A Traitor's Heart (A Revol Rossel thriller) by Ben Creed

Author:Ben Creed [Creed, Ben]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Welbeck Publishing
Published: 2022-04-27T16:00:00+00:00

29

The light was closing in as Rossel, Nikitin and Ivashin stood before what remained of Grachev’s former lodgings.

Thanks to the Luftwaffe’s nightly bombing raids during the city’s 900-day siege, Rossel had seen many buildings like this one. With only the facade still in one piece, it was an enigmatic stone mask concealing a past that had been eviscerated. Its window frames, with peeling paint, containing only shattered glass. Out of one billowed a single white curtain, as if a belated flag of surrender. A table and chairs were visible in a room that now had no walls or ceiling. A huge and twisted steel beam dangled at an unlikely angle: a surreal sword of Damocles hanging over a child’s crib.

The street was near the railway lines, which probably explained why it had taken such a pounding from all those Dorniers and Heinkels. It looked as though there had been ten apartment blocks like this one before the war. Now, only three were left standing on one side of the street.

The rest were just holes in the ground, rapidly filling with snow.

‘This is it,’ said Ivashin. ‘We had a reunion here, not long after the war had ended – that time it was just me, the sergeant, Katz and Samosud. We drank a lot and swapped tales of valour, the way old soldiers do. They were rebuilding everything round here. And then one day a couple of years ago – spring of 1950, I think – a labourer working on the site next door to this building took his drill and drilled right into an unexploded bomb. No more labourer, no more building and not much left of the two on either side. That’s what Grachev told Katz, anyway. Those two were close. Thick as thieves.’

‘Where was his apartment, can you remember?’ said Nikitin.

Ivashin shrugged. ‘Not the exact position, but it was on the fifth floor, I remember that much.’

‘Let’s go around the back,’ said Rossel. ‘There’s too much rubble blocking the front door.’

The rear of the block was in better condition. A fire escape had buckled and at its base had peeled away from the brick, but, after a couple of failed attempts, Nikitin managed to hoist himself up, followed by the others. After a storey and a half the floors were in a better condition and they clambered into the apartment block via an empty door frame.

The building was in complete darkness. Using light from Nikitin’s torch to pick their way through the debris, they made their way along the fourth floor. From there, an interior stairwell led to the fifth. They turned left and found themselves at the end of a long, wide corridor with doors on either side. The torchlight picked out a mural of workers harvesting sunflowers on the wall, still perfect. At the far end, a glass vase containing dried stalks stood on a small wooden sideboard. Rossel had the strange sense that, at any moment, one of the doors might open and a laughing

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