General Fiction posted October 29, 2025 Chapters:  ...31 32 -33- 34 


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Prisoners
A chapter in the book Dmitri's Extraordinary Fate

Dmitri's Extraordinary Fate: 33

by tfawcus




Background
Dmitri, who is trying to join Leila in Turkiye, has been arrested as a spy. He doesn't realise she never left Ukraine and is on her way to Kalynorad, hoping to find him.
As Oleh was being frogmarched to the Land Cruiser, he twisted around to face the corporal. 'You can't do this. I'm a Ukrainian citizen. I know my rights.'

The corporal sneered and said, 'Show me your papers then. Or did they float away down the river?' He took a step forward and struck Oleh across the face. 'You have no rights, boy. You're a Russian deserter and a prisoner of war. Probably a spy to boot.'

He turned his attention to Dmitri. 'And you? What have you got to say for yourself?'

'You know I'm not Russian, and I can prove it.' Dmitri pulled his sodden passport from his pocket and handed it to the corporal. 'See. Dmitri Zahir. Citizen of Ukraine.'

The corporal squinted at it with exaggerated care. 'Dmitri Zahir? I can't see anything saying that. All the words have been washed away.'

He pocketed the passport, and the soldier pushed Dmitri's arm further up his back, forcing him forward.

'Wait!' The corporal had caught a glint of gold. 'What have we here?' He wrenched the chain holding Leila's amulet from around Dmitri's neck. 'You won't be needing this where you're going.'

'Give it back! It belongs to my ... sister.'

'Your sister? Oh yes, I remember her. Still in Kalynorad, is she?'

'Yes.'

The corporal leered. 'Then I'll make sure she gets it ... if you know what I mean.' He gave Dmitri a broad wink.
 
***
 
Back at the camp, Lieutenant Hrytsenko leaned against the doorway. His unbuttoned uniform and the coarse stubble on his chin suggested a man who no longer cared much about anything, a suggestion reinforced by the pallor of his skin. There was something broken behind his eyes, as if he had long since stopped considering the mismatch between conscience and duty.

When Dmitri and Oleh were thrown down at his feet, his gaze briefly shifted from the middle distance to Corporal Karpov.
 
'Well?'

'Russian deserters, sir.'

'That's a lie!' Dmitri said. 'We're Ukrainian citizens. The corporal has my passport to prove it.'

Karpov's boot landed squarely on Dmitri's backside, and a searing pain shot up his spine. The lieutenant looked away in distaste.
 
He drew on his cigarette slowly, exhaled, and said, 'You know what to do, corporal.'

Corporal Karpov saluted the departing shadow of his superior and snapped an order. 'Bring the spades and crowbars.'

Oleh was led off to the far side of the compound, close to the barbed wire fence. The earth was hard and unforgiving. A distant echo from Oleh's direction matched each blow from Dmitri's crowbar. By sunset, his pit was shoulder deep. He no longer had the strength to toss soil up out of the hole, and he stopped to wipe the sweat from his brow.

Karpov gestured with his cigarette. 'That'll do,' he said. 'Now pass the spade up to me.'

Dmitri hesitated. The guard pointed his rifle at his head.

'Now.'

After the two men left, Dmitri lay on his back, staring at the violet sky. Every bone in his body ached. The blisters on his hands oozed and stung. Above him, and slightly to the right, Venus grew steadily brighter, and pinprick stars began to dot the sky. His head swam, and the world became a soundless blur as he adopted a foetal position and lapsed into unconsciousness.

Some hours later, he was awoken by angel kisses on his upturned cheek, snowflakes, or the light touches of a fading dream. They landed like feathers and melted like tears. He sat up shivering and drew his coat around his shoulders. A bank of broken cloud covered half the sky, but he could see Orion winking through the tattered remnants as they gradually moved west. With some difficulty, he hauled himself onto his knees and, using the walls of the pit to steady himself, managed to stand upright. His whole body felt numb except for a vague tingling in his extremities. He tried stamping his feet, but a searing pain shot up through his ankle. He had to make do with swinging his arms, clasping and unclasping them around his body in an attempt to restore circulation. Although still too weak to climb out of the hole, he could at least see over the rim and get some sense of his bearings.

Kalynorad lay to the east, and above it on the side of a hill, he could make out the ruins of St. Volodymyr's Church silhouetted against the night sky; St Volodymyr's, where he and Mira had sat in the grass a lifetime ago, devouring the food they had so audaciously stolen from Corporal Karpov and his two men. A waning crescent moon now hung above it like a hollowed-out face.

He ducked back into the shelter of the hole and curled himself against the cold, shielding his nose from the sour smell of fetid earth. If this was the end, so be it. At least he would be buried in the same soil as his sister.
 
***
 
When morning came, Dmitri was still curled and semi-comatose. The sharp crack of a pistol brought him to his senses. He staggered to his feet in time to see a figure straighten up from Oleh's newly dug grave. Shuddering with fear, he collapsed into his hole again and waited with his eyes clenched shut. People's lives are said to flash before their eyes at the point of death. Dmitri had almost a minute to review his pitiful existence; enough time to feel the sharp pain of regret. The crunch of boots grew louder, and the muzzle of a revolver nestled against the back of his neck. For a split second, he drove his mind into the soft curve of Leila's neck and prayed she might by some miracle be carrying the life-spark of his child. There was a click as the firing pin fell.

Rough hands hauled him upright, and a blinding light seared his eyeballs as the first rays of dawn spilled over the horizon. For a moment, he couldn't fathom whether he was in heaven or still on earth.

A mocking voice behind him said, 'No easy ride into eternity for you, lad, but you'll wish you were dead soon enough.'

He was slung between two soldiers and dragged across the compound and up the steps into the interrogation room. Lashed to a chair with savage knots and blindfolded, he waited in silence for what seemed like the passage of an hour. Then a faint aroma of vanilla and sandalwood wafted into the room, the scent of a man who used civility as a weapon.

There were three sets of footsteps: one a soft shoe, the other two clumsy and louder. Chairs scraped back, and the interrogator gave a gentle cough, followed by a pause. A cold weight of dread settled in the pit of Dmitri's stomach. His pulse raced. His ankle throbbed. And he could only imagine what would happen to him next.

The voice, when it came, was smooth yet carried an underlying threat, like a velvet scabbard sheathing steel. 'Dmitri Zahir. An Arabic name. Are you an Arab, Dmitri?'

'No, sir. I am Ukrainian. The corporal has my passport. He took it when he rescued us from the river. Ask him.'

'Ask him? Is that an order, young man? Are you giving me an order?'

'No, sir. That's not what I meant at all. But he does have it.'

'Corporal Karpov, do you have the boy's passport?'

'No, sir.'

'So you're a liar and an Arab. What else, I wonder? A spy perhaps?'

'I'm not any of those things, sir. My father died fighting in the Ukrainian army against the Russians. Why would I want to spy for them?'

'But your friend Oleh Zhukov accuses you. He has already confessed, but he was foolish. He lied to us.' He paused for a fraction of a second before adding, 'We shot him at dawn. Do you want us to shoot you, too?'

Dmitri blurted out, 'This is madness. Oleh was a musician, a guitarist, not a spy. I met him on the train from Lviv.' Perhaps it was his rising panic that charged his words with such anger. He was cornered and knew there was no way out, but he had not quite lost his senses. If Oleh had been shot at dawn, he couldn't have been questioned.

His interrogator ignored the outburst and continued evenly, 'You have heard of Marshal Georgy Zhukov, perhaps? The famous Russian general.'

Dmitri was about to deny it when he heard footsteps behind him and felt cold steel on his neck. 'Yes, I've heard of him, of course. But Zhukov is a common name.'

The steel blade slid behind his ear and, with sudden ferocity, was thrust downwards. Dmitri's blindfold fell away. He blinked, momentarily dazzled, and tried to focus on the man sitting in front of him. The face was in shadow, but the light glinted on the three stars on his shoulder.

'Please, colonel. You have to believe me. Major Andriy Kolt can vouch for me. I knew him in Velinkra.'

'Enough of your lies! Take him away, corporal.'

After Dmitri had left the room, the colonel turned to Lieutenant Hrytsenko and said, 'I know Major Kolt. He is a personal friend of mine. If the boy is telling the truth, then your corporal will be brought to account for wasting my time. In the meantime, have Zhukov brought in. Let's find out what he has to say.

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Main Characters in this Chapter:

Dmitri Zahir, a teenage boy hellbent on reuniting with Leila, his true love.
Mira Zahir, his twin sister, who was killed in a bomb attack.
Leila Haddad, the Syrian girl Dmitri has fallen in love with.
Oleh Zhukov, a guitarist that Dmitri met on his way to Kyiv
Lieutenant Sergei Hrytsenko, the POW camp commandant
Viktor Karpov, a corporal in the Ukrainian army
The Interrogator, a Ukrainian army colonel

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