Agent of Death (17 page)

‘Why did you use a bomber?’ said Sohler.

‘Because the Mem Tav attack unit was our first version and it was too big for a Fieseler.’

‘Have you still got the bomber? For other targets?’

‘No. It was lost in the raid. An engine failed. And it was always our intention to use the flying bomb as soon as possible because this submarine can take a flying bomb to within range of the city we need to hit.’

‘What is it?’ said Sohler.

‘It is a city whose destruction will cause unique and irresistible influence to be brought on the Russians, by a nation more powerful than their own.’

‘And the city is?’

‘New York.’

CHAPTER 20

Vnukovo
Airfield,

South
-
West
of
Moscow.

Saturday
27
May,
08
.
30
hours.

I think it was Vnukovo airfield because the journey to the Kremlin took about half an hour on roads cleared of all other traffic, and the only other big airfield to the south of Moscow was Domodedovo, which would have meant a much longer journey. And we were definitely south of Moscow, because eventually we crossed the Moskva river with the walls of the Kremlin ahead, which meant we were going north. But nobody told me where we’d landed. Nobody told me anything.

Not that I was bothered. As I climbed out of the Lisunov transport I was too busy gaping at the biggest collection of military aircraft I’d ever seen, and all one single type: the Yak 9 fighter, one of the most mass-produced aircraft in history. Not much of an aircraft in my opinion – imagine a small Spitfire, slower and less heavily armed – but the Soviet pilots loved it and said they could out-turn, and out-fight anything German.

The Yak 9s stretched in rows beyond belief. It looked as if there were more of them on that single field than the entire front-line strength of RAF fighter command. It was an awesome display of the industrial might of the Soviet Union, and equally impressive was the typically Russian bustle and noise, and yelling and confusion – organized confusion – as a stream of heavy lorries carted hundreds of aircrew in flying kit out to their machines, because we’d landed right in the middle of a major operation.

But it wasn’t like an op. It was like a holiday, as the young pilots shouted and waved and laughed – they all looked about sixteen years old to me, and made me feel like a grandpa – and the lorries honked, and the ground crew in their hundreds waved back at the pilots and they sang and cheered and whistled. They were getting their first proper machines; anyone could see it. They’d qualified on whatever training kites the Russians had and were being issued with real fighters at last. It was the same in the RAF. It was a big occasion when you got your first real aircraft, but we didn’t do it on this scale, and we just had a booze-up in the mess afterwards. We didn’t show this degree of delighted enthusiasm, with chaps singing patriotic songs and waving red flags because they were overjoyed to be doing their bit for the Motherland. These lads were the very best of their nation, God bless them, and I wished them luck because I was an airman too and I was on their side.

But I wasn’t given long to look. The NKVD came up to the Lisunov, in a Ford Wiley’s jeep painted with a red star, and Zharkov and I – he still in his chains – were driven off across the airfield to a set of plain, grey buildings with a control tower and more red stars painted on the walls. Then there was the usual shouting and I was led outside the building while they took Zharkov away. I was shoved into what looked like a big Packard automobile, which it wasn’t. It was a reverse-engineered Russian copy: a hand-built re-creation of a Packard, manufactured by the Zil company and given a new name –
Zis
– to prove it was Russian. But it was still a big luxurious car and I was crammed into the rear seat between two NKVD soldiers who didn’t speak to me or each other. So I sat back and looked at the view, which was dull, with nothing else on the road, and little to see until we got into Moscow, which I remembered from my childhood, especially the area round Red Square and the big onion-dome, St Basil’s cathedral.

Moscow was busy and thriving, crammed with people, and unmarked by the war, but drab and dour; the result of having no commercial advertising with its bright colours. Still, by comparison, London was full of bomb sites, Stalingrad was rubble and corpses, while Moscow was pristine. The Germans got close in ’41 and managed at least one air raid with hits claimed on the Kremlin, but if it’d done much damage it didn’t show now.

We went straight through one of the Kremlin gates, with passes waved and passwords given, and we entered a world bearing no relation to the suffering nation outside, because everything was neat and smart and tickety-boo. All the uniforms were pressed and clean. All the boots were gleaming. All the paintwork was fresh, all the food and drink was excellent and limitless, with white linen and uniformed waiters who grovelled like pre-revolutionary peasants. It was tempting to say ‘that’s communism’, which it was, and yet it wasn’t, because it
was
communism inside the Kremlin, but I can tell you as a matter of fact that it was the same inside every other dictatorship I ever saw – and I’ve seen a few – because it’s a precious rare dictator who shares the hardships of his people.

So in we went to the Kremlin, which isn’t just one building like number 10 Downing Street or the White House. It’s many buildings, and big ones too, enclosed within red-brick walls that form a rough pentagon, of nearly seventy acres, over a mile across at its biggest diameter. It was a fort once, like the Tower of London only bigger, and it contains palaces, churches, spires, and much more. But while the religious buildings were pure Russian Orthodox, the rest looked eighteenth century Italian, with Palladian porticoes and painted stucco. I was taken into one of these Italianate buildings and put into a small library with a couple of men to guard me, and there I sat all day.

At least they fed us. Which is to say the waiters fed the guards, bringing in very good food on silver trays, and the guards were decent enough to share it with me. Or rather, the first time food came in, they muttered to one another and looked at me, then shoved the tray in my direction, giving me first pick. I took this as a good sign, like travelling in a Zis limo, because if there’d been any gossip that I was in trouble, I’d have got nothing. But they didn’t talk to me, or even tell me where I was. I think we were in the Grand Kremlin Palace, but it could have been the Old Armoury, because those are the only two buildings that face southwards towards the river. I never did find out.

Then, after dark, there were footsteps outside the door, and orders and salutes, and I was rushed up several flights of stairs, noting that the place was still alive with working people, with lights burning everywhere. I got lots of odd looks for my RAF uniform, which to them was wildly exotic, but nobody spoke to me and I had no idea what was happening.

Finally, we went round a corner and into an office, which was big and gloomy with lots of dark wood, and a couple of windows looking out over the Kremlin walls and across the black, gleaming River Moskva. I saw a skyline of square, angular, Russian architecture against the night sky, all rows of rectangular windows, a stunted skyscraper in the middle with a steeple, and a huge, floodlit picture so big that it could be seen from this office nearly a mile away. It was a picture of Josif Vissarionovich Stalin, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, also known by various nicknames including Koba, Soso, Uncle Joe, and the Boss.

The picture was an icon: a flattering image. I could see that because the man himself was standing about thirty feet in front of me, as he read the rule book to a large group of officials. They were dark-suited, mostly with glasses, and each with one red star in his button hole. They were just like the assistant secretary I’d met in Ukraine. They nodded in profound respect at everything Stalin said, and followed his finger as he tapped it forcibly on a big map that hung behind his desk.

‘Yes, comrade General Secretary!’

‘No, comrade General Secretary!’

Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, General Secretary!

Stalin was not much to look at until he looked at you. The famous black hair and moustache were going grey, his face was heavily pock-marked, his left arm moved awkwardly, crippled in a childhood accident, he had a strong Georgian accent, and his clothes were dull. He wore a plain, brown, single-breasted tunic plus dark blue jodhpurs and jackboots that very obviously contained lifts to get him up to average height. It always amazes me that anyone vain enough to wear lifts can’t see that everyone else can see that they’re wearing them. It’s like wigs.

Then two things hit me at once. First I realized that there was someone else who liked plain brown tunics and jackboots. Hitler, for Christ’s sake! Second, when he was done with the officials, and they scuttled out, anxious to demonstrate enthusiasm for their duties, Stalin finally looked at me … and all thoughts that he was nothing special were driven away. He had yellowish, oriental-looking eyes, and when they stared at you, you knew you were looking at the most powerful man in the world. This wasn’t Churchill or Roosevelt, who answered to democracies, and it wasn’t even Hitler, who was losing his grip by now and his generals were plotting in corners.

No. This was Joe Stalin, who’d long since killed all his opponents – actual opponents, potential opponents, and anyone who might dream of becoming an opponent. He’d killed them having first beaten and tortured them; they and all their families. This was Joe Stalin who could do anything to anyone, and had no humanity, no pity, and no morals, and was was master of the massive, enormous, invincible military machine that was grinding Germany’s Wehrmacht into defeat. So when he looked at me, I felt the same jolt of fright that you get when you’re driving and some idiot skids his car straight at you. He looked steadily at me and I have no hesitation in saying that I was afraid, because I was absolutely right to be afraid.

Then he spoke.

‘So,’ he said, ‘you’re the smart-arse. You’re the clever dick. You’re the one who gets a below job by telling the girls you piss vodka!’ That was Joe Stalin. That’s how he spoke, except that as with
Mat
, I’ve held back some of it because what he said in Russian was considerably more obscene.

I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing. He laughed and sat behind his desk, stared at me, held out a hand without looking, and two silent lackeys put a thick file into the hand; they stooped by him and whispered into his ear, pointing here and there at papers in the file when he opened it on the desk. But he frowned and they instantly slid back, and he read straight through the file at amazing speed. It was all about me; mainly typed sheets and letters, but there were photos too, including one of me, in England, standing by L-for-Leather with my crew. That one was odd, because I didn’t remember it being taken. But then, every country spied on every other, and that’s the way it was and still is.

Then he looked up, and I had my moment speaking alone with the worst man in human history, responsible for more deaths than Adolf Hitler. There was just him and me, plus the lackeys and however many NKVD goons were standing behind me; I don’t know how many because I didn’t look.

When he’d done reading Uncle Joe looked up, having memorized everything, and he began by reeling off intimate personal details of my life and those of my parents, and a summary of my RAF service, and the fact that I’d been approached by Lady Margaret Comings. He had it off pat: name, rank, and number, and the address of the apartment where I’d lived when my father taught in Moscow. He even had the names of my Russian school friends. I suppose he did it to frighten me, which he needn’t have bothered with, because I already was.

‘And now,’ he added, ‘you’re supposed to be the ordinary RAF officer who just happens to speaks all the languages, and gets sent by Bletchley Park to tell me all about Mem Tav,’ he said. I wasn’t at all sure where this was going, except that he didn’t trust anyone or anything. What could I say? Was he testing me in some way? I didn’t know and he obviously wanted a reply. So I just told the truth.

‘Yes Comrade General Secretary,’ I said, ‘I’m David Landau.’

‘Huh!’ he said. ‘You do speak good Russian …
Moscow
boy
!’ and he laughed again, and told me something that surprised me, because I learned that my fiction wasn’t fiction. ‘What a clever little shit you are,’ he said, and stared even harder. ‘How did you know my authority was behind you?
The
Boss
says
this
!
The
Boss
says
that
! You used my name repeatedly and no Soviet would dare to do that. So … how did you know? Who told you?’

‘Nobody, General Secretary,’ I said. ‘Because I didn’t know. But it made sense, and I took the risk, because I knew that your name would get action.’

‘Oh, it would!’ he said. ‘But don’t try it again, because all sorts of things happen in wartime. You’re Churchill’s man so you couldn’t face a firing squad,’ he said, then he paused and smiled, ‘not like Colonel Zharkov, when we’re done with him.’ He paused again, then shrugged. ‘But accidents happen. Unfortunate accidents. Regrettable deaths.’ He stared at me long enough to make sure I’d got the point, then turned to one of the lackeys. ‘Get him a chair,’ he said, and I was seated in an instant. ‘So, clever dick,’ he said, ‘Moscow boy. Now you can tell me everything you know about Mem Tav, which I warn you is a matter of the most profound secrecy, because I will not have the morale of our fighting troops damaged by rumours of super-weapons in the hands of the Fritzes!’ And he leaned across the desk and put a cobra to shame, for his sheer capacity to terrify. ‘Do you understand me?’ he said. ‘Do you understand, you tricky little Englisher-Polski yid?’

He never even raised his voice, and the expression on his face was a sort of smile, but I had to fight hard to stop myself fouling my pants. Apart from that, yes indeed I did understand. I could see why he wanted Mem Tav kept secret. He had to, with the Red Army stretched to the absolute limit, and just beginning to push the Germans back. There couldn’t be any wobbling at such a time as this. We’d have done the same, and so would the Yanks. We’d have kept Mem Tav under our hat.