Snow Wolf (8 page)

There would be other men who would want
to speak with her, he said. Other questions to be asked, and maybe she would
have to tell her story again, but for now she was to rest and try to build up
her strength. The following day they would move her to a private hospital in
Helsinki. He would do his best to help her.

she watched him go and then she was left
alone in the small white room. Somewhere off in the distance she could hear a
radio playing cheerful dance music and it made her think of another time and another
place, the first night Ivan Khorev had taken her dancing on the banks of the
Moscow River, and in laughing voices echo beyond the room. the corridor she
heard She felt the grief suddenly flood in on her like a tidal wave and she
tried not to cry.

It was a long way from the icy wastes of
Nicochka. A long way from the cold and despair and the pain she had lived with
for months, the aching in her breast that felt like someone had stuck a knife
in her heart and she was slowly bleeding to death.

And all the time the image in her mind
that wouldn't go away.

She and Ivan walking in Gorky Park in
summer, Ivan smiling, the look of pride and love on his face as he held Sasha
in his arms.

Berlin. December 15th The Ilyushin
transport plane with red stars on the wings bumped to a halt on the icy runway
at Schbnefeld airport in East Berlin. A thin man with sharp features-a pursed
mouth, long face, and small bright eyes--disembarked and walked quickly across
the tarmac to a waiting Zil car.

As the car drove out through the gates
and headed east away from the city, Colonel Grenady Kraskin took off his cap
and rubbed a hand along his thinning hairline. At sixty-two, he was a veteran
and senior KGB officer with over thirty years' experience. Answerable only to
Beria and Stalin, he was responsible for special interior operations, which
came under the control of 2nd Directorate, based in the seven-story KGB
Headquarters in Moscow's Dzerzhinsky Square. In this capacity Krasicin had
traveled to East Berlin for his monthly inspection tour of top-secret Soviet
research facilities, which he carried out with customary thoroughness.

After a thirty-kilometer drive, the black
Zil turned off the main Potsdam highway onto a minor road that finally led past
the sleepy German hamlet of Luckenwaide. At the end of a road lined with tall
fir trees stood a double gate with a metal barrier. Beyond the barrier lay a
tarmac track with barbed-wire runs on either side. Two uniformed guards snapped
stiffly to attention as the Zil drew up and an officer came out of a concrete
guard hut to check the passenger's identity cards. Moments later the barrier
was lifted and the car drove through.

A half kilometer down the barbed-wire run
Kraskin saw the mouth of an underground tunnel, like giant concrete jaws
erupting from the earth. The car drove down and finally came to a halt.

When Krasicin stepped out he was in a
vast bunker that looked like an enormous underground car park. There was a
sickly smell of diesel fumes and stale air. Intense neon light blazed overhead
and a dozen or more military vehicles were parked on the concourse. Off to the
right was an elevator, its metal doors open and waiting.

The officer in charge saluted smartly and
led Kraskin across. Both men stepped in. The doors closed and the elevator
descended.

The Pan American Airways DC-6, Flight 209
from Paris, was almost empty and the blond-haired man sat in a window seat two
rows from the front.

As the aircraft banked to port and came
in over Berlin's Wannsee Lake, the man saw the broad ribbon of the Unter Den
Linden stretched below him. Here and there the surrounding suburbs were still
peppered with old bomb craters, and looking east he saw the still crumbling,
gutted buildings in the Russian Zone.

It was ten minutes later when the plane landed
in West Berlin's Tempelhof airport. The immigration and customs checks were
thorough and there was a military presence everywhere since the Russians had
sealed off East Berlin with a ten-yardwide shoot-to-kill strip. But the
uniformed West German official did not spot the false American passport and the
man passed through without too much delay.

No one seemed to take any notice of the
blond man, and moments later he saw the gray Volkswagen parked opposite the
civilian car park. An attractive woman in her early thirties sat behind the
wheel smoking a cigarette, and he recognized her dark Russian features. She
wore a blue scarf around her neck, and when she noticed him she tossed her
cigarette out of the window.

He waited a full minute before he crossed
to the car and put his case on the back seat, his eyes carefully scanning the
Arrivals area before he moved.

He didn't speak as he climbed in beside
the woman, and a moment later she pulled out quickly from the curb and drove
toward Berlin.

Colonel Grenady Kraskin looked across at
the big, slovenly man seated opposite and smiled. They were in Sergei Enger's
office on the first of several floors in an underground complex that had once
been built by the Germans.

Kraskin smiled. "Well, Sergei, tell
me your troubles."

Sergei Enger was a stout, untidy figure
of a man with dark, thinning curly hair and a plump stomach. A physics graduate
from Moscow University, he was head of research in the Luckenwaide underground
complex. Despite his easy-going manner and untidy personal appearance-Enger
frequently wore mismatched socks and carried the remains of breakfast or lunch
on his tie-the man had a brain as sharp as a scalpel and a talent for
organizing others.

Enger smiled back weakly. Troubles he
certainly had, but Grenady Kraskia didn't have the look of a man you shared
personal problems with.

The colonel's face was sharp and hard and
weather-beaten. There were ruts in his leathery skin, deep wrinkles that almost
looked like scars, and combined with a chilling smile, they had a frightening
effect. And the man's crisply pressed black uniform and immaculately polished
boots always intimidated Enger.

Outwardly a reasonable and intelligent
man, Kraskin's external mask hid a dark and savage streak. In one winter
campaign near Zadonsk on the River Don in the Caucasus during the Bolshevik
Revolution, Kraskin's battalion had engaged a detachment of four hundred
Whites, wiping them out in three days of savage hand-to-hand fighting.
Promising mercy to the survivors and their families who had surrendered,
Kraskin instead had them lined up against a wall and shot, showing no mercy to
women and children.

Enger shrugged and toyed with a pencil on
the desk. "What makes you think I have troubles, Grenady? The project is
going better than I expected."

Kraskin beamed. "Excellent. I'm glad
to hear it."

Enger stood up, as if still bothered by
something, and crossed to the broad glass window that looked down onto the vast
complex below.

The place never ceased to amaze Enger,
even after spending two years there. The Nazis had started work on the
underground complex ten years before, intending it as a V2 factory, but the
Russian advance into eastern Prussia had ended all that. Now it was one of the
most secret and advanced research facilities in East Germany, the entire
operation sited underground, doing away with the need for camouflage above
ground Lebel.

Beyond the office, glass lights blazed
overhead. The whole area was swamped in daylight. Metal boilers and
air-conditioning conduits ran along the walls for almost half a kilometer. Here
and there men sculked about in white coats.

Enger looked down at the amazing scene
for several moments before turning back.

"I left the details you requested in
the file on the desk, Grenady. I trust they meet with your approval?"

Kraskin picked up the folder. When he had
finished scrutinizing the progress sheets inside he turned back to Enger.

"You've done well, Sergei. The
German scientists, they seem to be outperforming themselves." Kraskin
grinned. "It's amazing what the threat of being sent to a Gulag will
do."

He smiled at Enger. "You look like a
man who has the weight of the world on his shoulders. If it's not the project,
what is it? Come, Sergei, let's hear whatever's on your mind."

Enger hesitated. "But could I be
frank, Grenady? Could I really speak freely?"

Kraskin laughed. "If you're asking
me are these rooms bugged, the answer is no. I made a point of deeming you a
special case."

"I'm indebted, Grenady."

Kraskin waved a hand dismissively and
half smiled. "Nonsense, what are friends for? Say what's on your
mind."

Enger removed a soiled handkerchief from
his pocket and dabbed his brow. "You've no idea what it's like here. The
constant hum of the machines, the conditioned air. I don't know bow the Germans
stood it. I'm glad my work here is almost at an end."

As he sucked on his cigarette, Kraskin
said, "So how much longer before your part of the operation is
completed?"

"The way it's going, a lot earlier
than we thought. Borosky and the other scientists will be arriving in the next
few weeks to link the various projects together."

"So how much longer?" repeated
Kraskin.

Enger shrugged. "A month, maybe
sooner. Our initial tests have been very promising. And the test site in the
Caucasus is nearing completion. I've also read our latest reports of the
Americans' progress sent from Moscow. We're going to be ahead of them. Their
explosion in the Pacific was small in comparison to the one we intend. Really
it was only a triggering device the Americans detonated. I can almost guarantee
we'll be the first to explode the actual hydrogen bomb."

"I'm very pleased to hear that,
Sergei. I'll make sure to mention your diligence in my report."

Enger paid no heed to Kraskin's
statement. His voice suddenly softened and he said, "Do you think there's
going to be a war, Grenady?"

Kraskin laughed. Enger looked at him in
amazement. "What's so funny?"

"is that what's been bothering
you?"

"It had crossed my mind. You have to
admit it's being talked about."

Kraskin grinned. "And what makes you
think there's going to be a war, my friend?"

"Damn it, Grenady, it doesn't take a
genius to figure it out."

Enger nodded back toward the underground
bunker. "I've been living down there for the past two years like a mole,
not a scientist. Days go by when I don't see sunlight." He hesitated.
"The way things are between us and the Americans right now, some kind of
conflict looks inevitable. For almost two years now we've been working
frantically on our weapons program. And in the past six months since the
Americans exploded their first device the funds have suddenly become unlimited.
And then there have been the threats. Veiled, but there. To all of us, not just
the German scientists. Work harder, much harder, or there will be
repercussions. There has to be a reason, Grenady. We're racing against time.
Why? Is there something Moscow isn't telling us?"

Kraskin stood up slowly. "There
won't be a war if the Americans see sense."

"What does that mean? I'm a
scientist, I deal in facts. Give me facts, Grenady."

Kraskin swung around and his words had a
savage ring. "The Americans think they own the fucking world. They think
they have some God-given right to control this planet, tell everyone how it
should be run. Well, we're not going to take that shit from them."

Enger shook his head. "You can't
imagine what the next war would be like. These bombs we're working on, they are
not like the ones the Americans dropped on Japan. They're much more powerful.
Entire cities and their populations can be totally wiped from the map with one
explosion. In Nagasaki and Hiroshima people survived some ten kilometers from
the epicenter. With a thermonuclear explosion big enough, that isn't even a
remote possibility." Enger hesitated. "Besides, I'm not deaf,
Grenady, I may be a thousand miles from Moscow but I still hear the
rumors."

Kraskin raised his eyes before he drew on
his cigarette. "And what rumors are they?"

Enger hesitated. "That we're gearing
up for war. That Stalin wants the bomb completed fast, so he can drop it on the
Americans before he dies. They say he's taken to walking alone in the Kremlin
gardens, talking aloud to himself. That his behavior has become more erratic
and unpredictable. They say he trusts no one, not even himself. Doesn't that
worry you?"

Kraskin looked sternly at Enger.
"And who tells you such things?" Enger said nervously, "They're
simply rumors, Grenady. But everybody here speaks of them."

Kraskin's voice had a hint of menace.
"I think you'd be wise to ignore such rumors and not doubt Comrade
Stalin's mental health too loudly, my friend. There are people in Moscow who
might hear and start to doubt yours. Statements like that could have you locked
in a rubber room.. Or shoveling salt in a Siberian mine. Or worse."

"Then just answer me this, They say
the purges are about to start again. That people are being arrested in huge
numbers and shot or sent to the camps. Especially Jews. Is it true?"