Hitler's peace

Beria touched a couple of bruises on the prisoner’s face and arms and laughed. “The utmost severity? Koltsov, you wouldn’t know the utmost severity if it fucked you up the ass. You’re an executioner, not an interrogator.” Looking straight into the prisoner’s eyes, Beria continued: “Big difference. You see, it takes a certain kind of person to beat a man with a club for thirty minutes. I can see you know what I’m talking about. I can see it in your eyes. Killing a man, putting a gun to his head and pulling a trigger, is nothing. Well, maybe the first time it feels like something. But when you’ve killed as many as a hundred, a thousand, then you know how easy it is. Like something you do in an abattoir. That’s just killing, it means nothing, and any fool can do it.”

Even as he spoke, Beria turned quickly, pointed the revolver, and shot Captain Kolstov in the head. Before the captain had hit the floor, Beria had returned his cold, merciless stare to his Ukrainian prisoner.

“See what I mean? Nothing. It means nothing. Nothing at all.” Beria handed the pistol to Vertinski, who took it in his shaking hand. Then, nodding down toward the dead captain, Beria told the prisoner, “Look at him. Look at him,” and he took hold of the Ukrainian’s hair, pulling his head down. “Imagine it. He was one of mine. Not a traitor like you.” Beria snorted, then turned and spat onto the dead man’s head. “No, he was just incompetent.”

Beria let go of the man’s hair and, taking a step back, turned his sleeves up another few inches and selected a rubber rod that was hanging from a shiny new nail in the wall. “All I have for you, my friend, is a promise. That before I’m finished, you will envy this”-Beria kicked the dead man’s face, negligently-“this piece of shit.” Beria glanced meaningfully at Vertinski and Melamed. “This clown, Koltsov, who was too soft for his own good. Because there’s only one way to deal with an animal like a Ukrainian peasant. You beat him. And then you beat him again.

“You.” Beria snapped his fingers at one of the other NKVD officers in the torture chamber. “Put that chair up on the table.” Then he clicked his fingers at the two men holding the Ukrainian. “You two. Sit him up in that chair and tie his feet to the legs. The rest of you pay attention. This is how we amuse the spies and traitors in our midst. This is what we do. We tickle their feet.” And seeing that the prisoner was now securely bound to the chair, Beria brought the rod down hard on top of the man’s toes. Raising his voice over the Ukrainian’s howl, Beria said, “We tickle their toes until they beg for mercy.” Beria struck the prisoner’s feet again, and this time he screamed aloud. “Like that! And that! And that! And that!”

Lavrenti Pavlovich Beria took off his pince-nez, placed it safely in his trouser pocket, and then licked his lips. He wasn’t a fit man despite the frequent games of volleyball he played with his bodyguards, but he was strong enough, and he inflicted the beating with an economy of effort that spoke of years of practice, and some considerable enjoyment. “Energetic” was how people usually described Beria, and for the officers witnessing this beating it would have been difficult to disagree. Mamulov, Beria’s secretary, had always thought vegetarians were weak and listless and held human life in awe, until he worked for Beria. Beating a man on his bare feet for a full thirty minutes was something awful to behold. A lesson from the deepest pit in hell that was not lost on any NKVD in that room.

At last Beria threw aside the rubber rod and, taking hold of the towel that Mamulov had thoughtfully fetched for him, wiped his face and neck. “Thank you,” he said, quietly. “By God, I needed that, after the journey.

“On the floor with him,” he ordered the two men holding the now unconscious prisoner, still bound to the chair. “Idiots,” he snarled, as they tried to lift the chair down. Beria sprang onto the table like a cat. “Not like that. Like this.” He placed his foot on the chair and pushed it off the table so that the prisoner fell heavily onto the floor. “It’s not a fucking ambulance service. You,” Beria pointed at Melamed. “Get a bucket of water and some vodka.”

Beria threw the bucket of water onto the Ukrainian’s head and then tossed it aside as the man, whose feet were the size and color of two pieces of raw beef, started to revive. “Pick him up,” said Beria.

The guards straightened the chair, and Beria, taking the vodka from Vertinski, pushed the neck of the bottle into the prisoner’s mouth and tipped it up, so that the man could drink. “Watch and learn,” he told his men. “You want a man to tell you something, don’t beat him about the head and mouth so that he can’t talk. Beat him on the feet. On his ass. On his back, or on his balls. But never interfere with his means of speech. Now, then, who sent you on this mission, my friend?”