Free Tin Sky by Ben Pastor Page B

next, so you can change. The photo of yourself and the cigars, too. May I provide anything else, Commander?”
    Khan sat on the bed to test the mattress. “Yes, my provisions. No need to prepare my meals, Major. As you saw, I brought along enough sealed food for two weeks. I’ll touch nothing else. In the morning, a single chocolate ration is all I require.”
    “Understood. I must, however, insist on a routine medical check before I leave.”
    “What? Don’t make me laugh. Do you really think I plan to commit suicide after going through all this effort?”
    “I must insist. If you prefer, I’ll remain present in the room.”
    “That’s ridiculous. Send the damned quack in, and make it snappy.”
    Weller happened to already be in the building, checking General Platonov’s blood pressure. He followed Bora upstairs, promptly carried out the check-up, found nothing out of the ordinary with (or on) Khan, and left.
    Bora’s watch read 6.13 p.m. Time to meet Scherer at the Tractor Factory. Before leaving the detention centre, he enquired about Number Five with a variation on the usual question. “Has he asked for me?”
    “No, Herr Major.”
    “Anything else to remark?”
    “Only that he hasn’t called us names, Herr Major.”
    It was just like the bastard, Bora thought, to react to the first news about his family in years by simply not insulting his jailers. He stopped to scratch Mina’s fat back on his way out of the building. Dusk was closing in fast, even though the clouds hadn’t yet risen to fill the sky. He took Moskalivka Street to Rybna, crossed the bridge over the Kharkov River and headed down the long Old Moscow Highway/Staro–Moskovskaya road to the Tractor Factory district. Soon he was driving alone on the wide boulevards leading out of the city. Side streets petered out, the steam factory and the Russian army cemetery went by, and still Bora followed the German signs in Gothic script that read Nach Ch.T.S .
    The Kharkov Traktorenwerk Siedlung , a small industrial city at the edge of the city, had suffered much in the repeated battles for Kharkov. In the near dark, Scherer was waiting off Narodna Street, in front of Building G. Bora gave him back the Tank Corps suit and the rest.
    “Did you have problems getting here, Jochen?”
    “None, other than it was a bear loading the tank on to the damn train.”
    “The convoy?”
    “It’s parked around the corner. Was already here when we arrived. Not very happy; Russki fighters strafed them around Bestyudovka. No casualties, but a round barely missed the car. If you want the GAZ-61 back in Smijeff tomorrow, my men and I will go along part of the way, to rejoin our unit. Make sure you take along the trunk with the Russian’s foodstuff; he’s got all kinds of goodies in it. So what’s the Field Marshal going to do, send for the T-34 or have it disassembled here to study it?”
    “He’s flying in himself in the morning, so they might work on it in Kharkov. Or in Zaporozhye.”
    Scherer took a wistful look at the menacing, dark bulk filling up the hangar behind him. “It’ll take more than what we presently have to confront this model if they plan to use it in large numbers. It’s so new, the paint on it is still fresh. I wonder how many of them they’ve got in the hamper.”
    “However many they have, we’ll make good use of this one. Start the tank up and follow my vehicle down Ivan Frank Street. There’s a better place to keep it for the night.”
    After leaving the T-34 safely awaiting Manstein’s visit in an underground shelter on Louis Pasteur (Lui Pastera) Street, Bora decided on a hunch not to take a shortcut to Merefa through the southern districts, in case Platonov changed his mind and wanted to see him tonight. Less than two hours had gone by, but the guards at the detention centre reported that Number Five had insistently been asking for the interrogator during the past fifty minutes. Anxious as he himself was, Bora decided to let