Sam Eastland - The Beast in the Red Forest

A woman crouched against the concrete wall made a space for Pekkala. In the glare of a naked bulb hanging from the ceiling, Pekkala saw lice, tiny and translucent, scuttling across her scalp.

An hour later, footsteps sounded in the corridor and the rat-faced man appeared, swinging a wooden truncheon by its leather cord. He swung open the barred metal door.

Instinctively, the people in the room lowered their eyes. But one man, standing near the front, was not fast enough.

The rat man raised his truncheon and brought it down on the top of the prisoner’s skull.

The prisoner’s legs buckled as if a trap door had opened beneath his feet. He fell face down and blood began to spread across the floor, reflecting the light of a single bulb, which blazed in its wire cage on the ceiling. The occupants of the cell shuffled back from the creeping red tide, the heels of their shoes clicking dryly over the concrete.

The policeman stepped over to Pekkala. Ignoring the puddle of blood, he tracked red footprints across the floor. ‘Krug doesn’t like the look of your pass book. He said it had been altered, which I could have explained to him myself. Instead of that, I had to go all the way down the street to the German garrison and show them my own damned identity book so that I could get inside the building and be told what I already know!’

‘Rusak!’ shouted a voice from down at the end of the corridor. ‘Bring him here!’

Now Rusak took Pekkala by the arm and hauled him out into the corridor. He marched Pekkala past an empty cell where two policemen, stripped down to their shirts and with black braces stretched over their shoulders, sat cleaning their revolvers using handkerchiefs dipped in an ashtray filled with gun oil.

In the front hallway, the ash-haired officer was standing in the doorway, hands in his pockets, looking up at the rain which had just begun to fall. ‘Who are you?’ he asked Pekkala, without bothering to turn around.

Pekkala did not reply.

‘That’s what I thought,’ whispered the officer, as he stepped aside to let them pass.

Rusak pushed Pekkala ahead of him.

Pekkala gasped in a lungful of clean air as he staggered into the street. ‘Where are you taking me?’ he asked.

‘To a bigger cell,’ Rusak answered. ‘That other place is too crowded. That’s all. It’s nothing to worry about.’

It was those last few words which made Pekkala realise that everything he had just heard was lies. Now his heart pulsed in his throat. His breathing came shallow and fast.

Rusak walked him across the street and down an alley between two rows of buildings. The alleyway was bordered by high brick walls on either side. Coal dust lined the path, glittering in the damp air.

Rusak walked behind him, splashing through puddles in the alley.

Shivering as if he were cold, Pekkala put his hands in his trouser pockets. In his right hand, he took hold of the switchblade.

‘Chilly today, isn’t it?’ asked Rusak. ‘Well, don’t you worry, pal. You’ll soon be warm again.’

As Rusak spoke, Pekkala heard the unmistakable rustle of a pistol being drawn from its holster. In that moment, Pekkala stopped thinking. He pulled the knife out of his pocket, pressed the round metal button on the side, releasing the blade, and swung his arm around.

Rusak had no time to react. The knife struck him on the side of the head and the blade vanished into his temple. The rat man’s face showed only mild astonishment. His right eye filled with blood. He dropped the revolver, took one step forward and then fell into Pekkala’s arms.

Pekkala laid him down. Then he set his boot on Rusak’s neck, pulled out the blade and wiped it on the dead man’s coat. For a moment, Pekkala waited, watching and listening. Satisfied that they were alone, he folded the blade shut and returned the knife to his pocket.

He took hold of Rusak by the collar of his tunic and dragged him down the alley. Rusak's boots laid a trail though the glittering black coal dust. Ten paces further on, Pekkala came to a place where the brick wall was recessed, forming a space like a room with three sides and no roof. Judging from stains on the brick, the space had once been used to store garbage ready for collection. Now it was filled with half a dozen bodies, some soldiers and some civilians. They had all been shot in the back of the head and piled on top of each other. Their faces were shattered, the corpses wet from the rain.

Pekkala dumped Rusak on the pile. Then he took a few steps backwards, as if expecting Rusak to rise from the dead, before he turned and ran.

At the safe house, he met up with Barabanschikov. It turned out that the partisan leader had also been stopped at a police roadblock on the other side of town, but had managed to talk his way out of it.

‘You ran into the wrong people, that’s all,’ said Barabanschikov. ‘It was just bad luck that you were arrested.’

‘Maybe so,’ replied Pekkala, ‘but I’ll need more than luck to survive.’ From that day on, he carried the shotgun in his coat.

Memo: Joseph Stalin to Henrik Panasuk, Lubyanka. December 11th, 1937

Liquidation of prisoner E-15-K to be carried out immediately.

*

Memo: Henrik Panasuk, Director, Lubyanka, to Comrade Stalin. December 11th, 1937

In accordance with your instructions, prisoner E-15-K has been liquidated.

‘The Rasputitsa will come early this year,’ said a voice behind Pekkala.

Pekkala was startled at first, but then he sighed and smiled. ‘There is only one person who can sneak up on me like that.’

‘Luckily for you, that person is your friend.’

‘Good morning, Barabanschikov.’

Almost hidden among the skeleton-fingered branches of a Russian olive tree, Barabanschikov sat on an upturned bucket. He wore fingerless wool gloves and a cap pulled down over his ears. Lying across his lap was a Russian PPSh sub-machine gun fitted with a 50-round drum magazine. Such weapons, once almost impossible to obtain, were now commonplace among the partisans. Barabanschikov had been sitting there long enough that a fine layer of snow had settled upon his shoulders. The former school teacher had long ago given up shaving and a dark beard covered his face. His eyes, once patient and curious as he gazed across the rows of desks each morning while his students pulled notebooks from their satchels, had taken on a burning intensity brought on by malnourishment, insomnia and prolonged fear. Those children he once taught might not have recognised him at all, but for the gold-rimmed glasses he still wore.

Cupping his gloved hands to his mouth, Barabanschikov puffed warm breath on to his frozen fingers. ‘Have you found out yet who did the killings in the bunker?’

‘Not yet,’ replied Pekkala, ‘but I am working on it.’

Barabanschikov reached down and gently patted Pekkala’s face, the rough wool of his glove snagging against Pekkala’s three-day growth of stubble. ‘You had better work fast, my old friend. There has already been a gunfight between a Red Army patrol and a group of partisans searching for whoever killed their leader. Two partisans are dead. Three soldiers are wounded. We are fast approaching the moment when nothing can prevent an all-out war between us and the Red Army. In the war we have fought until now, all we had to do was survive until the Red Army pushed back the invaders. But the storm that is coming is not like any other they have seen. You know Stalin. You know what he is capable of doing. And unless you do something to stop this, he will annihilate us all.’

‘That’s why I have brought in some help,’ said Pekkala. ‘Come inside, Barabanschikov. It’s time you met the commissar.’

*

Kirov looked around him blearily. It was dark in the room. Only a few chinks of daylight worked their way in through gaps in the boards which had been nailed over the shutters. For a moment, he stared in confusion at the greatcoat which had been draped across him. Then he pushed it away, stood up and began slapping at his clothes, hoping to dislodge the lice which he felt sure had taken up residence in his uniform.