Rage of Battle wi-2

by Ian Slater

  The closest they had got to the dream was to hold hands during their walks by the Neva until sunset touched the river with gold and to go to one of the small coffee shops by the river, where he would buy her a cup of real chocolate-flavored coffee, which she loved so much and which on occasion mysteriously found its way in from the West.

  He regretted not having a picture of her, but in those days even the simplest and cheapest East German camera was beyond his means. Perhaps it was better not to have a photo, he sometimes thought — better to hold the ideal in the mind, where the ravages of time and the vicissitudes of war couldn’t sully the dream.

  He became aware of the captain standing beside him, placing the green form on his desk. “The authorization, Admiral.”

  As Brodsky unclipped his gold Parker pen, he pushed the smiling, happy image of Malle from his mind. For all he knew, she might be dead. But despite his effort to forget, he found himself remembering momentarily the color of her eyes, ice blue and yet nothing cold about them — rather something eternal — and her joyous smile, even for one of “them,” the Russians, who had invaded and colonized the Baltic states on the heels of the Stalin-Hitler pact. It was one of the things he remembered best about her — that she didn’t care about politics and took each person she met on his or her merits.

  Brodsky read over the authorization, understanding that handing over the investigation to the MPO would effectively mean handing over any credit for the investigation to them as well.

  Fifteen minutes later, the captain in charge of MPO’s “Border troops Estonia” arrived at Brodsky’s headquarters. Though he was dressed in full naval uniform, the gate guards immediately recognized him as MPO from his green shoulder boards and gave him a snappy salute. The colonel assured the admiral that MPO would get to the bottom of it.

  * * *

  Using the admiral’s phone, without asking, the captain, Vladimir Malkov, a kapitan pervogo ranga— “naval captain first class”—in charge of MPO-Tallinn, in turn called the MPO’s plainclothes section in Tallinn, which was responsible for protecting the borders against penetration by foreign agents and for preventing “unauthorized boat departure” by Soviet citizens.

  Within a half hour Captain Malkov had a printout of all known informers and suspected counterrevolutionaries dating as far back as those involved in British intelligence’s “Operation Jungle.” The list of potential troublemakers in the Baltic states was long enough from the years of the Cold War, but after Gorbachev, there had been an exponential leap, the list quadrupling as the zhdavshikh— “wait and sees”—had become more militant and sure of themselves in their demands for autonomy from the Soviet Union. Given the urgency of the task, Malkov knew there was no possible way of working methodically through the list. Almost a thousand Russian sailors had been killed in the sinking of the Yumashev, and who knew how many more would die on other ships because they were firing dud, instead of live, ammunition? It called for drastic measures.

  * * *

  Just before dawn, twenty green-canvas-topped trucks, spewing smoky exhaust, rumbled into Tallinn’s big Mustamäe apartment complex. The polluted yellowing concrete slabs of the ten-story apartment blocks were pricked here and there by dim lights as workers from the night shifts in the shipyards and factories arrived home, eager for breakfast after the grueling twelve-hour shifts. Other workers, many of them clerical, leaving the apartment block for work were stopped by the ring of MPO troops and asked for their work permit as well as their resident identification cards. After this, they were told to form four ranks stretching from the wide, grassy strips between the apartment buildings to the curbside, where the drivers of the yellow buses were told to keep going past the stops.

  More MPO naval-uniformed troops fanned out quickly into the apartment buildings, stationing themselves by elevators and fire escape stairs, forbidding any movement from floor to floor as well as from the buildings themselves.

  Malkov explained to his subordinates that he had chosen the Mustamäe because the “high density” was much more manageable from a military and psychological point of view than the sprawling shipyards. Even so, Malkov stressed that it was important that the inhabitants of the complex be unable to communicate among themselves within the apartments.

  * * *

  In apartment 703, in number one complex, closest to the road, a middle-aged and attractive grandmother, Malle Jaakson, her only concession to age a pair of glasses, looked down at more troops arriving. Her fifteen-year-old grandson, Edouard Jaakson, excited by the sight of the troops pouring out of the trucks around the buildings, asked, “Nana — what are they doing?”

  When the youth turned and saw his grandmother’s face, his boyish thrill gave way to a more mature realization — that the troops could only mean trouble.

  He had grown up being taught about the Russians — their language, their history — but as well as the official syllabus, he had also heard the underground story of the “betrayal” of 1939 and the purges in 1941, after more than nine thousand teachers, intellectuals, journalists, and other “counterrevolutionaries” had been rounded up on the terrible night of June 13—family members literally torn from each other, dragged from city and farm alike to the railheads and then to the Soviet oblivion east of the Urals.

  Then the Nazis had taken their share of the Stalin-Hitler Pact, with more than forty thousand Estonians forced to join the Wermacht. By the time the two totalitarians had finished their titanic war, a third of all Estonians were dead.

  Now, seeing more trucks arriving, the fifteen-year-old was reminded of something else, passed down from generation to generation of Estonians — that as terrible as the Nazis had been, it was the KGB who had inspired the most fear, who had been the most barbaric.

  For Malle Jaakson, clutching the boy tightly to her side, it was as if Estonia’s nightmarish history had suddenly leapt from the past to terrify the children of those who had already suffered so abominably. Edouard’s mother and father had not yet returned home from the shipyards. The first thing she must do was to warn them. She went to the phone to dial the Tallinn docks. She would keep calm, tell the floor foreman that it was urgent family business. A sudden illness.

  The phone was dead. Perhaps, she thought, it was only their phone malfunctioning. Or cut off.

  “Edouard, wait here. I’m going next door.” She started to turn the handle.

  “Vernut‘sya v kvartiru!”— “Back in your apartment!” The soldier’s voice made her jump in fright and she quickly obeyed.

  Inside, she closed the door, leaning back on it, one hand beneath her throat as if she had trouble breathing.

  “It’s a conscript roundup,” she told Edouard, her voice shaking.

  “I won’t leave you, Nana. I’ll look after—”

  “No, you must hide.” She held him close to her again and could feel his heart beating — but he was still a boy, despite his bravery.

  “I’ll be all right,” he tried to assure her. “I’m too young for the—”

  “No one’s too young for them,” she said. “No one. You must—”

  She heard a metallic tapping noise and guessed it must be the sound of the troops’ metal-tipped boots as they ran into the building. She could see them disappearing into the various buildings of the complex like ants sucked up by some great anthill. Edouard broke from her tight embrace, looking down at her. “It’s the heating vent, Nana. Somebody’s tapping.”

  “What?”

  “The heating vent.”

  “Yes,” said Malle. How often her son had complained about a late party from the floor below, its sounds vibrating up the shaft. “Yes,” Malle said hopefully. “Quickly — go and listen. I’ll watch the door.”

  On all fours, Edouard put his ear close to the vent and waited. The tapping began again.

  “Who is it?” he asked, careful not to give his own name first.

  “Friida,” came the tinny reply. “Friida Magi. The apartment above you. Friida — you remembe
r?”

  “Yes, of course,” replied Edouard, only now giving his name, recognizing her voice, though now it was little more man a hoarse whisper.

  “They are arresting people.”

  “Who?” asked Malle, who had come in quickly from the kitchen, nervously casting one eye toward the door, its safety chain on.

  “The KGB!” came the incredulous reply.

  “No,” said Malle. “Who are they arresting? What for?”

  “God knows. But you must try—” There were echoes of loud knocking coming down the shaft. The warning voice ended abruptly, the heating vent clanging shut.

  “Edouard—” began Malle in a panic, but not knowing what to tell him.

  “Nana! The cover in the bedroom. The plumber’s crawl space.”

  “Yes,” she said hurriedly. “Good boy. Quickly, Edouard. Quickly!”

  He turned, his excitement vanished now, her panic his. She saw it in his face and forced herself to calm down, steering him to the bathroom. “Go to the toilet first.”

  Suddenly he had a vision of him being hidden away for days, weeks, and became even more frightened so that for a few seconds he just stood there over the toilet bowl, unable to do anything.

  “Hurry!” she urged.

  As he flushed and hurried to his parents’ bedroom, she thrust a small jam jar of apple juice and a wedge of cheese into his hands. He was crying.

  They could hear the sound of heavy boots thumping along the hallway. “Quickly!” she whispered, kissing him. In one sweeping movement, surprising in its litheness for a woman in her fifties, she snatched a small vase of dried flowers and its crocheted doily from the main bedroom’s low night table. Next she took from it an ashtray full of coins, a comb, the family Bible belonging to her daughter-in-law, and a pair of whitish rubber earplugs sometimes used by her son at the docks. In another second Edouard was stepping on the night table, Malle steadying it on the bed, trying to push up at the plumber’s trap door. He couldn’t reach it. Malle quickly handed him one of her slippers. This gave Edouard the extra reach to shift the trapdoor just enough for a hand hold. She gave him a leg up and he was up inside, replacing the square plasterboard tile.

  The sound of boots outside ceased, but now the voices of soldiers moving from door to door could be heard, and voices coming up the heating vent from the apartment below, terrifyingly close so that to Malle, the very air seemed drenched with the stench of fear.

  She relaid the night table, careful not to make it too neat, then suddenly saw the dusty imprints of the table’s legs on the bed cover where she had lifted it for Edouard to stand on. She brushed it with her hand, but the dirt from one of the legs was too ingrained. She stripped the bed of the cover, threw it in the wicker laundry basket in the corner of the bedroom, and rummaged frantically in the bottom drawer of the wardrobe for the still-unused cover she’d given her daughter-in-law as a wedding present: a colorful patchwork quilt made by relatives of her father in America.

  There was an argument going on next door. Malle felt weak in the knees, exhausted. She brought the new cover up over the pillows, smacking a crease beneath them, falling on the bed, pushing herself back up. Next she walked back to the kitchen and slumped down at the table, pushing back a wisp of hair, still blond despite her years, and, her brain racing, tried desperately to think what she should do next to protect Edouard. Maybe they weren’t after conscripts at all. Perhaps—

  She saw two cups and two plates in the sink. She jumped up, washed one of each, and put them away. If they asked if anyone else lived in — no, they would know who lived in each apartment, but one dish and cup might convince them she was alone today. She chastised herself, told herself to calm down, get her story straight. She’d tell them Edouard had left for school. But it was too early. His bicycle — yes, his bicycle would have a flat and he’d had to leave early to walk to school. No, he could fix that. It had been stolen! But she’d have to give them its permit number, and when they checked downstairs in the racks and found it—

  What about the Mustamäe’s being surrounded? He would have been stopped had he tried to leave. No — no, her grandson was — she would use the Russian word for “conscientious”—sovestlivy. Her grandson was conscientious and had left for school earlier than usual. She would have to stick with that and not mention the bike. She repeated “sovestlivy. “ After that she wouldn’t know what happened to him. Perhaps, she could suggest, he had become frightened, hearing police were at his parents’ apartment. That would explain him not arriving at school. But then-She stopped. She was galloping too far ahead, she told herself — one step at a time, Malle. She turned the radio on, put the kettle on to boil, and scrounged through the pile of newspapers in the kitchen corner, pulling out a copy of Pravda, hesitated, replaced it, and instead pulled down a worn Jaan Kross novel. Kross had been a proud Estonian, a nationalist — the Communist party newspaper would be too obvious a ploy to curry favor. People subscribed, but they didn’t read it. No, proud but not obstructionist grandmother would be her best bet. She looked about the apartment again, her heart thumping so hard, she instinctively put her hand on her bosom to catch her breath. She rearranged the old photo of herself as a young conscript graduate-radio operator in the Baltic Fleet. In Russian uniform. That might help.

  She sat down again, biting her lip, looking about the apartment once more, trying to imagine herself as a newcomer there, for any possible sign of Edouard hiding. She heard a police klaxon in the distance. The troops were still about the housing complex, and she could see several armored cars she’d missed before parked under the linden trees. Ideal camouflage, she thought — but what of her own camouflage against inquiries about Edouard? Looking beyond the complex, she could see the medieval spires of the old town piercing the peaceful autumn air. She could smell the odor of herring wafting up through the vent, and now she realized no one was talking next door. For a moment it was possible to believe that there was no war. Had they left? Had the neighbors been taken away? She waited. There was no sound.

  Suddenly she rushed toward the master bedroom and looked up at the trapdoor, remembering she had given Edouard one of her slippers to push up the cover. There might be a smudge of dirt on the plaster cover. There was no sign of disturbance. As she lowered herself to the kitchen table again, the kettle began to whistle. It had the force of an informer screaming. So heavy was her relief that for a moment she felt drowsy. Seeing the needle spire of St. Olav’s in the distance, steam rising in sharply defined clouds above the dome, Malle wished for a moment that, like her daughter-in-law, she could believe in God, in the Blessed Virgin. Her hands were trembling. Still she could hear no new noise in the building. Perhaps it wasn’t a conscript raid after all and they had come looking for deserters or to arrest only one family. Pray it was someone else.

  From somewhere below she could smell cabbage being cooked. It surprised her — not that someone was cooking vegetables so early but that the smell was so powerful. She had long thought her sense of smell was diminishing with age. Soon she became aware of noises all over the apartment— the hum of the small refrigerator and above it a high, almost inaudible whine that she did not recall having ever heard before. “Tikho!”—”Be still!” she whispered to herself, but she was praying for Edouard.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Rosemary’s growing anxiety about visiting young Wilkins increased as she entered the antiseptic and musty foyer of the school’s old hospital. Resentful of young Wilkins yet obviously expected by the headmaster to be concerned as well as discreet, she had found the drive from Oxshott through the usually tranquil wooded countryside to be one of mounting tension. As if she didn’t have enough to worry about with her exhausting day-to-day chores of teaching a coed class of adolescents, and her mother, who, not surprisingly, was given to bouts of blackest depression over young William’s death. On top of this there was her own constant and growing anxiety about Robert, who had departed for Holy Loch in a rainstorm not unlike this.

 
; Richard Spence, though fully occupied driving through the torrential rain on the winding, narrow road, was making reassuring fatherly noises about how the weather was bound to improve, seizing upon the weather as a metaphor for general improvement, even as the Audi was forced to slow more than usual around the curves because of the pelting rain. He swerved sharply to avoid a three-ton army lorry, the first of a long convoy en route to the south coast. “Reminds me of forty-four — D Day,” he said, looking across at Rosemary.

  “Hardly,” said Rosemary in an uncharacteristically contentious tone. “You couldn’t have been more than five.”

  “He would have been old enough,” said Georgina from the backseat, having invited herself along for the ride, declaring she “adored” driving in bad weather. “Children remember more than you think. Freud—”

  “Quite right, Georgina,” said Richard. “I was six, to be exact. But I remember it very well. Lorries from here to London.”

  “Well, I daresay this isn’t for D Day,” said Rosemary. “It’s more like Dunkirk.” There was silence in the car. Rosemary was sure Georgina had merely come along to get a look at Wilkins — no doubt he’d be a wonderful conversation piece, another “bourgeois victim” for a seminar at LSE. Richard said nothing to counter her uncharacteristically bad-tempered retort about Dunkirk. Besides, her gloomy assessment, in his view, was probably an understatement of the true military situation. A military disaster seemed imminent. Even the most conservative papers, including the Telegraph, not usually given to hyperbole, were conceding that the Dortmund-Bielefeld pocket was on the verge of collapse despite what seemed to be a pause in the progress of the Soviet divisions. It was as if they were gathering their collective breath before launching the death blow to the already badly savaged British Army of the Rhine, the American Fifth Army, and the decimated remnants of the German armored and motorized divisions who had fought a tenacious but losing rearguard action following the Communist breakthrough at Fulda Gap.