Kingfisher

by Gerald Seymour

  The group had become inseparable. At school they had sat together, at home they had worked together - because David said they must be cleverer, with better grades, better diplomas than those they sought to emulate. But they were being prepared for a life of conformity and inaction, inevitable in its way, until the day that David had come to Rebecca's house with the radio set.

  They were teenagers now, but isolated from the outside world until the radio flitted into their lives. The Voice of America, the World Service of the BBC, Radio Liberty broadcast by an emigre staff in Munich and beamed from a massive transmitter across Central Europe. The curtain was pulled back, a shaft of sunlight brought in. There was contact with the forbidden, excitement and stimulation at the illegality of it all. David said he'd purchased the radio, and smiled. They knew it was beyond his means, and he'd also said they had no need to learn more of its acquisition, only to listen and to understand.

  It became a secret thing, special and precious with its expanded short wave band, and a door through which they followed the June War of 1967, and the War of Atonement of 1973. They heard of the tribulations endured by those of their faith who sought to emigrate from Russia to the State of Israel, were told of the trials of those not permitted to leave the Motherland that they wanted to forsake. They knew of international protest at the lot of Soviet Jewry, they suckled themselves on what they believed to be the strength of world opinion. Heady and intoxicating drink for the four teenagers . . .

  And David was their leader.

  Nothing had ever been formally decided. It had never been talked over, but the time came when he made all the decisions for the group. At first there had been discussions, followed always by inevitable agreement to David's point of view, till within the last two years the pros and cons were no longer argued. David announced what they would do, and there was immediate concurrence. And as he assumed command so David's personality seemed to grow, and he took on a mantle in the minds of the other three of new strength, new influence. Yet when Moses submitted to the men in khaki, with their instruments and their drugs, when he gave the names, then David would follow to an identical cell, a fashioned and geometric imitation of the one that Moses lay in now, and his future would be as strongly etched as was that of Moses. The torture would be the same as he would have endured, and the culmination too - perhaps the same dawn, perhaps the same prison yard. All of this would be David's if Moses talked when his interrogators came for him, all of this and an equation of betrayal. Was he any more fitted, better equipped, to confront them in the interrogation basements? David with his smiling face, who could conjure up passion into his words, communicate the life in his eyes. Did he possess a threshold that would protect him from the fear and terror of pain? And Moses realized that he had never known David to experience helpless and uncontrollable stress, had never seen anguish screw up his cheeks, or known him exchange his confidence for confusion and hurt. It hastened a chilling shudder through him; what if David were no better, no stronger, no more resolute than he, Moses, the follower? He clasped his arms across his chest, digging his uncut fingernails through the fabric of his shirt. What if the leader were no better able to withstand the pigs, had no defiance, no arrogant obscenities? That would be betrayal too: to expose him to them, to leave him weak and vulnerable and screaming.

  How many months ago it had been that David had found the woodman's hut amongst the birch forest near the 'dachas' north of the city Moses could not remember. Time had travelled fast since then, much had been compressed into the days till they had seemed to run together without shape or pattern because of the new stimulus of what they called the 'programme'. Moses had allowed his work at the new chemical factory near his home to become subordinate to the meetings that the group held inside the darkened and damp shack, which they reached separately, making their own way at David's behest. Bare walls, only the rough-cut timbers to shield them from the spring rain that followed the snow and that preceded the summer heat and the flies. It was here that David had talked and the others had listened. The irony was - and it was not lost on them - that the doctrine he preached was available for all in the Ukraine to find; there were histories, tomes of them, of the partisan warfare against the Germans who had occupied the area, and treatises of the tactics of Guevera, and for those who had stored them and who had not thrown them away when they were suppressed there were the works of Mao, and there were the thoughts of Giap who had conquered the invincible Americans. That was what David talked to them of. On one fundamental only did he depart from the text and bible of the guerrilla fighter. There would be no

  'first stage', there would be no 'infra-structure period', no creation of an 'indoctrinated population base'. They took too long, took too many people, and the circumstances in which they found themselves could not be likened to the paddy fields of Asia. The Jews of Russia had spoken of the ills so often they had no need for more words, only for action. And if the action were successful then his movement would develop as a sapling does under the spring light, but first there must be the root, deep in fertile soil. He told them of the revolutionary warfare that would hit back at the oppressors of the Jewish people. 'Like a flea-bite at first,' he had said. 'But a flea that cannot be found, that cannot be hunted out, that comes back and wants more. That turns what is first an irritation to anger. When their anger is aroused then we know that we are hurting them, then we know that we have vengeance. There has been a great wrong here, too great a wrong for us alone to erode. But it is a gesture that is needed. How many walked in submission to the German shower chambers? How many now walk in submission to the camps at Potma and Perm?'

  David had been persuasive, but there was no necessity for it. All in the group knew the fighting ground. Isaac said that he had met a youth who had met once with Yuri Vudka who had seven years at Potma to think on his application for leave to emigrate to Israel. David had chipped in, not allowing him to finish - but then he seldom did, and it was not resented -'Vudka from our own Kiev, and seven years to think of his city, and his crime that he had wanted to leave, and had written things down, that he had books from the West and in the Hebrew language.' David had talked of the new Jews of Israel, hardened and fashioned in their own sun by the rigours of their own land and their own freedom. He called them 'sabras', men who had washed away the placidity of the former generation that had marched to the cattle trucks with not an arm upraised.

  So how placid, docile, unquestioning were their people? There was enough evidence to make him believe it, enough that he had heard to verify the belief that they were supine, incapable of self- help. But often they had wondered whether there were other groups that met in bare and shadowed rooms, that came to darkened and pathless woods, that sought shelter in the same nameless anonymity and that talked of a struggle, of hope and revenge, however trivial. David had heard on the radio of the bomb detonated on the Moscow Inner Underground, and had told them of protest and disobedience among their people in Novosibirsk - and in the main square at that - and of a man who was executed in the prison at Tbilisi and who had set off six explosive devices. He had heard it on the radio, where the word carried biblical validity. Not all Jews, he had said, and smiled, but at least others of different faith and aspiration who were burrowing at the edifices, chipping and hacking. Others who rejected the required submission as totally as they, and who stood back from the fly-swat resistance of the press conference, and the smuggled letter to the West, and the complaint to the Foreign Power. 'Words, words, stupid and ineffective,'

  David had said. 'As valuable as lying in the sand in the path of a steam-roller. It is action that will change them, that will achieve something.' They had wondered how many other tribes shared their jungle and ate the same fruit, but they had no way of knowing. As the group became more daring and more cohesive so too their dread of breaking the precious security was augmented.

  There was no consideration given to widening the size of the cell - too dangerous. Heighten the walls, strengthen the locks
, repel recruits even should they be found. An island, aloof in a battle sea, that was how they had decided they should remain.

  They had followed David through each step as he prepared the ground for the movement that lifted their course from the level of conspiracy to action, accepting every stage of his logic, not disputing his argument. Moses thought of the long weekend days and the mid-week summer evenings they had spent, the four of them, in the hut. How they had talked of what they would do, sometimes all shouting together and laughing and hanging on to each other's shoulders and imagining how a grateful people would bow to their courage, acknowledge the standard-bearers, feel a pride in their bravery. David had decided when they were ready, and none had queried him, only become quiet in the elation of knowing that the moment had arrived. They had talked in whispers that evening, subdued to the droned harassment of the mosquitoes, and clung to each other before the time to go to their homes, and memorized the route to the rendezvous the next evening. It had been wonderful for Moses as they had held each other close, the male smells unable to counter the softer, more gentle trace of the girl's scent. So much strength, so much power, nothing they could not do because they were together. Later had come the chilling loneliness for the boy, when he left the warmth of the group, to walk back on his own on the forest path towards the road. David had said he would be the first to kill, Isaac had argued till Rebecca had found the compromise. None should claim the privilege by right, in the cell they were as one, she had said, and seemed to mock at David. The leader had rejected her, demanded it for himself, the prerogative of the front runner, but Isaac would not yield. Rebecca had spoken again, chided David. Were they not all capable? It was a simple thing, was it not? She had opened the door, disappeared for a minute, not more, and when she returned there were four twigs in her fist, their tips arranged in line, their length hidden in her closed palm. David had drawn first, expressionless, watching and waiting, then Isaac with a smile lightening his features because his was shorter, Moses third, and the winced sigh of disappointment from the other two men when they saw the stubbed length of the one which he had chosen. A protest from Isaac, a taunt from Rebecca that already they would divide themselves - officers and men, commissars and proletariat - a shrug from David. No remark from the boy himself. Again and again in his mind Moses had worked over the plan, digesting the part that he would play, remembering the details.

  The first blow they would strike, and Moses Albyov had been chosen; not David who was their leader, not Isaac who fancied and believed in his fitness, but Moses, the last of the recruits to arrive before the cell had been sealed. To curse

  Rebecca or to love her for the chance she had wished on him - he had not known the answer as he stumbled from shadows of the wood to the roadside.

  But his hand had shaken, and the wool had drifted across his eyes. The mistakes of Moses Albyov. Errors that the others would not have made. And if he now collapsed, if he buckled, then all would pay the penalties for the faults that were his alone.

  If there could only be someone to speak to, or just the sound of a human voice, however distant...

  No food, and his belly aching with the deprivation and bowels grinding an extract from the last meal. God knows how many hours before.

  Pray God let it finish.

  Those were the thoughts of Moses Albyov. And they stayed with him till the moment he was roused by the sounds of keys turning in the lock of the door and of the bolt being withdrawn from its socket.

  Four men for the escort. Not gentle, yet not brutal. Guiding him uncomfortably down the darkened passageway. His arms were pinioned and the men's fingers dug hard down into his muscles, and the manacles that they had put on his wrists were set tight so that the encompassing steel bit into his flesh. He was classified as 'political terrorist', 'enemy of the people', one who had sought to kill a guardian of the State; and Moses knew that there was no possibility of sympathy.

  No words as they moved and their feet were rubber-shod so that the party - more like a cortege, he thought - went silently on its way. That was why he hadn't heard them, but they must have come, every few minutes, must have come to the door to spy at him, only he had not been aware of it.

  Fear now. A horrible, clinging terror, something that was new and that he had not experienced before, compressing the muscles of his stomach and leaving his throat parched and dry.

  More doors and more guards and more keys. Out into a brighter corridor where men sat at a low wooden table with a radio playing light music, men who interrupted their card game to stare at him, the look that men have for a fellow creature that is not a part of them, contaminated, condemned. Fit and strong men who were taking him, not tolerating his weakness of step as they bustled their way up the flights of stairs down the lengths of the passageways. Another door, another lock, another staircase, and they were half-pulling him with them. His lagging was not a conscious decision; if anything he wanted to please, like a dog about to be beaten that nestles against its master's legs. But he could not follow at their speed, so they dragged and pushed him to maintain their momentum.

  The cold of the cell was gone, replaced by the warmth of midday, a fierce summer's day.

  There was sweat on the faces of the men that took him, straggling on the corners of the staircase landings, then flattening themselves and their prisoner against the wall to allow free passage for a senior officer in his pressed trousers and tailored tunic, the medal ribbons of his service on his chest. Seven flights they climbed, then a closed and polished door in front and the respectful knock of the starshina with the stripes on his arm, and the command, distant but impatient, for them to enter.

  One on each arm, one behind and the sergeant in front. Through the outer door and across the outer office, then the inner room, and the door open. Moses could see three men at a desk facing him as he was propelled forward. His trousers were sagging, still held up by his hands, his stockinged feet bruised and chafed from the stair surface of concrete and stone. Cold eyes, looking at him, boring into him, examining and stripping him. The sanctum of the enemy. There was a breeze now on his face, soft and winnowing against his cheeks, playing on his hair, cooling at his chest. On the left the source of the draught, an opened window, double- glazed for winter but pulled back now to permit the free flow of air.

  No bar, no impediment.

  If they saw him look at it . . . if they gauged his intention . . . These were the ones who would bend and break it out of him, who would make him tell them of David and Isaac, and Rebecca with the black hair and the dark eyes and the breasts that he was afraid of and the waist that he yearned to encircle. . . . Moses's eyes were riveted to the front, locked on the man who sat at the central chair of the table.

  The guards, preoccupied with delivering their charge to such august company - a full colonel of militia, the KGB major and the major of police - did not detect the flexing of his arm muscles, the bow-string tightness of his legs.

  Moses Albyov closed his eyes, closed his mind at the moment that he catapulted himself the seven feet from where he stood to the window-sill. There was a delay as he scrabbled, impeded by the handcuffs, to swing the weight of his torso out into the void, and for a brief second one of the guards was able to claw at his trousers, now flapping and loose at his knees. If his ankle had been held they might perhaps have been able to arrest his fall, but the fingers of the guard were clamped only on to the cotton cloth of the trousers; it was not enough for him to grip at when he took the full weight of the diving Jew.

  As he fell there was a sudden clarity in his mind, and an image of a group, of young faces that were laughing together and smiling, and their arms were all around him, and then- voices pealed as bells for him ...

  All ended by the sledgehammer impact on to the tarmac of the headquarters car park.

  Hot water into an ant's nest. Men running and shouting and reacting to orders, forming excited, shifting patterns around the broken figure in their midst. From high above the colonel of mil
itia, sharing the seventh-floor vantage-point of the window with the police major, surveyed the chaos below. Alone among them the man from KGB remained at the interrogation table.

  It was he who broke the shocked silence of the room.

  'Dead?' he asked.

  From the window the reply, muffled because the head was still craning outwards. There is no possibility of survival, not from such a height.'

  'And no preliminary interrogation, no initial questioning?'

  'There had been none, as you requested. As you had asked. Just the forensic on the hair and the photograph. You were specific: there were to be no questions until he had cooled. Not even his name and his address, not even why he did not carry the card. You were specific.'

  A nodded head, enough of the games, enough of the point- scoring. Wouldn't bring him back, didn't matter now. The KGB man made a gesture of dismissal to the four guards.

  'So we have just a photograph. No address, not even a name..

  'You had said there should be no questioning.' 'I am aware of what I said. So we take again our starting- point. We have the photograph. He is -' and the dry smile, the suggestion of humour - 'he was Jewish. The forensic have confirmed that the hair textures matched. It becomes a job for policemen. It will not be difficult to identify him - many ways - and once we have achieved that then the associates will be easy. We shall have them in a few days. It will take that time, a few days, but less than a week, and then we shall have the little bastards. And we have saved ourselves a bullet. Perhaps that is the way we should look on it: we have saved Mother Russia the price of a bullet.'

  CHAPTER TWO

  Early that morning, many hours before Moses had died, his mother had bicycled to where David lived. It was a long journey in the fast-forming heat for a woman suffering the first pangs of arthritis, and the fact that she attempted it indicated the anxiety she held for the overnight absence of her only son. When she arrived it was David who answered her knock, and they had talked at the front door, David blocking her from going inside, determined once he had heard the germ of the news that she carried that she should not meet his own parents.