Antanas Sileika - Underground

“Just a moment. If you knew your communications were compromised, why did you ask for me in particular? You were calling me into a trap.”

“Because I knew if anyone could get in, it was you.”

“You’re saying you lured me back in?”

“In a way, yes.”

“And maybe you lied about Elena just to get me in?”

The bunker was so small that they were pressed in close to one another in a huddle, the candle shedding the only light. Lakstingala and Lozorius were both smoking. Lukas would have liked to smoke too, but the bunker felt airless enough as it was.

“No, that part’s true. Elena is alive and I knew you’d want to know it. A miracle, eh? I had to tell you, but I did compromise her a little by naming her. If all our communications are being read by the traitors in Stockholm, the Reds know she’s alive too.”

“You used her code name?”

“Our code names haven’t been secret for years. They know us all by our real names. There are files on each of us in Vilnius. There are investigators assigned to each of us and there’s money on our heads. Either you or I would bring enough to make a man rich. Even Elena has a price on her head.”

“Where is she?”

“In Merkine. She’s living with false documents.”

“How is it possible? Flint saw her die in an explosion.”

“We’ve all seen people die. Sometimes they die and sometimes they don’t. She was wounded and taken to a hospital. When she was almost well, she was sprung out with a few other women.”

“How can you know this?”

“I know this and I know a hundred other loose ends of information, but none of them is any good to me. Yours is the only thread that will take us anywhere.”

“I can’t understand all this. Why did you give away her secret through your transmission? And why did you call on me?”

“Because I knew if I told you she was alive, you would come. And I knew that you were the only one who had a chance of survival even if a trap was set for you.”

“But why did you need me in particular?”

“Because I need someone like you to help me get out of this country.”

“You gave an oath,” said Lakstingala. He had been smoking and listening to them in silence although he was very close to them, his face no more than an arm’s length away. His eyes had gone cold.

“What good are our oaths now? The movement is broken. I’ve seen that. The only ones left are the lucky ones like us. The whole structure has crumbled and what hasn’t vanished is shot through with betrayal. Most of the farms have been collectivized—we have no base of support anymore. I was ready to die for my cause when there was hope that someone from our side might win, even if it wasn’t me, but I don’t see hope anymore. The best we can do is get back out and take what news we have with us. I’d give anything to be sitting in a restaurant in Stockholm right now.”

“What are the spy agencies going to say about that?” asked Lukas.

“To hell with them. They were just using us anyway. The British or Swedes have been penetrated, and for all we know, the Americans too. I’m terrified of being taken alive. I know too much. I don’t think I could withstand the torture.”

“Then you should shoot yourself,” said Lakstingala.

Lozorius looked away from Lakstingala and would not look back again. “Do you have anything to drink?” he asked.

Lukas did. He had been saving some cassis Lakstingala had brought. He opened the bottle and poured each of them four fingers.

Lozorius drank half the liqueur and then rested his glass on the table. “I don’t think I want to die anymore. That’s the problem.”

“I’ll kill you if you don’t have the courage to do it yourself,” said Lakstingala.

“Don’t be so harsh,” said Lukas.

“You think he’d be the first one? We’ve had partisans that were bad to begin with or went bad later, and others became cowards like this one. We had field courts when there was still an organization, and I took part in a couple of executions.”

“I’ve been in dangerous spots before,” said Lozorius, “but something has broken in me. You can’t blame me for that.”

“I don’t blame a horse for breaking its leg. And the cure is the same,” said Lakstingala.

“Stop it,” said Lukas, and Lakstingala closed his mouth and hunkered down. “Lakstingala, come outside with me. Lozorius, you stay here.”

They walked out a distance to the nearest copse.

“The man makes me furious,” said Lakstingala. “He knew what the dangers were when he came back here. Now he’s lured you in for no good reason and he’s put all of us at risk.”

“There’s still the matter of my wife, though.”

Lakstingala nodded. “That’s true, but you’ll do her no good. Leave her alone. If she’s living with false papers, she’s built some kind of structure for herself, but it will be very fragile. If you go looking for her, you could destroy all that.”

“But I haven’t come here to ruin her life—I’ve come here to save her and get her out again. She should be dead. For all I know she was dead, but she’s risen from it somehow. You don’t look indifferently at that kind of miracle. I’ll get her out somehow.”

“What you say will be hard enough for two. Do you want to risk it with Lozorius?”

“I don’t know. I wouldn’t want to leave him behind. He has a bad look to him.”

“I’ll execute him. He’s a traitor, in a way, for endangering you.”

“Don’t be so hard. We all have to find a way to survive, even you.”

“Don’t worry about me.”

“Why not? You worry about me.”

“Honestly, you have to stop talking like that. If sentimentality is what you lived off in the West, I’m glad I’m not going there.”

Lukas smiled but hid it from him. “Would you come with me if I went looking for Elena in Merkine?”

“I’d lead you to the edge of town. In the meantime, let’s take this one back where he came from—or rather, let me do it.”

“Go easy. When I knew him before, he wasn’t like this.”

When they stepped back into the bunker, they found that Lozorius had finished the blackcurrant liqueur in each of their glasses. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but I thought you might shoot me when you returned.” He looked at them sheepishly.

It seemed for a moment as if the furious Lakstingala might do just that, but he got over it. Lukas and Lakstingala both went part of the way back with Lozorius, but Lukas left them to return to his bunker. He invited Lozorius to visit whenever he felt the pressure grow too great. The man needed bucking up.

Upon his return to his bunker, Lukas saw the three glasses still on the table. He put his finger into the bottom of one and tasted the tip of it.

He heard a noise outside. He reached for his assault rifle and put a hand grenade in his pocket as well.

“It’s just me,” a familiar voice called.

“Rimantas, what are you doing here?”

“You’re supposed to call me Poe . I’m sorry, but I just wrote a new poem and I knew you’d want to hear it.”

Lukas should have been angry, but he could never stay that way with Rimantas. The man was too outrageously amusing for his breaches of security to be taken seriously.

LAKSTINGALA AND LUKAS surveyed the town of Merkine from the same position where they had stood when they first attacked the town, five years earlier. The woods were behind them and a hundred metres of field before them, and beyond that the backs of the wooden houses on the edge of town. Then, there had been half a dozen men in their unit and dozens more in other positions. Of these men, only Lukas and Lakstingala were still alive. It was hard to look at the town without a sense of bitterness for all that had happened since they had been there, for the futility of all the deaths that had left the sleepy town unchanged.