Road of Bones

by James R Benn

  “Okay,” Max said. “I drive, yes?”

  “No,” I said, remembering the Russian pilots and their crazy takeoffs. “Just show us the way.”

  We drove off, and Max pointed out a two-story building topped with corrugated metal roofing, housing for the permanent ground staff. It was another repair job, the roof slapped on along with a few windows boarded up. Morris had bunked in there, along with a non-com. That would be our next stop.

  On the main road, leading to the gate, we came upon a block-long three-story building, looking a lot like an apartment building you’d find in any city. Except that one end had been blown off, leaving one set of rooms exposed to the elements.

  “Nice place, yes?” Max said. “General Belov and NKVD officers live here. All fixed up. Vannaya. Hot water.” It was a nice enough place that two guards patrolled the sidewalk in front of the entrance.

  I told Max to wait with the jeep. I didn’t think it needed to be guarded, but I didn’t want him getting in the way. Sidorov flashed papers in front of the sentries, who saluted and stood aside as we entered.

  “It must feel good to have guards do what you tell them,” I said, as we entered the central hallway.

  “And to have a pistol at my side,” he said. “But these things can be fleeting, so let us hope we find something. And by the way, do not trust Max. Not at all.”

  “Because he’s been in a prison camp? That’s where you just came from.”

  “I will explain later. Now, let us focus on the search. Although after several days, I doubt anything of value is left,” Sidorov said.

  We went to the second floor and Sidorov led the way to a door with a notice tacked up. He told me it said no entry permitted. We entered.

  It was a nice room for a lieutenant. Curtains on the window overlooking the main road. A bed with a soft quilt. A table and chair with a small bookcase. An armoire with a uniform and shirt on hangers. I went through the pockets and found nothing.

  “The books are mostly political,” Sidorov said. “Marx and Engels. Some by Comrade Stalin himself. They actually look well-read. He’s even made notations in the margins. He was a diligent Marxist indeed. These tomes are dreadfully dull.”

  I turned over the mattress, looking for anything Kopelev wanted hidden from sight.

  Nothing.

  “Letters,” Sidorov said, leafing through papers held between the pages of a book with a red star on the cover. “From his parents in Novgorod. The usual blather about Stalin and the great struggle, intermingled with family sentimentality.”

  “No evidence of a girlfriend?”

  “None. Ivan Kopelev was a serious young Communist, according to all here and from what I can glean from these letters. Of course, as an NKVD officer posted here, he would have to be. Only the most trusted Party members are allowed contact with Westerners.”

  “Well, as we know, that doesn’t always work out well,” I said, thinking back to Sidorov’s assignment with the Soviet embassy in London.

  “Ivan had an earnestness to him that I could have never claimed,” Sidorov said, looking behind the bookcase. “There is nothing here to tell us he was anything but what he appeared to be.”

  “Which likely got him killed,” I said.

  “Why do you say that?” Sidorov asked.

  “Kopelev went by the rules. He was the kind of guy who would never give anyone a break, right? Other than that, I don’t see any defining characteristic. Chances are, he discovered something he shouldn’t have.”

  “That makes sense. But if we don’t come up with anything credible, Moscow will decide what he stumbled upon, and it likely will be a Yankee imperialist plot,” Sidorov said.

  “What are those other books,” I said, pointing to the small stack next to Marx and his pals.

  “A volume of poetry,” Sidorov said. “Alexander Pushkin, the greatest of the Russian poets. Stalin approves of him, so he is a safe choice for a rising NKVD man. This one is by your Mark Twain. The Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. A good choice. The hero is an engineer, which fits well with the view of the ideal Soviet man. And the modern devices he introduces to medieval society is akin to Marxism leading the masses to a better life.”

  “It’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court,” I said. “I’ve read it.”

  “No one in Russia knows where or what Connecticut is, so the translators likely dropped it. This last one is less interesting. An atlas of the Soviet Union, with articles on each of the autonomous republics. Laudatory comments abound,” Sidorov said, leafing through the oversized book.

  “Let me see it,” I said. I’d hoped the maps might prove useful if I ever got out of here to look for Big Mike. But the writing was all in Cyrillic script and was indecipherable. As I flipped through the pages, a slip of paper fell out. It marked a two-page spread of the Black Sea, with Turkey recognizable to the south. Some of the ports on the Black Sea were circled. Batumi and Poti in Russia, near the Turkish border. Samsun and Trabzon in Turkey itself.

  “This is a receipt,” Sidorov said. “From the Goskomizdat bookstore in Poltava. The State Committee for Publishing, that is.”

  “Looks like a second-hand book,” I said, which made sense in the midst of war. “Are we on this map?”

  “No,” Sidorov said, tracing his finger along the top of the page. “Poltava is north of here, directly above Sevastopol, see?”

  “That’s in the Crimea, isn’t it? It’s one of the places Max told us he worked.”

  “Max never worked a day in his life. That star beneath the skull tattoo on his arm? That signifies he is a vor. A professional thief. Vor v zakone, a thief in law. They disdain labor of any sort and dedicate themselves to supporting fellow thieves and resisting the government. The star tattoo is significant. The higher the rank, the higher on your body the star rises. Max is young, but he is part of the thieves’ world.”

  “It is like the mafia?”

  “Somewhat. But the primary purpose is not to make money. It is to live the life of the vor, free of state interference, and to help your fellow thieves. They trust each other completely, and distrust everyone else.”

  “Are you sure about Max? Maybe he got those tattoos just to impress the other prisoners,” I said.

  “Billy, I knew a fellow on my labor detail who did that. He made his own ink by burning his boot heel and mixing the ash with his urine. He put those stars on his knees, which is the sign of a high-ranking vor since it symbolizes his refusal to kneel before any authority. But he was found out quickly. He was beaten and raped, then left with a piece of broken glass and a brick. He was given two days to remove the tattoos, which he did. Then he was forcibly tattooed, with a teardrop beneath one eye. The message of the teardrop is that the prisoner has been raped and is not to be respected. So, no, I do not think Max adorned himself with false tattoos,” Sidorov said, going to the window.

  I joined him and watched Max talking with the sentries, lighting cigarettes for them, laughing and clowning it up. He looked harmless, which might just make him dangerous.

  “What’s with the elephant tattoo?” I asked.

  “That is perplexing. You see, the Russian word for elephant is slon. Those letters, or the picture of an elephant, is a recent development. They stand for suki lyubyat ostry nozh. Slon,” Sidorov said, rubbing his chin, his eyes fixed on Max. “Bitches love a sharp knife.”

  “What does it mean?”

  “When the fascists invaded, prisoners were offered the chance to serve in the armed forces. We had lost so many soldiers in the first months that it was critical to fill the ranks with whoever would fight,” Sidorov said. “This apparently split the vor community. Those who volunteered to gain their freedom were seen as traitors. They had broken the sacred vow to never serve the state or obey its orders. They are the Bitches.”

  “Max is one of them?”

  �
��I cannot be sure. A vor with his tattoos has a stature which makes it doubtful in my mind. He must have a vendetta against one of the volunteer prisoners to have the slon tattoo already,” Sidorov said.

  “I don’t get it. What do you mean, ‘already’?”

  “A number of volunteers from the camps have already been convicted of crimes and re-sentenced. Some have fought well, but others were likely looking to desert at the first opportunity or succumbed to the temptation to steal. They were greeted with predictable violence by the vor when they were returned. In the camps they call it the Bitch War.”

  “You have to wonder, then, what is Max doing in uniform? Maybe he offended a high-ranking vor in the camp and had to get out in a hurry. What other choice would he have?”

  “Thieves in law have their own courts, their own process for dealing with disputes. Fairer than Soviet justice, in their own way. Still, you could be right,” Sidorov said, in a way that told me he didn’t think it likely.

  “Could Max be involved in the killings?”

  “We should determine if he has an alibi,” Sidorov said. “However, an execution within a military base is not their style. It brings too much attention. A thief would gain a great deal of stature if he stole supplies from that storeroom. But to kill two men for no profit? He would be seen as a fool.”

  “I see that. But someone had a motive to murder those two. And we’re nowhere near finding it. Let’s go talk to Bull before it’s too late to get Craven on that flight.”

  “You do that, and I will request a meeting with Drozdov and Belov. Your Major Black should be there as well,” Sidorov said. “I think we are done here.”

  I agreed. But I took the atlas. You never know when a map might come in handy.

  Chapter Twelve

  Max talked the whole way back, asking about what we’d found and who we thought killed the lieutenant and the Yankee. I told him Uncle Joe Stalin had told me to keep it zipped, and he laughed, asking why Comrade Stalin wanted me to keep my trousers zipped. Even Sidorov chuckled. Max was a charmer, and smart enough to make a joke in spite of his fractured English. He would bear watching.

  After we’d dropped Max off at the barracks, we made for the Operations building. Sidorov went off to find Drozdov and I headed for Bull’s office. He was in, but Major Black was with him. They were seated at a table, maps and files spread out before them. I tried to back out, but Bull waved me in.

  “Any news, Billy?” he asked.

  “Well, I do have a favor to ask,” I said, shooting a glance at Black. “It’s a bit unusual.”

  “Shut the door and ask away,” Bull said. “We’re all friends here. The air force has nothing to hide from the OSS.”

  “Major Black may not want to know, sir,” I said, pulling up a chair.

  “This investigation does concern me, Captain, so if the general doesn’t mind, I’ll stay,” Black said. “I must admit, you’ve got me curious.”

  “Do either of you know Technical Sergeant Marty Craven? He’s with the C-47 transport squadron.”

  “Sure,” Black said. “Everyone knows Marty. He’s an operator.”

  “I know he trades a lot with the locals,” Bull said. “Never had a complaint about him from his CO. Why?”

  “There’s a C-47 headed to Tehran pretty soon. Can you put him on it?”

  “That’s the favor? What the hell for?” Bull asked.

  “I need some leverage with Drozdov. I want to tell him Craven is a possible suspect, since all Drozdov seems to care about is pinning the murders on an American,” I said. “If you get Craven out of here fast enough, he won’t be in any trouble.”

  “But you might be, if Drozdov thinks you tipped Craven off,” Black said.

  “I’m not worried about that. I want Drozdov to approve travel for me to question Lieutenant Vanya Nikolin. Pointing the finger at a Yank might put him in a good enough mood to do it. He doesn’t have to know about this little chat, and we can explain away the transfer as nothing but routine.”

  “Now I can see why you didn’t want me in the room, Captain. Fewer witnesses,” Black said.

  “Nikolin is the NKVD officer who was assigned to guard the warehouse, right?” Bull said.

  “Yeah, he and his men were transferred out to the front east of Krakow, far as I know. I’d like to question him before the Krauts fill him full of holes.”

  “Speaking of NKVD, they have to approve the manifest for all transport flights,” Black said. “They may not appreciate a last-minute change, especially if any of them have traded with Marty. Every Russian within ten miles knows he’s always ready with a fistful of rubles.”

  “I wouldn’t worry about that,” Bull said. “Kopelev’s replacement is playing catch-up. He was just transferred in and he’s probably never heard of Craven. As it happens, I have the final manifest right here, ready to go.”

  “You sure it’s a good idea?” Black asked, addressing the question to Bull, not me.

  “It is,” I said. “We need a break, and this could help. If nothing comes of it, there’ll be another guy ready to take Craven’s place. The army’s full of them.”

  “Okay,” Bull said. “Major Black, you never heard this conversation. I’ll get the paperwork going and send someone to get Craven on board. Wheels up in one hour, Billy. Good luck.”

  I found Sidorov, who said Belov and Drozdov would see us in fifteen minutes. I took the time to hustle over to the barracks and find Carter, the navigator on the Banshee Bandit. He’d offered to go over his maps with me, and I was glad I took the time to find him. The weather over the Romanian oil fields had cleared, and they were scheduled to take off on a mission before dawn.

  He showed me Kozova, where Big Mike’s B-17 had gone down. There was a rail line leading to Kiev, about two hundred and eighty miles to the east. After that, it was another couple of hundred miles farther east to Poltava. If I were Big Mike, I’d watch for a train headed in that direction. The farther from the front they got, the less danger they’d be in. In theory.

  Or maybe he was already in custody, rounded up by the NKVD internal troops. I was getting a good sense of how paranoid the Russians were about outsiders, so I knew our downed aircrew wouldn’t get a hero’s welcome. But sooner or later, even the most suspicious NKVD office would have to recognize these Americans as allies.

  They had to. And Big Mike had to be alive.

  Carter gave me a couple of small-scale maps. Spares, he said. One was of the Ukraine region and the other showed part of the Ukraine at the top and northern Iran at the bottom. He had that one in case they ever flew out of Russia via the Persian Corridor, the Lend-Lease supply route to our south.

  “No such luck,” Carter said. “It’s sunny Italy for us.”

  I wished him luck, since that meant tangling with the Luftwaffe and thick flak again, then hoofed it back to Operations. I wondered why the Poltava airbase was so far behind the lines. The front was now five hundred miles to the west and moving farther away toward Poland and Germany. Maybe the location was logical when Operation Frantic was first planned, but it wasn’t now that the Red army had advanced so far to the west. Why make our aircraft fly hundreds of miles farther than they needed to? Moving nearer the front would put us closer to targets, closer to any aircrew who had to bail out, and save fuel. Relocating the airfield would make sense, but good sense was often in short supply when it came to army decision-making, Yank or Red.

  “This way,” Sidorov said from the doorway of the Operations building. “We are meeting in the briefing room around back. Maiya will translate. I have the impression Drozdov does not trust me to do it. Or perhaps he trusts her to leave out anything he doesn’t want Belov to hear.”

  “There’s no politics like army politics,” I said, following Sidorov to the Quonset hut behind Operations. Long shadows trailed us as the sun began to disappear beyond the horizon.

&
nbsp; “An NKVD posting like this is an important step for a career officer,” Sidorov said. “It demonstrates how much he is trusted by the Party to be put in charge. I imagine Drozdov has his sights set on Moscow, but he knows that any failure here, especially one involving Westerners, will be the end of him.”

  “Of him or his career?”

  “The Communist Party is Stalin. Anyone who makes the Party look bad makes Stalin look bad. That means either a bullet or a shovel on the road of bones. I plan on neither, myself,” Sidorov said, opening the door to the Quonset hut as I glanced at my watch. By now, I hoped Craven was stowed safely aboard the C-47 along with as much loot as he could carry.

  Inside, Belov and Drozdov sat at a table in front of a large map of the Ukraine and points west. Maiya stood at their side, hands folded behind her back. Major Black sat facing them, and I hoped he had a good memory for forgetting things. A con job always worked better if people believed what they were being told. Even though Black wasn’t the intended mark, I didn’t want his expression giving anything away.

  General Belov spoke first, and Maiya conveyed his wish for a speedy conclusion to this terrible tragedy. Then Drozdov began, his tone as menacing as his cold blue eyes and pock-marked face. He tapped the table with his forefinger a few times, finally calming down and nodding to Maiya to begin.

  “Major Drozdov demands that you reveal what you have discovered,” she said. “It is unacceptable that the murderer of Lieutenant Kopelev has not been found. He says you must not care about your dead sergeant very much either. What have you accomplished so far, and when do you plan to apprehend the killer?”

  “I understand the major’s concern for both victims,” I said, buying myself a little time to figure out the best way to respond. Back on the Boston PD and in the army, I’d been on the receiving end of a wagonload of shit rolling downhill, so it wasn’t a new experience. First time in Russian, though. “Since Captain Sidorov arrived this morning, we have been busy surveying the crime scene, questioning people who knew the deceased, speaking with Doctor Mametova, and searching the lieutenant’s quarters.”