WHAT'S MORE COMMON IN WAR: LOYALTY OR BETRAYAL?
April 1944. After so-called liberation from both the Nazis and the Soviets, Ukraine remains a battleground between resistance fighters and the ruthless Soviet secret police working to break them at all...
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❦ SCREAM, NIGHTINGALE, SCREAM VI. bow to yours, but do not forget ours ——————————————————
When his consciousness and sense of place returned, Taras found himself slathered in a nest of damp straw.
Around him, rotted-out rafters partitioned the barn's open dirt floor into bays. His sheepskin coat lay atop cobweb infested wood, drying in a patch where the soft light of dawn poured in.
Vika was there too, sitting patiently across from him, just sitting, being there, not saying anything and not needing to say anything because the NKVD uniform she wore said it all.
"Are you alright?" she asked, dodging the words he had hoped she would be blunt with in her opening. "Sokolov said you were still unresponsive when they moved you because of the hypothermia threat."
How nice of them to finally care.
"When?"
"Ten minutes ago, if that."
"That's not what I meant."
To be fair, the question was open-ended and the scope still focused on him. But her deflection was pitiful. Desperate, really. She was acting like the prisoners who slowed their digging so they had time to brace for the moment of death.
Vika gave a series of brisk nods to further delay her response before finally spitting it out in a pained half whisper. "I know. They came to recruit me in Novocherkassk."
"Why?"
"You're shivering, Taras."
"Don't say my name. I'm fine."
To prove it, he tugged his greatcoat off the rafter. Damp sheepskin slapped him on the back. Its dull weight slid over curled shoulders, concealing the waves of shivers which racked his bare neck and back.
The only reason he was cold was because of the wet blood. While he didn't have a mirror to see the cuts, he judged they ran from his left temple to the back of skull based on the stinging alone. Trails of their sticky red had reached his neck, each clutching shards of the gravel he'd collapsed onto. Where Sokolov had struck him with the rifle butt produced its own dull pain that scrambled his vision with every throb.
"Tell me why," Taras said, further examining the wounds by touch. Even the lightest of skims made him draw a sharp breath through grit teeth.
"Why what? Why they recruited me or why they sent me to you?" she asked. "They recruited me because what was left of the Don host was taking up ranks in the Red Army. I was used to spy on my own people because we're still considered a threat to the Soviet state."
"You really are Cossack then," he muttered into stiff hands. Curls of dried blood flaked off as he rubbed them to build friction and a distraction. "That's one truth. How about the rest?"
