Crack of Doom (6 page)

Kolodzi was still silent, his eyes narrowed to small slits. "I'd never make it by this evening," he said.

"With the pace
you
walk! Besides, when you're on the main road, you're sure to get a lift."

Kolodzi's resistance was crumbling as the first shock gave way to calm reflection, and he heard himself say: "But I just can't . . ."

"And why can't you?" Vohringer broke in. "You don't seriously think, do you, that if the partisans show up at all, they're likely to come today?" When Kolodzi made no reply he addressed Herbig: "Got a cigarette?"

"No."

Bastard, thought Vohringer, and turned back to Kolodzi; "Have
you?"

"No smoking now," Kolodzi answered absently, his brain feverishly working.

Vohringer was right, this was the only thing he
could
do. Only he must hurry, he mustn't dither about it a moment longer. He got up, picked up his rucksack, and hoisted it on to his back.

"Not more than half an hour gone," observed Herbig coldly.

Kolodzi swung round. "Let's get this quite clear," he said deliberately. "As long as we're here, there's only one person who has any say, and that person's me. It's time you got used to the different uniform—you re not in the Party now—understand?"

Herbig got up without a word and hoisted his rucksack. He said nothing as they stamped through the snow toward the houses. On the way Vohringer suddenly stopped. "What's that?"

"What's what?" asked Kolodzi, looking round.

"Up there in the wood. A house?"

Now the others noticed it too. The building Vohringer had seen was about three hundred feet above the village on the other side of the valley, and despite the darkness could easily be distinguished by its pointed gable, which peeped out above' the trees.

"Perhaps the sanatorium," said Kolodzi thoughtfully.

"A sanatorium?"

"For heart cases, I think—I remember hearing of it.

Sure to be empty now. You can't see it from down there."

"It might do for us," said Vohringer, eager for action. He stared at it in fascination; the picture excited him in a way he couldn't analyze. "Some place," he continued. "Like a castle, a snow-capped castle."

"You and your imagination," said Kolodzi. "What d'you think you'd find up there? The rooms would be so cold we'd freeze to death."

They went on. The point where they reached the village was near the edge of the wood. There was a large house, standing rather on its own; Kolodzi passed it and crossed the road before looking round. The other houses were well spaced out and on both sides of the road. Besides the houses on the road there were about a dozen more, hidden between small clumps of pines; these others had been built on both sides of the valley's steep banks, but they were sunk so deep in snow that they could hardly be seen. It looked as if the village had about eighty houses altogether.

Kolodzi made up his mind. He went to a house about thirty yards away from the big house, standing in a garden surrounded by a chest-high fence. Behind it, only a few yards further on, the wood began. He had always liked the idea of living next to a wood. The garden gate was open, and the snow in the drive had been trampled down by many boots. "Our comrades," said Vohringer with a meaningful grin.

Kolodzi stopped outside the front door. "Be careful what you jabber about," he whispered. "The locals may understand us, and we're deserters, remember." Then he knocked on the door and waited.

Inside there was complete silence. Kolodzi took a step back and glanced over the front of the house. "Give them a bang with your tommy-gun." Vohringer hammered against the door so hard that the noise reverberated through the house. A light went on behind one window, and a little later the door opened. "Damn," said a sleepy voice.

"Grüss Gott," Vohringer grunted, switching on his flashlight and shining it on the man in the doorway, who was only half dressed. He was a tall, lean man with a dark face and a long straggly beard. The light seemed to dazzle him, and he muttered a few incomprehensible words.

"We want to sleep here," Kolodzi said to him, putting his right hand on his cheek. "Sleep," he repeated in Czech.

"Nix sleep," came the sullen answer; and then in Czech: "No room."

"What's he say?" asked Vohringer.

"I can't understand him either."

"But you. . . ."

"Quiet," said Kolodzi sharply. He pushed the man aside and went into the house; the others followed him. There weren't many rooms, and they tried each in turn, ignoring the man's violent protests. "What a stink!" said Vohringer in disgust. He looked into a room half filled by two large beds. An old woman was sitting in one of them; she hastily pulled her sheet up to her neck and looked at the men in terror. "Wrong number," Kolodzi remarked, closing the door behind him. The next room looked fairly tidy. He shone his torch on the walls. "How will this do?"

Vohringer sniffed. "It stinks too," he said.

"You ought to be used to that," grunted Kolodzi. "This is where we'll stay."

There was a large tiled stove; when Kolodzi put his hand on it, he almost burned his fingers. Around it was a wide bench stretching as far as the window, under which there was a heavy table. Among the room's other furniture was an old, brightly painted chest and a spinning wheel. On the walls, in rough frames with much of their gilt flaking off, hung the images of saints, whose round faces smiled out through the dusty glass.

Kolodzi lit an oil lamp. Without worrying about the civilian, who stood in the doorway watching their every movement, he dumped his rucksack and extracted two reserve magazines of ammunition and pushed them under his belt. His look fell on Herbig, who was standing about uncertainly. "What are you waiting for?" he asked impatiently. "You two are staying here."

"And you?" asked Herbig warily.

Kolodzi ignored him. He went over to the civilian, and asked: "Can you understand us?"

"No," the man answered.

Kolodzi laughed and looked at Vohringer. "Did you get that?"

"I'll say I did. He's even stupider than he looks."

The man stared at them in fury. Suddenly he turned and left the room.

"That got rid of him," said Vohringer. "He understands every word."

"Looks like it." Kolodzi lowered his voice. "So you must be careful when you talk to each other."

"Perhaps he's one of them."

"We'd never have that much luck. But hell certainly know if there are partisans in the place, and that's what matters." He slung his tommy-gun over his shoulder. "I don't want either of you to leave the house. When I come back, we'll see how things go."

"Where are you going?" said Herbig.

"Just for a walk," Kolodzi answered coolly. His eyes met Herbig's, who was still leaning against the stove, a cigarette hanging at the corner of his mouth. He hadn't taken off his coat, and his pack also stood by him ready to hand. I should have brought someone else, thought Kolodzi again: Herbig's obstinate and unpredictable, it's a risk leaving these two alone together. A warning voice registered faintly inside him.

He straightened up, and the other two watched him walking to the door, tall and supple. "If I'm not back by tomorrow morning," he said over his shoulder, "go to Schmitt at Szomolnok." Then he was gone.

CHAPTER

3

Andrej Zarnov, leader of the group which had captured the general, had not been a partisan from the start. Living on a tiny farm in Oviz with his father Jozef and his sister, Margita, he had long ago lost touch with his brother Pavol, a lawyer in Prague and a strong Czech nationalist. In 1941 Pavol was shot for trying to throw a bomb in a German general's car. Andrej was comparatively Little affected by this, unlike old Jozef, who took his elder son's death very hard. He would like to have given the rest of his life to the farm and his two surviving children, but the solace they could provide him was very short-lived; Margita indeed had long been a source of anxiety to him.

Before the war Margita had worked in the sanatorium at Oviz, where rich men from Prague and Brno came to take cures for their over-fatted hearts and to recover from their latest
affaires.
There Margita had met a fine young gentleman from Roznava, who stayed in the sanatorium a few weeks every year and who had promised to marry her; but one day he suddenly disappeared, and was never heard from again. Since then Margita Zarnov had become little better than a tart—so people said—who slept with a different "patient" every night. So old Jozef was almost glad when the Germans marched in and cleared the sanatorium of its occupants; but even then things with Margita had gone no better. She was still a beauty, and there were plenty of young men in Oviz and Svedler who had an eye on her; only she would have nothing to do with them, and spent all her time plotting and planning with Andrej and Nikolash, the Russian whom Andrej had brought into the house.

Nikolash had demanded Jozef s room, saying contemptuously: "The old boy can sleep in the stable"; soon he treated the whole house as if it were his own. Jozef was getting too old to work on the farm, which he saw going to rack and ruin, but he had to be satisfied if Margita still cooked his meals for him, and if she and Andrej still gave him a bit of their company at Christmas time. He could still take pleasure in the preparations for Christmas, cutting down a pine from the wood—he had chosen a particularly big one this year—dragging it up to the house, and decorating it as in old times when his wife had still been alive. Of course Nikolash mocked at these capitalistic rites, but here at least Andrej defended his father against the arrogant and overbearing Russian.

Nikolash had come to Oviz two and a half years ago, determined to persuade Andrej that he should avenge Pavol's death by leading a partisan group as Pavol had done. "You owe it to your brother," he insisted. "We worked together for six months, and I tell you he was a hero, a great Czech."

"We're not Czechs," Andrej objected. "Mother was Austrian, and father's remained a Magyar."

"We're all brothers," Nikolash answered. "The men and women who have been subjugated by the Germans are all brothers and sisters. Do you want them to stay here forever? Think of the others. What did the Germans do to Austria, or to Hungary? Didn't you hear how their soldiers raped the women in Vienna, and in Budapest?"

Andrej shook his head. His work on the farm was hard, and he had never bothered much with what happened in the wider world. Nikolash told him more about the Germans—how they had massacred the Poles and burned up the churches in France, and showed him pictures of Russian women who had been killed by the Germans. Andrej was shocked; he had never seen such terrible pictures before. "This isn't a national war any longer," Nikolash said. "It's a crusade against evil; and anyone who hates and fears evil must do something against it, as your brother Pavol did. You're a Czech citizen, and so is your father. The land you live in gives you your bread. One day your children will live in this land, and their children will have Czech parents only. Do you want them to talk ill of you?"

"What do you want me to do?" Andrej answered; and that was how it started. Margita too made friends with Nikolash; in fact, she fell in love with him. This distressed Andrej, who was very much attached to his sister and knew she was only a diversion for Nikolash. Andrej's dislike of him grew with the easy way Nikolash spread himself in the house, and picked up in his coarse hands anything that caught his eye: their best crockery from the cupboard, old Jozef s suits, the pictures of Andrej's dead mother, and then finally Andrej's own sister.

Moreover, the longer they lived together in that house, and the nearer the front came, the less restrained grew Nikolash's talk. He ranted at the Czechs in the same breath as the Germans, calling them a miserable pack that couldn't be trusted, who didn't deserve to be liberated by the victorious Russian army. Andrej suppressed his anger. In the course of months he had become more and more convinced by Nikolash's views, and now there was no Czech in the country who desired the downfall of the Germans more fervently than Andrej. In contrast to the others, who out of patriotism became partisans, Andrej developed from a partisan into a patriot. But recently he had begun to show a shrewd independent judgment which the Russian was coming to find very tiresome. He tried to water down Andrej's newly aroused national consciousness with Marxist doctrines; but Andrej showed that in two and a half years he had absorbed practically nothing of Nikolash's views on the dictatorship of the working class. "Dictatorship sounds bad," he declared on one occasion. "We Czechs are against every dictatorship, whether it comes from the Germans or the workers. What d'you think we're fighting for?"

"You'll never be anything but a stupid yokel," Nikolash said furiously. "None of you can see beyond the dung heap in front of your own house. You people simply can't be made to listen to reason, you have to be taught a lesson first."

"What exactly do you mean by you people'?" Andrej asked, but Nikolash gave no reply. And ever since that day Andrej's suspicion had grown.

It was the day they had captured the general, when they sat together for a while celebrating with loot champagne at Zepac's house, that Nikolash said the long-awaited words: "The day after tomorrow our friends will be coming!"

His words were a bombshell. The two men sprang up, and Nikolash enjoyed their surprise, his leathery face wrinkled up into a broad grin. "I heard it an hour ago," he said cheerfully. "Why are you getting so excited? Didn't I tell you a month back that it wouldn't be long now?"

"Of course you did," muttered Andrej. He fell back on his chair, looking rather stunned. "What will happen to
us
then?" he asked after a pause.

Nikolash was rolling himself a cigarette. "You can do what you like," he answered in an indifferent voice. "In case you feel like coming with me, I'm going to Dobsina. We're starting again there. I'd be glad if a few of you came along."

"And the prisoners?" asked Andrej.

"You'll hand them over when the first of our people come."

"I thought
you
would be doing that."

"I've changed my mind. We don't know how far our divisions will advance. In case they reach Dobsina, I'll have to be there before them; otherwise the whole organization will go up in smoke. I can't even count on Pushkin now, he's got too much on his mind." Pushkin was the head of the entire organization.

"Then we might have taken the general to the others straight away," said Andrej.

"No, he's worth far too much to me," said Nikolash. "You don't catch a general every day. If he's given company, he might start getting ideas." He lowered his voice so that only Andrej could hear. "We'll take him up tomorrow."

"To the mountain?"

"Yes. And you'd better call your people together tomorrow. I've got to know who's coming with me to Dobsina. I can count on you, I suppose?"

Andrej frowned. Going to Dobsina was something he couldn't decide about on the spur of the moment. "I'll think it over," he said evasively.

Nikolash picked up a bottle, and drained it. "Best thing about the Germans, their champagne," he said, wiping his mouth. "When we get to Berlin, we won't drink anything but champagne. Let's go."

Nikolash stamped off into the darkness, and Andrej noted with satisfaction that snow was falling. He turned to Zepac, a tiny, gnome-like figure of a man with the belligerent air of a small fighting cock.

"You were very quiet," Andrej said.

"You know why," Zepac answered. He had had a grudge against Nikolash ever since Nikolash had called him a miserable Slovak yokel. "I'll be glad when we're rid of him," he added. "Think I'm going with him to Dobsina? I wouldn't dream of it, what should I do there? I've got a wife and children here. Let the others carry on."

"We're not free yet."

"Free!" Zepac laughed. "What is free? Certainly not what
you
imagine. You're a Czech, but we Slovaks want something different."

"Perhaps you want the Germans," mocked Andrej.

"Oh shut up. You know we don't want Germans
or
Czechs. Why d'you think I've been fighting against the Germans?"

"Well, why
have
you, seeing that your Tiso is all for them?"

"He's not our Tiso. Tiso's working for the Germans and the Hungarians, not for us. So shut up about Tiso," he shouted, and disappeared into the house.

Andrej walked on smiling, remembering all the times he had bickered with Zepac on this subject. Zepac didn't know what he wanted, in fact he only joined the partisans, according to Kubany, so as to impress his wife, who wore the trousers at home. Still, he was a good man with a tommy-gun, and Andrej was satisfied with him.

But that reminded Andrej that they wouldn't need tommy-guns any more: no tommy-guns and no organization. The thought was so painful he felt like crying, and he trudged through the snow toward Elizabeth's house hardly noticing where he was going. He had never realized it would mean so much to him, but of course it wasn't surprising. As time went by he had become a leading figure in the local partisan activities.

It was a well-planned organization, and much bigger than Andrej had at first supposed; all its men were chosen with great care. Andrej had picked
his
section from Oviz and two neighboring villages; they were supposed to take prisoners so that Pushkin, in DobSina, could supply his contacts in Prague with exact information about each new division the Germans moved up to the front through Kosice.

Until a month ago, the prisoners had been shot after questioning. Then Nikolash gave instructions that those with the rank of captain and up should instead be taken to a safe hideout. The place chosen was a hut in a remote wooded valley northwest of Szomolnok, which was guarded by four reliable men from Kosice; it could also be used as a reserve base should things become too hot in Oviz. Nikolash, however, had been anxious to take extra precautions, so he and Andrej built a strong log cabin near the highest mountain peak in the vicinity; it was extremely defensible, and they brought up enough arms and ammunition to give them a breathing-space in any emergency. They did not tell the others about it, because, said Nikolash, "They'd be the first to betray us if their necks were in danger— I know this rabble." Nikolash didn't know that in less than a week Margita had wormed the secret out of her brother.

Going straight to Margita's room, Nikolash lit the lamp, went over to the bed and called her name. The pillows moved, as a slim face appeared with dark tousled hair and black eyes which blinked at him sleepily. "Nikolash!" she sat up with a start. "Is Andrej back?"

"Yes. With his woman, I think. Come on over." He went into the next room, where he took off his shoes. Margita came in. She had only a nightgown on and sat down on his knees. "Did you get the general?"

"Yes."

"Andrej’s a good man," she said proudly.

Nikolash smiled. "It wasn't very difficult. The Germans are stupid as geese. Aren't I a good man?"

"Show it."

He pulled her nightgown up over her knees. "Like this?"

"Yes."

"Or like this?"

"Like that too."

He laughed heartily and put her back on her feet. "I'm hungry," he said.

"You pig!" exclaimed Margita in disappointment. "You think of nothing but eating and drinking." She leaned over his shoulder. "Do you still love me?"

"And howl"

"Show it."

"Let me eat first."

"No, show me straight away." She bit his ear.

"You little bitch. Let me alone, or. . . ."

"Or what?" He did not answer, and she took a step back. "Nikolash!"

"Yes."

"Look this way." He turned around and saw that her nightgown was on the floor. "Am I beautiful?" she asked.

"Your legs are."

"Nothing else?"

"Your breasts are."

"You've got another woman," she said angrily.

He wiped his greasy fingers on his trousers and laughed. "Any objections?"

She ran toward him. "If you've got another woman, I’ll kill you."

"You will?" He put his huge hands round her throat. "One squeeze, and you're dead."

"Let me go."

"You see!"

He sat down and she climbed back onto his lap and said: "It occurred to me this afternoon, you've never told me why you aren't married."

"Women marry, men love. Like this." She groaned beneath his hands. "Nikolash. . . ." He carried her over into her room and threw her on to the bed.

Afterward Nikolash returned to his room, took a half-filled bottle out of the wardrobe, put it to his mouth, and drained it. Then he stared pensively at the ceiling. He had a lot to think about. Moving the organization wasn't going to be easy, he told himself, and he had to decide which of the men to take with him. Krasko's men were out. They were to blow up the German HQ tonight. That was the last job they were to get from Nikolash, though they didn't know it yet. Even old Orid Krasko didn't know. He couldn't take more than a few men from Kosice, because the Germans had a field Gestapo at Dobsina and a lot of new faces there would attract attention. Besides, Orid Krasko might well have a foot in both camps, he used to sympathize with the Germans—even had his daughter running round with a German soldier.