Dan Smith - Red Winter

‘I’m not sure, but it’s the only explanation. There’s something here, something we’re not seeing.’

‘They’re calling,’ Lyudmila said. ‘They want to talk.’

While Tanya and I were discussing her idea, the men outside gave the first indication that they were even there. Until now, they had remained quiet. We had not attempted to speak to them, nor they to us, but now a voice shouted out in the night.

To my ears, the words were muffled and I couldn’t make them out, but as soon as I heard them, both Tanya and I stopped.

‘Sh.’ I put a finger to my lips and looked at Anna. She had pushed back her cap and her hair had fallen from beneath the cloth in places, greasy and matted. In the gloom of the izba , I could see it was twisted and clumped, as if it hadn’t been washed in a long time. Her pale face was streaked with dirt, and there was a dark band round her forehead, left by the ancient cap.

Lyudmila was closer to the window, able to make out the words. She beckoned us over.

‘Stay here,’ I told Anna.

Tanya and I returned to the window. The men were in the same positions as before. They had made no attempt to retreat or attack. They had not laid down their weapons, nor had they used them against us.

‘What did he say?’ I asked. ‘Exactly?’

But before Lyudmila could reply, the voice shouted again.

‘Send out the family,’ the man said. ‘Send them out and I’ll let you go.’

Tanya opened her mouth to reply, but I stopped her, saying, ‘Don’t answer. Don’t communicate with them at all. We need to think about what we’re going to do.’

I sat on the floor and rested back against the wall, hearing the man shout again.

Send them out and I’ll let you go . There was something odd about that. It wasn’t what I had expected. A demand for us to surrender made sense, but these men were calling for us to release the old woman and her family.

‘They think these people are our hostages,’ I said.

‘What are you talking about?’ Lyudmila watched the yard, ready to smash the cracked glass in an instant. Ready and willing to kill.

‘They think these people are our hostages,’ I repeated. ‘That’s why they haven’t done anything. They’re protecting them .’ I looked at the far end of the room where Oksana and her family remained quiet.

‘Them?’ Lyudmila asked, turning round. ‘Why?’

Outside, the voice called to us again, but we refused to answer.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Maybe they’re not Chekists out there?’ Tanya suggested. ‘Maybe they’re Blues…’

‘Oksana called them Chekists,’ I said. ‘I don’t think she was lying.’

‘Maybe she was wrong.’

‘Or maybe there’s something important about these people,’ I suggested. ‘Maybe that ’s your “something valuable”.’

All three of us now turned to look across the room at the family. Oksana held her hands tight together, one clasping the other as she stole glances at the top of the pich , where her children, Nikolai and Natasha, were hiding. Sergei still sat with his head hung low and his shoulders hunched. He looked even older now, as if the last few hours had stolen years from him. He kept his eyes to the floor.

His wife, though, sat upright, her head turned in our direction, glaring at us.

‘What’s so important about you?’ I asked. ‘What do you mean to those men?’

Her lips parted in a grin that would have sickened Baba Yaga’s stomach. Dry and thin and cracked, they peeled back to reveal her blackened teeth and empty gums. ‘You can’t stay in here for ever,’ she said with a sneer. ‘You’ll have to leave sometime, and they’ll be waiting for you.’

‘You might be right,’ I said, getting to my feet. ‘We can’t stay in here for ever, but those men out there don’t want to hurt you, so maybe you can help us get out.’

‘I won’t help you,’ she said. ‘ We won’t help you.’

‘You don’t have any choice.’

‘Wait,’ Tanya stopped me. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘We’ll use them as cover,’ I said. ‘If they’re important in some way, let’s use it to our advantage.’

‘We can’t—’

‘I agree with him,’ Lyudmila interrupted.

‘Twice in one day?’ I said.

She ignored me. ‘Take them with us until we’re out of danger. It’s the only way.’

Tanya looked at the floor for a moment before turning her attention to the family at the back of the room. ‘If we do that, we’ll be no better than Koschei. Using women and children.’

‘We’re not going to hurt them,’ I told her.

‘But we’re going to use them as a shield. And how do we even know it will work? You really think they’ll just let us go because we have them?’

‘We don’t know.’

‘So we just take a risk? We just put their lives in danger?’

‘Their lives are already in danger – that was their doing, not ours.’

Tanya pushed to her feet and stood in front of me, a head shorter than I was, but she seemed taller when she turned her face up to look into mine. We were close enough that I could feel her breath on my skin when she spoke, her voice an urgent whisper but growing louder. ‘What if it’s nothing to do with these people, Kolya? What if… ?’ She put out her left hand and touched the revolver in my right. ‘What if you’re wrong?’ She kept her hand there as if to stop me. Her skin was clammy, her temperature raised by the warmth inside the room, coupled with the tension in her body. Her voice was pleading. ‘What if you’re wrong ?’ She was feeling doubt now; it was consuming her. The family, the mother, the children, they were all worming into her thoughts and making her doubt; weakening her. ‘What if it doesn’t stop those men out there? What if they… ? Lyudmila –’ she turned to her comrade for support ‘– you have to know this is wrong. You must . We can’t do this.’

But Lyudmila shook her head. ‘I’m sorry.’

With my free hand, I peeled Tanya’s away from mine. She didn’t resist much, just enough to register that resistance, and I knew what she wanted – for this to be my decision. She knew that using the family was the only option left open to us, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. She had come here for revenge, but there were lines she was not prepared to cross. If something happened to any of them, she didn’t want it to lie on her conscience.

My conscience was already as black as the darkest corners of the forest, though. A few more lives would make little difference to mine, and I had come here for more than revenge. I was here to find my family, and I would do whatever I had to, anything to stay alive long enough to find Marianna and the boys. I would kill anyone who stood in my way. And there was Anna too. If I let this family walk out of here, as the men were demanding, there might be nothing to stop them from burning the izba to the ground and shooting us like a farmer shoots rabbits running from the burning stubble of last year’s crop.

‘There’s only one way for us to find out if we’re wrong,’ I said, still holding her hand, looking into her eyes.

‘We’d be no better than them.’

‘But I’m not any better than them, so you can blame me if anything goes wrong.’

She looked at me for a long while, as if she was trying to see something she had missed before. ‘Who are you, Kolya?’

‘I just want to find my family,’ I said.

‘And you’re prepared to do anything to find them?’

‘Anything.’

I saw in her face what a detestable notion she thought that was, and I even felt it myself, but I saw something else too. Understanding.