‘Where’s Ragozin?’
‘He went to the crossroads at the end of the village.’
‘Why?’
‘He said he spotted some wild strawberries growing by the side of the road when we drove in here.’
‘Idiot! Strawberries don’t grow this time of year. They were probably poisonous mushrooms.’ As Barkat climbed the stairs, he mumbled a song called ‘Katyusha’. ‘Apple trees and pears in blossom. .’
Under his breath, Stefanov sang along: ‘. . on the river morning mist. .’
When Barkat had gone, Stefanov rose to his feet and walked across the muddy floor to look at the map. Placing a finger at each end of the map, where the grid references began, he traced the coordinates he had heard on the radio. ‘Grid 7, H-12,’ he muttered to himself. His fingertips came together over a cluster of black freckles on the rubberised canvas, each one representing a house. The name of the village was barely legible, its letters all but hidden by the wrinkles on the canvas. He stared at the spot until at last he could decipher the word. Vinusk. The breath caught in his throat. His fingers dropped from the map.
‘Barkat,’ he whispered, and then his voice rose to a shout. ‘Barkat!’
His voice was drowned out by the shriek of incoming Soviet rockets, as if a train were hurtling past at full speed just above the house. In two long strides, Stefanov crossed the room and dived under the desk on which the radio had been set up. As he crawled up against the wall, he heard the clattering roar as a shell hit the road and then a long hiss as another landed in the pond. A third landed somewhere behind the house.
Stefanov closed his eyes, jammed his fingers into his ears and gritted his teeth as explosions began to follow each other so quickly that he could not distinguish one from another.
He felt a sudden pressure in his ears, like diving too deep under water. The floor bucked. Then the roof caved in. The air was filled with metallic-smelling smoke. He cried out and his mouth filled with smoke. The radio slid off the table and its metal corner smashed him in the head. Stunned by the blow, Stefanov heard a far-off ringing like a single struck piano key whose tone refused to fade away. And suddenly everything stopped except that single note which seemed to rise in pitch until he felt his skull must shatter like a crystal glass. In that moment, Stefanov felt neither pain, nor fear, so separated from the spark of his own life that it was as if he had never existed. For how long this lasted, he had no idea. It might have been a few seconds before the sound vanished abruptly and, in its place, he heard the crackling of flames.
Stefanov opened his eyes. At first he saw nothing. He wondered if the concussion had blinded him. Bringing his hand to his face, he could vaguely make out the wall of his approaching palm. He crawled out from under the broken table, through rays of sunlight that punched through the smoke, leaning like crooked pillars among the fallen timbers of the roof. Shakily, he climbed to his feet, shedding a garland of tangled radio wires from around his shoulders. The smoke was already beginning to clear. The maps on the wall had been shredded as if by the claws of giant cats. Where the roof had fallen in, clumps of thatch littered the floor. Lying on a heap of mouldy straw in front of him was a cluster of baby mice, eyes not yet open, their tiny pink bodies twined together as they nosed about in the grey air. Above him, visible through holes torn in the roof, fat cumulus clouds wandered by in the blue.
Stefanov climbed the staircase and stepped out into a world that he no longer recognised. Blast craters crackled and smouldered in the road. Licks of flame stabbed out of the ground. Trees which had lined the street were splintered at chest height. Where houses had once stood, he now saw only fragmented walls and chimneys, from which rose coils of thick black smoke.
Their truck, which had been hidden behind the building, was slumped forward on punctured tyres, its engine torn away.
Barkat lay beside the ruined vehicle. A bird could have flown through the hole in his chest.
At the sight of his friend’s blood, mingled with the blue-green puddles of spilled radiator fluid, Stefanov dropped to his knees. With tears blurring his vision, Stefanov gathered Barkat in his arms. Lifting the body over his shoulder, he set off towards the crossroads where Ragozin had gone to find the strawberries. As he stumbled under the weight, fresh perspiration doused the white salt blooms of old sweat on his clothes. Barkat’s face thumped against Stefanov’s back and the dead man’s boots trembled in a rhythm with his stride.
Stefanov reached the crossroads. Here, as well, artillery had cratered the ground.
Rain dripped on Stefanov’s head, merging with sweat as it trickled down his forehead. He wiped it from his face and glancing at his reddened fingertips realised that what had fallen on him was blood, not water. Struggling to wipe it off as quickly as he could, he looked up and saw Ragozin’s body tangled high in the branches of a tree, where he had been thrown by the blast. Ragozin’s back was folded almost double, his face strangely misshapen, like a waxwork figure melting in the sun.
There was no way to bring Ragozin down. Stefanov had to leave him. Still carrying Barkat, he stumbled on towards a town, whose rooftops he could see in the distance.
Another kilometre along the road, he met a column of Russian infantry heading west to stop the German advance. Stefanov climbed up on a grassy embankment while the soldiers filed past.
Gently, he set Barkat on the ground. The dead man collapsed in a sitting position, slumped against Stefanov’s legs like a broken marionette.
The soldiers marched in good order, faces hidden under the flared rims of their helmets. Over their left shoulders, each man carried a rolled blanket, the ends of which were stuffed into the little aluminium buckets that served as mess kits. A few of the soldiers glanced nervously at the corpse.
Once the column had gone by, Stefanov shouldered the body and continued on beneath grey clouds tasselled with rain.
Pekkala arrived
Pekkala arrived at the Cafe Tilsit at 5.30, half an hour before the meeting was due to take place. It was his custom to arrive early for meetings. This gave him time to study his surroundings, even those which were as familiar to him as the Tilsit. Out of habits that had been drilled into him since his first days of training with the Okhrana, he never sat with his back to a window or a door, but always positioned himself against a wall by an exit, preferably the kitchen, through which he could escape if needed. The other advantage of being near the kitchen was that anyone entering the restaurant through the service entrance would inevitably be halted by the staff. The change in tone of their voices was as good as any watchdog, even if he could not hear what they were saying. And if, as was likely, the intruder responded by pulling a gun on any waiter or dishwasher who tried to bar his way, even if he did not pull the trigger, the sudden silence from the kitchen was equally efficient in warning him that something was not right.
No matter how safe Pekkala knew his surroundings to be, whenever circumstances forced him to sit facing away from a window or a door, he felt the skin crawl on the back of his neck.
These rules of survival had been so engrained into Pekkala’s mind that he no longer gave them any conscious thought.
The cafe was bustling as usual for that time of the evening. Most of the customers sat at long tables, elbow to elbow, strangers side by side, enjoying the strange solitude that came with being alone in such a crowded place. As Pekkala made his way towards his usual table at the back, he saw that it was already occupied. As he turned to look for an alternative, the figure at his chosen place raised a hand and smiled.
It was only then that Pekkala realised the man was Kovalevsky, who had arrived even earlier, no doubt with the same instincts as Pekkala’s.