Agent of Death (8 page)

Such was the immense scale of this eastern war, where the Red Army was facing the Wehrmacht nose to nose, and I’d never seen anything like it. The noise was appalling, the filth beyond imagination, and the chaos seemed total. But the Russians kept going through the uniquely Russian mixture of stoic perseverance, ferocious patriotism, noble self-sacrifice, and the threat of punishment which might include shooting on the spot, or sending to a penal battalion where death was equally certain, but took longer to arrive and was nastier when it came.

Meanwhile Ulitzky was yelling red-faced at another Russian, who yelled back in fury and suddenly drew his Tokarev automatic and waved it the air. So Ulitzky shouted even louder and tapped a finger on the row of medals on his tunic, because like most Red Army men he wore the lot, even in battledress: not just ribbons but the dangling metal as well. Ulitzky had a lot of medals and the other did not, and Ulitzky was pointing this out.

Otherwise, both wore near-identical uniforms: khaki jodhpurs and gymnatiorka with shoulder-boards bearing the three stars of a
polkovnik
– a colonel. Likewise, both wore caps with patent leather peaks and a single red star. But Ulitsky’s cap was khaki all over, while the other’s had a sky-blue crown, because he was NKVD. He was an officer of the state-within-a-state, whose men were everything from policemen to firemen, and who looked like soldiers but weren’t because they were the Communist Party’s enforcers, arresters, and executioners. Sometimes they actually fought the enemy, but mostly their guns were aimed inward. So the Red Army hated the NKVD and the NKVD hated them right back.

Behind each yelling colonel stood two rival squads of men, each alert to the actions of its officer, each with hands well clear of their PPSH submachine guns, in firm and well-founded determination not to get into this argument of their betters, and everyone, including me, repeatedly ducking as some machine or other went roaring overhead, either struggling for height, laden with bombs, fuel, and ammunition, or coming in empty and exhausted with crews leaking blood and entrails.

I looked at the latest of them as they came down, wheels reaching for the ground. The Red Army thought it was winning but the Jerries didn’t agree and were fighting back hard, covered by continuous action from Luftwaffe aeroplanes that were technically superior to their Russian opponents, even if heavily outnumbered.

I looked back at Ulitzky and the NKVD colonel, as the latter suddenly fired
crack
-
crack
in the air, empty cases flying out of the pistol. Ulitzky snatched out his own pistol, put two more shots in the air,
crack
-
crack
, and then both resumed shouting. I flinched and looked at the cause of the argument.

The NKVD were guarding the one standing building in all these acres of tents and huts, mud and dugouts. It was – had been – some sort of academy: big, plain, and concrete, in Soviet Socialist architecture, rising to four storeys, with a tower in the middle, decorated with a red star over the main door, and a bronze bust of Lenin. It was a huge building.

Now much of the window glass was gone, and the building was spattered with shrapnel scars, and the pilot of the German Arado jet was somewhere inside. But the building still had doors and the NKVD were keeping them shut despite Ulitzky’s bellowing insistence that he had official Red Army authority to be let in: him and his tame Englishman. Obviously there’d been a cock-up somewhere, and, standing where Ulitzky had told me, with a strict injunction to keep my mouth shut, I was getting fed up.

‘Keep out of this, Moscow boy,’ he’d said. ‘You’d get your balls chewed off and spat out.’ But finally I pushed through Ulitzky’s squad, who had their backs to me and were concentrating on keeping out of the argument. They let me pass and I walked up to the two colonels. Instantly the NKVD squad, who were facing me, frowned heavily and cocked their guns with a vicious clatter while their officer looked me up and down in suspicious hatred. It was probably the first time he’d ever seen a British uniform.

‘What’s this?’ he yelled at Ulitzky. ‘Who told him to come forward?’ He stamped his foot. ‘This will appear on the record!’ he said. ‘It will appear with all the rest!’ Ulitzky turned round and glared at me and, for an instant, the shouting stopped, giving me the chance to deliver the little speech I’d been preparing.

‘Comrades,’ I said. ‘If we stand out here much longer, we’ll upset the Boss,’ I paused to let that dreadful word be heard and digested. ‘Because, in case you don’t know, I am here on the direct orders of the Boss, as agreed personally between him and Mr Churchill.’ I smiled, and spread my hands wide, absolving myself from blame. ‘So, comrades, you can upset the Boss if you like, because that’s your business in your country. But I’ve got to go back to England some time, and I can’t afford to upset Churchill.’

It wasn’t much, but if I do say so myself, it was delivered in fluent Russian, and it was delivered in Stalin’s name, or rather his nickname. It was that before everything; that before
absolutely
everything. It was the fear of upsetting Stalin. So the NKVD man faltered, shrank, licked his lips, and thought hard: here was this pretty-boy Englishman who spoke Russian like Ivan Ivanovich, and who said he was sent in the Boss’s name! But could it be true? Did the Boss really give a shit about this bloody foreigner? It was difficult. A man could make a bloody fool of himself. He could drop himself into something worse than shit.

But in the end he didn’t dare take the risk. So he put away his pistol, stood to attention, clicked his heels, and saluted me.

‘Colonel Piotr Boris Zharkov,’ he said, ‘People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs. How can I help you, comrade?’

After that it was easy. At least getting inside was easy, for Ulitzky and me, because Ulitzky’s men had to stay outside, and we were marched off down the ground floor where the NKVD had a considerable headquarters, and all the empty windows were fortified with sandbags, with no daylight getting in, but cables fixed to walls and ceilings, with dangling electric bulbs, and a diesel generator thudding away somewhere.

Zharkov led the way with his squad right behind me and Ulitzky. We went down long corridors, with shouted word of us going ahead, and rooms emptying out as curious staff crowded into the corridors to get a glimpse of us; of me, really. There were hundreds of them, and there was surreptitious murmuring and discussion behind hands, but most of them kept well back, most of them obviously technicians rather than soldiers, and all of them nervous. Obviously, the Russians had mobilized a huge technical team to investigate whatever it was that had killed the people of Ulvid, and that was hardly surprising. We’d have done the same if it had been Sheffield or Bradford.

Finally we were taken into a big classroom, lavishly rigged out as an office, with a large staff, female as well as male, and rows of typewriters, filing cabinets, and tables and chairs, and a big picture of Stalin on one wall.

Zharkov went straight to the picture and saluted the very senior NKVD officer who sat in front of it behind a desk, elaborately uniformed, cap on head, rows of medals on his chest, and a fat neck bulging over his collar, with uniformed minions standing to either side of him holding notes and pens and files, while Ulitzky and I, and Zharkov’s men, stood waiting in front of them.

‘Comrade General!’ said Zharkov. ‘Here is the English expert sent to us by Mr Churchill.’

‘And you let him in, without my word?’ said the general, and rose from his seat leaning on the desk with fat fists bristling with hair, and all the minions gasped in united affectation of outrage. Zharkov gulped in fright, but stood his ground, and pointed at me.

‘He says he’s here on the personal word of the Boss,’ he said, and saluted the big picture. What effect that might have made on the general I never found out, because three civilians entered the room at the quick march, pushed past everyone, and went straight to the general, one of them talking into his ear, the other two staring hard at me, and the general sat down with a nervous thump and all the signs of being outranked.

The three civilians wore suits, ties, and collars, and no insignia other than a single red star in their lapels. One was the leader, and he stepped forward and looked at me. He was in his early thirties, with close-shaved hair and a pale, intelligent face. Every inch of him proclaimed that he was one hell of a climber of the greasy pole, and no pole was more greasy that the Soviet political one.

‘Are you Wing Commander Landau?’ he said.

‘Yes, comrade,’ I said.

‘I am Genady Vorishilov,’ he said, ‘assistant undersecretary to Comrade Stalin. I am also chairman of the scientific advisory sub-committee to the Central War Committee.’ He drew breath to say more, but then this formidable man surprised me, as he hesitated, lost confidence, and looked at the general as if for support, only to see the general rock back in his chair with a satisfied smile, seeing weakness and scenting advantage. Zharkov – a mere colonel – stepped back from centre stage to get out of the way of his betters, took off his cap, and wiped the sweat from his brow with clammy fingers.

And thus a great light shone down upon me. I realized that everyone here was more afraid of Stalin than of the Germans, and before all else they were concerned to avoid making any decisions, or any taking actions, that might later be pronounced bad. So it was much safer to keep quiet, vanish into the crowd, and let some other idiot take the risks. The Russians even had a word for this buck-passing avoidance of responsibility. The word was
obezlichka
, and this was it. So there was a great silence, and it was time for another little speech from me.

‘Comrade General, Comrade Undersecretary,’ I said, ‘may I give an opinion?’ And I got the now-familiar moment of surprise at an Englishman speaking Russian. To them it was like hearing a dog speak. ‘Comrades,’ I said, ‘I can see that there are matters here of procedure, perhaps even
politics.
’ They winced at that. ‘Matters that do not concern me. But I am here on the orders of Comrade Stalin, and of Mr Churchill, who will take full responsibility for my actions. So while you comrades discuss these other matters, could I at least see the German pilot who is held in this building?’

It worked. Better than that, it worked easily. It was rolling a stone downhill. It was Pontius Pilate washing his hands. The general and the undersecretary had found someone to take the blame, and, after some furious muttering between the two of them, Zharkov was ordered to take me to the German. So out we went and clumped down more corridors with our escort. Zharkov led the way and, when he got a little ahead, Ulitzky whispered to me.

‘Moscow boy?’ he said, ‘Is all that stuff true about the Boss? Did he really fix it with Churchill? You being here?’

‘I haven’t the slightest idea,’ I said, and Ulitzky snorted with laughter, but very quietly so Zharkov shouldn’t hear, and he put arm around my shoulders and squeezed. So I laughed too, equally quietly. But I didn’t laugh when I saw the German pilot.

CHAPTER 8

Bletchley
Park
,

Milton
Keynes
,
Buckinghamshire
,
England.

Saturday
20May
,
08
.
45
hours
.

Brigadier Sanders got out of the Bentley, buttoned up his overcoat, and put on his cap. It was a miserable, grey, English morning and he stretched his legs and thought of the journey he’d just suffered. He wasn’t a coward; he rode to hounds in peacetime and he’d got his gongs from the Great War. But he was glad to get out of the car, beautiful as it was. It was a four-and-a-half litre, Derby-built saloon with Park Ward coachwork, a sweeping, burgundy-red body with cream leather interior, plus synchromesh, disc brakes, and other futuristic twinkles, tailored to the likes of the woman who drove it, even though the car was owned by a distinguished cabinet minister – an actual Duke.

She was Lady Margaret Comings and she was more beautiful than the car, even Sanders admitted that, and she wore special outfits when she drove it. This one was a burgundy-red silk trouser suit, with a jacket cut to show off her bottom. She wore it with a cream blouse, burgundy-red turban, and lipstick and jewellery to match. And she knew everyone. Not just the normal social list but, through her husband Sir Jack Comings, she tapped into an English-Jewish Mafia of the great and the brilliant, including Frederick Laskerman, Churchill’s best friend and scientific advisor. One call from her to Laskerman, and it was ‘Margaret, darling! How’s Jack?’ and the door to number ten swung open.

Sanders didn’t understand women and never would, but this one was particularly hard to bear. And now she got out of the driver’s side, slammed the door, and walked round the car on high-heeled cork wedges, also burgundy-red. She didn’t lock the car but simply abandoned it among a shoal of lesser breeds, stuck diagonally across the asphalt of two parking spaces, and never a backward glance. She flicked open the cover of a tiny watch in her ivory bangle. Cartier at least. It had to be.

‘Not bad,’ she said, ‘for Whitehall to Bletchley. Not my best time, but not bad.’

‘It was quite fast enough,’ said Sanders, ‘especially in the bad light.’

‘I got us what we went for though, didn’t I?’ she said, and smiled.

‘You’ve got a bloody cheek,’ he said, ‘I’ll give you that.’

‘Dear me, Brigadier,’ she said, frowning, ‘won’t you apologize for swearing to a lady?’

‘Won’t you act like one? Have you no respect for anyone?’ She thought about that. ‘Churchill,’ she said. ‘He’s a good egg. A jolly good egg.’

‘You’re only saying that because he was hanging on your bloody words and gaping at your … your …’ he faltered.

‘Tits?’ she said.

‘God dammit woman, don’t be so coarse!’

Her smile snapped off. ‘Brigadier,’ she said, ‘thanks to me, the prime minister has given us what we asked. So now let’s see if you can get us into this Hangar, or whatever they call it.’

Lady Margaret may not have been impressed by the brigadier’s fame and rank but others were, so he got them past rifle-bearing sentries, wary section leaders, protesting department heads, and finally a big, fat, Wren petty officer with tiny features and evil eyes, who looked capable of frightening off the Wicked Witch of the West. But she phoned those above her nonetheless, as others had done who’d been brushed past, so there would be a reckoning sooner or later.

‘You can go in now, sir,’ said the big Wren, and she stood up and marched across the little ante-room, opened the door she was guarding, and led them into the science of another age.

Lady Margaret looked round. Under Bletchley rules she shouldn’t know this place existed, because Bletchley rules said:

Don’t
talk
to
your
mother
,

Don’t
talk
to
your
father
,

Don’t
talk
in
the
morning
,

Don’t
talk
in
the
afternoon
,

Don’t
talk
in
the
evening
,

Don’t
talk
to
anyone
,

About
anything
.

But some people did talk, at least to her. It was one of the reasons she was so useful to Brigadier Sanders’s Section 15 (Special Duties), which was responsible for checking that Bletchley’s tight, security-driven hierarchy didn’t drop something through the cracks.

So she frowned at the noise, which she knew never ceased because the machines never stopped working. They were run by successive shifts of uniformed Wrens in shirtsleeve drill, with collar and tie, but sleeves rolled up to keep them clear of the machines. The girls were very young, but were experts at a job so special and secret than almost nobody knew it existed. Not it nor the machines involved.

There was nothing like these machines anywhere else in the world, and there were ten of them, laid out in a wide, featureless room known as the Hangar. Each machine was the size of a giant wardrobe, and displayed thousands of valves in rank and file, plus aluminium tubes bearing wheels that sent endless streams of tickertape whizzing to unknowable destinations for unfathomable purposes. They were the first ever programmable, electronic computers. They were a new thing on the face of the Earth and they were a generation ahead of anything in the hands of the Germans, the Russians, or even the Americans. They were a uniquely British triumph and they were enormously powerful code-breakers.

Then the Wren petty officer stood back, and Sanders spoke to Lady Margaret.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘satisfied? Even I’ve not seen this before.’

She nodded. ‘So these are the Colossuses?’ she said.

‘Colossi,’ he corrected.

‘How scholarly! Did you do Latin at school?’

‘Can you not be serious?’ Then another Wren came up, wearing a cap and a tunic with a curl on the sleeve. She was a Wren First Officer and she’d put on full uniform because she’d spotted intruders. She stopped in front of Sanders and saluted. She looked about fifteen but wasn’t and was deadly serious.

‘Good morning, sir,’ she said. ‘Can I ask what you’re doing here?’

‘And can I ask who’s the officer in charge here?’ said Sanders.

‘Me, sir,’ said the Wren.

‘Oh,’ said Sanders. ‘Is there no naval officer?’

‘Yes, sir. Me, sir.’

‘Oh,’ said Sanders, and Lady Margaret laughed.

‘I think you’ve wandered into the girls’ dorm, sir,’ she said, and the Wren stared at her, annoyed at being mocked but lost in envy for the gorgeous, gorgeous outfit.

Then doors banged and four men entered: a middle-aged, round-faced man with glasses, a Saville Row suit, and a bow tie, followed by a Royal Navy captain, a lieutenant colonel, and a civilian in a grey mac. The round-faced man was gasping from running, and he was angry. But he kept control and spoke with a precise, stabbing voice.

‘Brigadier Sanders,’ he said, ‘Steven! This is a jolly bad show. You’ve known me for years. I thought we were friends. Why did you go behind me? Why didn’t you come to me?’

‘Because you would have said
no
,’ said Lady Margaret, ‘You don’t care about the Russians. You’re concentrated on the Western Front and won’t take effort from it.’ She tried to smile but failed, because even she had her limits.

‘Madam,’ said the round-faced man, ‘we have not previously met, so let me introduce myself. I am Sir Donald Trent, director of this establishment, and while you have demonstrated a certain –
underhand
– ability to pull strings, it is my choice exclusively as to who serves at Bletchley and who does not. You will therefore speak when spoken to, and not interrupt again.’ Then he walked off, beckoned Sanders to follow him, and the two held a very English, icily polite argument in a corner of the big room, where their speech was drowned by the background noise. It was a very bitter argument, embarrassing to behold, but eventually Trent fell silent, pointedly turned his back on Sanders, and returned to the waiting group.

‘Gentlemen, ladies,’ he said.

‘Sir,’ said five voices, and Trent spoke to the Wren First Officer.

‘You will allocate the use of one Colossus, whenever needed, to a project of which you will be informed by Brigadier Sanders. You will consider this project to be of overriding national importance and you will pass your findings directly to myself and to Brigadier Sanders, and to none other.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said the Wren.

‘What about me, sir?’ said one of the officers who’d come in with Trent. ‘Standard procedures should involve me, at least.’

‘Yes,’ said the others.

‘Gentlemen,’ said Trent, staring at them as a python stares at a piglet, ‘even
I
am to consider myself privileged to be given sight of Brigadier Sanders’s investigations. So if you are disappointed, you must bear your disappointment with fortitude.’ He let them ponder on that, then walked off and they followed. But he stopped at the door and spoke to Sanders. ‘I really do look forward to the outcome of this decision, Steven,’ he said. ‘I hope that it justifies the consequent denial of vital information to our fighting men. Let us hope that not too many lives are lost, and that your findings are worth the finding.’

*

‘Here’s what we’ve got … sir,’ said Lady Margaret, and sat down in one of the scrubbed wooden chairs in Brigadier Sanders’s office. It was nearly midnight but Sanders was sitting immaculately neat, in full uniform, with his overcoat draped neatly over his shoulders, while she wore a sensible set of denim overalls with a thick cardigan on top.

It was a plain, well-swept room, with bare brick walls painted green. It had no heating and was bitter cold in winter and nasty cold now. There was a picture of the King on the wall, above photos of men lined up for regimental portraits which all looked the same; there was strong smell of pipe tobacco, and a number of large tables where Sanders kept his personal files in measured rows, in identical locked steel boxes. One table, aside from the rest, bore an oil-cloth cover, a shiny Primus stove, a polished aluminium kettle, plus bone china crockery, pots, spoons, jugs, and packets, and a clean linen tea-towel, and everything lined up like the guards on parade and not a smut, stain, or blemish in sight. Lady Margaret looked at these lavish tea makings and wondered where Sanders got them. He had even had three different kinds of tea and it couldn’t have come from the black market because Sanders didn’t use the black market; he thought it unpatriotic. She shrugged off the problem and turned to business.

‘The Colossus cracked our intercept,’ she said. ‘It was
Abteilung Adler
code. Toughest we’ve ever dealt with. But the Colossus cracked it.’ She put two brown manila files on the table and Sanders pulled up a chair to sit beside her.

‘What’s the other lot?’ he said.

‘That’s the latest from public sources, mainly libraries. I had a search done at the Bodleian, the British Museum, Trinity Dublin, and a few others, including the Historisches Museum library in Berne, in Switzerland. Our people there were very helpful.’

Sanders rubbed his eyes. He was very tired.

‘D’you want a brew?’ he said. ‘Earl Grey, isn’t it? With lemon and no sugar?’

She wondered again how he did it with all the rationing. Fresh lemons! He actually had fresh lemons. And fresh milk. ‘Yes please,’ she said.

‘Good,’ he said, ‘I’ll brew up, and then we’ll have a look at what you’ve got.’ So he pumped the Primus, found a match, and made excellent tea for the two of them. He lived alone and was both cook and housekeeper. He drank Darjeeling, weak with a splash of milk.

‘OK then,’ he said, huddling in his overcoat, ‘so what have we got?’

‘Here’s the conventional stuff,’ she said. ‘We’ve got a picture of Abimilech Svart, at last.’ She took out a brightly-coloured, excellently-drafted, watercolour portrait of a young man in a boy-scout-type uniform. He was gazing sternly off into the distance; all blond hair, straight nose, and blue eyes.

‘What is he, Hitler Youth?’ said Sanders.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘he’s an
Oberstammführer
Hitler
Jugend
. That’s the senior youth rank, reserved for very good boys indeed. They have to be racially perfect, and that’s the point. The Nazis have a favourite artist called Wolfgang Willrich, who does racial stereotypes, and this one is supposed to be the perfect Nordic youth based on Abimilech Svart as he was in the early nineteen-thirties.

‘Supposed to be?’

‘Yes, but we can’t find any portrait or photograph of him. Someone’s gone through the records and blotted him out.’

Sanders peered at the picture. ‘It’s not a real portrait,’ he said, ‘its idealized.’

‘It’s the best we’ve got.’