This Fog of Peace (Moon Brothers WWII Adventure Series Book 4)

by William Peter Grasso

  What a waste of time.

  Now we’re truly going to bear this cross of the Soviets on our own.

  An NCO thrust a telephone into his hand. President Truman’s military aide was on the line, telling him the president needed him at the White House immediately.

  When Marshall arrived in the Oval Office, Secretary of State Byrnes and Admiral King were already there. “We had a little trouble finding you, General,” Truman said. “We had no idea you’d gone to work at this ungodly hour. Please apologize for me to Missus Marshall for waking her up.” The president pointed to a serving cart by the wall. “Have yourself some coffee, General. You look like you need it.”

  Secretary Byrnes pulled a message form from his briefcase. “This just came in to State from Harriman in Moscow. He’s saying that the American pilot who went down in the Soviet zone—he’s alive, supposedly, and the Russians are holding him.”

  “Is he injured?” Marshall asked.

  “They don’t say.”

  Marshall again: “Do we know where he’s being held?”

  Byrnes shook his head.

  “This is a fine kettle of fish, gentlemen,” Truman fumed. “If all this is true—and that boy is alive and stays alive—we’ve just given Uncle Joe Stalin a big bargaining chip to use against us.”

  Byrnes added, “I expect we’ll be receiving very soon a list of demands that must be met to get him back.”

  “No doubt about that, Jimmy,” the president replied. “Who wants to take bets what’s on that list?”

  “They’ll probably want gasoline shipments restored,” King said.

  “That should be the least of our worries, Admiral,” Truman replied. “My guess is that they’ll try to use it as a lever to force us out of Berlin…and if we have another screw-up or two, maybe even out of Germany.”

  Nobody could argue with that.

  King asked, “That directive of yours, Mister President…do you think it’s a good idea to leave it in place?”

  “Hell yes, we’re leaving it in place,” Truman replied. “We can’t go changing major policy on a dime every time the wind shifts. That’d be much too confusing for our boys, and that’s just not fair to them. Besides, Admiral, isn’t it you who always says that policy is like a big ship underway? You can’t change its direction quickly.”

  Nobody could argue with that assessment, either.

  Byrnes said, “My staff is composing a counter-demand that our pilot is held in full compliance with the Geneva Convention until we can arrange his release.”

  “Don’t send it,” Marshall cautioned.

  Byrnes asked, “Why not, General?”

  “Because unless we’re at war, he’s not a prisoner of war. So the Convention does not apply. Unless, of course, we’re ready to declare war on the Soviets.”

  Truman, looking stunned, replied, “I hope you’re joking, General.”

  “Of course, Mister President. It was an inappropriate thing for me to say. I apologize.”

  Truman returned to the topic of the downed airman. He asked, “What kind of treatment can we expect for that boy?”

  Marshall replied, “I expect he’ll be treated as a spy, Mister President.”

  “This just gets worse by the minute,” Truman fumed. “Whatever we do, gentlemen, we’ve got to keep a lid on this as best we can.”

  Byrnes asked, “ But what if Moscow starts blabbing to the whole world?”

  “Deny it, Jimmy,” the president replied. “Deny every damn thing they say.”

  Chapter Twelve

  It had been a week since Sylvie and Mirka joined the staff at the Hotel Neuwieder, the Berlin-Karlshorst establishment owned by Hermann Gestler, aka Franz. The old hotel, four stories tall, lay just a block east of Gestler’s house. Like that house, it had been spared the torrent of bombs and shells the Russians had liberally expended against the city during its capture back in May. The Soviet headquarters lay two blocks west. The hotel provided lodging for the Soviet high commanders and staff who populated that headquarters.

  With the Potsdam Conference now over, the hotel was crawling with Russian officers. The senior ones—the colonels through Marshall Zhukov himself—had a room to themselves on the upper two floors. The junior officers doubled up with a roommate on the two lower floors.

  The objective of the women’s mission—Colonel Valentin Yanov—lived on the third floor. Yanov wasn’t really a military man, despite his uniform and rank. He was a political officer—a Communist Party functionary once called a commissar and now known as a zampolit—whose main responsibility was maintaining proper socialist principles and discipline among the Soviet troops in Berlin. In addition, he advised Marshall Zhukov’s unit commanders who among their troops was failing to meet the Kremlin’s standards.

  “So he’s the rat we must trap,” Sylvie whispered to herself the first time she laid eyes on him in the dingy third-floor corridor. She’d been cleaning rooms on that floor when he appeared unexpectedly in the middle of the day.

  He entered his room but left the door ajar. Pushing the rolling linen hamper to his doorway, she said, in her halting, rudimentary Russian, “May I clean your room, Colonel Yanov?”

  He seemed much shorter now without the high, saucer-shaped visor cap of a Soviet officer he’d been wearing in the hall. She was surprised when he turned, smiling, and walked to her as she stood just outside the door.

  In fluent German, he said, “Fräulein, it would be easier for you, I’m sure, if we spoke German.”

  She nodded eagerly. “Yes, it would, Comrade Colonel. Thank you for being so kind.”

  “How do you know who I am, fräulein?” It was an honest question, without any hint of suspicion.

  “I know this room belongs to a Colonel Yanov. You have the key. It seemed a safe assumption.”

  As he heard her speak, his expression changed from the smile to a quizzical look. “You are not from Berlin, are you?”

  “No, Comrade Colonel. I am from far away, from Offenburg, just across the Rhine from France.” Hers was a carefully crafted and rehearsed story of false identity. Its telling was made easier by the fact that she’d actually spent a few months in that part of France while working for French 1st Army; the area’s features and customs were as familiar to her as any native.

  “I see,” Yanov replied. “What is your name, fräulein?”

  When she told him, he said, “Ah, even your name sounds French. You speak it, I assume?”

  “A little,” she lied.

  “That’s a little more than I do, unfortunately. Sylvie…such a pretty name for such a pretty girl.”

  He’s a flirt. This is going to be easy.

  She worked up a blush and an embarrassed smile.

  “Oh, I’ve made you feel uncomfortable, Sylvie. Allow me to apologize.”

  “No, Comrade Colonel. It’s just that you are so kind, but I have so much work to do. I didn’t expect anyone would be in their room in the middle of the day. Would you like me to come back and clean your room when you are not here?”

  “Actually, I’m leaving again. I just returned to retrieve my pipe tobacco.” He removed a pouch from the overcoat hung in the wardrobe and held it up like found treasure. “There…now I can get through the rest of the day. I won’t be back until after the supper meal. Take your time.”

  He put that huge cap back on his head and walked out of the room. On his way past her, he pinched her cheek gently as one would a child. “Make sure you don’t touch anything you shouldn’t,” he said as he did it.

  But the friendliness in his voice wasn’t sincere; wrapped within it she sensed the implied threat, Or you’ll be just another corpse thrown on a pile of Berlin rubble.

  “Have a good day, Comrade Colonel,” she said, with forced cheerfulness.

  As he vanished onto the staircase, she told herself, He’s not a big man. Five hundred milligrams of chloral hydrate should knock him flat on his backside.

  She’d clean Yanov’s room last. That would
give her extra time to survey its contents without being in a rush and leaving something out of position accidentally. If she worked fast cleaning the remaining rooms in the hall, that would give her even more time: I must search it carefully, especially those boxes that seem to be full of files. I’ll need Mirka’s help to read them and see which ones, if any, are important to us.

  Sylvie had no idea how Yanov had been chosen. But you didn’t have to be a genius to figure out the captured political officer would be touted to the rest of the world as a defector—a dedicated Communist who’d turned his back on Stalin and the Party, causing major embarrassment for the Kremlin. Whether that false defection would be useful for diplomatic bargaining purposes or to cut off the head of some crucial Soviet initiative, she had no idea. Her job—hers and Mirka’s—was simply to get him out of Berlin’s Russian zone and into the arms of the OSS.

  The hotel had been fairly deserted while the Potsdam Conference was in session, with Russian officers arriving late in the evening for a few hours’ sleep before setting out again before dawn for the half-hour drive to the day’s meetings. Now that the conference was over, though, the hotel was full of Russian officers lounging in its bar and restaurant, drinking lustily and talking loudly from mid-afternoon until well into the night.

  And now she’d met Yanov, their target.

  The other rooms cleaned, Sylvie went looking for Mirka. She found her on the top floor, where the generals and Marshall Zhukov had suites. Her fluency in Russian made her the right choice to work that floor. It would be a shame to be able to eavesdrop on high-level officers without the knowledge to understand what was being said.

  Sylvie pulled her into a linen closet so they could talk without fear of being overheard.

  “You’ve met him already?” Mirka asked, clearly surprised.

  “Yes. He’ll be gone until after supper. Come with me and help comb his room.”

  “No,” Mirka said. “That will look suspicious!”

  “But he’s keeping documents there we should read! I might get them wrong…or not at all.”

  “We’re not here to sift through documents, Sylvie. It’ll be hard enough figuring out how to get him to the Allied zone.”

  “No,” Sylvie replied, “they may hold information that could help us, like his itinerary, for example. Maybe we should switch floor assignments.”

  “Oh, that’s all we need! They’ll scrutinize our papers all over again. How many times can that happen before they get lucky and realize they’re forgeries?”

  “They’re excellent forgeries, Mirka. The best I’ve ever seen. Even I believe them.”

  “Good for you. But I’m not switching floors. If you see something that looks interesting, bring it to me.”

  “That is a truly bad idea, Mirka. The documents cannot leave his room.”

  There was no point discussing this any further. “Never mind, Mirka. I’ll do it myself.”

  She left Mirka standing in the storage room and went back downstairs to Yanov’s room. She had an hour—to be on the safe side—to “clean” it. Blocking the open doorway with that big rolling linen hamper, she began the task.

  It only took a few minutes to search the wardrobe closet and the lone chest of drawers. She found nothing out of the ordinary. There was only a pair of slippers beneath the bed. In fact, she was amazed at how few possessions Yanov seemed to have. She remembered Tommy’s rooms at his bases in Alençon—where they’d met in France—and in Frankfurt. Those rooms were full of paraphernalia, souvenirs, and enough clothing to go weeks without the need for laundry service.

  And Tommy’s just a captain. This Russian colonel doesn’t own more than a few sets of underwear, apparently—the one he’s wearing and whatever’s at the cleaners—because there are none in this chest of drawers. No wonder the load this hotel sends to the laundry every day is so huge. There’s so much that the van driver needs to make a special trip.

  There was nothing left to inspect but those boxes of files. She’d decided that since the door had to remain open, the safest way to do it was make it look like she’d knocked a box to the floor accidentally so if some Russian suddenly appeared, she could make it look like an accident she was busily cleaning up. She’d need to repeat that precaution for each of the four boxes in the stack.

  The first three boxes looked like they contained nothing but personnel records of Soviet military men. It was difficult to translate most of what was written, but each had the same official stamp on the top page like a black mark of shame, followed by narratives that seemed to suggest some inappropriate behavior had occurred. One word was present in every report. Sylvie was fairly sure what that word meant: rape.

  Before they’d left on this mission, Major Donleavy had warned them about the frequency of rape by Russian soldiers of women in Berlin. But he’d gone on to say that they’d be relatively safe working in a place full of high-ranking officers. “Those officers have their pick of concubines from the large number of women in the Soviet military. They don’t need to bother with raping strangers like the common soldier does.”

  He’d closed with one further warning: “Just stay off the streets as much as possible.”

  She scattered the contents of the fourth and final box on the floor. These looked like personnel files, too, but not of people in the Soviet military. The people described on these forms were civilians, and they all worked in this hotel. On the bottom of the pile, she found the file for her pseudonym: Sylvie Kohler.

  It was very sparse; it didn’t say anything more than was on the papers declaring her a German in the occupied territory.

  No hint of disciplinary issues. Apparently, they don’t think I’ve raped anyone yet.

  But she thought she might’ve missed something. She rifled through the stack one more time to convince herself that she hadn’t passed over it.

  But she hadn’t. There was no file on Mirka Braun.

  Down the street from the hotel was an old Catholic church. It had received only slight damage from the battle for Berlin. Several of the spire’s windows had been shattered and a chunk of its roofing blown off. Rain would leak down into the chapel; the pews in the affected area below the spire had been replaced by buckets. Miraculously, the droppings of the pigeons who had taken roost there rarely fell to the floor of the church below. But it wasn’t uncommon for some of those pigeons to make an appearance during mass, streaking over the altar like heavenly doves…or dive bombers, perhaps, delivering their sacrilegious load on the irritated priest.

  Tucked in an alcove beside the altar was a stand of votive candles, with a collection box front and center. The wrought iron framework beneath the candles and behind the box was the message drop for Sylvie and Mirka’s mission. Early each evening before curfew, one of them would leave the hotel to visit the church. Questioned by the hotel’s Russian guards where they were going whenever they set out, they endured the same taunting reply each time: God would not help the Germans.

  But there was little to fear from the guards. Performing their duties in close proximity to high-ranking officers, they dared not assault civilians whose only crime was to be within arm’s reach. The guards’ presence even provided a zone of security that included the church, providing protection from other Russians who might have sexual plunder—even murder—on their minds.

  Inside the church, they’d kneel at the candle stand as if offering a prayer, light a candle, and drop a coin in the box. That deposit made the perfect mask for the quick reach behind the box to retrieve whatever message had been left or leave one of their own. They had no idea who the postman delivering and retrieving the messages was.

  And I hope that person has no idea who we are, either, Sylvie told herself. The more who know, the less safe we are.

  There was no message in the stand this night but she had one to leave. It contained coded confirmation they’d made contact with the target, Valentin Yanov, and requested the possible dates and times for his extraction from Berlin. An aircraft would
be involved, and as she had come to learn, It takes practically an act of God to get an airplane into the air. So much coordination is necessary…Tommy’s squadron spends more time planning for a mission than actually flying it.

  Returning to the hotel, Sylvie headed to the staff kitchen for some supper. Mirka wasn’t in their room in the staff quarters; she wasn’t attending to any housekeeping duties on the fourth floor, either.

  Walking down the basement hallway to the kitchen, she heard what she was sure was Mirka’s voice, speaking German, coming from one of the offices. The words were muted, as if covering her mouth with her hand. But Sylvie thought she heard one sentence clearly:

  “No, she will pose no problem for us.”

  Then she heard a telephone receiver dropping into its cradle.

  Sylvie ducked into a storeroom, hiding until Mirka’s footsteps faded down the hall.

  In that closet, she was in the dark, literally and figuratively. The seed of suspicion that had been planted in her head over Mirka’s nonexistent personnel file grew like a cancer to full-blown conspiracy.

  Who is “she?” Is it me?

  And who is “us?” Mirka and who else?

  She thought of what a commander in the French Resistance had once told her:

  If you’re given an assignment and with that assignment comes a partner, the first thing you do is get rid of that partner.

  That’s doubly true, I suppose, if your partner just might be a double agent.

  I wonder if she’s planning the same fate for me?

  Chapter Thirteen

  Thirty-Seventh Tank Battalion had settled into an outpost near Klatovy, in Western Czechoslovakia, situated on the boundary that had been drawn between US and Soviet forces once Germany surrendered. The battalion had spent the week since their arrival attempting to train the German troopers they’d brought with them, but it wasn’t going well. The SS men disliked the American weapons they were being taught to use but had yet to be permanently issued. They considered those weapons scheisse: shit in English. But the moment an exercise was completed, the rifles and machine guns with which they’d been training were promptly confiscated and returned to the arms rooms of 3rd Army units. The Americans didn’t trust their new German “allies” quite enough yet to let them walk around with live weapons.