Tin Sky (46 page)

Bernoulli nodded a greeting. “Congratulations, Major Bora.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Quite an accomplishment. The Air Force captain I was standing behind must be your brother. He’s my old
Freikorps
colleague Sickingen’s son, isn’t he? Looks very much like you.”

“Yes, we take after our mother.” The day, with its tensions and sense of unfinished business, was taking on a stranger and stranger form. Bora stated the obvious, something he did only when he felt insecure. “It’s quite a coincidence meeting you, Dr Bernoulli.”

Arms relaxed, the military judge kept his hands clasped before his person – a professorial or priestly stance. “Less than it seems. You were in Kiev before; you should know I have some errands here.” (The green ravine by the cemetery, like a scar in the land.) “
Veritas liberabit vos
.”

Einsatzgruppe
C,
Sonderkommando
4a. End of September 1941. Bora looked beyond the judge to the spot where his brother stood full of laughter among colleagues like his own positive, sunny double. “Truth doesn’t set us free at all.”

“Quite the contrary, in fact. But we can’t ignore it.” In his unadorned field uniform, Bernoulli cut an ordinary figure compared with his highly decorated equals in rank. “It goes without saying that I’m not broadcasting that the ravine at Babi Yar, so visible from the air, is the reason for my presence in Kiev. Let’s say I love award ceremonies.”

Did it mean the judge had completed his investigation in Kharkov, and was backtracking towards Germany after the scent of other reports? His evasiveness did not invite questions about future plans, so Bora refrained from enquiries. He did say, however, “Notwithstanding a serious setback, I hope to be able to report to Colonel Bentivegni my preliminary findings about the matter which, in your words, I was ‘encouraged to look into’.”

Lieutenant Colonel von Salomon was approaching with an army photographer, no doubt to have his picture taken alongside Bora. After all, the 161st ID was Regiment
Gothland
’s parent unit. With an indifferent air Bernoulli made a sidestepping move, but not before a last quick exchange. “Does it mean you’ve discovered who killed Tibyetsky?”

“And Platonov.”

“And can you prove it?”

“No.”

That evening there was no avoiding an official dinner, after which Bora closeted himself to phone the chiefs of German
and Ukrainian police. Not altogether a waste of time, as Major Stunde had a German witness who’d seen Arnim Weller heading
away
from the train station shortly after 8 a.m. Lattmann’s “man in Kiev”, on the other hand, called at the Europa and sat with him until late.

Close to midnight, climbing the stairs to retire, Bora felt slightly less pessimistic about the chances of securing the army medic for interrogation.

As for Peter, he’d brought along a book of French poetry, Duckie’s gift, and was reading in bed when his brother joined him.

“I’d never read this fellow Villon before,” he said. “He’s not bad at all.”

Bora removed the Knight’s Cross from around his neck and draped it by its ribbon across the dresser’s mirror. He started taking off his uniform. “Is it ‘The Ballad of the Hanged Men’, or ‘The Ladies of Yesteryear’?”

“Don’t know: this one’s called ‘The Regrets of the Pretty Armour-Maker’.” Peter reading poetry was as novel as Peter putting a cigar in his mouth. “Do you mind if I smoke? I know you quit.”

“Go ahead.” While his brother lit the cigar (the seasoned pilot’s trademark), Bora glanced at the poem, which he’d read years before. “Les regrets de la belle Heaulmière” bemoaned the loss of youth and beauty, and the poet’s final comment was, “That’s how we do regret the good old days, / Among us fools… ” Four hundred years hadn’t made much difference to regret, apparently, or to the objective foolishness of regretting.

After a shower and a shave, Bora prepared to go to bed. Sitting up with the book in his lap, Peter smoked – Russian brand, Khan’s aromatic tobacco! – and watched him slip under the sheet in his underwear. “What happened to your knees and elbow?”

“Nothing: a mishap with the car. Don’t tell our mother.”

“I won’t. Remember when we swore we’d never wear pyjamas?”

“As you see, I still don’t. Do you?”

“Well, Duckie asked that I wear them at home. I suppose Benedikta lets you do without altogether, lucky dog. She’ll change as soon as she’s expecting.” Peter put out the cigar, laid the book on the bedside table and waited until Bora turned the light off. After a moment, he added, “Duckie and I mean to start working on the next one come Christmas. We plan on five, like her family.”

Bora smiled in the dark. “Well, you’re on your way. Dikta and I will have some catching up to do.”

“It’ll be fun.”

“It’ll be fun.”

“You can probably imagine it all already. Grandmother Ashworth-Douglas says you’ve got the second sight, that it’s the Scots in you.”

“I thought the Scots in me only made me hold my drink well.”

This wing of the hotel was taken over by the award recipients and others who’d participated in the ceremony. Some of them were retiring now: there followed the footfall of boots on runners, the opening and closing of doors. They were talking loudly after the many toasts and after-dinner drinks. At one point Kempf must have made his appearance, because they went suddenly quiet, and then it was a sequence of moderate
Gute Nacht, Herr General
s up and down the corridor.

Bora had nearly finished constructing an elaborate set of reasons why he could share Stunde and Pfahl’s trust that they would catch Weller, when Peter, whom he thought fast asleep, broke the silence from across the room.

“It’ll be all right, won’t it? For you and me and the girls, I mean.”

Bora’s heart shrank at the words. It felt suddenly small and hard like a marble in his chest, just as easy to toss and play with, or to lose. “What are you talking about, knucklehead? Of course it will.” Behind the cheerful reply, he realized he’d seldom felt so sad. All evening he’d fought against the feeling, telling himself it was the let-down of losing Weller, or the anticlimax after the
ceremony, or the coming of fever. It was not. It was not, and he wasn’t about to look into it, because he had no second sight and because he was afraid. “It’ll be all right for all of us, Peter.”

“Good night, then.”

“Good night.”

FRIDAY 28 MAY

In the morning, with General Kempf, who wanted to fly back immediately to Poltava, the brothers said a hurried goodbye on the hotel steps.

“Take care, Peter.”

“You too.”

Bora was tempted by a physical, aching desire to exchange a hug – unusual for one so reserved – but refrained from it, lest Peter worried. Obscurely, and denying it to himself, he knew it was the last time they would see each other in life. Now and throughout the following week, in order to function, he repeated
The one who will make it back has to be Peter, so all is well
to himself until he became wholly convinced of it. They would talk by phone once again, and again never mention their mutual affection. Ten days from today it would be up to Bora, alerted to a German plane wreck north of Bespalovka, to discover how war
really
left its mark.

11

28 MAY, AFTERNOON, MEREFA

By midday, having safely landed in Kharkov, Bora drove von Salomon to divisional headquarters. There, he heard the unwelcome news that an SS
Totenkopf
battalion had pre-empted his plans to reconnoitre Krasny Yar, and as of dawn on Thursday had been engaged in the operation. Obviously no proprietary claim could be staked on missions. All the same, the timing and choice of target put him on alert. With only a few days left before his time would be absorbed by readying the regiment for full-scale action, Bora chafed at the bit at having once more arrived too late. Units of the 161st ID encamped in the area reported the passage of troops, shooting and random explosions in the woods. The latter detail set Bora off.
If there’s a God
,
the snooping bastards have stepped into our own or Ivan’s minefields; more likely, they cleared their path that way, or blew up something in the Yar: what, and what for?

The use of firearms confirmed the presence of hostiles (although not necessarily, with
Totenkopf
); the blasts could point to a crude mode of getting at whatever might be concealed within the woods. It remained to be seen whether the SS were operating according to routine and had incidentally discovered occupants and materiel, or had been given the specific charge of seeking both at Krasny Yar.

“Do we know who authorized the operation?” Bora asked von Salomon’s paper-pushing lieutenant.

“As far as we know, sir, it was planned by SS Oberstgruppenführer
Max Simon himself, and entrusted to the 3rd Panzer Engineer Battalion. Our HQ was informed after the operation was under way.”

“Why the armoured engineers?”

“Don’t know, sir.”

Bora had seen members of
Totenkopf
serving as a fire brigade in Kharkov, but knew their reputation for ruthlessness. Simon headed them now that their founding father, General Eicke, had been shot down and killed in the spring. Officially bound for Bespalovka and his regiment to follow up on Thermopylae, Bora left for Borovoye directly from divisional headquarters.

Lattmann couldn’t add much information. The SS had maintained radio silence and travelled quickly to the operation zone.

“Would you say in a hurry?”

“I would say they went in seeming to know exactly what they were doing.”

“Not the way you reconnoitre.”

“Hardly. Trucks and armoured vehicles went by; I could see them from here. I keep informants at Vodyanoy: we’ll see what they’ve got to say.”

“Vodyanoy? That’s not far from the Kalekina homestead.”

“Right. It isn’t healthy for my sources to move while
Totenkopf
is around. They’ll bring information as soon as the SS clear out.”

Bora spoke with his eyes on the map. “That might be too late for details. I met the Kalekin widows; there’s an excuse for me to go there. And it is on the way to Bespalovka. Hell, the farm is six kilometres from here; I could
walk
.”

“Don’t even think of it. You’d appear way too suspicious on foot if they saw you. What business do you have with the widows?”

“Their sons ended up in the Yar. If I’m lucky, they and others like them are the reason for
Totenkopf
’s raid. If I’m not, I’ve blown my chance of understanding why Khan and Platonov were done in.”

The widows were not at the farm. Bora parked the GAZ
vehicle in the tractor shed – added when the place had been collectivized – under a giant sign that read “Friendship of the Peoples” on the wall. Chaff flew with the lightness of dead insects as his boots swept the dirt floor. A ladder led to a mezzanine where implements and spare parts had been stored, now empty. He climbed there and risked falling through the disconnected planks as he picked his steps to a small window, through which the south-western edge of Krasny Yar should be visible.
Through a glass, darkly
… The glass panes, opaque with dust, were in the way. Bora unceremoniously knocked them out with the grip of his handgun. He had to crouch to look through the low opening, balancing on the rickety flooring without being able to hold on, busy focusing his field glasses.

Beyond the one-floored sheds of the farm compound, five Opel trucks sat at the grassy threshold of the woods. Against a parched, tin-white sky, the operation proper must be drawing to a close; Bora had got here just in time. The Death’s Head unit was regrouping to leave. Non-coms led them, and the most interesting part was that wooden crates (Bora counted four, but there might be more already loaded) were being hauled towards one of the trucks. From where he was, they resembled the ammunition box he’d seen during his survey with Nagel. Judging by the effort needed to lift them onto the vehicle, they weighed a great deal. No attempt was made to open them, much less look inside. In fact, one of the non-coms made sure the locks were still fast before allowing the containers on board.

At once, Bora was in a hurry to get going. Most of the unpaved country lanes in this area ran roughly north–south. Whether the
Totenkopf
engineers meant to head south toward Smijeff (and the railroad) or north to Kharkov, they first had to travel the only narrow track, white with powdery dust, which linked Kalekina to Vodyanoy. Covering the small distance to Vodyanoy before the SS started out, and waiting there to see which direction they took, became imperative. Bora slid down the ladder, backed the GAZ out of the shed to the threshing
floor and drove west from the farm, crossing the open fields at his peril to keep from raising telltale dust on the lane. At Vodyanoy he barely had time to find an unseen lookout point behind a barn. Once the trucks reached the crossroads, the first four without hesitation continued to Borovoye (and the highway to Kharkov); the last truck turned left and motored south toward Smijeff and its railroad junction. Bora paused a moment longer, thinking. With the Donets dividing German and Russian lines, Smijeff was nothing but a rather exposed terminal for the railway from Kharkov: either the truck and its contents would stop in Smijeff, or else the intention was to load the material and ship it by rail with a higher degree of safety to the district capital. The distance from Vodyanoy to Smijeff being at least four times the distance to Borovoye, Bora let the SS trucks go their separate ways and then hightailed to Lattmann’s radio shack. There he contacted his regiment. He dispatched Nagel to the Smijeff rail station – twelve kilometres from the cavalry camp – with orders to relate whether any material was loaded by
Totenkopf
men on to a Kharkov-bound train.