The station manager escorted Stammer to a railway siding where even now a train was being boarded by hundreds of German soldiers anxious to escape the constant artillery fire and falling bombs; near the end of the train was a boxcar guarded by two of his own men.
“The prisoner is in there?” he asked his sergeant.
“Yes, sir. Where we found her. We thought it easier to keep her in there because of the horses.”
“Horses?”
“Yes. The girl has two horses with her. And a dog. She understands some German, I think—I’m not sure. I don’t speak any Ukrainian, so there’s not much I can tell you about her other than the fact that she’s scared. Terrified.”
“That’s all right. I can speak quite reasonable Ukrainian.”
“I also have a rather irate artillery lieutenant who’s anxious to claim this boxcar for his men as soon as possible so that the train can get moving.” The sergeant pointed down the platform, where an officer was now advancing toward them. “That’s him there.”
“All right, I’ll handle him.”
Stammer spoke to the lieutenant and assured him that he could have the boxcar for his men just as soon as he had spoken to the prisoner.
“How long will that take?”
“A few minutes.”
“This train has to get moving as soon as possible, sir,” said the lieutenant. “It’s a sitting duck for those Russian fighter-bombers as long as it’s waiting in this station.”
“Just let me do my job, Lieutenant.”
Stammer opened the door of the boxcar and saw a frightened-looking girl, about fourteen years old, two nervous horses and an emaciated Russian wolfhound. The wolfhound growled menacingly. As soon as he clapped eyes on them, Captain Stammer realized what the girl was not—she was certainly no partisan fighter and probably not a spy. At the same time, he realized exactly what the horses were: Stammer’s father, Wilhelm, was a doctor of zoology and natural history at the University of Bonn; Wilhelm Stammer was a world expert on freshwater snails and parrot fish. As a boy, Joachim had visited zoos all over Germany with his father, and in Berlin, he had once seen—and never forgotten—the rare Przewalski’s horses.
“May I come in and talk with you?” he asked.
A little surprised that the German was so polite, Kalinka nodded and put an arm around Taras to restrain him from biting the man.
Captain Stammer climbed up and closed the boxcar door behind him.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“Kalinka.”
“Well, Kalinka, we mean you no harm.”
“I wish I could believe that.”
“Really. It’s all right.”
“I don’t care what happens to me, but please, you have to let these horses go. These are extremely rare Przewalski’s horses. These horses go back tens of thousands of years. They’re the horses on the paintings in the caves in France and just about the only living contact with our Stone Age ancestors.”
“I know,” said Captain Stammer.
“Przewalski’s horses are extinct in all but name,” Kalinka continued. “Which makes them extremely important. This is a breeding pair—possibly the last pair anywhere in the world. If just one of these two horses dies, it will be another dreadful crime in this dreadful war. They’re not an inferior breed to domesticated horses, nor are they harmful to any other bloodline, because they actually prefer their own kind. But they are extraordinary and unique and extremely valuable. And I’ll bet any zoo would pay big money to have animals like these.”
“I know,” said Captain Stammer.
“There were a lot more of them—perhaps as many as thirty—living north of here, but they were shot by your SS. I managed to rescue these two and ran away, hoping that I might find someone who understood the zoological importance of these animals. Someone who knows that the last two of anything in this world is like an extra special gift from Noah’s ark. Someone who knows what happened to the dodo and to the woolly rhinoceros and to the Sivatherium.”
“I know,” said Captain Stammer.
Kalinka hesitated for a moment. “You do?”
“Actually, no, I’m not sure what a Sivatherium was,” he admitted.
“Oh, it’s a sort of cross between a giraffe and an okapi, I think.”
Captain Stammer nodded. “Look, I’m sorry about the other horses. Very sorry, indeed. Not all of us Germans are like the SS, you know. Some of us are really quite civilized. As it seems are these horses. Which is to say that they don’t seem to be all that wild.”
“They’re behaving themselves at the moment,” she said. “They’re usually as wild as the northeast wind.”