Free Red Shadow by Paul Dowswell

harassed or anxious.
    A cool breeze blew off the Moskva as they walked over the great bridge and Misha felt hungry. They bought black bread, salami and apples from a little grocery store on Bolshaya Yakimanka and reached the Park in a little over twenty-five minutes. There was an empty bench overlooking the Moskva Embankment so they sat there in the sunshine.
    Misha was bursting to tell her what Papa had said but knew he couldn’t. He could think of nothing else to say. It was Valya who broke the silence between them. ‘I know you’re dying to tell me something, Misha, so I will spare you the torment. I know what’s about to happen.’
    She waited for a young woman with a pram and two tiny children to walk past.
    ‘Papa says the whole Kremlin knows the Nazis are about to invade. Only Comrade Stalin denies it. But he knows something is wrong too.’ She paused. ‘I wonder how long it will be before they get here.’
    Misha felt slightly disappointed. He thought he’d known something Valya didn’t.
    ‘You sound so certain that the Nazis will be successful,’ said Misha. ‘Papa told me Comrade Stalin says the Germans won’t attack because they know it will end in failure. He says that anyone with a rational mind will see this. And although the Vozhd hates the fascists as much as any good communist, he thinks the Nazi leader is a shrewd character. He has made some clever moves in Europe.’
    ‘He has a magnificent army,’ Valya said.
    ‘Yes, but Napoleon had the best army in Europe too,’ said Misha, ‘and that ended in catastrophe when he invaded Russia. We’ve all seen the pictures of der Führer at Napoleon’s tomb when he went to inspect Paris last year. Hitler admires the little Emperor as much as any warlord. He’ll know what happened to Napoleon’s army, and if he forgets, I’m sure his generals won’t tire of reminding him.’
    Valya let out a long sigh. ‘Or maybe they’re as frightened of him as our generals are of the Vozhd ?’ She hooked her arm around his. ‘I’ll tell you a secret. Don’t ask how I know.’
    It was obvious how she knew. Anatoly Golovkin must have told her. Just as his papa did with him.
    ‘That campaign in Finland, after we reclaimed our territory in Poland. It was a disaster. Russian corpses were piled up like pyramids, frozen in the snow. The Finns beat us! A little country hardly anyone has heard of.’
    ‘But we won, didn’t we?’ said Misha.
    ‘Barely. D’you know what Papa told me? Oops, I’ve told you where I heard it now . . . He said the Finns used to attack when the Soviet troops were having their afternoon rest. Completely inflexible. And our soldiers were starving half the time because supplies didn’t get delivered. If the Finns can do that to the Soviet army, then we don’t stand a chance against soldiers who conquered Europe in just a few weeks.’
    ‘So much for our treaty with Germany!’ said Misha. ‘I was there at the banquet to celebrate it. It was only two years ago. I can’t believe they’re going back on that after such a short time. And even if they were stupid enough to attack, we’re much bigger than the other countries. We’re huge. We have far more soldiers and far more tanks and aircraft. There are twenty thousand aircraft in the Soviet air fleet.’ Misha was trying to convince himself. He finished with a flourish. ‘And we’re Russians!’
    ‘Misha, Papa says Comrade Stalin has had most of the top army men liquidated. Tukhachevsky, Yakir, Primakov . . . All those heroes of the Soviet Union we used to hear about and see on the podium in the Red Square parades, we don’t see them any more. They’re gone. Almost certainly dead.’
    ‘Rokossovsky came back,’ Misha said.
    ‘They must have decided he was more useful to them alive. But most of the generals and divisional commanders now are new men. They’re terrified of doing the wrong thing and they’ll be hopeless against experienced Nazi commanders.’
    A cool breeze