by Glenn Meade
It was a long way from the icy wastes of Nicochka. A long way from the cold and despair and the pain she had lived with for months, the aching in her breast that felt as if someone had stuck a knife in her heart and she was slowly bleeding to death.
And all the time the image in her mind that wouldn’t go away: she and Ivan walking in Gorky Park in summer, Ivan smiling, the look of pride and love on his face as he held Sasha in his arms.
6
* * *
BERLIN
DECEMBER 15
The Ilyushin transport plane with red stars on the wings bumped to a halt on the icy runway at Schönefeld Airport in East Berlin. A thin man with sharp features—a pursed mouth, long face, and small bright eyes—disembarked and walked quickly across the tarmac to a waiting Zis car.
As the car drove out through the gates and headed east away from the city, Colonel Grenady Kraskin took off his cap and rubbed a hand along his thinning hairline. At sixty-two, he was a veteran and senior KGB officer with over thirty years’ experience. Answerable only to Beria and Stalin, he was responsible for special interior operations, which came under the control of 2nd Directorate, based in the seven-story KGB Headquarters in Moscow’s Dzerzhinsky Square. In this capacity Kraskin had traveled to East Berlin for his monthly inspection tour of top-secret Soviet research facilities, which he carried out with customary thoroughness.
After a twenty-mile drive, the black Zis turned off the main Potsdam highway onto a minor road that finally led past the sleepy German hamlet of Luckenwalde. At the end of a road lined with tall fir trees stood a double gate with a metal barrier. Beyond the barrier lay a tarmac track with barbed-wire runs on either side. Two uniformed guards snapped stiffly to attention as the Zis drew up and an officer came out of a concrete guard hut to check the passenger’s identity cards. Moments later the barrier was lifted and the car drove through.
A half mile down the barbed-wire run Kraskin saw the mouth of an underground tunnel, like giant concrete jaws erupting from the earth. The car drove down and finally came to a halt.
When Kraskin stepped out he was in a vast bunker that looked like an enormous underground parking garage. There was a sickly smell of diesel fumes and stale air. Intense neon light blazed overhead and a dozen or more military vehicles were parked on the concourse. Off to the right was an elevator, its metal doors open and waiting.
The officer in charge saluted smartly and led Kraskin across. Both men stepped in. The doors closed and the elevator descended.
• • •
The Pan American Airways DC-6, Flight 209 from Paris, was almost empty, and the blond-haired man sat in a window seat two rows from the front.
As the aircraft banked and came in over Berlin’s Wannsee Lake, the man saw the broad ribbon of the Unter Den Linden stretched below him. Here and there the surrounding suburbs were still peppered with old bomb craters, and looking east he saw the crumbling, gutted buildings in the Russian Zone.
It was ten minutes later when the plane landed in West Berlin’s Tempelhof Airport. The immigration and customs checks were thorough, and there was a military presence everywhere since the Russians had sealed off East Berlin with a ten-yard-wide shoot-to-kill strip. But the uniformed West German official did not spot the false American passport, and the man passed through without too much delay.
No one seemed to take any notice of the blond man, and moments later he saw the gray Volkswagen parked opposite the civilian parking lot. An attractive woman in her early thirties sat behind the wheel smoking a cigarette, and he recognized her dark Russian features. She wore a blue scarf around her neck, and when she noticed him she tossed her cigarette out of the window.
He waited a full minute before he crossed to the car and put his case on the backseat, his eyes carefully scanning the Arrivals area before he moved. He didn’t speak as he climbed in beside the woman, and a moment later she pulled out quickly from the curb and drove toward Berlin.
• • •
Colonel Grenady Kraskin looked across at the big, slovenly man seated opposite and smiled. They were in Sergei Enger’s office on the first of several floors in an underground complex that had once been built by the Germans. Kraskin smiled. “Well, Sergei, tell me your troubles.”
Sergei Enger was a stout figure of a man with dark, thinning curly hair and a plump stomach. A physics graduate from Moscow University, he was head of research in the Luckenwalde underground complex. Despite his easygoing manner and untidy personal appearance—Enger frequently wore mismatched socks and carried the remains of breakfast or lunch on his tie—the man had a brain as sharp as a scalpel and a talent for organizing others.
Enger smiled back weakly. Troubles he certainly had, but Grenady Kraskin didn’t have the look of a man one shared personal problems with.
The colonel’s face was sharp and hard and weather-beaten. There were ruts in his leathery skin, deep wrinkles that almost looked like scars, and combined with a chilling smile, they had a frightening effect. And the man’s crisply pressed black uniform and immaculately polished boots always intimidated Enger.
Outwardly a reasonable and intelligent man, Kraskin hid a dark and savage streak. In one winter campaign near Zadonsk on the River Don in the Caucasus during the Bolshevik Revolution, Kraskin’s battalion had engaged a detachment of four hundred Whites, wiping them out in three days of vicious hand-to-hand fighting. Promising mercy to the survivors and their families who had surrendered, Kraskin instead had them lined up against a wall and shot, showing no mercy to women and children.
Enger shrugged and toyed with a pencil on the desk. “What makes you think I have troubles, Grenady? The project is going better than I expected.”
Kraskin beamed. “Excellent. I’m glad to hear it.”
Enger stood, as if still bothered by something, and crossed to the broad glass window that looked down onto the vast complex below. The place never ceased to amaze Enger, even after spending two years there. The Nazis had started work on the underground complex ten years before, intending it as a V-2 factory, but the Russian advance into eastern Prussia had ended all that. Now it was one of the most secret and advanced research facilities in East Germany, the entire operation sited underground, doing away with the need for camouflage above ground level. Beyond the office, glass lights blazed overhead. The whole area looked as if it were swamped in daylight. Metal boilers and air-conditioning conduits ran along the walls for almost half a mile. Here and there men scurried about in white coats.
Enger looked down at the amazing scene for several moments before turning back. “I left the details you requested in the file on the desk, Grenady. I trust they meet with your approval?”
Kraskin picked up the folder. When he had finished scrutinizing the progress sheets inside he turned back to Enger. “You’ve done well, Sergei. The German scientists, they seem to be outperforming themselves.” Kraskin grinned. “It’s amazing what the threat of being sent to a Gulag will do.”
He smiled at Enger. “You look like a man who has the weight of the world on his shoulders. If it’s not the project, what is it? Come, Sergei, let’s hear whatever’s on your mind.”
Enger hesitated. “But could I be frank, Grenady? Could I speak freely?”
Kraskin laughed. “If you’re asking me if these rooms are bugged, the answer is no. I made a point of deeming you a special case.”
“I’m indebted, Grenady.”
Kraskin waved a hand dismissively and half smiled. “Nonsense, what are friends for? Say what’s on your mind.”
Enger removed a soiled handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed his brow. “You’ve no idea what it’s like here. The constant hum of the machines, the conditioned air. I don’t know how the Germans stood it. I’m glad my work here is almost at an end.”
As he sucked on his cigarette, Kraskin said, “So how much longer before your part of the operation is completed?”
“The way it’s going, a lot earlier than we thought. Borosky and the other scie
ntists will be arriving in the next few weeks to link the various projects together.”
“So how much longer?” repeated Kraskin.
Enger shrugged. “A month, maybe sooner. Our initial tests have been very promising. And the test site in the Caucasus is nearing completion. I’ve also read our latest reports of the Americans’ progress sent from Moscow. We’re going to be ahead of them. Their explosion in the Pacific was small in comparison to the one we intend. Really it was only a triggering device the Americans detonated. I can almost guarantee we’ll be the first to explode the actual hydrogen bomb.”
“I’m very pleased to hear that, Sergei. I’ll make sure to mention your diligence in my report.”
Enger paid no heed to Kraskin’s statement. His voice suddenly softened and he said, “Do you think there’s going to be a war, Grenady?”
Kraskin laughed. Enger looked at him in amazement. “What’s so funny?”
“Is that what’s been bothering you?”
“It had crossed my mind. You have to admit it’s being talked about.”
Kraskin grinned. “And what makes you think there’s going to be a war, my friend?”
“For heaven’s sake, Grenady, it doesn’t take a genius to figure it out.” Enger nodded back toward the underground bunker. “I’ve been living down there for the past two years like a mole, not a scientist. Days go by when I don’t see sunlight.” He hesitated. “The way things are between us and the Americans right now, some kind of conflict looks inevitable. For almost two years we’ve been working frantically on our weapons program. And in the past six months since the Americans exploded their first device the funds have suddenly become unlimited. And then there have been the threats. Veiled, but there. To all of us, not just the German scientists: Work harder, much harder, or there will be repercussions. There has to be a reason, Grenady. We’re racing against time. Why? Is there something Moscow isn’t telling us?”
Kraskin stood up slowly. “There won’t be a war if the Americans see sense.”
“What does that mean? I’m a scientist, I deal in facts. Give me facts, Grenady.”
Kraskin swung around and his words had a ruthless tone. “The Americans think they own the world. They think they have some God-given right to control this planet, tell everyone how it should be run. Well, we’re not going to take that attitude from them.”
Enger shook his head. “You can’t imagine what the next war would be like. These bombs we’re working on, they are not like the ones the Americans dropped on Japan. They’re much more powerful. Entire cities and their populations can be totally wiped from the map with one explosion. In Nagasaki and Hiroshima people survived some six miles from the epicenter. With a thermonuclear explosion big enough, that isn’t even a remote possibility.” Enger hesitated. “Besides, I’m not deaf, Grenady. I may be a thousand miles from Moscow but I still hear the rumors.”
Kraskin raised his eyes before he drew on his cigarette. “And what rumors are they?”
Enger hesitated. “That we’re gearing up for war. That Stalin wants the bomb completed fast, so he can drop it on the Americans before he dies. They say he’s taken to walking alone in the Kremlin gardens, talking aloud to himself. That his behavior has become more erratic and unpredictable. They say he trusts no one, not even himself. Doesn’t that worry you?”
Kraskin looked sternly at Enger. “And who tells you such things?”
Enger said nervously, “They’re simply rumors, Grenady. But everybody here speaks of them.”
Kraskin’s voice had a hint of menace. “I think you’d be wise to ignore such rumors and not doubt Comrade Stalin’s mental health too loudly, my friend. There are people in Moscow who might hear and start to doubt yours. Statements like that could have you locked in a rubber room. Or shoveling salt in a Siberian mine. Or worse.”
“Then just answer me this: They say the purges are about to start again. That people are being arrested in huge numbers and shot or sent to the camps. Especially Jews. Is it true?”
Kraskin looked at Enger but left the question unanswered. “You’re a Party member and a valuable scientist. You have nothing to fear.”
“I’m Jewish, Grenady. It concerns me.” Enger’s face darkened. “Something’s in the air. I can sense it. Please tell me what’s happening.”
Kraskin said sharply, “I think you’re too long down in that bunker of yours talking to rumormongers. You’d do better to concentrate on your work. Pay no heed to malicious gossip coming from Moscow.”
There was a hard edge of menace in Kraskin’s voice, all reasonableness gone. He stubbed out his cigarette and ended the discussion. “Come, it’s getting late, we’d better finish the inspection. I want to be out of this rat hole and get back to Berlin.”
• • •
The blond-haired man stood at the window of the apartment on the Kaiserdamm. It was cold outside, a bitter wind sweeping the street. He heard the rumble of British Army trucks as they passed below the window, but he didn’t look down.
He turned as the woman came in. She carried a brown-wrapped parcel tied with string and a doctor’s black leather bag. She placed them on the table and went to join him at the window.
She looked at him. He had an air of stillness and of isolation. Alex Slanski was tall, in his middle thirties, and wore a dark double-breasted suit, shirt, and tie. His short blond hair was brushed off his forehead, and his face was clean-shaven and handsome. There was a trace of a smile on his lips, as if fixed there permanently. But it was the eyes she always noticed. Intense pale blue and infinitely dangerous.
“Kraskin should finish the Luckenwalde inspection by midafternoon. After that he’s holding a briefing at KGB Headquarters at Karlshorst. At seven thirty tomorrow morning he’s due to meet with the Soviet Zone commander, so our guess is he’ll go to bed early. He never stays in any of the army barracks but always uses the private apartment at his disposal. It’s by the Tierpark. Number twenty-four, a blue door. Kraskin’s apartment is on the second floor, number thirteen.” The woman half smiled. “Sometimes not such a lucky number. But for you, Alex, I hope so.”
Alex Slanski nodded. The faint smile didn’t leave his lips. “Tell me about the crossing.”
“You’ll use one of our tunnels that exits near Friedrichstrasse. A Red Army jeep will be left parked and waiting there.” The woman went over the details for several minutes, and when Slanski was satisfied she handed him an envelope. “Those are your papers. You’re a Red Army doctor from the Karlshorst Military Hospital making a call to one of your military patients. Kraskin is a wily old snake, so be careful. Especially if there’s someone else in the apartment.”
“Should there be?”
“He likes young girls. The younger the better. Kraskin’s a pedophile.”
“Somehow I’m not surprised.”
“He usually stays with a friend who shares the same depraved tastes. A major at Karlshorst named Pitrov. If he’s in the apartment, you know what to do.”
Slanski heard the hard edge of bitterness in the woman’s voice. She nodded at the brown-wrapped parcel. “Everything you need is in there. Make sure you don’t fail, Alex. Because if you do, Kraskin will kill you.”
Once she had left he opened the parcel in the bedroom. He tried on the uniform, and it fit him well. He felt a shudder go through him as he looked in the mirror. The major’s olive-brown waisted uniform with the wide silver shoulder boards and the polished boots gave him a threatening look. The brown leather holster and belt lay still in the wrapper. He took them and slid out the pistol. It was a Tokarev automatic, 7.62mm, the standard-issue Russian army officer’s sidearm, but the tip of the barrel had been grooved. He screwed on the Carswell silencer, then removed it again. There were two loaded magazines and he took each in turn and pried out the bullets with his thumb.
He checked the action of the magazines and weapon again and again, until he was satisfied neither might jam, then stripped the gun down and cleaned it with an oily rag left in
the parcel. When he finished, he replaced the bullets in the magazines, slammed home a magazine into the butt of the gun, and slipped it into the holster.
Slanski crossed to the bed, unfastened the top of the doctor’s black bag, and removed the knife. The silver blade gleamed in the light as he unsheathed it. He stood there running his thumb gently along the razor edge for several moments, feeling the sharpness of the cold steel. He replaced the knife in the sheath, slipped it back into the doctor’s bag, and snapped the metal catch shut.
Before he removed the uniform he took the photograph from his suitcase and slipped it into the tunic pocket. He wrapped the uniform neatly back in the brown paper. He did not dress again but went to lie on the bed.
The alarm clock on the bedside locker said three o’clock. He would try to sleep until six, and then it would be time to go.
• • •
It was almost seven when Kraskin’s car pulled up outside the apartment block facing the Tierpark. There was a crack of thunder, and rain had started to pour as Kraskin climbed out. The black Zis pulled away, and the colonel went up the stairs to the second floor and inserted the key.
When he stepped inside he noticed a door to one of the bedrooms was wide open. Kraskin stepped toward the doorway and saw the body of Pitrov, dressed in a blue silk dressing gown, sprawled across the bed. He saw the bullet wound to the head and the dark crimson patch spread on the white cotton sheets.
“Oh my God,” Kraskin breathed.
“Strange words for a communist, Colonel Kraskin.”
There was a faint click behind him. Kraskin turned at once and saw the man. He was seated in the shadows by the curtained window. His face was barely visible. But there was no mistaking the silenced Tokarev in his hand.
Kraskin made a move for his holstered pistol, managed to get the flap undone, but the man stood up smartly and came out of the shadows. He pointed the Tokarev at Kraskin’s head.
“I really wouldn’t, comrade. Unless you want to lose an eye. Sit down, at the table. Keep your hands on top.”