The Red Eagles (4 page)

Sheslakov closed the door behind him, thinking for a second about his own son, killed three years before in the war’s first days.

“Well, no obvious problem there,” Fyedorova said. “Tell me, why are you bothering to visit Kapitza? There’s no doubt concerning the scientific facts, is there?”

“I like to hear everything firsthand.”

A knock on the door heralded their next visitor, a burly man with a sour expression. He sat down without being asked. “Well, Comrade Sheslakov, I am here as ordered. I would be grateful if this business could take up as little time as possible.”

Sheslakov sighed inwardly, smiled outwardly. “I know your time is valuable, Comrade Boletsky, but this is First Priority business.”

Why, he asked himself, were there so many unmitigated bastards in the NKVD external sections?

“Comrade,” he said “tell me about the U-235 trains.”

“You have the report.”

“Tell me anyway,” Sheslakov said coldly, closing his eyes to help him keep his temper.

“They leave Oak Ridge on the first Friday of each month at around 6 p.m., arrive in Los Alamos on the following
Tuesday morning. Each carries ten crates, weight approximately fifty pounds, each containing five pounds of U-235. Two military police accompany the train throughout, two state police are picked up and deposited at each state border.”

“It seems an absurdly low level of protection.”

“It is.”

“Why so little, Comrade Boletsky, why?”

“Because the Americans have not considered the possibility of an attack. I think the two policemen are only there because of some instinctive desire to guard something that’s important, not because they seriously think it needs guarding.”

“Good. Now the train – how is it composed?”

“What do you mean?”

“What does it consist of?”

“I don’t have that information.”

“Get it, please. I want to know how many railroad cars, whether the engine is steam or diesel, where and when the engineers are changed over, as they must be on such a long journey. I want the makeup of the train, the order of the cars involved, everything. Who is the source of information?”

“GRU,” Boletsky said with ill-concealed distaste. “Melville, real name Aaron Matson, deputy chief of security at Oak Ridge. Rosa is his contact.”

“Is she? What’s his motivation?”

“Ideological.”

“I want a full dossier on him too. Coordinate it with Barchugov. Also a complete timetable of the train’s journey, where it is at all times. And I want to know why it leaves on Fridays at 6 p.m.

“Finally,” he said, consulting his notes for the first time, “I want everything you have on the situations at Grand Falls and the Alaskan relay station. I particularly want to know the current situation regarding American cargo-checking procedures.”

He stood up. “I realize most of this will have to come from America, but I would appreciate whatever urgency you can muster. This is First Priority.”

“I haven’t forgotten,” Boletsky replied stiffly.

“Why,” Fyedorova asked after he’d gone, “does it matter what sort of engine is pulling the train?”

“Steam engines have to stop for water,” Sheslakov replied as he looked for a particular file in the stacks on his desk.

“I’m going to see Petr Kapitza,” he said, passing her the file. “This is all we have on Walter Schellenberg. When I get back you can tell me whether he’s the man to be tempted by our bait.”

After helping herself to the bottle of vodka that Sheslakov kept at the back of his filing cabinet, Olga Fyedorova settled herself on the old cot under the window and opened the file. Holding the German’s photograph up to the light, she studied it for several minutes, trying to think herself behind the eyes that stared out at her. They were a boy’s eyes, she thought, not unlike Sheslakov’s.

A good beginning.

Her approach to an operation like this was completely different from Sheslakov’s. He approached it like a diagram, she like the writing of a love story, weighing up the interactions in the diagram, the way the people concerned would respond to events and, most important of all, to each other. There would be no more than ten people intimately involved in the unfolding of the plan, and several of them would remain unknown to her. It was all the more crucial then that those she wove into the plot should be known quantities, and that their strengths and weaknesses should be written in from the beginning.

Schellenberg was a special case. He had only one decision to make, and everything that was known about him had to be manipulated in the desired direction. He came from a
well-to-do family, had been educated at a Jesuit
gymnasium
, had studied medicine and law at Bonn University. Soon after graduation he had enlisted in the SD, the SS Security Service. All plus points, Fyedorova thought. Intellectuals were always easier to predict, particularly those who chose subjects like medicine and law. If he had studied history or physics, she would have been much less sanguine.

The move from the Jesuits to the SS was equally indicative. To her it implied the need for an ideological father figure; the ideology itself would be the product of circumstance rather than conviction. In France before the first war she’d known Catholics who had become Marxists at almost the touch of a button; almost the same process, except, she thought with a smile, in that case it was a mother figure that was required. Anyway, Schellenberg’s ideology was sufficiently vague and indeterminate to allow the free play of the sort of intellect that chose to study law and medicine. Neither would provide a driving force, and judging from his rise through the ranks, the man was not lacking in ambition. It couldn’t be money that moved him, and she had a sneaking suspicion that power for its own sake did not attract him. Power for what, then? It must be for play, for the chance to play games at the highest level.

That would make him ideal.

She went back to the file. He had coordinated the intelligence from Austria before the Anschluss, then personally undertaken a spy mission to West Africa in the winter of 1938–39, checking out harbour defenses. And, she remembered it now, he had been the officer at Venlo in 1939 who had lured the two British agents into captivity.

Games.

From 1939 to 1941 he had worked under Mueller for the Gestapo and had reportedly been close to Heydrich. Then, in June 1941, he had been switched to Amt VI, the SD’s Foreign Intelligence Service, as its new chief. With Heydrich
gone, he had gravitated to Himmler, and was now thought to be the Reichsführer’s chief political adviser. Early this year his organization had absorbed the discredited Abwehr to form a newly unified intelligence service. He was Hitler’s spy master.

So much for his career: he hadn’t missed an opportunity. He had a house off the Kurfürstendamm in Berlin, a country house at Herzberg. His office was built like a luxurious fortress, with a machine gun built into his desk and alarm sirens activated by photoelectric cells. When traveling abroad he “wore” an artificial tooth containing poison
and
carried a cyanide capsule in a signet ring.

That, Fyedorova thought, was particularly interesting. What kind of a man carried two suicide devices? An obsessive. In fact, the whole business about the desk reeked, not of paranoia – paranoiacs didn’t go on spy missions – but of perverse perfectionism. The medical/law student again. Here was a man who believed passionately in details, and who would probably have the two weaknesses typical of such people – an inability to see the forest for the trees and, more damning in a spy master, the compulsion to furnish from the imagination those details which were unavailable.

She got up and refilled her glass, fixed the photograph to the wall in front of her, and lay back on the cot. “Will you bite, Walter
tovarich
?” she asked the picture.

“I think you will.”

Sheslakov had found Professor Petr Kapitza supervising the unloading of crates containing laboratory equipment. The Institute was in the final throes of its return to Moscow and chaos reigned. Kapitza’s state of mind had not been noticeably improved by the appearance of another interrogator from the Atomic Division.

“As far as I’m concerned, the ‘First Priority’ should be saving several years’ work from these vandals,” he had
exclaimed, taking in the removal corps with a sweep of his arm. “Which one are
you
talking about?”

Sheslakov had given him a telephone number to ring and patiently waited in the Institute’s spacious lobby, imagining the swish of tsarist gowns in days gone by.

Eventually the scientist reappeared, motioning Sheslakov to follow him outside. “We can talk in the gardens, where we might conceivably hear each other.”

Sheslakov set out to be disarming. “Professor, I know your time is valuable, and I promise you that after this conversation the work can go on undisturbed. I have read the report of your conversations with General Kostylov, and there are just a few extra questions I need answered. First, if you were given fifty pounds of Uranium-235, could you make an atomic bomb?”

Kapitza looked at him sharply. “Is that a random figure you’ve just thought up?”

“No.”

“I thought not. The answer is yes, or at least the probability is very high. Two bombs, I would say.”

“How quickly?”

The scientist spread his arms. “That is hard to answer.”

“A month, a year, ten years?”

Kapitza looked up at the sky. “Two years, I would think. But I would not like to stake my life on it. The Fuchs diagram has no great surprises – the basic principles are clear. But there are always unforeseen problems.” He looked at Sheslakov again, this time with something approaching a smile. “Of course continued access to the American development process would save us from duplicating their mistakes.”

“How powerful would such a bomb be?” Sheslakov had no reason for asking the question save curiosity.

“Again, hard to say.”

“A guess?”

“I would say powerful enough to raze a city the size of Novgorod.”

It was Sheslakov’s turn to look at the scientist. Kapitza couldn’t possibly know that his questioner came from that city. A chill raced up Sheslakov’s spine. He couldn’t resist another irrelevant question.

“Professor, do you have any qualms about making such a bomb?”

Kapitza laughed for the first time. “Qualms? Of course not. Qualms have never stopped scientific development. We are on a roller coaster, as the Americans say, and the ups and downs keep getting steeper, and there’s no way to get off. What use are qualms?”

The chill was still there, so out of place on a beautiful spring morning. Sheslakov reorganized his thoughts. “The Uranium-235 – how easy is it to transport? How dangerous?”

“It won’t explode if you drop it. But it has to be kept in small quantities or a critical mass is reached. If that happens, radiation is released, and radiation kills.”

“So the idea of carrying five pounds of Uranium-235 in fifty-pound crates makes sense?”

“You are well-informed. Is that how the Americans are doing it? Yes, the container for the U-235 – a steel bottle probably – would be suspended somehow in the middle of the crate, keeping it an adequate distance from the other jars in the other crates.”

“So there would be no danger in handling these crates, no time limit, temperature limit, pressure limit, anything like that?”

“Not that I can see. When can we expect these crates to arrive?”

Sheslakov smiled, “
If
these crates arrive, Professor, you’ll be the first to know.”

“Yes,” Fyedorova told him on his return to the office. “Or at least I see no reason why not.”

Sheslakov sat himself behind his desk. “I think a drink is called for. In your case,” he added, examining the bottle, “another drink. I’m beginning to distrust this operation. People keep saying yes to me, as if the whole thing is a foregone conclusion.”

Fyedorova got up from the cot and took the proffered glass. “If it’s difficulties you want, don’t despair. They’ve found Luerhsen – in the Lubyanka. And they’ve lost Kuznetsky.”

They had been underground for more than eighteen hours, and the strain of confinement was beginning to tell. The whispering grew louder, the accidental noises more frequent, the smell of the latrine buckets was becoming unbearable. Kuznetsky wondered whether it might have been better to send out scouts and risk the dogs picking up their scent.

There was a soft knock on the partition. He put down his book, extinguished the candle, and eased himself up off the bed. This girl would sleep through anything, he thought to himself as he fastened his belt. The knock was repeated.

“Coming,” he whispered. Nadezhda turned over in her sleep, exposing one milky-white shoulder.

Yakovenko was outside. “Message coming in,” he said.

Kuznetsky followed him through the maze to the radio room, watched the operator transcribe the message from the current code. “Colonel Kuznetsky required Moscow immediately. Pickup points 12 14 15 Tuesday Thursday Saturday. Signal required. Request receipt.”

That was it. What the fuck did they want with him in Moscow? “Tell them the Germans are crawling all over the place and we’re still hibernating,” he told Beslov. “Diplomatically.”

“Situation understood,” came the reply. “Colonel Kuznetsky required Moscow immediately. Request receipt.”

“Maybe it’s a medal,” Yakovenko murmured. “Though they could have dropped
that
with the chocolate.”

Kuznetsky laughed. “Oh shit. Tell them—” He broke off at the sound of running feet.

Sidorova erupted into the dugout, mouthing the word “Germans.”

“Cut the connection,” Kuznetsky whispered to Beslov. “Make sure everyone’s ready,” to Yakovenko. He made his way to the periscope, squeezing himself between the roots of the tree that concealed it. The tube went right up through the center of the trunk, then into an artificial sapling that could be twisted where the trunk forked. Putting his eyes to the mirror, he could immediately see a single German soldier, a boy of about sixteen, walking slowly toward him, diligently scanning the ground for a sign. Gently swiveling the periscope, he could pick out the line of troops, spread out at around twenty-yard intervals, carefully advancing. Only the boy would actually pass over the camp. Kuznetsky prayed that he’d be nearsighted.

He seemed to be. He was already halfway across without pausing in his deliberate stride. Kuznetsky turned to check that his group and the other group leaders were all there, caught a glimpse of Nadezhda yawning in the background.

The boy stopped and reached down to pick something up, something small and red. A chocolate wrapper!
How the bell had they missed it
?

“Pretend it’s not there,” Kuznetsky silently pleaded. “Save your own and your comrades’ lives. Just keep walking.”

The German licked the paper, perhaps finding a last crumb of chocolate, and then he blew his whistle. Kuznetsky didn’t dare turn the sapling, but he could hear the sound of running feet crashing through the undergrowth and, more ominously, the sound of motors revving. A lieutenant came into view, examined the wrapper, looked warily around. Then he strode off to the left, and Kuznetsky risked following him with the periscope. The officer was busily pulling dead branches away from the T-34’s underground garage.

Kuznetsky climbed out of the roots, pointed to his watch, and held up one finger. The other group leaders scurried away through the interconnecting passages, counting seconds under their breath. He picked up the loaded antitank gun, checked that the automatic pistol was firmly in his belt, and continued counting.

Thirty-five, thirty-six. Everyone was ready. Forty, forty-one. And at least the light above ground was fading fast. Nadezhda smiled at him. Fifty-five, fifty-six.

Ever so carefully, he released the greased wooden peg that held the trapdoor and let it drop. A square of twilight appeared. Yakovenko placed the stump under the opening, and Kuznetsky used it as a launching pad to throw himself up through the square and onto the forest floor, screaming “Now” at the top of his voice.

Ignoring the nearby group of startled Germans, he picked out the approaching half-track and fired the antitank rocket. There was a whoosh of flame and the vehicle toppled forward like an elephant crashing to its knees. Yakovenko’s machine gun seemed to be going off in his ear, but the group of Germans were all down or falling, and suddenly there was near silence, only the shouts of the Germans farther off and the rumble of other vehicles in the distance.

The partisans were pouring out of the hidden exits, forming themselves into their groups and moving away. Kuznetsky could see the nearest Germans moving back and knew why, having read a captured Wehrmacht manual. They were supposed to form a circle with a radius of three hundred yards.

He checked his own group and led them off at a run on their prearranged compass setting – due west. Fifty yards farther they found another half-track disgorging troops and he dropped to the ground with the rocket gun, felt Yakovenko load it as he took aim, fired. Another inferno and they were running again, zigzagging between the burning Germans,
on through the forest. Nadezhda was leading now, through a small clearing and down into a shallow riverbed as a burst of automatic fire shredded the leaves above their heads.

They must have gone three hundred yards by now, Kuznetsky thought, but there’d be a second line not too far ahead. With a supreme effort he managed to regain the front and pulled the group to a halt.

“Down! Quiet!” he ordered, and it was as if a switch had been flicked. There was heavy gunfire to the north, and they could see the flames of the burning half-tracks reflected in the forest roof. To both right and left the passage of vehicles was audible, but ahead of them, nothing.

It would be fully dark in an hour. Should they wait for the second line and hope to pass through it unseen? Kuznetsky was inclined to think so until he heard the dogs.

“Spread – no firing,” he ordered, and they were on the move again, racing across the forest floor in a widening line, running into the enemy before either side had time to think. Kuznetsky’s automatic pistol coughed twice as a silhouette loomed to confront him, and he pumped another bullet between the dog’s yellow eyes as it broke free from its dead master’s grip. To his right and left the forest was again full of gunfire. He kept running, the sounds fading behind him, conscious that at least some of the others were running parallel paths through the trees.

It was not the first time that Sheslakov had visited someone in the bowels of the NKVD headquarters, but familiarity had not bred immunity. The grayness of the place seemed all-embracing, and this somehow seemed to emphasize the sharpness of each human touch. The people incarcerated, and their jailers – they all seemed like pieces of raw meat on an endless, uniform slab.

In the beginning, he thought, walking down another identical corridor, animality bred abstraction, the savage
developed language. Now abstraction breeds animality, correcting some cosmic balance. Our rulers run the most perfectly devised system like savages, he thought, while the Germans, still animals, choose anal retentives for their leaders. He felt a surge of sadness.

The NKVD officer opened the door of Luerhsen’s cell. “I must lock it behind you,” he said apologetically.

“Too many mass escapes, eh?” Sheslakov said, unable to resist the gibe.

Luerhsen looked up at him with one of the most peaceful faces Sheslakov could remember. No one upstairs had seemed to know why he was imprisoned, and it had taken Sheslakov half an hour and several irate telephone calls to get his file released. The “antistate activity” with which he was charged – but not, as yet, convicted for – concerned remarks he had made in 1939, five years before. To be precise, he had called the Nazi–Soviet Pact “an error of judgment comparable only with that made by Judas.” The NKVD officer in charge of the records had expressed surprise that the man had not been shot.

Sheslakov introduced himself and sat down on the bunk beside Luerhsen. “I wish to ask you some questions,” he said, “about someone you knew long ago. It has nothing to do with your case. I can do nothing to help you in that respect,” he added, suddenly deciding that honesty was the best policy with this man. “I can only say that the cause you served for thirty years needs your assistance once more. We need to assess how this woman will react in certain situations, and you are the only person in the Soviet Union who has actually met her.”

Luerhsen looked back at him placidly, a faint smile forming on his lips. “My loyalties survived many years in the enemy’s prisons; they will doubtless survive a few more in the prison of my friends. Who is the woman you wish to know about?”

“Amelia Brandt, now Brandon. We understand from your initial submission of her name as a possible GRU recruit that you knew her as a child and that you met again in Berlin in 1933.”

Luerhsen smiled. “She was always called Amy, never Amelia. Our Berlin meeting was very brief, two hours at most. But yes, she made an impression on me, mostly, I think, because seeing her then, in those circumstances, was like seeing her mother brought back to life. They looked so alike, but it was more than that.” He smiled inwardly, as if taken by a memory. “Hard to define,” he said. “Do you have a cigarette?”

Sheslakov offered his package, watched the old man inhale deeply. “I need as complete a picture of her as you can give me.”

“May I know why?”

“She’s a key figure in an operation we’re mounting in America. I can say no more than that.”

Luerhsen looked at him, took another deep drag on the cigarette. “That pleases me.”

“Tell me about when you knew her as a child.”

“Her mother and I were lovers, you know that. We met in the spring of 1918. Her husband had been killed several years before, at Tannenberg, I think. She was totally committed to the Party – the Spartakusbund as it was then. It was what we called a ‘comrades’ marriage’ in those days. Party work and bed and nothing much else. Amy must have been about seven—”

“She was born in August 1911.”

“Six, seven. A lovely child, though I’m afraid we didn’t have much time for doing things with her. You can imagine what it was like in Berlin in 1918 – more meetings than there were hours in the day, more newspapers than there was toilet paper, which was what most of them were used as. Elisabeth Brandt’s house was our center of operations; it was always
swarming with people. Another woman, Anna Kaltz, also lived there, and she had a daughter the same age as Amy – Effi – so the two little girls looked after each other. One dark one, one blond one. They’d help out, too, making drinks, rolling leaflets off the printer. In fact they always seemed to have ink on their faces. They both worshiped their mothers, I do remember that. But so did a lot of people in Friedrichshain. They were remarkable women.”

“Can you remember any specific incidents with Amy?” Sheslakov asked. Fyedorova had insisted on that question.

Luerhsen furrowed his brow. “Not really. I bandaged her knee once, I remember that. She’d cut it quite badly, should have had stitches, and it obviously hurt like hell. But she hardly shed a tear. She was a determined little thing. Once she started something she’d finish it. Really stubborn. I expect she still is. People don’t change much, do they?” He gave Sheslakov a quizzical glance, accepted another cigarette.

“Then the roof fell in. January 1919. I was here in Moscow at one of those interminable conferences for setting up the Third International. Elisabeth was one of the Party leaders killed by the fascists, not that they called themselves that then. She was raped and beaten to death by a gang of them in her own house, and while it was all happening little Amy was sitting in the cupboard under the stairs where her mother had hidden her. She came out eventually and found her mother’s body, then walked halfway across Berlin to her aunt’s in the middle of the night. Imagine it! There was gunfire, gangs of thugs roaming the streets looking for Communists, everyone shut up tight in their houses, not daring to go out, and there’s this little girl walking miles across the city. She didn’t say a word for six months. The aunt married an American in 1921, and they all moved to America soon afterward.”

“How do you know all this? You say you weren’t there.”

“From Anna Kaltz. She was in Kiel looking after her sick father during the week it all fell apart, and she didn’t dare return to Berlin for several months. She’s also the link with 1933, because she and Amy kept up a correspondence over the years—”

“Did Amy keep up with Effi too?”

“No. Strange. Or perhaps not. I think Anna was Amy’s link with her mother.”

“1933?”

“The terrible year. It was the summer, late July, I think. I’d been sent back to Berlin to organize the relocation of the
Pas Apparat
– the underground passport factories. The Nazis were well into their drive against us and we’d decided to move everything to the Saar. Effi Kaltz was the best forger we had – an amazing talent. Anyway, we were there, five of us I think, in this house in Friedrichshain, packing up all the stuff, the inks, papers, rubber stamps, everything. And there was this knock on the door and there stood this beautiful young woman in American clothes. Amy. She was in Germany for a holiday, a pilgrimage really, had tried to find Anna Kaltz and learned that she’d been arrested. So she’d somehow tracked down Effi.

“We didn’t know what to do with her. We were expecting the Gestapo any minute, and for once we weren’t wrong … but I’m getting ahead of the story. We had another couple of hours’ work to do, and Amy said she’d wait, even though she must have known the risk she was running. I finished my tasks before the others and I talked to her for a time – twenty minutes, something like that. It was a strange conversation.

“At first I couldn’t get over how much she resembled her mother – it was uncanny. Then I started noticing the differences. There was a reticence about her that Elisabeth never had, a feeling she was holding herself in, holding herself very tightly. Maybe it was just being in Berlin again, with
all that that must have meant for her. But I think it was more than that—”