by Ken Follett
‘Don’t bother to try,’ she replied in fluent German. ‘My family were immigrants from Bavaria.’
Frunze said in amazement: ‘I’ve been thinking about you lately, because I know another guy with the same surname – Greg Peshkov.’
‘Really? My father had a brother called Lev who came to America in about 1915.’
‘No, Lieutenant Peshkov is much younger. Anyway, what are you doing here?’
Volodya smiled. ‘I came to see you.’ Before Frunze could ask why, he said: ‘Last time I saw you, you were secretary of the Neukölln Social Democratic Party.’ This was his second step. Having established a friendly footing, he was reminding Frunze of his youthful idealism.
‘That experience convinced me that democratic socialism doesn’t work,’ Frunze said. ‘Against the Nazis we were completely impotent. It took the Soviet Union to stop them.’
That was true, and Volodya was pleased Frunze realized it; but, more importantly, the comment showed that Frunze’s political ideas had not been softened by life in affluent America.
Alice said: ‘We were planning to have a couple of drinks at a bar around the corner. A lot of the scientists go there on a Friday night. Would you like to join us?’
The last thing Volodya wanted was to be seen in public with the Frunzes. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. In fact he had been too long with them in this restaurant. It was time for step three: reminding Frunze of his terrible guilt. He leaned forward and lowered his voice. ‘Willi, did you know the Americans were going to drop nuclear bombs on Japan?’
There was a long pause. Volodya held his breath. He was gambling that Frunze would be wracked by remorse.
For a moment he feared he had gone too far. Frunze looked as if he might burst into tears.
Then the scientist took a deep breath and got control of himself. ‘No, I didn’t know,’ he said. ‘None of us did.’
Alice interjected angrily: ‘We assumed the American military would give some demonstration of the power of the bomb, as a threat to make the Japanese surrender earlier.’ So she had known about the bomb beforehand, Volodya noted. He was not surprised. Men found it hard to keep such things from their wives. ‘So we expected a detonation some time, somewhere,’ she went on. ‘But we imagined they would destroy an uninhabited island, or maybe a military facility with a lot of weapons and very few people.’
‘That might have been justifiable,’ Frunze said. ‘But . . .’ His voice fell to a whisper. ‘Nobody thought they would drop it on a city and kill eighty thousand men, women and children.’
Volodya nodded. ‘I thought you might feel this way.’ He had been hoping for it with all his heart.
Frunze said: ‘Who wouldn’t?’
‘Let me ask you an even more important question.’ This was step four. ‘Will they do it again?’
‘I don’t know,’ Frunze said. ‘They might. Christ forgive us all, they might.’
Volodya concealed his satisfaction. He had made Frunze feel responsible for future use of nuclear weapons, as well as past.
Volodya nodded. ‘That’s what we think.’
Alice said sharply: ‘Who’s we?’
She was shrewd, and probably more worldly-wise than her husband. She would be hard to fool, and Volodya decided not to try. He had to risk levelling with her. ‘A fair question,’ he said. ‘And I didn’t come all this way to deceive an old friend. I’m a major in Red Army Intelligence.’
They stared at him. The possibility must have crossed their minds already, but they were surprised by the stark admission.
‘I have something I need to say to you,’ Volodya went on. ‘Something hugely important. Is there somewhere we can go to talk privately?’
They both looked uncertain. Frunze said: ‘Our apartment?’
‘It has probably been bugged by the FBI.’
Frunze had some experience of clandestine work, but Alice was shocked. ‘You think so?’ she said incredulously.
‘Yes. Could we drive out of town?’
Frunze said: ‘There’s a place we go sometimes, around this time of the evening, to watch the sunset.’
‘Perfect. Go to your car, get in, and wait for me. I’ll be a minute behind you.’
Frunze paid the check and left with Alice, and Volodya followed. During the short walk he established that no one was tailing him. He reached the Plymouth and got in. They sat three across the front seat, American style. Frunze drove out of town.
They followed a dirt road to the top of a low hill. Frunze stopped the car. Volodya motioned for them all to get out, and led them a hundred yards away, just in case the car was bugged too.
They looked across the landscape of stony soil and low bushes towards the setting sun, and Volodya took step five. ‘We think the next nuclear bomb will be dropped somewhere in the Soviet Union.’
Frunze nodded. ‘God forbid, but you’re probably right.’
‘And there’s absolutely nothing we can do about it,’ Volodya went on, pressing home his point relentlessly. ‘There are no precautions we can take, no barriers we can erect, no way we can protect our people. There is no defence against the nuclear bomb – the bomb that you made, Willi.’
‘I know it,’ said Frunze miserably. Clearly he felt it would be his fault if the USSR was attacked with nuclear weapons.
Step six. ‘The only protection would be our own nuclear bomb.’
Frunze did not want to believe that. ‘It’s not a defence,’ he said.
‘But it’s a deterrent.’
‘It might be,’ he conceded.
Alice said: ‘We don’t want these bombs to spread.’
‘Nor do I,’ said Volodya. ‘But the only sure way to stop the Americans flattening Moscow the way they flattened Hiroshima is for the Soviet Union to have a nuclear bomb of its own, and threaten retaliation.’
Alice said: ‘He’s right, Willi. Hell, we all know it.’
She was the tough one, Volodya saw.
Volodya made his voice light for step seven. ‘How many bombs do the Americans have right now?’
This was a crucial moment. If Frunze answered this question he would have crossed a line. So far the conversation had been general. Now Volodya was requesting secret information.
Frunze hesitated for a long moment. Finally he glanced at Alice.
Volodya saw her give an almost imperceptible nod.
Frunze said: ‘Only one.’
Volodya concealed his triumph. Frunze had betrayed trust. It was the difficult first move. A second secret would come more easily.
Frunze added: ‘But they’ll have more soon.’
‘It’s a race, and if we lose, we die,’ Volodya said urgently. ‘We have to build at least one bomb of our own before they have enough to wipe us out.’
‘Can you do that?’
That gave Volodya the cue for step eight. ‘We need help.’
He saw Frunze’s face harden, and guessed he was remembering whatever it was that had made him refuse to co-operate with the NKVD.
Alice said to Volodya: ‘What if we say we can’t help you? That it’s too dangerous?’
Volodya followed his instinct. He held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. ‘I go home and report failure,’ he said. ‘I can’t make you do anything you don’t want to do. I wouldn’t want to pressure you or coerce you in any way.’
Alice said: ‘No threats?’
That confirmed Volodya’s guess that the NKVD had tried to bully Frunze. They tried to bully everyone: it was all they knew. ‘I’m not even trying to persuade you,’ Volodya said to Frunze. ‘I’m laying out the facts. The rest is up to you. If you want to help, I’m here as your contact. If you see things differently, that’s the end of it. You’re both smart people. I couldn’t fool you even if I wanted to.’
Again they looked at each other. He hoped they were thinking how different he was from the last Soviet agent who had approached them.
The moment stretched out agonizingly.
It was Alic
e who spoke at last. ‘What kind of help do you need?’
That was not a yes, but it was better than rejection, and it led logically to step nine. ‘My wife is one of the physicists on the team,’ he said, hoping this would humanize him at a moment when they might be in danger of seeing him as manipulative. ‘She tells me there are several routes to a nuclear bomb, and we don’t have time to try them all. We can save years if we know what worked for you.’
‘That makes sense,’ Willi said.
Step ten, the big one. ‘We have to know what type of bomb was dropped on Japan.’
Frunze’s expression was agonized. He looked at his wife. This time she did not give him the nod, but neither did she shake her head. She seemed as torn as he did.
Frunze sighed. ‘Two kinds,’ he said.
Volodya was thrilled and startled. ‘Two different designs?’
Frunze nodded. ‘For Hiroshima they used a uranium device with a gun ignition. We called it Little Boy. For Nagasaki, Fat Man, a plutonium bomb with an implosion trigger.’
Volodya could hardly breathe. This was red-hot data. ‘Which is better?’
‘They both worked, obviously, but Fat Man is easier to make.’
‘Why?’
‘It takes years to produce enough U-235 for a bomb. Plutonium is quicker, once you have a nuclear pile.’
‘So the USSR should copy Fat Man.’
‘Definitely.’
‘There is one more thing you could do to help save Russia from destruction,’ Volodya said.
‘What?’
Volodya looked him in the eye. ‘Get me the design drawings,’ he said.
Willi paled. ‘I’m an American citizen,’ he said. ‘You’re asking me to commit treason. The penalty is death. I could go to the electric chair.’
So could your wife, Volodya thought; she’s complicit. Thank God you haven’t thought of that.
He said: ‘I’ve asked a lot of people to put their lives at risk in the last few years. People like yourselves, Germans who hated the Nazis, men and women who took terrible risks to send us information that helped us win the war. And I have to say to you what I said to them: a lot more people will be killed if you don’t do it.’ He fell silent. That was his best shot. He had nothing more to offer.
Frunze looked at his wife.
Alice said: ‘You made the bomb, Willi.’
Frunze said to Volodya: ‘I’ll think about it.’
(iii)
Two days later he handed over the plans.
Volodya took them to Moscow.
Zoya was released from jail. She was not as angry about her imprisonment as he was. ‘They did it to protect the revolution,’ she said. ‘And I wasn’t hurt. It was like staying in a really bad hotel.’
On her first day at home, after they made love, he said: ‘I have something to show you, something I brought back from America.’ He rolled off the bed, opened a drawer, and took out a book. ‘It’s called the Sears-Roebuck Catalogue,’ he said. He sat beside her on the bed and opened the book. ‘Look at this.’
The catalogue fell open at a page of women’s dresses. The models were impossibly slender, but the fabrics were bright and cheerful, stripes and checks and solid colours, some with ruffles, pleats, and belts. ‘That’s attractive,’ Zoya said, putting her finger on one. ‘Is two dollars ninety-eight a lot of money?’
‘Not really,’ Volodya said. ‘The average wage is about fifty dollars a week, rent is about a third of that.’
‘Really?’ Zoya was amazed. ‘So most people could easily afford these dresses?’
‘That’s right. Maybe not peasants. On the other hand, these catalogues were invented for farmers who live a hundred miles from the nearest store.’
‘How does it work?’
‘You pick what you want from the book and send them the money, then a couple of weeks later the mailman brings you whatever you ordered.’
‘It must be like being a tsar.’ Zoya took the book from him and turned the page. ‘Oh! Here are some more.’ The next page showed jacket-and-skirt combinations for four dollars ninety-eight. ‘These are elegant too,’ she said.
‘Keep turning the pages,’ Volodya said.
Zoya was astonished to see page after page of women’s coats, hats, shoes, underwear, pyjamas, and stockings. ‘People can have any of these?’ she said.
‘That’s right.’
‘But there’s more choice on one of these pages than there is in the average Russian shop!’
‘Yes.’
She carried on slowly leafing through the book. There was a similar range of clothing for men, and again for children. Zoya put her finger on a heavy woollen winter coat for boys that cost fifteen dollars. ‘At that price, I suppose every boy in America has one.’
‘They probably do.’
After the clothes came furniture. You could buy a bed for twenty-five dollars. Everything was cheap if you had fifty dollars a week. And it went on and on. There were hundreds of things that could not be bought for any money in the Soviet Union: toys and games, beauty products, guitars, elegant chairs, power tools, novels in colourful jackets, Christmas decorations, and electric toasters.
There was even a tractor. ‘Do you think,’ Zoya said, ‘that any farmer in America who wants a tractor can have one right away?’
‘Only if he has the money,’ said Volodya.
‘He doesn’t have to put his name down on a list and wait for a few years?’
‘No.’
Zoya closed the book and looked at him solemnly. ‘If people can have all this,’ she said, ‘why would they want to be Communist?’
‘Good question,’ said Volodya.
22
1946
The children of Berlin had a new game called Komm, Frau – Come, Woman. It was one of a dozen games in which boys chase girls, but it had a new twist, Carla noticed. The boys would team up and target one of the girls. When they caught her, they would shout: ‘Komm, Frau!’ and throw her to the ground. Then they would hold her down while one of their number lay on top of her and simulated sexual intercourse. Children of seven and eight, who ought not to know what rape was, played this game because they had seen what Red Army soldiers did to German women. Every Russian knew that one phrase of the German language: ‘Komm, Frau.’
What was it about the Russians? Carla had never met anyone who had been raped by a French, British, American or Canadian soldier, though she supposed it must happen. By contrast, every woman she knew between fifteen and fifty-five had been raped by at least one Soviet soldier: her mother, Maud; her friend Frieda; Frieda’s mother, Monika; Ada, the maid; all of them.
Yet they were lucky, for they were still alive. Some women, abused by dozens of men, hour after hour, had died. Carla had heard of a girl who had been bitten to death.
Only Rebecca Rosen had escaped. After Carla had protected her, the day the Jewish Hospital was liberated, Rebecca moved into the von Ulrich town house. It was in the Soviet zone, but she had nowhere else to go. She hid for months like a criminal in the attic, coming down only late at night when the bestial Russians had fallen into drunken sleep. Carla spent a couple of hours up there with her when she could, and they played card games and told each other their life stories. Carla wanted to be like an older sister, but Rebecca treated her like a mother.
Then Carla found she was going to be a mother for real.
Maud and Monika were in their fifties, and too old to have babies, mercifully; and Ada was lucky; but both Carla and Frieda were pregnant by their rapists.
Frieda had an abortion.
It was illegal, and a Nazi law that threatened the death penalty was still in force. So Frieda went to an elderly ‘midwife’ who did it for five cigarettes. Frieda contracted a severe infection, and would have died but that Carla was able to steal scarce penicillin from the hospital.
Carla decided to have her baby.
Her feelings about it swung violently from one extreme to another. When suffering morning sickne
ss she raged against the beasts who had violated her body and left her with this burden. At other times she found herself sitting with her hands on her belly staring into space and thinking dreamily about baby clothes. Then she would wonder if the baby’s face would remind her of one of the men, and cause her to hate her own child. But surely it would have some von Ulrich features too? She felt anxious and frightened.
She was eight months pregnant in January 1946. Like most Germans she was also cold, hungry and destitute. When her pregnancy became obvious she had to give up nursing and join the millions of unemployed. Food rations were issued every ten days. The daily amount, for those without special privileges, was 1,500 calories. It still had to be paid for, of course. And even for customers with cash and ration cards, sometimes there was simply no food to buy.
Carla had considered asking the Soviets for special treatment because of her wartime work as a spy. But Heinrich had tried that and suffered a frightening experience. Red Army Intelligence had expected him to continue to spy for them, and asked him to infiltrate the US military. When he said he would rather not, they became nasty and threatened to send him to a labour camp. He got out of it by saying he spoke no English, therefore was no use to them. But Carla was well warned, and decided it was safest to keep quiet.
Today Carla and Maud were happy because they had sold a chest of drawers. It was a Jugendstil piece in burled light oak that Walter’s parents had bought when they got married in 1889. Carla, Maud and Ada had loaded it on to a borrowed handcart.
There were still no men in their house. Erik and Werner were among millions of German soldiers who had disappeared. Perhaps they were dead. Colonel Beck had told Carla that almost three million Germans had died in battle on the Eastern Front, and more had died as prisoners of the Soviets – killed by hunger, cold and disease. But another two million were still alive and working in labour camps in the Soviet Union. Some had come back: they had either escaped from their guards or had been released because they were too ill to work, and they had joined the thousands of displaced persons on the tramp all over Europe, trying to find their way home. Carla and Maud had written letters and sent them care of the Red Army, but no replies had ever come.