Get Lenin

by Robert Craven

  A hurried meal was consumed and the vodka bottle was passed around. Lichen tea followed and those that didn’t retch felt the beginnings of being alive again.

  Russian and German army maps were examined on the table where the sarcophagus had lain. One of Regan’s lamps, jerry-rigged to the on-board generator, cast harsh light and shadows across the page. Sunken cheekbones and eyes worked in deep shadows as the lights began to flicker. The generator was beginning to fail.

  Brandt thought the best solution lay with the Luftwaffe. ‘We need to get a transport aircraft here and hi-jack it. We need some kind of a ruse.’

  ‘How about a medical consignment retrieved from a skirmish with the Russian army?’ Kant suggested,

  ‘They would scramble a whole squadron for a prize like that,’ agreed Brandt.

  Looking into the distance, Kravchenko calculated that the flying boat would be out of Russian airspace within four hours. Kramer translated this for him. Brandt and Kant knew about the small islands off the coast of Helsinki and the planned transfer to the U-Boat. The flying boat couldn’t be shot down because of the precious cargo on board.

  Brandt’s thoughts suddenly turned to the girl in sable with Kincaid, Eva. She was a witness to what had happened and therefore expendable. He thought of those grey intelligent eyes and felt a stirring across his chest which consumed him for a moment. He’d caught her looking at him a couple of times at least before suddenly finding something else to look at when their eyes met. He smiled for the first time in twenty-four hours and decided he was going to see her again, no matter what. His attention was broken by the sound of wolves howling in the night which sent a primordial chill through everyone.

  Schultz’s radio was working and Bader was hunched over it, incrementally tuning for a signal. He paused. Inclining his head and practically resting his headset against the radio, he summoned Brandt over to him. ‘You’re not going to believe this, sir. It’s the British Embassy in Helsinki inquiring if we require assistance.’

  ‘How did they find us?’ Brandt was suspicious. If The British had their co-ordinates they could alert the Russians.

  ‘It’s the only German Army bandwidth signal in the area.’

  Brandt still wasn’t happy. He got Bader to ask ‘How do you know we need assistance?’

  There was a pause. Bader’s jaw clenched as he repeated the message. ‘They’ve intercepted a coded message from an American flying boat in Russian airspace. Part of the fragment decoded is — Alpine Unit eliminated.’

  ‘How quickly can they get a plane here and turn it around to the Finnish coast?’

  Zbarsky worked silently in the flying boat’s hold. The laboratory was state-of-the-art but the available chemicals useless. He was trying to re-think his formulae in his head and instruct his team simultaneously. He made some rough jottings on a page and cross-checked them against the chemicals. Once his decision was made, he tore the jottings up and chewed them when no-one was watching. They were close to the end of the treatments supplied for the train journey and now they had to preserve the body indefinitely. Pinching the bridge of his nose in exhaustion, he pondered his options: not co-operate and be shot in the head as the SS officer had threatened, or do his best.

  No point in being a hero both for him or his team.

  He blended the preservatives and began to work quickly and thoroughly. They had to hope against hope that keeping Lenin preserved and intact gave their countrymen a reason to get him back. The American’s pretty companion was with them translating for them. She looked uneasy and was clearly acting under duress. Oblivious to her discomfort, the SS officer and the American had almost begun a tug-of-war over her.

  Zbarsky asked her to instruct that the hold’s temperature be set to the sarcophagus’ settings immediately. Her accent was Eastern European, which meant either traitor or ally. He’d watch her closely before asking for her help. The fact that she was scared was a good start. The SS officer regarded him with distaste as Kincaid hollered the instruction through the plane’s communications systerm. Lights were instructed to be dimmed and only the team remained whilst the body was out of its coffin.

  Eva sensed that time was running out, that the net around her was snapping shut. She couldn’t disguise her horror at the attack on Brandt’s men. As the flying boat pulled away, the small Chechen girl was under heavy fire and Eva had screamed out a warning. She pounded on the glass with tears running down her face. She then looked around to see how she could get the plane back on the ground. Toying with the brooch laden with chemicals, she tried calculate the distance she could cover to immobilise the pilot. The flying boat’s engines had catapulted them off the ice and, with the fighter’s staying in tight formation, she was out of options.

  Her heart ached for the German officer and the pointless ending to his and his comrades' lives. Schenker and Kincaid had roared with laughter at their success and Regan was positioned somewhere aft filming the whole event. The flying boat had radioed Berlin, informing them that they were airborne and that a ‘partisan attack’ had been repelled during take-off.

  Kincaid’s personal secretary was being wired to start drafting an account of the events from Kincaid’s offices in Burbank, California.

  Regan had come back into the cabin area and was hovering. Eva was drying her eyes and trying to light a cigarette at the same time. Regan cranked his wind-proof lighter and the smell of petroleum filled her nostrils.

  ‘Allow me, miss.' He was now almost on top of her, leaning in. Despite working for most of the day in freezing temperatures, a cloying smell of stale sweat came from him. Her cigarette helped kill it off but she found his closeness intimidating. ‘Too bad about the mountaineers.’ He was now across her, looking out at the fighter plane alongside. He managed a quick glance down at her cleavage. ‘According to the member of the master race over there — ’ Schenker was positioning himself in front of the camera, looking to see if he was equidistant between the flags, and had started on the champagne once he had come up from the hold, his face its usual red rage ‘- they were racially suspect.’

  ‘Because of Olga?’

  ‘Yup. Better get your face straight, doll. The boss is coming over.’

  Kincaid studied Eva for a few moments before he spoke. ‘Honey, I find your presence soothing,’ he assured her. He took her hand in his and Eva fought the urge to retch. His fatherly demeanour didn’t reach his eyes. ‘You’re very, very special to me and I’m sorry, very sorry, you had to see that … and, yes, the ambush was shocking but necessary. The SS don’t have any experienced mountaineering units, so common soldiers had to be used and alas dispensed with. The newsreels couldn’t contain any inferior races, only prime Aryan soldiers.’

  He told her he also had information that one of the soldiers was a Communist and former International Brigadist in Spain, then added that a Chechen woman couldn’t be seen to be serving with the German Army. Kincaid was searching for a reaction but satisfied in himself that she was teary-eyed more out of fright. Eva summoned her smile from her heels. Trained in emotional mapping by the late Herr Gruber, she struggled to find convincing happy memories to bring to her eyes. Kincaid thankfully never looked past the smile, wishing only to see a pretty adoring face. She gave him that in spades, thinking of De Witte’s arms, and oddly and perhaps cruelly, of Brandt’s eyes.

  Regan, who had filmed for most of his life, knew she was faking and wondered what leverage he’d get with that information.

  The table was set in the best crystal and silver. Eva had never seen such opulence. It had to be said these villains loved their neatly-laid tables. Kincaid's fussing over table settings and throwing a tantrum over the cut-crystal gave him a prissy quality. She had been awake for nearly twenty hours and, as she re-did her make-up and changed into the low-cut evening wear Kincaid had bought, she wondered how long it would be before she slept again. She positioned her brooch along the halter-neck.

  She brought up her thick auburn hair, pinning it up to revea
l a diamond necklace Kincaid had purchased in Amsterdam. Her neck was slender and long, the colour and texture of alabaster, the diamonds sparkling on it. Regaining her composure, she swept out into the dining cabin and into the open boozy leers of Schenker, Regan and Kincaid. All jumped at the chance to seat her, Kincaid winning by a hair's breadth.

  Through Regan’s lens, Kincaid and Eva sat at one side, Schenker and three of Kincaid’s personal staff sitting opposite. Regan lined the film camera up, adjusted the overhead lights and roared, ‘Action!’

  Through his eyepiece, framed by the flags and just below the banner, the group faced the camera, raising a toast, Kincaid beaming and acknowledging Schenker who bowed modestly. The camera seemed to love them both. Eva’s composure had returned and Regan had to hand it to the broad — she could act. She gave furtive doe-eyed glances at Kincaid while Schenker leant across flirting openly. She was going straight to the ‘A’ list as soon as this documentary was screened worldwide.

  Regan panned the camera around the cabin, slowly capturing the flying boat’s splendour. The crew from the flight-deck appeared in shot, giving the thumbs-up. Later Regan would film the radio operator informing Berlin of their success, jump-cutting to Lenin’s coffin. As they were filming, another unit was preparing to film Goebbels and Himmler receiving the news. Kincaid’s team would then splice the film together at Goebbels’ private studios. The event was virtually being put together in real-time.

  Once the toast was completed, Kincaid and Schenker rose to stand in front of the flags, to applause from around the table. An announcement came over the intercom from the cockpit; they

  would be out of Russian airspace in two hours. Regan then turned his attention to the laboratory below. He thought about interviewing Zbarsky, maybe taking some of the sensationalism out of it by asking for a scientific slant on preserving Lenin. He hastily scribbled down some notes into a leather-bound notebook purchased from the same shop as his hero Ernest Hemingway. Pausing over the page, the idea slowly sunk into Jack Regan that he was standing on the cusp of history. He was about to become a legend and girls like Eva would flock to him.

  Chainbridge asked Brandt to repeat his statement. The signal out of the Urals was weakening, voices flowing in and out in waves. A few years earlier, Klaus Brandt’s dossier had been passed to Chainbridge when he had been collating information on German Army officers. He was assessed to be a very capable soldier, cool headed and inclined to act in the army’s, rather than the Nazi party’s, interests. He was also a legend in sporting circles, particularly mountaineering and cross country skiing and shooting. An Olympic place should have been guaranteed in 1936, but he never made the German team. He was now apparently out of political favour and had been left for dead in the middle of Russia. Whatever happened next would be British collaboration with the enemy while German bombs were landing on English cities. The trick was to keep British Intelligence’s fingerprints off the whole operation.

  ‘No Russian assistance,’ hissed Brandt’s voice through the receiver.

  De Witte shook his head. ‘If it went wrong, Churchill would have some explaining to do. Tell Stalin.’

  Chainbridge decided to keep the War Office in the know. Comrade Joe couldn’t be contacted anyway. It was rumoured he had fled Moscow. ‘Can you retrieve the consignment?’ shouted Chainbridge down the microphone in fluent German.

  There was a long pause. ‘Yes,’

  Chainbridge looked at De Witte. ‘What have we got in their vicinity?’

  ‘A lot of diplomatic flights have departed Moscow. No-one was expecting the Germans to get this far,’

  The Finnish Embassy staff in touch with their counterparts in the beleaguered capital checked UK diplomatic flights. De Witte, confirming the stranded unit’s co-ordinates, was also grasping the fact that an NKVD Officer was involved. He started to plan on detaining this individual and getting as much intelligence out of him as possible.

  Chainbridge spoke to Churchill’s secretary to confirm that Lenin had been snatched. The Foreign Office was running twenty-four hours a day digesting recent news from Singapore about Japanese fleet movements, and now this was another situation for them to juggle.

  Churchill had contacted Roosevelt’s administration in relation to flights within the USSR. A twenty minute pause on the line interspersed with clicks and hisses followed before the message came through: They had an American Transport still unloading lend-lease equipment for the Russian Army about two hundred miles ahead of German Army Group South in Ukraine. ‘Washington doesn’t want any US personnel involved,’ came the response.

  Chainbridge answered in his under-stated way, remembering Eva’s photographs of Kincaid’s hidden envelope. ‘Tell them there’s a US national aiding and abetting the German High command by flying Lenin’s body out of Russia. According to our information, it’s Donald T. Kincaid. This information is solid. We have copies of signed correspondence between him and high ranking Nazi party members. Do they want a diplomatic incident to ensue with The Soviet Union?’

  Twenty more tense minutes of hisses and clicks followed before Washington agreed to divert the plane.

  ‘Better tell them to get moving,’ said De Witte, speaking fluent German into the radio receiver instructing Brandt to stay put. He had to repeat it twice, stressing that no harm would come to Kravchenko.

  The ambassador was uneasy. The embassy was still operating without any Finnish or German interference. No doubt the Finnish Secret Service would be keeping Berlin appraised. Timing was going to be a critical factor; the later Berlin knew about anything the better.

  With the lockdown of the German underground, information from inside the Reich was down to a trickle. Chainbridge knew it was going to be down to luck if they could intercept Kincaid.

  He went out into the freezing night and lit a cigarette. Coughing harshly, he reminded himself he had to cut down. The moon sat low on the horizon, placing the embassy in a ghostly light.

  Kincaid’s private plane was probably out of Russian airspace now.

  Colonel Valery Yvetschenko furrowed his brow, concerned at the lateness of the hour. He was a precise man in every way and the train transporting Lenin was overdue. He rewound his watch, a gift for his fortieth birthday, to ensure it was functioning correctly. Continuous phone and radio messages were being sent to Moscow without any reply, just a constant static.

  It was possible, he mused, that Moscow had fallen to the Germans. Since the invasion, communication was at best unreliable and the Russian Army had been driven back to Moscow’s suburbs. It was also possible that the train had never left Moscow as radio contact throughout the journey had been intermittent. Tyumen was the fall-back position for the Politburo and Military Command using the Urals as a natural shield.

  For months the Soviet industrial and weapons complex had been shipped in secret into Tyumen prior to the invasion. Entire populations of workers had been railed in on the hour every hour ahead of the German advance. Vast catacombs had been constructed beneath the Ural Mountains, more still being mined to accommodate further shipments. Plant and machinery were working round the clock to feed the struggling forces with equipment, ammunition and vehicles. With the River Tura frozen solid, rail links and chartered allied transport planes were the only way into and out of the facility.

  If the rail link had been compromised, it was going to be a very long hard winter.

  It was ten-past-midnight and the snow was falling with such intensity that a search operation was nigh-on suicidal until morning. He peered into the wall of white falling before him, hoping to make out the shape of the locomotive coming in. His breath was crystallizing in the air, and with every inhalation it felt like tiny needles piercing his throat. He ordered the blast doors on the cavern to close for the night and, stomping up into the radio hut, instructed that messages were to be sent on the hour every hour. All that was coming back from Moscow was white noise.

  Five hours had passed and the sound of aircraft engines filled the
air. The dawn was still a few hours away and Brandt’s unit and Kravchenko had slept fitfully in the carriage. Olga and Kant, taking first watch, had killed three wolves that got too close. The animals lay on their sides with single bullet wounds to their heads. There were a great many more in the woods howling, watching and waiting for their moment to strike. Packs were feeding on the dead German soldiers, snarling and fighting over the remains. Schultz's body had been pulled up from its shallow grave and dragged into the forest.

  The snow had at last stopped and the radio had sparked into life. Brandt’s English was poor but he recognised the codeword ‘Iskra’ as the US Transport banked in to land.

  The C-47 Skytrain bounced along the frozen river, overshooting the carriage by a few feet. It turned quickly, blowing plumes of snow in its wake and pulled up alongside. Running below the length of the wing, the team boarded the plane. Before he climbed aboard, Brandt looked at the far bank. At least twenty wolves scattered into the forest from the din of the engines. The pilots gunned the engine and within minutes Brandt, Kant, Olga, Kravchenko, Hauptman, Bader and Voight, lost in their thoughts, were clattering pell-mell across the Russian dawn. Steaming hot coffee was served along with chocolate and emergency rations by a smiling American Navigator.

  ‘Looks like we’re all on the same side now!!’ he yelled over the din of the engines before heading back to the cockpit. He produced a hip flask and spiked the coffee with bourbon followed by a wink. The two pilots seemed to be flying in frenzy; pitching rather than flying the aircraft through the clouds. Sleep was going to be impossible, though there was one luxury — an on-board latrine. Olga went first to freshen up and was astonished that the taps produced running hot water.