The Berkut (60 page)

As Petrov had instructed, she took lunch at an open-air restaurant whose name translated as House of Exquisite Choices, which it wasn't. She ordered a small bottle of Chianti and some kind of pasta stuffed with some kind of fish that tasted heavily of garlic and iodine. As she began to eat, a hunchbacked priest entered, and after some loud and friendly conversation with the proprietor, he was shown to her table. He looked harmless, even feeble, until she saw his eyes as he looked down at her. "Signorina, I beg your pardon, but the restaurant is crowded today. May I join you?"

T alia glanced around. There were several empty tables. "As you wish, Father."

The old man struggled into a chair and hooked his wooden cane on the edge of the table. "It's hot," he said, wiping the perspiration from his neck with a white linen napkin. For several minutes he was besieged by waiters, all stopping by to make small talk and to seek his blessing, which he mumbled quickly and flashed at them with a wave of his hand.

By the time the priest's food arrived hers was cold. Pogrebenoi watched as he attacked his meal with enthusiasm, scattering bread crumbs on the tablecloth and covering his chin with red sauce. As he was finishing his meal it seemed to dawn on him that she was not eating. "You don't like this food?"

"It's too cold to tell."

He tapped his chest lightly.
"Mea maxima culpa,"
he said between belches. "My fault." He blotted his mouth with another napkin. "I was under the impression that you Russians like your food cold." The smile that crossed his face told T alia she had made her contact
.

84 – April 3, 1946, 9:00 P.M.

Ezdovo sat with his weapon across his lap and his back against Bailov, whose breathing told the Siberian that he was already asleep.

They were on a wide bed of slate the color of cold ashes. Below the rock formation a narrow stream cascaded against the bank and raced off in descent. The stream's pressure had eaten into the rock wall and created a place for an egg-shaped vortex of gurgling black
water. The two Russians had a full view of the stream and its gorge. No one would be able to get down to their level without considerable care and noise, especially at night. Even in daylight they had found the slate difficult to descend, but it had been worth the effort. Their haven was safe; they would be able to sleep. Their tracking was limited to daylight hours. When darkness came they needed to find a spot whose natural characteristics would alert them to impending trouble so that they both could sleep. They could not afford to sap their energy by staying awake, so the site of each camp was critical.

As Bailov's rhythmic breathing began to affect his own, Ezdovo stared down into the black eddy below and chewed a piece of dried beef. Its only flavor was that of smoke, but it activated his saliva and expanded his stomach to take the edge off his appetite. So far the tracking had been strenuous, but he relished the solitude of the trail and the companionship of Bailov. It was not a matter of conversation; they seldom talked. Rather, it was more the comfortable silence that friends share. Their energies were dedicated to following three Germans. Usually they used hand signals to communicate. Occasionally they made eye contact or grunted. True friendship needed few words.

Ezdovo let his mind turn inward, to the past, to his youth. He was on a grassy bank above the wide, swirling Amur River. Below, on a gravel bar, a large black bear was wading in the shallows pawing for pink salmon. He watched the animal, feeling an urge growing inside him. It was not something he could verbalize, but he felt a kinship with it, its black fur sleek and shiny, a large white diamond on its wide throat. After a while he slung his rifle, stagger-stepped down the steep embankment and waded out toward the finger of gravel. The animal watched him approach, lifted its snout into the wind and caught his scent, then returned to eating the struggling forty-pound salmon pinned under its paw. When he reached the bar, Ezdovo walked toward the bear, which stood at the other end, swaying slightly from side to side. Eventually it forgot its food and tensed at his approach. It dropped its head and blinked repeatedly, trying to focus the man in its myopic vision, sniffing to inhale the scent. Its mouth opened and slammed shut, the sudden snap of its teeth warning the intruder to back off, the sound echoing ominously along the riverbed. Then it backed up until its hindquarters were in the water, dug its thick forepaws into the loose gravel and stood, waiting. Its ears were flat against its skull, the hump on its back quivering as its muscles contracted and released. A deep growl rumbled inside it as Ezdovo stopped no more than a pace away. Suddenly the animal stopped breathing, its sides fully expanded with trapped air. It woofed quietly, then again, and rose to its hind legs.

Ezdovo stepped forward and wrapped his arms around the beast, hugging it tightly. The bear continued to woof quietly, turning as Ezdovo pivoted, saliva streaming from its jaws. After a few seconds Ezdovo released it and stepped back, placed the flat of his hand on the animal's snout and held the touch.

Ezdovo remembered the event as if it had happened only moments before. His father had told him that a Russian of the Siber must come to manhood by embracing a bear. For each man of the wilderness the beast was different and the embracing took different forms. For Ezdovo it had been a dance with a wild bear on a gravel bed in the Amur River, the music provided by salmon leaping and crashing over the rocks.

As a boy in his village near Lake Baikal, Ezdovo had listened to the old men tell their histories. Though he could read, few older people had such skill; instead, they relied on their memories and those of others to pass down history and the lessons of their clan.

The first Ezdovo to see Siberia had been Yatchak Ezdovo, who rode with the Cossack Yermak in 158 I. The conquerors of the capital city of Siber had taken Uzbek and Yakut girls and what meager wealth the city had to offer, burned the dwellings and left the heads of Siber's leaders on stripped pine stakes as a warning to others who might consider opposing the Cossack armies of Ivan the Terrible.

In the 1700s, Gelmut Ezdovo was banished, along with other Cossack leaders, to Siberia by Peter the Great. From the loins of Gelmut flowed the seed of generations of Ezdovos. Though he did not know the precise number of generations between Gelmut and himself, Ezdovo felt the warmth of the blood tie. The Ezdovo clan proliferated and spread out across the wastes of Siberia. They were hunters, fishermen, explorers, soldiers, policemen, priests, even scholars. All Ezdovos demonstrated fierce pride in the family name, an independent spirit and integrity marked by a sense of duty and absolute honesty. It was said among them that their blood was the cement of eastern Russia.

Though the family's history was interwoven with Russian politics, in his early years Ezdovo had been apolitical. He was eight when the Great Revolution took place, but it had little effect on his village, for on the eastern frontier even those who claimed royal blood lived hand to mouth. He was still learning his way through life, tending to his traps, sneaking into the beds of wenches and willing wives alike. He preferred the solace of his steep mountains, blue lakes and verdant forests. At the government fur-trading center on the Lena River, his pelts commanded the highest price among traders from Moscow.

Ezdovo's memory was deep and filled with clear images. He'd taken animals in numbers that defied recall, yet he could remember the season's take for every trapline he'd ever run and what he had taken in each trap, including the distinguishing features of each animal.

Several years after the Revolution there was a move to split Siberia from Russia. Legally and politically the area had no status; it was not a state, only a name. But some who saw what had happened in the Soviet west were determined to repeat these events. Factories were built, towns grew, people had work. It was time to fuse east and west, some thought; others disagreed. Though he thought of himself as Siberian, Ezdovo's roots were Russian. To him the two were the same, and he had no patience for those who would make them separate. But for a while the politics of grand scale had little impact in his village beside the lake. His family debated the situation with their neighbors, but no effort was made to become involved. Whatever might happen ultimately would have no effect on them, they felt; they were too small and far way for such things to matter.

They were wrong. Eventually the conflict came to them. Russian soldiers appeared one day in the village asking for Ezdovo. An Uzbek named Muvlovlovich was one of the political leaders of the revolt that had been crushed in the Siber. Most of his followers and confederates had been captured and executed, but Muvlovlovich himself had evaded the authorities and fled north to the Lena River. Ezdovo was barely twenty, but his reputation was widespread, and so when the Russian forces inquired about suitable guides, he had been suggested. They wanted him to help them locate the criminal and he agreed, more out of interest in the chase than from any political conviction.

Ezdovo led the soldiers up the Lena, eventually traveling more than eight hundred kilometers before they caught Muvlovlovich and his pitiful remnant of counterrevolutionaries. During their months together, he came to respect the commitment of the Russian soldiers, so when he returned he sought entry into the party and was accepted. Thereafter it mattered not whether he hunted man or beast. No trail, fresh or ancient, could elude him; when it came to tracking he had no equal.

So it had been that one day Ezdovo found himself before a small man in black with a hawklike countenance and a quiet, almost feminine voice. It was not immediately clear what Petrov's offer entailed, but he recognized something deep and compelling in the little man, and agreed to become part of the Special Operations Group. It was 1942 when he left his beloved mountains and traveled west to Moscow, first on horseback, then by train, and he had not been back since.

Sitting now in the stillness of the Thuringian Forest, Ezdovo thought about his German quarry. No man since Muvlovlovich had moved as much like an animal as this trio they now hunted. Since picking up the trail, the two Russians had double-timed their way south through a maze of ridges and valleys. The Germans had a lead, but even Ezdovo found it difficult to estimate how much. Their objective was to make contact with their quarry and stay with them, but the Germans were crafty, and now it seemed that they were no closer than when they had set out. Brumm knew what he was doing. Repeatedly Ezdovo had found himself ensnared by blind leads and apparent trail ends, each time forcing him into time-consuming backtracking or spirals in order to pick up the trail again. It was both frustrating and invigorating; he loved the hunt. It was clear that the German was an expert at using the terrain to his advantage. He knew how to disguise their passage, and even in areas where this was difficult, he found ways to give them pause. As the days wore on, Ezdovo found his admiration for Brumm growmg.

Today had been the most difficult of all. The Germans had gone through a boulder-strewn area, perfect for a directional switch. The two Russians spent the entire afternoon methodically searching in ever
increasing circles, until Bailov finally located a small patch of gray moss marked with a faint heel print. They could not make out the Star of David, but there was a depression in the right place and they knew it was their prey. "It seems they're headed east," he said, hunkering over the sign and looking in that direction, as if he might be able to see them ahead.

"So it appears. But he's not an ordinary man. He's confused us all the way."

"The print is east of where we lost them and it seems to point east, if a single print can point to anything."

"East toward our troops. It doesn't make sense." "Perhaps they don't know."

Ezdovo growled low. "They know. I don't know how, but their path south has been surgically precise. They have information-a map perhaps. They know where we are and where the Americans are."

"If so, we wouldn't expect them to turn east. It's a surprise. Who would expect it?"

The Siberian smiled. "Brumm understands the psychology of the hunt. They shouldn't go east; therefore they must go east. Yet to go east is to invite capture, and so they can't. See how devious he is, how subtle in his thinking? He gives us only one clue. It's nothing at all, but he knows we will be tempted to fall for it because it's all we have. You see? He gave this to us. The clue says east; we'll go west."

Eventually they located the new trail. It was westward, as Ezdovo had guessed, a swing of nearly ninety degrees off their southern course. Before nightfall they had found the slate outcropping and stopped to rest.

Now Ezdovo felt sleep crawling through his limbs, making them heavy; unconsciousness beckoned him, and he gave in to it. The face of Talia came to him. He saw her black hair, her clear brown eyes, and her scent warmed him as he fell asleep with an aching heart.

85 – April 3, 1946, 9:30 P.M.

Over the fall and winter Father Nefiore settled comfortably into the routine of the Wetter parish. The old priest, Father Jarvik, had been born in the Bohemian Forest near western Czechoslovakia. Although he was almost seventy, the old man was robust and in possession of a sharp mind, a keen wit and a venomous tongue for his parishioners who strayed out of line. His directives were followed without question, and in return for their loyalty his flock reaped enormous benefits. Father Jarvik seemed to be an inexhaustible source of clothing, food and tools. When a parishioner was in trouble with the authorities, he was there to intercede; when family problems arose, he handled them.