by Ken Follett
It was a week before Carla saw Frieda again. When she did, she told her all about Joachim Koch. She told the story as if simply retelling an interesting piece of news, but she felt sure Frieda would not regard it in that innocent light. "Just imagine," she said. "He told us the code name of the operation and the date of the attack!" She waited to see how Frieda would respond.
"He could be executed for that," Frieda said.
"If we knew someone who could get in touch with Moscow, we might turn the course of the war," Carla went on, as if still talking about the gravity of Joachim's crime.
"Perhaps," said Frieda.
That proved it. Frieda's normal reaction to such a story would include expressions of surprise, lively interest, and further questions. Today she offered nothing but neutral phrases and noncommittal grunts. Carla went home and told her mother that her intuition had been correct.
Next day at the hospital, Frieda appeared in Carla's ward looking frantic. "I have to talk to you urgently," she said.
Carla was changing a dressing for a young woman who had been badly burned in a munitions factory explosion. "Go to the cloakroom," she said. "I'll be there as soon as I can."
Five minutes later she found Frieda in the little room, smoking by an open window. "What is it?" she said.
Frieda put out the cigarette. "It's about your Lieutenant Koch."
"I thought so."
"You have to find out more from him."
"I have to? What are you talking about?"
"He has access to the entire battle plan for Case Blue. We know something about it, but Moscow needs the details."
Frieda was making a bewildering set of assumptions, but Carla went along with it. "I can ask him . . ."
"No. You have to make him bring you the battle plan."
"I'm not sure that's possible. He's not completely stupid. Don't you think--"
Frieda was not even listening. "Then you have to photograph it," she interrupted. She produced from the pocket of her uniform a stainless-steel box about the size of a pack of cigarettes but longer and narrower. "This is a miniature camera specially designed for photographing documents." Carla noticed the name Minox on the side. "You'll get eleven pictures on one film. Here are three films." She brought out three cassettes, the shape of dumbbells but small enough to fit into the little camera. "This is how you load the film." Frieda demonstrated. "To take a picture, you look through this window. If you're not sure, read this manual."
Carla had never known Frieda to be so domineering. "I really need to think about this."
"There's no time. This is your raincoat, isn't it?"
"Yes, but--"
Frieda stuffed the camera, films, and booklet into the pockets of the coat. She seemed relieved they were out of her hands. "I've got to go." She went to the door.
"But, Frieda!"
At last Frieda stopped and looked directly at Carla. "What?"
"Well . . . You're not behaving like a friend."
"This is more important."
"You've backed me into a corner."
"You created this situation when you told me about Joachim Koch. Don't pretend you didn't expect me to do something with the information."
It was true. Carla had triggered this emergency herself. But she had not envisaged things turning out this way. "What if he says no?"
"Then you'll probably be living under the Nazis the rest of your life." Frieda went out.
"Hell," said Carla.
She stood alone in the cloakroom, thinking. She could not even get rid of the little camera without risk. It was in her raincoat, and she could hardly throw it into a hospital rubbish bin. She would have to leave the building with it in her pocket, and try to find a place where she could dispose of it secretly.
But did she want to?
It seemed unlikely that Koch, naive though he was, could be talked into smuggling a copy of a battle plan out of the War Ministry and bringing it to show his inamorata. However, if anyone could persuade him, Maud could.
But Carla was scared. There would be no mercy for her if she were caught. She would be arrested and tortured. She thought of Rudi Rothmann, moaning in the agony of broken bones. She recalled her father after they released him, so brutally beaten that he had died. Her crime would be worse than theirs, her punishment correspondingly bestial. She would be executed, of course--but not for a long time.
She told herself she was willing to risk that.
What she could not accept was the danger that she would help kill her brother.
He was there, on the eastern front; Joachim had confirmed it. He would be involved in Case Blue. If Carla enabled the Russians to win that battle, Erik could die as a result. She could not bear that.
She went back to her work. She was distracted and made mistakes, but fortunately the doctors did not notice and the patients could not tell. When at last her shift ended, she hurried away. The camera was burning a hole in her pocket but she did not see a safe place to dump it.
She wondered where Frieda had got it. Frieda had plenty of money, and could easily have bought it, though she would have had to come up with a story about why she needed such a thing. More likely she could have got it from the Russians before they closed their embassy a year ago.
The camera was still in Carla's coat pocket when she arrived home.
There was no sound from the piano upstairs; Joachim was having his lesson later today. Her mother was sitting at the kitchen table. When Carla walked in, Maud beamed and said: "Look who's here!"
It was Erik.
Carla stared at him. He was painfully thin, but apparently uninjured. His uniform was grimy and ripped, but he had washed his face and hands. He stood up and put his arms around her.
She hugged him hard, careless of dirtying her spotless uniform. "You're safe," she said. There was so little flesh on him that she could feel his bones, his ribs and hips and shoulders and spine, through the thin material.
"Safe for the moment," he said.
She released her hold. "How are you?"
"Better than most."
"You weren't wearing this flimsy uniform in the Russian winter?"
"I stole a coat from a dead Russian."
She sat down at the table. Ada was there too. Erik said: "You were right. About the Nazis, I mean. You were right."
She was pleased, but not sure exactly what he meant. "In what way?"
"They murder people. You told me that. Father told me, too, and Mother. I'm sorry I didn't believe you. I'm sorry, Ada, that I didn't believe they killed your poor little Kurt. I know better now."
This was a big reversal. Carla said: "What changed your mind?"
"I saw them doing it, in Russia. They round up all the important people in town, because they must be Communists. And they get the Jews, too. Not just men, but women and children. And old people too frail to do anyone any harm." Tears were streaming down his face now. "Our regular soldiers don't do it--there are special groups. They take the prisoners out of town. Sometimes there's a quarry, or some other kind of pit. Or they make the younger ones dig a great hole. Then . . ."
He choked up, but Carla had to hear him say it. "Then what?"
"They do them twelve at a time. Six pairs. Sometimes the husbands and wives hold hands as they walk down the slope. The mothers carry the babies. The riflemen wait until the prisoners are in the right spot. Then they shoot." Erik wiped his tears with his dirty uniform sleeve. "Bang," he said.
There was a long silence in the kitchen. Ada was crying. Carla was aghast. Only Maud was stony-faced.
Eventually Erik blew his nose, then took out cigarettes. "I was surprised to get leave and a ticket home," he said.
Carla said: "When do you have to go back?"
"Tomorrow. I have only twenty-four hours here. All the same I'm the envy of all my comrades. They'd give anything for a day at home. Dr. Weiss said I must have friends in high places."
"You do," said Maud. "Joachim Koch, a young lieutenant who works a
t the War Ministry and comes to me for piano lessons. I asked him to arrange leave for you." She glanced at her watch. "He'll be here in a few minutes. He has grown fond of me--he's in need of a mother figure, I think."
Mother, hell, Carla thought. There was nothing maternal about Maud's relationship with Joachim.
Maud went on: "He's very innocent. He told us there's going to be a new offensive on the eastern front starting on the twenty-eighth of June. He even mentioned the code name: Case Blue."
Erik said: "He's going to get himself shot."
Carla said: "Joachim is not the only one who might be shot. I told someone what I learned. Now I've been asked to persuade Joachim, somehow, to get me the battle plan."
"Good God!" Erik was rocked. "This is serious espionage--you're in more danger than I am on the eastern front!"
"Don't worry, I can't imagine Joachim would do it," Carla said.
"Don't be so sure," said Maud.
They all looked at her.
"He might do it for me," she said. "If I asked him the right way."
Erik said: "He's that naive?"
She looked defiant. "He's in love with me."
"Oh." Erik was embarrassed at the idea of his mother being involved in a romance.
Carla said: "All the same, we can't do it."
Erik said: "Why not?"
"Because if the Russians win the battle you might die!"
"I'll probably die anyway."
Carla heard her own voice rise in pitch agitatedly. "But we'd be helping the Russians kill you!"
"I still want you to do it," Erik said fiercely. He looked down at the checkered oilcloth on the kitchen table, but what he was seeing was a thousand miles away.
Carla felt torn. If he wanted her to . . . She said: "But why?"
"I think of those people walking down the slope into the quarry, holding hands." His own hands on the table grasped each other hard enough to bruise. "I'll risk my life, if we can put a stop to that. I want to risk my life--I'll feel better about myself, and my country, if I do. Please, Carla, if you can, send the Russians that battle plan."
Still she hesitated. "Are you sure?"
"I'm begging you."
"Then I will," said Carla.
v
Thomas Macke told his men--Wagner, Richter, and Schneider--to be on their best behavior. "Werner Franck is only a lieutenant, but he works for General Dorn. I want him to have the best possible impression of our team and our work. No swearing, no jokes, no eating, and no rough stuff unless it's really necessary. If we catch a Communist spy, you can give him a good kicking. But if we fail, I don't want you to pick on someone else just for fun." Normally he would turn a blind eye to that sort of thing. It all helped to keep people in fear of the displeasure of the Nazis. But Franck might be squeamish.
Werner turned up punctually at Gestapo headquarters in Prinz Albrecht Strasse on his motorcycle. They all got into the surveillance van with the revolving aerial on the roof. With so much radio equipment inside it was cramped. Richter took the wheel and they drove around the city in the early evening, the favored time for spies to send messages to the enemy.
"Why is that, I wonder?" said Werner.
"Most spies have a regular job," Macke explained. "It's part of their cover story. So they go to an office or a factory in the daytime."
"Of course," said Werner. "I never thought of that."
Macke was worried they might not pick up anything at all tonight. He was terrified that he would get the blame for the reverses the German army was suffering in Russia. He had done his best, but there were no prizes for effort in the Third Reich.
It sometimes happened that the unit picked up no signals. On other occasions there would be two or three, and Macke would have to choose which to follow up on and which to ignore. He felt sure there was more than one spy network in the city, and they probably did not know of each other's existence. He was trying to do an impossible job with inadequate tools.
They were near the Potsdamer Platz when they heard a signal. Macke recognized the characteristic sound. "That's a pianist," he said with relief. At least he could prove to Werner that the equipment worked. Someone was broadcasting five-digit numbers, one after the other. "Soviet intelligence uses a code in which pairs of numbers stand for letters," Macke explained to Werner. "So, for example, 11 might stand for A. Transmitting them in groups of five is just a convention."
The radio operator, an electrical engineer named Mann, read off a set of coordinates, and Wagner drew a line on a map with a pencil and rule. Richter put the van in gear and set off again.
The pianist continued to broadcast, his beeps sounding loud in the van. Macke hated the man, whoever he was. "Bastard Communist swine," he said. "One day he'll be in our basement, begging me to let him die so the pain will come to an end."
Werner looked pale. He was not used to police work, Macke thought.
After a moment the young man pulled himself together. "The way you describe the Soviet code, it sounds as if it might not be too difficult to break," he said thoughtfully.
"Correct!" Macke was pleased that Werner caught on so fast. "But I was simplifying. They have refinements. After encoding the message as a series of numbers, the pianist then writes a key word underneath it repeatedly--it might be Kurfurstendamm, say--and encodes that. Then he subtracts the second numbers from the first and broadcasts the result."
"Almost impossible to decipher if you don't know the key word!"
"Exactly."
They stopped again near the burned-out Reichstag building and drew another line on the map. The two met in Friedrichshain, to the east of the city center.
Macke told the driver to swing northeast, taking them nearer to the likely spot while giving them a third line from a different angle. "Experience shows that it's best to take three bearings," Macke told Werner. "The equipment is only approximate, and the extra measurement reduces error."
"Do you always catch him?" said Werner.
"By no means. In most cases we don't. Often we're just not quick enough. He may change frequency halfway through, so that we lose him. Sometimes he breaks off in midtransmission and resumes at another location. He may have lookouts who see us coming and warn him to flee."
"A lot of snags."
"But we catch them, sooner or later."
Richter stopped the van and Mann took the third bearing. The three pencil lines on Wagner's map met to form a small triangle near the East Station. The pianist was somewhere between the railway line and the canal.
Macke gave Richter the location and added: "Quick as you can."
Werner was perspiring, Macke noticed. Perhaps it was rather hot in the van. And the young lieutenant was not accustomed to action. He was learning what life was like in the Gestapo. All the better, Macke thought.
Richter headed south on Warschauer Strasse, crossed the railway, then turned into a cheap industrial neighborhood of warehouses, yards, and small factories. There was a group of soldiers toting kit bags outside a back entrance to the station, no doubt embarking for the eastern front. And a fellow countryman somewhere in this neighborhood is doing his best to betray them, Macke thought angrily.
Wagner pointed down a narrow street leading away from the station. "He's in the first few hundred yards, but could be either side," he said. "If we take the van any closer he'll see us."
"All right, men, you know the drill," Macke said. "Wagner and Richter take the left-hand side. Schneider and I will take the right." They all picked up long-handled sledgehammers. "Come with me, Franck."
There were few people on the street--a man in a worker's cap walking briskly toward the railway station, an older woman in shabby clothes probably on her way to clean offices--and they hurried quickly past, not wanting to attract the attention of the Gestapo.
Macke's team entered each building, one man leapfrogging his partner. Most businesses were closed for the day so they had to rouse a janitor. If he took more than a minute to come to the door th
ey knocked it down. Once inside they raced through the building checking every room.
The pianist was not in the first block.
The first building on the right-hand side of the next block had a fading sign that said: FASHION FURS. It was a two-story factory that stretched along the side street. It looked disused, but the front door was steel and the windows were barred: a fur coat factory naturally had heavy security.
Macke led Werner down the side street, looking for a way in. The adjacent building was bomb-damaged and derelict. The rubble had been cleared from the street and there was a hand-painted sign saying: DANGER--NO ENTRY. The remains of a name board identified it as a furniture warehouse.
They stepped over a pile of stones and splintered timbers, going as fast as they could but forced to tread carefully. A surviving wall concealed the rear of the building. Macke went behind it and found a hole through to the factory next door.
He had a strong feeling the pianist was in here.
He stepped through the hole, and Werner followed.
They found themselves in an empty office. There was an old steel desk with no chair, and a file cabinet opposite. The calendar pinned to the wall was for 1939, probably the last year during which Berliners could afford such frivolities as fur coats.
Macke heard a footstep on the floor above.
He drew his gun.
Werner was unarmed.
They opened the door and stepped into a corridor.
Macke noted several open doors, a staircase up, and a door under the staircase that might lead to a basement.
Macke crept along the corridor toward the foot of the stairs, then noticed that Werner was checking the door to the basement.
"I thought I heard a noise from below," Werner said. He turned the handle but the door had a flimsy lock. He stepped back and raised his right foot.
Macke said: "No--"
"Yes--I hear them!" Werner said, and he kicked the door open.
The crash resounded throughout the empty factory.
Werner burst through the door and disappeared. A light came on, showing a stone staircase. "Don't move!" Werner yelled. "You are under arrest!"
Macke went down the stairs after him.
He reached the basement. Werner stood at the foot of the stairs, looking baffled.
The room was empty.
Suspended from the ceiling were rails on which coats had probably been hung. An enormous roll of brown paper stood on end in one corner, probably intended for wrapping. But there was no radio and no spy tapping messages to Moscow.