Sam Eastland - The Beast in the Red Forest

Malashenko flicked away his cigarette and stood aside to let him pass.

Inside the cabin, Vasko removed his gun belt, from which hung a holstered Tokarev and a Russian army canteen. He laid them on the table, then sat down and waited while Malashenko brewed coffee made from chicory in an old pan on the stove.

‘What is it you want from me?’ asked the partisan, as he poured the dark and bitter-smelling drink into a chipped enamel cup.

Vasko took the mug and turned it so that the handle was facing away from him but he did not lift it from the table. ‘You recently passed on information about a man named Colonel Andrich.’

‘That’s right. He arrived in Rovno two days ago.’

‘I need you to tell me where I can find him.’

‘That’s a nice pistol,’ said Malashenko, eyeing the gun belt on the table. Slowly, he reached out towards it.

‘If you want to keep those fingers,’ said Vasko, ‘don’t touch anything that doesn’t belong to you.’

Grumbling, Malashenko withdrew his hand.

‘Just do as you’re told and you will be well rewarded,’ Vasko told him.

‘How well?’

Vasko opened the satchel and pulled out something which had been placed inside an old grey sock. He set it on the table and pushed it across to Malashenko.

Malashenko picked up the sock and tipped the bar of gold on to the table. The spit dried up in his mouth. ‘Why are you paying me so much?’ he asked warily.

‘If it were up to me, I wouldn’t, but this is what the Admiral thinks you’re worth.’

Malashenko thought about Antonina’s advice, to leave Rovno and never come back. Better to travel with one bar of gold, he told himself, than with a hundred bags of salt.

Vasko slid the bar back into the sock and returned it to his farrier’s satchel. ‘Are we agreed?’

Malashenko nodded slowly. ‘Stay here tonight,’ he said. ‘You will be safe. I’ll be back in the morning, after I have found your Colonel Andrich.’

*

That first night in the cabin, as Vasko lay in the bunk, surrounded by the distantly familiar smells of Russian black bread, Russian tobacco and the fishy reek of Russian boot grease distilled from the rotted husks of Lake Baikal shrimp, he listened to the steady thudding of artillery in the distance.

He put his hands against his ears, hoping to block out the sound. But it didn’t work. The relentless pounding of the guns seemed to rise up from the earth beneath the cabin, until even the air he breathed appeared to tremble.

Vasko moaned and rocked from side to side, plagued by memories of the days he had spent in the hold of that prison ship bound for Kolyma after it had run aground on the shoals of Reshiri Island. Each wave that struck that crippled vessel sounded like a cannon ball against the iron hull. As the freezing water rose higher and higher in the cargo bays where he and the others had been left to die, Vasko had focused on the sound of the waves in order to drown out first the screams, then the pleas, then prayers and at last only the whimpering of those who had abandoned any hope of rescue. By the time the Japanese Coastguard peeled away a section of the hull to let them out, the sound of those waves had fixed forever in Vasko’s mind, until it had become like the beating of a second heart, driving him so close to madness that he could no longer recall how it felt to be sane.

*

It did not take long for Malashenko to learn both where and when Andrich’s meeting with the partisan leaders would take place. For a man of his particular abilities, few secrets could stay hidden in the rubble of that town.

First thing the following morning, he delivered the information to Vasko.

Within six hours, Andrich and the partisans who’d been with him were dead. Not long afterwards came the news that Commander Yakushkin had also been murdered.

As soon as Malashenko had dropped off the little girl at her grandmother’s house, ignoring the old woman’s questions about her daughter, he made his way back to the cabin where Vasko had been hiding in order to collect his bar of gold.

But Vasko wasn’t there.

Assuming that he had been tricked, Malashenko turned around and headed back to Rovno, roaring curses at the treetops on his way.

*

Admiral Canaris was sleeping in his chair, as he often did after a lunch at Horchner’s, his favourite restaurant in Berlin. With his hands folded across his stomach and a pair of slippers on his feet, these brief moments of oblivion had lately become his only respite from the unending stream of bad news which occupied his waking hours.

There was a gentle knocking on the door and Canaris’s adjutant, Lieutenant Wolke, entered the room. He was a young man, with a straight back, rosy cheeks and honest-looking eyes. He carried a print-out of a message just received from an informant behind the Russian lines.

The Admiral’s dachshunds, which had also been taking a nap, looked up from their cushioned chair and, recognising Wolke’s familiar face, lowered their heads and went back to sleep.

Moving almost silently across the room, Wolke placed the message upon the Admiral’s desk.

The Admiral breathed in deeply, then exhaled in a long, snuffling breath, but did not wake.

Wolke gritted his teeth. The Admiral did not like to be woken, but the message had been classified A3, which meant it was of the highest importance and required immediate attention. Which meant waking Canaris, whether he liked it or not.

Wolke cleared his throat.

Canaris’s eyes slid open. He blinked uncomprehendingly at Wolke, as if he had never seen the man before.

‘Admiral,’ said Wolke, his voice barely above a whisper. ‘An A3 has just come in.’

Slowly, Canaris sat forward, rubbing the sleep from his face, and picked up the piece of paper with one hand. At the same time, he reached out with his other hand, fetched his glasses and perched them upon his long and dignified nose.

The message contained an intercepted Soviet radio transmission indicating that Colonel Andrich had been killed in a shoot-out with Soviet partisans.

‘Good,’ muttered Canaris. ‘They have taken the bait.’ It was exactly what he had been hoping for.

But the second half of the message was not.

It went on to say that Commander Yakushkin, of the NKVD’s motorised rifle battalion, currently stationed in Rovno, had also been found dead. It gave no details about where Yakushkin had died or who had killed him or what the circumstances had been. Canaris cursed under his breath.

‘Is everything all right, Admiral?’ asked Wolke.

‘No,’ replied Canaris. ‘No, it is not.’ But he did not explain further, and Wolke knew better than to ask. ‘Has there been any word from Vasko?’

‘No news yet, Admiral.’

Canaris let the telegram slip from his fingers. ‘As soon as he returns to Berlin, have him sent straight to my office.’

‘Yes, Admiral.’

‘And Wolke. .’

‘Yes, Admiral?’

‘In the event that Vasko does not appear, type up a report placing the blame upon Otto Skorzeny.’

Wolke nodded. ‘ Zu Befehl , Herr Admiral.’

*

Having carried out the liquidation of Colonel Andrich, Vasko spent the rest of that day, as well as the following day, lying low in the ruins of an abandoned house not far from the hospital where Major Kirov was being treated for his gunshot wound.

By doing so, he was directly disobeying the orders of Admiral Canaris to immediately transmit the message that his task had been carried out, after which Skorzeny would dispatch a guide to escort him back across the lines.

He guessed that, by now, word of the colonel’s murder might already have reached Berlin. If so, Skorzeny would be waiting for the signal.