Dan Smith - Red Winter

‘Tanya.’ I called her name, letting her hear the warning in my voice. I needed Ryzhkov to tell me where Marianna was.

Ryzhkov pushed against the pistol, forcing it harder into his chest as he leaned his face close to Tanya’s. ‘Did I take them too? Your husband and children. I’ve taken so many, you know.’

‘You murdered them.’

‘Oh well, I can hardly bring them back from that .’

Her left hand darted out and gripped his throat, her fingers tight. Her face was a tortured picture of pain and fury.

Ryzhkov didn’t flinch. ‘Are you going to let her kill me, Nikolai?’

‘Tanya,’ I warned her again.

‘You hear how afraid he is?’ Ryzhkov said, staring into Tanya’s eyes. ‘How desperate?’ The sinews bulged in his neck.

‘Tanya.’ I shifted my pistol to aim at her now, then at Ryzhkov once more. There was so much confusion in her, so much conflict. I understood what she was feeling, but I couldn’t let her do this. ‘Tanya, please.’

‘You kill me and he might never see his family again. Would you do that to him?’ His eyes slipped to the side so he could look at me and I saw that, despite his predicament, he was enjoying this.

Tanya squeezed harder and Ryzhkov’s face began to change colour. Her fingertips dug into his skin as if she intended to tear out his throat, but Ryzhkov did nothing to prevent it. He let his arms hang by his sides as she crushed his life.

‘And then you’ll be just like me.’ Ryzhkov’s voice came in a hoarse whisper. His breath was failing, his life hanging on the edge. ‘You will have condemned Nikolai’s family. You will be like us. You will be Koschei too. Just another monster.’

‘She’s killing him,’ the old woman said behind me. ‘Don’t let her kill him.’

I heard Oksana saying something too, but the words were lost on me. There was too much happening, too much to think about. Ryzhkov was letting Tanya choke him – he was far more powerful than she was, yet he did nothing to retaliate. He was using his own mortality to manipulate us.

‘Are you going to let her do this?’ Ryzhkov asked me. His voice was tighter, and his eyes were wide and red.

I trained my gun on Tanya now, began to tighten my finger on the trigger. It wasn’t what I wanted. I didn’t want to kill her, but I would have to.

‘You have to stop,’ I warned her. ‘Please. If you make me do this, he’s one step closer to getting what he wants.’

Ryzhkov dropped to his knees now, his face bright red, his mouth open in a desperate attempt to draw breath. Still his men did nothing. They obeyed his order, sitting by and watching as Tanya squeezed with one hand and held a pistol to his heart with the other.

‘Don’t make me kill you, Tanya. Don’t let him use me to do this.’

Finally I broke into her rage and she turned to me as if woken from a dream. She blinked, looked down at her hands, at Ryzhkov’s bloated face, then released her grip.

Ryzhkov bent double, head to the ground, coughing and gasping for air, but as soon as his lungs were full, he pushed Tanya’s pistol away and got to his feet in front of her. The redness began to drain from his skin, and he lifted a hand to his throat, rubbing at the spot where Tanya’s fingers had marked him.

His grin returned and he looked from Tanya to me and then back again. ‘You can’t kill me,’ he said, voice rattling. ‘I’m deathless.’

I remembered that Galina had put her knife in him and all he carried was the ghost of a limp.

‘No one’s deathless,’ Tanya replied.

‘But you can’t kill me. You can’t let me live, and you can’t kill me, so what do you do?’

Ryzhkov had backed us into a corner, but he had a weakness. I had seen that already, and I wondered if we could play him as he had played us.

‘You found my family,’ I said, ‘but you’re forgetting that I found yours too. Maybe we can’t kill you –’ I stepped to one side and swivelled to point my pistol at Oksana ‘– but I can kill her .’

Immediately the smile dropped from his face.

Oksana was standing at the base of the ladder to the place where her children were hiding, exactly as she had been since I had allowed her back into the house. She had hardly moved. The old woman, though, was on her feet, hands to her mouth, and I realised the question of whose mother she was had been settled. Her fear was for Ryzhkov: he was her son.

The old man remained in his seat, head bowed as if he was trying to ignore it all, and now I understood the reason for his behaviour. While the mother was proud of her Chekist son, the father was ashamed. The revolution had split this family as easily as it had split the country.

‘Come here,’ I said to Oksana.

She hesitated, looking at her husband. ‘Tell them it’s not true,’ she said to Ryzhkov. ‘Tell them they’re wrong. You didn’t do all those things.’

So now I knew.

‘Come here,’ I said again, and this time she shook her head.

‘Would you rather I used one of your children?’ I asked, hating the dreadful nature of my threat. Ryzhkov had forced me to behave like him and I couldn’t help looking over at Anna, sitting in the corner watching me. I wished there was a way to let her see that I wouldn’t do it. I wanted her to know I would never hurt Oksana’s children, but there was no way to do it without warning the others too.

‘Which one will it be?’ I asked.

‘I’ll come,’ Oksana said, and when she was at arm’s length, I reached out and pulled her towards me, jamming my pistol under her chin as before.

I looked at Ryzhkov. ‘Your wife, I presume?’

I saw from his expression I was right.

‘Tell them it’s not true, Grigori,’ she pleaded with him. ‘Those things they say you did. Tell them it’s not true.’

But he couldn’t deny it. Not in front of his men, not in front of us. And when I looked back at the old woman, I saw sorrow replace pride, as if she had rejected the possibility of her son’s madness until this moment, but now she knew the reality of what he was.

Beside her, Sergei had his head in his hands.

‘Your mother and father,’ I said. ‘See how ashamed they are of you.’

‘They should be proud. I’m making our motherland better. More powerful.’

‘No, you’re just a murderer.’

‘I’m a patriot .’

‘Who drowns women and beheads old men.’

‘Enemies,’ he said. ‘The ones who can’t be taught. They have to be rooted out like weeds – you said so yourself. The weak and the unwilling. The others, I send for labour so they can learn to love the revolution; to fight for it.’

‘You didn’t do this for the revolution,’ I said. ‘You did it for yourself. Because you enjoy it. Because you’re a monster.’

‘Grigori,’ Oksana said, ‘tell them it’s not true.’

He turned up his lip at her. ‘Are you not a good Communist?’

‘Of course, but—’

‘Then you’ll find nothing wrong with what I’m doing. It’s these people who are killing our country with their false ideas and desertion.’ He looked right at me. ‘Kill her. I don’t care.’

Oksana tensed and then slackened in my arms as if she had been slapped. She couldn’t believe what her husband was saying. The father of her children.

‘Do it,’ he said. ‘Go on.’

I tightened my grip on Oksana and pressed the gun barrel harder, but my finger froze on the trigger.

‘Do it,’ Ryzhkov said again. ‘See what I will sacrifice for the cause.’

‘No,’ Oksana begged. ‘Please.’

I looked across at Anna, seeing how afraid she was of what I was doing.

‘Do it.’ Ryzhkov’s demand made me turn my attention back to him and I could see from his expression that he thought he had won. ‘You can’t,’ he said. ‘Can you?’