Beyond the Call (9 page)

It was a brutal process, and Stalin did not want his allies to witness it. He mistrusted them; the Polish government in exile still existed, and Churchill and Roosevelt continued to support it. Stalin believed that the British and the Americans might engage covertly in helping anti-Communist nationalists to resist his puppet. The USSR was busy putting in place its vision of post-war Eastern Europe, and its allies seemed to feel entitled to judge and object to Russian actions.

Naturally, the Americans and the British who witnessed those actions saw it rather differently. They believed they were fighting for a world that was free of repression and tyranny, not a Stalinist empire east of the river Elbe.

Caught up in all of this were the prisoners of war, whose liberation was getting closer and closer as the Red Army pushed across Poland. Added to the callous Soviet attitude to their plight was the problem of getting American help into Poland. Anticipating the difficulties, and the potential risk to liberated prisoners, the men at the top of the American military and diplomatic services secretly made preparations for working around the Soviets.

The first requirement was to have covert personnel in the field in the regions where the prison camps were located. That was a problem in itself. There was no existing intelligence system in place that could be used. Throughout 1944 there had been negotiations between Washington and Moscow about cooperating on intelligence in Eastern Europe, all of which had come to nothing. In early 1944,
an idea was floated for America's OSS and Russia's NKVD to run an exchange program, with OSS officers in Moscow and NKVD officers in Washington. The Russians were eager, but the scheme was shot down by President Roosevelt.
¹⁰
He was entering an election year, and allowing Soviet agents into the United States would be a propaganda gift to his political opponents.

Throughout the summer, other ideas for getting OSS/NKVD cooperation in Eastern Europe had been suggested, but were all blocked by Stalin and his foreign minister, Molotov. General Pavel Fitin, the deputy director of the NKVD, was enthusiastic. Fitin was the brilliant spymaster who had tried to warn Stalin in 1941 that the Germans intended to invade. His relationship with Stalin and Molotov was uneasy. While their ideological paranoia urged them to keep foreigners out, Fitin saw the value in maximizing all sources of intelligence-gathering. He even used his discussions with General William ‘Wild Bill' Donovan, head of the OSS, to chisel information out of him about OSS training, technology, and methods – information which Donovan happily (and rather naively) supplied.
¹¹
Fitin was willing to bypass both Molotov and Stalin, and suggested ways of infiltrating OSS officers into Eastern European countries such as Yugoslavia, Hungary, and Romania secretly through diplomatic channels.
¹²
But in Poland, where the most important German strategic effort was focused (and where the POW crisis was likely to occur), the diplomatic channels did not exist.

As 1944 wore away, Donovan made request after request for permission to put OSS agents into Poland for intelligence-gathering purposes.
¹³
The requests were denied. In fact, there were so many requests from the OSS, continuing on into 1945, that a dispassionate observer might wonder if they were deliberately designed to distract the Russians from more subtle infiltration efforts.

In November 1944, Major General Edmund W. Hill was posted to Moscow, where he joined the American Military Mission as head of its air division and overall commander of all USAAF units and activities in Russia.
¹⁴
Hill's previous appointment had been in Britain, as CO of
the Eighth Air Force's Composite Command.
¹⁵
Seemingly an innocuous umbrella organization for various specialized units, Composite Command included the 492nd Bomb Group, the unit that provided airlift services for the OSS. The modified Liberator bombers of the 492nd were used for parachuting agents into occupied territories. General Hill was deeply involved in operational planning for OSS mission-drops.
¹⁶
If the Military Mission in Moscow had wanted a man who was intimately connected with the operational structure of the OSS in Europe but was not officially an OSS officer, they could not have chosen better than General Edmund Hill.
¹⁷

All the elements that would be needed for a covert operation in Soviet-occupied territory were coming into place.

When Captain Trimble stepped out of his transport onto the frozen ground of Poltava on 15 February 1945, he knew nothing about such things.
¹⁸
But he was about to begin learning.

Soon he would find out first-hand about the Soviets, including what they thought about Americans and about a lot of other things in this war. He had already seen the bewildering contrast between the wonderful, warm hospitality the Russians could show and the callousness that was the other side of it. What he didn't know was how deep the callousness could run, and how horrifying the effects could be. A seasoned veteran of air combat he might be, but in many respects he was still an innocent in the ways of war. The Eastern Front could teach a man about the uttermost ends of war, and how human beings could become beasts.

There were Russian sentries already on hand as Robert and the other passengers disembarked, and a jeep was waiting to take them to the American camp. The sentries had their bayonets fixed: the long, sword-like Russian type that looked particularly threatening. Robert glanced enviously at the men's fur-lined caps; he'd have to snag one for himself as quickly as possible.

The jeep sped across the snowy field. Drawing into himself against the biting cold, Robert had little attention to give to his surroundings. There were few planes scattered about: a couple of C-47s and
two or three battle-scarred B-24 Liberators and B-17 Flying Fortresses bearing a mixture of bomb group markings (presumably these were the salvaged planes that he was here to ferry home). Most of Poltava's aircraft – its squadrons of Russian Yak fighters – were dispersed at the far end of the field. The only thing nearby with Soviet markings was a two-seater biplane that looked like a relic from World War I – a Polikarpov U-2 that the Soviets used for light local transport.

Robert was taken to the officers' quarters – a wooden barracks hut among a cluster of identical buildings lining the edge of a dreary roadway. Looming over it all was a row of old apartment buildings, blackened by fire and bomb-damaged. He had been instructed to report to the commanding officer immediately on arrival, so he deposited his kit and set off for headquarters. Following a sign nailed to a dead-looking tree beside a muddy road, he walked past the broken façades of more burned-out buildings and found the HQ of Eastern Command, which was another wooden shack. It was even less impressive than Debach HQ, which had at least had nice trees around it.

Robert went in and, having expected to be kept waiting, was admitted to the CO's office with startling speed. Here he got his first view of the man who was about to turn his life upside down and scare the living daylights out of him.

Colonel Thomas K. Hampton was a man of indeterminate age and even more indeterminate status. His premature baldness made him look older than he probably was, and his heavy eyebrows, solemn eyes, and long jaw enhanced the effect. Robert would know him for quite a while before discovering that there was a good deal of humor and warmth in Colonel Hampton; right now, he had little enough to be humorous about.

The status of his command was uncertain. In terms of its administrative position, Eastern Command was equivalent to formations like the Eighth and Fifteenth Air Forces, and yet it had hardly any infrastructure, no subordinate units, and its complement of aircraft was limited to a handful of transports. In scale, it was on a par with a small transport and maintenance battalion, and yet its senior officers were
at the very center of relations between the war's two most powerful combatant nations.

At a personal level, the Americans got on well with the Russians. There were frequent parties at the officers' and enlisted men's clubs, and gatherings at the base's theater and Russian restaurant, to which the Russians brought their vast talent for lively celebration and a real air of hospitable warmth. But then there was the official relationship, which was policed by the NKVD and colored by two sets of values and principles which were worlds apart.

About half of Colonel Hampton's time was devoted to diplomatic liaison with his Soviet opposite number, Major General S.K. Kovalev, overall commander of the Poltava base. Besides being an enthusiastic reveler, Kovalev was a cunning diplomat, whereas Hampton didn't really have the temperament for it. He regarded it as his duty to put the interests of American service personnel first and had no patience with Soviet obstruction and little ability with diplomatic doublespeak.

There were one or two officers in Eastern Command who, while not exactly sympathetic to the Soviets, empathized with the Soviet viewpoint; they regarded Hampton as needlessly antagonistic.
¹⁹
He had been barred by the Russians from flying into Poland because they believed he was gathering political intelligence (which was how they viewed reporting on Soviet misconduct).
²⁰
He never neglected to stick up for his men. There had been sporadic incidents in which unknown Russian soldiers had shot dogs belonging to American servicemen. Hampton informed General Kovalev that his men took ‘a very serious view of such cruelty to animals', and warned that if the men ever caught a Russian soldier injuring a dog, ‘I refuse to take any responsibility for what might happen to the Russian.'

Robert would grow to like Colonel Hampton, and eventually learned first-hand about the stresses of his position. He greeted Robert with a sour smile. ‘Welcome to paradise, Captain Trimble,' he said.

Robert laughed, and murmured something about being keen to take up his duties. Hampton looked oddly at him and asked if he understood fully what his duties were.

‘Why yes,' said Robert. ‘I'm here to ferry those salvaged aircraft back to their groups.' He guessed that the Forts would be going to England, and the Libs to Italy, and wondered if they'd all have to go via the tortuous Tehran route.

Hampton frowned sternly at him. ‘You're not here to be a ferry pilot,' he said. ‘Didn't they brief you in London?' He demanded to see Robert's passport, and studied it closely while Robert felt the first prickles of cold sweat. ‘When the clearance request came through from Tehran saying you were down for temporary duty only, we had to query USSTAF about your appointment, to be sure we had the right man.
²¹
Seems we do. Have you taken a look at this passport, Captain?' Hampton said. ‘This is a diplomatic passport, identifying you as a United States government official.' He handed it back. ‘You should've been briefed on this back in England.'

Robert had a dizzying sense of déjà-vu; suddenly he was back in that office in the US Embassy in London, objecting stridently while they tried to hustle him into being a spy.

‘You're not here to be a ferry pilot,' Hampton repeated. ‘I have enough pilots for the work we do here. That was just a ruse to get you out here. Your appointment comes from the Military Mission in Moscow. You'll be working with the OSS, Captain Trimble; you're going to be our agent in Poland.'

W
HEN
R
OBERT BUNKED
down that night, his head was spinning. He was exhausted; it seemed like days had passed since setting out from Rostov that morning. Whole days of bewilderment, briefing, and suppressed indignation. He'd been lied to, right from the start. He could excuse his old commander, Colonel Helton – he'd almost certainly been just as dumb about this as Robert himself. But somebody somewhere, in the shadowy upper reaches of the chain of command, had cooked up a lie and made him eat it.

His course was set, and there was nothing he could do about it. They'd caught, plucked, and basted him without him even realizing it.
How could he have been so stupid? The thought that he had traded the opportunity to go home to Eleanor – even if it was just a couple of weeks – for
this
… this nightmarish mission that sounded like a one-way ticket to a garrote or a firing squad, it was enough to make a man weep.

Robert's first impulse when Colonel Hampton delivered his ambush was to rebel, to refuse as he had in London when they'd tried to make a spy of him (as he thought). But he suppressed the urge; it wouldn't do here, in this back-of-beyond place, with this dark-eyed nemesis staring at him. So he bit back his indignation and asked what kind of ‘agent' he was meant to be, what his task was, and what the OSS had to do with it.

‘Don't worry,' said Hampton, ‘we're not going to parachute you into Berlin or anything like that.'

Robert was glad to hear it. But when he heard what
was
going to be done with him, he almost choked. He listened dumbly as Colonel Hampton gave him his first unsettling glimpse behind the curtain.