Read The Folks at Fifty-Eight for Free Online Page A

sounded angry, but there was a nervous edge to Brusilov’s voice as she heard him ask,
    “What is it, Cossack? Want her yourself, do you? Is fucking my wife not enough for you?”
    The tall man’s anger and contempt were obvious.
    “I have never touched your wife. I have the utmost respect for Nikki. It is a tragedy that you do not. As for the German woman, we have our orders, and I will ensure you obey them.”
    “So what now, Cossack? Are you going to shoot me?”
    “The only reason I have not already done so is out of fondness and respect for your wife. But I warn you, Sergey Brusilov, you touch that woman again and I will kill you. Now get back to the compartment and obey your orders.”
    “What about my automatic?”
    “You do not need it. The soldiers have their carbines. When we reach Leipzig, I will hand the weapon to Comrade Colonel Paslov and tell him why I took it from you. Now get back in there, and remember what I have said.”
    A sullen Brusilov returned to the compartment. Catherine Schmidt, with modesty restored, watched him sit down in the far corner.
    “What is the matter, Bolshevik pig? Did somebody just teach you some manners, or is your cock so small you did it without me knowing?”
    Brusilov didn’t ask the guards for a translation, and the guards didn’t volunteer one. Instead, he sat sulking in the corner, while they stared out of the window at the passing countryside. Catherine Schmidt sat outwardly gloating and inwardly seething. She’d expected that fourth man would be trouble. Now, it seemed, he had just ruined her only chance of escape.
    ****
    When Ivan Levitsky returned to his compartment at the end of the carriage, he found a man sprawled across the seat with an all-but-empty bottle of schnapps in his hand. Levitsky studied the man for a few moments. He was a middle-aged drunk, who must have staggered into the carriage and was now sleeping fitfully.
    Whenever the man began drifting into a deeper sleep, his fingers would relax their hold on the schnapps. Then he would wake with a start and grip the bottle tighter before returning to his stupor. It was a classic alcoholic daze. Levitsky had seen it, or something like it, too many times before not to recognize the symptoms.
    He’d been about to rouse the man and tell him to move to the next carriage, but thought better of it. The last time he had seen a man in such a condition at such an hour had been two months earlier, just before his father had died. Instead of moving the man on, as Levitsky knew he ought, he sat down by the door and quietly watched him snort and groan. He was remembering his father, recalling the pain of an alcoholic, the heartache it had caused the family, and the shame of a life so tragically wasted.
    He watched the town of Schönebeck come and go, and then Köthen after that. The train would soon be stopping at Halle, and then it wouldn’t be too long after that before Leipzig. He wondered how the great and terrible Stanislav Paslov would react to the news that one of his most trusted MGB agents was a common rapist. Perhaps Paslov would do nothing and put it down to high spirits, but then why issue the order? If Paslov was anything like his psychotic boss, Lavrenti Beria, he would probably make Brusilov a Hero of The Soviet Union and send Levitsky to the Gulag.
    He was still pondering the possibilities when the train pulled into Halle. A couple of civilians tried to get into the carriage. Levitsky sent them farther down the train. He continued guarding the carriage access until the train pulled out of Halle, waiting until they reached the city outskirts before returning to his compartment and the drunken interloper.
    “Who the hell is that?”
    He hadn’t seen Brusilov move along the corridor. He’d been too engrossed in painful memories. Neither had he seen the 1938 carbine in Brusilov’s hands, until its shortened barrel pointed at the drunk on the seat. Ivan Levitsky shrugged his shoulders and raised his