Tin Sky (9 page)

The
Kharkov Traktorenwerk Siedlung
, a small industrial city at the edge of the city, had suffered much in the repeated battles for Kharkov. In the near dark, Scherer was waiting off Narodna Street, in front of Building G. Bora gave him back the Tank Corps suit and the rest.

“Did you have problems getting here, Jochen?”

“None, other than it was a bear loading the tank on to the damn train.”

“The convoy?”

“It’s parked around the corner. Was already here when we arrived. Not very happy; Russki fighters strafed them around Bestyudovka. No casualties, but a round barely missed the car. If you want the GAZ-61 back in Smijeff tomorrow, my men and I will go along part of the way, to rejoin our unit. Make sure you take along the trunk with the Russian’s foodstuff; he’s got all kinds of goodies in it. So what’s the Field Marshal going to do, send for the T-34 or have it disassembled here to study it?”

“He’s flying in himself in the morning, so they might work on it in Kharkov. Or in Zaporozhye.”

Scherer took a wistful look at the menacing, dark bulk filling up the hangar behind him. “It’ll take more than what we presently have to confront this model if they plan to use it in large numbers. It’s so new, the paint on it is still fresh. I wonder how many of them they’ve got in the hamper.”

“However many they have, we’ll make good use of this one. Start the tank up and follow my vehicle down Ivan Frank Street. There’s a better place to keep it for the night.”

After leaving the T-34 safely awaiting Manstein’s visit in an underground shelter on Louis Pasteur (Lui Pastera) Street, Bora decided on a hunch not to take a shortcut to Merefa through the southern districts, in case Platonov changed his mind and wanted to see him tonight. Less than two hours had gone by, but the guards at the detention centre reported that Number Five had insistently been asking for the interrogator during the past fifty minutes. Anxious as he himself was, Bora decided to let the old man dangle a little longer, and climbed to Tibyetsky’s room instead. There, he found Khan fast asleep, so he had the guard place the trunk by his bed, and walked away without waking him up.

Gleb Platonov looked like death. Grey-faced, haggard, he sat with the photograph of his relatives face down on the table. “Where was this taken?”

Other than his name and identification number, it was the only sentence Bora had ever heard him speak. “I’m not required to say,” he answered dryly.

“Who had it taken?”

“Not required to say that, either.”

“It shows this month’s date. Has to be your doing; German doing.”

“Does it?”

“I demand to know —”

“I’m not accepting demands, General.”

“I ask to know —”

Bora moved his head from side to side, an indifferent sign of refusal. Platonov must be in a state of absolute turmoil at this time. Whatever Stalin’s reason for making him believe his women were dead, right now he had no way of knowing whether they were imprisoned (they weren’t); he couldn’t even be sure they were in German hands, since the calendar in the snapshot was Russian – Bora had made a point of it. For all Platonov knew – and this must be the cruellest doubt in his mind – they could have been executed in the days since the photo was taken. Keeping the image face down was meant to lessen the unavoidable pain of enquiring about them. Bora turned it face up. There was a kind of ache for him as well in seeing them: the women were beautiful, and affected him in his own way. Platonov’s love for them was legendary; he’d reportedly tried to kill himself in prison when told of their deaths. It stood to reason that if his women were now brought forward, they were alive, and in German hands. Clear-minded logic suggested it. But Platonov might be other than clear-minded this evening. After his release, he’d fought for nearly two years in the name of a system that had stripped him of all ties and shreds of hope, forging him at last into a war machine out of his utter, infinite
lack of expectation. But now… Bora felt a stable lack of pity, which didn’t mean he ignored the man’s feelings. To him, it was a matter of getting what he wanted, taking care not to show that he had no intention of harming the women; if on one pan of the scales lay Platonov’s anguish for them, the other was weighed down by his stoicism in Stalin’s jail, when he thought he had nothing more to lose.

Platonov could not bring himself to say out loud that he’d believed his family lost until today. Under his breath, he mouthed, “I thought – it’s the first time in six years I’ve seen an image of them.”

“I can have them safely escorted here to meet you.” Bora’s only sign of familiarity (intentional, as everything was in his behaviour with prisoners) was that he stood there with his hands in the pockets of his breeches. His fingertips met the button from Krasny Yar, and for a second the dead in the woods, the cut throat, the severed head were with him in the room.

“Swear to me it’s true, Major.” When Bora said and did nothing, the prisoner’s voice turned grave and low, like a repressed sob. “What do you want in exchange?”

“My needs haven’t changed.” From the briefcase at his feet, Bora took out a questionnaire he’d typed in Russian, a number of sheets held together by a paper clip, which he laid on the table. Platonov ran his eyes over the first page, and pushed it back in disgust.

“Bring my family to me.”

Bora firmly replaced the questionnaire under Platonov’s eyes. They stared at each other across the narrow space separating them. After confronting Khan’s physical exuberance in the afternoon, this was the cut-out, the abused leftover of a man; a few hours and a single photograph had crushed what remained of one who’d withstood torture. Bora had to think of his Stalingrad days to summon bitterness and avoid all empathy.

“No. I don’t want to wait until morning. I’ve waited long enough.”

It was the first and only suggestion that the women were due there the following day. Platonov was visibly shaken. He might have suspected until now it was a trick, so Bora took advantage of the moment. “I can tell you they spent four years in hard labour south-west of here, at the Kremenchuk power station. We freed them in ’41. They’re quite well, as you can see from the photo. I understand your wife lost three toes of her right foot during her sentence, but given the circumstances it could have gone much worse. Your daughter Avrora Glebovna is reported to be in good health as well.” Bora did not look away even after Platonov began to tremble. “As long as they’re under my tutelage, General, I vouch for their safety. However, should I lose that oversight, believe me, anything can happen. I have a wife; I speak as a husband to a husband. The moment the ladies enter this building I’ll personally and on my honour answer for them. But I’m not inclined to endure further delays: I want guarantees, too.”

It was strange, but it had happened other times with prisoners about to give in: that their protest suddenly became hollow, spoken in a dull tone that belied the forcefulness of the objections put forward.

“
Guarantees
? I am a Soviet lieutenant general.”

“And I’m a German interrogator. Soviet authorities didn’t even let you know your relatives survived your disgrace: we bring them to you.”

“It could be a ruse.”

“No, no. It’s a barter, General Platonov. And when bartering, IOUs don’t work.”

Platonov clutched the armrests of his green velvet seat to keep from trembling. His lower jaw hung half-open like a very old man’s; a frightful weariness seemed to have overtaken him, making him come unglued. He gave the impression that he would start losing his limbs piecemeal at any time, like a broken puppet.

The one thing that could be used against him Bora was using
now. He heard himself say, “Here we go, General”, and, as if from a distance, he could almost see himself neatly squaring the pages on the table, evaluating the effect of the handsome charm that had so often got him through in his young life.

As if looks spoke the truth. As if Stalingrad, leaving him sane, hadn’t carved out of him most of the civility he’d previously been one and the same with!
This is the devil’s work
, he was thinking, dismally.
I’ve gone from the role of a naive Adam in Eden to playing the serpent. And yet the serpent too has his reasons
. Whatever Stalin’s plan had been in making Platonov believe his women had been killed, it must be intolerable to start hoping again at this point, and at the hands of the enemy. Everything in the prisoner’s desperate posture begged for mercy; Bora had to be careful not to show a particle of the sorrow that tried to cut a rift into his firm resolve.

“Let me go once more through what we have been through for the past several days. You have been working closely with Colonel General Konev. We know you met with Marshals Zhukov and Vasilevsky in April, and we rather think you were to help organize the front around Voronezh. I understand your reticence to speak, and more so to elaborate on details, whether or not they can be termed military secrets. So I prepared this questionnaire, which itemizes possible changes brought by your High Command to the composition of tank destroyer, armoured and rifle divisions. We wish for you to mark off the option closest to the truth. And we wish to know what the role of the general officers listed at the bottom of the questionnaire is expected to be in any upcoming operation.”

I
,
we
: Bora’s careful dosage of the personal pronoun drew an imaginary line between what the German Army wanted and what he, Bora, was willing to do to meet him halfway. “From the moment Selina Nikolayevna and Avrora Glebovna were brought to my attention,” he continued, “I have strong-armed others” (he didn’t say, but Platonov understood he meant more politically inclined colleagues, or the SS) “in order to keep them
under Army care. Since we speak of guarantees, let me repeat: I cannot guarantee their permanence in Army-controlled territory, under Army custody, as time progresses, whether or not you collaborate. But if you collaborate
now
, I promise you the ladies will be in this building by mid-morning tomorrow, and I’ll do everything in my power to secure their future comfort. It’s true, I did argue with colleagues over them. I stuck my neck out, as they say, and all for nothing until now.”

Platonov lowered his eyes to the sheet in front of him. He’d regained his frowning hardness through God knows what effort, but he looked so careworn and pale that Bora felt he ought to say something to be on the safe side. “Kindly do not fall ill on me, sir. I won’t accept it. Think of the matter this way: if you hadn’t succeeded in destroying the papers you carried when we captured you, we’d have the information already.”

“Has someone new arrived this afternoon?” Taking time was an old technique: Platonov must be running out of ideas if he resorted to it. He tried to change the subject. “I heard steps. Who else is here?”

Bora took out a pencil. “I’m sure you’d like to know, General.” He laid it on the table. “We’ll promptly and thoroughly check anything you mark off, so please do not offend us by jotting down the first thing that comes into your head.”

“I need to think.”

“No. You need to give me what I want. Tomorrow I’ll give you what
you
want.”

“And if I don’t?”

“If you don’t, my part of the bargain is off, and I certainly will not risk another disagreement with my colleagues on account of your relatives. I am not walking out until you start writing. I
could
stay in this room all night if I have to; I’m used to losing sleep. But I won’t. One hour is the time I will give myself to call about your family coming. I won’t offer twice. It’s now ten minutes to eight.”

Most of the options on Platonov’s sheet were numbered. All the prisoner had to do was to circle the right number. With all the appearance of calm, Bora sat in front of him, right elbow on the table, resting his chin on the knuckles of the same hand. Oddly, compassion had dwindled to nothing inside him. Faster and faster, impatience rose and strained in its place.

“You’ve seen enough of me by now, Major, to perceive that I cannot —”

“It’s seven minutes to eight.”

“And using this – this method…”

Bora thought of the hours he’d spent cajoling him, reasoning with him, trying to convince him, and now that he was so near to breaking Platonov his irritation bordered on physical pain. Platonov sweated, and stared at him.

“I cannot, Major.”

“Six minutes to eight.”

A cornered animal can grow stiff or collapse, bite or crawl. Desperate cleverness can be resorted to and bring success, or utter failure. Platonov’s eyes seemed to burrow into his interrogator, sounding him for heartlessness or hesitation. “But maybe I could – I could give you —”

“What? You could give me
what
?”

“I could give you” – Platonov’s face was a skull covered with sad flesh – “something else.”

It was empty blather; Bora had heard corralled prisoners drivel on before. The attempt to divert his attention infuriated him.
You will give me what I want
, he was about to shout, but then he held back. A drowning man will promise anything to be saved, to be thrown a rope; and there are moments when
anything
may be even more than what you were looking for. “Define
something else
.”

“How much does a German major earn?”

Bora didn’t think he’d heard right. A senseless urge, like a blackout of reason, brought him to within an inch of taking out his pistol and shooting the old man in the face, seated
where he was. Only the pinprick of a thought – that Platonov might be counting on such a drastic way out – stayed his hand the time needed to regain control.
I kept it together when all was lost
, he forced himself to think.
I kept it together when all was lost. I can keep it together now
.