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

hands. So much for Red Army comrades.
    “Just a drunk passed out. I did not see him as a threat. But for a man who beats his wife and has to handcuff and sodomize a helpless girl, you may see him as a danger.”
    Brusilov sneered.
    “Keep laughing, Cossack, and they will bury you with that smile still on your face. Now move to the far side. Oh, and I will take my thirty-three. . . and yours.”
    Levitsky removed the two Tokarev automatics from his jacket pockets. He placed them on the seat and then backed away to the other side of the compartment. He watched Brusilov pick up the first, and then lean the carbine against the door before picking up the second. The Georgian sneered in triumph as he pocketed one and levelled the other.
    “Sorry, Cossack, but I cannot have you telling your tales to Paslov.”
    Levitsky shrugged a nonchalance he didn’t feel.
    “I am fascinated to know how you intend explaining all this. . . my death, the violation of the girl. I assume that when you are done with me you are going to finish what you started. And then, of course, you have our two uniformed comrades to consider.”
    “They will keep their mouths shut, and who is going to listen to a murdering Nazi whore?”
    “And what about my death? How will you explain that?”
    Brusilov’s face fell, but then the malevolent smile reappeared and he nodded to the drunk.
    “I think I will let our friend here take the blame. I came to check on you and found him standing over your body, with your gun in his hand. . . Of course I killed him.”
    “Do I get any say in that?”
    Levitsky turned, to look at the drunk and gave a start. The hand that had previously held the bottle now held an automatic pistol with a suppressor. The suppressor’s one-inch-diameter barrel was pointing directly at Sergey Brusilov’s head.
    Less than a second later, two slugs, fired in rapid succession, hit an astounded Georgian almost precisely between the eyes.
    Levitsky stood watching the lifeless body of Brusilov in open-mouthed shock, but then found his voice and addressed that same one-inch-diameter barrel.
    “If those were point two-two LR rounds, I would have to assume that is a Hi-Standard HDM and that would make you OSS?” A smile confirmed the truth, but the killer failed to answer. With stomach churning and heart thumping, Levitsky tried again. “Am I next?”
    “Not necessarily, and OSS disbanded in forty-five. Did they not tell you at MGB school?”
    It was Levitsky’s second surprise in under a minute. It hadn’t initially registered, but the man with the HDM spoke perfect Russian. The Ukrainian quipped back bravely.
    “I went to NKVD school, not MGB. Showing my age, I suppose.”
    The killer picked up the automatics and carbine and tossed them on to the luggage rack. The smile reappeared as he waved Levitsky towards the corridor and then stood back.
    “Time to move, old man.”
    Levitsky smiled politely and made his way toward the corridor, believing he was a good ten years the junior of the man with the HDM.
    It was the last thing Ivan Levitsky remembered.
    ****
    Catherine Schmidt sat watching the two Red Army soldiers with one eye and the passing countryside with the other. She didn’t know precisely how far they’d travelled, but they couldn’t be far from Leipzig and a second opportunity to escape had not presented itself. She listened to the soldier who had given up his carbine to Brusilov. He didn’t seem happy.
    “Where the hell has that MGB bastard got to with my carbine? He said he would only be a minute. We are nearly in Leipzig.”
    The other soldier seemed less concerned.
    “Stop complaining. You gave it to him. It is your responsibility.”
    “You heard what he said about the Gulag. I had no choice.”
    “So, go and get it back.”
    “Forget it; he will be back any minute.”
    “Well, if he is going to have the woman before Leipzig, he had better get a move on.”
    She suddenly saw Brusilov’s leather coat and heard a