Dan Smith - Red Winter

When I reached the bottom step of the izba , aware of Lyudmila behind me, I stopped and turned to Tanya, speaking in a quiet voice so the soldiers wouldn’t hear. ‘You have to believe me. Whatever he says, you have to believe me. These are not my men. My unit was small, and I lost soldiers in battle, others by transfer. I was given what was left of another unit in the same state, one that had been operating for several weeks without a proper commander. These men. But I only knew them a matter of days, and even then it was a confusing mess. Things were complicated.’

It had been hard after Grivino. All that killing on my conscience and being called a hero for it.

‘We were given fresh orders,’ I told her. ‘Orders to… to do… terrible things.’ Worse than I had done before. Not just requisitioning food, taking conscripts and executing deserters, but to spread terror. To torture and kill and burn. To propagate fear and drive the enemy into the shadows.

‘Is that why you deserted?’

‘I don’t know these men any more than you do. I trust you more than them. Is my trust misplaced?’

‘Don’t pretend you didn’t hear me. Is that why you deserted? I have to know. I have to believe there’s something good in you.’

A few weeks ago, I wouldn’t have cared what Tanya thought of me, but now I felt a pang of disappointment. ‘Have you not seen any good in me? None at all?’

‘Answer my question.’

‘Yes. Yes, it’s why I deserted.’ The word was not easy for me to say. For Tanya, it just meant I had abandoned a heartless regime, but to me, it meant something else. It meant disobeying orders, accusations of cowardice, acceptance that my loyalties had been given to a belief I could no longer embrace. And it meant that I had forsaken my own comrades, leaving some to do terrible things, while others hunted me down.

Receiving those orders had been a trigger for all the disillusionment and exhaustion that had been building in me. The yearning I’d felt last time I was with my family. The appalling thought that my own son, Misha, wanted to follow in my footsteps. The guilt of the countless lives I’d taken, including those at Grivino. And my elevation to heroism because of it.

So I deserted not because I was a coward, but because I wanted to escape the horror, to be with my wife and sons, to protect my family from men like Koschei; men who revelled in their new orders. So while Koschei had pressed his burning, five-pointed star to the skin of helpless people in his quest to proliferate the Red Terror, so I had chosen a different path.

Tanya thought about it, looking from me to the soldier and at the revolver I still held beneath Oksana’s chin.

‘Now it’s your turn to answer my question. Can I trust you?’ I pressed her. ‘I need to hear it.’

‘No,’ Lyudmila said, and that half-whispered word was heavy with disbelief, making Tanya look over her shoulder to see Lyudmila standing in the open doorway. She took a deep breath and something unspoken passed between them. An apology perhaps, or a plea for understanding. Then Tanya shook her head once at her comrade and looked at me.

‘Yes. You can trust me,’ she said. ‘For now. But when this is over, you will be Red again.’

‘And you will be Green or Blue or whichever. I understand. All scores will be settled.’ That was good enough for me. I knew that, for the moment, I could rely on Tanya.

I turned back to the soldier and raised my voice. ‘Where’s Koschei? Where’s Krukov ?’

He hesitated, glancing around at the others.

‘Don’t look at them. Where is he?’

‘He’s…’ He seemed almost reluctant to tell me.

‘ Where? ’

‘He’s delivering prisoners, Comrade Commander.’

‘Delivering them where?’

‘There’s a camp—’

‘You know where it is?’ I couldn’t help but feel I was getting closer.

‘No. He doesn’t tell us everything.’ He looked back at the others again. ‘But I think it’s nearby… He’s returning in the morning. I… Yes. Tomorrow.’

‘What’s your name, soldier?’

‘Ryzhkov. Grigori Ilich Ryzhkov. Our unit joined yours just a few days before you were killed. Or that’s what we thought had happened to you.’

‘I remember you.’ But I knew almost nothing about him.

‘Thank you, Commander.’

‘Tell me, Ryzhkov, why are you guarding this house? What’s so important about these people?’ I remembered the look on his face just a short while ago when Tanya threatened to kill me. I was sure his concern had been for Oksana’s life rather than mine.

‘I don’t know. All I can tell you is that Krukov ordered us to protect it with our lives. To protect the people, otherwise he would take our heads.’

‘You’re afraid of him?’ It would explain his earlier fear, his concern for Oksana, but it also brought his loyalty to me into even more doubt. How could I compete with a man who instilled this kind of reaction even in hardened soldiers?

‘Everyone is afraid of him,’ Ryzhkov said.

‘So why haven’t you run? He’s not here.’

‘Because that would make us deserters. And he always finds deserters.’

Aware of Tanya’s eyes on me, I asked the rest of the men to step forward one at a time and introduce themselves. I recognised some of the faces, but like Ryzhkov, they were strangers to me.

‘What about the others?’ I asked.

‘Gone,’ Ryzhkov said.

‘Following me?’

‘Some.’ He didn’t pretend to be surprised that I knew about them, but he didn’t offer any more information than he had to and I realised I had already told him more about what I knew than I should. I decided to keep everything else I had seen and heard to myself.

‘They volunteered?’ I asked. He already knew I was aware of my hunters, so it was in my interest to gather as much information as I could.

‘Some of them, Comrade Commander. Others were ordered.’ He gave me no names and I asked for none.

‘So Krukov took over right away.’ It was more a thought spoken aloud than a question. Krukov was a serious man of few words and capable of acting without any display of emotion. He’d been a reliable comrade to have at my side, had fought with me and Alek at Grivino. Alek never liked him much, but I had always thought I could trust him. This war, though, it had taught me new things about conviction in others. Now I couldn’t tell the truth from lies anymore.

‘Yes, as soon as you were gone. He had enough loyal men, and anyone who questioned his orders…’ He shook his head. ‘The only way to stay alive was to do what he said.’

‘You didn’t think about reporting this?’

‘To who? There’s no one to tell. Other units do the same thing. I’ve seen…’ Once again he let his words trail away.

I remembered what Stanislav had told me at the train before he died – that I had created Koschei – and now I understood what he meant. When Alek and I had left, we had given Krukov free rein to command the unit. We had made it possible for him to carry out our new directive in as efficient and brutal a manner as he could. We had unleashed Koschei, and in his rampage across the country, he had found Belev.

My head spun with the implications. If Alek and I hadn’t run, the medic, Nevsky, might have saved his life. My brother might be alive, and I would still be in command of my unit. And if I were still in charge of my unit, Marianna would be at home. My boys would still be at home. I would have been able to protect them better as commander of a Cheka unit than as a miserable fugitive hiding in the forest, fleeing from those who hunted him. My mistake in deserting was monumental, almost too much for me to bear.