell him this won’t stop until he gives me some answers,” the lieutenant said calmly.
McColl translated. He thought of adding that the German wasn’t bluffing, but who was he to encourage betrayal?
The Russian seemed to know it anyway. The eyes first blinked, then closed; the skin across the cheekbones drew tighter with each cut.
Another ten strokes and the lieutenant signaled a halt. “One last chance,” he said.
After translating that, McColl caught the hint of a smile.
The bullwhip sliced away at the bloody mess. McColl had just closed his eyes when the Russian made his first and last noise, a sort of “oh” that sounded more surprised than pained. The whole body shuddered, the legs sank and then gave way, until only the rope was holding the dead man up.
The lieutenant sighed with apparent frustration. “Cut him down,” he told the sergeant, whose uniform was splattered with blood.
McColl took one last look at the lifeless body, wondering how the man had managed to stay silent. Even knowing that death was certain, McColl doubted that he himself could have done so.
That evening he spoke to Ostrov.
“Well, it’s not that hard to get out,” the Bolshevik agreed. “You could dig your way under the fence in less than an hour.”
“So why aren’t we trying?” McColl wanted to know.
Ostrov sniffed. “One of two reasons. When the Germans arrest people, they take the name of their villages and tell them that for every man who escapes, ten of their neighbors will be shot.”
“They know I’m from Moscow,” McColl pointed out.
“Well, they can’t shoot ten of yours, then. But now we come to the second reason—there’s nowhere to go. No village would take you in, and how would you live without food or money?”
“How far is the border?”
“More than fifty versts.”
“That’s not so far. What’s there? Have the Germans built a fence?”
“I don’t think so. They haven’t had time. No, they man all the major crossing points—the trains in particular—but there’s no great cordon of troops.” He dropped the stub of his hand-rolled cigarette and ground it into the grass. “I’m sure there are places you can just walk across, but first you have to get there. Fifty versts is quite a way on the food they give us, and it’s mostly open country. You’d have to walk it in the dark, at the end of a long day’s work.”
As they laid themselves out for sleep that night, McColl put the notion to Fedya. The boy was undaunted by the distance and the likely difficulties, but then eleven-year-olds were rarely the best judges of what they could do—McColl had vivid memories of being carried back down Ben Nevis after he and a school friend had embarked on an ill-considered winter climb. “We’ll talk again tomorrow,” he said.
When McColl returned with his work party on the following evening, an excited Fedya was waiting. “I’ve got us some food,” the boy said once McColl had collected his bowl of watery soup and no one could overhear them.
“I told you not—”
“I didn’t bring it here,” Fedya interrupted. “There’s a place where the Germans pile up their rubbish, out behind the trees on the other side of their house. And when I was sent out with some stuff this morning, I realized there were places nearby where I could hide some food, and even if they found it, no one would know it was me. So the second time they sent me, I managed to wrap up two pieces of bread and hide them in among some roots. If I can do it again tomorrow and maybe the day after, then we’ll have enough for a long walk, don’t you think?”
“I do,” McColl said. “You’ve done well.” The boy’s getting caught was an awful prospect, but so was staying where they were. Some risks would have to be taken, and, given their circumstances, it was Fedya who would have to take them. “But tomorrow,” he added out loud, “promise me you’ll be careful. If a day goes by without a chance, then don’t worry about it. A few more days won’t make any difference.”
“I promise,” Fedya said.
