They made a fatal mistake, the most daring in the annals of the criminal world. They decided to intimidate the one who looked death in the eye for 900 long days without flinching. It was October 1946, the city of Leningrad. Bandits broke into the apartment of Marshal of the Soviet Union Leonid Govorov .
They dealt cruelly with his daughters and twins, believing that this would break their father’s will. Naive. They thought that the marshal would run to complain to Stalin or cry in the police station. Fools. They didn’t realize that Govorov was more than just a war hero.
He is a genius of artillery, who thinks like a machine, a man who knows no pity. Seeing the lifeless bodies of his chats, he did not shed a single tear, but simply went to the phone and gave an order that made Leningrad tremble. There will be no arrests or lengthy trials in this story .There will be only cold-blooded calculation and absolute destruction.
Marshal Govarov begins his personal blockade, and there is only one way out: to the bottom of the Neva waters. Marshal Govorov’s service map cut through the veil of freezing rain that was rushing from the Gulf of Finland. Leningrad, which had only just begun to return to life after the war, seemed abandoned that evening.
Govorov returned home to Kamennoostrovsky Prospekt earlier than usual. There was a rare, almost forgotten feeling of calm in my soul. Today his daughters Anya and Katya turned 19. To a student, a beauty, a pianist. His pride, his rear. The marshal went up to the third floor. He dismissed the security guards right at the entrance.
The key entered the keyhole softly. A click was heard. The door was unlocked. Instead of the aroma of festive cake and the sounds of music, something heavy, sweetish, and frightening wafted from the apartment, a smell that Govara had recognized unmistakably in the past four wars: the smell of cooling blood.
He slowly unbuckled his koby and put on his TT, stepping into the dark corridor. “Anya, Katya,” he called. His voice was firm, but there was no answer. Only the window in the kitchen creaked pitifully. He entered the living room and turned on the light. His whole life, all his triumphs, all his orders and titles lost all meaning in that moment.
The apartment was trashed, the furniture overturned, the sheet music trampled into the mud by boots. And in the middle of the room, on the white carpet, which had now turned crimson, they lay, the two girls, two copies of each other, two broken dolls. Their dresses were torn. Furrows from nooses blackened their necks.
Their faces, distorted with horror, stared at the ceiling with empty eyes. Above the bodies, on the wall, in lipstick, was written: “You closed the city from the Germans, Marshal, but who will close it from us? “Happy birthday!” Govorov didn’t faint, he didn’t scream. His face turned to stone, turning into a death mask.
All emotion instantly faded within him. Only the icy logic of an artilleryman remained. There’s a target, there are coordinates. We need to select the right caliber for destruction. He approached the bodies and covered them with a curtain torn from the window, carefully, as if covering a gun before battle.
Within 20 minutes, the apartment was filled with police. Investigative Committee Chief Skachenko, nervously clutching his cap, reported: “Leonid Alexandrovich, these are beasts.” The signature of the Plague gang. They are now holding the markets. We will find them. I have already given some directions. The investigation will be conducted under the control of Moscow. We will put them in jail, I promise.
They’ll give you 20 years, or even the highest prison term. Govorov sat in a chair, wiping his glasses with a handkerchief. He looked up at the commissioner. The look was so heavy that Skachenko stopped short. “Will you plant me?” – Marshal asked quietly. “According to the law, Comrade Marshall, the law did not protect my children.” Govorov put on his glasses.
The glass gleamed like cold steel. They came to my house. They killed adults, innocent girls. They did it to laugh at me. Are you asking me to wait for the trial, listen to their excuses, watch them grin in the cage? Govora stood up. Get out, Commissioner, take the bodies, draw up the papers, but I will look for the killers.
This is arbitrariness. I have to report to Berry. Report it to the devil himself . Leningrad is my city, and I will clean it. There, when the door closed behind the police, Govarov went to the special communications telephone. He didn’t need investigators who wrote reports. He needed executioners, professionals who could work quietly, harshly and without leaving a trace.
He dialed the first number. Colonel Roden is Govorov. Listen to the combat mission. Assemble the Wild Division. Yes. Reconnaissance of those who cut throats in the German rear. Full equipment. The meeting will be at my dacha in an hour. Second bell. Major Gromov, sound measuring station. Sergey, take your ears.
We will listen to the city. I want to know where, with whom and about what every rat in Leningrad is whispering. Third bell. Captain Veselov, SMERSH. Your basements in Kronstadt are free. Prepare your tools. We have a lot of work ahead of us. Very dirty work. Govorov hung up. He walked up to the Leningrad artwork hanging on the wall and picked up a red pencil.
His hand was steady. “Did you want war?” – he whispered. “You will receive it.” Art preparation is complete. Fire to kill. The dacha in Komarova, sheltered by centuries-old pine trees, that night resembled a field headquarters before an offensive. The windows are tightly curtained.
Outside, the wind from the Gulf of Pigs howled, throwing wet sand against the glass. There was silence in the oak-panelled office. Leonid Govorov stood at the table with an unfolded map of Leningrad. There were three people sitting opposite. People who did not exist in the official peacetime lists. First Colonel Ivan Rodin, commander of the reconnaissance company, nicknamed by the Germans the Wild Division.
Huge, with a face crossed by a scar. He smelled of gun oil. Second Major Sergei Gromov, thin, wearing glasses with thick lenses, a genius of sound reconnaissance. He could determine the caliber and coordinates with an accuracy of up to a meter from the echo of the shot. Third. SMERSH captain Viktor Veselov.
A man with a pale face and fish eyes. His work began where words ended. “Here’s the next thing,” Govrov began quietly. An opponent of an organized crime group led by the recidivist Chumny. Based in the Ligovka area. Number of up to 0 bayonets. The marshal looked up with a heavy gaze. Today they killed my daughters, Anya and Katya.
A heavy pause fell in the room. Rodin gritted his teeth. Gromov took off his glasses and began to wipe them with trembling hands. Veselov only narrowed his pupils slightly. The goal is complete elimination. No arrests, no trials. I need the names of the customers. Anyone involved must disappear. Ivan, the marshal addressed his homeland.
Your people are entering the city. Remove the uniform . I need a language. Any of the Plague’s six will be alive and able to speak . Comrade Marshal, Ligovka is our district. Sergei Govorov turned to the listener. Your task is mathematics. The city is an acoustic bowl. Place sound detectors on the roofs around Ligovsky. Disguise them as antennas.
You record every shot, every scream. We will locate their lair by the sound shadow. Victor, the marshal looked at the SMERSH captain. “I’m ready,” Veselov answered shortly . The basement is dry, the tools are in the car. This is not revenge, comrade officers, this is sanitization. We are removing gangrene. Carry out.
An hour later, three cars disappeared into the night. The operation began. Ligovsky Prospect lived its dirty life. Here, in the labyrinth of courtyards, Soviet power ended with the sunset. At Uncle Yasha’s Shalman, a skinny guy in an eight-piece cap nicknamed Sipley was smoking. He stood guard while the gang was partying inside. Sipley was pleased.
Chumenoy put out a case of vodka for the great deed. He did not notice how a shadow separated from the darkness of the arch , did not even have time to open his mouth. A hard gloved hand clamped his mouth. A blow to the solar plexus knocked the air out. Quiet, dear, – whispered a voice in his ear. Uncle wants to talk.
A second later, Sipley was already lying on the bottom of the truck, looking like a sack of flour. The car slowly The truck pulled out of the yard. Colonel Roden was sitting inside the back. ” Go first,” he said into the radio. “We’re carrying a package.” Meanwhile, Major Gromov’s men were installing strange devices that looked like large metal ears on the rooftops around Ligovka.
They were pulling wires and connecting oscilloscopes. The city noise was playing in Gromov’s headphones, but he was looking for a sound that would give away the beast. Govarov was waiting at the dacha. The door opened. Captain Veselov entered, rolling up the sleeves of his snow-white shirt. They’d brought Leonid Alexandrovich. Young, scared.
He knows where Plague is. Not yet, but in half an hour he’ll even remember his name in the womb . Govorov nodded: “Go, I’ll come down later.” The marshal went to the window. The rain intensified. “Oh, Dim,” he said. There are 39 left. The basement of the dacha in Komarova was soundproofed conscientiously. The scream of the man from whom Captain Veselov methodically extracted the truth was drowned out by the concrete walls, without disturbing the night forest.
After 20 minutes, Veselov went up to his office. His shirt remained spotlessly white. “Ready,” he said shortly. The hoarse one swam. The base, an abandoned boiler house of the Red Triangle plant on the bypass canal. The core of the perpetrators, about 12 people, are currently hanging out there. A senior criminal nicknamed Reboy.
It was he who led the visit to you. Govorov stood at the map, on which a point on the bypass was already marked. “Riboy,” he said, tasting the name like poison. Was he in the apartment? Yes, Sipley says. He boasted that he personally strangled. The marshal’s glasses became cloudy in the lamplight. Ivan, he turned to Colonel Rodin.
Let ‘s move out. The task is a complete cleanup. Work quietly. Knives, nooses, shots. Only in extreme cases Ryabo is alive in me, but he shouldn’t walk. A column of three inconspicuous M-class vehicles and a truck stent-like slid into the city. Leningrad slept a deep, painful sleep. The bypass canal, popularly known as the suicide ditch, greeted them with thick fog and the stench of rotten water.
The Red Triangle factory towered over us like a dark mass of broken brick. In the depths of the courtyard, in a dimly lit boiler room, a dim light was shining through the boarded-up windows. From there came the sounds of drunken laughter and an out-of-tune guitar. “There’s a guard at the entrance, two on the roof,” reported the scout, returning from the darkness.
“Take it off in a whisper,” Rodin ordered. The fighters of the Wild Division disappeared into the fog. A minute later, a body fell from the roof, hitting a pile of slag with a dull thud. The guard at the door simply disappeared, pulled by someone’s strong hands into the black opening. There was no scream, no wheezing, only the wet sound of cutting flesh.
“Let’s get to work,” Rodin commanded. The scouts burst into the boiler room. This was not a police arrest with shouts of “Everyone freeze!” This was a massacre. The bandits, celebrating a successful raid, didn’t even have time to grab a sawed-off shotgun. The shadows in camouflage moved with frightening speed. Knives whistled through the air.
One of the horns tried to throw a grenade, but his hand, severed by his opponent’s shovel, fell to the floor along with the grenade. There was no explosion. The check remained in place. In 40 seconds it was all over. 12 corpses lay on the dirty concrete floor in pools of vodka and blood. The music stopped.
In the middle of this hell, pinned to the floor by his knee, only one riboy was wheezing. His face was smashed to pulp, his arms twisted at an unnatural angle. The door opened. Leonid Govorov entered the boiler room. He was wearing a long Chanel coat and gloves. He walked through the bloody mess, not looking at his feet and stepping over corpses.
The room became quiet and cold, as if death itself had entered. The marshal stopped above Rbym. He raised his only surviving eye. There was an animal horror in it. He recognized this man. He saw his portraits in the newspapers. “You,” the bandit croaked, spitting through his teeth. “You’re a cop, you have to do it by law.
” Govorov slowly took off his glove. I’m not a cop. His voice sounded muffled, bouncing off the brick vaults. I am an artilleryman, and you are a defective shell. The marshal leaned over. You were in my house. You touched my children. Who ordered you? Reboy grinned a bloody smile. [ __ ] you, we are League members, we don’t give up our own.
He will find me sick with the plague, and he will find you. Govorov straightened up. He didn’t hit. It was beneath his dignity. “Victor,” he called to Captain SMERSH. He doesn’t want to talk. Explain to him that silence is golden, and we have no gold. We only have iron. Veselov opened his own sakvoyage.
Medical instruments flashed. Ivan, – the speaker addressed his homeland. Load the bodies into the car and go to the fort, the bay is deep. What about this? Rodin nodded at Ribov, who began to whine when he saw the scalpel in Vesely’s hands. And this one will stay here, we will play music. He loves music, after all.
My daughters were pianists. Govorov sat down on the only surviving box. Go ahead, Victor. We have time until dawn. I want to hear the name. every letter. The scream that came a minute later would have made any civilian sit up . But there were no civilians here . There were soldiers here who had seen Auschwitz and a father whose heart had been torn out. The night was just beginning.
The scream in the basement stopped as suddenly as a broken string. Reboy, reduced to a trembling piece of flesh by Captain Veselov , broke down. The criminal code for not giving up one’s own did not work against the tools of SMERSH. “Plague,” the bandit wheezed, spitting black blood onto the marshal’s boots. He is at the Krasny Khimik plant.
Old Ts’ao Bay. There’s a bunker there. Who gave the order? Govorov loomed over him like a rock. Who tipped me off to my apartment? I do n’t know the name, Riboy howled. The man in uniform, a colonel or a general, did not see his face. He arrived in a black Emka, gave me some money and said: “Let the artilleryman’s blood, let him choke.
” Govorov straightened up. A man in uniform means it’s a conspiracy. The threads led where even the police were afraid to look, to high offices. “And the plague one?” – asked the Marshall. “How to find him in this labyrinth?” He is paranoid. Every night, exactly at 3:00 a.m.
, he goes out into the workshop yard and fires off a clip, checking the cartridges. He has a trophy luder. Govorov looked at his watch. 0300. Enough. I’ve said everything, Riboy whined, trying to crawl to his feet. Live, chief, you are an officer. You gave your word. “I gave my word to the officer,” the Marshal answered coldly, taking out his TT.
And you are a mad dog. The shot sounded dry. Reboy twitched and fell silent. To be expended! – Govorov abandoned the Motherland, remove the bodies. ” We weren’t here.” 20 minutes later they were on the roof of a dilapidated building near Staro-Petergovsky Prospekt. The rain was pouring down.
Major Gromov, looking like a wet bird, was working his magic over the equipment. The sound pickup tubes were spinning, scanning the night. Comrade Marshal, Gromov pressed his headphones. The airwaves were dirty, windy, the port, beeps. Sergei Govorov approached the instruments. The sound of a Parabellum shot has a sharp attack and a short decay.
Look for this spectrum. Mathematics, Major 0300. Silence. A barely audible distant bang crackled in Gromov’s headphones. Then another series. “We have contact,” Gromov shouted. “Pileng taken. Distance 1.00 m, square 124. Old foundry. Echo from the pipe. He quickly plotted the dots on the map. The lines crossed. Here it is.
5 meters error. Govorov looked at the map. An ideal defensive position. Ivan, raise the group. We won’t assault it head-on. How could we? – Rodin was surprised. The walls there are meters thick. We’re artillerymen, Vanya. We don’t knock on doors. We break them down. The column moved toward the factory.
In the back of the truck, under a tarpaulin, lay what Veselov had taken from Vichev’s warehouse: a captured German flamethrower. The trucks stopped 300 meters away. The scouts silently took out the sentries with knives. Govorov approached the iron gates of the workshop. Drunken laughter could be heard from inside . Chumno felt safe. “Block the exits,” the Marshal commanded in a whisper.
“Board the windows!” “Nobody will come out.” “Comrade Marshal,” Rodin asked quietly . “If we start shooting, will there be a fight?” “There won’t be a fight,” Govorov answered. ” There will be disinfection.” He nodded to the soldier with the flamethrower. Rodin knocked out the viewing window in the gate with the butt of his rifle.
The barrel entered the hole. Fire! The stream of the flamethrower hit inside. Roaring flames instantly filled the stone bag, devouring the oxygen of the people. The scream that came from inside was terrifying. It was the howl of sinners in hell. The bandits rushed about, turning into living torches, knocking on the gate.
Govorov stood a meter from the doors and listened. Not a muscle twitched on his face . “Anya, Katya, this is for your fear,” he whispered. After 5 minutes everything became quiet. Open it. The scouts opened the red-hot gates. There was hell inside, but one person was alive. In the depths of the workshop, the plague-infested man hid in a concrete pit . The fire passed overhead.
He coughed, spitting out soot. Seeing the figure in Chanel, he raised his shaking pistol. Don’t come any closer, cop, I’ll kill you. Govorov entered the smoking workshop. He did n’t even take out his weapon, he just stepped towards the corpse. “Shoot,” he said, ” if you have time.
” The Luger’s shot sounded like a hammer blow in the echoing space of the workshop . The bullet knocked a piece of concrete out of the column a centimeter from the marshal’s temple. M.
