Snow Wolf (11 page)

Anna hesitated, and before she could
reply, Massey said in fluent Russian, "Let's cut out all the formal crap,
Romulka. What exactly are you saying?"

The cold eyes stared over at Massey, and
Romulka's voice was full of scorn. "The question was addressed to the
woman, not YOU."

"Then make it simple so she
understands the situation perfectly."

Romulka glared at Massey, then smiled
coldly and sat back.

"Basically this-if she agrees to
return to Moscow there will be a retrial for her past deeds. If the courts
decide she was harshly treated or wrongly accused, then her recent crimes,
shooting the border guards and escaping from a prison camp, will be judged in
that light. Can I put it any simpler, even for an obviously simple man such as
yourself"

Massey ignored the remark and looked at
Anna. "What do you say, Anna?"

"I don't want to go back."
Romulka said firmly, "Diplomatic efforts will be made to ensure you do.
But I'm giving you the opportunity to return of your own free will and have
your case reviewed. If I were you I would give such a proposal serious
thought."

"I told you. I don't want to go
back. I was imprisoned for no wrong, I committed no crime before I was sent to
the Gulag. And it's not me who ought to be tried, but the people who sent me to
a prison camp."

Romulka's face suddenly twisted in anger.
"Listen to me, you stupid bitch. Imagine how unpleasant we could make
things for your child. Come back and face the courts and you may see her again.
Don't, and I swear to you the rest of her life in that orphanage could be made
very unpleasant indeed. Do you understand me?"

Massey tried hard to control the urge to
hit the man, and then he saw the emotion welling in Anna's eyes, the pain
growing on her face until she seemed to snap, all the anguish suddenly flooding
out. She lunged across the table and her nails dug into Romulka's face, drawing
blood.

"No! You won't hurt my daughter like
that ... You won't!"

As Massey fought to restrain her, Romulka
went to grab her hair.

"You bitch!"

Massey and the aide stepped in between
them, before the policeman appeared at the door and Massey quickly ushered Anna
from the room.

As Romulka removed a handkerchief from
his pocket and dabbed blood from his face, he glared at Massey. "You
haven't heard the last of this! Your embassy will learn of this outrage!"

Massey stared angrily at the Russian.
"Tell who you goddamned like, you piece of shit. But she's made her
decision and we'll make ours." Massey jabbed a finger hard in Romulka's
chest. "Now get the hell out of here before I hit you myself."

For a moment it seemed as if Romulka
would rise to the threat as he glared back at Massey, a fierce rage in his
eyes, but suddenly he snapped up his briefcase and stormed out of the room.

Romulka's aide lit a cigarette and looked
over at Massey. "Not a very sensible thing the woman just did, considering
our embassy will most likely succeed in getting her back. And besides, Romulka
is a dangerous man to cross."

"So am i, buddy."

Massey arrived at the hospital that
evening and they walked down to the lake. They sat on one of the benches and
Anna said, "What I did today didn't help, did it? Has your Ambassador
decided what's going to happen to me?"

She looked at Massey uncertainly but he
smiled. "After he heard about Romulka's threat he agreed to grant you
asylum. We're going to help you start a new life in America, Anna. Give you a
new identity and help you settle down and find a job. You won't be given
citizenship right away but that's normal in cases like yours. You'll have to be
a resident for five years, just like any other legal immigrant. But if you
don't break the law or do anything crazy it shouldn't be a problem."

Massey saw her close her eyes, then open
them again slowly. There was a look of relief on her face.

"Thank you."

Massey smiled. "Don't thank me,
thank the Ambassador. Or maybe you should thank Romulka. Tomorrow you'll be
flown to Germany. There you'll be filled in on the arrangements that are being
made to help you. After that you'll be flown to the United States. Where to, I
don't know. That kind of detail isn't up to me.

For a long time Anna Khorev said nothing.
She looked out at the cold lake. Finally she said, "Do you think I'll be
happy in America?"

Massey saw the sudden fear in her face,
as if it was only now she realized the enormity of what had happened and the
uncertainty that lay ahead.

"It's a good country to make a fresh
start in. You've been badly hurt and your emotions are in turmoil. You don't
know what the future holds for you and your past is a painful memory. Right now
you're living in a kind of twilight zone. You'll probably feel confused and
lost for a long time. You'll be in a new country with no friends. But you're
going to heal with time, I know you will. That's about it. Except for the bad
news. And that is we'll probably never meet again. But I wish you happiness,
Anna."

"You know something, Massey?"

"What?"

"If things were different, I would
have liked to have seen you again. Just to talk. To have been friends. I think
you're one of the nicest men I've ever met."

Massey smiled. "Thanks for the
compliment. But I guess u haven't known many men, Anna. I'm just an ordinary
guy, believe me."

"Will you come to say goodbye at the
air-port?"

"Sure, if you like." He looked
down at her and some instinct made him touch her shoulder gently. "You'll
be OK. I know you will. Time will heal your heart."

"I wish I could believe that."

Massey smiled. "Trust me."

There was a patina of snow on the ground
as Massey and the two men walked with her to the aircraft. The Finnish
Constellation was waiting on the apron and the passengers were already
boarding.

Massey hesitated at the foot of the metal
steps.

He offered her his hand and she kissed
him on the cheek.

"So long, Anna. Take care of
yourself."

"I hope I see you again,
Massey."

She was looking at his face as she
boarded and he thought he saw tears at the corners of her eyes. He knew he had
been the first real emotional contact she had had in the last six months and he
guessed he had made an impression. He knew it would have been the same with
most people who escaped over the Soviet border. Frightened and alone, they
grasped the first kind hand offered to them.

He also knew that no matter what his
intuition told him he could have been wrong about her and the Finnish SUPO
officer who doubted her story could have been right; Massey didn't believe he
was wrong but knew only time would tell.

It was five minutes later when he stood
in the Departures lounge and watched as the Constellation trundled down the
runway before being finally sucked up into the Baltic twilight, its flashing
lights sending an eerie glow out into the surrounding cloud.

Massey looked at the empty sky for a few
moments before he said softly, "Do svidaniva."

As he pulled up his coat collar and
walked back toward the exit, he was too preoccupied to notice the dark-haired
young man lounging by the newspaper stand, watching the departing aircraft.

January 13th-27th 1953

Bavaria, Germany. January 13th, 11 Pm.

It was raining hard all over southern
Germany that night, lightning flickering on the horizon, and no weather for
flying.

The airfield barracks complex in the
heart of the Bavarian lake district was shrouded in low cloud and mist. No more
than a runway and a collection of wooden huts that had once belonged to the
Luftwaffe's crack Southern Air Command, it now housed the CIA's Soviet
Operations Division in Germany.

As Jake Massey came out of the Nissen hut
that served as the Operations Room he looked up at the filthy black sky, then
pulled up his collar and ran across to a covered army jeep waiting in the
pouring rain. A fork of lightning streaked across the darkness and as he slid
into the jeep the man sitting in the driver's seat said, "A night for the
bed, I'd say. With a good woman beside you and a bottle of Scotch."

Massey smiled as the jeep started along a
tarmac road. "You could do worse, Janne."

"So who have I got tonight?"

"A couple of former Ukrainian SS men
bound for Moscow, via Kiev."

"Charming. You always did keep the
best of company, Jake."

"It's either work for us or they
face a war crimes trial. Nast@ types, both of them, part of an SS group who
executed a number of women and children in Riga, but beggars like us can't be
choosers."

"That's what I like about working
for the CIA, you get to meet the most interesting people."

The man beside Massey wore a pilot's
leather flying jacket d a white silk scarf. He had a cheerful face and although
he was short and stocky his straw-blond hair was unmistakably Nordic.

At thirty-one, Janne Saarinen had already
seen more trouble than most men. Like some Finns after the Winter War with
Russia in '40 who saw their country's allegiance with Hitler's Germany as a
chance to get even with Moscow, Saarinen had thrown in his lot with the Germans
but paid a price.

His right leg had been blown off below
the knee by a Russian shrapnel burst that tore into the cockpit of his
Luftwaffe Messerschmitt at five thousand feet during a Baltic skirmish, and now
he had to make do with a wooden contraption that passed for a leg. There was
still a piece of the Russian metal somewhere in the ugly mass of scar tissue
where the German surgeon had sewn the stump together, but at least Saarinen was
still walking, even if with a pronounced limp.

The jeep drove down to a runway situated
near a rather large lake, a collection of hangars nearby, the doors of one of
them open and arc lights blazing inside.

Massey climbed out of the jeep and ran in
out of the rain, followed by Saarinen.

Two men were sitting in a corner by a
table, parachutes beside them, smoking cigarettes as they waited near a
black-painted DC-3 aircraft with no markings which was parked just inside the
hangar, a flight of metal steps leading up into the open cargo door in the side
of the fuselage.

One of the men was in his late twenties,
tall and thin, a nervous look on his anxious face, which already looked brutal
despite his relative youth.

The second was older, a rough-looking
specimen and heavily built, with red hair and a hard face that seemed hewn out
of rock.

He had a look of insolence about him and
he stood up when he saw Massey enter the hangar, and as he walked across the
man tossed away his cigarette.

He said to Massey in Russian, "No
night for man or beast, let alone flying. Are we still going,
Americanski?"

"I'm afraid so."

The man shrugged and quickly lit another
cigarette, his nerves obviously on edge, then looked back toward his whitefaced
companion.

"Sergei here has a bad case of the
frights. From the look of him he thinks we're doomed. And on a night like this
I'm inclined to agree. If the Russian radar doesn't help put us in an early
grave, the lousy weather probably will."

Massey smiled. "Oh, I wouldn't say
that. You're in good hands. Say hello to your pilot."

Massey introduced Saarinen but because of
regulations didn offer the Finn's name and the two men shook hands briefly.

"Charmed, I'm sure," said the
Ukrainian. He looked at him!

"seriously," a small nervous
grin flickering on his face. "A small point, but your pilot's got a false
leg. I just thought I'd mention it." Saarinen said, offended, "You
could always try taking off without me if it bothers you. And you and your
friend ov( there had better put out those damned cigarettes or none of us will
be going anywhere." He nodded over to the aircraft. "There are six
thousand pounds of highly inflammable fuel in those tanks. Do it, now!"

The younger man stubbed out his cigarette
the moment Sariiien barked the order, but the older Ukrainian stared at
Saarinen sullenly, then grudgingly followed suit.

"Who knows? Perhaps it might be a
better way to die than taking our chances with a pilot who's a cripple."

Massey saw the anger flare on Saarinen's
face and he said quickly to the Ukrainian, "That's enough, Boris. Just
remember, your life's in this man's hands so be nice to him. And for your
information, you've got the best pilot in the business. And he knows the route
as well."

"Let's hope so." The Ukrainian
shrugged and said grudgingly to Saarinen as he nodded over to the DC-3,
"So you think we'll make it in this American crate?"

Saarinen bit back his temper and said
evenly, "I don't know why not. It might be a lousy night for flying but
then that means the Reds won't be too anxious to put their own planes up. It
should be all right. The danger point is approaching the Soviet Czech border.
After that it's roses all the way."