Simon Montefiore - Red Sky at Noon

Twenty minutes later, a more senior Chekist with a squint, a Colonel Spassky, was perusing the maps and the notebook, and listening to Benya’s story. He seemed more impressed. ‘All right.’ He nodded, sighing loudly, clicking his tongue. ‘I think you’ve done well. We need to check up on you but your part in the Mandryka operation is confirmed by Comrade Elmor. We’ve already reported this incident to our superiors.’

Benya was returned to his small room, before being called back again for a third time to see an army general named Chernyshev who received him with the divisional commissar and Spassky.

‘Well, Shtrafnik,’ said Spassky briskly but with a kind blink of his eye, ‘you might just have earned your redemption. We know you’ve been through a lot. Good work. We’re just waiting to hear from our superiors. There’s a general based in Stalingrad who knows about the traitors Mandryka and Kapto and it happens he’s in this sector. He’s coming across to sign off on you.’ He called in Mogilchuk: ‘Their stories check out. I think they’re clean.’

General Chernyshev stood up and shook Benya’s hand. ‘I would be happy to recommend them for redemption. Draw up the documents, comrades, and I’ll sign it. Give them a proper meal, a hundred grammes of vodka and a wash. And for God’s sake, get the lice off them!’

Benya was so relieved and overjoyed he could hardly speak. Smiling to himself, he followed Mogilchuk back to the cottage where he found the others. After bolting down kasha and black bread and goat’s cheese, and even some fresh tomatoes, as much as they could, and a hundred grammes of vodka, they looked at one another, feeling human.

‘Will we be signed off as Shtrafniki so we can join a regular unit?’ asked Prishchepa.

‘I think so,’ said Benya. They had said it: Happy to recommend them for redemption. ‘Yes, yes, we will.’

There were mattresses on the floor, and Garanzha and Panka were both fast asleep. Benya lay down and savoured the way sleep was creeping up on him. They had been through a great deal, and now it was over, all over.

Feeling sick, Svetlana picked up the wad of papers that her father had thrown down.

‘You see what these are? They’re telephone transcripts of your conversations with your so-called lover!’ Stalin grabbed the papers out of her hands and started to read, his hands actually shaking: ‘“Svetlana Stalina: Hello, Lion, I long to kiss you, I can smell you, I can feel your lips on me, Lev, and I want more…” How can you say such things? You disgust me,’ he shouted. ‘“Shapiro: Darling Lioness, is it you? I can only just hear your voice. I can feel you in my arms. We’re going to meet again in that apartment. I am not going to waste time just talking, I am going to kiss your hair and your sweet freckles and hold your hand and…”’

Stalin threw down the papers again as Svetlana started to sob.

‘Do you recognize these words? Lioness? What is this? Don’t you know who you are? Filth! Where did you learn such things? Oh, I know! From your idiotic brother! He’s spending a week in the guardhouse. Now give me all his letters. Hand them over! No doubt you have them hidden away somewhere in here. Your Shapiro’s not even a writer. He’s a hack! He’s not what you think he is, I can tell you that! We’re checking him out.’

‘But I love him,’ cried Svetlana.

‘Love!? LOVE?’ yelled Stalin, spitting the word with hatred.

Svetlana tilted her chin at him defiantly. ‘Yes. Love! I love him!’

Stalin’s lips turned white and he slapped her twice across the face. He spun around to the nanny. ‘Just think how low she’s sunk. Don’t you think I’ve got enough to worry about? There’s a war going on – oh yes, we’re fighting for our existence, and she’s busy fucking!’

‘No, no, no, it’s not like that!’ the nanny tried to explain, wringing her hands.

‘It’s not?’ said Stalin, sounding slightly calmer. He turned back to his daughter. ‘You fool! Don’t you know who Lev Shapiro is? He’s forty years old and he’s got women all around him, and he’s fucking all of them. You’re nothing to him. Take a look at yourself! You’re plain as a plank! Who’d want you?’

‘Get up, Golden!’ Mogilchuk was back. The Cossacks stirred from their mattresses.

‘Do we come?’ asked Garanzha.

‘You wait here, Cossack,’ said Mogilchuk. ‘Golden, you come with me. Look at you! A week’s beard and food all over you. First wash your face.’

Benya did as he was told; then he walked with Mogilchuk back to the command post.

‘You’re lucky,’ Mogilchuk continued. ‘General Petrov is senior enough to sign off on your entire case for all four of you.’

Benya swallowed hard, experiencing the panic of happiness. Could he really be safe? Fabiana came to him suddenly, quite real, right there. He prayed she was alive and safe. He owed her so much, and now she was a secret, so deep, so incriminating, that he warned himself never to think of her – until he was clear. He had slept with the enemy; no one must ever know.

He was shown into an empty room and sat at a table and rested his face in his hands. Happy to recommend them for redemption. Happy to recommend them for redemption. These joyful words were echoing in his ears.

‘General Petrov!’ said Mogilchuk, saluting.

Benya stood up, his heart beating. He had survived Kolyma and the Shtrafbat and seven days behind enemy lines. Now he would be rewarded.

‘Remember me, Benya Golden?’

He’d recognize that voice anywhere, the bulk and the laminated skin like glossy chocolate, and the sausagey fingers aglint with rings, all enveloped in his eau de cologne that was based on cloves. This was no front-line general, no ‘Petrov’ either; ‘General Petrov’ was Bogdan ‘the Bull’ Kobylov, Deputy People’s Commissar for the Interior and Commissar-General of State Security (Second Degree), who had interrogated him once in Lubianka Prison three years earlier. You don’t forget anyone you meet in hell, and a man never forgets his torturer: it is an intimate relationship.

‘A lot can happen in three years, eh, Golden?’ said Kobylov as soon as they were alone. ‘I remember you well.’

‘Thank you,’ said Benya, not knowing what to say.

‘I don’t often get thanked by the men I beat with my truncheons, but that’s kind of you,’ Kobylov boomed jovially and mellifluously. ‘But time is short so let’s get down to business.’

Benya prayed that Kobylov would sign off on the redemptions. He had the power; he was Beria’s special henchman. When Beria had been summoned to Moscow in 1938, he’d brought his own men from Georgia, led by Kobylov.

‘I’ve examined your materials,’ said Kobylov in his clotted accent. ‘I’m impressed that you have recovered these top-secret documents and even more astonished that you personally claim to have liquidated the traitor Kapto.’

‘We, my fellow Shtrafniki and I, also played a key role in the liquidation of the traitor Mandryka,’ Benya pointed out.

‘A key role? Don’t over-egg the pudding, Golden. But I am only concerned with Kapto. Let me ask, firstly, what time precisely did you shoot Kapto and take these documents?’

Benya blinked. He wasn’t at all sure.

‘Think, Golden.’

‘Maybe… ten a.m.’

Kobylov looked at his watch: it was now 5 p.m.

‘Why are you asking—’

‘Don’t rile me today, Golden. Unless you want a smack? I thought not. How long did it take you to ride from there to our front line here?’

Benya tried to think: ‘Not long. We came slowly. We didn’t know where our lines were. Maybe a couple of hours.’