Story time in Berlin

The knife was cool against the bare flesh of his neck. One wrong twitch on his side and it would dig and press and cut, spilling his life onto the cold stone floor, sending him to join the many who had fallen in defense of the German capital. He knew this as surely as the stern figure holding the blade to his jugular did. In spite of it, however, he smiled.

He smiled, because he also knew that when he got to hell or wherever it was that Army grunts went when they died, he’d see his foe there too.

In one hand, he held an L9A1 pistol. The handgun was, at that point, pressed underneath the jaw of the Russian with the knife at his throat. If Andrew Marker decided the Ruskie was going for it, all he had to do was squeeze.

It was a deadlock; an unspoken, mutual promise shared between them the moment they realised the predicament they found themselves in. Neither of them would risk laying down their weapon while the other still had his up. Unfortunately Andrew’s arm was now beginning to ache; they’d been at this for what felt like a year, and he’d also noticed that the knife blade was starting to tremble ever so slightly. If this continued, exhaustion would finish what a sloppy brawl had started.

Fishing into his limited Russian vocabulary, which primarily consisted of alcoholic beverages, Andrew worked his mouth. The Russian tensed and Andrew felt the knife press harder into his skin.

‘Angliyski?’ he asked hopefully.

The Russian’s eyes widened with understanding but he didn’t reply immediately.

‘I’m afraid not,’ he said after a few moments in heavily accented, but steady, easy English. There was a beat, and a slow, steady grin spread across the Russian’s face. Andrew mirrored the expression.

‘On three?’ the Russian offered, and, after a millisecond’s consideration, Andrew nodded.

‘One,’ the Russian started.

‘Two,’ Andrew continued.

‘Three,’ they echoed and carefully lowered their weapons. Andrew rubbed his throat with his free hand as he holstered his pistol with the other and took a deep, relieved breath. The Russian took a step back and tapped at the skin underneath his jaw where the barrel of Andrew’s gun had been pressed.

‘I think my balls have crawled up into my stomach,’ the Russian said. Andrew snorted, and that single act dispelled any tension between them as he felt himself start to relax. The Russian seemed to have dropped his guard too, his shoulders had rolled back and he started to pace.

‘Tell me about it,’ Andrew said as he sighed and leaned against a desk. They stood in a blown-out office building; splintered desks, scattered stationary and collapsed cubicles decorated the floor, and a thin layer of dust had begun to gather. The Russian sat on a pile of depressing grey cubicle partitions and exhaled before reaching into his fatigues and withdrawing a packet of cigarettes, popping one from the box before taking it in his mouth and fishing for a lighter. He glanced at Andrew, saw him watching and paused…

‘You want one?’ he asked.

Andrew blinked, not honestly expecting the Russian to offer one, and nodded, plodding over in his thick, black combat soles. The Russian took another cigarette from the packet and handed it to Andrew, who took it and placed it between his lips as the Russian fumbled with the inner pockets of his fatigues in search of his lighter.

He must have found it as he made a pleasant murmuring sound before drawing out the lighter, proffering it to Andrew first, who grunted in appreciation before leaning over to let the Russian light it up. He took a slow, easy breath and revelled in the taste and sensation before exhaling gently.

‘Been fucking forever since I had a smoke,’ Andrew said with a contended sigh.

‘You quit?’ the Russian asked, his own lit cigarette held loosely between his teeth as he talked.

‘Years back when I joined the army,’ Andrew answered with a nod. ‘Mum hated the stuff. My ex did too; said she’d leave me if I didn’t give it up.’ He chuckled humourlessly, ‘Then she went and ran off with a pilot three weeks later.’

The Russian hissed, expressing his sympathies.

‘I know,’ Andrew continued, ‘it was a /navy/ pilot too. Never felt more embarrassed in my life.’

‘Hey now,’ the Russian growled, ‘I was Navy myself.’

‘You aren’t now?’

He grunted, ‘No. Transferred. Now I serve as part of the Voyska spetsialnogo naznacheniya,’ the blank look on Andrew’s face must have prompted him to explain, because seconds later, he said, ‘Spetsnaz.’

Andrew almost felt his heart stop.

He released a staccato breath; and then promptly started laughing.

‘What is it?’ the Russian asked, his face a mask of curiosity.

Andrew took a breath and shook his head, ‘I fought a Spetsnaz operator to a bleeding standstill and am now chatting with said operator while smoking one of his cigarettes. If I told my section about this they’d laugh and stomp me into the dirt for being a bloody liar.’

The Russian raised an eyebrow at him. ‘It is strange, yes but is it really something your friends would disbelieve so much?’

Andrew chuckled, ‘Mate, you have no idea what sort of horror stories that go around about your lot. Some of the more /believable/ rumours about the Spetsnaz say you backflip off buildings and toss hatchets at people.’

The Russian blinked before throwing back his head and roaring with laughter. He kept this up for almost five full minutes, leaving Andrew suitably impressed at the operator’s lung capacity.

‘Ah that was good,’ the Russian sighed. ‘I would tell you what we say of your own special brigades, but I’m afraid they’re not nearly as amusing.’

‘Fair cop,’ Andrew said with a yawn.

‘I remember a group of paratroopers who came to the ship I used to serve on – the Moskva. Stiffest bunch of jackasses you’d ever laid eyes on, and their witches weren’t much better. The Captain Lieutenant was offering them a tour of the ship and they happened upon me and a few others as they toured the portside…’ a slow, sly grin spread across his face as he recalled distant memories.

‘As they passed, the Captain Lieutenant stopped to give them a brief talk – I don’t remember what it was about – and as he did this, I decided to… well… have some fun at their expense, shall we say? I crept towards them, my shipmates watching eagerly, and, when I decided I was close enough, I stood up and shouted “GO!” as loud as I could manage.’

‘What happened?’

The Russian snickered, ‘Each of the dumbasses snapped to attention, turned left, and immediately vaulted over the side of the vessel.’

Andrew gaped, ‘All of them? Just like that?’

‘Every single one,’ the Russian cackled. ‘The witches escaped too much harm – they put their shields up before they landed. The paratroopers though, there were many fractures; eight at least, and a few concussions.’

‘Just from hopping into the sea?’ Andrew pondered dubiously.

‘Ah, no, now you see, here is the part where things got a little awkward for us. You see… we were still pulling the lifeboats up from a drill much earlier in the day…’

Realisation dawned on Andrew. ‘So those paras…’

‘Many of them hit the lifeboats as they fell,’ the Russian nodded before snickering again, ‘I think only one of them did not end up in the infirmary. Their Colonel was very unhappy.’

Andrew shook his head, but he too was smiling. He rolled his head back and stared at the ceiling.

‘We had a guy in our section when I was at Sandhurst,’ Andrew began.

‘This is your Military Academny?’ the Russian probed.

‘Yes,’ Andrew answered. The Russian nodded before motioning for Andrew to continue.

‘Anyway, we had this one bloke in our section – a Saudi prince if you can believe that – who was probably the laziest fucker you ever knew. Smart, fit, but he just didn’t want to do /anything/.’

‘I know the type,’ the Russian mused.

‘Yeah, well anyway we were on exercise and this guy had been given the task of carrying our Support Weapon – that was an L7A2 in our case – and the ammunition and he fucking hated it. Kept trying to foist it off on someone else and wouldn’t stop grousing about it.’

‘I get the sense this man was not popular,’ the Russian assumed.

‘Too bloody right he wasn’t. He’d find any and every bleeding excuse to be far away when we dug foxholes and every night we scragged the bastard for it. Silly cunt never learned though, and when we were finally done with exercises we filled in the trenches we’d dug and started on our way back when our Colour Sergeant suddenly stops us and asks the burke where the Support Weapon is. Sure enough, we all turn around and, as the Sarge says, he’s not got it. The guy looks at us, then looks back at the Colour Sergeant, and tells him “I buried it.”

‘So naturally we’re a bit stunned, and when the Sarge asked him “why did you bury it?” he replies “it was too heavy Colour Sergeant,” so at this point everyone’s starting to get a little pissed and the Sarge gets right up in his face and says to him “that weapon costs more than £50,000 you little bastard and you fucking /buried/ it?” and the Saudi thinks for a minute and then – I shit you not – tells the Sarge to his face: “I’ll buy you a new one.”’

The Russian laughed.

‘So of course after the Sarge dressed him down we had to go all the way back and spend an entire day digging up foxholes for that ruddy gun. If nobody did before, we /really/ hated him after that.’

The Russian chortled and took another drag from his cigarette.

‘There was an officer on my ship, the Moskva, who was very unpopular among the enlisted seamen. Made life difficult for them, liked giving orders and didn’t care much for however pointless they were. I assume you are familiar with such men?’

Andrew nodded, ‘Unfortunately.’

The Russian grunted, ‘Well this man had a rather funny looking moustache; impeccably groomed I suppose, but funny to look at for many of us. It looked a little of Hitler’s moustache, and he knew we made fun of it behind his back. Since we were all Lieutenants he could only really take his anger out on the enlisted men. It got so bad that eventually we decided to teach him a lesson.

‘There was an officer’s ball being held – don’t look so surprised, we had our events too, Stalin doesn’t /completely/ hate the idea of his people having a good time,’ the Russian smirked before continuing, ‘and this man, to the collective confusion of all, had a very attractive fiancé – an Air Force witch no less – and she loved that silly moustache of his. So on the eve of this ball, we… to borrow your term, “scragged” him. We bound, gagged and blindfolded him and then we got to work.’

‘What did you do?’

The Russian smiled devilishly. ‘We could not physically hurt him; that would only lead to investigations, and investigations in my country usually result in… reassignments if you see what I mean.’

‘I think so,’ Andrew affirmed. Details were scarce, but everyone knew of Stalin’s paranoia and what it meant for anyone to cross his sights.

‘Anyway, we could not – would not – hurt him. He was an asshole but he was still a crewman of the Moskva, so eventually we decided simply to cut him down to size a bit, literally in a sense. We got some gel, and a razor, and shaved half of his moustache off.’

‘Only half?’

‘It would not have looked nearly as funny, and imagining the humiliation he must have felt as he shaved the rest of it off before the ball was sweeter than any chocolate to us.’

‘How did his fiancé take it?’ Andrew wondered.

‘She pestered him about it all night,’ the Russian chortled, ‘kept asking him why he had shaved his “dashing” moustache off, and he had to keep deflecting these questions with awkward explanations like “I was growing tired of it,” or “there are new regulations.” He was much better after that. Still an asshole, but he stopped picking on the enlisted men. I believe he still suspects it was them who ambushed him instead of his fellow officers.’

‘Sounds like he deserved it,’ Andrew remarked.

‘Indeed,’ the Russian agreed, exhaling and releasing a cloud of smoke from his lips.

‘Speaking of people who deserved it,’ Andrew sighed, picking himself up and stretching his arms out, ‘I served in Ireland in the 70s, and there was a farmer who had his home about twenty, thirty miles from our camp. Never knew his name but great Christ he was a sour cunt. Kept jeering at us every time we’d roll by: “Focking Brits! The IRA’s banging your birds back home and laughing at you, you fockers”’ Andrew put on an Irish accent as he quoted the farmer, shaking his head, ‘we were certain he was feeding intel to the IRA but we could never prove it; mostly we think he just hated Brits.

‘Anyway, at our camp, we had a bit of a cat problem. We’d been staying at this place for almost three months at that point and in that time; we must have had at least three dozen moggies – probably a lot more than that – lounging around the camp. It started pretty innocently enough; a few soft-hearted lads give a stray a saucer of milk or a bit of MRE and after it happened enough, hey presto, we gained a new mascot. What we didn’t count on though, was that over these three months, our camp would eventually turned into a bloody cat shelter.’

‘I’m not a cat person myself,’ the Russian interjected, ‘dogs are easier to handle; better looking too.’

‘Fair enough. Anyway, we had all these cats lying about, and what do cats do? They piss; and after three months our camp fucking /reeked/ of cat piss. We tried shifting them but…’ Andrew made a scratching gesture with one hand, ‘that didn’t go so well, not with fifty of the bastards and only thirty of us.’

‘I imagine not. Part of the reason I prefer dogs.’

‘No it didn’t, and we were starting to get bloody sick of them. After another month passed though, we found what we thought would be a solution to our problem. You see, some of the lads had managed to set up a still in the camp, and some of their product had leaked because of a puncture, fault, I dunno. Anyway, one of the Sergeants comes to me and asks me to take a look at something, and he takes me to where a couple of guilty looking privates are standing next to a rather complicated looking contraption. But there’s also a few cats there…’

The Russian’s brow cocked and he “ah’s” and nods his head as he reaches a conclusion.

‘The cats were drunk weren’t they?’

‘Give the man a gold star,’ Andrew chuckled, ‘yeah, a couple of those little ragamuffins must have had more than they could handle overnight and they were, as the saying goes, drunk as a skunk. I was about to ask who’d set the still up when suddenly an idea came to me, and from the looks everyone else was wearing I could tell we’d all had the same thought.’

‘Drug the cats?’

‘Yeah, in a manner of speaking. Just before night we got as many containers as we could and filled them all up with milk, and then we spiked them with as much produce from the still as we felt safe; we wanted them drunk you see, not dead.’ The Russian nodded.

‘Anyway, the plan worked like a charm. Come the morning, we woke up to the sight of a couple dozen drunk kitties, and let me tell you something mate; when a cat gets drunk, and I mean /really/ drunk, their motor coordination goes completely. Some of them were dragging their hind quarters along looking all confused as to why their legs weren’t working. Others had the opposite problem, and they pushed themselves forward with their rear legs while their face ate dirt.’

Andrew chuckled at the memory of the legion of mewling cats trying and failing to pick themselves up to try and walk off what must have been a killer hangover.

‘So what did you do with them?’ the Russian queried.

‘Hm? Oh, nothing at first. Most of us were too busy laughing or gawping but eventually we realised that phase one of our plan, such as it was, had been a success. Unfortunately we didn’t have much of a clue as what to do next. We couldn’t just dump them anywhere, like out in the middle of a field, and we really didn’t want to dump them too close and risk having them make their way back either.

‘In the end, it was a Corporal who came up with an answer, Dobbs was his name. You see, the month before, we were on patrol close by this farmer’s house when we tripped an IED trap planted by the IRA; blew out the windows on his home… it also killed two of my boys and took the leg off another.’

‘Nasty business,’ the Russian murmured, ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Thanks. Anyway, the guy comes out not even a minute after the explosion and starts screaming at us. At us. Two soldiers are dead and another critically wounded, and he starts shouting and raging and demanding that we pay for his fucking windows,’ Andrew shook his head, ‘don’t think I ever wanted to shoot anyone as much as I wanted to shoot that bloody farmer. He got nothing, of course, but every time we went near he’d come out and bother us for compensation.

‘So, what Dobbs proposed, was that we load all the cats onto our Bulldog transports and dump them in that cunt’s barn when he was out or sleeping. As it happened luck was on our side, and he must have gone out to town to the market or something. Anyway, quick as we could, we picked up the cats, loaded them up in the Bulldogs and set off. We made it in decent time, planted every last drunk cat in his barn, and made tracks. I’d have given an awful lot to have seen his face when he opened it up.’

‘Did he ever suspect?’

Andrew sniggered, ‘Oh I’m certain he knew it was us. I don’t think he knew how we’d managed it though, and even if he ever figured it out he certainly couldn’t have proven it; we parked the Bulldogs well away from his farm on our usual patrol route. He kept giving us grief about it but not as much as he had before; probably afraid we’d do something else and we probably would have too if he’d kept it up. As it happened though we got rotated around a week later.’

‘Did you ever see him again?’

‘Thank the lord no, and if there’s any justice left in this world no one from my old platoon will have anything to do with him or Ireland ever again.’

‘There is still fighting there, is there not?’ the Russian asked.

‘Yeah, we take hits almost every time they open fire and dart back into the crowd and we can’t tell who’s innocent and who’s an insurgent waiting to put a bullet in your arse the moment your back is turned. It’s frustrating business; especially when nine people out of every ten in that dreary place hate your guts.’

The Russian nodded, ‘I understand this. I served in Afghanistan helping to hunt down the most elusive Mujahideen units, the ones that gave our military the most trouble. One night we stayed in a mountain village, we awoke to gunfire. Me and my unit sprang into action, took up our weapons, and assumed our firing posts, but we didn’t see anything. We then realised one of our squadmates was missing and heard shouting in one of the rooms. We rushed in expecting that maybe one of our local guides was a Mujahedeen sympathiser and had attacked him, what we found was one of them standing over my man waving his hands and shouting so frantically that our interpreter could not make out what he was saying.

‘We eventually found out that the guide had been cleaning his rifle during the night, and the stupid man had forgotten to flip the safety off. The rifle went off, and the bullet had gone right through my man’s boot.’

‘Shit…’ Andrew whispered.

‘We had to restrain the soldier, he wouldn’t stop trying to take the boot off himself and, in his panicked state, would only have done himself more harm. He was crying when we finally removed it and inspected his foot, sure that we would find a toe or two had been blown off.’

‘They hadn’t?’

The Russian shook his head, a smirk creeping back onto his craggy features, ‘By whatever twist of fate, the bullet had gone right through his boot and between the gaps of his toes. There was some blood from where the shot had grazed them, but his toes were all attached and he was otherwise unharmed.’

‘Lucky bastard,’ Andrew breathed.

‘We all had a good laugh about it when it became clear there was no real harm done, and eventually we managed to calm down the guide who’d shot him. He was quite apologetic, almost irritatingly so. After weeks of gruelling slogging through mountains and being shot at, that was quite a pleasant day. Not quite how I imagined my twenty-sixth birthday would kick off but…’ he shrugged, taking one last puff of his cigarette before tossing it onto the ground by his boot and stamping it out.

‘My first birthday away from home happened on an exercise in Kenya,’ Andrew divulged. ‘It was shortly after I received my commission; we’d set up camp next to a river and during the day it was almost teeming with crocodiles. They never came near us but we’d always have a man or two keeping watch just in case one of them got brave. Anyway, come the day word somehow got around that it was my twenty-first and naturally everyone took that opportunity to get absolutely roaring drunk.’

‘Soldiers,’ the Russian scoffed, but there was a soft, fond smile on his face as they said it.

‘Indeed. Anyhow, as I was about to retire to my tent for the night, five of the biggest in my section ambushed me; not the first time I’ve been scragged by the lads, nor was it the last, but the alcohol made them… rougher than I think they would have been otherwise. They stripped me down to my skivvies and tied me up with so much rope I literally could not move and made a great grand show of taking me down to the river, all of them chanting “Toss him in the river!” and a few singing “For he’s a jolly good fellow”.

‘They were about to dump me into the water when suddenly some bright spark pipes up: “Wait, what if the crocs are still up and about?” and after a few second’s silence, another man shouts “Get the guns!” so they plop me down by the riverside and leave me there while they all grab their rifles and some ammunition. Five minutes later we had roughly two dozen soldiers – all drunk – all of them toting loaded rifles, most of which were pointed at the water’s edge. To say I was worried would be an understatement.’

‘They threw you in the river I presume?’

‘Oh yes. There weren’t any crocodiles around, thankfully, though I didn’t know that at the time, and all I had to assure my safety was a platoon of inebriated, armed soldiers, most of whom didn’t have a torch, and let me tell you, there is /no/ light in the Kenyan wilderness save for the moon, so it was pitch black. It’s still easily one of the most terrifying moments of my life.’

The Russian leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. ‘And what would be /the/ most terrifying moment in your life?’

‘Probing for information?’ Andrew inquired.

The Russian shook his head, ‘Simple curiosity.’

Andrew thought, his brain bringing up a slideshow of all the years of his life that he could recall. There was a lot there; memories both bright and dark, events he would cherish until his dying days and others he would rather forget. It took him a while to answer.

‘I guess…’ he began, slowly, ‘probably when the news broke out that we were at war.’

The Russian nodded but didn’t say anything, and Andrew took that as a prompt to elaborate. ‘It wasn’t terrifying in the same way that night in Kenya was. It was more… ah I don’t know how to explain it. When that story broke I was on leave, at my brother’s house, playing football with him and his children; my niece and nephew. When we heard that broadcast it was like the world stopped for a few seconds. We were at war; war with a superpower. An honest to God superpower; and regardless of the outcome, the world Dominic and I grew up in would be gone, and the world little Ella and Charlie will grow up in is going to be a very, very different place indeed… and the knowledge of that absolutely /terrified/ me.’

There was a brief, pregnant silence as Andrew finished speaking.

‘When we were told we were at war with the world, there wasn’t much of a reaction,’ the Russian said. ‘All of us knew that if it ever came to war, we would stand alone. Maybe China would join us, maybe they wouldn’t, but regardless of their answer it would still very much be /our/ war. Some of the more fanatically devoted among the Spetsnaz brigades rejoiced; they believed, and still believe, that Communism – our way of life – is the only way forward. Many of them still hold the naïve belief that your workers may yet “throw off the shackles of the oppressed and take action against the tyranny of capitalism.”’

‘You don’t share their beliefs?’

The Russian shook his head. ‘I know men. I have lived among them, hunted them, and killed them. I have seen women in Moscow shuffle along the frozen streets in rags begging barely eking an existence while esteemed members of the Party drive around in imported American supercars. Communism is a fine idea, but it would require a fairer race than men to truly flourish. We are greedy by nature, always wanting more, and even Comrade Stalin and his ilk are not above this,’ he sniffs derisively, ‘much as they claim otherwise.’

‘The way you speak I’m surprised you’ve not been shipped off to a gulag in Siberia,’ Andrew remarked. The Russian snorted.

‘Who among my comrades-in-arms would believe you if you told them of what I said? You are a warrior dog of the great Western capitalist hegemony, an enemy of the people. I’ve played the part of the dutiful soldier all this time, why would anyone suspect differently now?’

‘So if what you’ve said is what you really think then what does all this mean to you then?’ Andrew asked him, raising a hand and gesturing to the desolation surrounding them, to the outside world where Berlin burned. ‘I’m not exactly happy about dying just to make sure some fat factory owner keeps raking in six figures a week but we’re all well aware that it’d only be worse under a madman like Stalin; the Purges aren’t exactly a secret, you know, though damned if you didn’t try to keep it one.’

The Russian took another cigarette and placed it between his lips, then thought better of it and slid it back into the pack.

‘I think that this is a terrible waste of life,’ he said finally, ‘and that if we have to march into another country and force them at gunpoint to accept our way of life then any peace gained through it is fragile and false. I fight and kill, and will perhaps die not because I subscribe to the idea of the permanent worldwide revolution, but because it puts food on my wife’s plate and allows my son to lead what I hope will, in time, become a normal, fulfilling life. It is all any of us can ever hope for, and I am sorry to say that for many of my comrades, even that is just a pipe dream.’

‘So why keep fighting for them then? Why not pack everything up and run?’

The Russian chuckled humourlessly, ‘As a special operator I am privy to more secrets than most, and I am aware that the KGB is not as all-knowing and all-seeing as it would have my people believe, but they are devious and clever, and they keep a very close watch on the military. The GRU is similarly overstated, but they hound defectors with a relentlessness that borders on reckless. I am not willing to gamble with the lives of my family on a long shot. We have done nothing to earn the ire of anyone in power, and as long as this continues we will be safe.’

Andrew wanted to say more but he was stopped when the Russian cocked his head, his expression shifting into a mask of curiosity.

‘The gunfire has stopped,’ he stated.

Andrew frowned and pricked his ears, and found that he was absolutely correct. Silence had fallen over Berlin.

‘The battle’s over,’ Andrew murmured. The Russian grunted in affirmation.

‘I suppose that means we should take a step outside and see who was the victor,’ the Russian said as he picked himself up and stowed the packet of cigarettes back into his fatigues.

‘I guess so,’ Andrew replied before hauling himself to his feet, and pausing as his radio squawked to life. He held it to his ear, listening, until the broadcast ended.

‘What did it say?’ the Russian asked.

‘All active units are standing down, apparently your mob are in full retreat. We took a battering, but we’ve held Berlin.’

‘I see,’ the Russian mused.

‘You don’t sound too surprised this happened,’ Andrew observed.

‘The entire offensive seemed ill-planned from the get-go,’ the Russian informed him, ‘a typical brute force approach left over from the early days of the century, we are big and our army is large, so in theory all we should have to do is steamroller our opposition,’ he made a disgusted noise, ‘it did not work in the First World War, it did not work in the years before the Martian invasion and it certainly won’t work now. I’d have imagined we would have learned by now, but clearly neither Stalin nor his brown-nosers in the Kremlin pay attention to the lessons of history.’

‘Can’t say I’m not thankful that’s the case.’

The Russian laughed, ‘Yes, I suppose you would be. But that means I must begin the trek back to wherever our new line is being formed.’

‘You weren’t told where that’d be?’

‘I doubt it was ever conceived that we might lose,’ the Russian muttered bitterly before turning to Andrew. ‘Still… I enjoyed this conversation, and our swapping of stories.’

Andrew nodded, ‘Maybe we could do it again sometime.’

The Russian grinned, ‘Maybe there will be peace soon hm? Come to my home in Moscow when this is over; my wife is a magnificent cook and I’m sure my son would like to try himself against you at football. He is quite keen on the sport.’

‘That’d be nice,’ Andrew smiled, ‘and maybe after that, you and yours could come see me and mine in Kent. My brother’s the funniest man you’ll ever meet, and I’m sure his kids and your son would get along famously.’

The Russian’s grin widened, ‘What is your name friend?’

‘Andrew Marker. Yours?’

The Russian’s eyes were alight with amusement and his grin became a smile that could give the Cheshire cat a run for its money, ‘Andrei Markov,’ he replied.

Andrew raised his eyebrows; ‘No shit?’ the Russian – Andrei – shook his head. ‘Well how about that,’ Andrew wondered.

Andrei raised his hand, ‘It was a pleasure to meet you Andrew,’ he said; his expression sincere.

‘Likewise Andrei,’ Andrew told him and took the proffered hand, giving it a firm shake.

The two descended the abandoned office building in silence until they reached the blasted entrance. Andrei took a few steps outside and turned his head towards Andrew.

‘Stay safe Andrew,’ he said, before disappearing into the city in the direction of the retreating Russian units.

‘And you too Andrei,’ Andrew murmured, staring in the direction his new friend had gone for a few moments before taking stock of his gear and beginning the jog back towards Allied lines.