Agent of Death (9 page)

Sanders nodded. ‘So if that was him as he was
then
, he’d only be about thirty now. Quite young. So what else is there?’

She sifted through a mixture of letters, photocopies, handwritten notes, and typed foolscap pages. ‘We know he grew up in Switzerland, in a Mennonite religious community running on a weird mixture of racial purity, rifle shooting, and higher education.’

‘Rifle shooting?’ said Sanders. ‘Aren’t Mennonites pacifist?’

‘Not this lot! They believe all men should bear arms, and they serve in the Swiss and German armies, and often in the artillery, because they’re well-educated and they’re keen on big guns too. It’s something to do with being able to defend Christ, when –
when
– he comes again, which event is central to their beliefs.’

‘Is it now?’ said Sanders. ‘Church parade on Sundays was enough for me. But go on.’

She nodded. ‘So … Svart is a noted marksman as many of them are.’ She looked down at her notes. ‘They call themselves the Karolings, and they moved into Germany in 1933 because they adored Hitler and wanted to be part of his Reich.’

‘And?’

‘The Reich loved them too, and Abimilech went straight up the educational ladder, joined the Nazi party and the SS, and became a great favourite of top Nazi women like Goering’s wife Emmy.’ She found a photocopied letter. ‘This is what Mrs Goering said of him: ‘
Er
ist
die
vollkommenheit
…’

‘English would do nicely at this time of night,’ said Sanders.

‘Ah … “He is the perfection of the Nordic type. Immensely beautiful, immensely clever, and with a most wicked sense of humour.”’

‘Very nice, I’m sure. So what’s he to do with Mem Tav?’

‘He invented it! He was given a unit within the SS.
Abteilung
Adler
– Eagle Unit – running a secret project funded by hidden money. We don’t who’s behind it.’

‘And do they make it, Mem Tav?’

‘Yes. We got that from earlier intercepts. They make it and deploy it. It was
Abteilung Adler
that attacked Ulvid, using an Arado jet bomber.’

‘And killed fifty thousand people.’

She frowned. ‘I think it was more. The Russians are covering up the real number of dead. I think it was a lot more.’

‘So what did the Colossus tell us?’ he said. ‘After so much grief in getting it?’

‘This,’ she said, and laid a typed sheet on the table. Sanders looked at it. He looked at it and frowned.

‘These words here,’ he said, ‘“effective dosage”. It means
lethal
dosage
, doesn’t it? The quantity of this stuff that it takes to kill a man?’

‘Yes, sir.’

Sanders pushed the paper away and stared at her. ‘Well, it can’t be right. It can’t be. It’s scientific nonsense.’ He stared at the paper again. ‘Are you sure about this? The translation, I mean?’

‘Yes, sir. I did it myself and I’m rather good at German.’

‘I know, I know,’ he said, and groaned. It was late, his old wounds were aching and Donny Trent would never speak to him again; his friend of thirty years. He looked at her. ‘We thought they might have beaten us to the atom bomb,’ he said. ‘But if this is true,’ he said, glancing at the transcript, ‘then it’s worse. The Huns have got something worse than the atom bomb, and they could win the war with it even now!’

CHAPTER 9

The
818
th
Vladimir
Illyich
Lenin
Soviet
Vocational
Technical
School
,

The
Soviet
Socialist
Republic
of
Ukraine

Saturday
20 May
,
10
.
50
hours
.

The room stank of human excrement. The foul stench rolled out as Zharkov unlocked the door, and stood back so that I could go in first, which I did and regretted it. The room had been a coal bunker. It had a chute to bring in the coal from outside, and a concrete floor, and rails for a couple of small, steel, four-wheeled trucks. The rails led to another door, a steel door, that was closed. There was nothing else in the room but some shovels and rakes, and a row of fire buckets hanging on one wall; these tools plus a ruined human being strapped to a heavy wooden chair, wallowing in his own mess with a table conveniently beside him bearing the tools that had been used to interrogate him.

I hesitated, physically revolted, and wondered what to say, or what to do. I swallowed the flood of bitter saliva that was pumping into my mouth as my body prepared itself to vomit. I fought for self-control and pointed to the man in the chair.

‘Is he alive?’ I said. Zharkov shrugged and snapped his fingers at a guard, who looked among the fire buckets, found one still full, and threw it over the German, with a loud splash. The German stirred but didn’t wake. He just sagged in the chair, looking barely human. He was stark naked, beaten unrecognizable, and his toes and fingers were smashed into broken bone and ragged flesh.

My stomach heaved, and I turned and walked out of the room with my conscience screaming. I couldn’t allow this. But I couldn’t stop it because I had a job to do, and I couldn’t let the Russians sneer at me. But my conscience groaned, and perhaps my stomach was still suffering from its airsickness, or perhaps not, but in any case I staggered a few steps down the corridor, and bent over and gagged and heaved and spewed. Then I stood up, still shaking, and found a handkerchief – the wingco’s nice English handkerchief with his initials embroidered on it by his nice wife – and I wiped my face, and saw Ulitzky looking at me.

‘Listen, Moscow boy,’ he said, ‘the Fritzes used this building as a headquarters, right?’ I nodded. ‘That was the coal bunker we were in, right?’ I nodded. ‘The coal was for the furnace for the electricity and the heating. But now the coal’s all gone, ’cos they used it all, and the furnace, and the generator, and the central heating is all gone, ’cos they blew them up when they left. And then they smashed everything that could be smashed, even the glass in the windows. They are very efficient, these Germans, so they smashed all the glass. And just before left in their efficient FAMO half-tracks and efficient Opel lorries, they efficiently lined up the school’s staff of caretakers with their families beside them – thirty-two adults and nineteen children – and efficiently murdered them with their efficient machine guns. One man told us this, because he was hiding. And now he’s the grandfather of a dead family.’ Ulitzky shrugged. ‘So how would you have treated them if they did this in your country? In England?’ Ulitzky jerked a thumb over his shoulder towards the German in the coal bunker. ‘And that one back there, that fine specimen of the
herrenvolk
: the master race? He was the one in the jet-plane that killed the people of Ulvid! So now it’s your turn, Moscow boy! Zharkov and his boys have been kicking the shit out of that bastard for days, and he won’t tell them anything.’

Ulitzky smiled a sad smile and stretched out a hand, appealing for help.

‘So come on, Mister Englishman. That Fritz has got to know something but we can’t get it out of him, and we’ve asked
our
people, to ask
your
people, to send someone clever. Are you clever?’

*

The argument was shorter this time, and it was not so much an argument as the fearful statement that leapt sideways out of everything that Zharkov said, though never stated specifically. This unspoken truth was that before I arrived, the man lined up by the general and the undersecretary as best qualified to carry the blame of any failure … was Colonel Piotyr Zharkov, since he had led the team that brought in the German pilot’s equipment and had supervised his interrogation.

So we all sat in the room Zharkov was using as his office, which, like the general’s, had proper office furniture and filing cabinets and typewriters, and also there were bottles of drink, and biscuits and sausage and cheese. And there was a neat little secretary in a neat little NKVD uniform, with smart-pressed breeches and shiny boots. She had blue eyes, fair skin, and thick blonde hair tied up in plaits coiled at the back of her head. She looked pure Nordic, and I wondered what Herr Hitler would think of her? Slavs were supposed to be hairy anthropoids with warty skins. She stood behind Zharkov and took notes, as Ulitzky and Zharkov yelled and thumped the table, discussing my proposals for a document that Zharkov could lay before his superiors.

I would have smiled at the girl if I could have managed it, but I couldn’t at this particular moment. I looked at her more carefully. My briefing notes had said that it was common to find women in the Red Army, even at the front where they fought bravely beside the men. But the notes also said that it was even more common to find the pretty ones attached to the personal staff of senior officers. Campaign-wives, they were called in Russian. But now the shouting was done, and Ulitzky was looking at me, and his speech was polite, proving that the shouting had been for show.

‘If you please, Comrade Wing Commander Landau,’ said Ulitzky, ‘please tell the Comrade Colonel, once more.’

‘Certainly Comrade Colonel Ulitzky,’ I said, and turned to the man behind the desk. ‘Comrade Colonel Zharkov, the point is that despite all your correct and vigorous efforts,’ I used these shameful words to describe torture because I was trying to get Ulitzky on my side, and he’d never have understood English-style morality in any case. ‘Despite all your
proper
efforts,’ I said, ‘the German pilot,’ I paused, ‘do we know his name?’

‘Grauber,’ said Zharkov, looking down at a file on his desk, ‘
Obersturmführer
Wilhelm Karl Grauber. The rank is a Waffen SS rank, equivalent to that of a pilot officer in your British air force, except that it is
Abteilung
Adler
SS, which is a superior division of the SS, such that all its ranks are equivalent to the next higher in the Wehrmacht, or Luftwaffe. So he would be a flight lieutenant in your service.’

‘I am grateful for the detail, Comrade Colonel,’ I said. Zharkov nodded and I continued, ‘So! Do we accept that
Obersturmführer
Grauber has told you nothing?’ Zharkov sniffed, looked guilty, lifted his hands slightly, fingers splayed, expressing helplessness, and spoke.

‘He said “Mem Tav”. The German said these words over and over again. He shouted them as if they were a threat.’

‘Ah,’ I said, and Zharkov looked at me in sudden hope.

‘Do you know what this means? Mem Tav?’

‘It’s the name of the weapon they used on Ulvid,’ I said. Ulitzky and Zharkov were nearly out of their chairs, and the secretary’s pretty mouth opened wide.

‘What is it?’ said Zharkov.

‘Yes, yes!’ said Ulitzky. ‘What do you know, you English?’

‘Nothing really,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry comrades. We only know the name. It’s the Hebrew word for death. For some reason the Germans are using that name.’

‘Oh,’ they said. Ulitzky, Zharkov, and the girl, all together, and much disappointed.

‘Can we get on with this, comrades?’ I said, to fill the silence. ‘I think we’re agreed that if you sign this German into my responsibility, then all blame for this interrogation, should there be any, passes to me.’ Zharkov cheered up at that, and spun five copies of a densely-typed Cyrillic document across the table. I glanced at the secretary. She’d typed all this and it was an excellent job.

So I signed all the copies with the dipper pen and inkwell on the desk: one copy for Zharkov, one for Ulitzky, one for me, and one each for the general and the assistant undersecretary. It was an interesting document in that my name and Winston Churchill’s appeared many times, but no Soviet name appeared anywhere at all. Not once.

Then Ulitzky signed, then four NKVD men junior to Zharkov were brought in from outside the office to sign, which they did with fearful resignation, under Zharkov’s eye, such that none could later claim they did not know, and then they were sent out again, and finally Zharkov signed, whipping out a lustrous, green-black, marbled-finish, twenty-four carat gold-nibbed, German fountain pen that went straight back into the pocket of his tunic. Then he smiled, snapped his fingers at the secretary, and vodka was served. I sighed because there’s only so much you can do with sleight of hand to throw your drink away when nobody’s looking. The ‘nobody’s looking’ part is easy for me, but the drink makes a visible mess on the floor. You need to be on a balcony, or next to a plant pot.

So Ulitzky and Zharkov knocked back several glasses and became merry, and the blonde secretary was given a glass, which she emptied in one go, to much applause, and I looked at her pulsing white neck as she gulped the spirit, head back, and I had an idea.

‘Comrade Zharkov?’ I said. ‘May I ask if the comrade, your secretary, speaks any German?’

Zharkov looked at her. ‘Comrade Grigorieva?’ he said. ‘Do you speak German?’

‘No, Comrade Zharkov,’ she said.

‘No matter,’ I said. ‘But can you find a nurse’s uniform for her?’ And thereby I learned that Russian men see nurse’s uniforms with the same eyes as Englishmen, because Zharkov gave a dirty laugh, Ulitzky winked and nudged me, and Comrade Grigorieva frowned. ‘No, no, no,’ I said, ‘I’m serious.’ And I explained what I had in mind.

‘Oh?’ said Zharkov. ‘Clever!’

‘I told you he was clever,’ said Ulitzky.

‘Then, with respect, Comrade Zharkov,’ I said, ‘can I ask that orders be given for the medical people to do their work, and that we go and look at
Obersturmführer
Grauber’s special equipment while they do it?’

Zharkov grinned at his secretary. ‘Don’t you want to see her in the nurse’s uniform?’

‘Yes!’ said Ulitzky.

‘Later,’ I said, ‘in fact I’ll have to.’ And I spoke to Grigorieva, ‘I’ll need to brief you, comrade. You will have a very important part in this. A serious part.’ She nodded and clicked her heels like a soldier.

*

There were four NKVD guards watching over Grauber’s equipment. They had it laid out on benches in a fifty-yard-long teaching workshop, with sandbagged windows and lights rigged. It was on the far side of the building, facing away from the landing strips, and with the thick concrete walls and the sandbags it was a relatively quiet room even with a war going on outside; but it was a sad room, because everything in it: the lathes, bench-drills, lifting gear, and everything else, had been systematically destroyed. The Germans had even smashed the hand-tools and instruments by beating them with hammers on the workshop’s anvils. At least the anvils were still there. It was too much trouble to destroy them, even for the Wehrmacht.

So the NKVD guards stamped to attention as Zharkov entered followed by Ulitzky and me. Other than the guards there was just one man present: a Red Army officer. There was nobody else in there. I’d expected the captured equipment to be crawling with technicians taking it apart for analysis. But no work was in progress at all, which seemed very odd, until I recalled the Russian fear of being caught out as the man responsible, and thought that was the explanation. But it wasn’t; not entirely anyway.

Meanwhile Zharkov stood to attention, hand to cap, with Ulitzky beside him doing the same, while Zharkov loudly explained that an English expert was here to advise his Soviet comrades, and then he gave dire and lengthy warnings to all present of the need for utmost secrecy. It was very formulaic and very Russian, and I looked round as Zharkov delivered it.

There were charts on the walls showing cross sections through tractor engines, beside bright-coloured propaganda posters of idealized peasants and factory workers with big shiny chins and bright eyes, marching through golden sunbeams. They were well designed by gifted artists, and they reminded me of the big coloured prints that the English railway companies put up to lure people to holidays in places like Eastbourne or Torquay. It was the same theme of beautiful people doing beautiful things, except that the beautiful people here were rather serious.

Then Zharkov finished talking and started getting up courage to do something else. He was about to deliver a piece of theatre. I could see it in his face. So he breathed deep, and he walked forward to the bench bearing the equipment, and stood with head held high, like a brave man facing the firing squad. Then he stretched out his hand and touched just the tips of his fingers on what looked like a heavy flying suit. Ulitzky laughed noisily at that, then Zharkov stood back in visible relief, Ulitzky sneered, and Zharkov looked at him in embarrassment before turning to me.