Tin Sky by Ben Pastor

Author:Ben Pastor [Pastor, Ben]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781908524522
Publisher: Bitter Lemon Press

7

FRIDAY 14 MAY, FORMER ABWEHR SPECIAL DETENTION CENTRE IN KHARKOV

At half past midnight, Bora had just fallen asleep. What awoke him was the clicking open of the street door, four floors down. Heard despite the distance, not imagined, it roused him completely so that he went from deep dreamless slumber to a state of lucid alert. Darkness was unbroken in the building. Outside, sheet lightning briefly drew the rectangle of the window grille high on the wall, against a night sky where clouds scudded in front of the stars. On the opposite side of the room, Bora perceived – dark on dark – the crooked rim of the damaged door open on the hallway.

He stretched his left arm, reaching out and groping for the pistol holder on the floor by the bed; he lifted it noiselessly and unlatched it. The heft of steel hardened his wrist as he passed the weapon into his right hand; in a single motion his fingers moulded around the grip and released the safety catch. Tensely he elaborated on thoughts of what was needed to prepare for every eventuality, without giving himself to dangerous flights of fancy. The entire building was untenanted; this much he knew. The block it belonged to, damaged during the battle of the spring, had been evacuated and the German authorities had kept it empty for future use.

From downstairs another distant sound came, consistent with the previous one – the click of a bolt as the door shut automatically. Bora sat up. There’s a difference between the sound of someone exiting and pulling the door behind him and the small noise of the mechanism when, from the inside, someone gently pushes it closed. This sound was of the second kind. Had the flash-lit window been a mouth panting in suspense, it couldn’t have better matched his state of mind. The thunder was like thunder in dreams. Bora rehearsed the familiar layout of the entryway to determine and anticipate the movements anyone would have to make in order to reach this floor.

His sense of a soldier’s dignity could be impractical at times. I’m not about to be shot in my underpants, he thought absurdly, and felt around for his breeches. The time it takes him to climb to this level trying not to be overheard is the time I need to button them and pull up my braces.

He’d gone through the process of clothing his lower half and retrieving his gun when the light in the third-floor hallway was turned on. Bora got to his bare feet at once, too highly strung to feel the glass shard he’d stepped on, a remnant of Khan’s ornate goblet. Downstairs, steps moved around, the progress of someone who walked from room to room, looking inside, searching. One man, wearing boots. Bora reached the threshold and listened. I made the same sound when I walked to Platonov’s door – that’s Platonov’s door he’s going to. It’s as if my own ghost were moving downstairs.

Having seemingly completed his search below, the booted man resumed his climb.

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