Sam Eastland - The Beast in the Red Forest

He did not expect to find Vasko there. By now, Malashenko was convinced that the Abwehr agent had already gone, having accomplished what he came to do. The thought that he had been cheated out of his bar of gold filled Malashenko with barely containable rage.

But when Malashenko arrived at the little shack, with its mildewed log walls and crooked tar-paper roof, he was stunned to discover that, in the few hours he’d been gone, all the windows had been knocked out. ‘Vasko!’ he shouted. ‘Vasko, are you there?’

‘Yes,’ said a voice behind him.

Malashenko spun around as Vasko stepped out from behind a tree, a Tokarev pistol in his hand.

‘I didn’t think you were coming back,’ the partisan remarked nervously.

‘Then you were mistaken, Malashenko.’

‘What the hell happened to my cabin?’

‘Somebody touched something they shouldn’t have.’

‘Well, it wasn’t me!’

‘I know,’ Vasko said calmly. ‘Because if it had been, you would be the one lying in pieces on the floor instead of somebody else.’

‘Pieces?’ Malashenko glanced in through the cabin’s open door. A headless body slumped in a chair against the wall. The walls were painted with blood. With nausea rising in his throat, Malashenko backed away. ‘Listen,’ he told Vasko. ‘There is something you should know. Pekkala is looking for you. Pekkala, the Emerald-’

Vasko cut him off. ‘I know exactly who Pekkala is.’

‘Then you know it’s only a matter of time before he finds you.’

‘That is exactly what I intend for him to do.’

He’s gone mad, thought Malashenko. Maybe he was from the start. Malashenko would have shot Vasko by now, but his sub-machine gun was slung across his back and he knew he’d never get to it before Vasko pulled the trigger on his pistol. Instead, he tried to reason with the man. ‘And when he does catch you, after what you’ve done-’

‘Oh, he won’t catch me,’ Vasko assured him. ‘You and I will see to that.’

‘You can leave me out of it!’ snapped Malashenko. ‘I already helped you. I did everything you asked of me.’ He held out one dirty hand. ‘You owe me that bar of gold.’

‘And you will have it,’ said Vasko, ‘but I require one small additional favour from you.’

‘What kind of favour?’ demanded Malashenko.

‘I would like you to bring Pekkala here.’

‘So that you can add another to your list of murders? You don’t understand. I have orders to protect the Inspector, as well as his assistant Major Kirov.’

‘Orders from whom?’

‘From Barabanschikov himself,’ replied Malashenko. ‘If anything happens to them it will be on my shoulders! In the meantime, I’m supposed to be helping them catch you.’

Vasko smiled. ‘Then they will be pleased when you report to them that you found me lying dead in your cabin.’

For a moment, Malashenko just stared in confusion, but as the seconds passed, he began to understand Vasko’s thinking. ‘The body in the cabin,’ he whispered. ‘They’ll think it’s you.’

‘When they find the pieces of my radio, along with other evidence, they’ll have no reason to think otherwise.’

‘And then you can get away clean,’ said Malashenko, marvelling at the beautiful symmetry of Vasko’s plan, ‘because nobody looks for a man they think is lying dead in front of them. Barabanschikov will be pleased, Pekkala will thank me. .’ then Malashenko paused. ‘But how will I convince them it is you?’

Vasko thought for a second, then he removed a spare Tokarev magazine from his pocket, pushed out one of the special soft-point rounds and tossed it to Malashenko. ‘Just show him this. He’ll know what it means. Go now, and the quicker you get back here with Pekkala, the sooner that gold will be yours.’

Malashenko needed no further encouragement. He turned and started walking down the trail to Rovno. Gradually, his walking pace picked up into a steady trot. Then, with thoughts of gold swimming in his brain, Malashenko broke into a run.

*

From somewhere beyond the barricade came the sound of a tank engine. A moment later, a German Jagdpanzer, normally used for destroying other armoured vehicles, appeared from around a corner.

Their faces masked with plaster dust, Kirov and Pekkala began firing at the vehicle, but the bullets bounced harmlessly off its front armour.

With no support, and no anti-tank weapons, the men in the garrison knew it was only a matter of time before the enemy made their final assault on the building. In the room-to-room combat that would follow, there would be no hope of surrender. It would be a fight to the death.

‘Why didn’t you marry Elizaveta?’ asked Pekkala.

‘You want to talk about that now?’ Kirov asked incredulously.

‘There may not be another time,’ said Pekkala.

‘How can I marry her,’ asked Kirov, ‘when the odds are I’d make her a widow long before we could grow old together?’

‘Do you love her?’

‘Yes! What of it?’

‘Then let her choose whether or not to take that risk. Your job is to stay alive. Hers is to trust that you will.’

‘That’s some advice, coming from a man who sent his own fiancée away to Paris as soon as the Revolution broke out! She wanted to stay and be near you, but you forced her to go.’

‘And I have regretted it every day since. Do not postpone happiness, Kirov. That has been the most costly lesson of my life.’

The building shuddered as a shell from the tank smashed into the upper storeys of the hotel. Soldiers accompanying the armoured vehicle crouched in the doorways of wrecked buildings, shooting at anything that moved in the hotel.

The Jagdpanzer backed up slowly as it manoeuvred for another shot.

With a sound like a whipcrack, a bullet passed just over Kirov’s head and smashed what was left of the light fixture hanging from the middle of the room.

Pekkala watched the barrel of the tank rising as it took aim. It seemed to be pointing straight at him. Slowly, he lowered his gun, knowing it was useless to keep fighting against such a machine. ‘I’m sorry, Kirov,’ he said. ‘I should never have brought you to this place.’

‘I would have come here anyway,’ answered Kirov.

Then came a deafening roar, following by the squeal of the tank’s engine and then another explosion, this one more muffled than the first.

The top hatch of the tank disappeared as a bolt of fire erupted from the turret. Black smoke poured from the engine grille and fire coughed out of the exhaust stacks.

At that same moment, Pekkala caught sight of a small grey cloud sifting upwards from the rubble of a building. A man emerged, still carrying the arm-length, sand-coloured tube of a Panzerfaust anti-tank weapon. At first, Pekkala could not understand why the vehicle had been destroyed by what appeared to be one of its own people, but then he realised that the man was a partisan. Just as he was wondering where the man had come from, and where he could have come by such a weapon, a terrible cry went up from the ruins, and more partisans began to pour into the street.

‘Where did they come from?’ asked Kirov, who had joined Pekkala at the window sill.

The soldiers, who had been ready to make their final assault on the garrison, began to pull back. But they were quickly overwhelmed by the mass of charging partisans, who seemed to number in their hundreds. In minutes, the SS men were running for their lives, leaving behind the smouldering hulk of their tank.

Deafened and coughing the dust from their lungs, Pekkala and Kirov stumbled their way out into the street. The air was filled with a metallic reek of broken flint from cobblestones crushed by the heavy iron tank tracks.

All around them, Red Army soldiers emerged from hiding places behind the coils of barbed wire which marked their last line of defence.