“I have no opinions, Herr Hammerer, and may I ask what methods do you mean?”
“The hanging, the shooting.”
“Russians are not afraid of dying.”
“Ah, really?”
They drove on in a strained and unpleasant silence. Time passed. She felt as if a noose compressed her throat, making it hard to breathe. Rita. Rita. All the way to the point of their destination, she felt such emptiness, such fatigue, as if she had been squeezed dry.
In the meantime, they drove up to an area confined by a fence of about 3.5-meters high, topped with barbed wire, with watchtowers at equal distance from each other. All the vegetation had been cleared around it for ten meters or so. Most likely, Herr Hammerer was not a stranger here as his car passed the checkpoint without being checked. It stopped at the front steps of a one-story brick building, Commandant’s Office, as the sign on the door read. Another row of the wired fence separated it from the squat buildings some two hundred meters away.
In the Commandant’s office, an Oberleutnant greeted them in a friendly manner and escorted them to a room, the door courteously held ajar by a soldier. Inside, Hammerer took a seat at the desk and pulled from his briefcase some files. He motioned Ulya to a chair behind a smaller table and took his time leafing through his papers.
The sound of hobnailed boots and wooden clogs approached and an Oberwachmann SS appeared at the door, a submachine gun across his chest. In front of him, an ashen-faced prisoner, reduced to a pitiful condition slouched, his eyes to the floor.
Hammerer looked him up and down. “Full name, nationality, date of birth, place of birth, education, Communist Party association, a branch of the military, army rank. Were you repressed by the Soviet power? Please translate.” He turned to Ulya.
Visibly flabbergasted by so many questions, the prisoner looked at Ulya.
“Tell Herr Hauptsturmführer your name, please,” she encouraged with a gentle tone.
“Anton Petrovich Sukhov is my name. I was born in April 1923 . . . in Siberia.”
“Where in Siberia?” Hammerer asked.
“Iskitim Village. It’s in the Novosibirsk district.” He fell silent.
“Education?”
“Seven-years of school then a technical school. I’m a good locksmith.” On his otherwise sullen face a lopsided smile appeared.
Seeing Hammerer’s irritable countenance, Ulya came to the man’s rescue. “Sukhov, are you a Communist?”
“No. My parents were from the repressed. The cadres would not accept me into the Communist Party.” He heaved a deep sigh.
“So, you are angry because they wouldn’t accept you?” Hammerer smirked.
Sukhov tilted his brow, staring at Ulya in stupefaction.
“Was it your wish to become a Communist party member?” Hammerer looked amused.
“No. I did not want to. I was happy they did not shoot my parents and—”
“Your army rank?” Hammerer gestured Ulya to continue translating.
“An infantryman.”
“If you engage in collecting information and rumors from other prisoners, it will be very useful for the German command.”
Blinking in bafflement, as though in hesitation, the prisoner whispered, “Yes, yes, happy to fulfill your wishes,” and looked around with haunted eyes.
It became obvious Hammerer had lost all interest in this thick-skulled young Russian. “Get him out of here.” He motioned to the guard.
Sukhov startled as the German stepped closer to him and threw a desperate glance at Ulya.
“You can go with him.” Something told her the young man would remain in the stalag.
A slightly different scenario repeated with the other candidates for a special training intended to infiltrate the Soviet rear as Ulya figured out.
All taken prisoner. Once Red Army troopers, now in tattered clothes hanging loosely over their skeletal frames, they screamed hateful shit at the Soviet power, Stalin, and their Political Commanders, swearing their allegiance to the Reich.
Only the last one, Novikov, seemed different. Composed, his eyes cold and proud, he told his story. Born, educated, parents, sergeant of a motorized rifle brigade, he was taken prisoner while shell-shocked in combat.
“Communist?” Hammerer’s face, as always was bereft of emotion.
“A week before June twenty-second, I applied to the Communist Party.”
Hammerer turned his head to Ulya. “Tell him if he puts on a German uniform, he’ll live.”
Ulya translated Novikov’s reply, “Herr Hauptsturmführer, I can’t fight against my countrymen. I swore my allegiance. Would you?”
After making some notes in his paper, Hammerer nodded at the guard to take the prisoner away.
“I would like him on our side.” Turning his gaze away from hers, he continued as though talking to himself. “I despise people who today are on one side and tomorrow on the other. How can one trust them not to change loyalties to a third?”
When their eyes met, a look of tired sadness passed over his features.
The days went along as usual. The “window-radio broadcasts” supplied Ulya with more and more alarming details.
With warm weather like today, she could keep her window open. Soon enough, a familiar voice—Fyedorov—drifted into the room. “I’m so freaking exhausted by these everyday raids. First, they rounded people for sending to Germany, and now they see conspirators in everyone, young and old. Today, again, we’ll be heading to sweep through Mogilevskaya Square and up from there the streets along the shore.”
“What, are you saying there is no single Underground worker left in the city?” Borisevich. His voice was heavy with sarcasm.
“Maybe there is, but I haven’t had a single free day from the end of May. Haven’t seen my wife and sons for weeks.”
“Stop whimpering, at least your stomach is not empty. As are theirs,” Borisevich retorted.
“Thank heavens.” And after some moment’s silence, “Time to go. Parade in three minutes.”
As soon as their steps faded away, Ulya prepared her cigarette dispatch and headed to the toilet room, hoping her message would be delivered in time and her information could spare some Underground workers. Or just some innocent people.
In recapping her last meeting with Nathan, she heard him saying, his voice cracked, “There are everyday raids in the city. They took four of
