Mausefalle

We were supposed to report on German positions, but slowly, it just seemed easier to eliminate them. I learned to use the sniper rifle a bit, but it wasn't my favorite. When Timur brought me a brand new PPSH-41 submachine gun, I'd flushed like a school girl. Everything about it was perfect: the feel of the wood, the ventilated barrel sleeve, the two perfect drum magazines. His nickname was "Papashar," Daddy or Papa, and he was a dream come true. Papa didn't care whether the day was hot or cold, didn't care if he was dirty. He took care of me, I took care of him. The first time I had to use him was when a team of four German infantry stumbled almost on top of Timur and me. Papa chewed them down in less than two seconds, before Timur could even bring his weapon to bear.

The longer I existed in the burned-out, dead graveyard of a city, the more I used other things. Timur showed me how to punch a hole in the case of the big square anti-tank mines, and put in a grenade fuse to attach to tripwires or pullwires. Because I could fit through almost any opening or pipe, I could sneak up to positions, place a mine and set it off from a distance or leave it for them to trigger when they tried to move. There were places I could squeeze into that were too small for the big square mines, and for them I used anti-tank grenades.

After a while, Seriov depended on me for some of the more difficult areas, either to spot for the artillery or to remove the hard points, myself.

I ranged out farther and farther, spending more nights in bolt holes and hidden in rubble under the nose of the enemy, often leaving a blasted machine gun position or a room with only a couple of freshly dead enemies in it. I was out on one of those forays when Seriov received his orders.

After a few weeks alone, when I realized there'd be no new Scout platoon, I abandoned the platoon area and just lived in my boltholes and hides, mostly in the basements of the destroyed houses and factories.

Surviving the enemy and the cold meant spending more and more time in the dark underground, curled up in mouse nests of blankets and clothing stolen from the enemy; nests that I stashed in dark corners all around the sector. I occasionally took supplies from less-than-attentive Russian units; it was a good reminder for them to be cautious.

I needed the blankets and jackets; winter had arrived. The temperatures had dropped, and the cold had come, stalking the unwary and killing the weak. At first, I cringed from the cold, but I began to understand it all; the ice, the snow and the frost. I began to revel in the cold, letting it harden me, letting it freeze my soul. I imagined myself a daughter of the ice and wind with icicle fangs and bitter claws. I was more a hunter of people than a warm-blooded person myself. The enemy suffered for it, as did a squad of our own men, Russians who misunderstood the entertainment possibilities of a lone female they found curled up in the corner of a basement. I dragged their bodies out into the deepening snow and left them in the open.

I stalked the enemy relentlessly; maybe, sometimes, my attacks had less to do with military reasons than to simply kill the weak, the unwary, the vulnerable. The clever ones seemed to sense me and act cautiously. Depending on whim, more than any logic, I would sometimes leave them be. Sometimes I just waited for my ruthless allies, the winter cold and sound-muffling snow to wear them down and cover my approach.

By mid-December I only returned to the Division for ammunition, and only at night, leaving my situation reports when I did. I'd probably said less than a dozen words aloud over that last month. The last time I'd stared at the supply clerk for several seconds trying to figure why he seemed so strange, then realized it was because he was alive. I'd gotten so used to the frozen blank stares of the dead that the living no longer seemed normal.

I realized then that even when I was around people, I was alone.

Ein Spiel von Fuchs und Maus

A Game of Fox and Mouse

Ankara: 24 April 1953

I walked down to the Political Attaché's office and went in without knocking. It was a very nice office, with stately bookcases and a small fireplace. He looked up with confidence, a significant change from his stunned expression at the dinner. "Major, what can I do for you?"

"I have a bit of a problem to resolve."

"So I gather. From the Ambassador's comments to me this morning, he feels you are being a bit heavy-handed about it."

I made a helpless gesture. "I am trying to do this as carefully as possible. There are times when being delicate results in far more harm than a direct approach. If Uncle Nikita has to get involved, everyone here will suffer a great deal, along with families and friends. That just doesn't need to happen."

He nodded in agreement. "I had to explain that many times during the war; you shoot the first deserter so you don't have to shoot the rest of the men." Just from the casual way he said it, I knew he'd been a Zampolit. "I'll try to convince the Ambassador that this is for the best."

"I'd appreciate that. Maybe he'll understand it better from you."

He leaned back. "I'll always try to help further the cause. He said this was about a kidnapping?"

"Possible kidnapping." I went on to explain the problem to him.

"That's very touchy. Beria's nephew, dead..." He mused. "Very, very bad, he won't take that well at all. If there were any way to put this off until things at the top sort themselves out, it'd be better for everyone, but I don't see that you can."

"Not that I can see, So it will be like pulling a tooth. Better to get the pain over all at once. If his nephew was involved in some kind of scheme to sell women it will look bad, but it would look worse if it came out later."

"It would look like a cover-up, like a corruption of the worst sort. Selling Russian girls to these damn Turks. The thought turns my stomach." He stared at the fireplace for a second.

"Maybe we'll find out, maybe the dossier will give us the finances and contacts."

"Is that what you think is in the dossier?"

I shrugged. "What else is there? That's why I came to you. All of this makes your job more complicated, if not impossible, and makes the Revolution look bad. You'd have no reason to be involved in something like this."

"I'll bring it up at dinner. You are going, aren't you?" He raised one eyebrow.

"It'd be a bad example if I stepped out to a restaurant and left everyone here. Wouldn't it?"

"Of course."

*****

The Political Attaché was true to his word, interceding on my behalf with the senior staff in the dining room of the Embassy. "It's a simple matter really. Give the Major time to work and we can get back to the mission we really need to be working on. Obstruct her and the entire Embassy could be locked down for weeks until the Secretary is satisfied."

The Ambassador gave him a sour look. "This distraction is the last thing we need. Things are tense enough right now."

I broke in. "It's unavoidable. The Secretary is concerned that this could cause a mistaken perception of the leadership and feels that it needs to be handled quickly and as quietly as possible. He's given me two full days and almost half of that is gone."

The Rezident gave a slight smile. "It is what it is. I don't think opposing Secretary Khrushchev is wise right now, so it is probably best to cooperate."

The Colonel said nothing, sipping his drink and silently reflecting on something.

I stood. "All due apologies, but I need to get a bit of sleep if I am going to deal with this. My journey here was rather exhausting, and I haven't rested at all. I will be up in a few hours. Thank you."

As I made my way out of the dining room I reflected that all I could do now was wait: set the trap, use the bait, even if I was the bait. It could be very effective; I'd seen it done before and it had nearly killed me.

Stalingrad. 24 December 1942

Truck Factory Basement

"Maus." The voice carried through the darkness. It seemed to come from all around. "I know you're there Maus. I can hear your heartbeat, I can hear you breathe."

I held as still as possible in the bitter, ever-present cold. I'd sensed a presence and stopped moving, trying to convince myself it was my imagination. I'd known it wasn't. No matter how hard I wanted to believe. I knew he was out there, and that he could sense me. I'd known he was out there for days, hunting me. I stayed silent, breathing in the frosty air slowly, instinctively trying to catch a scent like an animal; like the mouse he named me.

"So many men, Maus. You've killed so many. You had to know that sooner or later we would figure it out, that someone like me would come for you. I will get you, sooner or later. I've been waiting for days for you to come back through here." He spoke in schoolboy Russian, but he spoke clearly.

I tried to slide to my left, tried to seek the cover of the large metal structure that I'd just eased around. I'd learned to keep my back to a wall, keep escape routes to my left and right. The slight brush of my boot brought a low chuckle.

"Try to go out that way and you'll come up in front the machine gun nest you haven't been able to get to, the one that isn't near any walls or sewers. The sun is coming up out there, Maus. There's nowhere to hide in the light." He chuckled grimly. "Whatever your name really is, we call you Die Maus. Some of the survivors of your attacks reported hearing scratching like a Maus, just before the bombs went off."

The dimmest of light just hinting at filtering in, more something I could feel than see. He was right; I knew the machine gun nest he was talking about. I'd been trying to reach it for days, trying to kill more of them.

I felt in my bag. I had one last anti-tank grenade and less than half a drum of ammunition in Papa, maybe thirty rounds, just a couple seconds of firing, if I was lucky. Still, I lived here; this was my world, my ground, not his. I'd been here forever, for all of recorded time. I was part of it, part of the stone, the darkness, the biting winter, part of all this. I knew every inch, every pipe, and every slab of broken concrete.

There was an escape route; an air vent not too far to the other side, just past one of my sleeping nests, but I would have to cross the gap I knew he had to be watching. I waited for a moment, coiling my legs under me silently. Pausing between heartbeats, waiting for the absolute silence between beats to move.

I dove, rolling open and loose, and letting Papa snarl a half second burst, then another on the next roll. By the time the slower, lighter sound of his MP-40 responded, I was already behind the cover of the next slab of fallen concrete.

His burst lasted longer than it should have, and I let myself laugh silently at his obvious frustration.

He caught himself. "Very nice Maus, very nice. You are very, very quick." He gave a short bark of a laugh. "But I'm still here Maus."

I slipped up the side of the tilted slab between us, keeping Papa poised, held up away from the stone, away from anything that the metal and wood of the PPSH might touch, might ring against. The slab didn't go all the way to the ceiling here. There was a gap. Just a few inches. Just enough to fire a burst through, from above, from where he wouldn't expect it to come.

I paused several times, letting the cold numb me, steel me like armor, then slid up to the gap.

The darkness was near complete, but I'd survived in here for so long I could see the spectrum of black, the shades of darkness. The merest thought of light that filtered through tiny cracks in the building foundation were enough for me to find my target lying flat behind a chunk of up-heaved foundation. I brought Papa up and fired a burst.

As soon as the strobe of muzzle flash lit the area below me, my heart stopped, and I dove headlong down the slab. It hadn't been a soldier, just a greatcoat laid out where he knew I would look. Which meant it was a trap, and I'd fallen for it. He'd nearly worked his way around the massive slab, and his rounds already were ringing off the concrete next to me as I dropped, but my feet hit the floor and I threw myself sideways toward the path to the vent. Papa jolted in my hand as rounds stuck him; another round slapped at the heel of my boot, I stumbled and threw myself forward over another block of broken, fallen ceiling, rolling forward, then to my left. Another six-foot dash and I'd be through the vent and home free.

The air from the opening didn't feel right and that brought me up short. I caught the scent of something. I stopped cold and reached forward toward the vent. My fingertips touched a thin line, a hair-thin metal wire coming from the opening.

It had to be a tripwire. The bastard had put a bomb in the vent, probably one of those damned S-mines; "bouncing" fragmentation mines that were so lethal. I could steal it, use it against them later; I'd done that a lot. It was easy, so long as you moved "soft, kitten, soft" as Timur so often said. There was no time now, I had to kill him or die.

I could feel Papa was jammed, maybe ruined from the impacts of the German bullets. I only had one choice, a desperate one as likely to kill me as anything. I pulled the last anti-tank grenade out of my bag, then primed it and threw it, rolling against the wall behind me, trying to curl into a ball while remembering to keep my mouth open. I prayed overpressure alone wouldn't kill me.

A voiced uttered a harsh, ugly word all too near, and I looked up just as the grenade detonated, the fraction of a second of sudden explosive brilliance highlighting the lanky blonde soldier diving towards me, face twisted in rage, a knife gleaming in one hand.

That was the last thing I saw before the shockwave hit and everything went black.

Die Falle der Maus

The Mouse's Trap

Ankara: 24 April 1953

I leaned back against the wall of my room, just to the side of the door. I hadn't bothered to go to sleep. I knew that whoever my quarry was would have to act quickly, get the dossier out of the Embassy in the confusion following my death.

"I've been waiting for you," I whispered. He turned and froze, the barrel of my Tokerov pistol mere inches from his head. "Don't. Just don't, Zampolit. I can't begin to tell you how many men I've killed, real men, real soldiers, not pathetic shits like you."

I wasn't too terribly surprised it had turned out to be the Political Attaché. The revolver in his right hand had been aimed at the dummy in my bed; it was a Nagant, made unwieldy by the lengthy suppressor screwed onto the end, and he'd never be able to bring it around in time. He decided to stall for time. "I think you misunderstand..."

"You look in on all visitors to the Embassy while bringing a silenced weapon? Place it on the floor slowly. I'd rather have your help, but if not, I'm willing to tear this building down brick by brick." I was bluffing a bit, but he didn't pick up on that.

"If I call for help..."

"You're in my room, with a silenced revolver. I doubt that would help your case."

"I don't know anything about the kidnapping. I never even met Vadim personally."

I had him back away from the revolver and picked it up with my right hand, fumbling the awkward thing into my belt. "I know that. Where is the dossier?"

His eyes widened. "I don't know what..."

I cut him off. "How stupid do you think I am? You don't know Vadim, you aren't involved in the disappearance of his wife. You came to kill me, so you could get in touch with Beria to force the guards to open the Embassy. The only reason to do that is to get the dossier out so it won't be found."

He looked desperate. "I can get you anything you want, just not that."

"That's all I want."

"Beria will kill me." I could hear the fear in his voice.

"Beria might kill you later. I'm here right now, and I will kill you, I promise you that."

He considered it. "My office."

"Not terribly creative."

"It's the only place I control completely, the only place I can keep the Rezident out of."

As we walked through the empty halls to his office, I shook my head remembering my bolt-holes all over Stalingrad. Certainly his office had to seem like a terrible place to hide anything. The only person we saw was Ekaterina, sitting at her desk in the Ambassador's outer office. When she saw the gun in my hand, she suddenly found something very interesting among the papers on her desk and made a point of not looking back up. Her lipstick seemed to be a very different shade today.

Once we were in his office, I had him sit in the guest chair that faced his desk. "Where is it?"

"Wait, we can work something out. Lavrentiy is a reasonable man, I'm certain he could find a use for you. Let's talk this through before things go too far."

I noticed his familiar use of Beria's first name, and it confirmed what I'd been told. "Things have gone too far already. Where is the damn dossier?"

He tried to look me in the eyes, but like so many before him, he couldn't do it. "I just think..."

"You're not thinking at all and my patience is running out."

"He will find out you took it."

"According to my source, he only contacts you every three or four months so that nobody will figure out that you are holding the dossier for him, so it will be quite a while." He missed the obvious implication of that statement. I leveled my gun at his head. "Where is it? I'm not asking again."

He studied me for a second, finally understanding how uncertain his chances were in all of this. "The second row of the bookshelf. There is a slipcase labeled 'Compiled Speeches of the Second Agricultural Conference on Collectivism.'"

Amateur. Still, nobody would voluntarily read that, maybe he'd chosen a better place than I thought, at least against casual discovery. I carefully pulled the volume down and carried it over to the desk, keeping the gun on him. My right hand hurt from the weight of the book, but better a little pain than the chance he might rush me. It only took a few seconds to confirm it was what I was looking for.

I walked over to the other side of the desk. "Just one more question and I will get out of here."

He glared at me sullenly. "What is it?"

"Did you 'sample' the women Lavretiy Beria had you kidnap for him when you were his bodyguard? Vadim thought you did."

His eyes widened in panic, but he couldn't even get out of the chair before I fired into his temple. The shot echoed through the Embassy.

I dropped my Tokerav into his lap and pulled the Nagant out of my waistband. The door was closed, but not soundproofed. I had a little time before they figured out where the shot had come from; just how much depended on how willing Ekaterina was to volunteer what she'd seen.

Whatever time I had, it would be enough. I picked up the dossier and headed over to his fireplace.

###

I looked up from tossing the last page of the dossier into the fireplace as the door opened. The Rezident stood in the doorway, holding a piece of paper up, a glint of amusement in his eyes. A message returned from his headquarters no doubt; he had his own communications room, his own radios. "The Police report on the missing wife. Major Natalya Kornilov. Natalya Oksana Kornilov. Married name Beria, as in 'Oksana Beria.'"