Winter of the World (86 page)

He was there, on the Eastern Front, Joachim had confirmed it. He would be involved in Case Blue. If Carla enabled the Russians to win that battle, Erik could die as a result. She could not bear
that.

She went back to her work. She was distracted and made mistakes, but fortunately the doctors did not notice and the patients could not tell. When at last her shift ended, she hurried away. The
camera was burning a hole in her pocket but she did not see a safe place to dump it.

She wondered where Frieda had got it. Frieda had plenty of money, and could easily have bought it, though she would have had to come up with a story about why she needed such a thing. More
likely she could have got it from the Russians before they closed their embassy a year ago.

The camera was still in Carla’s coat pocket when she arrived home.

There was no sound from the piano upstairs: Joachim was having his lesson later today. Her mother was sitting at the kitchen table. When Carla walked in, Maud beamed and said: ‘Look
who’s here!’

It was Erik.

Carla stared at him. He was painfully thin, but apparently uninjured. His uniform was grimy and ripped, but he had washed his face and hands. He stood up and put his arms around her.

She hugged him hard, careless of dirtying her spotless uniform. ‘You’re safe,’ she said. There was so little flesh on him that she could feel his bones, his ribs and hips and
shoulders and spine, through the thin material.

‘Safe for the moment,’ he said.

She released her hold. ‘How are you?’

‘Better than most.’

‘You weren’t wearing this flimsy uniform in the Russian winter?’

‘I stole a coat from a dead Russian.’

She sat down at the table. Ada was there too. Erik said: ‘You were right. About the Nazis, I mean. You were right.’

She was pleased, but not sure exactly what he meant. ‘In what way?’

‘They murder people. You told me that. Father told me, too, and Mother. I’m sorry I didn’t believe you. I’m sorry, Ada, that I didn’t believe they killed your poor
little Kurt. I know better now.’

This was a big reversal. Carla said: ‘What changed your mind?’

‘I saw them doing it, in Russia. They round up all the important people in town, because they must be Communists. And they get the Jews, too. Not just men, but women and children. And old
people too frail to do anyone any harm.’ Tears were streaming down his face now. ‘Our regular soldiers don’t do it – there are special groups. They take the prisoners out of
town. Sometimes there’s a quarry, or some other kind of pit. Or they make the younger ones dig a great hole. Then—’

He choked up, but Carla had to hear him say it. ‘Then what?’

‘They do them twelve at a time. Six pairs. Sometimes the husbands and wives hold hands as they walk down the slope. The mothers carry the babies. The riflemen wait until the prisoners are
in the right spot. Then they shoot.’ Erik wiped his tears with his dirty uniform sleeve. ‘Bang,’ he said.

There was a long silence in the kitchen. Ada was crying. Carla was aghast. Only Maud was stony-faced.

Eventually Erik blew his nose, then took out cigarettes. ‘I was surprised to get leave and a ticket home,’ he said.

Carla said: ‘When do you have to go back?’

‘Tomorrow. I have only twenty-four hours here. All the same I’m the envy of all my comrades. They’d give anything for a day at home. Dr Weiss said I must have friends in high
places.’

‘You do,’ said Maud. ‘Joachim Koch, a young lieutenant who works at the War Ministry and comes to me for piano lessons. I asked him to arrange leave for you.’ She glanced
at her watch. ‘He’ll be here in a few minutes. He has grown fond of me – he’s in need of a mother figure, I think.’

Mother, hell, Carla thought. There was nothing maternal about Maud’s relationship with Joachim.

Maud went on: ‘He’s very innocent. He told us there’s going to be a new offensive on the Eastern Front starting on 28 June. He even mentioned the code name: Case
Blue.’

Erik said: ‘He’s going to get himself shot.’

Carla said: ‘Joachim is not the only one who might be shot. I told someone what I learned. Now I’ve been asked to persuade Joachim, somehow, to get me the battle plan.’

‘Good God!’ Erik was rocked. ‘This is serious espionage – you’re in more danger than I am on the Eastern Front!’

‘Don’t worry, I can’t imagine Joachim would do it,’ Carla said.

‘Don’t be so sure,’ said Maud.

They all looked at her.

‘He might do it for me,’ she said. ‘If I asked him the right way.’

Erik said: ‘He’s
that
naive?’

She looked defiant. ‘He’s in love with me.’

‘Oh.’ Erik was embarrassed at the idea of his mother being involved in a romance.

Carla said: ‘All the same, we can’t do it.’

Erik said: ‘Why not?’

‘Because if the Russians win the battle you might die!’

‘I’ll probably die anyway.’

Carla heard her own voice rise in pitch agitatedly. ‘But we’d be helping the Russians kill you!’

‘I still want you to do it,’ Erik said fiercely. He looked down at the chequered oilcloth on the kitchen table, but what he was seeing was a thousand miles away.

Carla felt torn. If he
wanted
her to . . . She said: ‘But why?’

‘I think of those people walking down the slope into the quarry, holding hands.’ His own hands on the table grasped each other hard enough to bruise. ‘I’ll risk my life,
if we can put a stop to that. I
want
to risk my life – I’ll feel better about myself, and my country, if I do. Please, Carla, if you can, send the Russians that battle
plan.’

Still she hesitated. ‘Are you sure?’

‘I’m begging you.’

‘Then I will,’ said Carla.

(v)

Thomas Macke told his men – Wagner, Richter and Schneider – to be on their best behaviour. ‘Werner Franck is only a lieutenant, but he works for General
Dorn. I want him to have the best possible impression of our team and our work. No swearing, no jokes, no eating, and no rough stuff unless it’s really necessary. If we catch a Communist spy,
you can give him a good kicking. But if we fail, I don’t want you to pick on someone else just for fun.’ Normally he would turn a blind eye to that sort of thing. It all helped to keep
people in fear of the displeasure of the Nazis. But Franck might be squeamish.

Werner turned up punctually at Gestapo headquarters in Prinz Albrecht Strasse on his motorcycle. They all got into the surveillance van with the revolving aerial on the roof. With so much radio
equipment inside it was cramped. Richter took the wheel and they drove around the city in the early evening, the favoured time for spies to send messages to the enemy.

‘Why is that, I wonder?’ said Werner.

‘Most spies have a regular job,’ Macke explained. ‘It’s part of their cover story. So they go to an office or a factory in the daytime.’

‘Of course,’ said Werner. ‘I never thought of that.’

Macke was worried they might not pick up anything at all tonight. He was terrified that he would get the blame for the reverses the German army was suffering in Russia. He had done his best, but
there were no prizes for effort in the Third Reich.

It sometimes happened that the unit picked up no signals. On other occasions there would be two or three, and Macke would have to choose which to follow up and which to ignore. He felt sure
there was more than one spy network in the city, and they probably did not know of each other’s existence. He was trying to do an impossible job with inadequate tools.

They were near the Potsdamer Platz when they heard a signal. Macke recognized the characteristic sound. ‘That’s a pianist,’ he said with relief. At least he could prove to
Werner that the equipment worked. Someone was broadcasting five-digit numbers, one after the other. ‘Soviet Intelligence uses a code in which pairs of numbers stand for letters,’ Macke
explained to Werner. ‘So, for example, 11 might stand for A. Transmitting them in groups of five is just a convention.’

The radio operator, an electrical engineer named Mann, read off a set of co-ordinates, and Wagner drew a line on a map with a pencil and rule. Richter put the van in gear and set off again.

The pianist continued to broadcast, his beeps sounding loud in the van. Macke hated the man, whoever he was. ‘Bastard Communist swine,’ he said. ‘One day he’ll be in our
basement, begging me to let him die so the pain will come to an end.’

Werner looked pale. He was not used to police work, Macke thought.

After a moment the young man pulled himself together. ‘The way you describe the Soviet code, it sounds as if it might not be too difficult to break,’ he said thoughtfully.

‘Correct!’ Macke was pleased that Werner caught on so fast. ‘But I was simplifying. They have refinements. After encoding the message as a series of numbers, the pianist then
writes a key word underneath it repeatedly – it might be Kurfürstendamm, say – and encodes that. Then he subtracts the second numbers from the first and broadcasts the
result.’

‘Almost impossible to decipher if you don’t know the key word!’

‘Exactly.’

They stopped again near the burned-out Reichstag building and drew another line on the map. The two met in Friedrichshain, to the east of the city centre.

Macke told the driver to swing north-east, taking them nearer to the likely spot while giving them a third line from a different angle. ‘Experience shows that it’s best to take three
bearings,’ Macke told Werner. ‘The equipment is only approximate, and the extra measurement reduces error.’

‘Do you always catch him?’ said Werner.

‘By no means. In most cases we don’t. Often we’re just not quick enough. He may change frequency halfway through, so that we lose him. Sometimes he breaks off in
mid-transmission and resumes at another location. He may have lookouts who see us coming and warn him to flee.’

‘A lot of snags.’

‘But we catch them, sooner or later.’

Richter stopped the van and Mann took the third bearing. The three pencil lines on Wagner’s map met to form a small triangle near the East Station. The pianist was somewhere between the
railway line and the canal.

Macke gave Richter the location and added: ‘Quick as you can.’

Werner was perspiring, Macke noticed. Perhaps it was rather hot in the van. And the young lieutenant was not accustomed to action. He was learning what life was like in the Gestapo. All the
better, Macke thought.

Richter headed south on Warschauer Strasse, crossed the railway, then turned into a cheap industrial neighbourhood of warehouses, yards and small factories. There was a group of soldiers toting
kitbags outside a back entrance to the station, no doubt embarking for the Eastern Front. And a fellow-countryman somewhere in this neighbourhood doing his best to betray them, Macke thought
angrily.

Wagner pointed down a narrow street leading away from the station. ‘He’s in the first few hundred yards, but he could be on either side,’ he said. ‘If we take the van any
closer he’ll see us.’

‘All right, men, you know the drill,’ Macke said. ‘Wagner and Richter take the left-hand side. Schneider and I will take the right.’ They all picked up long-handled
sledgehammers. ‘Come with me, Franck.’

There were few people on the street – a man in a worker’s cap walking briskly towards the railway station, an older woman in shabby clothes probably on her way to clean offices
– and they hurried quickly past, not wanting to attract the attention of the Gestapo.

Macke’s team entered each building, one man leapfrogging his partner. Most businesses were closed for the day so they had to rouse a janitor. If he took more than a minute to come to the
door they knocked it down. Once inside they raced through the building checking every room.

The pianist was not in the first block.

The first building on the right-hand side of the next block had a fading sign that said: ‘Fashion Furs’. It was a two-storey factory that stretched along the side street. It looked
disused, but the front door was steel and the windows were barred: a fur coat factory naturally had heavy security.

Macke led Werner down the side street, looking for a way in. The adjacent building was bomb-damaged and derelict. The rubble had been cleared from the street and there was a hand-painted sign
saying: ‘Danger – No Entry’. The remains of a name board identified it as a furniture warehouse.

They stepped over a pile of stones and splintered timbers, going as fast as they could but forced to tread carefully. A surviving wall concealed the rear of the building. Macke went behind it
and found a hole through to the factory next door.

He had a strong feeling the pianist was in here.

He stepped through the hole, and Werner followed.

They found themselves in an empty office. There was an old steel desk with no chair, and a filing cabinet opposite. The calendar pinned to the wall was for 1939, probably the last year during
which Berliners could afford such frivolities as fur coats.

Macke heard a footstep on the floor above.

He drew his gun.

Werner was unarmed.

They opened the door and stepped into a corridor.

Macke noted several open doors, a staircase up, and a door under the staircase that might lead to a basement.

Macke crept along the corridor towards the foot of the stairs, then noticed that Werner was checking the door to the basement.

‘I thought I heard a noise from below,’ Werner said. He turned the handle but the door had a flimsy lock. He stepped back and raised his right foot.

Macke said: ‘No—’

‘Yes – I hear them!’ Werner said, and he kicked the door open.

The crash resounded throughout the empty factory.

Werner burst through the door and disappeared. A light came on, showing a stone staircase. ‘Don’t move!’ Werner yelled. ‘You are under arrest!’

Macke went down the stairs after him.

He reached the basement. Werner stood at the foot of the stairs, looking baffled.

The room was empty.

Suspended from the ceiling were rails on which coats had probably been hung. An enormous roll of brown paper stood on end in one corner, probably intended for wrapping. But there was no radio
and no spy tapping messages to Moscow.