There was something haughty about this strange person. Zhillin could not see his face clearly, only a pinkish blob.Ĩ“Had a good sleep, Nikolai Feodorovich?”ĩHow did he know my name? Should I ask? No! Had he talked to the stranger the night before? But Zhillin could not remember any such conversation. The airplane had already landed when he woke up. He had never seen such a large blood diamond.ħHis dreams exhausted him. He threw himself at it, trying to stomp on it, but the big blood diamond on its blue body terrified him. He was trapped in a dark web, and a bright silvery spider sat weaving at its center. As he dozed he saw himself again in Belarus. Zhillin was angry with himself for that moment of fear and he transferred his hate to the stranger. But when he closed his eyes he could feel the stranger moving. He wanted to strangle that fat neck with both hands and throw him out into the clouds. The icy stare of the Kazakh’s eyes made him shudder. An unseen web was being woven around him, which darkened the light from the little airplane window.ĦHe looked long at the mug of his neighbor and suddenly the desire welled up in him to get rid of that heavy, plump mass with cold fish eyes. This light-eyed young Russian who had climbed from a rural village in the north to the highest ranks could not feel fear. He was like an agitated child standing at the edge of a stormy sea. “They can’t do anything to me,” he whispered to himself. At first he thought it was all a misunderstanding. They were insistent questions, and they disturbed him. Then they again brought up that mess about the liquidation of the partisan units in Belarus. They questioned him about the role of various Poles that he had supposedly encountered at the headquarters. He had been the intermediary between Rokosovsky’s army and the Poles. But Zhillin was had been nervous for quite some time now.ĥA few weeks earlier he had been interrogated about his time in General Bohr’s headquarters during the Warsaw uprising. The Kazakh could not be connected in any way to his unexpected trip. Maybe his unknown silent fellow traveler was assigned to watch him? No, that could not be. The order had simply been: report to headquarters. He must surely be a Kazakh, thought Zhillin, someone from the military buraucracy. His puffy cheeks and the bags under his eyes bounced to the rhythm of the roar of the airplane. A plump man wearing a loose military coat of English cloth looked at him through watery eyes, a fellow with no eyebrows, no eyelashes. Freezing rain mixed with snow burned his face. Only a U-2 could quickly get through the thick fog and the black clouds. Chernyakhovsky second, that Nikolai Feodorovich Zhillin was to report immediately to central headquarters.ĤHe climbed onto a U-2 airplane that had been prepared especially for him. Moscow sent two orders: First, that Marshal Vasilevsky was named to replace Gen. The next day it was reported that a wayward bullet had killed the commander of the Front. It was a quiet night in the Prussian village Mehlsack when Zhillin assumed his post. He had arrived the evening before the death of the commander of the Third Front, carrying secret orders. Chernyakhovsky- under unexplained circumstances-in a little village in Prussia. Zhillin had risen to the top overnight, right after the death of Gen. He headed the Special Section in charge of political activities in Marshal Vasilevsky’s army and was in the inner circle of the Marshal’s advisors. Nikolai Feodorovich Zhillin was assigned to the headquarters of the Third Belorussian Front. Prussia was turned into a mighty fortress.ģNKVD Col. This was where they took refuge from the Flying Fortress bombers: Bartow, Neustettin, Schimmerwitz, Gross Tuchen, Neuhof. The families of big industrialists lived there in serene villas and castles. 1 They had sent their wives and children away from central Germany to peaceful regions in the east. The German generals, the SS officers, the high Nazi party officials, had come to East Prussia on holiday to be with their families. The air forces of the Allies had not been able to reach it. At the beginning of the war, East Prussia had been the most secure, the quietest place in Germany. They tried in vain to break through and reach the Vistula by attacking the Second Belorussian Front led by Marshal Rokosovsky, in an effort to join up with German units at the Warta River and the Oder. 1 The Schutzstaffel, abbreviated SS, was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the (.)ĢThe Geman units were each locked in a separate vise, a separate stranglehold.
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