“What do you have there?” Elena asked.
“Just some beets, but they’re cooked. Are you hungry?”
“I’m always hungry. I have half a loaf of bread and some cold tea in a bottle.”
“Then let’s sit down for a moment. How much time do we have before the others arrive?”
“Maybe an hour, if everything goes well. Do you know what this is all about?”
“I do, but let’s wait a bit first.”
By the light from the air shaft, Lukas laid out his eight wrinkled beets on the table and watched as Elena removed a small loaf of dark rye from her briefcase as well as a stoppered half-litre bottle filled with sweet tea.
“Please, have a seat,” said Lukas, as if he were a waiter in a fine restaurant.
“Let me do this,” said Elena. “Do you have a knife?”
Lukas passed her a small pocketknife with which she peeled four of the beets and cut them into quarters, the way a mother might quarter a small orange for her child. She cut two slices of bread for each of them. Even in the bad light, her fingers were bright red. She stuck one of the beet quarters and offered it to Lukas off the end of his knife. He took it and put it in his mouth. When he reached down for the second piece she offered him, his fingers were bright red too.
“More than anything else, this is what I’m fighting them for,” said Lukas.
“Beets?”
He laughed. “No. Some kind of normal life. We shouldn’t be down in a basement like this, hiding away, just because we want to eat together.”
Elena didn’t reply. She unstoppered the bottle of tea. “We don’t have any glasses,” she said.
“That doesn’t matter.”
She lifted the bottle and drank from it and then passed it to Lukas, who drank from it too.
“Flint asked me to come here first,” said Lukas, “because he wanted us to have a chance to talk to one another for a while in private.”
“He knows about us?”
They had met only three times since the night they had first kissed, but each time they had managed to find a little time together.
“Flint knows everything. We live very close to one another in the bunkers and not much stays secret for long.”
“Have you talked to the others about me?”
“How could I not?”
“And what do men like Lakstingala advise in matters… like this?” She had almost said “matters of love” but was too shy to use those words.
“Lakstingala is not exactly a romantic, but he has a good heart.”
“So what is this thing that Flint wants us to talk about?”
“You work in an office in Marijampole, a place where the Reds congregate.”
“Yes, I know that. What about it?”
“There are some terrible Russian Reds there and some converts from the Lithuanian side. These are very bad men, as you’ve told me. They’ve sent hundreds to the camps in the North. They’ve sent others to Cheka prisons and permitted the men and women to be tortured. They have tortured people themselves.”
“Yes, yes. What about them?”
“We intend to execute them.”
“All right. Of course. I have no problem with that. But why are you telling me this? Do you need my permission? I can find out exactly where they live, if you like. I could look at their registration cards at work and tell you anything you want.”
“We’d never get them all. They go about with guards during the day and they sleep in safe places at night. We need to lure them out.”
“All right, so we’ll lure them out. How?”
“You could invite them to a party.”
“I could invite them? To what kind of party?”
“I don’t know. A name day, maybe.”
“My name day is the second of March, but the Reds don’t like name days much because they come off the Catholic calendar.”
“We’ll think of something else. The details don’t matter yet. It’s just the principle. Could you do it?”
“Be clearer on what you want.”
“You would invite your colleagues and as many important Reds as would come to a party in your flat. Once they were there, we’d liquidate them.”
She listened to him and did not reply, falling silent as the meaning of the words sank in. He’d used a euphemism unusual for him. How did one “liquidate” a human being? When she did not speak, Lukas carried on.
“You wouldn’t have to do anything yourself, but I have to say it wouldn’t be pretty.”
“And after it was over?”
“You’d have to flee into the woods with us. Your legal life would be over. One unknown is whether they would come to the party if you invited them.”
“If I can find some liquor, food and women, they will come. They are very simple men. Roll me a cigarette, please, as I try to understand this.”
Lukas did as he was told, taking out his supplies. The tobacco was homegrown and rough, and glued papers were hard to find, so he twisted the ends of the paper to make a tight cigarette that would be hard to draw on. He gave it to Elena, who examined it. They both remembered the fine cylinders her brother had made for them the first time they met.
“I thought you might have come early to this meeting because you missed me a little,” she said.
“I miss you a great deal. I wish I could be with you always.”
“But there is business that has to be done first.”
“The two are intertwined. I didn’t choose the life I’m living now. You said to me that you wanted to leave your old life. You said they were getting suspicious of you at work. This would be your chance to strike back at them, to avenge your brother. And I’d be avenging mine.”
“And afterward?”
“We’d be together then. It wouldn’t be an easy life, but we’d have each other.”
“There aren’t many women right in the underground.”
“But there are some. Listen to me. I love you. I want to be with you every moment of the day and night.”
She paused to let the words sink in. “I love you too, but is this the only way we have to be together?”
“What else could we possibly do?”
“I don’t know. And if I don’t agree?”
“Then it’s just one plan among many, a plan we never carried out. That’s all,” said Lukas.
“And the two of us?”
“We see each other whenever we can.”
“What about my plan?” asked Elena.
“Your plan involved treason.”
“And yours involves murder. But if we do nothing, we continue to see each other like we have until now, every few weeks, as the situation presents itself.”
“Yes. I can’t promise you anything better than that. I’m a soldier. We’re at war.”
“How would you kill them?”
“Flint and I thought about using poison, but it turns out poison is harder to get than we imagined.”
“So?”
“Flint says I’m the best shot he has. We would bring them into one place, feed them and get them drunk, and then I would shoot them while their guard was down. I understand you have a roommate. We could find a way to keep her away.”
“She’s as bad as the others at work. She’s discovered the Komsomol.”
“Then you could invite her, and as many women like her as you can think of.”
Elena smoked the last of the cigarette and threw it down onto the earthen floor. Lukas stamped it out.
“Your face is an open book,” said Elena. “Do you think you could mask it?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’d have to be all cheerfulness on the surface and a fox beneath that.”
“You’re speaking as if you’ve made your decision,” said Lukas.
“I have, almost. But I need you to tell me what’s in your heart. You Lithuanian men are all silence when it comes to your feelings. I have heard that men in other countries are not so circumspect with their thoughts.”
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