The Lieutenant's Lover

by Harry Bingham

  ‘He phones you where? At the guard house?’

  ‘No. His bungalow. I have to sit and wait. All those luxuries, comrade Kornikova. They say the poor man pinches kopecks, the rich man steals gold.’

  Tonya laughed. The driver swigged down his tea with a loud gulping sound. The sweep of light from the Tatra’s headlamps made every shadow or fold in the ground appear like a solid object, hard and black. When the driver threw the last few drops of tea away, the steam rose in clouds from the frozen ground. Tonya took the mug.

  ‘Well, then, if you don’t need me to help…’

  ‘No, the job’s half done already. Thanks for the tea.’

  ‘It was nothing.’

  ‘Oh, and comrade … no offence, all right? If I said anything, I didn’t mean…’

  ‘No, don’t worry. I won’t say anything. He wouldn’t ask me anyway.’

  Tonya took the mug back to the kitchens, then went to the toilet block to wash. There was no hot water, except for a couple of times a week, and the cold water was like melted ice. All the same, Tonya washed every day, and today she was more careful than ever to wash herself hard. She scrubbed at her face as though trying to remove a layer of skin. Her skin, which was clear enough anyway, tingled with the coarse sponge and the ice-water. She untied her hair, combed it out hard, wished she were able to wash it, but knew that it would be more likely to freeze than to dry. She didn’t usually like her eyes – that slight slant tended to attract insults from the European chauvinist Russians – but Misha had always loved them, so she did too. She gazed at herself in the little scrap of mirror. She saw the brightness of her cheeks and the sheer happiness of her smile; a happiness that came from her increasing certainty that in a matter of a mere day or so, she would see Misha again. She knew there were risks to be overcome, but they seemed too trivial to worry about: a little summer brook to be hopped over, nothing more. She turned her head from side to side, enjoying the idea that somebody would soon be looking at her with love, enjoying the sense of being a woman again.

  Just then, there was a noise on the snowy path outside. The toilet block was shared by both sexes and there was little privacy at any time. Tonya quickly retied her hair and left the block. She went straight to bed, but not to sleep, just lay awake, listening to the snores of her neighbours. Time passed. Ten in the evening came. Then eleven. Then midnight.

  She got up, ready to make her move.

  9

  The two luminous dots came closer, then closed into one. Misha forced himself to wait another minute or two. The single dot lengthened, then one dot broke away from the other. It was now past midnight, beyond any doubt.

  Misha found himself shivering. He was cold, of course, but it wasn’t cold but fear that had struck him. He got out of the car, peed in the snow at the edge of the forest track and got back in. He was still shivering, but alongside the anxiety he felt very calm. It was as though the anxiety were just a coat lightly thrown over the top of everything else, indicating nothing about what lay beneath. He turned the key in the ignition and the car came to life, crashingly loud in the silence.

  With headlamps on, he drove down the track back to the road, then killed his lights for the slow ride towards the camp. The camp was only about a mile distant, but without lights, he couldn’t drive at more than a few miles an hour. He’d intended to stop three hundred yards before the camp entrance, in the mouth of a farmer’s gate he’d identified earlier, but he drove too far by accident and had to reverse back to find his spot. His pulse stayed high and he was given to bursts of shaking, but his calmness remained too. He realised that he only shook if he thought of Tonya. If he pretended that he was just going to enter the camp to fetch a package, he felt no nerves at all.

  He parked the car by the farm gate, leaving the key in the ignition. The car was tucked well back from the road and its khaki front was camouflaged under a thick pelt of snow. Misha took the wire cutters and his iron bar and walked to the camp. Though the area was mostly flat, there was a corner where the camp dipped down to an area of low-lying ground, marshy in summer, but frozen hard now. The corner was little used by day. At night it was deserted. Misha approached the stretch of fence and listened. He heard only silence. He put the cutters to the wire and began to snip. The frozen metal parted easily and without noise. Within a couple of minutes, Misha had created an opening large enough to admit him. He slipped through the wire, then folded it back in place.

  There was little cloud cover now, but there was no moon, just the glitter of starlight over snow, the huge emptiness of sky. Misha now felt nerves for the first time, real nerves; not the fake variety that he’d felt before. He oriented himself carefully. He knew the camp layout well from his time spent watching, but everything felt different now that he was actually there. The buildings loomed larger and more substantial. All the same, he knew where he was and what he was doing.

  He located the little women’s sleeping hut and walked over to it. He walked carefully, not making any great racket, but also trying to look as though he had every right to be where he was, trying to look, feel and act like one of the camp guards themselves. His boots creaked in the frozen snow. His breath rose in clouds.

  10

  Midnight.

  Tonya stared at her watch until the luminous dots formed a single point at the top of the watch dial. She couldn’t quite believe that the moment had arrived and waited until the two dots separated again before she was certain.

  She got out of bed, and pulled on her uniform tunic, trousers, boots and coat. The two other women in the hut were heavy sleepers, and in any case, if they heard her getting up, they’d simply assume she was going to the loo. In cold weather such as this, no one went to the toilet block unless fully dressed.

  Tonya emerged from the hut, tucking her hair into her cap and arranging her scarf. There was no moonlight, but the sky seemed full of stars. The night always looked brighter when there was snow on the ground and Tonya had no difficulty in seeing her way. She felt nervous, but very clear, like the bright and frosty night air itself.

  Walking with firm, decisive steps, she made her way over to her brother’s bungalow. There was a light outside, shaded by the fretwork veranda. She walked smartly up the steps, knocked at the door and let herself in.

  The driver was there. He’d obviously been sleeping with his head on the desk close by the telephone, waiting for the ring. He straightened up, blinking sleep from his eyes, trying to pretend he’d been awake all along.

  ‘Ah, comrade, it’s you. No, your brother hasn’t called yet. It’s still early for him. That one, he drinks like… Sorry. No offence.’

  Tonya put a hand up to stop him. ‘No, don’t worry. Pavel’s been taken ill. He’s called the main gate. He wants me to go and fetch him.’

  ‘You? Really? But the roads are icy. Are you sure…?’

  ‘I drove a truck in the war, comrade driver,’ said Tonya with a touch of sharpness. ‘I drove an armoured car across the Neisse in the last offensive.’

  ‘All right, all right, sorry. Give it plenty of choke though. I suppose there’s not a problem, is there? Your brother…?’

  ‘Ill. You can guess what that means. You can go off to bed.’

  The driver nodded. He looked for his hat, which had fallen off while he slept, found it, and jammed it onto his head. He held up the key to the limousine and laid it on the desk in front of Tonya.

  ‘Thank you, comrade. Listen, I wasn’t sleeping, just resting my eyes. You won’t say anything, will you?’

  ‘Comrade, if I told him you were making plans to shoot comrade Stalin, he wouldn’t be likely to remember it in the morning.’

  ‘No.’

  Both the driver and Tonya found themselves taken aback by the shocking boldness of her remark. A little well of silence formed between them. Then the driver nodded one last time, and clattered out of the door, down the steps and away across the yard.

  Tonya picked up the key: the key to a car and the key to her
freedom, all in one. She looked around Pavel’s little nest. She felt a sudden urge to make a mess of it. To rip up the portraits of Stalin and Marx, to smash the vases, to pour oil on the carpets, to slash the tiger-skin. In all her dealings with Pavel these last weeks, she had never spoken her feelings about his denunciation of her. Indeed, she had hardly even known her own feelings. How could she, when the penalties for expressing them would have been so severe?

  But she didn’t need to bother with any of that now. She took the key, turned the light off, and walked over to the front gate. There was a guard on it that she recognised.

  ‘Hello there, Yuri Grigorivich.’

  The guard looked up. ‘Antonina Kirylovna! You’re up late.’

  ‘My brother. Taken “ill”. He wants me to go. I don’t know why.’

  The guard shrugged and nodded. He knew that Tonya was meant to be confined to camp, but an order from the commandant was an order.

  ‘Ill, eh? That’s a nice name for it.’

  ‘Yes. If I’m not back at once, then don’t worry. If he needs to sleep it off there, I’ll wait for him and bring him back in the morning.’

  ‘Very good. Take care on the roads, though.’

  Tonya nodded, awed at how simple it all was. The guard, Yuri Grigorivich, left his little wooden kiosk and unlocked the gates. The snow had piled up at the base, and he had to yank hard to break the crust. The big gates swung open.

  Tonya was in the car by now, the engine had started after only a little coaxing. She kept the choke out, as the driver had suggested. She released the handbrake and put the car into gear. She drove forwards slowly, not wanting to start off by letting the big car skid. She had no problem. The car passed through the gates. She raised a hand of thanks. Yuri Grigorivich nodded back. And that was that. Tonya turned out onto the road. The big car had powerful headlamps that illuminated the road well into the distance. The gates closed shut behind her. She only had to drive now, not too quickly, not too slowly.

  She’d be in Berlin by morning.

  11

  Misha saw movement and stopped dead.

  There was a figure moving around, caught against the low lamplight coming from a couple of the buildings there. Misha held himself down low, but wasn’t too worried about being seen. The night was dark, and he was a long way from the nearest lamplight.

  The figure entered a bungalow on the edge of the camp and was inside for a few minutes. Then someone left the bungalow, followed a few moments later by the first figure, who walked over to the gate house, then back to the car. The gates opened. The car left. Misha flattened himself against the snow to avoid the headlamps. The guard who had opened the gates closed them again. Silence returned.

  Misha let five minutes go by. There was no further movement, no noise. The camp was so fast asleep, it almost snored.

  Misha got up and dusted himself down. He was about to reach the most delicate part of the entire operation. The idea was a brazen one, but rack his brains though he had, Misha hadn’t been able to think of anything better. Walking upright, and looking boldly ahead of him, Misha walked over to the women’s sleeping quarters. A black electric wire ran into the hut to give it power. Misha cut the wire, then quickly used string to tie it back in place, so that the cut cord wouldn’t flop down across the yard and draw attention to the damage. Then he stepped around to the wooden door and opened it. He could see sleepy heads rising from pillows and staring at him.

  ‘Kornikova,’ he said, gruffly, disguising his normal voice in case the shock of hearing it caused Tonya to cry out. ‘You’re wanted outside. Now.’ He flicked the light switch on, but nothing happened. ‘The light’s gone,’ he added.

  Misha had expected to hear the sound of Tonya sliding out of bed, grabbing clothes, maybe muttering grumpily at being disturbed. But he heard no such thing. In that first second, the first tiny seed of trouble appeared, and bloomed quickly.

  ‘Kornikova!’ he repeated.

  One of the other women that he’d woken pointed in the near-darkness to the right bed. ‘There’s no need to shout. She’s in that one there. Either that or she’s on the toilet. Thanks for waking us all, comrade.’

  Misha, feeling the presentiment of disaster grow more and more strongly with every passing moment, checked the bed – found it empty – then ran with soft steps outside to the toilet block. He snapped the light on and ran in. There was one soldier, a man, squatting on one of the loos. The stalls had no doors and it was obvious that Tonya wasn’t in there. There was a smell of diarrhoea. The solider stared at Misha, said nothing, then spat on the ground and frowned as he returned to business. Misha ran out of the block and gazed around the wide snowy yard.

  Where could she be? The extraordinary truth crowded in on him. That second figure to have left the bungalow – the one who drove the car – surely there had been something terribly familiar about that step, that posture. And Misha remembered something else. The car door had been frozen. The person who’d opened it had needed both hands to yank it open. Surely, surely, only a woman would have needed both hands…

  All of a sudden, Misha knew without doubt that Tonya had stolen the car and was driving to Berlin to be with him. God, what a woman! Scared now, not for himself but for her, scared that his intervention might have disturbed her plans, he went bolting for the corner where he’d come in. He found the broken stretch of wire, wriggled through, then closed the gap. He didn’t bother to make a good job of it. The cuts would be obvious enough in the morning. By that time, the game would have been completely won – or entirely lost.

  He ran to his car. He searched his pockets for the key, couldn’t find it, felt a cold wave of fright, then remembered he’d left the key in the ignition. He started the car, and swerved out onto the road. He drove for half a mile without headlights, then, when the camp had disappeared well behind him in the distance, he switched to full beam. The road up to Bad Freienwalde was potholed and icy, and would need caution. After that, he’d be on better roads all the way.

  He’d be in Berlin by morning.

  12

  The party was a good one.

  Colonel Mikulitsin and his brother officers were in fine form. Toast succeeded toast. The vodka was cold and good. Dinner was a huge haunch of roast boar, and the remains of the joint had been left on one side, so the merry-making officers could continue to cut meat for themselves. Mikulitsin produced his cavalry sword and insisted that they carve with that. One of the officers, a Cossack, took the sword and slashed into the joint with a savage skill that had them all roaring with laughter and applause.

  Then the phone outside rang. It was answered and a moment later an orderly came in.

  ‘Lieutenant-Colonel Lensky, it’s for you.’

  Pavel lurched to his feet. ‘What is it? Is it the camp?’

  ‘No sir. Karlshorst, Berlin.’

  ‘Karlshorst!’

  Pavel wiped his mouth with his hand, a useless gesture. He couldn’t think why Karlshorst should be seeking him at this time. He wiped his mouth again, nervously, wishing he weren’t drunk.

  He went into the stone-paved passage outside, closed the door, and took the phone. Compared with the brightly-lit room he’d just come from, the passageway was cool and dark.

  ‘Lieutenant-Colonel Lensky here.’

  The voice on the other end of the phone, impersonal and distant, informed him that Lieutenant-General Lukyanchenko was waiting to speak to him. There was a short pause, when only the buzzing on the line told Pavel that the line was still open, then a second voice came in.

  ‘This is Lukyanchenko…’

  Pavel knew who the man was, of course: he was General Sokolovsky’s chief of staff, and one of the most important men in the administration. Pavel had once been at a reception when Lukyanchenko was there, but the two men had never met. His nervousness increased.

  But then Lukyanchenko began to explain why he was making the call. Concerns had been growing in the SMAD about disaffection among ‘reactionary elemen
ts’ of the German population. Such disaffection was expected to swell during the winter months. Lukyanchenko was ordering a sweep against all prominent ‘counter-revolutionary propagandists, black-market profiteers, and criminals’. The sweep was in progress now. Lieutenant-Colonel Lensky should prepare his camp to receive up to one thousand additional prisoners.

  Pavel heard the news in something of a haze. In part that was the drink, but it was more than that. This firm, authoritative voice, the unexpectedness of the call, the weighty nature of the news, even the solemn darkness of the stone passageway, all contributed to his slightly unreal feeling. He acknowledged the information, confirmed his understanding of it, and replaced the receiver. His drunken state bothered him and he leaned his head against the wall, for support and coolness.

  He picked up the phone again and dialled through to his bungalow. The phone rang and rang, but got no response. Puzzled and angry, he rang the gate house instead. The guard on the gate was surprised at the call.

  ‘But, sir, you already called for your sister to come and fetch you. She left just twenty minutes ago. She should be with you any moment, unless there was some problem on the road.’

  ‘My sister? Ryadovoy Kornikova, you mean. I never rang for her…’ Alcohol, surprise, and the honour of being spoken to by Lieutenant-General Lukyanchenko himself all swam around in his head. Pavel was hardly subtle in his political analysis, but he was a patriot through and through. The firm hand of authority acting against dissident sections of the German population warmed and delighted him. He believed in his country’s leadership. The idea of a thousand new prisoners – responsibility – the powerless confusion of the western Allies and the next great step forward for Mother Russia all swirled in Pavel’s head. What was this nonsense about his sister? He was inclined to dismiss the whole thing. His own driver had probably just fallen asleep. The rest of it was all some cock-and-bull story to deflect the blame. But why should Antonina have left the camp? She wasn’t allowed to. And in his car too! He’d haul her over the coals when she got here.