Traitor Read online

  “Problems?” he said, and then he saw me under the bar.

  The blond man came back around the bar, carrying my rifle. “He’s NKVD.”

  “I’m not NKVD, you son of a one-eyed Russian goat,” I said.

  The bearded man went down on one knee and looked at me in the half-light. From his lonely sidearm I knew he must be the commanding officer here, and from his silence I knew—at once but with certainty—that he was a man to be afraid of.

  “He had these,” the blond man said, showing the bearded man my rifle and grenades, “and this.” He took my map from his pocket and gave it to the bearded man. “No identification.”

  The bearded man spread my map on the floor, flattening the creases carefully with his fingertips. He turned it over to look at the psalm on the other side, then over again wordlessly. He looked at it for a long time, puffing on his pipe.

  Without raising his head, he said, “Bring up the gun.”

  We waited, Commander Golikov and I, while the other two went out. Their footsteps went away down the stairs. There was a stiff silence in which I could hear my heart beating in my throat.

  Commander Golikov sat back on his heels and looked at me.

  “The Germans will be here in three days,” he said. “Do you know how I know?”

  “Used your eyes?” I asked.

  He reached into a pocket and brought out something small and flat and silvery. He held out his hand. On his callused palm lay an eagle, wings outstretched, stitched in bright silver wire on a black cloth patch the size of my thumb. I recognized it from the Reds’ latest propaganda posters, though I’d never seen one in real life.

  It was a Wehrmacht officer’s breast eagle.

  “Did you kill him?” I asked. If he meant to scare me, he’d have done better to keep his mouth shut. It was his silence that scared me.

  He returned the eagle to his pocket. His face was blank.

  “No,” he said. “It’s mine.”

  I’d seen that, too, in the Reds’ propaganda. There were certain Ukrainians, traitor Ukrainians, enemies of the motherland, who’d taken commissions in the German army.

  I wondered whether this man knew my father. I wasn’t fool enough to ask.

  “It’s very nice,” I said. “Shiny. Better not let the Reds catch you with it.”

  He ignored that. “Do you know who we are?”

  “Deserters?” I guessed wickedly.

  “Nachtigallen,” he said.

  I could tell he expected me to be impressed. The Nachtigallen were the elite—an all-Ukrainian special-forces unit spearheading the German advance.

  “I’ve heard of them,” I allowed.

  “You can believe me when I say the Germans will be here in three days.”

  “Nobody’s arguing that.”

  “My point,” he said, “is that it might be better if you just waited.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Who is he?” the bearded man asked. His voice was quiet. He was watching my face. “Father? Brother?”—not unkindly—“What’s your name, son?”

  “None of your business,” I said. The son galled me.

  “They’ll leave their prisoners when they pull out.”

  “Not all of them.” Not the ones that matter.

  The other two were coming back up the stairs. They came in from the landing, wheeling a machine gun between them. A third man, whom I hadn’t seen before, followed with the ammunition pans. I watched them take the gun over to the window and lock the wheels of the mount.

  “Was it political?” the bearded man said to me.

  “What isn’t?” I was bitter now, nursing the gall.

  “Who was it? Reds or lyakhy?” He used the derogatory word for Poles.

  “Does it matter?”

  “Maybe,” he said. “Maybe not.” He let out a long, exaggerated sigh. He folded up my map and put it in his breast pocket. “Andriy,” he said, “come over here.”

  The young, pale one came over from the window. “Yes, sir?”

  “Take him downstairs. Put him in the cellar for now.”

  “Yes, sir.” Just a hint of a wince.

  “Look,” I said, as Andriy pulled me up gingerly by my elbow. I wasn’t going to make too much of a fuss. I was pretty sure I could take Andriy once we were alone, even with my hands tied. But it was the principle of the thing. “Look—you know I’m not NKVD. You might as well let me go.”

  “I know you’re not NKVD,” the bearded man said, “just like I know the NKVD would pay very, very handsomely to know we’re mounting a machine gun across from the Brygidki gate—yes?” He had to tilt up his chin to look me in the face now. It would have been satisfying in a way, if I weren’t so very sure that this man could kill me in a second, effortlessly and without remorse. “Give me your name, and I might reconsider,” he said.

  “Liar,” I said.

  Gunfire hammered distantly somewhere out in the darkness—a long, spattering burst of submachine-gun fire, rolling away slowly into silence.

  “What the hell was that?” said the blond man.

  “It’s coming from the prison,” said the other man, the one who’d carried the ammunition pans. He was looking out the window.

  “Get away from the window,” the bearded man said.

  The submachine gun picked up again. There was another long, unbroken burst of gunfire, then silence, then another long burst, and with it a popping fusillade of pistol shots. This time it seemed to stretch on forever. We stood there nervously in the half-light, all of us, looking at each other and listening.

  “Using up their ammunition before they let the Germans get their hands on it?” the blond man guessed doubtfully when the gunshots had finally died away again.

  But I knew what they were doing—with sudden certainty, as I knew to fear the bearded man’s silence.

  “They’re shooting the prisoners,” I said.

  And I knew he knew it, too, because he didn’t say anything.

  I jerked my elbow from Andriy’s unresisting hand. The bearded man must have been anticipating that. He’d closed the distance between us and hooked a foot neatly around my ankle before I’d taken one full step toward the doorway. I sprawled facedown on the floor, just catching myself on my bound hands.

  He put a foot between my shoulder blades.

  “Andriy,” he said, over my head, “Marko. Take him downstairs and keep him there.”

  “Cowards,” I snapped, jerking and twisting against their hands, stupid with panic. “Don’t you understand? They’re shooting them—they’re killing them, you bastards—you cowards—let me go—”

  “Keep him quiet,” said the bearded man from somewhere above me.

  One of them—Marko, the blond one—slipped his arm around my neck, crooking his elbow and clamping his hand over my mouth. They got me up to my feet, holding me by the arms between them. They half carried, half dragged me out to the landing. I wrenched against their hands furiously, trying to jerk my head away from Marko’s hand—achieving a short-lived victory when I got two of his meaty fingers between my teeth and bit down hard. He snatched his hand away with a curse.

  Andriy slammed his rifle butt into my stomach.

  I think it surprised both of us. For a second, as my breath spilled out and the world spun, we gaped at each other open-mouthed, like fishes. His face had gone green, the color of lichen.

  Belatedly, I realized that was probably because most of what had been in my stomach was spilling out too.

  After that, I let them drag me. They took me down through the shop and into the cool darkness of the cellar.

  Faintly in the distance, the gunfire had picked up again.

  7

  The cellar was a wine cellar and storeroom—or it had been at one point, presumably when the bar upstairs was still a bar. There were smashed crates and empty bottles all over the floor, and a row of fat barrels with spigots lining the long, brick-faced western wall. They put me down on the floor below the barrels, a
nd Marko untied my hands and retied them behind my back, tightly. He tied my ankles too, for good measure, with something that looked like curtain cord. I think he was still sore about his wounded fingers. Then he went back upstairs. Andriy sat on the stairs in the low light of an oil lamp, his rifle across his knees.

  We both jumped when the machine gun opened up—or he jumped. I twitched like a trussed pig.

  “So,” I said. They’d put me down on my stomach, and with my hands tied behind my back I had to crane my neck awkwardly to look him in the face. “Why are you mounting a machine gun across from the Brygidki gate?”

  He wasn’t really looking at me. He was studying the ground between us, his eyes half closed, as though he were trying very hard to bring something into focus. The machine gun pounded away above us. Brick dust drifted down lazily from the vaulted ceiling.

  “I can’t tell you that,” he said piously.

  “You’re a real saint, aren’t you?”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “I’ll bet you’re his favorite,” I said.

  He shifted uncomfortably, swallowing.

  “Who is he, anyway?”

  He looked up now—eagerly, like a dog. “Not your enemy.”

  “Just a German whore, like you?”

  I wanted to hurt him. I was bitter and aching, inside and out, and I wanted to hurt him. I wanted him to hurt like I was hurting, and I wanted to see it in his face.

  He blinked and looked away.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “Save it.” I hated him for that apology because he genuinely seemed to mean it. I wanted a rise out of him. “If you were really sorry, you’d get me out of here.”

  He turned blank, dark eyes on me. “I can’t.”

  “Why? Would he shoot you?”

  “Yes.”

  “That kind of friend, is he?”

  “He isn’t my friend. He’s my commanding officer, and he gave me an order. It would be necessary discipline.”

  “My mistake,” I said viciously. “You’re a zealot, not a saint.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “Look, at least untie me,” I said. “I think I’m losing circulation.”

  He hesitated. I’d played him well. By comparison, it was a perfectly reasonable request.

  “What are you afraid of?” I said. “You’ve got a gun, and you know how to use at least one end of it.”

  I knew I’d got him. Guilt is a powerful motivator. He flinched ashamedly and slid over to me across the floor, slinging the rifle on his shoulder. He slipped a knife from his boot and leaned over me. He loosed my ankles first, his thin, cold fingers fumbling uncertainly at the cord in the half-light. Then he cut the twine from my wrists, careful not to nick my skin—one loop at a time, until my hands swung free.

  I threw myself into him, dropping my shoulder and bowling him over to the ground.

  He fought with surprising ferocity even with my knee in his stomach—squirming and twisting and kicking under me, like a pinned beetle. He got his knife hand free from my fingers and slashed wildly at my throat. I reeled back by instinct, and he slid away from me, rolling onto his stomach with the knife in his hand.

  I jerked him back by his rifle sling and slammed his face into the floor.

  Even then he tried to fight, gathering his limbs together slowly and dazedly, trying to push himself up on his hands and knees. He hadn’t made any noise this whole time—shock or stupidity, I thought, but then it occurred to me that calling for help would require an unpleasant explanation of how and why, exactly, my hands had come free.

  I prised the knife from his limp fingers and dug a knee into the small of his back. I tore the rifle off him, slinging it on my own shoulder. Then I slipped the knife under his chin, bracing his head with my free hand.

  “Do you have guards at the alley door?”

  He didn’t say anything. His hands were clenched in fists on the floor. He was holding his head up bravely, defiantly, stupidly, but I could feel him shivering under my knee.

  “Answer me.” I opened the skin across his windpipe with the edge of the blade, just enough to draw blood. “Don’t think I won’t do it,” I said, through clenched teeth. “I’ve done it before. How do you think I got this uniform? How do you think I got those weapons?”

  By this point, I was really hoping he would open his mouth because I knew, from past experience, I couldn’t do it. But he just shivered silently beneath me, holding his head up like an idiot, waiting. Martyr, not zealot.

  “Look.” I was desperate now. “Look, idiot. You’re already dead, as far as he’s concerned. You might as well—”

  The cold mouth of a pistol pressed against my skull, behind my right ear.

  “Drop the knife,” the bearded man said.

  So that was that. I hadn’t heard the machine gun stop firing, and I hadn’t heard their footsteps.

  I tossed the knife away and let go of Andriy’s head. They pulled me off him. Somebody slipped the rifle off my shoulder and slung it away somewhere, and the bearded man motioned me down against the wall with his pistol. Two of them had gotten Andriy up to his feet, holding him by the arms—he unresisting between them, his face as white as a sheet. There was a thin, beaded line of blood across his neck where I’d nicked him.

  They shoved him against the wall beside me and stepped away from him.

  The bearded man stooped to pick up Andriy’s knife without taking the pistol off me. “Your own knife, Andriy?”

  Andriy said nothing.

  “Andriy, Andriy.” The bearded man shook his head. He stuck the knife in his belt. “‘He who is faithful in the least is faithful also in much’”—as though he were reciting it for the Sunday liturgy—“‘and he who is unfaithful in the least is unfaithful also in much.’”

  “I’m sorry, sir,” Andriy whispered.

  “You understand why this has to happen?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’m sorry too,” the bearded man said.

  He lifted the pistol away from me and put the muzzle to Andriy’s forehead.

  Necessary discipline.

  My fault.

  “Wait,” I said. “Stop—don’t. My name is Aleksey Kobryn, all right?”

  He looked at me. They all looked at me—except Andriy, who was leaning his head back against the wall, eyes shut. The muscles in his throat moved as he swallowed.

  “My father is Yevhen Kobryn,” I said.

  They looked at me. They didn’t speak. I floundered.

  “We—we were in school together. Andriy and I. Old friends. He recognized me.”

  “Is that so?” the bearded man said.

  “Not at first, I mean. It’s been a while. I wouldn’t have recognized him if he hadn’t said something.”

  “Is that so, Andriy?” the bearded man said. He seemed amused.

  Just say yes, idiot. Just say yes.

  Andriy shifted his head slightly. He didn’t open his eyes, and he didn’t speak.

  “It was in primary school,” I said, hating Andriy very fiercely. “It’s been a long time.”

  The bearded man wiped the blood from Andriy’s throat with his thumb. Andriy flinched.

  “Friendly little argument, is that it?” the bearded man said.

  “Something like that,” I said.

  He knew I was lying, of course. His lips twitched, as though he weren’t sure whether to laugh in my face. But he took the pistol away from Andriy’s forehead.

  “Get him out of here,” he said, in a voice of long suffering.

  He crouched on his heels, holding the pistol on his thigh, while they took Andriy upstairs. Then he looked up into my face.

  “A soft heart is a liability. If you’re going to last this war, you’d better learn.”

  “Save it,” I said.

  He sighed. He holstered the pistol at his hip.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “That Andriy and I were in school together?”

&nbs
p; “Andriy,” he said, “is from Proskuriv. Orphaned in the Reds’ famine. God knows how he made it across the border. He won’t tell me. I found him barefoot and begging in the streets seven years ago.” He was lighting his pipe. “I meant about your father,” he said. “I didn’t know Yevhen Kobryn had a son.”

  “Neither do the lyakhy,” I said. “Neither do the NKVD.”

  “I see.” He studied my face closely, as though trying to find my father there. He dropped his eyes and looked me over, head to toe. Unexpectedly, he reached and caught my hand and held it up, circling his fingers tightly around my wrist—all the way around.

  “When’s the last time you ate?” he asked.

  8

  Marko, the second-in-command, sat smoking and watching while I ate. The bearded man—Marko had called him Strilka—was gone, and evidently Marko was under orders to make sure I didn’t slip away in his absence. He had his pistol out.

  I hadn’t eaten so well in a long time. There was black bread and cold sausage and fat boiled dumplings stuffed with potatoes and onions, spread over the floor on pieces of oil-splotched newspaper. I ate slowly, in measured mouthfuls, letting Marko think only that I was savoring it, but each time an underling came down the stairs to say something into Marko’s ear, I folded another sausage or dumpling in newspaper and slipped it quickly into my pocket.

  I took a long time eating. Strilka came back before I was done. I didn’t know where he’d been, but there was the smell of smoke on him—the smoke of a fire, not pipe smoke. He sat down across the newspapers and started asking me questions—casually and at easy intervals, but I wasn’t an idiot. I knew what he was doing.

  “How old are you, Aleksey?”

  I answered him around mouthfuls. Why not? I’d already spilled the biggest thing I was going to spill.

  “Nineteen this August,” I said.

  “In school?”

  “Lwów Polytechnic. Just finished my first year.”

  “Studying…”

  “Mathematics.”

  He seemed to consider this. “Why mathematics?”

  I shrugged. “Only thing I didn’t fail in grade school.”

  A stretch of silence. “Where did you learn weapons?”