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“Lieutenant! Understood?”
Sigh. “Yes, sir.”
Alexander walked forward, leaving Ouspensky and Yermenko ten paces behind in the bushes, and came up to the circle in a small clearing. The men barely turned or raised their heads to look at him.
“Comrades,” he said, coming up close to their circle, “we need your help. We have no ammo left, the replacement platoons aren’t here, nor have I been able to reach anyone by field phone. I have twenty men left out of two battalions and I’ve got no support. We need your cartridges and your shells. We also need your first aid kits and some water for our wounded. And the use of your phone to call the command post.”
The men stared at him in silence and then laughed. “You’re fucking with us, right?”
“My orders were to break through the woods.”
“You clearly haven’t followed your orders, Captain,” said Lieutenant Sennev, glaring at Alexander from a sitting position.
“Oh, I’ve followed my orders, Lieutenant,” said Alexander. “And my men’s blood is testament to my obedience. But now I need your weapons.”
“Fuck off,” said Sennev.
“I’m asking you to help your brothers in arms. We are still fighting for the same side, aren’t we?”
“I said fuck off.”
Alexander sighed. Slowly he turned his back on the circle of men, holding his Shpagin. Before he was turned around completely, he saw the shrapnel club hurled by Yermenko sail through the air and with a siren wail embed itself in Sennev’s head. Yermenko must have been quite close to have heard it all, to have been so ready to throw the club. Alexander spun around, pointed his Shpagin and fired a shot at a time. He did not use the automatic fire. He didn’t waste a bullet on Sennev, who didn’t need one.
Alexander fired five rounds, Yermenko fired six, and they were done. The NKGB men never had a chance to lift their weapons.
Ouspensky and Yermenko took all their arms and provisions, while Alexander piled the bodies one on top of another. When they were a sufficient distance away—twenty paces—Alexander threw his grenade into the pile of bodies and shielded his eyes. The grenade exploded. For a few moments the three men stood and watched the flames rise up.
“Perhaps they need a soldier’s farewell from us,” said Ouspensky, saluting them. “Farewell, and fuck you!”
Yermenko laughed.
As they walked back to their positions, Alexander slapped the corporal on the shoulder. “Well done,”
he said, offering Yermenko a cigarette.
“Thank you, sir,” Yermenko said. He cleared his throat. “Request permission to go and find the enemy
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commander. I think if we take out their commander, their defense will fall.”
“You think so?”
“Yes. They’re very disjointed. In front, on the side, random fire, no purpose. They’re not fighting like a trained army. They’re fighting like a partisan force.”
“We are in the woods, Corporal,” said Alexander. “You’re not expecting trenches, are you?”
“I’m expecting reason. I’m not seeing it. They are heavily armed and they’re shooting at us as if they don’t give a shit how long they’ll hold out. They’re defending the woods as if they have an endless supply behind them.”
“And how will this change if you bring me the commander?”
“Without the commander, they will retreat.”
“They’ll retreat, but we’ll still be in the woods.”
“We can move laterally, south. We’re bound to run into the South Ukrainian front.”
“The South Ukrainian front will be overjoyed to see us. Corporal, my orders were to break through these woods.”
“And we will. But sideways. We’ve been here two weeks, lost nearly everything, cannot replace our men and cannot move the Germans. Sir, please let me bring you the commander’s head. You’ll see, they’ll retreat. The Germans don’t do well without a commander. We’ll be able to move sideways.”
Ouspensky nudged Alexander. “Why don’t you tell him they’re Russian, Captain?” he whispered.
“You think that will make a difference to Yermenko?” Alexander whispered back.
Alexander got on the newly acquired field phone to contact Captain Gronin of the 28th non-penal battalion, four kilometers south of Alexander’s position. He said nothing to Gronin about the downed NKGB but he did ask for reinforcements to come as soon as possible. It turned out that indeed the Germans had a bulge between Alexander and Gronin and to get reinforcements to Alexander, Gronin would have to move through German troops. Exhaustion in his voice, Gronin nonetheless managed to raise it high enough to shout, “Are you fucking joking with me, reinforcements? Who do you think you are? I’m sending you reinforcements when pigs fly! Fight with what you have until the rest of the army catches up with you.” And he hung up with a slam.
Alexander replaced the receiver gently and looked up to see Ouspensky and Yermenko staring him in the face. “What did he say, Captain?” asked Ouspensky.
“He said reinforcements will be here in a few days. We have to hold out till then.” Taking a sip of water from the flask, Alexander grunted—even the NKGB’s water tasted better—and said, “All right, Yermenko. Go get me their commander. But take another man with you.”
“Sir—”
“No. Youwill take another man with you. Someone silent and good. Someone loyal, someone you can
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trust.”
“I’d like to takehim , sir,” Yermenko said, pointing at Ouspensky.
“What are you, a fucking madman? I’m a lieutenant—”
“Lieutenant!” That was Alexander. He lit a smoke, glanced from Ouspensky to Yermenko, grinned and said, “Corporal, you can’t have the lieutenant. He is mine. Take someone else along.” He paused. “Take someone better. Take Smirnoff.”
“Thank you for your confidence, sir,” said Ouspensky.
“You’re welcome, Lieutenant.”
In an hour, only Smirnoff returned. “Where is Corporal Yermenko?”
“He didn’t make it,” said Smirnoff.
Alexander was silent a moment before he said, “I didn’t ask you that, Corporal. I asked where he was.”
“I told you, he is dead, sir.”
“And I asked you where he was. I will keep asking you until you tell me. Where is he?”
With a puzzled, slightly mortified, war-exhausted look, Smirnoff stared at Alexander. “I don’t understand—”
“Where is the dead corporal, Corporal?”
“Back where he fell, sir. Tripped a mine.”
Alexander straightened up. “You left your battle buddy, the man who covered your back, dead in enemy territory?”
“Yes, sir,” Smirnoff stammered. “I needed to get out of there, to get back here.”
“Corporal, you are not worth the uniform they put on you. You are not worth the gun they gave you to defend your mother country. To leave a fallen soldier in enemy territory…”
“He was dead, sir,” Smirnoff said nervously.
“And soon you will be, too!” Alexander shouted. “Who will carry your body to the Soviet side? Your buddy is dead. It won’t be him.” Waving his hand at Smirnoff, he said, “Get out of my sight.” Then,
“Before you go,” he said to the corporal who had turned on his heels, “you will tell me if you’ve discovered anything we can use. Or did you just go into enemy territory to leave a soldier to die?”
“No, sir.” Smirnoff didn’t look at Alexander.
“No sir what?”
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“Sir, I found out the commander is not German but Russian. Though I think there are a few Germans in their r
anks. I heard German spoken. The commander is definitely Russian. He yells to the troops in German but speaks to his lieutenant in Russian. He’s got about fifty troops left.”
“Fifty!”
“Hmm. They look to him for their every move.” Smirnoff paused. “I know because we got very close to him. That’s when we found out the area around his tent is mined. But now I know where to go. I’ll just find Yermenko’s body, the mine there has already been tripped, and I figure I can throw a grenade into the commander’s tent. He’ll be blown to pieces and his men will surrender.”
Alexander paused. “You sure he’s Russian?”
“Positive.”
Smirnoff left. A half-hour went by and he wasn’t back. An hour went by and he wasn’t back. After an hour and a half, with the woods black and impossible to see through, Alexander gave up on Smirnoff.
The stupid cocky bastard had obviously alerted them with another casualty. Now he is lying there dead, waiting for me to come and retrieve him.
“I’m going in, Lieutenant,” said Alexander. “If anything should happen to me, you’re in command of our unit.”
“Sir, you cannot go in.”
“I’m going, and I’m not coming back until either me or their commander is dead. Fucking Smirnoff! Left poor Yermenko in the woods.” Alexander cursed again. “At least now there are two of them for me to find. I’ll know where to step. Wish I had a fucking tank. If I had a tank, I wouldn’t be in this position.”
“You had a tank. If you hadn’t insisted on storming the river by yourself, you’d still have it.”
“Shut up,” said Alexander, taking his machine gun, tucking a pistol and five grenades into his shirt, and adjusting his helmet.
“I’m coming with you, sir,” said Ouspensky, getting up.
“Yes, right,” said Alexander. “They’ll hear you wheezing in fucking Krakow. While I’m gone, stay here and grow yourself a lung. I’ll be back in an hour.”
“Be back, Captain.”
In the dark, quiet as a Siberian tiger, Alexander made his way in the woods around the small flickering lights of the German camp. He had a small penlight that he held in his teeth and shined on the underbrush as he looked for a body, disturbed ground, anything. Alexander’s pistol was cocked and the knife was in his hand.
He found Smirnoff, who had found a mine. A meter away he saw Yermenko. He made the sign of the cross on the men with his pistol.
After putting the penlight away, his eyes made out the commander’s tent not five meters away in the
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clearing. He saw the mines lying flat on the ground. They hadn’t even bothered to bury them in their haste. If only his men hadn’t stepped on them in theirs.
He saw a flicker of a flashlight and a shadow in front of the tent. A man cleared his throat and said,
“Captain? Are you awake, sir?”
Alexander heard a man’s voice say something in German, then in Russian. In Russian, the captain asked the soldier to bring him something to drink and then not to step a meter away from the tent. “The mines have already killed two of them. But more will come, Borov. I’m well hidden, but we cannot take any chances.”
That was helpful, Alexander thought, putting the knife between his teeth and getting out his grenade. He knew he had to be stealthy and very exact. He could not miss the tent.
The soldier came out of the tent and before he closed the flaps, he saluted the man. Alexander was about to pull the pin out of the grenade. The adjutant said, “I’ll be right back, Captain Metanov—”
Alexander fell noiselessly to the ground. He dropped his grenade, and the adjutant went away.
Did he just sayMetanov ?
His tortured mind was playing tricks on him. With trembling hands, he picked up his grenade. But he couldn’t throw it.
He was so close. He could have killed the commander and his assistant so easily. Now what?
If he had imagined the name, well, so much the worse for him, so much the fucking worse for the ceaselessly restless him. A little more forgetting, a little less lament and he wouldn’t be within three strides of the German commander’s tent imagining he had heard the nameMetanov .
Alexander took one-two-three steps to the tent. He suspected the enemy captain wouldn’t bury a mine within such proximity to his sleeping area and he was right. Reaching out, he touched the canvas with his fingers. Inside the tent a small flashlight shone. Alexander heard the rustling of paper. He couldn’t even hear his own breath. It wasn’t because he was quiet. It was because he wasn’t breathing.
Silently he untied one of the ropes holding the tent to the stake. Crawling around, he untied another.
Then another. Then the fourth. He took a deep breath, took out his sidearm—though couldn’t cock it because it would make too much noise—gripped his knife, counted to three and jumped on top of the tent, pinning the commander inside the canvas. The man could not move. Alexander’s body was on him and the barrel of his now-cocked Tokarev was pressed to the man’s head. “Don’t move,” Alexander whispered in Russian. He felt for the man’s hands, pinning them with his knees. With one hand, he reached under the loose straps of the tent and felt around the ground for the commander’s gun. He found the gun and the knife, lying by what used to be the bed and the blanket. Feeling him stir slightly, Alexander said, “Can you understand me, or should I speak German?” He didn’t trust the man to lie quietly. Alexander punched him hard, knocking him out. Then he pushed away the canvas and shined his penlight into the man’s face. He was young, once dark-haired, completely shaven. He had a deep scar running down from his eye to his jaw; he had blood on his head; blood on his neck; he had only barely healed wounds; he was thin; he was pale in the white light of the flash; he was unconscious; he was either Russian or German. He was nothing, everything. Alexander gleaned no answers from this man’s face.
Alexander pulled the commander out of the tent, flung him on his back and before the adjutant had a
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chance to return with water, walked with him down the slope through the forest back to his own camp.
Ouspensky nearly fell down and lost breath in his only lung when he saw Alexander carrying the enemy commander. He jumped up but before he could say a word, Alexander cut him off with a hand motion.
“Stop talking. Get me some rope.”
Alexander and Ouspensky tied the man to a tree in the back of the tent.
For the rest of the night, Alexander sat in front of the captured officer. At last he saw the man’s eyes open and watch him angrily and questioningly. Moving closer, Alexander untied the bandana from his mouth.
“You bastard,” were the man’s first Russian words. “All you had to do was shoot me. No, you had me leave my men in the middle of battle.”
Alexander still said nothing.
“What the fuck are you looking at?” the commander said loudly. “Are you figuring out how I’d like to die? Slowly, all right? And painfully. I don’t give a shit.”
Alexander opened his mouth. Before he spoke, he brought a flask of hot coffee to the man’s mouth and let him have a few sips. “What is your name?” he said.
“Kolonchak,” said the man.
“What is your real name?”
“That is my real name.”
“What is your family name?”
“Andrei Kolonchak.”
Alexander took his rifle into his hands. “Understand,” he said, “if that’s your real name, I’ll have to kill you so your men make neither a hero nor a martyr out of you.”
The man laughed. “What do you think? I’m afraid of death? Shoot away, comrade. I’m ready.”
“Are the men you left behind ready for their death, too?”
“Certainly. We’re all ready.” The man sat straight up against the oak and stared unflinchingly at Alexander.
??
?Who are you? Tell me.”
“Tellyou ? Who the fuck areyou ? What are you, my brother in arms? I won’t tell you shit. You better kill me now because in a minute I’ll yell my rallying cry and my men will charge. They’ll die charging but you’ll lose what pathetic troops you got left. You won’t get a word out of me.”
“You’re in the back of my camp. You’re a kilometer and a half away from your own troops. Scream all you want. Scream like a woman. No one will hear you. What is your name?”
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“Andrei Kolonchak, I told you.”
“Your last name is a combination of Alexander Kolchak, the leader of the White Army during the Russian Civil War and the woman partisan Kolontai?”
“That’s correct.”
“Why did your aide call you Captain Metanov then?”
The man blinked. For just one moment, he glanced away from Alexander, but that one moment was enough. Alexander caught that one glance away square in the chest. Recoiling back from the man, he couldn’t look at him when he said, “Captain Pavel Metanov?”
There was silence from under the tree. There was silence from Alexander. Looking at his rifle, at his hands, at the moss, at his boots, at the stones, Alexander took one deep breath, one shallow breath, one aching breath and said, “…PashaMetanov?”
When he looked up, the man was staring at him with the perplexed, stunned, emotional face of someone who had heard an English voice in China, who had traveled a thousand miles and saw one white face, one black face, one recognizable, familiar face. As if an imprint of childhood were snapped with a black-and-white camera and it caught the smiling face of a young boy and of a soldier near death sitting roped to a tree, all at once and more.
“I don’t understand,” the man said faintly. “Whoare you?”
“I,” said Alexander, and his voice broke; he couldn’t continue. I…I…I scream to the deaf sky.
But it’s not deaf. Look at what’s in front of me.
Alexander stared at the man by the tree with a mixture of sadness, confusion, and disbelief. “I’m Alexander Belov,” he finally managed to utter. “In 1942 I married a girl named Tatiana Metanova—”