BARBAROSSANOVA

Episode 1, evening of 24 November 1942, west of Moscow, near Rzhev

 


A brisk gust of wind carried swirls of icy snow across the barren openness separating the German positions from our own. A comrade and I stood watch at dusk behind a pile of sandbags as the rest of my Red Army unit ... "Shtrafbat", or penal battalion, 8069 ... consisting of some 800 men and women ... convicts and political prisoners all ... hunkered down nervously in the dugouts behind me.
 


Just before daylight on the morrow, we ... along with several other penal battalions... would be ordered forward ... across minefields and coiled barbed wire to throw ourselves at the German defenses. We were the expendables. Our job was to advance across the field shoulder-to-shoulder in long lines, clearing the mines with our lives in advance of the tank brigade that would follow in our wake.

It was suicidal. We were sacrificial lambs. But should any of us miraculously survive the mines, bullets and barbed wire ... we were expected to fight. Anyone who turned back or failed to advance would be shot by the SMERSH "anti-retreat" detachments stationed directly behind us.

I shivered ... even in my padded field jacket and hat ... as night descended and the temperature plummeted. Looking back into the dugout entrances behind me, I could see the glow of dozens of cigarettes among my closely packed comrades. I wished I was back there among them. It would be a long cold night of waiting.

Posting to a penal battalion was for all purposes a death sentence. It had been my ticket ... not that I had any choice ... out of the Gulag after nearly five years of hard labor ... but for what? To be blown to pieces by some unseen mine? Or cut down in a hail of machine gun fire? I was an American forced to serve in the Red Army. And its callous disregard for human life, so dutifully accepted by my comrades, was in total conflict with my own sense of justice and human dignity.

But what was I to do? Tomorrow I'd be dead, and that was that. I huddled against the sandbags, ducking down out of the wind, and allowed my mind to wander back to the summer of 1936 and that warm fateful morning of my abduction on the streets of Prague.


 I had been sent by my NKVD masters to Berlin that summer of 1936 to assassinate the Nazi Propaganda Minister, Joseph Goebbels. I was ill-prepared for my mission and, although a valiant attempt was made, I failed miserably. The whole thing ended with me being raped ignominiously by Goebbels himself while tied spreadeagled to his bed, dragged off to Gestapo headquarters, tortured along with a young socialist woman called Katrin who had tried to help me, and condemned along with her to be executed by hanging.

I escaped my execution at the hands of the Nazis through the daring plan of a sympathetic SD officer and another Berlin socialist friend, Klaus Erbe, who loved me. Katrin, Klaus and I then fled by train to Prague where, safe from the Nazis at last, we holed up in the city's Grand Hotel Bohemia. Our night there had been the wildest, most delicious of nights ... a drunken menage a trois, played out amidst the twisted and rumpled sheets of the hotel room's large bed until exhaustion finally brought it to an end.

On the following morning, while Katrin and Klaus slept off the effects of our celebratory night together, I left the hotel for a morning walk. Before leaving our room, I stopped to survey the scene. The two of them lay naked on the bed ... Klaus on his side, Katrin on her back. His flaccid penis lay against her hip. His tousle-haired head was pillowed on her breast, which bulged under its weight. Her thigh was smeared along its entire length with the white crusty residues of what I knew were my own juices.

I felt that familiar tingle down low as my mind raced back to the moment of my biggest orgasm ... one among the many that night ... with me lying on my back, and Klaus over me, thrusting himself rhythmically and deeply inside me, my knees in the air, ankles rubbing the backs of his legs, hands clutching his hips, head thrown back, mouth wide open, moaning loudly ... and with Katrin lying alongside, mounding my left breast in her hand, taking as much of it as she could inside her mouth, and sucking hard while flicking at my hardened, eager nipple with the tip of her tongue.

Oh how I had screamed when the moment came, knuckles white as I gripped the bed sheets ... so loud that Katrin had clasped a hand to my mouth and hissed "Shhhhhhhhhh!" in my ear.

Then, as quickly as Klaus rolled off to one side, she had clambered over me, straddled my shoulders, grabbed me by the hair and eagerly thrust my gasping face into her wide open, glistening-wet pussy, and commanded me to eat her. I complied, thrusting my darting tongue deeply into that warm welcoming pink abyss, kissing and sucking feverishly until she stiffened, came with a howl, and collapsed on top of me.

I smiled to myself as I quietly let myself out of the hotel room. The two of them had not stirred. They needed time to sleep it off. I thought I would take a morning stroll down to the Old Town in search of a cafe where I could order a coffee and something sweet to eat. I wore a dark skirt and a plain white blouse, under a long coat. I felt alive and happy to be free as the morning air cooled my face.



I hadn't gone far, when I became aware that I was being followed ... by two men. My NKVD training kicked in. I stopped to look in a shop window to get a better look at them through their reflection in the glass.



One was tall and rather handsome, with Slavic features and a shock of blonde hair combed unstylishly forward. He wore a light trench coat and dark gloves. The other was a bit shorter, darker, dressed in a dark coat, and generally more sinister looking than his companion.



"NKVD" I thought to myself, sucking in my breath and moving on. Two blocks further, as I walked uphill, I could feel them quickening their pace and gaining on me. I looked frantically for a place of refuge. An open shop door, other people. There was none. They had chosen the moment to make their move well. I wanted to run but it was too late. A dark gloved hand took a firm grip of my arm and I felt something hard and blunt jammed into my ribs through the pocket of a light trench coat.



Attempting to look braver and more confident than I felt, I turned toward him, one hand in my pocket and reaching out with the other to grip his forearm. I was about to tell him to back off or I would screams, but I could feel his arm muscle tense, and imagined a finger on a trigger. He looked at me meaningfully.



There was something absolutely chilling about the cold grayness of his eyes ... a rare spellbinding intensity that simply can't adequately be described. It was a commanding look of a type that can only be experienced. He literally had me frozen in place, and slowly I released my grip on his forearm.

Just then ... probably in response to a predetermined signal ... a shiny new black Skoda Superb eased up to the kerb alongside me and my two newfound "friends". The driver, wearing a fedora, stepped out, and with a foot on the running board, said something quickly in Russian that I was too surprised to catch.



Not knowing what else to do, I said in English, while attempting to step away, "I really must be going now. I think you have mistaken me for someone else."

He gripped my arm more tightly and I heard the distinctive metallic click of a safety being released from inside his trench coat pocket.



"Get in," the blonde man hissed in my ear, opening the back door and jabbing me forcefully in the side with the nose of his gun.



In no position to argue, I turned about, bent down, sat down on the leather seat, and swung my legs in ... tugging at my skirt, which rode up revealingly on my thigh to above my hose. The blonde man shoved me over roughly and slid onto the back seat alongside me.

The dark man slammed the door and vanished from sight. The driver put the Skoda in gear and pulled sharply away from the kerb. The car leaped forward as he shifted gears and drove off.

"Now see here," I said, "I am an American citizen. You can't just abduct me off the streets of Prague like this! Just who are you anyway?"

"Call me Vassily," he replied, almost smiling.

"Well Vassily, tell your masters in Moscow that Barbara Moore has done her best. Things didn't quite work out in Berlin as planned, I'll admit, but you can't win them all. I did my bit, and I want to go home now. So please ...."

My words were cut short by a cloth soaked in chloroform pressed tight against my face. I began to struggle, but a strong arm across my chest pinned me to the back of the seat. I felt immediately nauseous and my head spun.

I was able to manage no more than an "Oh shit!" before I passed out and slumped down on the seat.