Tin Sky by Ben Pastor Read Free Book Online

moved, shifted his weight on the seat or even caused its wooden frame to creak. There was a solitary fly in the cell, and Bora could hear it land and take off from various objects.
    To the prisoner, it was perhaps one more form of nerve-wracking challenge to resist; to Bora it amounted to an exercise of mental discipline, devoid of emotion. And although no one could know what Platonov was thinking, Bora let a myriad other sensations, all unrelated to the place and moment, go through him without thinking about them, in the same way a breeze on a water’s surface doesn’t affect it enough to make it ripple. Platonov’s seamed face, marked by pain and overbearing, might equally indicate a similar ability to abstract himself, or else the stolid, spiteful intention to withhold communication now and forever.
    Finally Bora rose to his feet. Tight-lipped, he unbuttoned his breast pocket, took out the photograph and laid it on the table, face down. By the time he curtly rapped on the door to be let out, the prisoner had made no attempt to turn the print around or even reach for it; he might have lowered his glance to it, but Bora didn’t stick around to see whether this was the case.
    Letting things settle in Platonov’s mind was all Bora could do for now. He started back for Merefa, and at the Udy River crossing he began to think some luck was already coming his way. A makeshift filling station had been improvised by army engineers in a clearing by the road, too good an opportunity to pass by. The officer in charge was unsympathetic at first; lorries and half-tracks took precedence. In the end he agreed to give him half a tank, but remarked, “You know, you cavalrymen ought to travel on fodder. Where’s your horse, Major?”
    Gasoline being at a premium, it was best not to argue. Bora replied with the truth: that time was too tight this morning for a ride. He’d driven uneventfully as far as the Kremesnaya turn-off when a motorcycle courier overtook him in a storm of fine dust, signalling for him to slow down, much as a traffic policeman gives directions to an unruly driver.
    The army vehicle came head to head with the still-running motorcycle, and stopped. “Major Bora?” the courier enquired, raising the goggles on his forehead.
    “Yes. What is it?”
    “I was told at the Mykolaivska Street detention centre I’d find you along this road, Major.” The courier took a folded sheet out of his pouch. “There’s a high-priority communication awaiting you at Borovoye.”
    “Borovoye?” Bora scanned the message, which bore the name of an Abwehr colleague usually stationed at Smijeff, on the Donets.
    The courier turned the motorcycle around, in the direction of Kharkov. “You could go back five kilometres and take the first dirt road to the right, but I don’t recommend it: they’re still clearing it of mines. You might as well keep on to Merefa at this point.”
    “Thank you; I know the road from there.”
    What his foul-mouthed colleague Bruno Lattmann might be doing at Borovoye, in the middle of nowhere, was not indicated on the sheet. The place was at least thirty kilometres from here, which in Ukraine meant anywhere between one and two hours’ travel. There was nothing at Borovoye as far as he knew. His first thought was that the courier would bring news of Platonov: that he was ready to talk – or that he’d smashed his head against the wall. Now, Bora didn’t know what to think.
    The dirt trails were a nightmare of ruts and crumbling shoulders once away from the minimally maintained roads. On both sides, fallow fields, burned farms, flocks of peasantwomen around the occasional water troughs and long stretches of absolute, undulating solitude went by.
    Son of a Deutsche Welle radio executive, Lattmann was a close friend. When they’d last met ten days earlier, the conversation had ended on a personal note, not unusually for them. “Can you confirm she’s still living there?” Bora had asked.
    “Yes. I