Road of Bones

by James R Benn

  “See, gentlemen, we have found Nikolin and will bring him home,” Drozdov said when we found him already at the runway, standing by the Yak-6 twin engine transport. “The prodigal child. You doubted, did you not?”

  “Let’s just say we’re all glad he’s alive,” I said, with a sharp glance at Kaz.

  “As am I, Captain,” Drozdov said. He did seem pretty chipper about it, and I began to wonder if it really had been a clerical screwup, or if Nikolin had simply been shanghaied into filling a quota for the penal unit. “When I sent Vanya away, I did so for his own good. I never imagined he’d end up with the tramplers. Ah, here is Maiya. One of the new Soviet women, accomplished in all spheres of life!”

  “Please, Major Drozdov, you embarrass me,” Maiya said. She tried to suppress a grin as she went through the preflight check with the pilot.

  “The Yak-6 is a useful aircraft,” Drozdov said. “Good for courier flights, transporting wounded, or resupplying partisans behind the lines. It can land in a small field.” He gave a quick tour of the compact aircraft, pointing out the space for four passengers in the rear compartment. By the time he was done, Maiya and the pilot were ready. She waved as the engines started and the aircraft taxied out of the hangar and rumbled down the grass runway.

  “By this evening, you will have some answers,” Drozdov said. “I hope you make something of it.” With that, he stalked off.

  “His good mood didn’t last long,” I said.

  “I was surprised it lasted as long as it did,” Sidorov said. “I heard a clerk talking in Operations earlier. An NKVD colonel is coming in for an inspection tomorrow. Apparently concerning the death of the narkoman. He said Drozdov was quite angry when he heard.”

  “Of course,” I said. “The top NKVD man at a sensitive installation must be above suspicion.”

  “What narkoman?” Kaz asked. Sidorov filled him in on the drug overdose of a NKVD lieutenant.

  “Sorry, I forgot to mention that incident,” Sidorov said.

  “It is odd that with a shortage of morphine, this officer found enough to kill himself with,” Kaz said as we headed back to the jeep.

  “Doctor Mametova thought it was heroin, but she said she couldn’t be sure,” Sidorov said. “Either way, it is trouble for Drozdov to have one of his men involved in drugs. Very decadent.”

  “We’re sending Big Mike to Tehran,” I told Sidorov as I started the jeep. “He can try to track down Max. He’s not doing us much good here.”

  “I will be surprised if Max is where the army thinks he should be,” Sidorov said. “People have a habit of disappearing at the most inopportune times, don’t they?”

  “Or getting themselves killed,” I said. “I wish we’d found something useful at the bookstore, something that would give us some insight into what Kopelev was up to.” I realized I hadn’t had a moment to give any thought to Kaz’s cryptic comment in the restaurant and tried to focus on that as I made the short drive.

  “Only the killer knows,” Sidorov said.

  “Wait,” I said, slowing down as a flatbed truck with a mounted .50 machine gun careened down the road in the other lane. “Not necessarily. Remember what Teddy—Fedor—told me? That the killings could have been staged as a threat, a message. What better way to deliver a threat than in person?”

  “That would explain why they were shot with their own pistols,” Kaz said. “The killer could then make a chilling threat; cooperate or die by your own weapon.”

  “You do have a clarity about what makes a productive threat, Baron,” Sidorov said. “Quite an imagination.”

  “You don’t want to know the kind of things I imagine, comrade,” Kaz said, his tone as icy as the Siberian snow.

  Big Mike was in his room, leg stretched out on the bed, paperback in hand.

  “You guys think you can manage without me?” he said. “I’m going a little crazy here. Wouldn’t mind a change of scenery.”

  “Bull told us,” I said. “It is a good idea to locate Max, if you can do it on one foot.”

  “Check with the military police,” Sidorov said. “He may already have gotten himself into trouble, if he didn’t desert immediately.”

  “Think he would?” Big Mike asked.

  “Max strikes me as the resourceful type,” Sidorov said. “He has some status in the criminal world, but he may have lost that due to his cooperation with the authorities. The mere fact that he is in uniform is proof of that. But he managed to get out of the prison system and secure a posting here, rather than as a frontoviki. Then be sent to Tehran. Most fortunate.”

  “Which is to say suspicious,” I said. “So be careful. When do you leave?”

  “Bull’s picking me up in ten,” Big Mike said, checking his watch. “I’m glad you came by, didn’t want to miss saying goodbye.”

  “Safe travels, my friend,” Kaz said, clasping his hand. “We will wait to hear from you.”

  “Hey, you guys ought to be able to solve this thing toot sweet, now that you’re not wasting time searching for me or carting over reading material,” Big Mike said. “Here’s the maps you left me. I couldn’t come up with anything. And the book you wanted, Billy.” Tom Sawyer, where I’d stashed Nikolin’s order.

  “I know you’ll track him down,” I said. I didn’t bother telling Big Mike to rest up or take it easy. It was more important that he feel part of the team. And he wouldn’t listen anyway.

  Bull showed up a few minutes later. The paperwork was done, and Big Mike was approved on the manifest along with the other downed aircrew.

  “It’s been easier, now that General Belov assigned an air force officer to approve the manifests and check the cargo. Drozdov still hasn’t gotten a replacement for Kopelev, otherwise it might have taken days,” Bull told us.

  “If there is an NKVD colonel coming for an inspection, he may bring his own man as a replacement, to report on Major Drozdov,” Sidorov said. “It is how things are done.”

  “No wonder Drozdov’s been on the touchy side,” Bull said. “His boss is coming, and Belov is intruding into his domain. Military politics are bad enough, but NKVD politics are something else.”

  “Brutal,” was all Sidorov had to say.

  Big Mike hobbled out to the jeep with Bull, and we waved him off. Seeing him go should have made me glad. He’d been through a lot, and I’d rest easier knowing he’d been treated in an American hospital. But it felt like a bit of home went with him. Still, I was glad he was going back without a bombload over the Third Reich.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  “What shall we do next?” Sidorov asked as we went back inside. “It will be some time before we hear of Maiya reaching Zolynia. Shall we look at those maps?”

  “Why not?” I said. I unfolded the two maps and laid them out on my bunk.

  “You did not get these at a Soviet bookstore,” Sidorov said. “They look quite accurate.”

  “They’re from the navigator on my B-17,” I said. “This one is a spare. Here we are. Poltava, in Ukraine. To the west is the Dnieper River, which I crossed in the Po-2 on our way to bomb the Germans here, in Jedlicze.”

  “Almost a thousand kilometers east,” Sidorov said.

  “Right. Then about one hundred kilometers back west, here’s Zolynia, where Nikolin was supposed to be. The front lines weren’t far from there. Then to Kozova, where Big Mike and the others were held in the Military Medical Directorate. They’d bailed out about thirty miles north of there.”

  “What of the other map?” Kaz asked.

  “Carter had this when he thought they might return via Tehran, but that wasn’t in the cards. It shows this part of Russia all the way down to northern Iran,” I said, tapping my finger on Tehran. “It even shows the rail lines headed north out of Iran into Ukraine. Probably a navigation aid.”

  “There is Tabriz,” Kaz said, pointing to a spot near the Russi
an and Turkish borders. “I recall that was the destination for the crates in the warehouse. Khazar Brothers Shipping, I think.” He looked to Sidorov for confirmation.

  “Yes, that’s correct. What could the OSS and the NKVD be shipping to Iran? Weapons, perhaps,” Sidorov said.

  “I figure those crates would be flown into Tehran,” I said. “Then, what would be the most direct route to get them to Tabriz?”

  “On a train,” Kaz said. “The same train Max is on.”

  “Once a thief, always a vor,” Sidorov said. “What could he have stolen?”

  “Wait,” I said. “Max didn’t have access. How could he have packed those crates and got himself assigned to the railroad in Iran? It’s too much.”

  “Unless he had help,” Kaz said.

  “Or, if he were forced into it,” Sidorov said. “Or maybe he did the forcing. We have nothing but more questions.”

  “Let’s take another look at the warehouse,” I said. “Maybe we missed something on those crates.”

  It was a long shot in a case that was filled with long shots. Kaz and Sidorov agreed, so we went back to Operations and knocked on Black’s door and asked him for the key.

  “Sure, sure,” he said, jumping up from his desk and hastily closing a file. “I just heard, the Bulgarian mission is on. Drozdov got the approval from Moscow.”

  “Congratulations,” I said. “Who else is going besides you and Drozdov?”

  “Hey, I said too much already. After all this time, I just couldn’t believe it,” Black said as he unlocked his file cabinet.

  “We will not be interrupting the removal of your supplies?” Sidorov said. “I would hate to interfere with your preparations.” He glanced at me, and we both wondered if Black would blow a fuse when he discovered he was missing a case of morphine.

  “No, that hasn’t started yet, don’t worry,” he said, handing over the keys. “But bring these right back, okay? I’d hate to lose them at this point.”

  “Don’t worry Major, you haven’t yet,” I said. Sidorov coughed, and I didn’t dare look at him.

  Outside Black’s office, I looked around for a vannaya. I asked Sidorov if he knew which way it was, and he pointed to the end of the corridor and said it was the last door on the right. I told them I’d be right back and headed down the hall.

  It came to me as I opened the door. The thing Kaz had noticed in the restaurant.

  Sidorov had gotten up from the table and walked straight to the stairway and went down to the restroom. He didn’t look around, didn’t ask, and from what I remembered, there was no sign.

  He’d been there before. When? Unless everyone was lying about his stretch in the labor camps, it had to have been recently. It must have been the day Kaz had arrived, the day he’d spent recovering from his flight, or from the shock of seeing Sidorov. Okay, that answered when.

  What about why?

  I thought about that on the way back to the jeep. Unfortunately, Sidorov had commandeered the driver’s seat again, and all further thoughts were of survival. It was only when he slammed on the brakes and swerved to a stop in front of the warehouse that I had a chance to whisper to Kaz, I got it.

  Men were unloading supplies from a truck at the front door, a lot with American labels. Spools of telephone cable, cans of ham, salt, flour, radios, all of it just a fraction of what flowed from American factories and traveled halfway around the world to help defeat the Nazis. Boxes were marked with red crosses, but they all contained medical instruments. No morphine.

  Upstairs, I unlocked the interior room, and switched on the lights.

  Everything was there, just as it had been. Except for the crates bound for the Khazar Brothers. They were gone.

  “I will check the truck,” Sidorov said. “They may have already taken them.”

  “Go ahead, but they would have unloaded first, then loaded the crates,” I said. “Ask them if they’ve taken anything out of here in the last few days.”

  “Damn,” I said, setting my hands on my hips. “Now we don’t even know when they were taken or what’s in them.”

  “If they were flown out, there would be a manifest,” Kaz said. “We can check with General Dawson. Tell me, what did you conclude about Sidorov?”

  “That he’d been to the restaurant before,” I said. “He was familiar with the layout. But what else did you come up with?”

  “I did not speak Russian when I was in the bookstore, so I assume the staff thought I would not understand them,” Kaz said. “After Sidorov left, the woman asked the manager if he thought the captain was satisfied. He replied that he hoped so, and that he didn’t look forward to a third visit.”

  “What’s his game?” I said.

  “There seems to be only one possibility,” Kaz said. “That he took it upon himself to follow up on your hunch about the bookstore and discovered useful information there. He then hid what he knew with a return trip under false pretenses. He’d obviously warned the manager to play along.”

  “Why not just tell you he’d gone and found nothing?”

  “He can tell I don’t trust him,” Kaz said. “This way he proves to both of us that the bookstore is a dead end. And gets himself a second decent meal. The soup was very good.”

  “Nothing in the truck,” Sidorov said, entering the room. “Anything new in here?”

  “No,” I said, walking around as if we’d been surveying the place. “Same number of morphine cases and all the other stuff looks untouched.”

  “Based on where the bodies were found, there does seem to be ample room for four people,” Kaz said, moving around to the front of the shelves and aiming his hand downward. “The two victims were made to kneel, after being relieved of their pistols. Two shots.” His hand jerked twice, simulating the handgun’s recoil. Then he turned and looked at Sidorov, his hand aimed at his chest. “Wouldn’t you agree, Captain?”

  “Yes, I would,” Sidorov said. He locked eyes with Kaz as he walked past him and knelt where the bodies had been. “I would have made the accomplice holster the pistols on the dead men. It would cement the relationship.”

  “Very good,” Kaz said. He took a step and handed over two imaginary pistols. Then he drew his Webley.

  “Wait a minute, Kaz,” I said.

  “No, no,” Sidorov said. “This is excellent. We must recreate the crime. Of course, this would be a tricky moment. The witness is stunned at what he saw and accepts the weapons meekly. But the killer must maintain control and momentum, while keeping his subject compliant. So, with a gun at my head, I replace each victim’s pistol.” He waited a second, daring Kaz to do just that.

  He did. He placed his thumb on the hammer as if to cock it.

  Sidorov raised an eyebrow. He mimed placing two pistols on the imaginary corpses and then slowly rose, his hands out at his sides.

  “I am in your power,” he said, Kaz’s Webley not a foot from his head.

  I wondered what would happen next. Kaz’s revolver did not waver.

  “You are now complicit,” Kaz said, finally holstering his Webley. “The unknown subject, I mean.”

  “Of course,” Sidorov said. “That was an impressive demonstration. The killer fired the shots, but his companion was likely the one with blood on his hands.” He made a washing motion with his hands, turning away from Kaz.

  “That bound him to the killer,” I said. “It explains a lot.”

  “We may assume Lieutenant Kopelev stumbled across something he was not meant to see,” Sidorov said.

  “And Sergeant Morris?” I asked.

  “Perhaps he refused to go along with the scheme Kopelev discovered,” Kaz said, his hand still resting on the butt of his revolver.

  “Morris also spoke some Russian,” Sidorov said, walking along a shelf stacked high with explosives. “He could have overheard something incriminating. Something that
cost him his life. Eavesdropping can be dangerous.”

  “Or the killer wanted something from him,” I said, wondering if Sidorov was dropping a heavy-handed hint. “Something he didn’t want to do. Or a trade he didn’t want to make. He was in the souvenir business, small-time black market stuff.”

  “Morris was part of the air transport ground crew, was he not?” Kaz said. “He may have been pressured to smuggle something aboard one of the C-47s.”

  “But the manifests and the actual aircraft are checked by NKVD,” Sidorov said. “At least they were until recently. It would be quite difficult. Remember, it was Kopelev who discovered the smuggled Polish refugee aboard one of the transport aircraft.”

  “What happened to him?” Kaz asked.

  “He was removed and taken away. You can guess what came next,” Sidorov said. “Now, are we done with our playacting here?”

  “I’m done,” I said. “Let’s see if we can track down the manifest.”

  We locked up and left in silence, the spaces between us filled with coiled tension and the hint of ready violence. I knew Kaz was on edge, unhappy with this forced arrangement. But this was the first time I’d seen Sidorov’s mask crack and reveal anything other than his cooperative and collegial persona.

  I had to remember Sidorov was only here to place the guilt on an American, or, at a minimum, deflect any blame away from a Russian. His life depended on it.

  “Kiril, would you mind checking with Doctor Mametova at the hospital?” I asked as we got into the jeep. “I’m curious if she’s gotten any morphine shipments in yet.”

  “I will ask,” Sidorov said as we started the short drive to Operations. At the end of the runway sat two trucks, more of the flatbeds with .50 machine guns. I hadn’t seen any real antiaircraft weapons, only machine guns manned by Russians. Every other airbase I’d been on had heavy stuff in sandbagged emplacements. “Any reason why you think she would?”

  “No shortage lasts forever,” I said. “Meet us in Bull’s office, and we’ll let you know what we found out about the manifest. And we can check on Nikolin’s flight back.”