Kirov Saga Men of War - By John Schettler Page 0,100

named Molla, and another man—Burzan. You’ve heard these names?”

“Commissar Molla? Yes, sir. He went that way—to Kizlyar. You are assigned to his unit? Good luck to you then. He’s a hard man, that Molla. One of Beria’s men—he always finds his henchmen down here. If I were you I would stay clear of him. Molla came through here yesterday with three truckloads of women from the villages. He says they’re going up to Astrakhan, but who knows what he really means to do with them.”

Orlov’s eyes narrowed. His bet that any local Commissar of note would be well known and easily found had paid off. Three truckloads of women…. He didn’t like the sound of that.

“Good then,” he said. “Now I’ll take that piss.”

The Lieutenant saluted and went about his duties, and Orlov shuffled into the hotel, giving the desk clerk a sallow look and asking him for directions. Safe in the men’s room, he took a moment to activate his Jacket Computer and ask about the Makhachkala Division. He learned it was a special NKVD Rifle division formed from the local border defense, railway security teams, and supply train guards. It was attached here to the 58th Reserve Army and would remain in the region for another two months until that November. Now his Captain’s getup was likely to see him trundled off to some defensive post in short order, he thought.

He considered what to do, and decided his best bet would be to say he had orders for Commissar Molla. His brawn and natural assertive nature would back most other men down if he was questioned, and his Captain’s rank came in handy as well. All he had to do was steer clear of a nosey Colonel if he ran across one, as his present rank would trump most other officers he might meet on the road. His need to deliver these secure orders for Molla would surely get him on a truck heading north, and he had to get there soon, because he knew where those truckloads of women were going, and it wouldn’t be any place they would ever care to remember.

A lot of equipment was still moving north from Baku. The trains had been creaking with the weight of old rusting pipe, weathered drills and derricks, tools, shovels and anything else they could safely remove from the oil works. They intended to use them to find new oil elsewhere, and vast work camps were being set up, now collecting thousands to serve as raw labor in the new oil fields. Commissar Molla would find his grandmother here, he knew, and then he would take her and all the others in those trucks to God knows where. He had little time to waste now, and so after a meal and some brief rest at the hotel, he went out to look for another ride north to Kizlyar.

The city was now a gathering point for fragments of broken army divisions that had been shattered in the fighting and were slowly regrouping here, receiving supplies from barges offloaded at the port. He saw shoulder patches of the 317th, the old Baku Division that had been destroyed at Izyum and reformed here, and also the 319th, a new Rifle Division forming here along with the NKVD units.

He sighed, realizing that no matter how hard he tried to escape from it, anywhere he went in Russia now the war would soon find him, as it had found him here in the muddied streets of Makhachkala. No matter. He had come a long way now, from an aimless drunkard whoring his way along the Spanish coast, across seas and around the high mountains to this desolate place—but he had a mission now—he was no longer a lost and wandering soul, and that made all the difference.

Part IX

Letters From The Dead

“Dead letters! Does it not sound like dead men? Conceive a man by nature and misfortune prone to a pallid hopelessness, can any business seem more fitting to heighten it than that of continually handling these dead letters, and assorting them for the flames? Sometimes from out the folded paper the pale clerk takes a ring—the finger it was meant for, perhaps, molders in the grave; …he whom it would relieve, nor eats nor hungers any more on errands of life…”

— Hermann Melville, Bartleby The Scrivener

Chapter 25

Fedorov found Karpov on the bridge, pulling him aside, his eyes serious with some hidden energy and obvious concern. “Can we speak in the briefing room,