Night Soldiers

NKVD ‘arranged’ for it to happen. They meant for me to die, but I was only-well, you can see for yourself.”

“I’d heard that you were captured. Also that the Russians got you out.”

“Who told you that?” Kulic asked.

“Ilya Goldman.”

“Ilya!”

“Yes. Years ago, you understand. In Paris, before the war.”

Kulic took two cigarettes from the pocket of his uniform jacket, gave one to Khristo, struck a wooden match on the table, and lit them both. “In Paris, before the war,” he repeated, a sigh in his voice. He did not speak for a time, then said, “It’s true. They did get me out. If I’d died they wouldn’t have cared, but I was alive and I knew too much, so they couldn’t leave me where I was. Then, after they’d sprung me, they tried to send me back to Moscow, but I vanished.”

“Have you made it right with them?”

Kulic shook his head no, exhaling smoke from his nostrils. “Bastards,” he said briefly. “Do you know what went on here, in Yugoslavia?”

“Some,” Khristo said.

“Communists fighting Chetnik fascists, centrists, monarchists, the Mihailovich units, and all of us, excepting the Chetniks, fighting the Germans. Some groups with OSS support, some with the British MI6, some with the Russians. Believe me, it is beyond imagining. We shot our wounded, Khristo, to keep them from the Gestapo. I did that, with my own hand, sometimes to friends I’d played with as a child.”

“This war …” Khristo said.

“This war was worth what was done only if we come out of it a nation. Forgive the speech, but it’s true. When the Russians got here in force we’d already taken control-they could not do to us what they did to the Poles. But for that we paid a price.”

“I know,” Khristo said. “I saw it in France.”

“This was worse,” Kulic said simply.

They were silent for a time. The sounds of the great room-the hiss of damp wood on fire, the cleaning of weapons, subdued conversation-flowed around them.

“And now,” Kulic said finally, “it begins again. Only this time we are alone, or soon will be, and the NKVD begins to nibble. Assassinations, kidnappings, false rumors, the press manipulated, officials bribed, the destruction of reputations-you know their methods, I’ll spare you the bedtime stories-but there is no misreading their intentions. They want Tito for a puppet. If they can’t have him, they’ll throw him out a window and try someone else. Meanwhile, our American friends are still here, and they help if they can, but they are about to fold up their tents and steal away into the night.”

“I doubt that,” Khristo said.

“You’ll see.”

“Drazen,” Khristo said after a moment, “the numbers on the barge.”

“Still a mystery?” Kulic smiled with the right side of his mouth.

Khristo waited.

“I believe you sent a radio message to the Bari station. Some strange ravings about an NKVD colonel who is supposed to materialize in Sfintu Gheorghe on the twelfth of April. Well, you wanted a contact, now you have it.”

“You are to help?” Khristo leaned forward, a little amazed.

“Help.” Kulic repeated the word to himself and laughed. “How is your English?”

“Good enough.”

“I believe it went: ‘Find out what that crazy son-of-bitch does.’ You understand?”

“Yes.”

“Well.”

Khristo took a moment to assemble his thoughts. “What he does is bring Sascha Vonets out of Romania, with information, probably very good information. Ilya got Sascha’s message out-from the camps. Voluta delivered it to me. It cost him his life. In Spain, Sascha told me what was coming-in the Yezhovschina purge of the security services-and Ilya warned me when I had to get out. Then, in Paris, I was trapped by the British, in an emigre operation against the Soviets, and sent to prison. For life. Voluta’s organization set me free, just before the Germans took Paris. So, because of these people, because they endangered themselves on my behalf, I sit here drinking beer with you. One could simply walk away from such responsibilities. Is that your suggestion?”

“These friends … are all NKVD friends.”

“And you, Drazen.”

“Perhaps someone wonders just what really goes on with you, where your heart is. You walked away from the Russians in 1936. Or maybe not.”

“Horseshit,” Khristo said.

“Yes? Could be. All apologies, and so forth, but explain to me why you are not the bait in an NKVD trap? You go up into that godforsaken Bessarabia-some little fishing village, a place beyond the end of the world. Romania now belongs to the Russians, so what you are trying to do is draw OSS operatives onto Sovietoccupied soil. Where they will be gobbled up and put on show. Somehow, heaven only knows how, American newspapers learn of this. ‘Oh-ho!’ they say. ‘This bunch of wild asses in the OSS now spies on our great ally in the war. Off with their heads!’ “

Khristo stood up. There was silence in the room.

“Sit down, sit down,” Kulic said, making calming motions with his hand. The old woman returned and poured beer into his tin can from a pitcher. “Very well,” he went on, “you are a virgin.”

Khristo sat down on the bench. His hands were shaking so he put them between his knees.

Kulic leaned forward and spoke very quietly. “It is politics. The American government is going to shut down the OSS. The minute the Axis surrender is final-that’s the end of it. Some sections will be moved around to other departments, some of the networks will be salvaged, but …”

“And so?”

“So there is no guarantee, even if you should manage to slip through the Russian nets on this river, that there will be anybody to help you in Romania.”

“Even if you tell them that I am not a traitor?”

“Even then. You could be unknowing, no sort of traitor at all, yet still bait. You’ve seen such operations.”

Khristo was silent. It had happened in Paris: he had been drawn into a scheme to stir up the Soviet intelligence apparat in Western Europe, and he had never known about it until too late, until Aleksandra was gone.

Kulic’s expression changed. There was suddenly discomfort in his face, regret, as though he had determined to do something that he did not want to do, but that he knew he had to do. “Khristo Nicolaievich,” he said quietly, “you are my old friend. I know your heart. But we are both part of something that is larger than two individuals and sometimes, in war, individuals cannot matter. There are times when a sacrifice has to be made. But, for one time, maybe we should try to let friendship win. Let us take you south, through the mountains. We’ll put you on a boat, give you a passport of some kind, and leave you in Trieste. It’s not a bad place, you can live there if you like. Or go to Paris and drive a cab. Live your life, stop fighting, have your politics over a coffee if you must have them, but for God’s sake do not delude yourself about Americans. They change, Khristo. One minute they are excited, the next cool. What point is there in having two useless corpses in Sfintu Gheorghe instead of one? They may decide to leave you sitting there like a fool, untrusted, a provocateur for the Soviets, and such a thing would be too sad for an old friend to see. I will get you down the river, if you feel you must go, but my heart tells me that tragedy is waiting for you there.”

Khristo lay on a blanket in the corner of the room but he was too cold to sleep. From time to time someone got up and fed the fire and he stared into the flames and wondered what to do. Lying next to him was a girl, perhaps seventeen, with a blanket pulled over her head like a shawl. Awake, she would be soft and pretty, he knew, but in sleep her face was aged and frightened. Her eyelids flickered, then her lips moved as though she were speaking in a dream.