Sam Eastland - The Beast in the Red Forest

The lights flickered.

If one piece of hot shrapnel hits these crates, thought Kirov, we will be falling from the sky in pieces as small as rain.

The colonel swore and grabbed hold of the sides of his desk.

The next sound was like a huge flag billowing in the wind. The shock nearly dropped Kirov to his knees and panic washed through him at the thought of being buried alive.

The candle went out, and was followed by darkness so complete, it was as if they’d all been struck blind.

A dry, snapping boom shook the building.

That blast was followed by another, but this one was more distant than the last. As the seconds passed, bombs continued to fall, each one further away than the last.

It’s over, Kirov thought to himself.

But, in the next instant, the room was filled with deafening explosions.

Kirov’s first thought was that some of the loose ammunition must have exploded, but then he glimpsed the splashing light of a gun muzzle. Somebody had opened fire, but he couldn’t see who held the gun. In the flickering glare, Kirov watched Fedorchak go down, his blood splashing in an arc across the ceiling.

Kirov turned to run, hoping to reach the stairs which led up to the street, when suddenly he felt a stunning blow to his side. The impact threw him against the wall. He stumbled and fell to the floor, gasping for breath. The whole upper part of his body felt as if it had caught fire.

The firing stopped and, a moment later, a sabre of torchlight punctured the dusty air.

Someone stepped over to the doorway.

Kirov heard a metallic rustle as the gunman slid an empty magazine from his pistol, letting it fall with a clatter to the floor. Unhurriedly, he replaced it with another, then chambered a round in the breech.

Kirov struggled to focus on the man, but his eyes were filled with smoke.

At that moment, there was a sound at the end of the excavated hallway.

The gunman aimed the beam of his torch down the tunnel, just as the two typists made a run for the exit.

The gun roared again, twice, three times, and the women fell in a heap at the base of the steps.

Spent cartridges clattered down. One of them bounced off Kirov’s cheek, searing the flesh.

The gunman heard him gasp and suddenly the torch beam was burning into Kirov’s face.

The man bent over him.

Blinded in the glare, Kirov felt the hot muzzle of the gun pressing against the centre of his forehead. Cordite smoke sifted from the breech. Kirov knew he was about to die. The clarity of that thought cut through the shock of his wounds, but where Kirov had expected to feel terror, there was only a strange, shuddering emptiness, as if some part of him had already shrugged itself loose from the scaffolding of flesh and bones that anchored him to the world. He closed his eyes and waited for the end.

But the shot never came.

The next sound Kirov heard was the soft tread of the man’s boots as he made his way along the earth-walled passageway, stepped over the two dead women, climbed the stairs and was gone.

Kirov lay in the dark, unable to move, tasting blood at the back of his mouth and wondering why the gunman had left him alive. Perhaps, he thought, I am so badly wounded that he knows I’ll be dead before help can arrive. Although Kirov knew he had been shot, he wasn’t sure where he’d been hit. The pain had not yet focused and his whole body felt numb. Feebly, he dragged his fingertips across his chest, searching for a tear in his uniform where the bullet had gone in. But his strength began to fail him before he could locate the wound. A velvety blackness sifted through his mind. He struggled against it, but there was nothing he could do. The darkness seemed to overflow his skull and pour out through his eyes. His last conscious thought was that he might have been dead after all.

Memo from Joseph Davies, US Ambassador to Moscow, Hotel President, Paris‚ to Secretary Samuel Hayes, US Embassy, Moscow, November 21st, 1937

Following message to be forwarded through standard unofficial channel via Kremlin to Comrade Joseph Stalin.

Dear Comrade Stalin,

News has reached me of an unfortunate situation regarding one of our citizens currently residing in the Soviet Union, a Mrs William Vasko, who reports that her husband was taken into custody while employed at the Ford Motor Car plant in Nizhni-Novgorod. No word has been received of his whereabouts for some time. Any word on this matter would be greatly appreciated.

Yours etc. Joseph Davies, Ambassador

PS Your proposal to purchase cargo ships currently in the process of being decommissioned by the US Navy is being closely examined in Washington. I hope soon to be able to deliver favourable news on the subject.

Kirov regained consciousness just as he was being wheeled into an operating room. He sat up suddenly, startling the nurses who were moving the gurney towards the surgery table. Ignoring their protests, he began to climb down, but when his feet touched the floor, he found that he could barely stand. It felt as if his bones had been removed.

One of the nurses took hold of Kirov’s shoulder, trying to push him back, but Kirov, in his morphine-fuelled delirium, punched her on the chin and laid her out cold on the red linoleum floor. Then the other nurse attacked, kicking his shins with her blunt-toed shoes and pulling his ears while she called for the doctor.

Angry and completely confused, Kirov fought against the woman, staggering around until his legs gave out from under him. His head struck the floor with a crack.

From where he lay, Kirov noticed a pile of severed arms and legs heaped into the corner.

The face of a man appeared above him. He wore a white smock smeared with blood. ‘You fool!’ he shouted, as he pressed something cold and wet against Kirov’s face. ‘These people are trying to help you!’

A sickly sweetness, smelling like paint thinner, filled Kirov’s lungs. ‘Damn you,’ he managed to say, before he tumbled back into oblivion.

*

Kirov woke with the sun on his face. His chest was covered with bandages and his bare feet poked out from under a grey army blanket.

He was by himself in a small room, which appeared to have been converted from some kind of closet. It had one window, against which the ice-sheathed branches of a tree tapped as they jostled in the breeze. The walls of the room were a pale brownish yellow, like coffee with milk that had been left in a mug and gone cold. The only thing aside from his bed was a collapsible chair in the corner.

Vaguely, he remembered hitting somebody. A woman. No, he thought. That can’t be right. I would never have done such a thing.

Then he leaned over and threw up, surprised to find a bucket already waiting on the floor beside his bed. He groaned, still hanging almost upside down, and wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his hospital pyjamas. Although Kirov’s sight was blurred, the sunlight melting into rainbows everything on which he tried to focus, he was relieved to see his boots standing at the foot of the bed, along with the canvas bag containing Pekkala’s revolver.

As he lay back, Kirov noticed a movement on the other side of the room. A man was standing there, hidden until that moment by the glare of light pouring in through the window. ‘Who’s there?’ he asked.

The man did not reply.

‘Do I know you?’ demanded Kirov.

The man walked towards him, still masked in the flare of the sun.

In that silhouette, Kirov thought he recognised Pekkala’s shoulders, like plates of armour slung across his back, but his vision was blurred and his mind kept skipping, like a needle jumping on a record.

The man reached out and Kirov felt the warmth of a hand pressed against his forehead.

‘Sleep now,’ whispered the stranger.