by Nick Cook
“What sort of country is it?”
Fleming twisted the standard lamp round so it shone full on the map pinned to the blackboard behind him. He pointed to the hundred and twenty mile second leg, tracing its path with a ruler.
“Mostly flat, as you can see, so you’ll stand out like a sore thumb if you’re not careful. But the 234’s fast, it will give you an advantage, despite the concentration of their air defences. About the only piece of intelligence we have for the area is that the Russians have moved some fighters into the old Luftwaffe base at Grafen, here, so keep it tight; you don’t want to stray. It’s a short flight, too, so the element of surprise will be very much on your side. The Soviets won’t be expecting an attack on Branodz. It’s well defended, it’s almost impossible to find amongst those valleys unless you know what you’re looking for, and they know that the Germans are going balls out to stop the Americans in the south. So far, the Russians have had it damned easy in Czechoslovakia.”
“What about the target itself? When am I going to see a model, study photographs.”
“We haven’t got any.”
Kruze shook his head in disbelief. “I can’t go in there with no idea what it is I’m meant to be bombing, for Christ’s sake.”
“And we can’t just send in a Mosquito two hundred miles behind Soviet lines on a photo jaunt. We do have eyewitness reports, though.” He tried to make it sound casual. “Herries, over to you.”
Herries cast his mind back to his fleeting recce of Branodz. He repeated what he had already told his debriefers in London a dozen times.
“The building you’re looking for is a large Alpine villa, chalet style, of all-wooden construction,” the traitor said. “It’s situated on the edge of the town, in a clearing that doubles as a motor-pool. It’s easily the largest building in the village and has flags sticking out of every orifice. Even at the speed you’ll be coming in at, you won’t be able to miss it.”
“Remember,” Fleming added, “we know that Shaposhnikov will be manning the radio between 0630 and 0700.” He paused. “We’ve also heard from Moscow that he’s already at Branodz. If you time your attack for around 0640, you’ll catch him in the operations room, just after his early morning shit. You might even get him while he’s still got his trousers down.”
Kruze laughed, purging the tension that had been building in his muscles and knotting his stomach. At first, Fleming’s expression did not alter, then he allowed himself a smile. “You’ve worked with the Lotfe bombsight at Farnborough. At the height you’ll drop from, you can’t miss; you’ll obliterate the entire area.”
“I hate to break up the party,” Herries said, “but what about our escape routes?”
“Once Kruze is on his way, get out of Oberammergau and lie low, wait for the Americans to advance and surrender yourself to them. We’ll get you out of their custody as soon as we can.” He saw Herries move to protest and then realize that there was nothing he could say in front of Kruze. “You’ll just have to trust us,” Fleming said.
“As for you, Piet, once you’ve dropped your tanks and bombs on Shaposhnikov you’ll be low on fuel, so head west as fast as you can. Make as if you’re going for the German lines, that’s important, but as soon as you’re in the clear, divert to any Allied airfield. We can’t tell anyone to expect you, for obvious reasons, so make sure you land on your first approach. As soon as they see that you’re surrendering an Ar 234 to them, they’ll let you in. Then sit tight and don’t say anything until the EAEU comes to get you.”
Fleming wandered over to the window, pulled the tattered curtain aside and studied the night sky. There was a bright three-quarter moon with intermittent cloud cover, light enough for the Auster pilot to see the landing area, but too dark for them to be picked up by night fighters . . . hopefully. He looked at his watch and then to Kruze. It was just past eleven.
“The Auster leaves at midnight. Try and snatch some rest. If you have any further questions, I’ll tackle them on the way out to the aircraft.”
As the two of them moved for the door, Fleming caught the traitor’s eye. “Herries, I want to talk to you,” he said.
Fleming waited till they were quite alone.
“It hasn’t escaped our notice that you could quite easily shoot Kruze in the back and blame your German friends. But if you live and he doesn’t, we’re not going to believe you, it’s as simple as that.”
Herries said nothing.
“So, we’ve built in a little safeguard just to make sure you don’t do anything rash,” Fleming continued. “Although Kruze isn’t allowed to know who you are, I’m going to give him a code word. He will pass it on to you when - and only when - you finally part company at Oberammergau. He’ll think it’s to let us know that he got to the aircraft in one piece.”
Fleming looked into Herries’ eyes and allowed himself to smile. “You, on the other hand, can look on it as the only way you’ll dodge the gallows.”
After wrestling with his conscience in the solitude of the briefing room. Fleming sprang to his feet and strode outside, slamming the door behind him.
Kruze, about to risk his life, deserved better. He had resolved to tell the Rhodesian about Herries. The longer he spent with the traitor, the more he realized that Kruze needed to be forewarned, code word or not.
* * * * * * * *
Kruze was too wound up to rest. The room was cold and miserable, with only the muted glow of an old hurricane lamp to see by, and he suddenly ached for Penny.
There was a faint knock at the door. Fleming looked in hesitantly, then entered when he saw Kruze was awake.
“I thought I’d see how you were doing.” He drew a chair up beside Kruze’s bed. “Cigarette?” He offered the pack.
“No thanks,” Kruze said, still staring at the ceiling. He sensed Fleming’s awkwardness in the silence that hung between them.
“How did you feel before you went into Rostock?”
Fleming took a long pull on his cigarette and watched the blue smoke curl in the chill air. “Rostock . . . seems like a bloody lifetime ago. I remember ... it felt like everything was down to me, just me. But it wasn’t Staverton I didn’t want to disappoint, it was myself.”
Kruze nodded. “Staverton wouldn’t have given a shit if you hadn’t come back, as long as he’d got his precious 163C. Don’t think I have any illusions about his intentions towards Rolf Peiper. He’d do anything, bend any rule, to get the job done.”
Fleming tried to explain the other side of Staverton, the man who had helped him on the road to recovery, though all he could think of was the AVM’s refusal to tell the truth about Herries.
“That’s balls, Robert. Stop kidding yourself. Why do you think he sent you into Rostock, for a miracle cure? You’re one hell of a good intelligence officer, but Staverton seems to have owned you, body and soul, since Italy.”
“Christ, you don’t mince words, do you?” Fleming threw the cigarette to the floor and ground in the stub with his boot. “I didn’t know my past was aired so openly around the EAEU.”
Kruze took his eyes off the crumbling, yellowed paint above the bed and looked across at Fleming. There was none of the self-pity in his face that he had expected.
“No one knows who you really are, Robert, so no one talks about you, except for Mulvaney and you know what he’s like; holds you in the highest admiration, old boy, and all that.”
Fleming smiled, shaking his head. “Admiration from a pompous, stuffed shirt like Mulvaney. God, I must have been an even bigger prick than I thought.”
“I’ve always thought of us as having quite a lot in common, you know Piet. Does anyone know who you are?” Behind Fleming’s eyes there was a serenity and a wisdom that disturbed Kruze. The words, delivered without any trace of malice, hit him hard.
“There was someone. I think she knew.”
“Someone to go back to?”
“Right now I can only think of Shaposhnikov,” Kruze answered, stiffly.
Fleming li
t another cigarette. “I wish I shared your sense of professionalism.”
“How do you mean?”
“You asked me about Rostock. To tell you the truth, it was Penny who kept me going. This past year has been pretty bad for us, and I realized then that it was my fault, that it was up to me to do something about it. A little late in the day.”
Again, Kruze felt the cramp in his stomach. Fleming had stopped, was pulling on his cigarette. “What exactly happened to you in Italy?”
Fleming hesitated, then began. “I was on the tail of an FW 190. I remember feeling elated, he was slap in the middle of my sights, didn’t have a clue I was there. I thought he must have been half-asleep, so I closed the range, just to make sure. Stupid. I was the dozy one. I must have been about a hundred feet behind him, when he lowered his undercarriage and flaps - just like you did with the Junkers the other day. I shot past him and the next thing I knew was his cannon thumping into the wings and the fuselage. Then the instrument panel exploded and I blacked out.”
Fleming took another drag from his cigarette.
“I came to with this bloody awful pain in my side. The aircraft was in an inverted spin and I reached up and tried to pull the hood back. But my Mae West dug into me and hurt like hell, so I reached down to untie it. It came as a bit of a bloody surprise when I found I had no Mae West and most of my tunic was missing and there was just this big hole in the left side of my body. Then I just started watching the ground spinning lazily overhead. I would have been quite happy to have carried on like that, except the shell that hit the instrument panel had also severed my oxygen pipe and I started to breathe in the flames which had eaten through the forward bulkhead. I gave the canopy a bloody good tug and then I must have been sucked out. God knows how I opened the chute, because I don’t remember a thing between sitting in the cockpit and waking up in bed in a field hospital.”
He dropped the cigarette next to the first stub. “So there you have it. Penny must have been by my side for every single hour of the day and night when they shipped me back to England. They told me afterwards that when she wasn’t in the operating theatre watching bits of metal being removed from me, she was in that chair by my bed, holding my hand, worried sick. She thought I was going to die. I did for a while, but not then. That came later.”
“How long did it take for you to come round?” Half of Kruze wanted Fleming to stop, but the other was captivated.
“I was in a coma for about three months. It’s funny, you know. No one could possibly have loved a woman more than I loved her on that morning in Tuscany. I suppose I thought that there wasn’t a hope in hell she would want to stay with a man who couldn’t change his own clothes, who had to be spoon-fed, pissed himself without even knowing it. So I shut her off, before she had the chance to leave me. There were violent moments too, when I couldn’t even control my actions. God, I hated myself for that. Even so, I loved her all that time. I just bent over backwards not to let her know ...” His voice trailed away.
Suddenly he said: “I’ve never told a soul before.”
“You’ve changed, Robert, that’s why. You’re no longer the prick of the EAEU.”
Fleming stared at him for a second and then burst out laughing. “I suppose from you, Kruze, that’s a compliment.”
Kruze allowed himself a smile. “It was meant to be one.” He took one of his own cigarettes from his pocket and lit it. “What are you going to do about your wife?”
“She wants a divorce, so it’s probably too late for us. I have to start getting realistic. Still, I’d just like a chance to explain.”
Kruze swung his feet off the bed and sat on the edge of the mattress.
“It’s not too late, Robert.” Kruze took a deep breath. “If you get out of this shit-hole alive, and there’s every reason why you should, you must go to her as soon as you can.”
Fleming laughed again. In the dim, half-light of the room, he looked ten years younger. “Piet, you’ve only met her once, you don’t know her: she’s a headstrong girl and -”
Kruze cut him off. “No, Robert, I bumped into her a few days ago. I was leaving the Ministry and she was heading in to deliver the letter.”
“The infamous letter. So, you know we were getting divorced.”
“Only later. She seemed upset, so I bought her a drink. That was when she told me.”
“I see,” Fleming said, his voice suddenly distant.
“She loves you, don’t you see? The letter was a cry for help.”
Fleming straightened. “How can you possibly know? Did she tell you all this?”
“She didn’t have to. It was obvious. The girl is still in love with you.”
“You really don’t have to do this, Kruze. I’ve come to terms with it. Look at me, I’ve made a full recovery.” He held his arms out. “But this is not the man she married. He never got out of that Spitfire over Monte Lupo.”
Kruze felt an urge to shake him. “You look like the same guy to me.”
Fleming shrugged. “You didn’t know me then.”
“I saw the photograph of you in the Spit. . .”
Fleming got to his feet. The look of bewilderment had changed to anger. “I only sent that picture to her a month ago, long after you came to the cottage.”
“What are you talking about?” Kruze pushed himself off the bed.
“The shot of me in the Spitfire. I found it in the Bunker and sent it to her. Now you tell me you’ve seen it at the cottage. What the bloody hell were you doing there?”
Kruze shook his head. “It’s nothing.”
Fleming pushed the chair back. “I asked you what you were doing there.”
Kruze dropped his cigarette. “I told you. We met quite by chance. It must have been the day before you were sent to Rostock. We saved a child from that V2 blast near the Ministry. That night I had a long talk with her. Two days later we had a bite to eat in Padbury.”
Fleming’s face twisted in disbelief.
In the semi-darkness, Kruze saw the fist coming a little too late. He made no attempt to parry it, but tried to duck. The blow caught him on the side of the face and he fell backwards against the thin wall of the hut. He shook his head and began pulling himself onto his feet, but Fleming’s hands were already on him, dragging him upwards, his breath coming in deep, convulsing gasps.
“You’ve got a fucking nerve, Kruze.”
Even with his head ringing from the blow, Kruze easily wrenched the other man’s grip from him. With all his might he pushed, ramming Fleming up against the far wall. The whole hut rocked.
“Listen, Robert, I’m not telling you all this so I can have a bloody good gloat. I’m trying to get it into your stupid skull that she may not know it, but she still loves you, and you’re never going to discover that for yourself if you sit on your arse, thinking about the good times you could have had.”
Fleming tried to push himself free, but Kruze had him pinned hard against the wall. Fleming rammed his face right up to the Rhodesian’s.
“Did you touch her?”
“You said it yourself; we’re two of a kind. She’s lonely and afraid, but it’s not me she wants. She wants you, needs you, but you have to make the move. Don’t waste any time when you get back. Go to her.”
Kruze felt Fleming’s body relax, saw some of the fire die in his eyes. He drew back, not sure what would happen next. Fleming’s breath came more easily as he looked into the Rhodesian’s face, straightening his tie and uniform as he did so.
“I need to get some air,” Fleming said, simply. “The Auster leaves in fifteen minutes.” And with that, he stepped out into the night.
* * * * *
Stalin looked at the two reports on his desk. He picked up the first and held it to his chest for a moment in the silence of his office. The news could not have been better. All across the front, the great nine hundred and fifty kilometre front, the British had halted their advance eastwards and were digging in.
All the signs were clear. Arch
angel was in London. In a short time it would be in Washington too.
Sabak could feel his master’s elation.
“What about the other matter?” Stalin asked.
“The problem is solved,” Sabak said. “We have obtained the Nerchenko girl’s complete co-operation. It seems the prospect of her father being informed of her little performances for Comrade Beria terrified her more than the chief of internal security himself.”
“But has she served her purpose?” Stalin asked.
Sabak smiled. “We need make no other arrangements, Comrade Stalin. She was going to give the game away sooner or later, but as it happened, she tripped the wire sooner than we expected. It’s all in the report.”
Stalin opened the second file and read the dispatch. With scant clues available to him, Beria had none the less picked up the trail.
He read on. Shlemov had been sent to Branodz. Knowing the diligence of Beria’s most tenacious investigator he would now be roaming around the 1st Ukrainian Front pulling in the missing strands.
Shlemov was a loose canon, Stalin thought to himself. A little knowledge in his hands was certainly a dangerous thing.
He needed help.
He closed the file and started drafting the note. Sabak could ensure that it was typed up with no clue to its origins and delivered anonymously to Beria’s love nest on Kuznecki Most.
The rest would be up to him.
* * * * * * * *
Herries had taken his cap off and thrown an RAF greatcoat over his shoulders to shield his uniform from the USAAF groundcrew who worked through the night to get their battle-weary Mustangs ready for operations the following morning. Despite their proximity to the front line, there was hardly any gunfire to be heard, the wind carrying most of the sound back inside the retreating borders of the Reich, but every now and again the horizon lit up as another Allied artillery barrage began to pummel the Wehrmacht’s positions around the Bavarian capital, a mere twenty kilometres away.