Ian Slater - Rage of Battle

“I will be brief,” said the captain. “Sabotage has been committed against the Soviet navy — the navy which protects your children from imperialist aggression.” He heard someone in the crowd making a guttural coughing noise, getting ready to spit.

“I want information,” Malkov told them, switching from Russian to fluent Estonian. “Now! I should tell you we have Mustamäe Apartments surrounded.”

There was a murmur, a sudden shift in the crowd. The captain’s inference was clear.

“Come here!” the captain ordered the riveter and his apprentice. Reluctantly, a marine trooper pushing them with his rifle, the two men walked up the four steps to the dais, the apprentice stepping over a puddle from the rainfall dumped by an early morning shower that had washed the air so clean that for a while the rusting, polluted aspect of the docks had taken on a clean, sparkly look. It was all illusion. The riveter looked at the captain defiantly; the apprentice tried to do likewise but was clearly afraid that if he did so, he would be shot on the spot.

“The first choice of hostages,” said Malkov, indicating the two men, “has been from the docks. Future hostages will be taken from Mustamäe.” He looked at the sullen crowd of workers, his eyes seeming to take in every stare and turn it back on itself. “I will be in the dockyard office.” With that, he walked down the four steps of the dais and, passing through the flank of troopers, nodded to the NCO, handing him back the megaphone. His car started up and a volley of shots rang out, blowing the riveter and apprentice off the dais.

The crowd of workers were stunned, surged angrily, then, under a long burst of machine-gun fire from the armored personnel carriers, stopped, yelling and screaming at the Russian troops, their voices mingling with the screeching of the gulls, several of which had also been hit by the machine-gun bursts, their lifeless bodies tumbling down through the gantries. Here and there, feathers fluttered like bloodied snow, eventually to fall softly on the wind-ruffled harbor.

At Mustamäe they were already loading the trucks now that the lists of whose family lived where had arrived from the docks. Priority in the roundup was being given to teenagers, as Malkov knew from his experience as an MOP officer in Riga that the elderly were not worth the trouble. They were easier to round up at the beginning but prone to die on you in the cells, which only stiffened resistance among the workers rather than weakened it. Younger hostages were by far the best bet.

An MPO corporal returned to apartment 703. On his copy of the list, it said, “Family Jaakson.” When she opened the door, the woman, Malle Jaakson, remarkably well preserved for her age, he thought, was wearing spectacles and had a book in her hand. “You told us,” the corporal said, glancing down at his clipboard, “that Edouard Jaakson was at school.”

“He isn’t,” the MPO corporal said.

Either the woman had been telling the truth and the boy had left for school early, then hopped it, or he was in the apartment. The corporal brushed past her, through to the small nine-by-nine living room, his head turning, his concentration absolute as he checked the four small rooms of the apartment.

Another Hitler, Malle thought. She had been gripping the book so tightly, she could feel her fingers going numb from the lack of circulation.

The corporal stopped and looked back long and hard at her. She blushed; the man’s eyes were not accusing but rather roving over her trim figure, ill defined beneath a loose-fitting, rust-red cardigan but obviously more alluring to him for that. Instinctively she pulled the cardigan closed about her as if to shut out his view. Immediately she realized it had been the wrong thing to do, as if she were in fact showing herself off. Even worse, it might occur to him that she was trying to divert his attention. But then, if she could divert his attention—

“Would you like some coffee?”

“Real coffee?” the corporal asked, his surprise total. Like most of the troops, he was clearly fed up with drinking the bitter ersatz stuff made from barley and chicory.

“No,” she said. “I’m sorry. I don’t care for the artificial kind either. But I have some tea. I imagine you must be tired. You could do with a cup, I expect.”

“Yes,” he said. “Thank you, Mrs. Jaakson.”

She smiled nervously as she picked up the kettle. “Is that a Ukrainian accent I detect?” she asked as if she liked it.

“You can tell?” Though she had not turned around from the gas stove, she sensed from his tone that he was pleased. She could feel him relax, as if the very air had changed, and heard him unbuckle his webbed belt as he sat down at the table. Filling the kettle, she could see outside that the troopers were still surrounding the building, some trucks, packed with civilians, leaving, and others, empty, arriving. But even the line of soldiers seemed more relaxed, their circle around the apartments sagging in places, confident now that no one had gotten out who shouldn’t.

“Have you been posted in Tallinn for long?” she said lightly, turning up the gas, the stove’s yellowish-blue circle of fire hissing softly, comfortingly.

“In Tallinn,” he said, “a year. I like it. You can buy more things here. Not so good now, of course.”

“No,” she said, reaching for the tea and spooning it out carefully into the pot. She thought she heard a noise, possibly from the bedroom, and feeling herself stiffen with alarm, rather than let him see her reaction, took her time replacing the lid on the tea jar and putting it back on the shelf above the gas ring. She heard the noise again and quickly turned the tap full on, topping up the kettle, though it was already half-full, not daring to look at him for fear he might see the alarm in her eyes. “You have a family?” she asked, concentrating on the kettle.

“Yes,” said the corporal, “I’ve been married now for three — four years. My wife’s name is Raza.”

The noise sounded again, like the rustle of a curtain.

“You must miss your family.”

“I have no children. But yes, I miss my wife.”

“Yes.”

When she turned to face him, she gasped, almost dropping the kettle — his erection purple, swollen and rising like some huge fat earthworm, the most disgusting thing she had ever seen. He nodded toward the bedroom with a crooked grin. “I’ll take the boy off the list,” he said. She was transfixed.

“I don’t care if he’s joined the Lesnye Bortsy za Svobodu,” he said, meaning the Forest Freedom Fighters. “Or with relatives, whatever. I’ll take him off the list.” He paused. “But you must be nice. Like you enjoy it, yes?”

Stunned, Malle lifted the kettle, which was so heavy it splashed, almost extinguishing the gas ring, making a loud, steaming noise.

“I can’t hear you,” he said.

Through the mist, the silence after the shelling screamed its presence, the pounding of the heavy guns having pummeled eardrums so badly that only the high tones were left, their ringing so intense that the sound of the dawn birds’ song was lost to David Brentwood as he lay, muscles aching, his whole body tense, hands still gripping the squad automatic weapon, his eyes adjusting to the bronze dawn of his goggles until he took them off. The glare of the sun-infused mist was hurtful to his eyes, but now at least Brentwood had a wider field of vision across the cratered landscape, which he remembered from the aerial reconnaissance photos had once been a meadow backed by a wood of Lombardy poplar. The wood was now gutted, the few remaining poplars blackened and splintered, leaning at impossible angles, looking like burned Christmas trees, leaves that had no doubt once flickered gold in the autumn sun now gone, one of the starkly naked trees that remained reminding him of the gaunt “lynching trees” he’d seen in old movies, stripped of foliage, charred, only one leaf still defiantly attached, a hundred yards from him. It was on this leaf that he focused, at once amazed and buoyed by its resilience against all odds. Or was it less resilience and more sheer luck?