Kyiv (Spoils of War)

by Graham Hurley

  The world had erupted, a chorus of horns, and klaxons, and shouted oaths. Arms waved. Drivers braked. An oncoming tram screeched to a halt. A Wehrmacht fuel bowser stopped dead in the middle of the road. Then, suddenly, they were through. A glance in the rear-view mirror confirmed that Kalb’s car had slotted itself neatly in behind.

  ‘OK, capo?’ Andreas felt sweat cooling on his brow.

  Schultz didn’t answer, not at once. Then Andreas felt the lightest pressure on his thigh.

  ‘Never better.’ He was smiling.

  *

  At the new SS HQ, Andreas pulled the Mercedes to a halt in the courtyard. Only days ago, this building had been part of the city’s university. It belonged to the Department of Medicine, and when they hurried up the approach steps and pushed in through the doors, Schultz caught the heavy sweetness of formaldehyde. Short of occupying an abattoir, he could think of no better place for Kalb and his team of butchers.

  They were still waiting by the table that served as a reception desk when the Standartenführer strode in. Kalb pretended to be unaware of his visitors but when he headed for the staircase that led to the upper floors, Schultz intercepted him.

  ‘Krulak,’ he said. ‘Larissa.’

  ‘At a time of our choosing, Schultz.’

  ‘Now.’

  He stopped, favouring Schultz with his good eye.

  ‘So why the hurry?’

  ‘We have the newspaper standing by. The radio people, too. The Governor wants us to make a big push. We have a success on our hands. Best to celebrate it.’

  Kalb hesitated a moment.

  ‘And us?’ he gestured round. ‘You’ll be pointing out how resilient we are? How we take all this nonsense in our stride? Our second headquarters move within a week? Not a stitch dropped?’

  ‘Of course,’ Schultz glanced at Andreas. ‘Make a note. Stitch dropped. Krulak will love that. Off you go, Herr Kalb. Time and reputation wait for no man.’

  Kalb nodded and began to mount the stairs. He was doing his best to mask his weariness, and perhaps a little confusion, but it showed nonetheless. When he’d gone, Schultz turned to Andreas again.

  ‘You told Glivenko we were handing him over to the SS?’

  ‘I did, capo.’

  ‘And he believed you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Excellent,’ Schultz checked his watch. ‘God rest his soul, eh?’

  *

  Bella had been back in the Leningrad Gallery for most of the afternoon. Schultz had asked her to try and tease a full account of the bombing campaign from Glivenko, but The Pianist had showed no interest in talking about what had really happened. They’d been through a handful of other posters together, Glivenko reminiscing again about his student days in Leningrad, and when one of the guards had unlocked the door to enquire whether their conversation was over, Bella had said yes.

  Glivenko, though, had caught the guard’s eye.

  ‘A couple of minutes, tovarish. Do you mind?’

  The guard had tapped his watch and told them to be quick. As soon as the door was closed again, Glivenko had beckoned her closer.

  ‘They’re going to hand me over to the SS,’ he said. ‘If I thought you’d ever see me again, I’d find a kinder way of saying this.’

  ‘Saying what?’

  ‘You were right about not going back to Moscow. Stay here if you can. Stay anywhere. The NKVD have orders to kill you. You hear me? You understand what I’m saying? Anywhere but Moscow.’ He forced a smile and put his arms around her. ‘You promise me?’

  *

  Now, an hour or so later, with darkness beyond the windows in the Leningrad Gallery, Bella heard voices at the door. First to appear was Schultz. He’d plainly been drinking. Normally, a glass or two of schnapps would make little impression. Now, his eyes were bright, swimming with good cheer. He stepped into the room and closed the door behind him with a playful little flourish. It was a theatrical gesture, not Schultz at all, and Bella got to her feet, abandoning a hand of patience.

  ‘Good news, and bad news,’ he was looking round, making sure they were alone. ‘The bad news first. Do you mind?’

  Bella shook her head. You’re in charge. Go ahead.

  ‘It’s Glivenko. You became close. Am I right?’

  ‘Yes. Became? What’s happened?’

  ‘He’s dead. That window? You remember that fucking window?’

  ‘Upstairs? In the Poster room?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She looked at him. She didn’t need the rest of the story.

  ‘He threw himself out? Is that what you’re going to tell me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And that’s why you never mended it?’

  Schultz said nothing. Not even sorry. Then he stamped hard on the floor, his heavy boots shaking the wooden boards, and the door opened and there was another figure outlined against the dim lights in the corridor outside. Her arm was still in a sling. She took a tiny step forward, then shook her head. Disbelief? Caution? Delight? Bella didn’t know.

  ‘The good news?’ Schultz was swaying a little as he nodded towards Larissa. ‘Your night is young.’

  27

  TUESDAY 30 SEPTEMBER 1941

  Tam Moncrieff sat in the big drawing room, gazing out at the darkness. Except for the dog curled at his feet, he was alone. Supper had come and gone, himself and Groenbaum picking at plates of cold venison supplied by a local poacher. Gerri was out for the evening, playing bridge with friends, and Groenbaum, with an apology for the weight of his current caseload, had retired to the Lindau Room to confront, he said, nearly a week of accumulated paperwork.

  He and Moncrieff had spent a long hour together on the teeing-off platform. Hitting balls across the valley had by now become a ritual, a coda to the intimacies Groenbaum was still trying to extract during long face-to-face sessions seated in the window of the Lindau Room. These always followed the morning’s workout in the weights room, and Moncrieff – buoyed by the exercise – did his best to part the curtains on episodes in his life that, in Groenbaum’s phrase, deserved a little attention.

  In Berlin, three years ago, he’d killed an American businessman. The circumstances, to Moncrieff, fully justified the steps he’d had to take but within weeks he was under interrogation in one of the basement rooms the Gestapo reserved for difficult clients. Those hours in the basement of their Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse headquarters would stay with Moncrieff forever. They’d strapped him to a board, and covered his face with a towel, and poured a steady trickle of water on the towel until it filled his nose and throat. After that, he began to drown and when Groenbaum insisted on details he did his best to describe the coldness of the water in his lungs, and his determination to hold his breath, and then – within seconds – the realisation that some primitive instinct had taken over, that he was sucking in more and more water as he fought to breathe, and that death, or perhaps dying, was a far simpler proposition than he’d ever imagined. First you feel bubbles in your lungs, he’d said quietly. And then darkness and resignation take care of the rest.

  Groenbaum had listened intently to this account, making notes on a pad, returning again and again to the word ‘darkness’. What exactly did Moncrieff mean? How did he feel? Was there an element of guilt involved? That he wasn’t stronger? More resilient? That he’d let himself and, by extension, the Service down?

  Moncrieff had dismissed all of these questions. As a Royal Marine, he was no stranger to the possibility of interrogation. There were tricks you could play on yourself, resistance techniques they taught you, but once you were in the hands of experts, you surrendered all control. They took you to places they’d been exploring for most of their working lives. They’d mapped pain and they understood panic and they knew every one of those little pathways that led to your deepest fears. In short, they could do whatever they wanted with your helplessness. That realisation, said Moncrieff, was deeply, deeply troubling but there was no room left for guilt. These people were about to kill
you. All you wanted them to do was stop.

  But afterwards, Groenbaum had insisted. How did you feel afterwards? Moncrieff knew exactly how he’d felt once they’d decided to set him free before expelling him from their precious Reich. Bella, bless her, had collected him from Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse. It was the middle of the night. He had twelve hours to leave Berlin. That left time for a proper farewell but the Hungarians in the basement, the specialists the Gestapo so prized, had done their work well. He didn’t want to set foot in Bella’s apartment. He didn’t even want her to touch him. Instead, he wanted to walk the empty streets, all the way to Tempelhof Airport, alone, utterly lost, every breath of the cold Berlin air a fresh reminder that death would never be a friend.

  ‘She forgave you? Bella?’

  ‘There was nothing to forgive. The Gestapo had taken it all.’

  ‘All of what?’

  ‘Me.’

  ‘That’s really how you felt?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And did she understand?’

  ‘Probably not. She defected to Moscow within weeks, but that’s another story.’

  To date, he and Groenbaum had yet to touch on Bella. His wife obviously knew about her, and so Moncrieff assumed that Groenbaum was also au fait, but Moncrieff was in no hurry to go any further. In Groenbaum’s view, she’d doubtless be an issue but in the meantime the episode in Berlin had given him plenty to work on. Hence, this afternoon, yet another session on the teeing-off platform.

  ‘Let it go, Tam. Another one. Hit another one. Ready? You feel the tension? You’re the coiled spring. Go. Release it. Get rid of it. Beautiful shot, truly wonderful. Just watch it, Tam, just watch it fly. Imagine it’s a little bird. And now it’s gone.’

  Ball after ball soared over the valley and into the trees, and Moncrieff began to wonder exactly what kind of psychological burden he was supposed to be getting rid of. Having someone pour water into your lungs wasn’t the kind of episode you’d ever forget so what, precisely, would bag after bag of lost golf balls really achieve? By the time they returned to the house, this feeling had hardened into something close to an impatience salted with resentment. He felt they were both marking time, getting nowhere. The real issue was his lost week, the void that no one seemed able to explain, but when he’d broached the subject just now, over supper, Groenbaum had shaken his head.

  ‘Too soon, Tam. Too early. Trust me, please. I know that’s hard for people in your line of work, but we all have your best interests at heart.’

  Now, looking for something to read, Moncrieff spotted what looked like a photograph album. It was lying on the low table beside the sofa on top of a pile of magazines. He fetched it and returned to the armchair. Groenbaum was in the habit of playing classical music on his gramophone when he was working, and this evening he’d chosen Brahms. The German Requiem, Moncrieff thought. Richly appropriate.

  He opened the photograph album, realising at once that this had to be Gerri’s work. A family tree on the inside cover celebrated the coming together of Geraldine Plover and Giles Tice. There were four shots per page, black and white prints with serrated edges, years and years of a marriage tidied neatly away, each print carefully dated. The opening pages were a tribute to the social reach of rowing. ‘Henley Royal Regatta, July 1932’ read an entry on the first page, ‘Giles in his Pa’s blazer!’

  Moncrieff studied the photograph. Giles, he knew, was Gerri’s first husband, and he saw the physical likeness at once: tall, lean, just the hint of a stoop. Turn the clock back a decade, Moncrieff thought, and I might have been this man’s brother. The camera had caught Giles in conversation with an older couple, and the expression on the woman’s face – rapt, smitten – told Moncrieff everything he needed to know. Giles Tice would have been a catch for any young gal. No wonder Gerri missed him.

  Their wedding occupied several of the pages to come. Gerri at a wicket gate outside the church, posing with her two bridesmaids. The happy couple hours later at the reception, both standing behind an enormous cake, knife raised, doubtless acknowledging the applause of friends and family. Giles running the gauntlet through a blizzard of confetti, one protective arm around his new bride, making for the open door of what looked like an Alvis. And on the next page, the camera lent briefly to someone else, the honeymooners on the balcony of a hotel, palm trees and the long curve of a bay behind them. ‘Torquay’, read the caption. ‘Bliss.’

  Moncrieff sat back a moment, putting the album to one side, wondering whether Gerri realised how lucky they’d both been to find each other. Even now, nearly ten years later, she was still – in his eyes – immensely attractive, but the presence of Giles had given her beauty a luminance that the camera never failed to pick up. Bella, he thought wistfully, reaching for the book again. If only.

  Pages later, they were abroad. Photos of a city, first: a long corniche, more palm trees, handsome waterside hotels, horse-drawn carriages, elderly women on park benches eyeing the beginnings of the evening paseo. According to the captions, this was Barranquilla, August 1935. In one shot, especially striking, Giles had captured his wife in a moment of total candour, her face half turned to the camera. She was wearing a straw hat against the sun and it must have been windy because one hand was reaching for the brim. In the background, Moncrieff could see fishing boats, and what looked like the bow of a liner, but what drew his attention was the light in Gerri’s eyes. By now they’d been married for nearly three years. Yet she was still besotted.

  He turned the page again. They’d evidently left the seaboard for the mountains. An explosion of banana leaves filled the foreground while ridgeline after ridgeline receded towards the far horizon. The slopes of the mountains were thickly wooded, and mist coiled up from the valleys. ‘Above Medellín’, ran the caption. ‘Bloody hot!’

  Moncrieff checked the next few pages. As well as mountains, there was a plantation of some sort: peasants squatting in the long grass, their brown arms on their knees, taking advantage of the shade; Gerri with a white bandana around her head and a native child in her arms; Giles on a horse, amused and imperious. Then they were back among the bushes, and Moncrieff was looking at a wicker basket brimming with beans, an Inca face turned towards the camera, another smile captured for the album.

  ‘You naughty man.’

  Moncrieff glanced up. Gerri had ghosted into the room. Not a sound, he thought. Not a single clue.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t resist it.’

  ‘You were bored?’

  ‘Curious,’ he nodded at the album. ‘Colombia? Am I right?’

  ‘Clever boy. Giles’s family had a business over there. They grew coffee up in the mountains behind Medellín. After his father died, we took it over.’

  ‘You liked it?’

  ‘I loved it. We both did. The climate’s perfect for coffee beans. They only grow arabica but that happens to be everyone’s favourite. Sweeter, lighter, yet still rich. Yum-yum,’ she smiled, nodding down at the album. ‘My father-in-law had done all the hard work. The market was already there. All we had to do was keep growing the stuff.’

  Moncrieff started turning the pages again. Then he paused. Giles was standing beside a biplane, one gloved hand on the propeller.

  ‘He was a pilot?’

  ‘He was learning. It was always something he’d wanted to do. The coffee estates gave him the perfect excuse. He said he could monitor our efforts from a distance. Never have to be a bother to anyone.’

  ‘And he passed? Went solo? Flew himself?’

  ‘Yes. But only briefly, I’m afraid. Next page, I think.’

  The photo, this time, was part of a report scissored from a newspaper. The image was grainy, but there was no doubt what had happened. Giles Tice, apprentice aviator, had come to grief. Of the biplane, very little was left intact.

  ‘Was he hurt?’

  ‘Yes. Both legs broken, damage to his knees, fractured pelvis.’

  ‘Christ. Poor man.’

  ‘Quite.’r />
  ‘Hospital?’

  ‘Four months. It was run by the Catholic church in Medellín. They did everything they could for him, but my poor lamb was suffering. It was horrible to watch.’

  ‘But he recovered?’

  ‘More or less. They set the breaks and his pelvis healed itself. The real problem was up here.’ Her hand settled lightly on Moncrieff’s head.

  ‘Really?’ Moncrieff had turned the page again. Now he was looking at Tice in a hospital bed, his face gaunt against the whiteness of the pillow. Even his wife’s presence, perched on the bed, one arm draped across his thin shoulders, could barely raise a smile. ‘So what happened?’

  ‘We got a so-called expert in. On reflection, I think he may have been a witch doctor. He prescribed a drug. Or maybe we should call it a potion. Does scopolamine mean anything to you? It comes from the deadly nightshade plant. The Indians use it a lot. They call it “the Devil’s Breath”. It’s meant to be the world’s best painkiller. In Giles’s state you’d take anything.’

  ‘And did it work?’

  ‘It knocked him for six. I was there at the hospital day and night. The nuns were very kind. They didn’t much like the stuff but Giles had insisted and they respected that.’

  ‘And it took the pain away?’

  ‘It took everything away. My poor man could remember nothing. Not the accident. Not me. Barely his own name. Everything came back in the end, but it took weeks and weeks. When I told him we were married, that I was his wife, he had to take it on trust.’

  ‘Did he object?’ Moncrieff tapped the photo of Gerri trying to cheer her husband up. ‘I find that hard to believe.’

  ‘That’s sweet,’ she bent quickly and kissed him on the cheek. ‘But I think you’re missing the point.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘It changed him. Totally. He became another man.’

  ‘No more flying?’

  ‘No more anything. When the war came there was a moment when he told me he wanted to join the Air Force, fly a Spitfire, but I told him they’d never have him, and I was right. It was the same with the Army. I’m afraid he drew the line at the Navy, though they’d have turned him down as well.’