The Folks at Fifty-Eight (4 page)

Why they had ordered him to undertake guard duty in the company of such a man, Levitsky had no idea. Uniformed Red Army guards usually escorted prisoners, but this time they wanted MGB men in plain-clothes. They had only told him the prisoner was important and the order had come from the highest level. Levitsky hoped it wouldn’t be too long a journey. Transporting a dangerous and important prisoner across occupied Europe was a difficult enough assignment, without having to rely on a man such as Brusilov.

Levitsky didn’t speak to Brusilov as they sat waiting for their prisoner. He sat at the opposite end of the bench, studiously ignoring him and glaring at passers-by. Then they brought the prisoner up from the cells below, and surprise overcame hostility.

Flanked by two Red Army soldiers, the prisoner was a woman, young and slender with exquisite features, piercing blue eyes and soft blonde hair that fell across petite shoulders. She was wearing a full white cotton and lace skirt that flowed as she moved, with long black boots that finished immediately below the knee. A close-fitting leather jacket to match the boots had the lapels turned inward and was fastened to the neck, an acknowledgement of circumstance that did little to detract from her beauty or disguise the figure beneath.

Levitsky studied her in wide-eyed admiration. He didn’t know who she was. He didn’t care why she was in handcuffs. He only knew that she was beautiful.

A low whistle from the other end of the bench told him that Brusilov must have also seen the girl. Levitsky tore his eyes from her and scowled his disgust at the uncouth Georgian. The Red Army captain in charge of prisoner escort barked an immediate warning.

“The state will not tolerate the abuse of prisoners, without orders. Do you understand, Brusilov? You are to escort the woman from Magdeburg to Leipzig by train, and then hand her to our comrades from Prague; nothing more. Comrade Levitsky will go with you. He will ensure you obey your orders.”

Levitsky snapped to attention and nodded his agreement. It would be his pleasure to protect such a beautiful creature from the crude ambition of that chekist thug.

Brusilov shook his head.

“I am MGB. I do not take orders from the army.”

“This order comes directly from Comrade Colonel Paslov.”

At the mention of the notorious regional head of the MGB fear momentarily disrupted Brusilov’s sneering features, but it was gone in an instant. He slowly and lasciviously looked the girl up and down as he snarled a question.

“This is her? This is the German whore who murdered all those Red Army officers?” In answer to the officer’s nod of confirmation, he said, “They say she fucked them as she killed them. I say there are worse ways to die.”

Levitsky listened to Brusilov’s crude commentary and suddenly realised who the girl was. He remembered hearing about her from some of the guards. At the time he had thought their description of the girl and their graphic tales of her lust and savagery exaggerated. Now he could see they had spoken the truth, at least as far as her beauty was concerned.

The guards had told him that her name was Catherine Schmidt, and she stood accused of murdering and horribly mutilating a string of army officers. They had gone on to describe her alleged crimes in lurid and graphic detail.

But as Levitsky studied the girl, he found himself unable to fathom how one so young and stunningly beautiful could have committed such dreadful acts of violence and depravity. She looked so petite; so dainty, so delicate. He couldn’t imagine her being guilty of anything, least of all that. There had to be a mistake.

The officer clearly held no such reservations. He snapped an order to the two soldiers.

“Make sure you do not leave her alone. And leave the handcuffs on.”

Levitsky felt unhappy with the order.

“What if she has to. . . ?”

“She can piss and shit in her pants. You keep her handcuffed, and you stay with her.”

“Yes, Comrade Captain.”

Although barely one hundred and sixty centimetres in height, Kurt Meissen cut something of an imposing figure as he strode along the platforms of Magdeburg railway station. As with the Saxony porcelain that shared his family name, the pint-sized stationmaster believed precision paramount and perfection a pursuit. He similarly believed the punctual departure of those many converging trains that briefly stopped at Magdeburg’s platforms to be a personal responsibility.

On this particular morning, however, the pint-sized perfectionist was less than happy with his Russian masters, because the train to Leipzig should have left fifteen minutes ago. With the clock ticking and his passengers frowning, there was still no authority to send the train on its way, nor any official reason given for the delay.

A woman in a fur-collared coat glared at him from her place on the train. Meissen glared his authority back at her. He’d been about to march over and tell her to keep her mouth shut and her stares to herself, when three Opel Blitzes drew up at the station entrance. Both angry woman and indignant official stopped glaring and watched as two full platoons of Red Army soldiers piled out of the back of the trucks and ran along the platform.

With long-barrelled Mosin-Nagant rifles held at arm’s length and parallel to the ground, the first dozen soldiers formed a cordon and began shepherding Meissen and his fellow spectators away from the train. The balance of the two platoons formed a line of defence between the entrance and the front carriage. As stationmaster, and therefore person temporarily responsible for the stationary train and its passengers, Kurt Meissen felt aggrieved at such an affront to his authority. He wisely decided not to argue the point.

Meissen and his fellow spectators looked on as a Red Army captain jumped down from the front passenger seat of the leading truck. He selected three soldiers, who then marched to the front of the train and began herding passengers out of the front carriage.

One of those ejected was the superior-looking woman in the fur-collared coat. She glared her special glare of superiority at the captain and began loudly objecting.

“You have no right to do this. Who do you people think you are? I happen to be. . .”

Protest gave way to anguish as the butt of a Mosin-Nagant hit her hard across the back of the head. The woman cried out and sank to her knees, while the captain looked angrily at the soldier responsible and halted any further assault with a curt word of command. Cowed by the captain’s anger, and following a second command, the soldier slung the rifle over his shoulder and helped the stricken woman to her feet. He linked his free arm around her waist and then began manhandling her along the platform. Opening a compartment farther down the train, he pushed her up the steps and through the doorway. Somebody reached out to help her up, but nobody spoke and nobody else moved.

With the front carriage now empty, the captain took a long look around the station, and then signalled towards the entrance. A man clambered from the back of the second Opel. Intrigued, Meissen studied him as he turned and glared at the gathering. The man looked squat and solid, belligerent and dangerous. He looked like MGB. Had he been any closer, Meissen would have quickly averted his eyes, but he was far enough away to risk a further look.

A woman followed the man from the truck. She was young and she was beautiful, and she was handcuffed. Meissen’s heart immediately went out to her. She jumped down from the open back and then staggered before regaining her balance. The squat-looking man caught her. He had held her close and grinned as she squirmed against the hold, before passing her to the two Red Army soldiers who had followed them from the truck.

Meissen watched the trio as they hurried their prisoner along the platform, and then climbed into the front compartment of the now empty carriage. He wondered what she could have done to warrant such specialist treatment. He shuddered to think of what lay in store for her. Then his eyes caught the movement of another man clambering out of the truck.

As with the first man, he was dressed in civilian clothing, but unlike the archetypal MGB thug who had preceded him, this man was tall and slim and stylish. He strode arrogantly along the platform, but instead of joining them in the first compartment stepped up and into the last compartment of the same empty carriage. It seemed his job was to ensure the quartet at the front of the train remained undisturbed during the journey to Leipzig.

The captain signalled again, and the train slowly pulled out of the station. Kurt Meissen looked on with anger in his eyes; that had been his responsibility. The captain suddenly noticed him standing there and nodded a cursory acknowledgement as he waved the platoons back on to the trucks. Meissen thought of speaking, but said nothing and nodded back.

After a final glance at the departing locomotive, the captain turned and walked back along the platform before climbing back into the passenger seat of the lead Opel. He gave the order and they all headed off, presumably back to barracks for a well-earned glass of vodka.

As he watched them go, Kurt Meissen’s glare fluctuated between the distant locomotive and the disappearing trucks. Then he spotted a discarded cigarette packet lying on the platform and roared at one of the porters to pick it up. With platform once again immaculate and ego thus salved, he puffed out his chest and marched smartly back to his pristine office at the end of the concourse.

Catherine Schmidt sat in the far corner of the lead compartment, quietly studying her motley assortment of guards. She was looking for weaknesses, anything with which she could divide and conquer; or in this case, divide and escape. The two uniformed soldiers seemed harmless enough. They were typical Bolshevik cannon fodder from the Sixty-Second Army. But then she recalled that same fodder had trapped the German Sixth Army in Stalingrad for two and a half months and cost The Axis eight hundred thousand lives. She also recalled the words of her father. He had told her that Bolsheviks fought without fear of death, because a life under Stalin was a life without joy and a life without hope. He also said that any enemy who fights without fear is worthy of respect.

The Stalinesque thug who had mentally undressed her at the detention centre and then mauled her at the railway station was a different matter. His name was Brusilov, she had heard that at the detention centre, and he obviously kept what few brains he boasted between his legs. That was exactly where she liked her Bolsheviks to keep their brains. Even now he was sitting opposite her, leering at the intentional exposure of a naked upper-thigh beyond a hitched hemline and intentionally-widened knees. He was the obvious weakness, she thought. He would be the target.

The fourth man wasn’t with them. He would be farther down the train; the last line of defence, or the first. Nobody had spoken while they were in the truck, but she remembered him studying her at the detention centre. He was smitten with her looks, she had seen that immediately, but there was wisdom in his eyes that belied the façade of an infatuated dupe. He would not be so easily fooled. If the opportunity to escape arose, she hoped he would remain at the other end of the carriage.

It was time to turn up the tension.

She released the upper fastenings on her jacket, restored each lapel in turn, and then slumped back in the seat and left her knees spread. Brusilov studied the increased exposure and rewarded her effort with a smile of lechery.

She suddenly stretched out a leg and kicked at his.

“Hey, Bolshevik pig! Stop looking up my skirt.”

She saw him glare at the kick, and then frown as he listened to the words. That was good. He obviously didn’t speak German. She could use that to her advantage. Although she spoke enough Russian to get by, she had feigned ignorance of the language throughout her arrest and interrogation. There was a reason for that.

One of the guards obviously did speak German. He laughed and translated.

“She called you a Bolshevik pig. She said to stop looking up her skirt.”

Brusilov snarled back at the guard.

“Ask her why not? They say half the Red Army has had their cocks up there.”

Laughter faded to a smirk as the guard again translated. She feigned indignance, snapped her thighs together, sat upright, and then answered the insult with a toss of her head.

“Tell him he is not important enough, or good-looking enough. Tell him he is just ugly cannon fodder.” Mischievously, she added, “I expect he has a tiny cock anyway.”

The guard started laughing again, but wisely stopped when Brusilov demanded a translation. When the man from the MGB heard, he scrambled to his feet, snatched a cruel handful of long blonde hair, and dragged her head back.

“We will see how small it feels when it is fucking you in the ass.”

This was better than she could have hoped. He was clearly a thug and a lecher, and that was good, but it was the aggression and obvious lack of any self-control that made him ideal for her purpose.

Earlier, she had deliberately staggered against him after jumping from the truck. When he had grabbed at her and pulled her close, it confirmed her initial appraisal of him, but it also confirmed something else: the bulge she had seen on the left front of his inside jacket pocket; it was caused by a Tokarev automatic pistol.

That confirmation had pleased Catherine Schmidt a good deal more than the crude mauling of her young body could possibly have pleased Sergey Brusilov.

As he stood towering over her, oafishly asserting his masculinity, the guard again translated. She winced, and then bravely spat a question at the interpreter.