Chapter 26
~ Monday 2nd September 1918 ~
Later ~ I have no idea how much time has passed, cannot not even be sure if I have slept or not ~ I hear the sound of footsteps in the corridor and the grinding of keys in the lock. I open my eyes as a flashlight probes the darkness of my cell. It sweeps the tiny cave then hits my face, blinding me. Rough hands suddenly grab me, hauling me to my feet.
"What do you want?" I croak.
"Quiet!" hisses a male voice.
"I will not!" I reply loudly, suddenly angry.
In response I receive the back of a hand hard across my face, so hard that it spins my head, straining my neck and making my senses swim. Then I am pulled across the cell towards the door ~ pain raging in my cheek from the slap. I stumble and fall to my knees, but they do not slow, dragging me as I try to recover, my feet scraping on the concrete floor. As they haul me along the corridor, I hear surprised voices calling out from the neighbouring cells. My captors do not speak and do not stop until we reach the exit.
From the blackness of the jail, we suddenly emerge into the bright lights of the police station and stop. I blink in the glare as I regain my feet and look around me. I briefly see the faces of two strangers, then a bag is pulled down over my head from behind, and all becomes dark again. My hands are grabbed and pulled roughly behind me, where they are bound tightly with coarse rope or twine.
Then we begin walking again, their hands pushing at the centre of my back, propelling me along. I feel cool, night air through my clothes ~ we are outside. After a few steps, perhaps ten yards, we stop again. I recognise the unmistakable smell of petrol and oil ~ a car of some sort. I hear a door open, then I am thrust forward, stumbling against the vehicle, cracking my shins on the unyielding metal with a stab of pain. Uncaring hands grab me from both sides and lift me off my feet, tossing me effortlessly through the air, head first. I gasp as I land on my back on the smooth floor of what I realise must be a van, perhaps the same van in which I arrived. I bounce and slide to a halt against something hard. Immediately, doors slam shut, close to my feet.
Then the engine roars into life and we are moving, the van swaying, rolling me from side to side uncontrollably.
* * *
The journey has lasted for perhaps half an hour. Occasionally I have heard male laughter and voices from the front of the vehicle, over the roar of the engine, and I wonder if they are watching me being rolled around, hitting my head and limbs on hard surfaces. I pull at the rope that bind my hands, trying to make some slack, but without success, and I am finding it hard to breathe inside the heavy cloth bag, with the fumes of the exhaust making me feel sick. It becomes even worse as we begin to lurch over unmade roads, and I am thrown helplessly into the air again and again, crashing back down on the steel floor.
At last we stop, but I cannot not feel any sense of relief, for I am sure that worse is to follow. I hear the doors open, letting in a wash of cool, clean air, then I feel hands grab each of my ankles. Effortlessly, they haul me feet first across the floor and out of the van, to crash onto the ground on my back. Now hands seize my arms and hoist me to my feet, then thrust me forward at a fast, stumbling walk. I know that my life counts as nothing to them, and I am sure that it will shortly be taken from me.
Then there is warmth and the sound of many voices around me, male voices raised in loud conversations, and there is the sickly smell of consumed alcohol. A cheer goes up. I am pulled through the crowd, hands grasping at my body as I pass, fondling my breasts, slapping my bottom, until suddenly we stop. The bag is brusquely lifted from my head, and I can see that I am in an agricultural shed of some kind, in the company of about thirty men, one of whom is Avadeyev. He is standing close, leering at me with an expression that combines hatred with triumph.
Wordlessly, while two of his men hold me by the arms, he raises both his hands and grips the edges of my dress at the top ~ where it buttons down the front ~ and jerks the two sides apart. The buttons pop and fly, revealing my white cotton blouse underneath.
Shivering with fear, I glare angrily at him. "You will regret this when Sverdlov hears about it," I rasp.
He laughs. "Sverdlov? How will he find out? And what would he care if he did? It was Sverdlov who signed the execution warrant on your precious royal family. He wants you dead almost as much as I do!"
The revelation stuns me. Sverdlov? Responsible for the murder of my friends? He must be lying; but why would he bother, when I am already his captive? I am shocked speechless, an empty feeling suddenly in my heart.
Before I can gather my wits, he is leaning closer, grinning like a lizard. I feel the heat of his breath on my face, smell the stink of his foul breath, can read the intent in his eyes as he rips my blouse open in the same way as he just disposed of my dress.
There are mutters of approval from around the room as my chest is exposed, my small breasts unprotected by a brassiere. He turns briefly away from me to grin at his cohorts. Then his hands are suddenly at my shoulders, yanking the remains of my upper garments down my arms and body. They fall to the floor at my feet, and I am exposed, naked to the waist, wearing nothing but my knickers and a petticoat.
I fight back the tears, unable to cover myself, seeing where this is going, refusing to beg this despicable animal for mercy. Instead I glare at him, staring into his eyes with all the disgust I feel for him.
He laughs again at me. Then, without warning, strikes me across the face with the back of his hand, for no other reason than the pleasure it gives him to abuse me while I am helpless. I cry out involuntarily, tasting blood in my mouth. He wastes no more time, reaching down to rip away my remaining clothes, leaving me completely naked before this roomful of men.
Ashamed and terrified, I close my eyes, the tears now flowing uncontrollably. They clearly plan to have their pleasure on my helpless body before, no doubt, killing me ~ and Avadeyev is to be the first.
"Turn her round," he instructs the men holding me. They obey, and then they push my head down so that I am doubled over, my most private parts revealed to all. As I feel his groin press against my buttocks, I remember that this was what happened to Polya when we were held captive with the royal family in Tobolsk. Like her, I try to press my legs together, to deny him access, but it does not stop him. Something is pressing close against my vagina, what it is I do not know for sure, but I feel it began to force its way inside me.
"Please, no!" I scream, and hear them all laugh. They begin to chant: "Fuck to death! Fuck to death!" Avadeyev's hands are gripping my hips, his fingers digging into my flesh, pulling himself into me.
I feel my senses swimming as my mind tries to shut out the nightmare, but I am jolted back into consciousness by a loud explosion from somewhere in the room behind me. The chanting stops, as though a radio has been turned off. Another five bangs follow in quick succession. Something warm splashes on my back, and all the hands holding me become slack and fall away. Released, I stand and turn to see what has happened. Avadeyev is lying on the floor at my feet, blood quickly forming a pool beneath him, as are the two men who had been holding me down.
I look around the hut, searching for an explanation. Standing at the far end, in the open doorway, with a cloud of cordite smoke rising slowly above her head, stands my saviour, Rada, with a heavy pistol in each hand. The remaining men cower before her, their hands in the air. They seem to have lost interest in me.
Chapter 27
~ Rada ~
I quickly pull up my clothes from around my ankles and try to arrange them around me, covering my nakedness. Then, as I secure the front of my dress with the few buttons that remain, I run through the crowd, which parts miraculously, like the Red Sea, to stand beside Rada.
When I arrive, she hands me a pistol. "I don't know how to use these things," I whisper.
"Don't worry about using it, just wave it around as though you do," she hisses.
I comply, seeing the terrified expressions on the faces of the men as they see it in m
y shaking hands pointing at them.
"What now?" I ask.
"You get outside first," she replies with a twist of her head towards the door behind us.
I slip past her, out into the cool night air. As I do so, I see her remove something from her belt, a kind of stick thing with a cylinder attached. There is a dull thud as she tosses it into the crowd, then she backs quickly outside and slams the door behind her.
"Run!" she bellows, demonstrating by her own action.
I follow, holding up my long skirt. After about eight stumbling steps on the rough ground, the silence of the night is ripped by an enormous explosion behind us, and the area is lit up briefly as though by a searchlight. Rada throws herself to the ground, and I copy her. A blast of hot air sweeps past and over us, followed by pieces of corrugated iron and other debris that begin to rain down around us, the largest, fortunately, missing us.
When the shower stops, we pick ourselves up and stare at the shattered, smoking remains of the hut. There is not much left. A crater, about ten feet across, with a few beams still standing like gravestones around its perimeter to show where it had been, while the wreckage of the remainder is scattered in a large circle around us. Among that debris are things that looked disturbingly like twisted human bodies, or parts of them.
"Quite a bang," I comment. My terror of minutes ago has been replaced by a strange kind of calm, though my heart is still pounding in my chest.
"Hand grenade," she replies casually, shrugging.
"Impressive," I add.
"Yes," she says.
"Messy, too."
"Yes," she says again.
I look around. The sky is lightening, with only one or two of the brightest stars still visible, and the horizon off to our right is already yellow-grey, split with a slash of red cloud above the silhouetted rooftops of the city, promising that dawn is imminent. Northwards, beyond the smoking ruins of the shed, the ground rises to an embankment, a black shadow against the near-black of the sky beyond. As though on cue, with a whistle and a plume of orange-tinted smoke, dotted with a shower of sparks, the dark shape of a train clatters swiftly and noisily by along the top of the embankment, disappearing away to our left. Within a minute, it is gone, leaving only a trail of sooty, grey smoke that slowly drifts upwards and spreads into a translucent cloud.
There are no more buildings nearby; we are standing in open farmland, with just a clump of trees not far away to our right, and a line of poplars stretching east-to-west behind us, which I assume must have been beside the road by which I was delivered. I find that I am beginning to shiver.
"Are you ok?" Rada asked.
I nod, trying to avoid looking into the part of my mind that holds the recent events in the hut ~ the images in there are the stuff of nightmares.
"How did you find me?" I ask, curious, and anxious to start a fresh train of thought.
"I've been following you ever since you left the café."
"I've been puzzling about that. What exactly happened there?"
"Well," she says, arranging her thoughts in order. "From where we were sitting, near the window, I could see a group of soldiers hanging around outside. I thought there was something odd about the way they were loitering, so I told Stanislav and Leo. They tried to say it was not important, but Nina and I went out to investigate anyway. Even though we were in uniform, the men pointed guns at us and tried to arrest us. We resisted, and a fight broke out. Although they were waving their guns around, I think they were reluctant to use them against us in a busy shopping area, but one went off in the struggle anyway. The shot hit Nina, and she fell, but I managed to escape into the crowd of onlookers. The soldiers dared not fire their guns at me with so many people around, and though a couple of them pursued me, I was able to lose them."
"Nina? Oh no! How is she?"
"I don't know for sure; she didn't look good. I needed to get back to you, to warn you, so I had to leave her."
She pauses, the memory of abandoning her colleague troubling her, then shakes her head, as though to clear it, and continues:
"The trouble was, whichever way I approached the café, there were soldiers blocking all access. By the time I had worked my way round to the back entrance, I saw them putting you in a van. I stole a bicycle and followed you to the police station. As soon as it got dark, I started to break in. But then they brought you out, so I followed again."
"On a bicycle?" I ask, incredulously.
She grins ~ I love that grin.
"No, I stole a police car." She points to a vehicle parked a short way off. Sure enough, it has the word 'Militsiya' painted on the side.
I find myself hugging her, words failing me, and then I realise that I am still holding the pistol she gave me in the hut.
"What if this thing had gone off?" I exclaim, suddenly realising the danger. "I could have killed someone!"
She looks at me quizzically, and I realise what a stupid thing I just said. Killing, after all, is what guns are designed for, and the people before whom I had been nervously waving that particular weapon had previously been clamouring for my own death.
"Anyway, it's empty," she informs me, taking it from my shaking hand and stuffing it into the wide belt of her uniform. "I emptied it into that bastard Avadeyev, and the men holding you."
Again I had to divert my mind from the images that suddenly filled it. "Do you always walk around with two pistols?" I ask.
She laughs. "No, only one as a rule. I took the other from the man who was supposed to be keeping guard outside the shed. Those men were not real soldiers, just a militia of local thugs, getting a thrill from the position of power. He was too interested in peering through the window at what was going on inside to notice me, and the rest of them were making so much noise that he didn't hear me creep up behind him with a knife in my hand."
I rub my swollen cheeks with the palm of my hand. Now that the pace of events has slowed, I am aware again of the pain in both of them, and the rawness inside my mouth from Avadeyev's last blow. I find that I can smile wryly at that thought ~ it was literally his last. I can relax, knowing that the brute is dead and can never harm me again.
We stand in silence for a while, looking at the ruins of the hut as I begin to fumble with my clothes, trying to re-arrange them a little better.
"Whoever owned that isn't going to be pleased when they find it like this," I comment, nodding towards the still-smoking foundations of the hut.
"We had better make good our escape then, before we're caught red-handed," Rada agrees. "We need to move on, at any rate. Where shall we go?"
"To find Max, of course!" I say decisively. "He is closer now than at any time since he walked away to join the circus.
"Which way?"
I point westwards. "Follow the railway line and check every farm until we find him."
Chapter 28
~ An Arsenal ~
Before leaving the scene of devastation, we have ransacked the van in which I was delivered. We found a bottle of vodka and some tobacco, which we have left, and a rifle, another pistol ~ in the holster of a brown leather belt ~ and several cartons of cartridges, all of which we have decided to liberate. The police car yielded nothing useful.
We have decided to leave the vehicles and walk, not wishing to be caught with evidence to connect us to what had happened here.
Rada hitches the rifle by its strap onto her back, then removes the purloined pistol from its holster, opens a flap in the handle, and extracts a kind of cage, containing bullets. She pulls back the top of the gun, and a bullet pops out and falls to the ground. Then she holds out the pistol to me.
I stare at her.
"Take it," she insists. "It's not loaded."
To prove her point, she raises it above her head, pointing it at the sky, and clicks the triger a couple of times, before taking hold of the barrel and holding it out to me again.
Nervously, I comply, wrapping my hand gingerly around the hand-grip, keeping my fingers well away f
rom the trigger, even though I know the gun is empty. It is big in my hands, which do not even completely circle the rectangular handle, and it is so heavy and unbalanced that it feels as though it wants to twist out of my grasp.
"Good," she says. "Always be careful how you handle it, and it will be your friend. Now, this," she points to a small lever, "is the safety catch. When it is this way, the gun cannot be fired. Keep it like that at all times until you need to use it."
I nod.
"If you ever need to fire it," she continued, "hold it with both hands, like this." She demonstrated with her own gun, holding it straight-armed, level with her eyes, pointing it out over the open fields.
I copy her, the gun drooping in my ineffectual grip.
"Tighter! Grip it firmly," she instructs.
I grasp it harder.
"Good," she says again. "Now, when it goes off, it will kick back." She mimicks the action by jerking the gun in my hands. "Using two hands will steady it a bit, but you have to be prepared for a jolt in your arms. It is a beast! Okay?"
"You're not expecting me to use this thing, are you?" I ask, seeing where she was leading.
She nods, tight-lipped.
"I hope not. But the way things have been going, I think you have to be ready to do just that. Now, it's not loaded, remember, but I want you to know what it is like to fire the gun, so let off the safety catch, put a finger on the trigger and pull."
The safety catch is right by my thumb, and easy to slide along. But when I hold the gun out at arm's length, as instructed, I find it quite hard to pull the trigger, and I add a finger from my left hand to help my right. As I pull it, I can see a small part at the back, just above my hands, slowly tilting. Eventually, the trigger gives, and the moving thing snicks back to where it started. When I release the trigger, there is a metallic click from inside the gun, which I also feel in the handle.
"Do it again," Rada orders.
I obey, and find it easier this time.
"Now three quick shots," she says.
"My arms are getting tired," I moan.
Natalie Tereshchenko - The Other Side Page 14
