Beautiful Assassin (13 page)

Down at the harbor we saw them frantically loading ships with vehicles and munitions and other matériel. It was obvious now that the higher-ups considered the battle for Sevastopol utterly lost. Most of us hoped that he or she would be one of the lucky few to get a spot on a ship leaving this hellhole. There were some who even purposely wounded themselves so they could get transferred out on a hospital ship. Though even that wasn’t entirely without risk. Fewer and fewer ships were getting through the heavy bombing by the Luftwaffe over the Black Sea. We’d all heard of the sinking of the
Armenia,
a Red Cross ship carrying wounded and civilians, near Gurzuf. Over five thousand went to a watery grave.

Rumors, as they always do in war, circulated as to what would happen to those left behind. The optimists said there would be reinforcements coming from the Soviet Forty-fourth or Forty-seventh up north, and that we just had to hold out until they could reach us. Others
said that the navy was sending transport ships to evacuate the remaining troops. After all, they couldn’t just sacrifice the hundred thousand remaining troops, could they, this despite the fact that we knew that in Kiev they had let six hundred thousand troops fall into German hands? Everyone wondered how long we could hold out, with supplies and ammunition and food growing short. Despite hearing about units fighting to the last man, word also spread of entire battalions, sometimes even regiment or brigade levels, surrendering to the Germans. Soldiers debated whether it was better to die fighting or to take their chances as prisoners, and many had already written letters home saying their good-byes to loved ones.

After an intense day of fighting, what remained of my company had pulled back yet again and taken up position in the wreckage of a marine engine factory down near the quay. Though the roof had caved in, most of the walls were still relatively intact, providing us with enough cover to dig in and make a last-ditch defense. Not fifty meters behind us was the sea. The stench of burning oil hung heavily in the air from a tanker ship that the Luftwaffe had hit out in the harbor. Dense black smoke drifted in, stinging our eyes.

A half-dozen soldiers from my unit had dug in behind what had once been a loading dock of the factory. From there, two hundred meters to the east we could see where the Germans had taken refuge in a bombed-out building, and beyond along the hills overlooking the water.

To our rear, several four-wheel GAZ vehicles drove past, bouncing over the craters in the road. They passed close enough that we could see the officers inside. They avoided our gazes. All were being chauffeured down toward the docks and rescue.

“Sons of bitches,” Drubich complained, waving a fist in the air. He was crumbling cigarette butts he’d scrounged from off the ground and using the tobacco to roll himself a cigarette. For paper he used propaganda leaflets the Germans had begun dropping from the skies, telling us in bad Russian that if we surrendered we would be treated fairly, be given food and vodka.

“If you could save your neck, wouldn’t you do the same?” replied a soldier named Ivanchuk, a big man with a pink, swollen face like the udder of an unmilked cow. He was loading a captured
Maschinengewehr
.

“We have to stay and die, while those bastards get evacuated,” said Drubich.

“They could give a shit about us,” Ivanchuk scoffed.

“I heard the old man wouldn’t even ransom his own son,” said another soldier named Polevoi, a signalman.

The old man, of course, was Stalin. His son had been captured by the Germans, and Stalin had refused to trade a captured German soldier for him.

“So why would he care what happens to us?” added Ivanchuk.

Drubich glanced over his shoulder, then in an undertone said, “We could surrender.”

“Do you know what the krauts do to those they capture?” replied Ivanchuk. He made his right index finger into the barrel of a gun, put it to his temple, and said, “Bang!”

“Kill all of us? I don’t believe it,” countered Drubich.

“Believe it.”

“I have a wife and baby. I want to see them again. Even the krauts can’t be such monsters.”

“They’re worse than monsters,” scoffed Ivanchuk. “And if you’re not afraid of them, you’d better be afraid of our own side. At least for your family’s sake.”

“What’re you talking about?”

“Those that surrender, their families
fttt
,” he said, making a slashing motion across his throat.

“What?” cried Drubich.

“They’re sent to the camps. Or worse.”

“That’s bullshit.”

“It’s true. So before you go surrendering, Drubich, you ought to think about that wife and kid of yours.”

“Let Roskov catch you talking like that, Drubich,” said Polevoi, “he’ll shoot you even before the Nazis have a chance.”

Several of the soldiers laughed nervously, that sort of hollow gallows laughter.

Lowering his voice and glancing over his shoulder, Drubich said, “And where the hell is Roskov, anyway? Has anybody seen him lately?”

“Maybe he was shot,” Polevoi joked.

“We should be so lucky,” replied Ivanchuk.

“Why should we be sacrificed?” said Drubich, his tone that of a petulant child. “Besides, how could the krauts kill a hundred thousand prisoners. They couldn’t kill that many. Not if we surrendered.” He turned toward me. “What do you think, Sergeant?”

“Nothing the Germans do anymore surprises me,” I replied.

“So we are to fight and die for those bastards?” he said, flicking his thumb toward the road where the officers had just passed.

“No, not for them,” I replied. “We fight for ourselves.”

“Why the hell should we?”

“Because no one else will, that’s why.”

“So they can give you more medals, Sergeant?” Drubich said bitterly to me.

“I never wanted any medals,” I replied.

“The rest of us fight and die, and she’s the one who gets the credit.”

“All right, Drubich,” said the captain, “that’ll be enough.” He glanced over at me.

“I don’t mind fighting,” Drubich offered. “But this is crazy.”

“It’s all crazy,” said Ivanchuk. “The whole fuckin’ mess.”

“I have a family,” Drubich continued. “I don’t want to die like this.”

“Stop your fucking bellyaching,” said the Wild Boar, who had been sitting quietly a short distance away smoking a cigarette.

“I didn’t sign up to be slaughtered like cattle.”

“I told you to shut the fuck up,” grunted the Wild Boar. He pulled his Tokarev from his holster and pointed it at Drubich. “I should shoot you myself and save the krauts a bullet.”

Drubich looked warily at the Wild Boar, then at Captain Petrenko. “I was just talking.”

The Wild Boar didn’t say anything but kept the gun trained on Drubich. He had a crazed look in his eyes. For a moment I wasn’t sure whether he would do it or not.

Then Captain Petrenko said, “Put it away, Sergeant.”

Finally, the Wild Boar lowered the gun and stuffed it into his holster.

Thousands of our troops, though,
had
already made the choice to
surrender as the Germans tightened the noose around the city. I certainly didn’t want to die, but the thought of surrendering was even more abhorrent. I’d heard what the Germans did to those who surrendered, especially to women. I wasn’t sure I wanted to take the chance. Still, like the others, I felt betrayed by the Soviet high command. That they were so willing to let us all die here. And for what?

During a quiet moment, I scribbled a note to Kolya, more words tossed into the howling storm.

As I wrote these words, the distance that I felt toward Kolya seemed suddenly unimportant, even trivial. My heart welled up with emotion. I felt very much the loving wife I’d portrayed in the letter, a wife who, if the war had ended right then, would gladly have returned to her husband, would have considered myself fortunate to be able to live the rest of my days with him, sleeping beside him, reading to each other, growing old in his company. With death looming so close, everything appeared suddenly very clear. All the details of my past with Kolya came rushing back to me—his gentleness of spirit, his quiet intelligence, the way his blond hair fell into his face, the pale blueness of his eyes. How, as he left for work in the morning, he’d gently cup my face as I slept and say, “I love you, Tat’yana.” His love was something I’d taken for granted in the past. Can love sit dormant in a heart like a seed, I mused, until a moment like this, when it breaks out of its shell and begins to grow? I recall thinking then that it had taken a war for
me to realize this. Of course, the irony was that I realized this only when it was too late.

I managed to give the letter to a wounded comrade who was being evacuated by submarine.

As night fell, Captain Petrenko gathered the company together.

“I don’t have to tell you the fix we’re in, comrades,” he said in his usual even tone. “But I’ve got orders to hold this position.”

“For how long?” asked the Wild Boar.

“We are to hold it, period.”

A low grumbling began among the troops.

Finally the Wild Boar said what was on everyone’s mind. “So those fuckin’
predateli
can sneak out in the middle of the night.”

Another soldier said, “Yes, they are traitors to leave us while they scatter like chickens.”

“General Petrov should be held accountable,” a third cried.

Petrov was the general in charge of Sevastopol’s defense.

“All right, shut up,” Petrenko said. “It doesn’t do any good to whine about any of this now.”

“When can we expect reinforcements?” I asked the captain.

“There won’t be any.”

“None?”

“That’s right. Look, I don’t like this any more than you do.”

“We could attempt to break through the German lines,” offered a corporal named Timoshenko, a slight man who had the dark glossy hair of a crow.

“To where?” Petrenko replied. “The entire Crimea has fallen into German hands.”

“The only option then is surrender,” Drubich called out. There was a momentary silence, the startled sort, like that after a plate crashes to the floor while people are eating dinner. Then several soldiers followed this up with “he’s right” and “why not?” One man shouted, “Why should we just sit here and wait to be slaughtered by their Panzers?”

Petrenko looked around at the troops. “I have my orders,” he said.

“Where’s Major Roskov anyway?” one soldier shouted tentatively.

Another chimed in with “Yes, where the hell is he?”

“He’s already been evacuated,” the captain replied.

“Wouldn’t you know it,” Timoshenko cried.

Growing bolder, someone else cursed, “The gutless prick.” Then a chorus of taunts ridiculed the once-feared
chekist
officer.

“I’m in charge now,” Petrenko explained.

“Maybe Drubich’s right,” said another soldier. “To continue fighting is crazy.”

A few shouted out in agreement, while others called the group advocating surrender traitors. They went back and forth, their voices growing heated.

“All right, quiet down,” said Petrenko, raising his hands for silence. “If any soldier decides to surrender, I won’t stop him. Each of you will have to make that decision for yourselves. But I should warn you, the krauts are as likely to shoot you as not.”

That seemed to sober them. After a while the grumbling died down. One soldier, the young sniper named Cheburko, said, “We might as well die fighting the bastards.”

Several followed this with “He’s right” or “Let’s die like soldiers.”

Afterward, we sat in the growing darkness. Some cleaned their weapons or counted their rounds, while others scribbled letters by candlelight. All of us knew that we had reached the end of the line, that there would be no more retreats, no more tomorrows. That this was it. Then someone began to hum the melody for “Katyusha.” Soon others joined in and they began to sing the words:

Petrenko approached me and whispered, “A word, Sergeant.”

I followed him into a small room at the far end of the building, one that looked as if it had been a boiler room.

“They want you out,” he said.

“What do you mean ‘out’?”

“The higher-ups. They want you on the next submarine out of here.”

“Why?” I asked, though of course I knew.

“They don’t want anything to happen to you.”

“I can’t leave,” I cried. “Not now.”

I was neither a fool nor a hero. I didn’t want to stay and die. But I also didn’t want to abandon my comrades. I thought of what Drubich had said about my being given special treatment. To him and the others this would only confirm that.

“You don’t have a choice, Sergeant. It’s an order.”

“When?” I asked.

Petrenko took a long drag on his cigarette. “Some time tomorrow. A sub is to arrive. You’re to be on it.”

“What of the rest?”

He smiled sadly. “We’re fucked.”

“What if I refuse to go?”

The captain shook his head. “This comes straight from the top. Hell, anybody else would give his right arm to be out of this shit hole. But you, you want to stay.” Petrenko let out with a brittle laugh.

“I merely want to fight like everyone else.”

“Don’t worry. You’ve done more than your share of fighting.” Petrenko’s face glowed orange as he took another pull on the cigarette. He reached out and laid his hand on my shoulder. “Sometimes, Sergeant, we can serve best indirectly. They have big plans for you.”