Tin Sky by Ben Pastor Read Free Book Online Page B

people. Given the mess on the Tunisian front, Colonel Bentivegni is reported ‘somewhere’ in Southern Italy conferring with commanders there, more’s the shame. By the way, it was coincidence that Scherer and his unit were in transit to the 11th Panzer Division’s new deployment area; imagine how desperate they are to get their hands on the tank. I needn’t tell you that the Abwehr must have the defector first before RSHA gets hold of him; the Central Security Office would transfer him then, and we wouldn’t get another chance.” Given that when alone with Bora Lattmann usually spoke of the RSHA as “Kaltenbrunner’s thugs”, it was a sign of his haste that he’d simply called SS-Gestapo intelligence by its acronym.
    Bora flew over every rut and pothole along the next twenty-odd kilometres; any forgotten landmine in the criss-cross of dishevelled lanes zigzagging between Borovoye and the river could have blown him sky-high.

2
    4 MAY, AFTERNOON, NORTH OF NOVO ANDREYEVKA
    The immediate area along the Donets, south of the ford Bora himself had used the day before, was cordoned off by troops, a sign of the importance and secrecy of the event. All around stood heavily armed soldiers and artillery from the 161st, in case it were a ruse, and, further back, armoured vehicles and three tank busters from the 11th Panzer at the ready. The place where the Russian tank had stopped was on the nearside of a slight incline fifty or so metres from the river bank, undetectable from enemy lines. On its oversized turret the commander’s cupola was open, and a man in a leather jacket and visored cap stood leaning, with his arms crossed over its rim. Distant grass fires to the east, invisible from here, caused infinitesimal flecks of grey ash to rain slowly over the scene, resembling bits of foil.
    Without drawing close, Bora took a long look through his field glasses. Photos of Brigadier General Tibyetsky existed, none taken close-up since the start of the war, but he had seen several from the late ’30s. His heartbeat accelerated; Bora could feel it in his throat. Between January and June 1941 until a week before the invasion, as assistant to the military attaché in Moscow, he’d gathered all available information about the Red Army’s higher ranks, including the tank corps general most likely to give Germany a run for its money once hostilities began. It made Bora’s head spin to think of him less than fifty metres away now, on this side of the Donets. As mysteriousas his nickname, earned after his revolutionary activity in the steppes of Central Asia, he went by Tibyetsky but that, too, was an assumed battle name, like “Stalin” or “Molotov”. Bora also knew him as Petrov and Dobronin, and there might be other aliases. If this defection was a trick, it was a luscious one, a trap he longed to jump into headlong.
    The Russian had meanwhile taken his own field glasses in hand, and was surveying the array of troops facing him. Eventually, he turned to the shaded spot where Bora’s vehicle was parked, and there was an exchange of stares through their respective lenses. Cinders slowly swirled in the air between them. The mound of steel and the man on top of it stood motionless behind that lingering, erratic reel of minute specks.
    “It’s about time you got here, Scotsman.”
    Caught up in his observation, Bora was startled by the voice nearby. A flushed and smiling Scherer stood by him. As a former cavalryman and colleague from the heady days of the invasion, like others at that time he’d referred to Bora as Der Schotte , because of his mother’s lineage. “He won’t deal with any of us, Scotsman,” he said, out of breath. “Look at that turret, will you?” He pointed to the T-34. “What a beast . The tank alone is worth instant leave to Germany. If he’s rigged it with explosives, I’m ready to defuse it with my teeth. I’m having an orgasm over that tank.”
    “Well, I’m having an orgasm over him .”