The Beast in the Red Forest(18)

Only once did Pekkala come close to being caught, one night when he almost stumbled into one of their encampments. Their shelters had been sturdily built with pine-bough roofs and camouflage rain capes covering the entrances, on either side of a stream. Their horses had been tethered to a nearby tree.

Slipping into the water, Pekkala gritted his teeth against the shock of cold. Moonlight turned the stream into a flood of mercury. He waded hunchbacked through the rustling of current, hoping to pass unnoticed between the dugouts.

Pekkala was just coming level with the German positions when he heard the rustle of a rain cape being thrown back. The horses shifted nervously. Sidestepping into the weeds, Pekkala crouched down among the bristling stalks. Ten paces upstream, a man emerged from one of the dugouts. He walked to the edge of the bank. Moments later, a silver arc reached out into the dark. The soldier leaned back, gazing at the stars, then hawked and spat as he buttoned up his fly. The tiny island of saliva drifted past Pekkala's hiding place as the soldier returned to his dugout.

Pekkala moved on, deeper and deeper into the wilderness, through storms which thrashed his face with sheets of rain while lightning, like a vast electric spider, stalked the earth. When the rain stopped, he could smell wild grapes on the breeze, the scent so sweet and heavy that it hummed like music in his brain.

Now there were no more horse tracks, or tracks of any kind except those only wild animals could have made.

One warm autumn afternoon, Pekkala passed through a forest of tall red maples. Coppery beams of sunlight splashed through the trees, refracting among the branches until the air itself appeared to be on fire. High above the forest canopy, vultures circled lazily on rising waves of heat. In this place, he came across strange, shallow depressions in the earth. He had seen structures just like this, employed by Ostyak hunters in Siberia. These primitive beds, lined with moss and lichen, had been recently constructed by war parties or groups of hunters moving quickly across the landscape, without time to build proper shelters. This was the work of savages.

Pekkala knew that he was in more danger now than he had ever been before. Although he had escaped the horsemen sent to kill him, there was no hiding from these people, for whom this wilderness was home.

Then he knew it was time to stop running.

After removing the bolt from his rifle, Pekkala buried it, along with the ammunition from the black leather pouches at his waist. Then he set the useless gun against a tree and left it there. Next, he took off the ragged German uniform that he had been wearing as part of his cover for the mission and which by now was little more than rags. Knowing that he would likely be butchered at first sight of the field grey wool, he heaped them in a pile, to which he added the scrolled bark of birch trees, twigs snapped from dead pine trees not yet toppled to the ground and fistfuls of dry, crumbling lichen. With one match, the head of which he had preserved in candle wax, he soon had a fire going.

Pekkala sat naked in front of the blaze, warming his filthy skin.

They came for him soon after dark, just as he had known they would.

Pekkala heard people moving towards him through the darkness. Six he guessed. Maybe seven. No more.

He let them come.

The shadows hauled him roughly to his feet.

Where is the bolt for that gun?' asked a man, pointing at the rifle which Pekkala had dismantled.

Take me to whoever is in charge and I will tell you.'

I am in charge!'

No,' said Pekkala. You're just the person he sent.'

The man hit Pekkala in the face.

Pekkala staggered back and then righted himself. He touched his fingers to his lips. The skin was split. He tasted blood.

I should kill you where you stand,' growled the man.

Then you would have to explain why you don't have the bolt for this gun, or the ammunition you will need to use it.'

You have ammunition?'

Pekkala nodded. Enough to have killed you if I'd wanted to.'

I'll do as you ask,' said the man, but you may well regret what you wish for.'</ol>
 
 

 

The shadows closed in around Pekkala, but they were hesitant, as if his nakedness defied the rusted edges of their handmade weaponry.

Now!' screamed the man.

Fumbling, they put a sack over Pekkala's head and dragged him away through the trees.

For several hours, they steered him through the darkness.

Branches clawed against his shoulders and the soles of his feet were cut by roots and stones. When at last the partisans lifted the sack from Pekkala's head, they did so gingerly, as if unhooding a falcon.

Pekkala found himself in the middle of a small encampment deep in the forest. His gaze fixed upon two old women, their ankle-length dresses plastered with ashes and mud, huddled around a fire and roasting a dog on a spit. Beside the fire lay a small heap of dented pans and pots, like the emptied shells of river clams. The metal spike squeaked as the dog twisted slowly above the embers, teeth bared in a blackened snarl as if to rage at its misfortune.

Clothing, more filthy and ruined than the rags he had burned in the fire, was dumped at his feet. Shivering at the clammy touch of the cloth, Pekkala struggled into a rough linen shirt with wooden buttons and a pair of wool trousers patched across the seat. The garments reeked of old machorka, its smell like damp leaves in the rain.

Give him some food,' ordered a voice.

Oblivious to the heat, one of the women took hold of the dog's right rear leg. With a twisting cracking sound, she wrenched it off. Then she walked over to Pekkala, holding out the leg by its charred paw, steam rising from the splayed meat and the shiny white ball of the hip bone at the end.

Pekkala ripped away a mouthful of the scalding flesh. He had forgotten how hungry he was.

The woman stared at him while he ate, eyes glinting in her puckered face. Then she turned around and walked back to the fire.

A man appeared from the darkness. For a long time, he studied Pekkala, keeping to the edge of the light, his face masked in the shadows. I don't know who you are,' he said, but the Germans sent hundreds of men to kill you.'

That sounds about right,' said Pekkala.

How in the name of God did you manage to survive?'

I'd say it was luck,' he replied.

And I'd say it was more than that,' replied the man, as he stepped from the shadows at last. His face was surprisingly gentle. He had a rounded chin, a thin and patchy beard and thoughtful brown eyes, which he struggled to focus on his prisoner. He is an intellectual, guessed Pekkala. A man who has learned to survive by something other than brute force. Who would have kept himself clean-shaven if only he could have found a razor. A man who has lost his glasses.

As if reading Pekkala's mind, the man produced a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles, one of the temples replaced with a piece of string, looped them over his ears and continued his observation of the stranger. I am Barabanschikov,' he said.

And my name is Pekkala.'

Barabanschikov's eyes widened. Then it is no wonder they couldn't find you. You are supposed to be dead!'

Then the darkness just beyond the firelight began to fill with whispers, swirling through the smoky air like the first gust of an approaching storm.

You make them nervous,' observed Barabanschikov.

That was never my intention,' replied Pekkala. If you let me go, I will leave you my rifle, along with the location of the place where I buried the bolt and ammunition. You won't ever see me again.'

That would be a pity.' The man held up his hand in a gesture of conciliation, his palm glowing in the firelight. I was hoping you might stay here for a while. Any man who can outrun an army might have skills that we'd find useful in the forest.'

A few snowflakes made their way down through the trees.

Winter is coming,' warned Barabanschikov. For a man to take his chances, out there alone in the snow, is the difference between brave and suicidal.'

Pekkala glanced about him at the ragged assembly of men and women. They had the look of death upon them, as if they knew how little time they had left. Although they did not speak, their eyes pleaded with him to stay. I will remain with you until the ice has melted in the spring,' he said, but then I must be moving on.'

Until the ice has melted,' agreed Barabanschikov.

He stepped forward and the two men shook hands.

I might need that rifle, after all,' remarked Pekkala.

Barabanschikov reached into his coat, withdrew a sawn-off shotgun and handed it to Pekkala. Take this instead. It strikes me that you are a man who does his killing at close range. A rifle is more suitable to those  – ' he jerked his chin towards the men who had brought Pekkala into the camp  –  who find safety in numbers and distance.'

Humiliated, the men lowered their heads and scowled at the ground.

That was in the early days, when Barabanschikov's Atrad was not a fighting force, but just a group of terrified and haphazardly armed people who had fled into the forest and were simply trying to stay alive. It was only later that they managed to acquire enough weapons to defend themselves.

Before the war began, the Red Army had not prepared for any kind of partisan activity. Those who had proposed training soldiers in guerrilla tactics on Russian soil, in the event of an invasion, were condemned as being defeatist. Teaching Russian soldiers to fight behind enemy lines assumed that Russia could be successfully attacked, and Red Army generals had assured Stalin that this was impossible. Any officers expressing doubts were shot, with the result that, when German troops poured across the border in the summer of 1941, the Soviet High Command had no idea how to combat the enemy in territory which had been overrun.