Agent of Death (16 page)

Eventually a big, fat, middle-aged woman in an Aeroflot uniform came, pushing a squeaky wheeled trolley with a tea urn, and lots of bread and cheese and fruit, and some bottles of Ukranian Lvivske beer. At first, Zharkov and I didn’t get any of the beer because the guards grabbed the lot with big grins and proceeded to knock the caps off the bottles by banging them against the edge of the table, biting chips out of the wood. But that drew a loud yell of anger from the Aeroflot woman, who leaned forward and slapped the two guards hard about the head, grabbed the bottles from them, stuck them down in front of Zharkov and me, and poured out a stream of angry Ukranian. The guards were young, they probably looked like children to her, and obviously the mother figure was as powerful in Ukranian culture as she is in Russian or Polish, because they just took the beating and hung their heads in shame.

Seeing that, Madame Ivanova Aeroflotova grunted in satisfaction and gave me a big smile and pinched my cheek, and said something to me which I just about understood, because she spoke more slowly. She said something like ‘what a lovely boy’ and ‘pretty eyes’, then she yelled more Ukranian at the guards as a warning, then marched off with her squeaky trolley and a final smile and a nod to me. As I said the girls do like me. I can’t help it.

So then we tucked in, the guards and me. It was the first decent food we’d had since getting on to the aircraft. But Zharkov didn’t touch anything. He was too sad.

After that, we were left alone for more hours until after dark, when the chandeliers came on, lit by electric lights of which half weren’t working. Soon after, a dozen NKVD turned up: the sergeant we’d seen before, our two guards from the plane, and some other privates. They’d all been at the vodka and were noisy and boisterous. They were all Ukrainians and they were too drunk to speak Russian, but the sergeant grinned at me, winked at his men, and gave me a pretend salute.

‘Come,’ he said, managing that word at least; he beckoned and took a step or two and then looked back at me. They all did. So I got up and followed, leaving Zharkov with the other two of our guards who looked as if they were missing Christmas and New Year in one go. But what else should I have done? I had nowhere else to go, and they were smiling. More than that, they were talking about me. Especially one of the guards from the plane, the one who’d had the keys. He was going nineteen to the dozen, waving his arms and pointing at me, and the others were all listening and nodding. Then some of the smiles went and they started looking at me with a funny expression, and one of them actually crossed himself. The sergeant saw that and roared with laughter. ‘Come,’ he said to me, ‘come!’

So off we went to a room which was a mixture of a guard room and canteen. It stank of sweat and Russian tobacco, and there was a table and chairs and the inevitable bottles of drink, and glasses, and overflowing ashtrays. I was put into a chair. Everyone sat down, lit up, and took a couple of drinks of neat spirit, and they all laughed. Most of them were close to the falling-over stage, and there wasn’t one drop of good sense in the room.

‘Shhh,’ said the sergeant, ‘shhh!’ And they fell silent, and looked at me intently, and I began to feel very uneasy, because the sergeant reached down to his holster, unbuttoned it, and drew out a revolver, to gasps from the rest. He put the revolver on the table, grinned at me, and made the effort to speak Russian. ‘These boys,’ he frowned and corrected himself, ‘these
comrades
,’ he said.

‘Comrades,’ said the rest, and nodded.

‘These comrades,’ he said, and pointed to the two guards from the plane, ‘they told us about you. You’re special. You pass your hands through iron.’

‘Oh,’ I said, wondering how best to deal with this. I looked at the key-bearer, who frowned in his fug of booze and nicotine, and fumbled for words in Russian, and then gave up and chattered away rapidly in Ukranian.

‘Ahhhhh,’ they said, and looked at me with big eyes. God knows what he said. God knows what he told them, because I think he’d well and truly mixed up what he’d seen and heard back in that school building.

‘Show us,’ said the sergeant. ‘Show us the Russian roulette.’

‘Yes,’ said the key-bearer, finding his tongue at last. ‘You told us Russian roulette. You do it. Do it now! It can’t hurt you. Nothing hurt you. Not the death-suits, not irons. Not nothing.’ So the sergeant pushed the pistol across the table to me, and I remembered how I’d spoken to Ulitzky about Russian roulette before I picked up the German rubber suits.

I suppose it was Ulitzky that made me do what I did next. In the RAF, we lost men all the time. One day they were alive and well, and joking or arguing or smoking, or boasting about what they’d done to some girl after a dance … and then they were gone. They just never back from a raid, or sometimes you saw them go down yourself. You saw the machines blown apart and the bodies tumble out. Sometimes you saw it but not usually, and we had to deal with that; we were very young, in an all-male community, and the way we dealt with it was with massive drinking, massive rowdy parties in the mess, with indoor rugby and fart-burning competitions, building furniture mountains up to the ceiling, then fighting to be first man to the top stark naked, and nobody minded or even charged us for the breakages. Not when we had a life-expectancy measured in days.

So that’s what I was used to; Ulitzky was dead, and here was an audience blind drunk, in bad light, just begging me to show off. So I’m afraid I did, having first taken a couple of drinks myself.

‘Give me the pistol,’ I said, ‘so I can check there is no trickery.’ And they understood me because they’d all had Russian knocked into them by the Red Army, so they were OK as regards hearing it. It was speaking that was their problem. So they cheered and whistled and stamped their feet on the floor, and banged their fists on the table, swallowed even more drink, and whistled and stamped again. It was just like a mess party, and I took the revolver and made a great show of examining it, though what I was really doing was finding out how it worked.

It was a Russian Nagant, an odd weapon with seven chambers. This one was much worn, and the parts were loose, which was excellent for my purposes. When I’d done looking, I ejected all seven cartridges, put them in a row on the table, and looked at the audience who were sitting with their mouths open.

‘Now I must ask you all to get in front of me,’ I said, ‘and to get well back, because if anything goes wrong there will be blood and brains everywhere and you don’t want that on your uniforms.’ It was like performing to children. They all got up, goggle eyed and gaping, and stood on one side of the table, leaving me on the other side with only the wall behind me.

So I put on a show. What they saw was me loading one cartridge, spinning the cylinder, and putting the pistol to my head before pulling the trigger. I spun and pulled the trigger several times, and they saw beyond doubt that each time there was a cartridge in the revolver, and they dared not even breathe.

‘Now I need an assistant,’ I said. ‘Who’s going to help me?’ Everyone hung back, until the bulk of them pushed someone forward, and I did the business of asking his name, shaking his hand, and slapping him on the back. He was a small, shy man; the runt of the litter, which was why he’d been shoved forward.

‘I am Borislav Leonid Malinkovitz,’ he said, giving the full works, as Russians do, and Ukrainians too, obviously.

‘So, Borislav Leonid,’ I said, giving the first two names, which was friendly and less formal, ‘I can see you are a fine fellow and a credit to your mother!’ And I winked at the audience. The oldest trick in the book, and it won the usual derisory laugh at the victim. Then I got him to check that the revolver was really loaded, and I got him to count the chambers.

‘Seven chambers,’ he said.

‘So if I load one cartridge, Borislav Leonid, what is the maximum number of times I can pull the trigger safely before a cartridge must fire?’ He frowned at so great an intellectual challenge, so late at night, and with so much vodka in his belly. But he counted slowly on his fingers and finally produced the right answer.

‘Six,’ he said, ‘then a cartridge must fire.’

‘Thank you, Borislav Leonid,’ I said. ‘Now stand back with the rest. To keep clear of the blood.’ So he got clear, I loaded one cartridge, spun the cylinder, and put the pistol to my head.

‘We will all count,’ I said, and pulled the trigger. ‘One!’ I said.

‘One!’ they said and I pulled the trigger again.

‘Two!’ I said.

‘Two!’ they said.

And so on. I took them to the full six.

‘The next time, a cartridge must fire, yes?’ I said.

‘Yes,’ they said, worked up to excitement. ‘Yes! Yes! Yes!’ So I put the muzzle of the pistol carefully to the side of my head, and they saw me squeeze the trigger, and they saw the hammer rise. They were fairly shaking with excitement.

Then …

‘Click,’ went the revolver, and they groaned and gasped and stared.

‘Seven,’ I said, ‘but perhaps the revolver has eight chambers after all?’ And I pointed the revolver up and pulled the trigger once more, and blew a hole through the ceiling, as the pistol fired with a deafening bang in that narrow space, and a cloud of plaster settled on my head.

Yes, I know it was vanity, but they were asking for it and they saw what they thought they saw … which wasn’t what really happened, believe me it wasn’t. The Nagant revolver is a unique oddity in that its cartridges stick out a little in front of the chamber mouths. This is to enable the cylinder to move forward at the time of firing, and place the cartridge right into the barrel, forming a gas-tight seal, such that none of the power of the explosion is lost in the gap between cylinder and barrel as in ordinary revolvers. An obscure technical point, but useful to a sleight of hand merchant, because it enables him to push on the front of a cartridge, to start the ejection, while flicking the emerging back end of the cartridge with the thumb nail – the same thumb nail that’s just opened the loading gate –
et
voila
! The cartridge is out, and nobody knows but you.

After that, all you’ve got to do is palm the cartridge and reload at need. Well, it’s actually a bit more complex than that, but it’s easy for me, or someone like me; and it certainly isn’t clever because it’s something you’re born with. But clever or easy it was a useful trick, and, when I got to Moscow, I think it saved my life.

CHAPTER 19

The
Führerboat,

Running
at
Periscope
Depth
,
West
of
the
Faroe
Islands
.

Saturday
20 May
,
15
.
00
hours

‘Captain,’ said Kuhnke, ‘sorry to disturb you but von Bloch is on the intercom. He wants to talk to you privately.’ Sohler was already sitting up on his bunk with his legs over the side. He’d moved as soon as he heard the curtain swish. There was no door to his small cabin. He’d had that taken off and replaced by a curtain, which kept out the light when he was sleeping, but let in anyone, at any time, to speak to the captain on urgent business.

So Sohler was up and dressed – he slept fully clothed but for shoes and cap – and he was looking at Kuhnke in the light from the corridor. He was up but not awake. Not properly.

‘Captain?’ said Kuhnke, and leaned forward and shook Sohler by the shoulder. Sohler’s eyes blinked.

‘What is it?’ he said, breathing sleeper’s breath into Kuhnke’s face. ‘How’s the boat?’

‘All in order, sir.’ Kuhnke paused. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘we’ve got problems. Lots of problems. Half the electrical systems don’t work, we’re still working on leaks, some of the hatches are jammed – that’s the ones between tubes – and we’ve got no proper lighting in the battery compartments.’ He tried to smile. ‘All hands are making repairs where we can and we’re running steady for the moment. We’re making eight knots. Can’t go much faster or the leaks get nasty.’

Sohler nodded. ‘So?’ he said.

‘They want to talk,’ said Kuhnke, ‘to you.’

Sohler struggled to concentrate. Svart and his Mem Tav team were in the port tube; thirteen of them. Von Bloch, Weber, and the blackshirts were in the starboard tube; twenty-two of them now that Zapp was dead. No more figures came to mind. Sohler was barely awake and was dragging his mind into action like a man hauling a full bucket out of a well.

‘How many did we disarm?’ he said. ‘Remind me.’

‘About half,’ said Kuhnke. ‘Then von Bloch found out, and ordered the rest to fall back to the starboard tube. He had a full-scale row with Weber. A real screaming match. Weber wanted to fight, but von Bloch made them fall back.’

‘And they’ve sat there ever since,’ said Sohler.

‘Yes,’ said Kuhnke.

‘And our boys are on guard?’

‘Yes, sir. As ordered. There’s a man with a pistol at each access hatch into the starboard tube. Watch on, watch off, there’s always a man on guard.’

‘Good,’ said Sohler, ‘I don’t want those blackshirt bastards in my control room ever again.’ He sighed. ‘Well … I’ll have von Bloch if I must. He’s the best of them by far.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Kuhnke. ‘I think von Bloch probably agrees with us that Weber’s a complete idiot, and von Bloch’s certainly got the sense not to start a war in the boat.’

‘And now he wants to talk.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Sohler sagged, closed his eyes, and did his best. He was trained to make decisions. He was a veteran. He could deal with anything to do with the boat, its machinery, its men, or its enemies. But this was different. What the hell were they doing out here with a brand new wonder weapon and going nowhere? Who was in command? Who was giving the orders? What use was it all anyway with the war lost, even if nobody dared admit it? And what about himself? He’d killed an SSA sergeant major. Was that legal? Was it putting down a mutiny? It certainly wasn’t self-defence because he, Sohler, had fired first. So Weber would say it was murder, and the SSA had great power in the Reich.

‘Oh shit,’ said Sohler finally. ‘Give me a minute.’ One small privilege of a captain’s cabin was a tiny washbasin with taps. Sohler filled the basin, dipped in his hands, and rubbed cold water into his face. ‘Ugh!’ he said, and dried himself on a grubby towel.

‘How’s the burns, sir?’ said Kuhnke, looking at the dressings just visible above the collar of Sohler’s Tommy blouse. At least the dressings were clean. The medics saw to that.

‘Getting better,’ said Sohler, then, ‘right! Put ’em through.’ Kuhnke reached for the handset. ‘Wait,’ said Sohler, ‘Only von Bloch, right? Not that arsehole Weber. I’m not talking to him. Get von Bloch on the line, and you sit with me and listen.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Kuhnke, and Sohler put on his cap.

Ten minutes later there was a meeting in the officers’ mess: Sohler and Kuhnke on one side of the table, von Bloch with a folder of documents on the other. They sat silent until the hatch closed. Then Sohler looked at the three mugs of black liquid steaming on the table:
ersatz
coffee, made from roasted acorns and chicory and who knew what else. But there was sugar and condensed milk and it was hot. In fact it wasn’t bad actually. Submariners got used to it. Sohler pushed one mug towards von Bloch.

‘Thank you, Captain,’ said von Bloch, and sat straight in his chair; he bowed politely from the waist. As ever, Sohler couldn’t help noticing von Bloch’s voice. It was like an actor’s voice or a radio announcer’s; everything proper and smooth and grammatical, in number, gender, and case.

‘Huh!’ said Sohler and nodded back, and the three men sipped at the mugs, wondering how to begin the conversation. Sohler spoke first.

‘So,’ he said, ‘what’s this all about?’ He moved his hands to encompass everything around him. ‘What are we doing? What’s going on? And what do we do now?’

Von Bloch nodded. He put down his mug. ‘Captain,’ he said, ‘I have to tell you that Herr Svart, most regrettably, was injured when the torpedo exploded.’

‘Oh?’ said Sohler.

‘Yes,’ said von Bloch, ‘he fell and sustained a head wound.’

‘Then get him to the sick bay,’ said Sohler. ‘Let one of the docs see him.’ Von Bloch shook his head.

‘Best not to move him,’ he said. ‘He is being attended by a fully trained man from his own team.’

‘A doctor?’

‘A fully trained man,’ said von Bloch, and Sohler shrugged. He wasn’t worried about Svart. He’d never met him and hoped he never would, because rumour said Svart had the knack of scaring men shitless, even his own men;
especially
his own men.

‘Whatever you want,’ said Sohler, and von Bloch nodded.

‘But he is occasionally conscious, and is completely informed of the situation.’

‘Is he?’ said Sohler, frowning and wary.

‘He is. And he is of the opinion that it is vital that this boat, and all of us aboard, should function as one team united. To that end, Herr Svart gives his personal word – and his emphatic insistence – that all hostile actions between your men, Captain, and my men, shall cease, and be set aside, and be struck from the record as if they had never occurred. Do you understand me, Captain? There will be no recriminations of any kind.’

Sohler frowned. He looked at Kuhnke. Kuhnke’s expression said, ‘Good!’

‘Assuming that,’ said Sohler, ‘I still ask what are we doing here, and to what purpose, especially as the vessel is damaged and can’t make anything like full speed.’

Von Bloch frowned. ‘But can I assume you still have fuel for a long voyage?’ he said. ‘This boat was designed for exceptional range.’

Sohler looked at Kuhnke, who nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘The lower tube is mainly for fuel tanks and stores. We’ve got fuel for forty thousand kilometres and provisions for six months.’

‘Good,’ said von Bloch. ‘Then let me explain, Captain, but I ask you to be patient because the explanation is complex.’

‘Go ahead,’ said Sohler.

Von Bloch paused, concentrated his thoughts – which were complex and which were difficult. Then he began to speak, looking alternately at Sohler and Kuhnke, and, out of his profound belief in Abimilech Svart, he delivered a powerful, logical, and persuasive argument.

‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘first of all I must ask you to take note that we cannot choose the weapons with which we fight. Thus the soldier cannot say that he will use the rifle but not the bayonet. The gunner cannot say that he will fire solid shells but not high explosive. And you submarine gentlemen cannot say that you will sink a warship but not a merchant ship. So you sink any ship of the enemy, including ocean liners full of women and children.’

‘But that’s war,’ said Sohler, ‘and the British do the same.’

‘Which is precisely my point,’ said von Bloch. ‘The scientists invent ever more terrible ways of warfare, and we cannot refuse to use them. We cannot refuse, because if
we
do not use them, then the enemy will.’ Von Bloch looked at Sohler and Kuhnke. ‘Speak now if you disagree, you men who drown sailors.’

Sohler and Kuhnke said nothing.

‘So,’ said von Bloch, ‘let us now talk of total war between modern nations. This kind of war has reached the stage where the clash of armies in the field is irrelevant, because we have found the means to destroy cities. The wars of the future will be won by destruction of cities, not armies.’

‘What are you talking about?’ said Sohler. ‘What do you mean?’

‘The Tommies and the Americans do it with their heavy bombers,’ said von Bloch. ‘They send a thousand bombers to obliterate a city and its people.’

‘That’s just air raids,’ said Sohler, ‘terror raids!’

‘No,’ said von Bloch, ‘it is the new means of warfare, and by this means they have destroyed much of Hamburg, Berlin, Cologne, and other cities.’ Sohler nodded at that. He knew. Everyone knew, but nobody said so. ‘And soon,’ said von Bloch, ‘this process will increase. Herr Svart says that the Americans will soon develop a bomb containing uranium. One of these bombs – just one – will have the power to blow up an entire city.’

Sohler squirmed in his chair because he didn’t see where this was leading. ‘So what?’ he said.

‘The uranium bomb will be a second way to obliterate cities and, believe me, it will be used.’ Sohler still frowned. ‘So do you not see, Herr Captain, that Mem Tav is just one more such weapon? We have entered already into this age of city-destruction, such that not only are the civilian population no longer immune from war,
but
they
have
become
the
main
target
! This is the stage we have reached. This is the world of today! I do not ask you to like it, but I insist that you recognize it.’ Sohler and Kuhnke still said nothing.

‘So where are we now?’ said von Bloch. ‘If we do not stop them with Mem Tav, the Tommies, the Americans, and the Russians will win the war, and the Russians will take such vengeance on our people as cannot be imagined. There will be destruction and obliteration of our nation, our values, and our people. The Russians are savages and they will be savage.’ He looked at Sohler and Kuhnke. ‘Do you gentlemen have families back home?’

‘Yes,’ said Sohler.

‘Yes,’ said Kuhnke.

‘So think of them, and then give me your objections to using Mem Tav.’

As the silence continued, von Bloch saw that the powerful, logical, and persuasive argument – Svart’s argument – had convinced Sohler and Kuhnke that the Mem Tav weapon should be used. But, for the first time, von Bloch himself was nibbled by doubt. He was nibbled and prickled, but pressed on regardless as he would have done in his cavalry days when men were falling and only he was left to carry forward the flag. He did so because he was loyal and brave, and never wondered if he served the right cause; not yet.

‘So!’ said von Bloch. ‘It remains only to decide upon the target.’ He produced a diagram from his folder. He gave the diagram to Sohler and Kuhnke. ‘This is the means whereby we shall deliver the weapon.’

‘A flying bomb?’ said Sohler, looking at the diagram.

‘Yes,’ said von Bloch. ‘It is a highly modified Fieseler 103. A flying bomb, as you call it. You will bring this vessel to within range of the target, you will come to the surface, and my team will assemble the Fieseler and its launching ramp on the casing.’

Sohler frowned. ‘How will you do that?’ he said.

‘The boat has been adapted for this purpose,’ said von Bloch. There are hatches in the hull, and anchor points for the ramp.’

‘What’s the target?’ said Sohler. ‘London?’

‘No,’ said von Bloch. ‘Not for many reasons, of which the first is that London has highly developed defences against flying bombs. It has radar, heavy guns, and fighters. Herr Svart estimates that if we aimed at London, the British would have an eighty-five percent chance of shooting down our Mem Tav Fieseler, and it is too precious to risk because it is the only one ready. Also it is the Russians we need to stop, and they would not be stopped by an attack on London. They were not stopped even by a Mem Tav attack on one of their own cities.’

‘Which was that?’ said Sohler. ‘Moscow?’

‘No. We couldn’t reach Moscow. We attacked the city of Ulvid in Ukraine. We used an advanced bomber, and attacked Ulvid with total success.’ Von Bloch shrugged. ‘But it was useless. The Russians suppressed the truth. They said that fifty thousand people had died in an air raid, and that the survivors of the city were being moved east in special trains to protect them from further attack. But there were no trains because the entire population of Ulvid was dead.’