‘Where?’ There was a choice of chairs.
‘Over there.’
Moncrieff took the seat in the window. The view south over the golden woodlands was sensational. He heard the scrape of another chair as Groenbaum joined him. Moncrieff took a closer look at the blazer.
‘Leander?’ Moncrieff asked. ‘You row?’
‘I do, when time permits. That’s where I met Gerri. Her husband was a member when I joined. I did most of my rowing on the Bodensee. You know it at all?’
‘A little. I rowed too, first at university, then in Berlin, but never – alas – on the Bodensee. I was there in high summer. The place was overrun with tourists.’
‘Including you?’
‘Of course,’ Moncrieff was gazing at the blazer again. ‘His name was Giles, am I right? Your wife was telling me about him this morning. Tall chap.’
‘Very. She was besotted. I’m afraid I’m a pale copy of the real thing. Did she tell you that, as well?’
Groenbaum didn’t wait for an answer but dug in his pocket and produced something in his clenched fist.
‘You’re a magician, now?’ Moncrieff couldn’t suppress another smile.
‘In a way, yes. I want you to look very hard at this object. I don’t want you to talk. I don’t want your attention to wander. The whole point is to concentrate. I may bring it closer, I may take it further away, but whatever happens it should overwhelm you.’
Moncrieff nodded. Overwhelm carried implications he understood only too well.
‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Whenever you’re ready.’
Groenbaum unclenched his fist. Inside was a golf ball. Groenbaum took it in his other hand, holding it between his forefinger and his thumb at eye level.
‘Is that yesterday’s ball? The same one?’ Moncrieff asked.
‘I asked you not to talk.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Just look at it, Tam. Let it in.’
Let it in? Moncrieff stared at the ball, trying to do Groenbaum’s bidding, understanding what was at stake. His only other brush with hypnosis had been years ago at a mess night at the Royal Marine barracks in Portsmouth. A visiting magician had asked for after-dinner volunteers, and Archie had pushed him forward. On that occasion, drunk, it had been easy to slip his moorings and drift away but now was very different. Concentrate, he told himself. Forget your surroundings. Forget the last couple of weeks, Pearse Lenahan, Frank Jennings, French motor cars, Kim bloody Philby. Think golf. Think ball.
It didn’t work, even when Groenbaum eased the ball away, and then back again. At last, he gave up.
‘You know what I’m trying to do here, Tam.’
‘I think so.’
‘Then that’s why. Hypnosis is surrender. It has to take you by surprise. You’re a canny man, Tam Moncrieff, and you’re far too honest.’ He frowned, pocketing the ball. ‘So how might we cure that?’
The answer, as Moncrieff later realised, was Groenbaum’s wife. The three of them lunched together around a table on the patio, a light salad from the garden with a glass of white wine. The conversation drifted back to Germany, idled for a while over the delights of the Bodensee and then settled gently on the difficulties of finding decent coffee when the bloody U-boats were sinking so many freighters. Groenbaum was recorking the bottle when his wife sprang to her feet, her hand extended to Moncrieff.
‘A walk,’ she said. ‘Weather like this? We absolutely must.’
They set off on a path that ran obliquely across the face of the hill towards the trees. The dog came too, a handsome red setter that had belonged to Gerri’s first husband. Before they ducked into the shadow of the huge elms, Moncrieff glanced back at the house. Sunlight glinted off the windows at the front of the property, but he thought he saw movement behind the window on the corner. The Lindau Room, he thought, with Groenbaum plotting yet another route into Moncrieff’s subconscious.
Under the trees, it was much cooler. Gerri took Moncrieff’s hand again. They were climbing now, on the other side of the valley from the house, and Moncrieff was looking for golf balls.
‘It didn’t work, did it? My husband sets a great deal of store by it. If you want the truth, that’s how he first got me into bed.’
‘Hypnosis? Is that ethical?’
‘Certainly not. But it worked.’
‘Bed?’
‘Hypnosis. I know it’s a cliché, but Matheus is deeply neurotic. He loves the chase. What happens afterwards isn’t so important.’
‘You were disappointed?’
‘Not at all. Women are used to being let down. If anyone was disappointed I think it was Matheus. He’d been eyeing me from the moment we met. I was too easy, Tam. Unlike you.’
‘Was your husband still alive?’
‘God, no. Disappointment? He didn’t know the meaning of the word. Giles was utterly reliable, and not just à deux.’
À deux. Moncrieff smiled. He’d spotted a golf ball, then another, then a third. He bent to all three and slipped them into his pocket. Then he looked round. Here, he told himself. Had the watcher existed, then he might have been standing here.
‘How many patients does your husband treat?’ Moncrieff was looking back at the house, high on the opposite slope.
‘Regular patients? Maybe a dozen. Maybe more.’
‘And are they all in my line of business?’
‘Most of them, yes.’
‘MI5?’
‘Some of them.’
‘MI6?’
‘Why do you ask?’
‘Because I need to know.’
She smiled and studied him for a long moment. Then she gave his hand a squeeze.
‘Need is an interesting proposition, Tam. At the end of this path is a caravan. It belongs to us. I have a key.’ She nodded up the hill. ‘And afterwards you can ask me any question you like.’
Moncrieff gazed at her. She knew she attracted him, and he sensed the attraction was mutual, but the offer couldn’t have been blunter. Absurd, he thought.
‘Is this part of the therapy?’ he asked. ‘Do all us spies get the same treatment?’
‘Not at all, Mr Moncrieff. Under the circumstances, it might help to take a compliment.’
25
TUESDAY 30 SEPTEMBER 1941
Ilya Glivenko, the sapper they called The Pianist, waited until early hours before giving the signal to move. The officer in overall command of the Kyiv operation had ordered them to stand down. The Germans, it seemed, had somehow accessed the list of targets and were dismantling them dozens at a time, using relays of Russian diggers to find the receiving equipment and then disconnect them. More troubling still, they’d worked out exactly which wavelengths the teams on the island were using and had taken steps to block their transmissions. In short, the operation was over.
At the end of the command message, there was applause for every engineer involved with the promise of awards to follow. The Germans had paid dearly for their arrogance and their treachery. Soviet determination and Soviet know-how had reduced key parts of the city to rubble and soon the world would know that the Hitlerites could be stopped. But now was the time to beat a careful retreat.
Glivenko’s men, all four of them, were eager to move. No one had eaten for more than twenty-four hours and there were rumours of a cache of supplies hidden beside the boat. Glivenko’s torch moved briefly from face to face. He anticipated getting to the end of the island within the hour. Heavy rain had swollen the river and by daybreak, with four paddles, they should be at least thirty kilometres downstream. Command had sent an extraction team to meet them. In a couple of days, with luck, they’d be back behind Soviet lines.
The beam of Glivenko’s torch settled on a nearby tree trunk. The Kazakh, Vassily, had removed his cap badge and nailed it to the ancient pine, and the sight of the Red Star sparked a ripple of laughter. These men, Glivenko knew, had revelled in delivering the task assigned to them: first to spend all those back-breaking days mining target after target, and the
n to linger among the trees and watch the fruits of their labours boiling over the city. This was a story, Vassily had insisted, that would pass from generation to generation. Not a story, said another. A legend.
The men set off, Glivenko in the lead. They were used to the busyness of the forest at night, the scampering of unseen creatures, the sigh of the wind, the creak of the forest overhead, and just occasionally the call of a nightingale. Glivenko had insisted on bringing their equipment with them, and the men took turns to carry the heavy batteries. They tramped on, using paths down the spine of the island, as invisible as ever to watching eyes on either bank. The fact that the Germans had neglected to put search teams on the island had first astonished, and then gladdened Glivenko, and once they had their hands full trying to contain explosion after explosion he knew his sappers were probably safe. German efficiency, he thought. Another fantasy.
The tree cover grew steadily more sparse towards the southern end of the island, where the mossy soil surrendered to the river. Glivenko motioned his team to a halt. Ahead, he thought he recognised the outline of the steel assault boat they’d been allotted but low cloud had blown in from the east and in the darkness he had to be sure.
Leaving his men behind, he moved ahead, staying low, one step at a time. Within minutes, he’d confirmed the boat. It was lying in the reeds at the water’s edge. There was plenty of room for all of them and four men could lift it with ease. There were five wooden paddles carefully stowed in the bottom of the boat, and, better still, his fingers found a canvas bag that had to contain food. He was about to head back to the treeline when his gaze was drawn to the bow of the boat. Something was wrong. He knew it.
He crouched on the soggy eel grass, using his fingers again to explore the thin metal skin. There were holes, lots of them, below the water line. Someone had been here, he thought, probably recently. Five minutes with a hammer and an iron spike, and the boat was useless. He lifted his head, scenting danger, and, as he did so, the darkness erupted in a blizzard of muzzle flashes. An ambush, he thought. Shit.
Bullets were pocking the surface of the river. Some tore clean through the boat. His own men, all armed, were doing their best to return fire but he knew the odds were against them. Someone had planned this. Someone had taken great care to lure them into the trap. Then came a voice, impossibly close, a German voice, telling him not to move, and he instinctively shielded his face from the sudden brightness of the torch.
‘You’re The Pianist?’ the voice grunted in German. ‘Am I right?’
*
It was late morning by the time Schultz arrived at the airstrip. After the chaos of the last week, the operation on the island had been flawless. Three of the Russian sappers had been killed, their bodies left for the wild dogs, and the other two captured. One of them, Ilya Glivenko, was even now under armed guard in the museum’s Leningrad Gallery. Later, the little man would be facing a barrage of questions. In the meantime, Schultz had other business to attend to.
The offer of an hour aloft in the little Fieseler Storch had come from Wehrmacht headquarters. The military were no friends of the SS and it had required little effort on Schultz’s part to secure the aircraft. The pilot, it seemed, had been flying over the city yesterday afternoon and had reported troubling developments in a quarry to the north of the city centre. Streams of people choking the approach roads. Evidence of widespread violence. He’d spoken to the pilot himself. Bodies, he’d said. Lots of bodies.
Now, Andreas pulled the big Mercedes to a halt beside the tiny plane. The pilot was already at the controls. Schultz got out of the car and stifled a yawn. Andreas handed him the camera and two extra rolls of film.
‘Over a hundred exposures,’ Andreas muttered. ‘Let’s hope you don’t need more.’
Schultz pocketed the camera and looked round. The retreating Soviets had done their best to wreck the runways, cratering the concrete with high explosives, but the little Storch was nimble and could be airborne within a hundred metres.
Schultz opened the passenger door and introduced himself. The pilot extended a hand. No Hitler salute.
‘You got the bastards,’ he said.
‘Which ones?’
‘The fucking Ivans on the island, of course. Good work, sir.’ He patted the spare seat. ‘Help yourself.’
The pilot had been studying a map of the city which he now shared with Schultz. His leather-gloved finger traced the roads leading to the sand quarry.
‘They call it Babi Yar,’ he said. ‘Or sometimes just the Yar. None of this stuff is pretty but I dare say that won’t surprise you.’
Schultz nodded down at the Mercedes. His driver, he said, had taken a look for himself only yesterday and the poor man wouldn’t be sleeping for at least a week.
‘He was there? In the Yar?’
‘As good as.’
‘And?’
‘He’ll tell you himself, when we get back.’
Schultz had produced the little Leica. The pilot watched him checking the exposure and advancing the film.
‘You want pictures?’
‘I do. Our friends in black do our reputation no favours.’
The pilot nodded, said nothing. He stabbed at the control panel and the propeller began to turn. A cough from the engine, and then another before it caught, and then he was easing the throttle, allowing the revs to settle. Moments later, after a glance left and right, they were picking their way through the debris, heading for a stretch of sodden turf. Then came a roar from the engine and Schultz felt the punch of acceleration before the little plane lifted into the air, shook its feathers, and headed back towards the sprawl of the city.
The slaughter at Babi Yar was by no means over. From five hundred metres, Schultz looked down at the endless columns of tiny dots flooding out of the city’s shtetls and converging on the yellow scar of the quarry. The scene, from up here, he thought, had an almost biblical dimension, telling a story that young Andreas had found so hard to grasp. Thousands of people, maybe tens of thousands, ordered to their deaths.
‘Lower,’ Schultz had spotted what he assumed was the quarry. ‘That’s it? Down there?’
The pilot dropped a wing, hauling the aircraft into a near-vertical turn, and Schultz felt his snatched breakfast rising in his gullet as he gazed down. A black corridor of soldiers, just as Andreas had described. Piles of abandoned clothing, possessions, lives. A white worm, wriggling between the soldiers, naked flesh and bone, scurrying towards the quarry. And then the giant pit itself, plaited with bodies, arms, legs, a hideous stretch of embroidery on the dampness of the sand, and the soldiers perched on the ledge above, attending to their business, crouched behind their guns, ridding the city of its Jews.
Schultz took picture after picture, ordering the pilot lower and lower until he could see individual soldiers looking up, waving their arms, telling him to fuck off. One even raised his rifle and tried to draw a bead on the little plane, the way you might swot a troublesome insect, and Schultz got a picture of him, too, perfectly framed, the wind-tanned face contorted with anger.
‘I wonder if they feed them raw flesh in the morning,’ he was looking at the pilot. ‘Or maybe those bastards down there are just bred that way.’
*
Schultz was back at the museum by early afternoon. He gave Andreas two rolls of exposed film and told him he wanted the prints by nightfall. He also ordered recording equipment to be installed in the museum’s Poster Archive.
‘Top floor,’ he said. ‘The little room at the end.’
Back at his desk, a series of messages awaited him. One was from the office of the Military Governor, congratulating him on cleaning out the island in the Dnieper. Another asked him to contact an aide at Wehrmacht headquarters. Schultz called for tea and something to eat before lifting the phone and dialling the number. The Wehrmacht aide at the other end, a Berliner he’d known from pre-war days, said that the General was delighted with his efforts.
‘These people have no faith,�
� he chuckled. ‘I told them you were the best and they never believed me. They were resigned to these bloody explosions going on forever. As a matter of interest, how did you play the Russian you took when they blew the bank up?’
‘I made a friend of him,’ Schultz grunted. ‘Before I had him shot.’
*
Moncrieff was uneasy. He didn’t want to make an enemy of this woman, neither did he want to insult her, but somehow he sensed he’d managed to do both. They’d made it up the hill to the caravan. She’d unlocked the door and invited him in. A faint tang of cigarette smoke hung in the stale air, and he’d glimpsed breadcrumbs on the mat beneath the folding table. She’d wanted him at once. There was a mattress on the floor, with a couple of blankets and three cushions.
‘You’re very welcome to fuck me,’ she’d murmured. ‘Isn’t that a reasonable proposition?’
In most other situations, Moncrieff could only agree. She was witty, she was excellent company, and the moment she peeled off the cashmere sweater and asked him to remove her bra he knew Groenbaum was a lucky man. She had Bella’s body, the same tight stomach, the same tilt to her breasts, the same appetite for sex spiced with laughter and a surprising trick or two.
‘This?’ she’d murmured, sinking to her knees before him. ‘Or perhaps this?’
He’d muttered his apologies and reached down to ease her to her feet but she shook her head.
‘Tell me what a girl needs to do.’ She unzipped him and slipped her hand into his trousers. ‘No complications. I promise you.’
Complications? At the time, Moncrieff had laughed. ‘You don’t want to fall in love with me? Is that what you’re saying?’
‘No need, Tam. A fuck will do nicely. Can you handle that?’
He couldn’t. Wouldn’t. And now he knew there was a price to pay.
‘You think I’m ugly?’ she asked. ‘Be honest.’
‘I think you’re beautiful.’
‘You think I’m fast? Is that it?’
Kyiv (Spoils of War) Page 26