Mausefalle

Colonel Ivanov stood behind him, grimly eyeing the dead Political Attaché.

Tossing the last page of the dossier into the fire, I picked the Nagant back up from the floor next to me. "A sham marriage. Uncle Nikita arranged it. He thought I needed more protection from the criminal organizations he'd sent me after, and the link to Beria would make anyone think twice. He also figured that if I was married to Vadim, Lavrentiy Beria would leave me alone. In return, with Vadim married to me, Stalin would ignore rumors of his fondness for men. Vadim liked big rough men, usually several at a time."

"And you agreed to this?"

"It gave some protection to me and Roza for almost five years. He wanted nothing from us, other than to act as masks. We were content to live in our own part of the house, while I pursued my job."

"Roza?"

"My daughter. She's ten." A hint of my rage slipped into my voice.

"Not Vadim's daughter then?" The Rezident and the Colonel moved into the room, watching me carefully.

"Hardly, I don't think he could have done it with a woman if he tried. My Roza is the reason Vadim is dead. I found out he promised her to his uncle. Everybody knows about Lavrentiy Beria. Fucking murderous rapist bastard." I could see the Ambassador peering in around the edge of the door, with a wide-eyed Ekaterina peeking past him.

The Rezident looked down at his feet. "One hears things."

"That he kidnaps women off the street, rapes them, and if they fight, he kills them? Because that is what he does." My voice started to raise slightly and my lip curled. "After Stalin's death, he's gotten bolder, now he's taking random women right off the street in daylight, sometimes away from their husbands' sides. Vadim decided he would give Roza to him, so the monster could flaunt it at Uncle Nikita. He always treated her like a granddaughter and Beria knew that."

"And?" He spoke softly.

"And Vadim miscalculated. He always thought the stories about me at Stalingrad were trumped up for propaganda." I laughed softly, remembering the shock on Vadim's face when he realized why I insisted on keeping my driver, even though he had to be the worst driver in the Oblast. Vadim's big rough friends were used to bullying and beating much softer people than Timur and me. Zampolit Pavov could have told him about that; unfortunately for him, Pavov had run into Timur in East Prussia near the end of the war. Unhappily for Pavov, there hadn't been any witnesses. Equally unhappy for Vadim, he'd had no witnesses available, either. "He found out that the stories had been softened, so that I'd seem less brutal."

"You killed him." The Rezident was simply stating a fact, there was no accusing tone.

"The fire killed him, but I'm sure he was very glad when it finally did."

"What about your daughter?" He sounded genuinely curious.

"She is safe, where nobody will ever reach her." I thought back to taking her to the train before leaving for Ankara. I remembered putting the chain with its priceless little token around her neck, leaving her with Tania. Tania had, in fact, proved to be a wonderful aid to the Regimental Commander, so much so that he married her. Now, as the wife of the Ambassador to Italy, nobody would ever even think to ask why she'd had a ten-year-old niece traveling with her.

"So why are you here, what it this about?" He eyed the fireplace.

"One last favor for Uncle Nikita. A dossier of letters and orders used to blackmail Molotov and Malenkov into supporting Beria's play for power." I caught the Colonel's eye and knew that Molotov would know of the dossier's demise quite soon. There was no doubt about the Ambassador contacting Malenkov. "The Zampolit..." I spit on his corpse. "... used to be one of Beria's bodyguards. Beria gave him the dossier to keep here, where nobody would find it."

"How did you know where it was?"

"I questioned Vadim for a very long time. He was very forthcoming towards the end. As I said, he was looking forward to the fire. I am absolutely certain he just didn't know who the man here was. I had to use myself as bait and draw him out."

"Now what? You were married to Beria's nephew, so Khrushchev's supporters will still want your head if he succeeds in unseating Beria. Molotov and Malenkov will never believe you didn't read the dossier. And if, Saints forbid, Beria succeeds, he will..." The Rezident shrugged helplessly.

"I'm dead. I died in the fire, along with my daughter. There will be bodies found in the basement eventually. I put the bodies of two flu victims down there. There are advantages to being an operativnik. Uncle Nikita will ensure they keep digging until the bodies turn up. I'm sending him one last message, then I disappear from here and nobody will ever look for me."

"Leaving me with a dead Political Attaché." The Rezident really was an intelligent man, I could see he'd already figured out that no good would come of trying to stop me from leaving. In fact, it'd be best for everyone at the Embassy if I'd never been known to be here at all.

"You wouldn't be a very good 'Cultural Attaché' if you couldn't handle a single body, would you? Do whatever you want, I'd claim it as a suicide myself; politics is so stressful these days. Delay reporting it for as long as you can, I think it would best for everyone if Beria was the last to find out his dossier was gone." I glanced at my handiwork. "Don't worry; they'll send another. Political Officers multiply like lice."

He smiled slightly and didn't block my path as I headed out the door.

West Germany. Somewhere in the Schwarzwald: 3 May 1953

I slipped out of the hired car and began to walk up the lane towards the large stone manor-house. On either side, for as far as I could see, were cherry trees in full blossom, the pink-white petals carpeting the ground and filling the trees. I'd dreamt of it for so very long, but my imagination had fallen so very short of the breathtaking spectacle. I walked on, taking in the unbelievable beauty. I watched the front door of the manor-house open and a figure peered out, then turned and shouted into the house excitedly.

A moment later the door opened fully, and they started down the steps, hand in hand. She tugged at him to go faster and he smiled down at her fondly.

When they reached me, Kurt and our daughter pulled me into an embrace.

Still wearing the German ID tag around her neck, my tall blonde daughter made a mock angry face, her laughing blue eyes putting the lie to her stern voice. "Mother. Father and I have been waiting forever for you to get here."

Aus die Maus

Game Over

Stalingrad. 24 December 1942

Truck Factory Basement

I lay completely still, feeling something I couldn't ever remember feeling before. I could barely remember the word for it.

Warm.

I was warm. Only my face felt any cold at all, and even that was not so bad. My feet were warm, and I couldn't even think of when that had ever been a logical idea. I didn't just feel cold; I'd been made of cold, a thing of dark and ice and frost. I remembered what happened and wondered, if maybe, just maybe, this was death. I almost laughed; I'd hidden from death for so long, feared it, fought it, and struggled endlessly against it; here, it was warm and wonderful.

The darkness was so complete, so total that even I, a part of it, couldn't see. The only sensations were warmth and a comforting pressure across my ribs, holding me back against...

I screamed inside, but the noise stayed there. Noise was death and I wasn't dead, not at all. I tried to fight free, and the comforting pressure turned to a steel band, pinning me.

"Mausi. Shhhhh. Shhhhh. Mausi, I won't hurt you in any way. I promise." He let his arm relax just a bit, but left it here to make sure I knew not to try to bolt away.

I stayed silent and held very still, waiting for my chance. My white winter over suit, my quilted jacket and quilted pants were gone, my thick felt valenki boots and socks were off, but he'd left my winter underclothes on—the long wool shirt and pants—and he'd left me my fur lined cap. That had to mean something. He must have had plenty of time to do anything he wanted, but he'd left those on me, then covered us with something. Blankets, thick wool blankets, probably from my sleeping nest, my quilted jacket on top of that. My hand had pushed out of our coverings and found the cold again. I pulled it back, involuntarily. A small dark part of me screamed in horror at my retreat from the familiar hardening cold, but another part reveled in the warmth.

"Our fight is over, Mausi. Our war is over. We died here in Stalingrad." His voice was sad and bemused. He took his hand away, and a moment later reached it out of our covers and flicked a tiny flame into existence.

I felt myself sink back against him. There was no point in fighting, there was nowhere to go. We were in a space not much bigger than the two of us. If he'd have let me go, I'd probably have knocked myself out on the stone not even three feet overhead. A massive chunk of the stone slab had fallen, sealing us in a corner, trapping us together forever. He flicked the lighter shut.

"I don't want to do that too much. I don't know if we have any air coming in or not, but it probably won't be enough." He put the lighter away and put his arm back around me. Somehow that helped push back the sick terror of entombment.

I pulled a breath in. "How do you speak Russian?" Even to me, my voice was soft and ghostly. I could feel a shock pass through him, as if he didn't realize I might be able to speak.

"My family had a nurse for the children. She was from Kaliningrad and she taught all of us children to speak Russian."

"A servant? A nurse?" I tried to picture it. I'd grown up with dirt floors and barely any food. We may have had a White Russian family name, but we'd never been a wealthy family.

"My family is a Junker family, landed nobles of a sort; we had an estate. We had a... place to make liquor. We grew cherries and turned them into a liquor called Kirschwasser. In the Schwarzwald, the Black Forest. Our nurse was one of the orchard workers' wives." He seemed to settle in a bit more.

We just lay there for a few minutes. "Why didn't you kill me?"

He laughed. I couldn't remember ever hearing anyone laugh out loud like that. "I tried, Mausi. I tried everything. I tried shooting you, blowing you up, stabbing you. It's just not meant to be."

I tried not to smile, but with his mock frustration, the humor in his voice was contagious. "It's been tried a lot."

"My machinegun jammed..."

I stifled a giggle, then tried to figure out was wrong with me. It had to be all the excessive warmth making my thoughts fuzzy and soft. "It's the stick magazines on your MP-40s, they aren't right for this. They catch on rubble and cause feed jams. The drum magazines we use are better."

"Yes. I didn't exactly have time to fix that. Somebody..." I knew he was smiling ruefully just from the tone in his voice. "... threw a grenade and I kicked it away." That explained why the explosion hadn't killed us both. He paused. "How did you avoid the mine?"

"The air from the vent felt wrong, and I smelled the wire; they smell different when they are new."

He shifted. "My God, How long have you been down here?"

I tried to think of a time when I hadn't been. Everything from before just seemed so unreal. "Forever. Maybe."

He fumbled behind him for second, then pressed something into my hand. It was a knife handle, with the blade broken off neatly at the guard. "Last thing I tried. The blade caught in the cooling vents of your damn gun. Snapped off." He laughed again. "Then I used the lighter when I realized you were unconscious..." His voice trailed off abruptly.

"And you found out I'm a girl."

"You looked so harmless and innocent. I couldn't do it. When I took your coat off you, I found your collection of tags, so I know you're not really harmless, but I... I just couldn't. I'm just tired of it, tired of the fighting, tired of this horrible 'Rattenkrieg.' Besides, there's no point now. We'll both be dead soon enough. I didn't know whether you would ever wake up, and you seemed so cold, like you were made of ice. I thought, maybe, at least you could be warm for a little while."

I pulled the blankets a little higher up. "I don't remember the last time I was actually warm like this."

"It's Christmas Eve, anyway. I couldn't kill you on Christmas Eve." He reached up and tucked a corner of the top blanket a little tighter around us. "My father was in the Great War, and on Christmas one year, I think it was 1914, his unit decided to have a truce with the British. They shared food, played games and gave gifts to each other. He still has a lighter that a British soldier gave him. Of course, the next year the British launched massive attacks just to keep it from happening again. Not a very sentimental people, the British."

"We didn't have Christmas for a long time. Since the Revolution I think, but a few years ago, it was allowed again, although they don't say Christmas. My mother was so happy." For some reason, sharing that made me feel better, as if life wasn't quite over.

We just lay there for hours. Sometimes silently, sometimes, hesitantly, we talked, off and on. We talked about growing up, we talked about our families. Neither of us believed in any of the causes that had brought on the war. I'd just wanted to teach children, he'd just wanted to grow his cherries and make his brandy, as his father and grandfather had.

We talked about the pointlessness of it all. He'd been fighting for almost three years already, and his exhaustion was obvious.

"This fight is almost over, anyway. We've lost here." He mused. "6^th Army is doomed; we all know it. Fucking Luftwaffe failed us. The food and ammo are almost gone. The only ones getting out of here are the wounded, not even most of them."

I nodded, then realized he couldn't see. "More and more of our people are arriving every day, more and more tanks and guns."

"Then why are you out here alone?"

I wasn't sure I could explain that, I told him about the Scout Platoon disappearing while I was out, about Zampolit Pavov and his hatred of me. "Maybe I just belong here. Sometimes it feels that way."

We wound down a bit and I was shocked to realize that not only was his arm still around me, I was holding it there.

He fumbled behind him again. He held something up that had a thin line of yellow light. A watch that was somehow glowing. "It's midnight. Merry Christmas, Mausi."

"No it isn't, Christmas is weeks away." I stopped. "I think." I wasn't even sure what day it was anyway.

"It's December 25^th... oh, that's right, you do the Eastern Tradition, seventh of January, right?" I felt a little of the cheer go out of him and I hated it. Somehow his good humor made our shared fate tolerable.

"No. Today is Christmas." I pulled my jacket down and searched the pockets until I found my last chunk of black bread. "We can have Christmas dinner." I tore it in two and pushed a piece into his hand.

"Wait." He gave me a very slight squeeze that left me somehow breathless in a way that had nothing to do with air, then rummaged through something behind him. "I forgot, I have... Bergkäse cheese... Schwarzwurst, blood sausage... and if that grenade didn't break it..." He gave a short victorious bark of a laugh. "Kirschwasser!"

He had a small folding knife he used to cut the sausage and cheese into slices. With no light I couldn't be sure but, I suspected he gave me a little more food than he kept. We both ate hungrily.

He pulled himself up into a half sitting position and I just seemed to naturally fold against him. For a moment he lit the tiny flame again and handed me a bottle, it had a gold label with a stylized fox, bowing respectfully. "The fox is our namesake. This is Kirschwasser. It's pretty strong, and it's usually pretty harsh, but this is some of my family reserve. It's almost twenty years old, and it's been stored in wooden barrels."

I took a slow sip. It had a wonderful flavor, and I could feel heat spread through me from it in a delightful warming sensation. "That is delicious. It is nowhere near as strong as vodka."

I pushed it back into his hand and he took a sip as well. "It tastes like home."

"Your home must be amazing."

"Sometimes. Especially in the spring, I think. As April turns to May, the cherry trees bloom and the whole world turns pink and white."

"I'd love to see that." I meant it.

There was a long silence while we passed the drink back and forth. "I wish you could, Mausi. I wish we'd met some other place and time."

"A nobleman meet a peasant girl? Just where would you meet a peasant girl?"

He gave me a slight squeeze. "In the spring there are dances. Everybody goes, even peasant girls. I'd ask you to dance."

"I don't know how to dance, and my feet are too big."

He laughed. "I took off your boots, remember? Your feet are not too big, but they were very cold."

I pressed the soles of my feet down on the tops of his, enjoying the warmth. "I still don't know how to dance. I never learned."

"I would teach you. The waltz first, I think. It is easy to learn and very graceful."

I nestled back against him a little, trying to picture it. "Under the cherry trees?"

"Under the cherry trees. You would outshine all the other girls, like a star. I would almost certainly try to steal a kiss, and you would probably slap me."

I laughed. It sounded so light and easy, so unlike what I was; what, at least, I thought I was. "Maybe I wouldn't slap you." I twisted around until I was on top of him, facing him nose to nose. "You wouldn't know for certain until you tried."

He tasted of Kirschwasser, cheese, sausage and black bread, the same as I did. I began to fumble with his shirt, looking for more warmth, the warmth of a kind that went far beyond temperature. We found that warmth together.

Hours later, we lay pressed together, warm skin to warm skin. There were rumblings of artillery coming through the rock, muffled but clear, the sound of a battle. The air was growing much thicker around us, I could feel it and I could tell it wouldn't be long. We'd suffocate before we froze or starved, and for that, I was glad. We'd simply fall asleep together and never wake up.

"I wonder what they will think."

"Who?" He shifted.

"Someday, somebody will clear all the rubble to build something new. I wonder what they will think when they find us."

"They'll find a man and a woman together. They won't know who we are."

I tried to focus; I was getting so very sleepy. "What if they did? What if they found a Russian and a German holding each other in the ruins, maybe it would mean something to somebody."

"Maybe. I think I'd like that."

I shifted and began pulling our uniforms together. "If we are in uniform, they can't ignore it."