Stalemate (The Red Gambit Series) (41 page)

Another line of thought to explore later, the two Colonels looked at each other and agreed on the point.

Another body arrived, this time dragged from the landing area. The SS soldier had been struck by four, possibly five bullets.

Looking up at the Major, the two senior officers waited for him to continue.

“It seems that they had a machine-gun set up there,” he indicated a ruined building at the T-junction.

The dead bodies of the NKVD security squad had been cleared away and laid out, ready for burial.

“We have found numerous German casings there.”

He turned, catching the two Colonels off-guard.

“There we have found signs of other groups waiting at the rear of the barracks building, and at least four of the NKVD unit died there.”

The
GRU officer was there for something completely different, but could not show his main interest. Perversely, Bakhatin was not privy to the true nature of matters at Fischausen, as he was a recent arrival in Königsberg

Witte took the lead.
Rather than force the Major’s hand, he tried to gently steer him in the direction he needed.

“So, two buildings caught fire. The NKVD
barracks and that one there. What is that?”

“Good question
, Comrade Polkovnik. I had assumed it was the officer’s quarters, but that was here,” he indicated the building directly opposite the smoking ruin, which had once housed the NKVD security force.

“Why did you assume that
, Comrade Mayor?”

“Because that
is where we found both officers. The fire was very intense, Comrades.”

There was no need to be more forthcoming, each man there had seen his fair share of death.

“The bodies of the military personnel have been recovered, and placed ready for burial.”

Witte looked back at the line of covered
Soviet corpses, his mind totally alive and waiting for the next words.

“We assumed the women were
German whores, so we quickly buried them over there.”

He indicated a freshly turned patch of soil beside the destroyed gasthaus.

“Women, you say Mayor? Why assume they were whores?”

“Apologies
, Comrade Polkovnik, the NKVD unit here did not have female soldiers, so there seemed little alternative.”

The GRU officer hesitated, then took the plunge.

“I will need to see the female bodies, Comrade Mayor,” the NKVD Colonel’s head swivelled at lightning speed.

The Army Major contemplated asking why
, but quickly decided that he was better off doing the job’ and getting the two Colonels off his back.

He shouted at a Yefreytor commanding a small work detail, who ran to his side and sprang to attention.

“Get your men to uncover the female bodies immediately, Comrade Istlov. The Colonel wishes to inspect the corpses.”

Yefreytor Istlov harried his men into position
, and shovels made short work of disinterring the dead.

‘I hope the Chekist bastard has a strong stomach.’

The thought brought the slightest of smiles to the NCO’s face.

The NKVD officer sauntered over, the GRU Colonel moved swiftly, betraying his anxiety.

More than one mind noticed, and logged the information for another time.

The two smaller corpses were badly
charred, no distinguishing features of note, save the few strands of blonde hair on one skull, preserved by contact with something that didn’t burn.

Witte moved his attention to the adult corpse, almost destroyed by the fire.

“That one held a knife, Comrade Polkovnik.”

Witte held the Major’s gaze for a moment, partly to press him to continue
, and partly to give him time for what was to come.

“It
seems likely that she and Mayor Savitch had a fight, during which the Mayor was killed.”

The army officer threw a casual hand at the line of uniformed corpses.

“His throat had been cut, and it also seemed he had lost vital parts. We counted over fifty small stab wounds to the front of his torso.”

Both colonels immediately wondered why the Major had not informed them of this as a priority, and the NKVD officer promised himself to ensure a black mark was recorded against the infantryman.

Witte stoically accepted the man’s inexperience with investigative matters.

In any case, the swine Savitch was no loss.

Pulling out his pocketknife, he extended the blade and went to work on the eyelids, both fused by the extreme heat.

Faint hints of blue
-grey greeted his enquiry, and he mentally ticked a box.

He examined the woman
’s right breast, but was unable to find the childhood scar, so obvious during her initial NKVD examination.

Something caught his eye, a sliver of gold, and he pushed at the blackened skull, tilting it sufficiently to uncover a chain around her neck.

Slipping his blade underneath it, he teased it out millimetre by horrible millimetre, until the opal cluster came into view, relatively untouched by the attention of the flames.

Satisfied, Witte stood back, permitting Bakhatin his own opportunity to see the body of Greta Knocke.

The two Colonels moved patiently through the affected area, gradually picking up a picture of a Werewolf attack against the hated NKVD, an attack that had inadvertently claimed the lives of the three Knocke’s.

Later that evening, w
hen both men were back in their warm and cosy billets, the report writing began, sheets of paper to satisfy the higher authorities and to be filed for posterity.

At the end of his submission, Colonel Witte considered the matter very carefully,
and only after twenty-five minutes of solid reasoning did he commit himself to paper.

When the report fell under General Pekunin’s gaze later the following day, the GRU head
weighed the suggestion of the investigating officer

‘...it would seem reasonable to assume that this was a random act by a
n isolated group, leftover from the German War, stimulated into action by the latest fighting. As such, there is no record of the action happening, and no record of the casualties.

With that in mind, it would seem reasonable to assume that the
German officer Knocke cannot reasonably develop knowledge of the loss of his family, and, therefore, can continue to be employed under threat...”

Pekunin waited whilst his deputy read the report through, infuriatingly slowly for a quick-witted man.

“Well?”

Kochetov returned the report to the desk.

“I agree, Comrade General. I think Witte is right. The operation is still ongoing.”

Pekunin’s thoughts exactly, and he dictated a report for
the personal consumption of Beria and Zhukov, supporting the submission by Colonel Witte.

Pekunin signed the finished documents with a flourish, unaware that he was
contributing to his own downfall.

Man never made any material as resilient as the human spirit.

Bern Williams

Her employment in the residence of Oberst Christian Adolf Löwe had terminated abruptly.

It had not been the plan
, but natural reactions meant that her departure from Baden-Baden was immediate and irrevocable.

It had been
an error obviously, and she should have found some other way to remove his wandering hands, but no one was prepared to challenge Valois on the matter. De Walle started to, but decided against pushing it, the flashing anger in his subordinate’s eyes telling him silence was a wiser course of action.

Her replacement, another female ‘Deux’ agent, reported that the elderly Löwe still carried the evidence of his failed sexual assault on Anne-Marie Valois. Perhaps the physical damage she had wrought on the retired
German Colonel had also served another purpose, for Löwe had become withdrawn, and no longer pestered his female staff.

Maybe he would revert to type
, once the plaster came off, although the scar on his face would probably never disappear.

Released back to her duties within the Legion Intelligence set-up, she had been with De Walle and De Montgomerie when the awful news had arrived.

She broke the strained silence.

“I will do it.”

Neither man argued in favour of an alternative, and neither man wanted the duty.

Knocke was due to arrive at the headquarters within the hour, and would receive a very different reception to that he was anticipating.

De Walle went off in search of Lavalle, so he could be informed, and know why Camerone’s commander would not be at the Senior Officers meeting that lunchtime.

De Montgomerie remained in his office, pondering the ramifications of the horrible news, not envying
his friend the task she had taken upon herself.

Valois took herself off to prepare for delivering
the bad news to a former enemy, a man she had come to admire and respect, and to whom she owed her life.

He knew he wasn’t popular with his peer group, but it was just their envy of his natural ability, as far as Patton was concerned.

That holding such a belief was possibly why he wasn’t popular with his peer
group did not even occur to George Smith Patton.

He had just completed a difficult telephone discussion with Devers, the Army Group commander.

Patton snorted to himself as he recalled the verbal confrontation.

‘Jake Devers Nil, George
Patton One.’

Notwithstanding some
admitted minor character issues, Patton knew he was not the mad egotist that he was considered to be. However, that was something he mainly kept to himself.

Easing himself into his campaign chair,
the white-haired General commenced mapping out his new orders to Third Army.

In 1943,
George S. Patton, then a three-star in command of Seventh Army, had given his normal fiery pep talks to some of his units prior to the invasion of Sicily, using phrases like, ‘the only good German is a dead German’, de facto verbal orders that cost many a Axis prisoner their life. In particular, the 45th US Infantry Division had taken his words literally, and shot many prisoners out of hand. Although the notorious slapping incident was blamed for his loss of the Seventh Army, the prisoner ‘order’ to his soldiers also contributed greatly.

Patton had little doubt that it would all come back and haunt him in his later days.

He had no idea that it would visit itself upon him this very day.

Sabine Faber knew this was her moment
, and she acted decisively.

She had harboured and
nurtured her inner feelings, keeping them safely hidden, earning trust, and becoming a familiar figure around the Third Army Headquarters.

Fraulein Faber was an intelligence-cleared cleaner and, in that capacity, had been entrusted with tending more sensitive areas, especially as she was the daughter of a
German officer serving in one of the new Republican units.

Intelligence had missed one vital matter.

She was also the sister of the dead Oberleutnant Maximillian Faber, late of the 1st Fallschirm-Panzer Division ‘Hermann Goering’.

Max Faber had been taken prisoner
in Sicily, at the Biscari Airfield, on the 14th July 1943. He had been summarily executed by men of the 45th US Infantry Division, some of whom were tried for the offence.

Had they not been
brought before the military court, then Sabine would never have learnt of the circumstances of her brother’s death, and would not have built up a hatred for the man responsible.

The man in the room
, outside of which, she now prepared herself.

Picking up the tools of her trade, she knocked on the dark wood doors.

“Enter.”

Pushing open both doors, Sabine slid into the room, receiving a cordial welcome from the man she had come to kill.