James Barrington
Manhunt
To Sally — for always and everything
Prologue
The KGB came to the village of Skel’ki, on the southern shore of the Kakhovskoye Vdkhr, as they had always done, in the hours before dawn.
The bitter easterly wind had picked up snow in its passage over Kazakhstan, and the officer in charge — a young captain — had ordered the snow chains to be fitted before the cars had covered even half the distance from the KGB headquarters in Vasil’yevka. In the village, the wind moaned and howled around that cluster of buildings, leaving deep drifts in the lee of anything that provided a shelter. The few cars and lorries in the settlement had been turned into anonymous white lumps, and the two slow-moving black saloons left clear tracks in the snow as they crunched and rattled over the poor road surfaces.
The small grey concrete apartment building stood on the western edge of the village, where the farmland intruded into the built-up area. Identification of the building was easy — the informer had described it very accurately — and the KGB cars circled it once before they parked, one vehicle at the front and one at the rear entrance. The drivers stayed in the cars to keep the engines running and the heaters on, and also to stop anyone trying to leave the building. Although the absence of any lights suggested that it was an unlikely eventuality.
Within the USSR, it was said that the KGB always operated in groups of at least three. The logic behind this assumption was that, if faced with any temptation, one man alone might succumb to it, two men together might conspire to do so, but the third would always inform. Whatever the truth, the group that had arrived to arrest Pavel Ostapenko comprised six burly KGB men.
They climbed the stairs to the third floor, then headed softly along the passageway until they reached the second door on the left. There, the captain paused and took out his automatic pistol. He carefully moved back the slide, chambering a round, before he gestured to his men to prepare. One of them hefted a sledgehammer, while the other four pulled metre-long clubs from inside their overcoats.
The officer held up his left hand, three fingers extended, and silently mouthed a countdown. When his last finger vanished into his fist, he nodded, and the man with the sledgehammer swung it at the door lock. With a splintering of wood, the lock gave way. As the implement was withdrawn, another KGB man lashed out with his foot and the door swung violently inwards. One and half seconds later, all six were inside the tiny flat.
Pavel Ostapenko sat up in bed with a start, as the door splintered, and stretched out his hand towards the light switch, though he needn’t have bothered. The bedroom light came on instantly and, before Ostapenko could react further, one of the KGB men had reached the bed and jabbed him viciously in the solar plexus with one end of his club.
As Ostapenko tumbled, gasping and helpless, to the floor, his wife began to scream. The captain slapped her hard across the face, breaking a tooth and starting a nose bleed. She struggled to her feet, holding a hand over her face, and staggered towards her daughter’s bed in the corner of the room. The eight-year-old girl watched in silent horror, eyes wide and mouth open, at this invasion of her parental home, then she clung to her mother with an unnatural strength born of sheer terror.
Two of the KGB men dragged Pavel Ostapenko to his feet and pinned him against the bedroom wall, while another systematically beat him about the chest and abdomen with his fists. Marisa and her daughter watched, helpless, as his thin body quivered under the savage blows.
Finally, at a sharp command from the captain, the two men holding Ostapenko bent him forward, lowering his head so that yet another could take a swing at it with his club. The weapon descended, but, at the last moment, Ostapenko moved his head slightly, and the club cracked his collarbone instead of meeting the back of his skull. Ostapenko screamed shrilly, and the two released him, letting him collapse on the floor.
The captain strode across the tiny room to where Ostapenko now lay, kicked him hard in the lower back, and then in the stomach — blows which seemed to have little effect on the prostrate Ukrainian — and then he turned away.
‘Who are you?’ Marisa Ostapenka stammered, the words slurring from smashed and broken lips.
‘Captain Yevgeni Zharkov, KGB,’ the officer snapped in response. ‘And this man’ — he gestured contemptuously behind him — ‘is under arrest for anti-Soviet activities.’
‘What…? What has he done?’
‘He was overheard criticizing the Party’s ten-year plan, and also the performance of the manager of the Mikhaylovka Collective Farm.’
Marisa Ostapenka shook her head. ‘He didn’t…’ she began. And then she stopped, appalled at what she’d just said.
The captain eyed her steadily, the beginnings of a smile playing around his thin lips. ‘You are not suggesting, comrade, that we are wrong, I hope?’
‘No, no,’ she cried, desperately shaking her head, but she already knew it was too late.
‘Pick him up,’ the officer ordered, and the semiconscious Ostapenko was again shoved up against the wall. They kicked his legs apart and took a firm grip on him. ‘We’ll ask the man himself.’
Taking a club from one of his men, the captain rammed the end of it under Ostapenko’s chin, forcing his head back. ‘A question for you, Ukrainian,’ he snarled. ‘You do not even have to speak, just give a nod if what I say is true.’ Zharkov withdrew the club and stood back. ‘Are you,’ he began softly, ‘guilty in any way of anti-Soviet activities?’
Before Ostapenko could answer, even if capable of doing so, the officer thrust the club up, in a vicious underarm arc, into the Ukrainian’s groin. Ostapenko’s eyes and mouth opened wide with the severity of the blow and, despite the straining grip of the two KGB men, his body doubled up in agony.
‘There,’ the officer said, offering a bleak smile to the woman and child. ‘We asked him the question, and he admitted to his crime. That was a nod, wasn’t it?’ he asked.
The KGB men were all smiling broadly, knowing how to play the Georgian captain’s little games. ‘I’m not sure that was a nod, Comrade Captain,’ one of them said. ‘I sort of think he shook his head.’
‘Oh, really?’ the officer replied. ‘Then perhaps we’d better ask him again.’
‘No, no, please… please don’t.’ Marisa fell to her knees in front of the KGB officer, her daughter dropping by her side. ‘Yes, he nodded. We all saw it.’
The captain bent down towards her. This business was becoming more amusing with every minute that passed. ‘You’re probably right,’ he said gently, ‘but I think we’d better ask again, just to make certain.’
He stood up, gestured to his men, and then again swung the club. As before, Ostapenko doubled over, and then fell unconscious to the floor. His pyjama bottoms were stained crimson with the blood pouring from his ruptured scrotum, and the bedroom wall he had been held against was now stained and splattered with gore.
‘Now, that was definitely a nod.’
Marisa Ostapenka had retreated sobbing to a corner of the room and was crouching on the floor, with her eyes tightly shut. The captain stared at her with disappointment: it didn’t look as if there was much further entertainment to be found in this apartment tonight.
He turned back to his men. ‘Right,’ he said, ‘get him into the car. You’d better wrap him in something warm — it’s snowing outside and we wouldn’t want him catching cold, would we?’ His men chuckled dutifully. ‘It’s bad enough that we had to restrain him so forcefully, for resisting arrest,’ he added. As two of the KGB men dragged the unconscious Ostapenko towards the door, the captain called after them. ‘And make sure he doesn’t bleed all over the seats.’