Winter of the World

by Ken Follett

  Carla's heart stopped. She thought of what the Gestapo had done to her father. She knew she could not withstand torture. In two minutes she would name every Swing Kid she knew.

  Frieda, who was less imaginative, said: "Don't look so scared!" and opened the door.

  It was not the Gestapo but a small, pretty, blond girl. It took Carla a moment to recognize her as Nurse Konig, out of uniform.

  "I have to speak to you," she said. She was distressed, breathless and tearful.

  Frieda invited her in. She sat on a bunk bed and wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her dress. Then she said: "I can't keep it inside any longer."

  Carla glanced at Frieda. They were thinking the same thing. Carla said: "Keep what inside, Nurse Konig?"

  "My name is Ilse."

  "I'm Carla and this is Frieda. What's on your mind, Ilse?"

  Ilse spoke in a voice so low they could hardly hear her. She said: "We kill them."

  Carla could hardly breathe. She managed to say: "At the hospital?"

  Ilse nodded. "The poor people who come in on the gray buses. Children, even babies, and old people, grandmothers. They're all more or less helpless. Sometimes they're horrid, dribbling and soiling themselves, but they can't help it, and some of them are really sweet and innocent. It makes no difference--we kill them all."

  "How do you do it?"

  "An injection of morphium-scopolamin."

  Carla nodded. It was a common anesthetic, fatal in overdose. "What about the special treatments they're supposed to have?"

  Ilse shook her head. "There are no special treatments."

  Carla said: "Ilse, let me get this clear. Do they kill every patient that comes here?"

  "Every one."

  "As soon as they arrive?"

  "Within a day, no more than two."

  It was what Carla had suspected, but even so, the stark reality was horrifying, and she felt nauseated.

  After a minute she said: "Are there any patients there now?"

  "Not alive. We were giving injections this afternoon. That's why Frau Schmidt was so frightened when you walked in."

  "Why don't they make it harder for strangers to get into the building?"

  "They think guards and barbed wire around a hospital would make it obvious that something sinister was going on. Anyway, no one ever tried to visit before you."

  "How many people died today?"

  "Fifty-two."

  Carla's skin crawled. "The hospital killed fifty-two people this afternoon, around the time we were there?"

  "Yes."

  "So they're all dead, now?"

  Ilse nodded.

  An intention had been germinating in Carla's mind, and now she resolved to carry it out. "I want to see," she said.

  Ilse looked frightened. "What do you mean?"

  "I want to go inside the hospital and see those corpses."

  "They're burning them already."

  "Then I want to see that. Can you sneak us in?"

  "Tonight?"

  "Right now."

  "Oh, God."

  Carla said: "You don't have to do anything. You've already been brave, just by talking to us. If you don't want to do any more, it's okay. But if we're going to put a stop to this we need proof."

  "Proof?"

  "Yes. Look, the government is ashamed of this project--that's why it's secret. The Nazis know that ordinary Germans won't tolerate the killing of children. But people prefer to believe it's not happening, and it's easy for them to dismiss a rumor, especially if they hear it from a young girl. So we have to prove it to them."

  "I see." Ilse's pretty face took on a look of grim determination. "All right, then. I'll take you."

  Carla stood up. "How do you normally get there?"

  "Bicycle. It's outside."

  "Then we'll all ride."

  They went out. Darkness had fallen. The sky was partly cloudy, and the starlight was faint. They used their cycle lights as they rode out of town and up the hill. When they came in sight of the hospital they switched off their lights and continued on foot, pushing their bikes. Ilse took them by a forest path that led to the rear of the building.

  Carla smelled an unpleasant odor, somewhat like a car's exhaust. She sniffed.

  Ilse whispered: "The incinerator."

  "Oh, no!"

  They hid the bikes in a shrubbery and walked silently to the back door. It was unlocked. They went in.

  The corridors were bright. There were no shadowy corners: the place was lit like the hospital it pretended to be. If they met someone they would be seen clearly. Their clothes would give them away immediately as intruders. What would they do then? Run, probably.

  Ilse walked quickly along a corridor, turned a corner, and opened a door. "In here," she whispered.

  They walked in.

  Frieda let out a squeal of horror and covered her mouth.

  Carla whispered: "Oh, my soul."

  In a large, cold room were about thirty dead people, all lying faceup on tables, naked. Some were fat, some thin; some old and withered, some children, and one a baby of about a year. A few were bent and twisted, but most appeared physically normal.

  Each one had a small adhesive bandage on the upper left arm, where the needle had gone in.

  Carla heard Frieda crying softly.

  She steeled her nerves. "Where are the others?" she whispered.

  "Already gone to the furnace," Ilse replied.

  They heard voices coming from behind the double door at the far end of the room.

  "Back outside," Ilse said.

  They stepped into the corridor. Carla closed the door all but a crack, and peeped through. She saw Herr Romer and another man push a hospital trolley through the doors.

  The men did not look in Carla's direction. They were arguing about soccer. She heard Romer say: "It's only nine years ago that we won the national championship. We beat Eintracht Frankfurt two-nil."

  "Yes, but half your best players were Jews, and they've all gone."

  Carla realized they were talking about the Bayern Munich team.

  Romer said: "The old days will come back, if only we play the right tactics."

  Still arguing, the two men went to a table where a fat woman lay dead. They took her by the shoulders and knees, then unceremoniously swung her onto the trolley, grunting with the effort.

  They moved the trolley to another table and put a second corpse on top of the first.

  When they had three they wheeled the trolley out.

  Carla said: "I'm going to follow them."

  She crossed the morgue to the double doors, and Frieda and Ilse followed her. They passed into an area that felt more industrial than medical: the walls were painted brown, the floor was concrete, and there were store cupboards and tool racks.

  They looked around a corner.

  They saw a large room like a garage, with harsh lighting and deep shadows. The atmosphere was warm, and there was a faint smell of cooking. In the middle of the space was a steel box large enough to hold a motorcar. A metal canopy led from the top of the box through the roof. Carla realized she was looking at a furnace.

  The two men lifted a body off the trolley and shifted it to a steel conveyor belt. Romer pushed a button on the wall. The belt moved, a door opened, and the corpse passed into the furnace.

  They put the next corpse on the belt.

  Carla had seen enough.

  She turned and motioned the others back. Frieda bumped into Ilse, who let out an involuntary cry. They all froze.

  They heard Romer say: "What was that?"

  "A ghost," the other replied.

  Romer's voice was shaky. "Don't joke about such things!"

  "Are you going to pick up the other end of this stiff, or what?"

  "All right, all right."

  The three girls hurried back to the morgue. Seeing the remaining bodies, Carla suffered a wave of grief about Ada's Kurt. He had lain here, with an adhesive bandage on his arm, and had been thrown onto the convey
or belt and disposed of like a bag of garbage. But you're not forgotten, Kurt, she thought.

  They went out into the corridor. As they turned toward the back door, they heard footsteps and the voice of Frau Schmidt. "What is taking those two men so long?"

  They hurried along the corridor and through the door. The moon was out, and the park was brightly lit. Carla could see the shrubbery where they had hidden the bikes, two hundred yards away across the grass.

  Frieda came out last, and in her rush she let the door bang.

  Carla thought fast. Frau Schmidt was likely to investigate the noise. The three girls might not reach the shrubbery before she opened the door. They had to hide. "This way!" Carla hissed, and she ran around the corner of the building. The others followed.

  They flattened themselves against the wall. Carla heard the door open. She held her breath.

  There was a long pause. Then Frau Schmidt muttered something unintelligible, and the door banged again.

  Carla peeped around the corner. Frau Schmidt had gone.

  The three girls ran across the lawn and retrieved their bicycles.

  They pushed the bikes along the forest path and emerged onto the road. They switched on their lights, mounted up, and pedaled away. Carla felt euphoric. They had got away with it!

  As they approached the town, triumph gave way to more practical considerations. What had they achieved, exactly? What would they do next?

  They must tell someone what they had seen. She was not sure who. In any event they had to convince someone. Would they be believed? The more she thought about it, the less sure she was.

  When they reached the hostel and dismounted, Ilse said: "Thank goodness that's over. I've never been so scared in all my life."

  "It's not over," said Carla.

  "What do you mean?"

  "It won't be over until we've closed that hospital, and any others like it."

  "How can you do that?"

  "We need you," Carla said to her. "You're the proof."

  "I was afraid you were going to say that."

  "Will you come with us, tomorrow, when we go back to Berlin?"

  There was a long pause, then Ilse said: "Yes, I will."

  x

  Volodya Peshkov was glad to be home. Moscow was at its summery best, sunny and warm. On Monday, June 30, he returned to Red Army Intelligence headquarters beside the Khodynka airfield.

  Both Werner Franck and the Tokyo spy had been right: Germany had invaded the Soviet Union on June 22. Volodya and all the personnel at the Soviet embassy in Berlin had returned to Moscow, by ship and train. Volodya had been prioritized, and made it back faster than most: some were still traveling.

  Volodya now realized how much Berlin had been getting him down. The Nazis were tedious in their self-righteousness and triumphalism. They were like a winning soccer team at the after-match party, getting drunker and more boring and refusing to go home. He was sick of them.

  Some people might say that the USSR was similar, with its secret police, its rigid orthodoxy, and its puritan attitudes to such pleasures as abstract painting and fashion. They were wrong. Communism was a work in progress, with mistakes being made on the road to a fair society. The NKVD with its torture chambers was an aberration, a cancer in the body of Communism. One day it would be surgically removed. But probably not in wartime.

  Anticipating the outbreak of war, Volodya had long ago equipped his Berlin spies with clandestine radios and codebooks. Now it was more vital than ever that the handful of brave anti-Nazis should continue to pass information to the Soviets. Before leaving he had destroyed all records of their names and addresses, which now existed only in his head.

  He had found both his parents fit and well, although his father looked harassed. It was his responsibility to prepare Moscow for air raids. Volodya had gone to see his sister, Anya, her husband, Ilya Dvorkin, and the twins, now eighteen months old: Dmitriy, called Dimka, and Tatiana, called Tania. Unfortunately their father struck Volodya as being just as ratlike and contemptible as ever.

  After a pleasant day at home, and a good night's sleep in his old room, he was ready to start work again.

  He passed through the metal detector at the entrance to the intelligence building. The familiar corridors and staircases touched a nostalgic chord, even if they were drab and utilitarian. Walking through the building he half-expected people to come up and congratulate him: many of them must have known he had been the one to confirm Barbarossa. But no one did; perhaps they were being discreet.

  He entered a large open area of typists and file clerks and spoke to the middle-aged woman receptionist. "Hello, Nika--are you still here?"

  "Good morning, Captain Peshkov," she said, not as warmly as he might have hoped. "Colonel Lemitov would like to see you right away."

  Like Volodya's father, Lemitov had not been important enough to suffer in the great purge of the late thirties, and now he had been promoted to fill the place of an unlucky former superior. Volodya did not know much about the purge, but he found it hard to believe that so many senior men had been disloyal enough to merit such punishment. Not that Volodya knew exactly what the punishment was. They could be in exile in Siberia, or in prison somewhere, or dead. All he knew was that they had vanished.

  Nika added: "He has the big office at the end of the main corridor now."

  Volodya walked through the open room, nodding and smiling at one or two acquaintances, but again he got the feeling that he was not the hero he had expected to be. He tapped on Lemitov's door, hoping the boss might shed some light.

  "Come in."

  Volodya entered, saluted, and closed the door behind him.

  "Welcome back, Captain." Lemitov came around his desk. "Between you and me, you did a great job in Berlin. Thank you."

  "I'm honored, sir," said Volodya. "But why is this between you and me?"

  "Because you contradicted Stalin." He held up a hand to forestall protest. "Stalin doesn't know it was you, of course. But all the same, people around here are nervous, after the purge, of associating with anyone who takes the wrong line."

  "What should I have done?" Volodya said incredulously. "Faked wrong intelligence?"

  Lemitov shook his head emphatically. "You did exactly the right thing, don't get me wrong. And I've protected you. But just don't expect people around here to treat you like a champion."

  "Okay," said Volodya. Things were worse than he had imagined.

  "You have your own office, now, at least--three doors down. You'll need to spend a day or so catching up."

  Volodya took that for dismissal. "Yes, sir," he said. He saluted and left.

  His office was not luxurious--a small room with no carpet--but he had it to himself. He was out of touch with the progress of the German invasion, having been busy trying to get home as fast as possible. Now he put his disappointment aside and began to read the reports of the battlefield commanders for the first week of the war.

  As he did so, he became more and more desolate.

  The invasion had taken the Red Army by surprise.

  It seemed impossible, but the evidence covered his desk.

  On June 22, when the Germans attacked, many forward units of the Red Army had had no live ammunition.

  That was not all. Planes had been lined up neatly on airstrips with no camouflage, and the Luftwaffe had destroyed twelve hundred Soviet aircraft in the first few hours of the war. Army units had been thrown at the advancing Germans without adequate weapons, with no air cover, and lacking intelligence about enemy positions--and in consequence had been annihilated.

  Worst of all, Stalin's standing order to the Red Army was that retreat was forbidden. Every unit had to fight to the last man, and officers were expected to shoot themselves to avoid capture. Troops were never allowed to regroup at a new, stronger defensive position. This meant that every defeat turned into a massacre.

  Consequently the Red Army was hemorrhaging men and equipment.

  The warning from the Tokyo sp
y, and Werner Franck's confirmation, had been ignored by Stalin. Even when the attack began, Stalin had at first insisted it was a limited act of provocation, done by German army officers without the knowledge of Hitler, who would put a stop to it as soon as he found out.

  By the time it became undeniable that it was not a provocation but the largest invasion in the history of warfare, the Germans had overwhelmed the Soviets' forward positions. After a week they had pushed three hundred miles inside Soviet territory.

  It was a catastrophe--but what made Volodya want to scream out loud was that it could have been avoided.

  There was no doubt whose fault it was. The Soviet Union was an autocracy. Only one person made the decisions: Josef Stalin. He had been stubbornly, stupidly, disastrously wrong. And now his country was in mortal danger.

  Until now Volodya had believed that Soviet Communism was the true ideology, marred only by the excesses of the secret police, the NKVD. Now he saw that the failure was at the very top. Beria and the NKVD existed only because Stalin permitted them. It was Stalin who was preventing the march to true Communism.

  Late that afternoon, as Volodya was staring out of the window over the sunlit airstrip, brooding over what he had learned, he was visited by Kamen. They had been lieutenants together four years ago, fresh out of the Military Intelligence Academy, and had shared a room with two others. In those days Kamen had been the clown, making fun of everyone, daringly mocking pious Soviet orthodoxy. Now he was heavier and seemed more serious. He had grown a small black mustache like that of the foreign minister, Molotov, perhaps to make himself look more mature.

  Kamen closed the door behind him and sat down. He took from his pocket a toy, a tin soldier with a key in its back. He wound up the key and placed the toy on Volodya's desk. The soldier swung his arms as if marching, and the clockwork mechanism made a loud ratcheting sound as it wound down.

  In a lowered voice Kamen said: "Stalin has not been seen for two days."

  Volodya realized that the clockwork soldier was there to swamp any listening device that might be hidden in his office.

  He said: "What do you mean, he hasn't been seen?"

  "He has not come to the Kremlin, and he is not answering the phone."

  Volodya was baffled. The leader of a nation could not just disappear. "What's he doing?"

  "No one knows." The soldier ran down. Kamen wound it up and set it going again. "On Saturday night, when he heard that the Soviet Western Army Group had been encircled by the Germans, he said: 'Everything's lost. I give up. Lenin founded our state and we've fucked it up.' Then he went to Kuntsevo." Stalin had a country house near the town of Kuntsevo on the outskirts of Moscow. "Yesterday he didn't show up at the Kremlin at his usual time of midday. When they phoned Kuntsevo, no one answered. Today, the same."