Across the Green Border

Chapter One

It was mid morning as the Wehrmacht marched into Kaunas; the booming sound of hobnailed boots pounding the roadway drifted high above the city buildings. The soldiers’ heads were rigid and their faces stern, and their field-grey uniforms and their steel, chin-strapped helmets were cleaned and polished for the occasion. They were in Soviet territory, rifles over their shoulders and not a Red Army soldier in sight. Crowds lined the streets, most of them clapping and cheering, glad to see their liberators. Others stood back shaking their heads - this was their second occupation in a year and they wondered what the hell was going to happen this time. To the German army, the third day of Operation Barbarossa was well underway.

At Kaunas’s law enforcement office, located on a second-floor building in the heart of the city, sergeants and their subordinates darted about, notebooks and pens working overtime, reporting on what they’d seen or heard from the overcrowded streets. The sound of telephones filled the air as another amber light lit up the station switchboard. For the umpteenth time the secretary pushed a plug into a socket and spoke into her mouthpiece, ‘Hello, Police Headquarters.’ It was chaos.

Jonas Petraitis, the Chief of Police, hurried from the street accompanied by two of his constables. It was almost noon and he wasn’t in his customary state of mind. He’d been across the Neris River, one of two major rivers bordering the city of Kaunas, and witnessed the aftermath inflicted upon the inhabitants of Vilijampole, or Slobodka, as the Jewish residents preferred to call the community. Houses were burning and synagogues had turned to ashes. There were bodies lying in the streets; some with arms or legs missing and a number decapitated. But what bothered him the most were the children lying lifeless on the roadway – some were babies, two or three months old. It made him sick to the stomach.

His secretary, in her early fifties, looked up from her switchboard as he entered the office. ‘Coffee, please Zelma,’ he said to her. ‘I’ve got to wash down this sickening feeling in my throat.’

She tore off her headset and banged it on the desk. ‘Coffee?’ she yelled. ‘You must be joking.’

‘No,’ said Petraitis, ‘the usual - with milk, and sugar.’

She groaned and moved to the cupboard behind her. Let the damn phones ring, she said to herself; after the turmoil of the morning, she didn’t care. She made two cups and sat facing her boss across his desk in his glass partitioned office.

‘What’s the problem?’ she asked.

After hearing reports of disturbances in Slobodka she wanted to know what had happened so he told her what he’d seen. She was shocked, almost to the point of vomiting on the floor. She brushed her graying hair aside and wiped tears from her dark-blue eyes.

‘Jonas, how could they do such a thing?’

‘The whole town’s gone crazy,’ he said, ‘and I can’t do a thing about it. I can’t even uphold the law. Try to intervene and I’m threatened by a dozen armed men.’ He shifted his middle-aged frame uncomfortably in his chair. ‘Even the fire service is up against it. I’m unsure if the perpetrators are from the Lithuanian Activist Front, or they’re political prisoners released from the Ninth Fort. Maybe it’s both.’

‘Whoever it is, they don’t like Jews,’ Zelma said.

He shook his head. ‘You can be assured of that.’ He reached for his cup. ‘Maybe the caffeine might help.’

She looked through the partition across the outer office to her desk. A constable was seated in front of the switchboard, her headset close to his ear. He flicked a switch and a phone rang in the office. She smiled appreciatively and sipped her cup.

‘It was nice to see you this morning,’ she said. ‘We didn’t know where you were or what had happened to you. It was a relief to hear from Marguerite and know you were safe.’

Jonas was over most of his torture: the electric shocks, the bashings; the sleep deprivation; he was able to move about without discomfort. His experience with the Soviet Secret Police, the NKVD, was one he could do without. Being charged with murder, spying, and harbouring insurgents, was extreme, but his shooting of the Red Army soldier was not unexpected - the Mongol was molesting his daughter, Anita, who had been crying over the body of her partisan boyfriend desecrated and lying in the square.

Stefanas was known to the Soviets and the soldier could have followed her home and arrested her – and anyone else that was there - for being a rebel collaborator. That was the way the Soviets worked. On the other hand, the soldier could have taken her away and…he dared not think of the consequences. And what of his son, Karlis, who was a friend and team mate of Stefanas? Had he, Max Stucas, and Kowalski the Pole, survived what Stefanas didn’t? He fretted over it time and again.

He placed his cup on the table. ‘A lot’s happened over the last few days,’ he said to Zelma, ‘especially with the last of the Soviets getting out of town and destroying the bridges. I hope you were treated with respect while all this was going on?’

‘I’ve been here most days, had the door locked all the time. Even the sergeants and constables had a problem getting in. While you were away there was activity across the road at the Ministry of Defense. Bolsheviks were going in and out of the building. They had a big clean out; lit bonfires in the street.’

Jonas nodded. ‘I saw an example of that in the early hours coming home.’

‘It must have been terrible locked up in that dungeon,’ she said.

He pictured the explosions in his mind as he was escorted across the prison yard by Andre Kovalenko, the Red Army Colonel. ‘It was easy getting out. The Luftwaffe blew up the gates.’

‘How is Anita?’ Zelma asked. ‘I saw the bodies in the square. It was despicable, nothing short of despicable.’

His face turned sullen. ‘She took it badly. If she doesn’t improve, we’ll have to get her to a doctor.’

Zelma stared over his shoulder out the window. ‘Those fiends, if only I could get my hands on them.’

‘You’d box them around the ears, eh? Give them the old one-two?’

‘Bet your life I would.’

They sat in silence for a moment while he sipped his coffee. Then she looked at him. ‘We’ve lost a number of our men, Jonas. There’s no trace of them.’

It didn’t surprise him. In the circumstances anything could have happened. ‘They may have joined in the fighting. Felt they were doing their duty as nationalists helping to rid the Soviets from the city.’ He drank the last of his coffee and placed his cup on the desk. ‘How many?’

‘Five, including Konrads.’

Jonas leaned back in his chair and covered his face with his hands. ‘Bastards,’ he said. He thought of Irena, his housemaid, and her family, Erik and Ilma Daumantas. He lowered his hands. ‘It was my fault. I told Konrads to drive Irena home to the farm. It was unsafe here.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Any sign of the car?’

She shook her head. ‘Probably halfway to Moscow by now.’

‘Along with Irena and her mother and father,’ Jonas said. He cursed again and thumped the top of his desk. ‘Christ, what in hell is going to happen next?’

The phone rang. It was the constable at the reception desk. ‘Jonas, there’s someone to see you.’

He gazed out through the glass partition towards the desk then looked at Zelma. ‘Did I say something stupid? There’s someone to see me and he’s dressed in a uniform - a German uniform.’

Zelma followed his gaze. ‘He’s young, too, and handsome. I bet he has lots of other attributes. I’d best come with you, to give you support.’

‘I’ll be right out,’ he told the constable and hung up the phone. He stood up. ‘It didn’t take them long to find us.’

‘Maybe he’s looking for directions,’ Zelma said. ‘To Moscow.’

He saw the funny side of it. ‘Could be, let’s go and tell him.’

True to Zelma’s words, the Wehrmacht officer was tall, dark and handsome.

‘Major Ulrich Krüger of the Sixteenth Army at your service,’ the German said. He spoke fluent Lithuanian and greeted Jonas with a click of his heels and a restrained Hitler salute. ‘Chief Petraitis, I’m told.’ He looked at Zelma, smiled and tipped his large, prominent cap. ‘Madam?’ he said. ‘Or is it Fräulein?’

Zelma flushed, almost swooned. ‘Fräulein will be fine,’ she said, totally impressed. ‘Fräulein Zelma.’

The officer looked at Jonas. ‘Chief, the Wehrmacht has arrived in your city in the most diplomatic way and I must congratulate you and your citizens. You have done us a service. There’s no Red Army in sight.’

‘We try to do our best for our visitors,’ Jonas said. ‘That is, our welcomed visitors, those that will accept us as we are and not what they want us to be.’

The officer smiled. ‘Straight to the point, Herr Petraitis.’ He looked around the office. A number of constables were seated at their desks - one trying his hand at a typewriter, a key at a time. Another was trying to decipher annotations hurriedly scribbled into his notebook. To them, it was business as usual, no matter who was in control of the country.

‘The Wehrmacht will be setting up headquarters over the next few days,’ Krüger said. ‘No doubt you will see more of me as time goes by. It’s been a tiring trip, but I thought I’d drop by and introduce myself.’

‘All the way from Berlin, Major?’

‘Not quite, but a long journey all the same. However, I won’t keep you. In your position it’s obvious you have important things to attend to.’ He clicked his heels, tipped his cap to Zelma, and turned to go, then stopped.

‘By the way, as we came in there was a crowd gathered at a petrol station along the road. They were making lots of noise. Seemed to be celebrating something - the retreat of the Soviets, perhaps?’

Jonas was inquisitive. ‘A crowd at a garage, is that all you saw?’

‘Me, yes, but one of my NCOs said he saw a number of men on the ground and others standing over them brandishing iron bars. He took some photographs. There were guards carrying rifles.’

Jonas rubbed one hand against his forehead and sighed. He closed his eyes, thinking the worst then looked at the constable seated at the typewriter. ‘Alex, call for a car. We’re heading for the Lietukis Garage.’ He turned to the Wehrmacht officer. ‘Major Krüger, I must go. Thanks for the information.’

Krüger nodded and left the office.

* * * * *

Constable Alex Sumskas turned the car into the driveway of the Lietukis Garage and stopped beside a petrol pump. Jonas jumped out and looked around. There was noise from inside the workshop, but outside it was quiet: no crowd, no armed guards, no bodies on the ground like the German officer had mentioned; the place was deserted. On the concrete at his feet, fresh water from a hose trickled towards a drain. Then a voice called from the doorway of the workshop behind him. He whirled and the apprehension on his face quickly changed to a beaming smile.

‘Karlis, Karlis, my boy.’

He threw his arms around his son and patted him on the back. They stood apart, holding each other’s arms. Karlis seemed thinner than last they’d met. His clothes were shabby, his hair was longer, and the whiskers on his chin were ready to cross the fine line between stubble and beard. Pressures of partisan life, Jonas thought. Nevertheless, he was overjoyed and felt the emotion rise within him knowing well they could be seen together, openly, without the threat of Bolshevik consequences.

‘It’s good to see you, Poppa,’ the twenty-three-year-old said. ‘I’ve been to the apartment, twice, but there was no one home. With the telephones out, I couldn’t ring.’

‘There’s a story to tell, my son, but not here. And you, after what had happened to Stefanas, we were beside ourselves.’

‘I can understand; it was a tragedy. How is Anita taking it, and Mumma and Irena?’

‘Anita’s suffering. She saw him in the square, he wasn’t a pretty sight. It’s going to take a while for her to get over it.’

Jonas let his arms fall by his side. He’d leave the shooting and his arrest until later.

‘Your mother’s okay, but we know nothing of Irena. My driver took her home a few days ago. He hasn’t returned.’

Karlis looked over his father’s shoulder, staring at the trees in the park on the other side of the road. It reminded him of the forest and the winding trails and the mayhem of running for their lives. It reminded him of a single gunshot sounding through the trees; an indication that retribution had been served and the law of the forest had been upheld - and an informer had paid with his life. He looked back to his father.

‘Stefanas was killed at the farm. There was a double agent. We were caught in a trap.’ He paused for a moment. ‘If anything’s happened to Irena or her family…’ his voice trailed away. ‘I should have listened to you, Poppa. We shouldn’t have risked their lives like that. We should have made our base somewhere else, not at the farm.’

Jonas gripped his shoulder. ‘You know Erik, son. He wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.’

Karlis nodded. ‘What about you, how have you been?’

‘As I said, there’s a story to be told. I’ll tell you about it when you get home. I assume you’re coming home?’

‘As soon as I can, but I’m here with Max and Kowalski. They’re inside, come and see them.’

* * * * *

‘It was appalling,’ Max Stucas, the leader of the partisan cell, told Jonas. ‘We tried to intervene, but they stood up to us. If we’d have taken it further it would have been disastrous. Not only were they determined, but they were out of control.’

Along with the partisans, Jonas and his constable were seated around the desk in the workshop office: on chairs, on boxes, anything that would take their weight. He’d listened to Max’s story: about the captured Soviets and the Jews beaten to death outside on the car wash area and how their blood was flushed down the drain with a hose. Then he thought of his episode early that morning across the Neris River in Slobodka. The Lithuanians were taking out their frustrations on the Jewish population and if he and his constables had tried to intervene, like here, more lives would have been lost. And it wouldn’t have ceased - the Jewish problem wasn’t finished yet, by any means, he thought. And now that the Nazis were here, he was worried, and after what Kowalski had told them about the atrocities committed in Warsaw and other areas of Poland, he couldn’t bear to imagine what lay ahead.

Jonas jerked a thumb towards the front of the building. ‘There’s no sign that anything’s happened out there. What have they done with the bodies?’

‘They seized some Jews off the street,’ Max said. ‘Made them dig graves in the cemetery.’

‘Should I ask what happened to the gravediggers?’

Max stared at him then dropped his eyes. ‘No.’

The office fell silent. Max looked up with a pained expression on his face. ‘The Committee was in on it too.’

‘The Committee?’

Max explained how he’d pleaded over the radio for help from the headquarters of the Lithuanian Activist Front. ‘The LAF knew what was going to happen. They virtually gave permission. They told me they couldn’t hear me and turned off their radio.’

Jonas leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes and tried to come to terms with his own frustrations. ‘With the retreat of the Bolsheviks, I thought our troubles would be over,’ he said, ‘but not so. Our nationalists have taken matters into their own hands and have gone completely out of control. Their leaders are no better than they are, prepared to encourage these horrendous crimes.’ He looked at the men seated around the table; their faces showed the same concern. ‘The Communists have Stalin, the Nazis have Hitler. Have we a demon in our midst?’

Chapter Two

That night, as the citizens of Kaunas lay in their beds, the sounds of gunfire broke out across the city. Those brave enough to look from their windows could see the red glow of flames rising high above the Neris River, where again, houses in the Jewish community of Slobodka, along with another synagogue, were blazing. By daybreak, twenty-five houses were burned to the ground and over one hundred Jews were massacred and dumped onto the streets – three were rabbis. By early morning, a mass of bloated bodies floated beneath the concrete bridge spanning the river to the city, all victims of trigger-happy machine gunners. Anti-Semitism in the city of Kaunas was rampant.

* * * * *

The first weeks of summer in Lithuania were pleasantly warm and, with the Soviets gone more people were out on the streets of Kaunas. They shopped in stores that opened their doors more regularly and for longer hours. Alfresco restaurants and cafés became more frequented, with patrons shaded by awnings and umbrellas. But Max, Karlis and Kowalski, and Corporal Boris Valik, an ex-army corporal in his late twenties, preferred to make the best of the short Baltic summers and sat at a table nearest the footpath absorbing the rays of the sun. Far from the shadows of the forests, the partisans were happy to relax, eat their favourite food and drink their favourite beverages, pleased to be relieved from their position at the Lietukas Garage - the days of which they would never forget.

A dust covered Mercedes stopped with a squeal of brakes in front of them and three German officers stepped out. The senior of the three - a middle-aged man, stocky, with glasses perched crookedly on his nose - brushed his jacket while his subordinates surveyed the layout of the small café. It was crowded, but a junior officer pointed to a vacant table behind the partisans and his leader nodded.

Max placed his cup on the table and looked at the men walking towards them. Apart from the pistols on their belts they carried no other weapons. ‘I don’t recognise the uniform,’ he said to Valik. ‘What about you?’

The corporal’s thoughts were elsewhere; the raid on his parent’s home and their deportation to the Soviet Union was still fresh on his mind. He pushed his plate to one side. ‘What was that, Max?’

‘The uniform, can you make out who they are?’

Valik studied the officer. Although closely resembling the Wehrmacht’s, it was difficult for him to decide. ‘No, can’t say I do.’

Max nudged Kowalski and asked in Polish. ‘Know who they are?’

‘Einsatzgruppen,’ the Pole said.

‘Oh.’

‘Who are the Einsatzgruppen?’ asked Karlis.

The Germans passed them and sat at the adjacent table.

‘I’ll tell you later,’ Max said and nudged Kowalski again. ‘No spreche kein Deutsch, right?’

Kowalski nodded.

A waiter in a spotless white jacket scurried from inside the café and handed each German a menu. The senior officer glanced at his list of choices, then laughed, handing it back with a shrug. ‘Russian!’ he said, and laughed again.

The waiter slapped his forehead with an open palm, collected the menus and placed them into a pocket of his jacket. From another pocket, he produced newly printed German menus and handed them around. ‘My apologies, gentlemen,’ he said, in German.

The men from the Einsatzgruppen ignored him and searched meticulously for a suitable item of food and drink. Finally, the waiter took their orders and retreated to the kitchen.

The senior officer yawned and stretched his legs. He removed his cap, ran his fingers through his hair and gazed nonchalantly ahead of him, catching the eye of Kowalski sitting across from him. ‘Lovely sunshine,’ the German remarked.

Kowalski, already familiar with the Einsatzgruppen’s means of mopping up behind the German army as they advanced through Poland, raised his chin and pinched the front of his throat with his fingers and made a horrible croaking sound.

Max tapped the Pole on the head. ‘Laryngitis,’ he said to the officer in German. ‘Yelling profanities at the Bolsheviks.’

The Germans burst into laughter and the officer thumped the table with his fist. ‘You sent them packing, eh friend? You must have done a lot of shouting.’

‘Told them to take home their hammer and sickle and not come back,’ Max said.

The Germans broke into hysterical laughter again.

Max waited until they’d settled. ‘Long drive today, Captain?’ he asked.

The officer gestured outwardly with his hand. ‘Yes, but it’s nice to relax and look at our new surroundings. Better than Poland - full of undesirables and Jews. They should have deported them to Madagascar, like they’d planned.’

Max could feel the tension mounting in the man sitting beside him. Kowalski’s eyes were bulging and he was rising slowly from his chair. Max held his arm and gently pushed him back. The waiter arrived with food and drinks for the Germans and set them onto their table. The tension eased. Max watched as the men from the Einsatzgruppen ate ravenously and guzzled their wine.

The partisans were in no hurry. Like the Germans, they ate their fill, sat unperturbed, and indulged in a glass or two of alcohol – a pleasure they’d been without for a good many weeks – and, like most Lithuanians, they were hoping for better things to come. They drank slowly, enjoying their moment. In contrast, the Germans swilled glass after glass. They became boisterous. Laughter followed every remark; at times drowning the noise from the traffic in the street. Some patrons left, feeling uncomfortable. Others ignored them, accepting the liberators, happy to see the last of the Soviet regime.

Two men walked in. They seated themselves to the right of the partisans, two tables from the Einsatzgruppen. They chatted openly, ordered from the waiter then continued their conversation, ignoring the patrons around them.

It wasn’t long before the gestures displayed by the new arrivals attracted the attention of the Germans. There was touching, lingering eye contact, facial expressions and verbal outbursts that at times became audible to the men from the Einsatzgruppen. The Germans sat in silence watching and listening. Understanding Lithuanian wasn’t a priority when the tone of the two men’s voices told them everything they wanted to know. Finally the captain stood, placed his cap on his head, and indicated to his subordinates to follow. He walked around the partisans to the two men, still deeply engrossed in conversation – and each other.

Kowalski tapped Max on the arm and stood up, jerking his thumb away from the tables. Max pushed back his chair. ‘Up, quickly,’ he said to Karlis and Valik. ‘Follow us.’ They moved onto the footpath and casually headed up the street.

Thirty metres on, they heard a shout behind them; the officer’s voice was unmistakable. A table was upturned and chairs and glassware crashed to the pavement. More shouting erupted before the sound of pistol shots - four in all - resounded up the street.

‘Don’t look back,’ Max said. ‘Keep walking.’

They increased their pace in silence, reaching an intersection. There were military trucks and cars of all shapes and sizes moving up and down the road. They paused for an opening in the traffic. When it came they stepped off the curb, reached the centre of the road as the horn of a passing vehicle beeped.

‘Hammer and sickle men!’ a voice yelled at them from an open window. ‘Auf Wiedersehen!’

Kowalski caught a glimpse of a face in the rear seat. It was the Einsatzgruppen officer from the café. ‘Schweinehund!’ he yelled into the exhaust of the vehicle.

They reached the other side of the road and stepped up to the footpath.

‘It’s obvious these Einsatzgruppen mean business,’ Karlis remarked. ‘Who are they?’

Max kept walking. ‘The Reich’s murder squad. Kowalski faced them a number of times in Warsaw. They’re made up of men from the SS and the SIPO Security Police. They’re run by the Gestapo and they don’t like Jews, Gypsies, or - as we’ve discovered - homosexuals.’

‘My God,’ said Karlis. ‘More trouble. How many Jews do you think there are in Kaunas?’

‘A few thousand, I’d guess. But we know that figure is diminishing, day by day.’

They stopped and surveyed the fruit and vegetable shop belonging to Hershel Goldberg, who lived with his wife Sonia in an apartment across the courtyard from where Karlis’s father, his sister Anita, and mother Marguerite, lived. Already, windows were broken, a sign was torn down and paint had been splashed all over the empty market shelves inside. On the outside, a large Star of David had been daubed across the front of the shop with the word, Juden, scrawled beneath.

‘There’s one thing I can tell you, though,’ continued Max. ‘Like your father said, we thought life would be easier with the Soviets gone, but with the Einsatzgruppen in town, believe me, our troubles have just begun.’

Chapter Three

A number of men of the LAF crowded the desk in the foyer of the Kaunas radio station where, days before – along with the telephone exchange – they’d stormed in and seized it from the Soviets. Now, they stood and listened to the Russian voice crackling across the airwaves. But there were others who didn’t care. They lounged in chairs or stood at the door gazing into the street, their minds focused on anything but the voice of Joseph Stalin. To them, his speech was an annoyance to their ears:

‘The Red Army, the Red Navy, and all citizens of the Soviet Union must defend every inch of Soviet soil, must fight to the last drop of blood for our towns and villages, must display the daring, initiative and mental alertness characteristic of our people.

‘In case of forced retreat of Red Army units, all rolling stock must be evacuated - the enemy must not be left a single engine, a single railway truck, not a single pound of grain or gallon of fuel. Collective farmers must drive off all their cattle and turn over their grain to the safe keeping of the state authorities for transportation to the rear. If valuable property cannot be withdrawn, it must be destroyed without fail.

‘In areas occupied by the enemy, partisan units, mounted and on foot, must be formed. Sabotage groups must be organized to combat enemy units, to foment partisan warfare everywhere, blow up bridges and roads, damage telephone and telegraph lines, set fire to forests, stores and transport. In occupied regions conditions must be made unbearable for the enemy and all his accomplices. They must be hounded and annihilated at every step, and all their measures frustrated...’

The broadcast over, the radio was switched off and the group dispersed.

‘It appears we have more opposition to contend with,’ Max said.

Kowalski had understood little of the Russian’s speech. ‘How do you mean?’

‘Stalin said partisan groups must be formed to combat the enemy. That means us, as well as the Germans. They’re going to leave behind some opposition to keep the Nazis on their toes, just like we’ve been doing to them. They know how to do it, because we taught them.’

Kowalski gave him a wink. ‘Maybe we shouldn’t have tried so hard.’

* * * * *

Unknown to the partisans in Kaunas, not all rolling stock made it to the confines of the Soviet Union. A train loaded with deportees stopped with mechanical trouble on a deserted stretch of the main eastern line ten kilometres short of the Lithuanian border. With the help of a following train, the crew shunted the engine and its six carriages into a siding and left them. Desperate, the deportees tore unsuccessfully at the thick wooden wagons with their fingers. They cried in vain for help. Without food and water, over four hundred Lithuanians – men, women and children – died an agonising death.

Chapter Four

Zelma knocked and without waiting opened Jonas’s office door and stepped inside.

‘I’ve had a call,’ she said. ‘A farmer has found some bodies.’

Jonas looked up from his paperwork and laid his pen onto the desk. ‘Where?’

‘Petrašiūnai. In the cemetery.’

Jonas breathed deeply to control himself. ‘Is this a joke?’

His secretary looked at him oddly. ‘Of course not, the call came in a few moments ago.’

‘Isn’t that where you’d normally find them - in a cemetery?’

Zelma rolled her eyes. ‘Jonas, this is a vacant allotment, it’s not open for business yet. And the bodies, they weren’t buried in the usual way - they’re all together in one big pit.’

‘Oh, Christ. Give me the details and I’ll go and investigate.’

* * * * *

Constable Alex Sumskas slowed the car at the entrance to the cemetery, six kilometers from the centre of the city. The area covered many hectares surrounded by a high stone wall. Inside, a short distance through an open cast iron gate was a small house with a terracotta tiled roof. Standing in the yard a man puffed on a curved wooden pipe. He walked up to the car as Sumskas drove in and stopped.

‘I’m Chief Petraitis,’ Jonas said. ‘This is my constable. Were you the one who contacted the station and reported the find?’

The farmer removed the pipe from his mouth and shook Jonas’s hand. His face was thin and leathery and Jonas imagined the rest of his body, hidden beneath his clothes, would look the same. ‘I’m your man, Chief. Follow me.’

The old man led them along a road recently used by heavy vehicles. The tyre tracks were wide and tread marks clear in the loamy soil, moist from recent rain. They approached an area some distance from the gate overgrown with grass and chest-high pines. In the centre of the lot was a large pit, three metres wide and two metres deep, with a mound of recently turned earth at the bottom. On one side of the mound a blanket was spread. There were stones on each corner holding it down. The old man slid into the pit and walked towards the blanket. Jonas and the constable followed and the closer they got, the stronger the smell of rotting flesh became. The farmer pulled the blanket aside exposing the remains of three entangled corpses, half covered by the surrounding earth. Clothes hung from their emaciated limbs and the sunken eyes of one victim stared pitifully out at them.

Jonas screwed up his face. He gestured to the farmer to replace the blanket and clambered out of the pit. Sumskas needed no encouragement.

‘Let’s go to the house,’ Jonas said, and the three walked slowly back along the road. The farmer puffed unconcernedly on his pipe.

A quick inspection of the unlocked premises revealed an empty, unkempt and dilapidated interior with the remains of two decomposing dogs in a corner of a room. They retreated for the second time, and sat on the cracked and pitted concrete steps leading to the front of the house.

‘When did you discover the bodies?’ Jonas asked the farmer.

The older man tapped his pipe against his shoe, jarring free the last of the smoldering tobacco and scrunched it with his heel onto the step. ‘Early this morning, after first light. I’ve been suspicious of the goings-on in here for some time and with the departure of the Bolsheviks, I decided to investigate.’

‘Suspicious of what?’

The old man jerked a thumb at the house. ‘There’s been a guard living here with those dogs. He wouldn’t let anyone in, or even talk to anyone. He carried one of those rifles around - a Shapagin, I think. You know the one with the big round magazine. I’m sure he wouldn’t hesitate to use it.’

‘Anything else?’

‘Trucks came here, late at night, never in the daytime. I snuck up on more than one occasion, close to the wall. It was too high to see, but I could hear. There were men talking and working with shovels, and there was lots of moaning. The moaning seemed to come from different locations on different nights. Then came the thumping - like a shovel hitting something soft. The moaning stopped after that.’

‘Were there any gunshots?’

‘No. If I didn’t live close by, I wouldn’t have known a thing.’

Jonas gazed through the open gates