Agent of Death (11 page)

Then he performed the
Deutscher
blick
. He looked round for eavesdroppers.

‘Klaus,’ said Sohler, quietly.

‘Sir?’ said Kuhnke, amazed at the use of his first name. Sohler had never done that before while at sea.

‘I want you to do something for me,’ said Sohler.

‘Yes, sir!’ said Kuhnke, standing to attention.

‘Not like that. Quietly.’

‘Sir?’

Sohler took a key from his pocket and gave it to Kuhnke. It was an ordinary, domestic key made by the German ABUS company. It was what anyone would use for his front door. But this one had its purpose written on a square tag hanging by a piece of string from the hole in the key’s round end. Kuhnke looked at it nervously.

‘Talk to a few of the men,’ said Sohler, ‘the old ones that we know.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Kuhnke, and Sohler explained what had happened at the meeting with Weber, von Bloch, and Zapp, and what he wanted Kuhnke to do.

‘Black bastards,’ said Kuhnke.

‘Yes,’ said Sohler, ‘and meanwhile, hold course, dead slow, and conserve fuel.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Kuhnk. ‘But where are we going, sir?’

‘I don’t know. They won’t tell me.’

CHAPTER 12

The
818
th
Vladimir
Illyich
Lenin
Soviet
Socialist
Vocational
Technical
School
,

The
Soviet
Socialist
Republic
of
Ukraine.

Saturday
20 May
,
12
.
40
hours
.

I looked at the pile of German gear, then I looked at Ulitzky, who’d touched it and lived. And unlike Zharkov, he hadn’t just touched it with his fingertips. He’d picked up a load of it and carried it in his arms. Now everyone was standing back except Ulitzky to see what the Englishman would do.

Of course they didn’t know that the Englishman was a Jew born in Poland with a Russian grandfather and a Polish grandmother; an Englishman who’d spoken Polish or Russian as mother tongue until the age of fifteen, and who’d thought he’d take British citizenship as a technicality to get him into King George’s air force, so he could personally drop bombs on the Nazis.

On the other hand, my mother’s family had been in England since Cromwell’s time, and perhaps that counted. Also I was wearing RAF blue and a Military Cross that another man had won and, in that moment, I suddenly found that I was more English than I thought. I found that I couldn’t let down the chaps in 696. Not in front of the Russians. Nor even could I let down King George, who’d pinned on my DFC, which I did win by myself, and who was a decent, endearing sort who fought hard against his awful stammer and did his duty.

So Ulitzky laughed in delight as I stepped forward and examined
Obersturmführer
Grauber’s gear with rather more laying on of hands than was entirely necessary, to show that I wasn’t afraid, even though I was. I was bloody terrified.

Fortunately it got better as the revolver’s hammer kept coming down on empty chambers. Perhaps the filthy stuff – the Mem Tav – was worn out, or there wasn’t any left? Perhaps it had all been used up on the poor Russians who’d brought it in here? I now believe that to be the case, but for whatever reason it didn’t strike me dead.

The biggest item was the ejector seat, a thing I’d read about but never seen. There was a standard pilot’s seat, much like those in British aircraft, but the seat was welded into a tubular framework made of something like aluminium but lighter, and the whole thing was glazed over with Plexiglas into an airtight cabin. It was fitted with rockets – now blackened from firing – to blow it clear of the aircraft, and it had what looked like its own oxygen supply system, feeding into a concertina-style tube that had been cut with something sharp. The whole thing was incredibly light; it contained a full set of aircraft controls and instruments, it had a hatch to get in and out of, and it had been connected via synthetic-fibre cables – also amazingly light – to a huge parachute of some other synthetic material. But the cables had been cut and they now lay folded in a pile with the parachute.

Then there were several sets of odd flying gear: the heavy suit that Zharkov had touched, then a lighter version, then an even lighter version, then the pilot’s uniform, and, forlornly beside the rest, his singlet, socks and underpants, his watch, his identity tags, and a gorget on a gold chain designed to hang round a man’s neck. It was beautifully made in enamelled bronze. On the inner side was the pilot’s name: Grauber, Wilhelm Karl, plus his rank, army number, blood group, and an odd-shaped letter K, while the outer side bore a highly-stylized, Germanic version of the letters
AA
SS
. Presumably this stood for
Adler
Abteilung
, the Eagle Unit of the SS, the elite-of-elite special group that Zharkov had mentioned. The same four letters were stamped, stencilled, or otherwise marked on all the rest of this amazing kit, right down to the singlet and underpants.

I looked again at the three flying suits. Each one covered the whole body, including the head, hands, and feet. Each had an outer layer of rubber so that it was airtight and waterproof, and each had fabric layers inside the rubber. Each headpiece had a wide, transparent visor and each visor was designed to make precise contact with the other two, so the wearer could see out through the three layers.

I lifted up the biggest suit, examined it, and found an odd tool in a sheath. It was roughly knife-shaped, it had a grip like a knife, but it had no point and no blade, only an inch-wide hook at the tip, with a razor edge on the inside of the hook. I held the tool next to a long, straight slash that ran from chin to groin of the suit, splitting it wide open, and I found other and more ragged slash marks on the other two suits. I looked at the gas warfare captain.

‘These suits,’ I said, ‘were they worn one inside the other?’

‘Yes, comrade,’ said Goraya. ‘We had to cut them to get him out. He was trying to do so himself when they caught him. The pilot, that is. The suits were sealed by overlaps with adhesive on them. Once the overlaps were in place they formed a perfect seal and the only way to open the suit was to cut it. There are no fastenings or openings of any kind. You have to cut the overlaps.’

‘I see,’ I said, ‘and was it you that found him, comrade?’

‘No,’ said Goraya. ‘It was some of our riflemen. But they called for us. They called for the gas section, because some of them fell down dead.’

‘They did, but he didn’t.” |I said,  “That’s interesting.  Why didn’t the stuff kill him?  And how was he when you first saw him? The German?’ I said. Goraya looked to Zharkov.

‘Tell him,’ said Zharkov. ‘He knows how we treat fascists.’

‘He was unconscious,’ said Goraya. ‘Our boys had beaten him with their rifle butts.’

‘Had they though?’ I said, and turned back to the suits. With considerable effort, and Ulitzky’s help – he stepped forward the instant he saw I couldn’t do it by myself – I pulled the suits inside out, just in case there was anything hidden inside them. And there was. The innermost suit held a miniature oxygen system independent of the main unit in the ejector suit. The unit was neatly contained in the right inner thigh of the suit, and a supply tube ran up to the head section, where there was a mouthpiece. Also, in the left thigh there was a flat, floppy, plastic bag with a short section of tube: narrow where it met the bag, wide at the other end. There was a valve to prevent back-flow, and the bag held stale German urine. Finally, this lightest suit – the innermost suit – was distinctly differently made. It had a network of narrow plastic tubes running round and round the inside, and connected to what looked like a feeder tube or inlet.

Captain Goraya twitched his lower lip in a glum, guilty expression, showing that these were fresh discoveries.

‘So what can you tell us, Moscow boy?’ said Ulitzky. ‘What have we got here?’

‘We’ve got something very nasty indeed,’ I said. ‘I think this stuff, Mem Tav, is so dangerous that it’s a threat to the man in the bomber who delivers it.’ I pointed at the ejector seat. ‘Look at that. He’s shut in there, which is airtight, with an oxygen supply. And even inside that, he’s got three layers of protective suits, with another oxygen supply in the innermost. My guess is that if he’d got back to his base, he’d have climbed out of the aircraft, walked over to a decontamination unit, taken off the outermost suit, which was so completely sealed that he had to
cut
his way out,’ I said, picking up the odd, knife-looking tool, ‘with this. Then he’d drop the outer suit into a bin, with the Mem Tav contamination on it. Then he’d walk away, cut himself out of the next suit, and drop
that
into a bin. Then presumably he’d could get himself out of the third suit and be OK.’

‘What about the oxygen supply in the innermost suit?’ said Ulitzky, ‘and all those tubes running round the inside?’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘the oxygen supply in the suit would be to keep him going when he disconnected from the aircraft’s supply. These suits are airtight, remember. But I don’t know what the tubes are for. Perhaps we can ask the German pilot?’

‘You can try,’ said Ulitzky, but we had to wait several hours for that.

We had to wait until we heard from the medics. Meanwhile Zharkov got us out of the room with the German gear as soon as he could, and we stood in the corridor arguing, because Zharkov wanted to take us to a canteen in the school building for a meal, but Ulitzky loudly proclaimed that the 6
th
Guards had a better canteen, and that we should go there, and Zharkov was nearly broken with not knowing what to do.

‘But I have no orders,’ he said to me, ‘orders concerning your leaving this building.’ It was almost comical. He didn’t dare let me out without orders, but he was obviously terrified of asking the general or the assistant undersecretary, because they might not know the answer, and would take it out on him – Zharkov – for bringing the question to them.

‘Don’t worry, Comrade Colonel,’ I said. ‘Get me a phone and I’ll ring Moscow and have a word with the Boss. I’ll tell him you don’t know what to do, and he’ll speak to you himself.’ I looked steadily at Zharkov and, for a moment, he was struck speechless at the thought of doing such a thing. Then Ulitzky laughed.

‘Come on comrades,’ he said, and Zharkov was too flustered to object. So we had a meal outside, at an extremely noisy and boisterous tented canteen. The German air raid was over and the benches packed with Red Army soldiers, who whistled and cat-called on sight of Zharkov’s NKVD cap as we entered. But Ulitzky yelled at them.

‘Shut up!’ he cried. ‘Where’s your manners you shit-stained farmers? What would your mothers think? And your fathers and grandpas?’ The soldiers fell silent. Most of them were very young and Ulitzky was a formidable figure. ‘That’s better,’ he said. ‘Now don’t be rude to this NKVD comrade.’ And he took Zharkov by the shoulders and kissed him on both cheeks, to a murmur of surprise from the soldiers. ‘There,’ said Ulitzky, looking round the tent. ‘Don’t be rude to the NKVD. You don’t have to be rude to them … because you can leave all that to me!’ And there was a huge roar of laughter, cheers, and stamping feet.

*

I finally saw the German pilot, Grauber, in the late afternoon. By then Zharkov had rigged out his secretary in a very fetching nurse’s outfit, carefully put together to exclude any Soviet or Russian insignia. Marina Grigorieva looked pretty damn good in her soldier suit, but dressed as a nurse she was a stunner. Ulitzky and Zharkov just stood staring with silly grins on their faces. So I explained what I wanted her to do, got her to learn her only line, and she went off. She was a clever girl.

Then I gave it another hour and went to see Grauber. The Red Army medics had done a good job, with NKVD help. They found a small room in the school; one that still had glass in the windows. They gave it a thorough clean, put in a bed with fresh sheets and blankets, and a few bits of medical furniture and kit. Meanwhile they anaesthetized Grauber in the field hospital nearby and gave him every care known to Soviet medical science, which was considerable, because they were very good at what they did, having had an enormous amount of practice. Then they took Grauber back to his nice, clean room and let him wake up in it. Finally, they found me a doctor’s white coat and a stethoscope in exchange for my tunic, and they pressed my trousers and polished my shoes.

All this was all my idea, obviously, but the Ruskies did it, and they did it well, so all credit to them.

When I went in to see Grauber he looked wonderfully better. Some of what had looked like damage to his face had been only congealed blood and dirt. And they’d given him just enough morphine to take the edge off his pain, and make him a bit dopey. Also, they’d put some packs of captured German medicines as set-dressing on a table beside his bed, and, best of all, Nurse Marina was sitting beside him, where he could see her lovely face, and she was smiling at him, pausing to dab his brow with a damp cloth from time to time, and saying ‘Shh!’ when he tried to speak.

Let me stress right now that there is no such thing as a truth drug. I say this as one who has interrogated more suspects than a battalion of barristers. No drug will make someone speak the truth. Not sodium pentothal, nor morphine, nor anything else, because the human mind is subtle beyond such measures. It will still invent, defend, and lie; or simply wander off into disconnected nonsense. All that a drug can do – and that includes alcohol – is damp down the defences and give you a fighting chance if you ask the right questions in the right way.

So I marched into Grauber’s room giving my best impression of a German doctor, and I smiled at Grauber and spoke to Nurse Marina in German.

‘Is he any better?’ I said.

‘Yes, Herr Doctor!’ she said.

‘Has he been given sulphanilamide?’

‘Yes, Herr Doctor!’

‘Is he responding?’

‘Yes, Herr Doctor!’

I gave her a short, professional smile and she sat back. That was her spoken part done. But she tried to take Grauber’s bandaged hand. A bit of a mistake, that, because he winced, even with the morphine. So she extemporized by stroking his arm above the wrist. He liked that. He half closed his eyes.

I looked at him and wondered if my idea would work, because it wasn’t all that tremendously brilliant. It was just my hope that Grauber had been so knocked around that he didn’t know what day it was, let alone where he was, and might respond to a bit of kindness, especially if he believed it was German kindness. After all, he’d had some fairly extreme Russian unkindness and that hadn’t worked.