The Red Eagles

by David Downing

  “So there would be no danger in handling these crates, no time limit, temperature limit, pressure limit, anything like that?”

  “Not that I can see. When can we expect these crates to arrive?”

  Sheslakov smiled, “If these crates arrive, Professor, you’ll be the first to know.”

  * * *

  “Yes,” Fyedorova told him on his return to the office. “Or at least I see no reason why not.”

  Sheslakov sat himself behind his desk. “I think a drink is called for. In your case,” he added, examining the bottle, “another drink. I’m beginning to distrust this operation. People keep saying yes to me, as if the whole thing is a foregone conclusion.”

  Fyedorova got up from the cot and took the proffered glass. “If it’s difficulties you want, don’t despair. They’ve found Luerhsen – in the Lubyanka. And they’ve lost Kuznetsky.”

  Two

  They had been underground for more than eighteen hours, and the strain of confinement was beginning to tell. The whispering grew louder, the accidental noises more frequent, the smell of the latrine buckets was becoming unbearable. Kuznetsky wondered whether it might have been better to send out scouts and risk the dogs picking up their scent.

  There was a soft knock on the partition. He put down his book, extinguished the candle, and eased himself up off the bed. This girl would sleep through anything, he thought to himself as he fastened his belt. The knock was repeated.

  “Coming,” he whispered. Nadezhda turned over in her sleep, exposing one milky-white shoulder.

  Yakovenko was outside. “Message coming in,” he said.

  Kuznetsky followed him through the maze to the radio room, watched the operator transcribe the message from the current code. “Colonel Kuznetsky required Moscow immediately. Pickup points 12 14 15 Tuesday Thursday Saturday. Signal required. Request receipt.”

  That was it. What the fuck did they want with him in Moscow? “Tell them the Germans are crawling all over the place and we’re still hibernating,” he told Beslov. “Diplomatically.”

  “Situation understood,” came the reply. “Colonel Kuznetsky required Moscow immediately. Request receipt.”

  “Maybe it’s a medal,” Yakovenko murmured. “Though they could have dropped that with the chocolate.”

  Kuznetsky laughed. “Oh shit. Tell them—” He broke off at the sound of running feet.

  Sidorova erupted into the dugout, mouthing the word “Germans.”

  “Cut the connection,” Kuznetsky whispered to Beslov. “Make sure everyone’s ready,” to Yakovenko. He made his way to the periscope, squeezing himself between the roots of the tree that concealed it. The tube went right up through the center of the trunk, then into an artificial sapling that could be twisted where the trunk forked. Putting his eyes to the mirror, he could immediately see a single German soldier, a boy of about sixteen, walking slowly toward him, diligently scanning the ground for a sign. Gently swiveling the periscope, he could pick out the line of troops, spread out at around twenty-yard intervals, carefully advancing. Only the boy would actually pass over the camp. Kuznetsky prayed that he’d be nearsighted.

  He seemed to be. He was already halfway across without pausing in his deliberate stride. Kuznetsky turned to check that his group and the other group leaders were all there, caught a glimpse of Nadezhda yawning in the background.

  The boy stopped and reached down to pick something up, something small and red. A chocolate wrapper! How the bell had they missed it?

  “Pretend it’s not there,” Kuznetsky silently pleaded. “Save your own and your comrades’ lives. Just keep walking.”

  The German licked the paper, perhaps finding a last crumb of chocolate, and then he blew his whistle. Kuznetsky didn’t dare turn the sapling, but he could hear the sound of running feet crashing through the undergrowth and, more ominously, the sound of motors revving. A lieutenant came into view, examined the wrapper, looked warily around. Then he strode off to the left, and Kuznetsky risked following him with the periscope. The officer was busily pulling dead branches away from the T-34’s underground garage.

  Kuznetsky climbed out of the roots, pointed to his watch, and held up one finger. The other group leaders scurried away through the interconnecting passages, counting seconds under their breath. He picked up the loaded antitank gun, checked that the automatic pistol was firmly in his belt, and continued counting.

  Thirty-five, thirty-six. Everyone was ready. Forty, forty-one. And at least the light above ground was fading fast. Nadezhda smiled at him. Fifty-five, fifty-six.

  Ever so carefully, he released the greased wooden peg that held the trapdoor and let it drop. A square of twilight appeared. Yakovenko placed the stump under the opening, and Kuznetsky used it as a launching pad to throw himself up through the square and onto the forest floor, screaming “Now” at the top of his voice.

  Ignoring the nearby group of startled Germans, he picked out the approaching half-track and fired the antitank rocket. There was a whoosh of flame and the vehicle toppled forward like an elephant crashing to its knees. Yakovenko’s machine gun seemed to be going off in his ear, but the group of Germans were all down or falling, and suddenly there was near silence, only the shouts of the Germans farther off and the rumble of other vehicles in the distance.

  The partisans were pouring out of the hidden exits, forming themselves into their groups and moving away. Kuznetsky could see the nearest Germans moving back and knew why, having read a captured Wehrmacht manual. They were supposed to form a circle with a radius of three hundred yards.

  He checked his own group and led them off at a run on their prearranged compass setting – due west. Fifty yards farther they found another half-track disgorging troops and he dropped to the ground with the rocket gun, felt Yakovenko load it as he took aim, fired. Another inferno and they were running again, zigzagging between the burning Germans, on through the forest. Nadezhda was leading now, through a small clearing and down into a shallow riverbed as a burst of automatic fire shredded the leaves above their heads.

  They must have gone three hundred yards by now, Kuznetsky thought, but there’d be a second line not too far ahead. With a supreme effort he managed to regain the front and pulled the group to a halt.

  “Down! Quiet!” he ordered, and it was as if a switch had been flicked. There was heavy gunfire to the north, and they could see the flames of the burning half-tracks reflected in the forest roof. To both right and left the passage of vehicles was audible, but ahead of them, nothing.

  It would be fully dark in an hour. Should they wait for the second line and hope to pass through it unseen? Kuznetsky was inclined to think so until he heard the dogs.

  “Spread – no firing,” he ordered, and they were on the move again, racing across the forest floor in a widening line, running into the enemy before either side had time to think. Kuznetsky’s automatic pistol coughed twice as a silhouette loomed to confront him, and he pumped another bullet between the dog’s yellow eyes as it broke free from its dead master’s grip. To his right and left the forest was again full of gunfire. He kept running, the sounds fading behind him, conscious that at least some of the others were running parallel paths through the trees.

  It was not the first time that Sheslakov had visited someone in the bowels of the NKVD headquarters, but familiarity had not bred immunity. The grayness of the place seemed all-embracing, and this somehow seemed to emphasize the sharpness of each human touch. The people incarcerated, and their jailers – they all seemed like pieces of raw meat on an endless, uniform slab.

  In the beginning, he thought, walking down another identical corridor, animality bred abstraction, the savage developed language. Now abstraction breeds animality, correcting some cosmic balance. Our rulers run the most perfectly devised system like savages, he thought, while the Germans, still animals, choose anal retentives for their leaders. He felt a surge of sadness.

  The NKVD officer opened the door of Luerhsen’s cell. “I must lock it
behind you,” he said apologetically.

  “Too many mass escapes, eh?” Sheslakov said, unable to resist the gibe.

  Luerhsen looked up at him with one of the most peaceful faces Sheslakov could remember. No one upstairs had seemed to know why he was imprisoned, and it had taken Sheslakov half an hour and several irate telephone calls to get his file released. The “antistate activity” with which he was charged – but not, as yet, convicted for – concerned remarks he had made in 1939, five years before. To be precise, he had called the Nazi–Soviet Pact “an error of judgment comparable only with that made by Judas.” The NKVD officer in charge of the records had expressed surprise that the man had not been shot.

  Sheslakov introduced himself and sat down on the bunk beside Luerhsen. “I wish to ask you some questions,” he said, “about someone you knew long ago. It has nothing to do with your case. I can do nothing to help you in that respect,” he added, suddenly deciding that honesty was the best policy with this man. “I can only say that the cause you served for thirty years needs your assistance once more. We need to assess how this woman will react in certain situations, and you are the only person in the Soviet Union who has actually met her.”

  Luerhsen looked back at him placidly, a faint smile forming on his lips. “My loyalties survived many years in the enemy’s prisons; they will doubtless survive a few more in the prison of my friends. Who is the woman you wish to know about?”

  “Amelia Brandt, now Brandon. We understand from your initial submission of her name as a possible GRU recruit that you knew her as a child and that you met again in Berlin in 1933.”

  Luerhsen smiled. “She was always called Amy, never Amelia. Our Berlin meeting was very brief, two hours at most. But yes, she made an impression on me, mostly, I think, because seeing her then, in those circumstances, was like seeing her mother brought back to life. They looked so alike, but it was more than that.” He smiled inwardly, as if taken by a memory. “Hard to define,” he said. “Do you have a cigarette?”

  Sheslakov offered his package, watched the old man inhale deeply. “I need as complete a picture of her as you can give me.”

  “May I know why?”

  “She’s a key figure in an operation we’re mounting in America. I can say no more than that.”

  Luerhsen looked at him, took another deep drag on the cigarette. “That pleases me.”

  “Tell me about when you knew her as a child.”

  “Her mother and I were lovers, you know that. We met in the spring of 1918. Her husband had been killed several years before, at Tannenberg, I think. She was totally committed to the Party – the Spartakusbund as it was then. It was what we called a ‘comrades’ marriage’ in those days. Party work and bed and nothing much else. Amy must have been about seven—”

  “She was born in August 1911.”

  “Six, seven. A lovely child, though I’m afraid we didn’t have much time for doing things with her. You can imagine what it was like in Berlin in 1918 – more meetings than there were hours in the day, more newspapers than there was toilet paper, which was what most of them were used as. Elisabeth Brandt’s house was our center of operations; it was always swarming with people. Another woman, Anna Kaltz, also lived there, and she had a daughter the same age as Amy – Effi – so the two little girls looked after each other. One dark one, one blond one. They’d help out, too, making drinks, rolling leaflets off the printer. In fact they always seemed to have ink on their faces. They both worshiped their mothers, I do remember that. But so did a lot of people in Friedrichshain. They were remarkable women.”

  “Can you remember any specific incidents with Amy?” Sheslakov asked. Fyedorova had insisted on that question.

  Luerhsen furrowed his brow. “Not really. I bandaged her knee once, I remember that. She’d cut it quite badly, should have had stitches, and it obviously hurt like hell. But she hardly shed a tear. She was a determined little thing. Once she started something she’d finish it. Really stubborn. I expect she still is. People don’t change much, do they?” He gave Sheslakov a quizzical glance, accepted another cigarette.

  “Then the roof fell in. January 1919. I was here in Moscow at one of those interminable conferences for setting up the Third International. Elisabeth was one of the Party leaders killed by the fascists, not that they called themselves that then. She was raped and beaten to death by a gang of them in her own house, and while it was all happening little Amy was sitting in the cupboard under the stairs where her mother had hidden her. She came out eventually and found her mother’s body, then walked halfway across Berlin to her aunt’s in the middle of the night. Imagine it! There was gunfire, gangs of thugs roaming the streets looking for Communists, everyone shut up tight in their houses, not daring to go out, and there’s this little girl walking miles across the city. She didn’t say a word for six months. The aunt married an American in 1921, and they all moved to America soon afterward.”

  “How do you know all this? You say you weren’t there.”

  “From Anna Kaltz. She was in Kiel looking after her sick father during the week it all fell apart, and she didn’t dare return to Berlin for several months. She’s also the link with 1933, because she and Amy kept up a correspondence over the years—”

  “Did Amy keep up with Effi too?”

  “No. Strange. Or perhaps not. I think Anna was Amy’s link with her mother.”

  “1933?”

  “The terrible year. It was the summer, late July, I think. I’d been sent back to Berlin to organize the relocation of the Pas Apparat – the underground passport factories. The Nazis were well into their drive against us and we’d decided to move everything to the Saar. Effi Kaltz was the best forger we had – an amazing talent. Anyway, we were there, five of us I think, in this house in Friedrichshain, packing up all the stuff, the inks, papers, rubber stamps, everything. And there was this knock on the door and there stood this beautiful young woman in American clothes. Amy. She was in Germany for a holiday, a pilgrimage really, had tried to find Anna Kaltz and learned that she’d been arrested. So she’d somehow tracked down Effi.

  “We didn’t know what to do with her. We were expecting the Gestapo any minute, and for once we weren’t wrong … but I’m getting ahead of the story. We had another couple of hours’ work to do, and Amy said she’d wait, even though she must have known the risk she was running. I finished my tasks before the others and I talked to her for a time – twenty minutes, something like that. It was a strange conversation.

  “At first I couldn’t get over how much she resembled her mother – it was uncanny. Then I started noticing the differences. There was a reticence about her that Elisabeth never had, a feeling she was holding herself in, holding herself very tightly. Maybe it was just being in Berlin again, with all that that must have meant for her. But I think it was more than that—”

  “She was unhappy?”

  “No, not at all. On the contrary, she seemed very happy. She was wearing an engagement ring—”

  “Are you certain of that?”

  “Yes.”

  “But she never married.”

  “Engagements can be broken off. No, it wasn’t unhappiness. I sensed divided loyalties, and remember, it was my job to do just that for many years. You get a feeling for it, you know there’s a split somewhere, sometimes even before the person concerned does. Amy was happy in one world but she still had at least half her heart in her mother’s world. And I don’t think she’d ever have been able to pull the two together. She had to choose.”

  Luerhsen paused, seemed to be examining the cell floor. “Or have the choice made for her, which is probably what happened that evening.” He paused again.

  “The Gestapo arrived,” Sheslakov prompted.

  “Yes. A crashing on the door. Those bastards even enjoyed hitting doors. But we were prepared. There was a tunnel from the cellar that ran under the house behind and up through a grating in the next street. The Pas Apparat’s houses were the eighth wonder of
the world when it came to hidden exits. We got away down the tunnel and piled into the car that was waiting and half-rammed our way past a Gestapo car that was blocking a crossroads. It was like an American gangster movie. And Amy …”

  He smiled at the memory. “In the car I said something to her, something flippant like ‘Welcome home,’ and her face – the reticence was all gone – she was the absolute image of her mother in that moment. It was that look that made me put her name forward, because I knew, I knew, that the German part of her life wasn’t finished, and that sooner or later she would know it, too, and that somehow she would … not avenge her mother, but somehow justify her mother’s death. Do you understand?”

  “I think so. What happened next?”

  “I know only from thirdhand sources. We had a routine in such circumstances. The passengers would get out one by one, so as to split the pursuit, and I was the first to leave the car that night. What I heard, months later, was that Amy and Effi got out together, managed to shake off the followers, only to find the Gestapo waiting for them in Amy’s hotel room. It seems likely that they’d been following her all day, ever since she started making inquiries about Anna Kaltz.

  “They were taken down to Gestapo headquarters on Prinz Albrechtstrasse, put in adjacent cells. They could talk to each other but not see each other. At some time in the night some men came down and crushed Effi’s drawing hand in the hinges of the cell door. Then they all raped her. Amy they left alone, probably because she had an American passport. She tried to comfort Effi through the rest of the night and in the morning they took her out and told her she was being deported. They put her on a train for Bremerhaven and must have held her there until the ship sailed. Effi died in Oranienburg a month later, killed by some pig of a guard for speaking out of turn. It was from one of her fellow inmates that we found all this out.”