The Folks at Fifty-Eight (16 page)

Beria good-humouredly chided him, but there was an undercurrent of anger in his tone that didn’t go unnoticed.

“So, you have friends in America now, Stanislav. Are you sure that such liaisons are wise?”

Paslov spoke fondly of Alfred Schulman. He said Schulman was working to expose Nazi war criminals hiding in America. Schulman had nothing to do with the American government. He worked with Wiesenthal in Linz.

“You surprise me, Stanislav. Here I find you listening to decadent music and boasting of Zionist friends in America. I think it at best imprudent, and at worst foolhardy.”

Paslov refused to be goaded. He said he and Schulman had been together in the concentration camp at Mauthausen. Schulman had saved his life many times, just as he had saved Schulman’s. Schulman was a good man and a good friend, and Paslov was similar to Beria. He did not betray his friends.

It was a crude and obvious compliment. With the notable exception of Stanislav Paslov, Lavrenti Beria had no friends, and both men knew it.

Beria came back at him with the party line. He said the time may come when Paslov would have no choice; it was his duty to denounce those who pollute Russia, irrespective of blood or friendship. He added that many believed the betrayal of family and friends to be a measure of trust, but then made a throwaway gesture, slumped into an armchair, and lit a cigarette.

Paslov refused to let the matter to drop.

“Lavrenti, this man is a Nazi, an enemy of the people, and a mass murderer of Bolsheviks. How could you do this?”

Paslov watched as the dark eyes chilled and the peasant features contorted into aggression.

“Stanislav, the next time you communicate with your Zionist friends in Washington, perhaps you would do something for me. Perhaps you would ask them to tell you the whereabouts of Reinhard Gehlen, and Martin Kube and, for all I know, Josef Mengele and Martin Borman.”

Paslov listened to the names and instantly recalled the faces from the hundreds of photographs that had once decorated his office wall. All but a few were dead, assigned to rightful places in hell, or so he’d thought. He spluttered his confusion.

He knew about Reinhard Gehlen, but Kube was dead. He couldn’t say what had happened to Borman and Mengele, but he did know about the old Prague SS and Gestapo hierarchy. They were all dead. He and the Smersh teams had found and then burned their bodies.

Beria shook his head. He said these Nazi criminals had fooled both Paslov and the Smersh teams. Many were now working for the Americans or British, some for both.

Paslov suddenly saw the pieces falling into place. Kube had been Catherine Schmidt’s guardian. Many claimed he was her lover. He asked if Kube was behind her escape.

Beria seemed weary. Did he need to answer that? Of course that was the reason. Kube was working for the Americans. Part of the agreement obviously involved them rescuing his murdering teenage whore. Paslov had missed it all. He had allowed Kube to slip through his fingers like rain through a grate. Now he had even let this slip of a girl evade him. Some would not think it wise that a man such as Paslov sat listening to decadent music and communicating with Zionist friends in America, while the Soviet Union’s enemies roamed free.

Paslov, defensive, argued back. He spoke of the war’s immediate aftermath, and accused Beria of pulling the Smersh teams back to Moscow before they had finished. Perhaps, if Beria had allowed them to finish their investigations, this would not have happened.

“I did nothing of the kind. Stalin demanded their recall. Their incompetence and failure to identify even Hitler’s body made us look like fools. I merely passed on his orders.”

Beria made a visible effort to compose himself. He said he didn’t blame Paslov; it had been a fraught and difficult time, with death and confusion everywhere. For once their normally-reliable Smersh teams had failed. He asked about the search for Catherine Schmidt.

“And so, have you managed to find this girl?”

“No, Comrade, but I have only just realised her importance in this. I thought that. . .”

“You thought I was looking for another petal for my flower game?”

“Well, yes. I am sorry, Lavrenti. I did not mean to. . .”

Paslov had always struggled to disguise his abhorrence of the Mingrelian’s insatiable sexual and sadistic appetites. The ‘flower game’ was one of the most disgusting examples.

Far from the innocuous pastime the name might imply, Beria’s ‘flower game’ held its origins in the early days of his rise to power in the Transcaucasian region. He would sit on the back seat of his Buick limousine, sandwiched between his two infamous henchmen, and cruise the streets of Tbilisi looking for young girls. The men would accost the girls, bundle them into the car, and then take them to Beria’s house or one of his hideaways. Once there, they would strip the girls naked but for their shoes, and force them to kneel in a wheel formation with heads touching at the centre.

Beria would then wander around his ‘flower’, inspecting and violating and rearranging their nakedness, while he chose the most alluring ‘petal’ of that particular ‘flower’. The hapless creature would then be dragged into an adjoining room, usually by her ankles, and brutally raped, while the remaining ‘petals’ listened to her cries and awaited their own fates in terror.

Since his elevation and transfer to the capital, the chilling sight of Beria’s ominous black limousine trawling the streets of Moscow for similarly vulnerable young girls had become almost commonplace.

Paslov asked why Beria had not told him about Kube before now. The Mingrelian snarled.

“Because until Heinrich Müeller gave up that information we had no knowledge of it. Now do you see why I employ such a man?”

“Of course, but now that Müeller has given up what he knows he must pay for his crimes. How could you let this devil live, Lavrenti? How could you protect such an evil?”

“You think I have sold my soul to a devil, Stanislav? You think, perhaps, I would make a credible Faust?”

“No, Lavrenti. Mephistopheles, perhaps. Faust was a fool. You are anything but.”

Still Paslov refused to let the matter drop. After all those months in Mauthausen, not knowing if each morning would be his last, this was too important to let go. He said now the Americans knew about Müeller working for Beria he had become all but valueless. He asked Beria to give the German to him. He would deal with him. Beria shook his head.

He said Müeller still had much to tell, and pointed to the fact that the U.S. Army still didn’t know of Müeller’s defection. He said the western intelligence agencies were more at war with one another than the Soviet Union. He stubbed out his cigarette, and leaned closer.

“Right now America is like a fat and lazy whore, without the protection of a pimp. She is lying on her back with her legs spread, and offering us a fuck for nothing. It is our duty as red-blooded Soviet men to ensure she does not walk straight when we have finished.”

“Is that why you are now in such a hurry to build these terrible weapons?”

Beria stopped smirking. Paslov felt the elation rise. He had obviously hit a nerve.

“What do you mean, when you say hurry, Stanislav? What do you know about this?”

“I know Stalin is suddenly in a hurry to build atom bombs, and confront the Americans. I know he has told you to build them, and I know he has given you little time in which to do it.”

“We have to defend ourselves, Stanislav. You must see that?”

“Defend, yes; confront, no. The Americans did not attack us when we were at our most vulnerable; they came to our aid. Why should they attack us now? The Washington giant is back in his lair, and he is slumbering again. Leave him there, Lavrenti. All the time he sleeps, we grow stronger: in Europe, in South America, in Asia, in Africa. But, if we build these terrible weapons that will all change. They will see us as a threat, and an enemy.”

Beria shrugged his indifference. Paslov hammered home the point.

“A war with America is a war we cannot win, Lavrenti. These Americans are not Bonaparte, or even Hitler. The world has moved on so much, in such a short space of time. Russian winters cannot defeat atom bombs and jet aircraft, and they are so wealthy. Even if we build these weapons, they will simply build bigger and better weapons, and we will always be struggling to keep pace. Tactics may win battles, but finance wins wars. You must see that, Lavrenti. You must see that we have to fight them another way; a more cautious way, a more subtle way.”

“I see nothing of the kind.”

Beria’s anger was rising. Paslov read the signs and knew he would gain little b
y
antagonizing the Mingrelian further. He shrugged a conciliatory shrug, and let the matter drop.

Beria looked pleased. He returned to the search for Hammond and the girl.

“What about the hotels and boarding houses? Have you checked them all?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Even in Dessau?”

“We have checked everywhere.” Paslov saw the smile of knowledge widen. “What do you know, Lavrenti?”

“I, too, have friends in Washington, Stanislav. I, too, have people who tell me secrets. One, in the American State Department, has told me some interesting things. He tells me there is a house in Dessau. He says it was once a guesthouse. He says the old woman who runs it may have started taking in guests again. Perhaps we should see if she has any vacancies.”

“He is the same man? The man who told you about the girl being in Magdeburg?”

The answering nod from Beria left Paslov feeling confused. He hadn’t expected a response. Beria had always been paranoid and excessively cautious. The fact that Beria had confirmed his source, and the man’s location, surprised and concerned him. He rose from his chair.

“I will get some men.”

Beria remained seated and calmly lit another cigarette.

“Not just yet, Stanislav. There is plenty of time. They are after all just sprats to catch a mackerel. We do not want to cast shadows on the water. We might frighten the bigger and cleverer fish away. Let us sit and talk for a while, but not about bombs and wars and spies. Did I hear you mention a glass of wine?”

“I’m bored with cards. I want to go out. I want some fresh air. I want some fun.”

“Well, you can’t. Stop being so selfish and childish and make some coffee.”

The old woman had woken and grunted the instruction. Catherine Schmidt pouted her petulance and began firing more questions.

She asked Hammond how he had come to work for the government. He told her that he had joined the marines when he was twenty-four, because he hated office work. He said in the marines he had worked on developing amphibious landing techniques, but his heart wasn’t in it. When OSS started in forty-two they asked him to join. He agreed, because he had a facility for languages and an aptitude for close-combat. He had no facility or aptitude whatsoever for amphibious landing techniques.

She asked about the incident on the train and whether he had killed the two MGB agents. He asked which was which. When she described Brusilov, he nodded and confirmed the truth. She seemed happy about that. He said he hadn’t killed ‘the clever one’ because it hadn’t been necessary. She seemed similarly pleased about that.

She then asked why he had killed the Red Army guards with a knife, when he had his gun. He said the noise would have alerted the regular passengers. When she mentioned the silencer, he said the suppressor took the weapon’s overall length to almost fourteen inches. It made it cumbersome to align at close quarters.

“You are good, aren’t you?”

She studied him with admiring eyes. It embarrassed, and left him feeling ashamed. He wasn’t proud of his lethal skills, or that he had so often used them to such deadly effect. He said the older he got, the more the guilt and shame preyed on his mind, and added that sometimes he wished he’d never heard of OSS. When she asked why, he told her that as a marine he usually faced his enemy; with OSS that was rarely the case.

He tried to stem the questions, but she persisted. She changed the subject to trivia and asked again about his wife. Hammond spoke of his love for the wayward Emma, and how he missed being with her. When she asked what he missed the most, he didn’t answer. The old woman saved him any further embarrassment.

“I told you before. You’re a little too forward for my liking, young woman. Now stop asking foolish questions, and make some coffee.”

“I’m sick of coffee.”

“Then make some for us.”

She flounced over to the stove, but not before she had increased his discomfiture.

“I bet you miss her because of the sex. I bet you haven’t had sex for ages.”

Hammond responded to her teasing with patronizing indifference.

“Oh, do you now? And why would you think that?”

“Because you’ve been away from her for a long time; you just said so. And because you’re a man, and men always want sex.” She paused. “And because I’ve seen the way you look at me when you think I’m not watching.”

There had been a childlike simplicity in the observation, in direct contrast to the wilful seductress who now stared an invitation. The old woman opened her mouth to interrupt. Hammond growled his anger.

“Let me explain something to you, young lady. You are just a child, a foolish child, and I’m easily old enough to be your father. You’re an assignment, a bad assignment, a dangerous assignment, a rude and spoilt and petulant and irritating assignment, but nothing more than that. Now do as you’re told. Make the coffee and stop this nonsense.”

She grinned and pouted back at him, seemingly unaffected.

“Or what will you do? Would you like to be my father? Is that what it is? Do you want to put a naughty little girl over your knee? Do you want to pull her knickers down and smack her bare bottom? You can if you like. I promise I won’t tell anyone.”