The Berkut (80 page)

"What if I survive? You're not afraid that I'll tell the world that Adolf Hitler is alive and in your hands?"

"Who would believe you?" Ezdovo replied with a smile. "And if they did, would you be strong enough to keep
yourself
alive? There would be many who would want to take vengeance on the man who denied them Hitler. We have no reason to fear you, Colonel."

The German smiled; the Russian was right. When they had gone, he considered his options. Only one made sense.
Gü
nter Brumm lay back on the deck and waited for the end. He was free at last.

141 – April 28, 1946, 11:25 P.M.

Valentine was shaking. What the hell were Jews doing on the ship? Who were they hauling away? He had not seen the face. Could it have been-? How the hell did they get on board? When the procession had passed, he cautiously approached the cabin across the hall and looked inside. There was a man lying on his back on the floor. Brumm! Valentine drew his automatic and stepped inside.

The German lifted his head, a puzzled look on his face. "Who are you?"

It was time to take a chance. Valentine flashed his credentials. "OSS."

Brumm smiled, then began to laugh. "The Americans, too?" he said. His laughter grew louder until tears ran down his cheeks. "Too late, my American friend. Hitler is gone and your Russian allies have mined the ship. We're going to die here. All of us." His laughter was still echoing in the companionway as Valentine ran down the stairs, four at a leap, to the crew area. People were everywhere, nervous like cattle before a storm, milling and moody, but not yet out of control. In the crew's quarters he opened a locker and found a single kapok life jacket. Putting it on, he tightened the straps as he ran up to the main deck.

A sailor blocked his way. "What's going on?" he challenged. "What are you doing in this area?" Valentine struck the man in the nose with the heel of his hand, and felt the cartilage drive upward into his brain. As he slumped to the deck Valentine stepped over the body, tucked his pistol in his belt, climbed the railing and hovered for a moment to get his balance in order to push off hard.

Several passengers on the deck near him grabbed at his trousers. "Don't worry," a woman's voice said soothingly. "They'll get the engines started. It will be all right; you'll see." The voice was one of certainty.

Valentine cupped his hands over his crotch, inhaled deeply and jumped out as far as he could. He struck hard and went deep. When he bobbed to the surface he began to swim, fighting his way up long salty swells into the wind, taking a breath only every ten or twelve strokes. The explosions came before he expected them. They were unspectacular dull thuds, but the sound and shock carried easily through the sea, and he knew the ship would sink. Keep swimming, he told himself. The big bang would occur when the sea spilled into the white
hot boilers. When it did come, it was a huge blast that lifted a red
-
and-white fireball into the sky and rained debris on him for nearly a minute. When he could see again, the ship was gone; all that could be heard were a few pitiful voices screaming for help. Valentine scanned the surface for flotsam and finally spied a large object not far away. It was a flat cork-filled raft, low in the water but stable, and he managed to pull himself onto it before collapsing. He could hear voices in the dark, but could see no survivors. Once a child's voice shrieked that there was "something" in the water. Sharks, he realized, instinctively drawing up his legs and somehow getting all of his body onto the raft. Soon there would be a feeding frenzy. Knowing it was useless to look for others, he lay back, riding the waves before the wind, alone with the terrible knowledge that would stay with him the rest of his life.

142 – May 7, 1946, 1:00 P.M.

The train in the Odessa freight yard consisted of a black diesel, four Pullman cars with a flatbed on each end and a rust-colored caboose. The flatbeds had low walls of armor plating and firing ports. At the center of each, a small Czech ack-ack gun was mounted on a large steel tripod. Each antiaircraft weapon was surrounded by air-cooled, American 50-caliber machine guns. For an attack from above, each car's gun placement was designed to provide a deadly field of fire, though in its several years the train had never been attacked, and now that the war was long over, it seemed unlikely that it would ever be. Still, Stalin liked his personal train secure; above all else, he took comfort in weapons, the more the better.

The soldiers who served in Stalin's personal guard were handpicked men who would follow any order immediately and die in defense of their leader. Those who failed just once to execute even the smallest directive from their superiors were shot without trial or comment. Each understood that his duty must be performed perfectly every time. Now these men were posted in a defensive circle around the train, as alert and ready as a combat division on the verge of battle.

The special passenger in the train was still drugged. Dr. Gnedin had watched over him personally since they snatched him from the ship, seldom leaving him for more than a moment. The compartment in which the prisoner was kept had been stripped bare. The windows were covered by steel plates, and there were no carpets or furnishings, so there was nothing he could do to kill himself. Having brought him this far, Petrov was determined to see the mission through. He and the remaining members of the Special Operations Group were gathered in a small mud-brick building by the rail siding. It was a bright blue morning with a gentle swirling breeze that created small dust devils and lifted them into the sky. The assault of the ship had taken their bright red. "Ezdovo, Petrov suggests that you take this woman to your mountains and make yourselves a family. Comrade Stalin has issued an order that there be more Ezdovos, and desires that this occur within a biologically acceptable time. To you, Pogrebenoi, Petrov says thank you and wishes me to express his personal affection and gratitude. He also asks me to offer you a gift-from him, from us, from your country
to both of you."

Two small boys stumbled clumsily into the dark room, wide-eyed with fear. When they saw their mother, they threw themselves at her and, clinging, sobbed in her arms.

When the trai
n began to pull away, Ezdovo, T
alia and her sons walked out of the mud-brick building. Petrov was standing in the door of the last Pullman car. The four waved to him, but he did not respond. He was staring out across the countryside, his arms folded across his chest, chin up, his black eyes intense.

They watched silently until the train had disappeared. Then Ezdovo turned to Talia and scooped the boys into his arms. "I'll show you my home in the mountains," he said.

"Is it bigger than Moscow?" the youngest asked. "And better." Ezdovo smiled.

143 – July 1, 1946, 2:40 P.M.

It was afternoon, cool and windy. The silver-brown James River stirred under a gust, and chocolate eddies spiraled toward the grassy banks. Beau Valentine sat with his back against a spindly silver maple tree. He chucked a small rock into the river and observed for the hundredth time how completely it was assimilated, how no evidence remained when it sank. Ermine was nearby, her head on a fallen log, watching him with the kind of attention reserved only for the special of heart.

It was not so much a nightmare as a peculiar dream. It had happened; of that Beau was certain. He had been on the ship with Adolf Hitler. The ship had sunk. When the sun came up the next morning there was nothing left-no debris, no bodies, not even an oil slick, just him, clinging to the raft. He had floated for two days until the
current carried him close to a small rocky island near Corsica. He swam ashore and walked up a bluff to a small house with a dirt floor, where they fed him.

He had talked his host, a fisherman, into sailing him back to Genoa. The Corsicans did not ask him how he came to be on the beach, or what boat he had fallen from. It was not an unusual event; over centuries many men had washed up on their beaches. Sometimes they were dead, sometimes alive. Ships went down. Such events were God's will.

In Genoa Valentine used an old agent's trick and wired his Swiss bank for money. Ermine, he was certain, had already left for the States. He paid an exorbitant price to a Genoese cabdriver to take him to the Swiss border, and once again crossed the border illegally. In Geneva he purchased a new identity for himself and caught a train to Paris. From there he flew to London, from London to Idlewild in New York, from New York to Washington, D.C., by train.

Valentine reported to the old
ass
headquarters in the capital, and was debriefed by personnel in the new National Intelligency Agency. He told them everything up to the war's end and about his early searches for German scientists, but refused to divulge the details of most of his final months in Europe, describing the period only as "personal business."

"Had yourself a final fling with some European bimbo?" the case officer probed.

"Something like that."

With his identity restored, he bought a new car, a black Ford with a powerful engine and a white top. It cost him twice what it was worth, but he didn't care. What good was money if you felt guilty about spending it? It pleased him to have a new car, and that alone justified it.

Ermine had resigned by letter before he returned. From Geneva he had wired her: SAILED STOP SANK STOP SWAM STOP OK STOP SEE YOU SOON STOP LOVE ME? DON'T STOP YR. FLOWERMATE. When he picked Ermine up at her mother's house in Virginia, she had a strange look in her eyes, a look that he couldn't identify, but she didn't say anything.

Jamestown beckoned him; he was not sure why. He had been there once before, years ago. Something inside told him to go again. It was afternoon.

Ermine did not say she was disappointed with the place, but he knew she was. It was no more than a few old stones piled on a low island that had once been a peninsula. "Not much to it," she said.

"I know. That's what I remembered from the first time. I guess I had to know it hadn't changed."

"Can we go now?"

"Not yet," he said, hugging her tenderly. He still had some knocking around to do, he said, and she respected his mood. For the last four days, sunrise to sundown, he had spent his time walking and sitting in the ruins. Now, with another rock under the surface of the river, he felt like talking. Ermine was ready to listen.

"The Brits left a nice little community here and came back to nothing," Valentine said. "Nobody knows what happened. All dead. A few broken stones, some yellow bones-that's all they found. Probably looked a lot like it does now. It's the mystery that lives; it's the one thing people can't come to grips with. They can't stand not knowing."

Ermine came over to him and hooked her arm through his. "They weren't Jews," Valentine said. "They were Russians." She had no idea what he was talking about.

"Our senses don't always tell us the whole story. Airplane pilots learn the hard way. Their bodies say one thing, their instruments another. If they go with their senses, they're dead. I saw Jews, I heard Jews, but they were Russians-some kind of special unit with one mission."

"NKVD?"

"Nope. Something special. Very small. Dedicated people. They had that look."

"He's alive, isn't he?" she asked quietly.

Valentine looked at her. "Yes. The Russians have Hitler. Alive." "And you?"

He laughed a cruel laugh. "What would I do with him? They can have the bastard. Poetic justice. Of all of us, they had the best reasons for wanting him. For us it's more a matter of principle, an academic need for justice or completion. Americans are big on finishing things. For the Russians it's necessity; they want their vengeance."

Ermine snuggled against his massive arm. "You finished it, Beau."

"Yessum, I finished it."

"What will they do with him?"