The End of the Third Reich

by Nick Cook

  “Comrade Major, to what do I owe the pleasure? No, don’t tell me. I can guess.” Sheverev let out a long throaty laugh, his bear-like frame heaving with every intake of breath.

  “Quiet, Oleg Andreyovich, and give me a drink. Vodka is what I feel like, so please, none of that local wine which does such terrible things to my stomach.” Malenkoy gave him a pained expression.

  “To please our new hero, the Major, would be an honour.” Sheverev bowed to Malenkoy in mock reverence and disappeared behind one of his trucks.

  Sheverev was Malenkoy’s best ally in Chrudim. Malenkoy had tacitly agreed to turn a blind eye to Sheverev’s racketeering on the understanding that he could use the sergeant’s tools and resources when he needed them. Sheverev also kept his Major happy with a liberal supply of vodka whenever Malenkoy felt like a drink. There was one other advantage of keeping in with the sergeant; he knew all the gossip there was to be had in the sector.

  He re-emerged carrying a bottle and two dirty metal cups. Sheverev poured a good measure into each container and handed one to Malenkoy.

  “To you, Comrade Major,” he said raising his cup. “A damn good engineer and scourge of SS terrorists to boot. Nastrovya.” He knocked back half the contents.

  “Spare me the compliments, Oleg Andreyovich,” Malenkoy said, yawning. “I only co-ordinated the hunt because the fuckers were in my sector and ruining our little game here. It was really the Siberians who found them.”

  “The Siberians . . . yes, I knew that actually,” Sheverev said shaking his head slowly. “Those sons of bitches have had a busy week.”

  Malenkoy took another swig of the throat-burning vodka. Already he felt his body relaxing. Soon the maskirovka would be finished and then perhaps he could apply for some leave. He was hardly listening to the old gossip.

  “Busy?” Malenkoy felt he had to humour the other man. He didn’t want the vodka supply to dry up. “Busy doing what?”

  Sheverev leant forward. Malenkoy could smell the alcohol on his breath.

  “Well, a sergeant friend of mine who looks after a bunch of Siberians over in Branodz told me that our good friend, Comrade General Nerchenko, commissioned his platoon to track down a major from headquarters who took a jeep and an armoured car for escort and deserted, just like that.” The starshina whistled through his teeth. “I mean what would make a man run away like that? It was a nice comfortable job being aide-de-camp to the general.”

  Malenkoy stiffened.

  “You don’t mean Major Paliev?”

  “Yes, Paliev, that was him.” Sheverev nodded.

  “Oleg Andreyovich, Paliev didn’t desert, he was ambushed on official business for the general. He was killed by the SS insurgents we found up on the mountain. We found his papers on one of the bodies.”

  “Well that may be, Comrade Major,” Sheverev said, slurring his words, “but Nerchenko told my friend and his Siberians to kill your Major Paliev when they caught up with him. Nerchenko must have really hated this Paliev. He ordered them to burn the body, the jeep, everything. Only deserters get that sort of treatment.”

  Malenkoy stopped drinking. He thought of Yuri. He saw the headless body at the Freikorps’ camp. He saw Nerchenko’s face drain of its colour when he told him that it was the SS who had killed Paliev. Yet he’d wanted Paliev dead all along. It just didn’t add up.

  Sheverev continued to drone on.

  Malenkoy looked intently at him and put his finger to his lips.

  Sheverev looked affronted.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. I’ve got to go.”

  “So suddenly?”

  “Yes.”

  Malenkoy walked off, but stopped after a few paces. He turned to Sheverev.

  “You should watch your mouth, Oleg Andreyovich. One day you might get it shot off.”

  Sheverev shrugged.

  “Me? No chance. I’m a survivor. Like you, Comrade Major. We use our heads. We’ll be all right, you’ll see.’

  * * * * * * * *

  Herries had forgotten to put his MP40 on automatic, but it did not matter. The single shot killed the Russian instantly.

  The plan had worked perfectly, but he had had to wait a good two hours before the right opportunity presented itself. He had first spotted the jeep and the lone occupant through his Zeisses at a range of several hundred metres. When it reached a dip in the road, Herries jumped from behind his cover and lay down beside the crumbling edge of the concrete highway.

  For an agonizing few seconds, he had thought the Ivan was not going to stop, then he heard the whine of the engine as the gears slowed the jeep’s speed and he held his breath, his thumping heart almost blocking out the sound of the approaching vehicle. Before the occupant had time to get out of the car and remove his pistol from its holster, Herries had the gun trained on his chest. One shot, and it was all over. The young officer’s surprise was etched on his now lifeless face, showing the traces of those last emotions - anger at being duped, agony that it should all end this way.

  Herries scrambled up to the jeep and inspected his work. Playing dead had been a desperate ploy, but he couldn’t go any further on foot. His stomach felt as if it was being pulled inside out by the dysentery. Had he not reached the road at that precise instant, he would have collapsed in the forest and elected to stay and die there.

  Herries was relieved to see that over one of the jeep’s rear seats was an officer’s greatcoat. It would cover up the bloodstain that was now spreading over the man’s tunic with the rapidity of ink on blotting paper. He had to get the uniform off him, but it was too dangerous to do it in that exposed place. Better to drive further along the road and swing off into the trees, where he would have time to change into the Russian’s clothes and dispose of the body.

  He pushed the corpse onto the passenger seat and cast a quick glance around to familiarize himself with the controls. The ignition caught the engine straight away and first gear engaged with no difficulty, but he lifted the clutch pedal up too quickly and the jeep hopped forward with such a jolt as it stalled that Herries was thrown back in his seat.

  At that precise moment, Dietz, a hundred metres behind, fired.

  The bullet hit the frame around the windscreen and whined off into the trees. Herries saw the point of impact out of the corner of his eye.

  Then he saw the movement reflected in the windshield.

  He already knew who it was before he spun round and saw the massive frame of Dietz pounding down the road towards him. It took two seconds for Herries to make a choice between turning to face his sergeant with a machine pistol on single shot or trying to restart the jeep. His dithering took Dietz fifteen metres closer. Herries made his choice, but his reactions were dulled by the sickening panic that caused the blood to pound in his head. His eyes raced over the dashboard. Where was the fucking ignition key? His fingers groped around the base of the steering column until he felt the angular edges of the key. He turned it and the engine coughed and died. In the mirror he could see Dietz, very close now, raising his rifle to his shoulder for a second shot on the run. He turned the key again.

  The vehicle hopped a foot and stalled. The limp body of the Russian slumped forward onto his lap. Shit! He had left the bloody gear in first. Herries’ mind was numb now to anything that was going on outside the jeep. The blood rushing in his head made his eardrums feel as if they would explode, while everything on the periphery of his sight greyed out until he was left with a narrow tunnel of vision whose only point of focus was the ignition key. He did not even hear the report from Dietz’s next shot, nor the bullet that screamed past his head by inches.

  Dietz knew that he had Herries. He pounded his legs along the pot-holed surface of the road with all his strength over the final twenty yards to the jeep.

  Herries turned the key with such force that his clammy thumb and forefinger slipped off the shiny metal surface, but the engine caught, the clutch engaged and he shot back in his seat as the jeep surged forward. Di
etz hurled his rifle into the rear of the vehicle and lunged for the tail-gate, grasping it with one hand, then two. Herries was into second gear, the engine screaming as he brought the speed up to 40 kph, but Dietz held on, slowly hauling in his dragging feet, preparing himself for the final effort which would propel him into the rear of the vehicle.

  Herries could see it all in the mirror. The two white hands on the tailgate and between them the grotesquely twisted face, blood and dirt still caked to the stubble on the cheeks and chin, wincing with every jerking movement of his body which brought him one second nearer to jumping onto the back seat.

  Herries threw the corpse off his legs and groped for the MP40 which was lying between the two front seats. He grabbed it by the barrel, took one last look at the needle on the speedometer as it nudged past 55 kph, and then swung round, crashing the stock of his machine pistol down onto Dietz’s knuckles. The mouth curled back silently with the pain and the red eyes bored into Herries’ for a second, then he was gone. He watched in the mirror as the body rolled, bounced and fell along the road, before coming to rest. Then he rounded a corner and it was gone.

  Herries drove fast for another two kilometres before he felt he had put enough distance between himself and the man whom he was sure he had killed two days before. This time he would take no chances, even if Dietz had hit the road hard enough to break every bone in his body.

  Herries swung down a muddy track lined with high pines and, when he was satisfied that the vehicle could no longer be seen from the road, he slewed to a halt. His body trembled with deep convulsions as the events of the last few minutes caught up with him. He leant over the side of the jeep and retched until his stomach was emptied of the berries and leaves that had been his only nourishment for the past few days.

  Ten minutes later Herries was back in the driving seat dressed in the uniform of the Soviet lieutenant. He wrapped the greatcoat around his body to hide the large dark stain on the chest and was about to set off back for the road when he noticed the wretched appearance of his face in the mirror. He jumped out of the jeep and went over to his bundle of clothes which partially hid the body of the Russian behind the nearest pine. He found his razor and set about shaving his dry face, his cheeks and chin still too numb to protest as the rusty blade scraped away the two-day old stubble.

  Satisfied that his cleaner image would not draw undue attention from passing factions of the Red Army, Herries drove off in the open-topped jeep, paused at the main road to make sure the coast was clear, and then took a left in the direction of Pilzen.

  * * * * * * * *

  Shaposhnikov and Krilov settled back into the canvas seats in the rear of the Ilyushin as the pilot opened up the throttles and the bomber trundled down the long runway before lifting off from Kubinka, the military airfield fifty kilometres from Moscow.

  It was a four hour flight to Ostrava, the main Soviet rail-head and logistics station for the Red Army build-up in Czechoslovakia. There they would pick up transport for the two hundred kilometre journey to the front, but not before Shaposhnikov ensured the consignment from Factory 497 at Berezniki, a facility at the base of the Urals, had arrived safely at the marshalling yards. Shaposhnikov wanted to oversee some of the unloading operation personally.

  As Krilov stared out of the window at the receding city of Moscow, he felt an immense wave of relief. Every minute that passed put another five kilometres between them and Beria’s internal security police, the NKVD. The events of the last few days had made him anxious. Paliev’s attempted defection, Nerchenko’s jitters, the coded exchanges between Moscow and Branodz; they had all risked exposure unnecessarily. Finally there was the news that Paliev had been ambushed by the fascists. But somehow the leadership of Shaposhnikov had kept them as one, kept them strong. He relished the moment when they would all be together; Shaposhnikov, himself, and the three generals, Badunov, Vorontin and Nerchenko, from each respective front. Five men who would change the face of the world. His whole body tingled with excitement.

  The village of Krazna Hora had long been ordained as the meeting place for the final briefing on Archangel. Krilov had had to send out urgent despatches within the past few hours to the three generals in the field to tell them that the plan had been brought forward. It would be up to Shaposhnikov tomorrow to tell them by how much the scheme had been affected.

  Archangel would work because good men, pure Bolsheviks, committed to the ideals on which their Revolution had been founded, were behind it. It would work because their mentor was not only true to those beliefs, he was also the best strategist in the Allied command - Western or Eastern. It had been planned down to the last detail.

  By the time Generalissimo Stalin, once a great man, now paranoid and divorced from reality, realized they were gone, the steamroller would be heading for Paris.

  It would work because they had the ultimate weapon known to man, the last resort if all else failed. And they had the balls to use it.

  Krilov reclined a little more, no longer caring about the sharp discomfort of the seat. It felt good to be going into action again.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Herries’ few hours in the barn could have been his most comfortable since his arrival on the Eastern Front, but he chose not to sleep.

  He wasn’t afraid of being discovered by the peasant who owned the barn, for he could easily have bluffed his way through any encounter with a rural Czechoslovakian simpleton.

  Herries’ restlessness centred on the tenacity of the Siberians whom the Russians used to hunt insurgents behind their lines. If they were onto him, they could have picked up his trail from the point where Dietz’s body lay broken in the road. He was pretty sure that such clues as he had left were minimal, but now that he was only a matter of miles from his goal, it paid to stay on his guard. If he had been discovered, there would have been no question of bluffing his way past the Russians who controlled their Siberian hunters. They would have cast one look at the jeep hidden inside the barn and taken him away to be shot, either as a spy, a deserter or a black marketeer - jeeps commanded a high price with the partisans.

  As soon as he had caught his breath, Herries arose from his bed of straw, heaped in one of the corners of the dry stone building. He knew the most dangerous part of the journey was yet to come.

  He had survived the two-day trek through the dripping forest, avoiding its dangers with the skill of a seasoned poacher. He had skirted Branodz by about three kilometres along the way and crept up to a bluff, which overlooked the centre of the town to see Ivan’s preparations for the invasion of the West for himself. Squinting through his Zeisses he had seen the armour, the preparations, the hive of activity around the headquarters. There had been patrols, but none had come close to him. He was still good, even without Dietz.

  But this morning he was heading into the beast’s lair. Today would signal the end of the journey, one way or the other.

  Herries stood in the middle of the barn and dusted the straw off his uniform. He walked over to the jeep and inspected his face in the rear-view mirror. Stubble was returning to his sallow cheeks, but he scratched it off with his razor, the light that streamed through the cracks in the wooden roof being just sufficient to show him what he was doing.

  He had needed cover, a place to go to ground for a few hours. He had not been long on the road when he spotted the barn down the muddy track. It was the perfect place to hide the secret of Archangel.

  Herries placed his officer’s cap on his head and inspected the face that stared back at him in the jeep’s mirror. He reckoned that with the greatcoat to conceal the reddish-brown mark that stained his chest, he could pass unchallenged into Pilzen.

  He walked back to the corner where he had rested and pulled back some of the straw until the base of the stone wall was exposed. He removed the loose rock that he had found the night before and stuffed the small package into the dark recess that lay behind. He wedged the stone back into its position, satisfied that it looked undisturbed and then heape
d the straw back into the corner.

  The job finished, he pulled back the twin doors of the barn and paused to scrutinize the surrounding woods to make sure that he had not been observed.

  The jeep started up first time. He coasted down to the end of the track and resumed his journey along the last few kilometres that led into Pilzen.

  Before the radio was destroyed during their retreat from Boskovice, Herries had reckoned on the German-occupied town in Western Czechoslovakia being the next to crack between the vice-like squeeze of the converging Soviet and American Armies.

  When he crossed the town’s limits in his jeep, he wasn’t so sure. His eyes darted in and out of the columns of Red Army troops that lined the streets for signs of a Western presence. He was in the centre of the town and on the point of turning round when he spotted the Stars and Stripes fluttering reassuringly in the wind on a building at the far side of the main square. His pulse quickened as he steered the vehicle straight for it.

  He drew up outside the building and hailed the burly US military policeman who was standing guard outside. Trying hard to keep his nerve, he mustered a halting Russian accent.

  “I have signal for the British liaison officer. Please to tell me where is the British delegation.” Herries prayed that the American would not run a spot check on his papers.

  The MP ambled down to the jeep.

  “You want the British mission? Jesus Christ, another one?” The American gritted his teeth. “You’re almost there, bud. See that grey building on the other side of the square? You’ll find the British in there. Why the hell they can’t put a flag outside their building same as we do, I don’t know. That way I wouldn’t have to give fifty goddamned guys like you the directions every day.”

  Herries put the jeep in gear and tore round to the other side of the square, scattering a group of US and Soviet personnel who were bartering in the road outside the British building. Herries leapt out of the vehicle, bounded up the steps and was through the door.