The Folks at Fifty-Eight (5 page)

“Is this the only way he can do it? From the back, with the woman handcuffed?”

If she was going to get to the Tokarev, she would need to be facing him when he took his pleasure. If her hands were free, it would make the task all that much easier. She held out the handcuffs in mute testament. Again the guard translated. That was the beauty of needing a third party to translate. It allowed her to manipulate one comrade by using the voice of another. She knew the mocking laughter of a comrade would wound his machismo more deeply than a sneer from her ever could. By pretending ignorance of the language it also allowed her more time to think, more time to plan, and more time to compose the next barb.

Just as she had anticipated, Brusilov listened, snarled, and held out his hand.

“Give me the keys.”

But then a setback, as the guard stood his ground and shook his head.

“No, Comrade. I have orders not to do that.”

She privately cursed the guard’s obstinacy, then turned to study the red-faced Brusilov, and sneered, silently mocking his apparent impotence and hoping to further enrage. It had the desired effect, because he dragged her up by her hair, spun her around, pushed her face-down on the seat, and then growled an order at the guards.

“Get out of here, both of you.”

Now she could feel the heat of his breath on her neck and smell his sweat on the air. Now she could hear his breathing over the rattle of the train, short heavy grunts of uncontrolled lust that came and went as he mauled at her flesh and dragged her knickers down. Now he was clearly out of control, and that was what she had hoped for. Now all she needed was privacy.

He duly obliged, between grunts.

“If you two are not out of this compartment in two seconds, your next train-ride will take you to the Gulag. Now get the fuck out.”

The two men studied her apparent helplessness with shame in their eyes, before turning away and slowly filing out of the compartment. She felt the elation rise as she watched them shuffle along the corridor. Now she could concentrate solely on him. One-on-one, this ignorant Bolshevik pig would be no match for her. One-on-one, she would flatter and deceive, gasp and writhe in helpless acquiescence, feed his ignorance, fuel his lust, and gently coax him between her thighs.

Once he was there, she could get to the Tokarev.

But then the compartment door slid back and everything went wrong at once. The groping hands and probing fingers suddenly withdrew. The grunts of animal lust subsided. The heat of his breath and the smell of his sweat receded. All she could feel was the swaying of the carriage. All she could hear was the rattle of the train.

There could only be one reason.

She cautiously turned her head and saw him there, the tall and elegant-looking one, with a look of thunder on his face, and the snout of his seven-six-two millimetre Tokarev gouging into Brusilov’s temple.

The man reached into Brusilov’s coat and collected his Tokarev, then backed into the corridor, where the two soldiers stood watching. He motioned for Brusilov to follow, and then turned to where she sat covetously studying the automatic and silently cursing his interference. He spoke to her in German.

“Cover yourself, woman. You move one millimetre from that seat and I will shoot you in the head. Do you understand?”

She nodded meekly and began restoring modesty, then watched as a sullen-faced Brusilov followed him out of the compartment. He snapped at the two soldiers.

“You two get back in there and stay with her. And this time obey your orders.”

The two uniformed men nodded their contrition and shuffled back into the compartment. Brusilov stood before him in the corridor. She sat quietly listening to their conversation and planning her next move. Both men sounded angry, but there was a nervous edge to Brusilov’s voice as she heard him ask,

“What is it, Cossack? Want her yourself, do you? Is fucking my wife not enough for you?”

The tall man’s anger and contempt were obvious.

“I have never touched your wife. I have the utmost respect for Nikki. It is a tragedy that you do not. As for the German woman, we have our orders, and I will ensure you obey them.”

“So what now, Cossack? Are you going to shoot me?”

“The only reason I have not already done so is out of fondness and respect for your wife. But I warn you, Sergey Brusilov, you touch that woman again and I will kill you. Now get back to the compartment and obey your orders.”

“What about my automatic?”

“You do not need it. The soldiers have their carbines. When we reach Leipzig, I will hand the weapon to Comrade Colonel Paslov and tell him why I took it from you. Now get back in there, and remember what I have said.”

A sullen Brusilov returned to the compartment. Catherine Schmidt, with modesty restored, watched him sit down in the far corner.

“What is the matter, Bolshevik pig? Did somebody just teach you some manners, or is your cock so small you did it without me knowing?”

Brusilov didn’t ask the guards for a translation, and the guards didn’t volunteer one. Instead, he sat sulking in the corner, while they stared out of the window at the passing countryside. Catherine Schmidt sat outwardly gloating and inwardly seething. She’d expected that fourth man would be trouble. Now, it seemed, he had just ruined her only chance of escape.

When Ivan Levitsky returned to his compartment at the end of the carriage, he found a man sprawled across the seat with an all-but-empty bottle of schnapps in his hand. Levitsky studied the man for a few moments. He was a middle-aged drunk, who must have staggered into the carriage and was now sleeping fitfully.

Whenever the man began drifting into a deeper sleep, his fingers would relax their hold on the schnapps. Then he would wake with a start and grip the bottle tighter before returning to his stupor. It was a classic alcoholic daze. Levitsky had seen it, or something like it, too many times before not to recognize the symptoms.

He’d been about to rouse the man and tell him to move to the next carriage, but thought better of it. The last time he had seen a man in such a condition at such an hour had been two months earlier, just before his father had died. Instead of moving the man on, as Levitsky knew he ought, he sat down by the door and quietly watched him snort and groan. He was remembering his father, recalling the pain of an alcoholic, the heartache it had caused the family, and the shame of a life so tragically wasted.

He watched the town of Schönebeck come and go, and then Köthen after that. The train would soon be stopping at Halle, and then it wouldn’t be too long after that before Leipzig. He wondered how the great and terrible Stanislav Paslov would react to the news that one of his most trusted MGB agents was a common rapist. Perhaps Paslov would do nothing and put it down to high spirits, but then why issue the order? If Paslov was anything like his psychotic boss, Lavrenti Beria, he would probably make Brusilov a Hero of The Soviet Union and send Levitsky to the Gulag.

He was still pondering the possibilities when the train pulled into Halle. A couple of civilians tried to get into the carriage. Levitsky sent them farther down the train. He continued guarding the carriage access until the train pulled out of Halle, waiting until they reached the city outskirts before returning to his compartment and the drunken interloper.

“Who the hell is that?”

He hadn’t seen Brusilov move along the corridor. He’d been too engrossed in painful memories. Neither had he seen the 1938 carbine in Brusilov’s hands, until its shortened barrel pointed at the drunk on the seat. Ivan Levitsky shrugged his shoulders and raised his hands. So much for Red Army comrades.

“Just a drunk passed out. I did not see him as a threat. But for a man who beats his wife and has to handcuff and sodomize a helpless girl, you may see him as a danger.”

Brusilov sneered.

“Keep laughing, Cossack, and they will bury you with that smile still on your face. Now move to the far side. Oh, and I will take my thirty-three. . . and yours.”

Levitsky removed the two Tokarev automatics from his jacket pockets. He placed them on the seat and then backed away to the other side of the compartment. He watched Brusilov pick up the first, and then lean the carbine against the door before picking up the second. The Georgian sneered in triumph as he pocketed one and levelled the other.

“Sorry, Cossack, but I cannot have you telling your tales to Paslov.”

Levitsky shrugged a nonchalance he didn’t feel.

“I am fascinated to know how you intend explaining all this. . . my death, the violation of the girl. I assume that when you are done with me you are going to finish what you started. And then, of course, you have our two uniformed comrades to consider.”

“They will keep their mouths shut, and who is going to listen to a murdering Nazi whore?”

“And what about my death? How will you explain that?”

Brusilov’s face fell, but then the malevolent smile reappeared and he nodded to the drunk.

“I think I will let our friend here take the blame. I came to check on you and found him standing over your body, with your gun in his hand. . . Of course I killed him.”

“Do I get any say in that?”

Levitsky turned, to look at the drunk and gave a start. The hand that had previously held the bottle now held an automatic pistol with a suppressor. The suppressor’s one-inch-diameter barrel was pointing directly at Sergey Brusilov’s head.

Less than a second later, two slugs, fired in rapid succession, hit an astounded Georgian almost precisely between the eyes.

Levitsky stood watching the lifeless body of Brusilov in open-mouthed shock, but then found his voice and addressed that same one-inch-diameter barrel.

“If those were point two-two LR rounds, I would have to assume that is a Hi-Standard HDM and that would make you OSS?” A smile confirmed the truth, but the killer failed to answer. With stomach churning and heart thumping, Levitsky tried again. “Am I next?”

“Not necessarily, and OSS disbanded in forty-five. Did they not tell you at MGB school?”

It was Levitsky’s second surprise in under a minute. It hadn’t initially registered, but the man with the HDM spoke perfect Russian. The Ukrainian quipped back bravely.

“I went to NKVD school, not MGB. Showing my age, I suppose.”

The killer picked up the automatics and carbine and tossed them on to the luggage rack. The smile reappeared as he waved Levitsky towards the corridor and then stood back.

“Time to move, old man.”

Levitsky smiled politely and made his way toward the corridor, believing he was a good ten years the junior of the man with the HDM.

It was the last thing Ivan Levitsky remembered.

Catherine Schmidt sat watching the two Red Army soldiers with one eye and the passing countryside with the other. She didn’t know precisely how far they’d travelled, but they couldn’t be far from Leipzig and a second opportunity to escape had not presented itself. She listened to the soldier who had given up his carbine to Brusilov. He didn’t seem happy.

“Where the hell has that MGB bastard got to with my carbine? He said he would only be a minute. We are nearly in Leipzig.”

The other soldier seemed less concerned.

“Stop complaining. You gave it to him. It is your responsibility.”

“You heard what he said about the Gulag. I had no choice.”

“So, go and get it back.”

“Forget it; he will be back any minute.”

“Well, if he is going to have the woman before Leipzig, he had better get a move on.”

She suddenly saw Brusilov’s leather coat and heard a voice calling the soldiers out to the corridor. Maybe there would still be time to get to the Tokarev before they got to Leipzig. She doubted it, but maybe. The soldier’s relief was obvious.

“He is back, thank God,” he said. “What does he want now?”

The soldier got to his feet, slid open the door and took a pace forward, but then suddenly grunted and fell back into the compartment. He lay sprawled at her feet, his eyes wild with terror, his hands covered in blood and clutching at the gaping wound in his throat.

The second soldier panicked. He stood up and grabbed for the carbine. A foot kicked it away from shaking hands. An arm clamped around his neck. It lifted him up and spun him around, before the point of a flat-bladed knife punctured his right kidney. The soldier groaned and continued struggling. The arm moved from his neck. A hand grabbed at his hair. It pulled his head back to locate the blade, and then thrust it forward while another drew the lethal edge through his windpipe.

The second soldier’s body slumped alongside the first. Stunned, Catherine Schmidt looked blankly up at the killer as he fired a question.

“You are Catherine Louise Schmidt?” He had spoken in German, but the accent wasn’t German. It was North American. Still handcuffed, she nodded and got to her feet. He spat another question. “Which one has the keys?” She pointed to the second soldier, but still didn’t speak. The stranger rummaged through the soldier’s coat pockets before finding the key. He unlocked the handcuffs. She massaged the ache in her wrists as he drew the blinds and barked an order. “We have to get out of here now. Do you speak English?”

“Yes, but what are you doing here? Who are you?”

“They sent me to get you. My name is Hammond.”

She meekly followed him to the carriage door and then watched as he threw it open and held it against the force of the rushing air current. He shouted to her above the noise.

“There is no time to wait for the train to slow, so we have to go now. When you hit the ground, you roll, and then you stay still. Got that?” She nodded, not understanding who he was or what was happening, only knowing that he was getting her away from the train. He continued issuing instructions. “Don’t look up, don’t get up, don’t move, and whatever you do don’t look back at the train. You stay where you land until I tell you to move. Got it?” She nervously studied the open doorway, but said nothing. He grabbed her arm and pulled her to the opening. “Good.” He held the door wide and, with the briefest glance at the onrushing countryside, threw her into the abyss.