Angel, Archangel (35 page)

“Kolya, do not give him the pleasure,” Shaposhnikov said softly.

Shlemov’s eyes lit up.
“Comrade Marshal, it is so good of you to contribute to our little conversation.
I was just coming to your true motives for hatching up this plan.”

“I was doing my duty.”

“So, you took it upon yourself to undertake this crusade, a full-scale attack on the British and the Americans as well as the fascists.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because Comrade Stalin in the Kremlin has gone soft on us,” Krilov interrupted.
He pronounced the word “comrade” with real disdain.
“He negotiates with Roosevelt and Churchill; it is he who is the traitor to the ideals of the Revolution, not us.
We would have been doing him and Russia a favour.”

“I see,” Shlemov said.
“And I suppose Churchill and Roosevelt would have just sat on their fat behinds while your hydrogen cyanide rained down on their troops in Germany.
I presume you gave some thought to their reactions the moment you were to unleash what you have stored at Branodz.”

“The chemicals were a contingency plan,” Shaposhnikov said, simply.
“They were a weapon of last resort.”

“But if we had used them,” Krilov shouted, “the Allies would have spent days arguing about a response, such are the divisions in their command structure.
And by that time we would have been on our way to victory.”

Shlemov finally lost his temper.
“If you had fired just one of those shells, you would have started a chemical weapons exchange that would have turned Europe into a desert.
Is that what we have fought so hard to achieve these last four years?
Victory will come, but it will take time.
The difference between us is that I will live to see it.”

Shaposhnikov took a step forward.
“I doubt it, Shlemov.
Archangel was Russia’s last chance for a united continent.
You and your kind have ruined the best opportunity we shall ever have of achieving that goal.”

“Really,” the investigator said dismissively.
He was fighting for the upper hand, but Shaposhnikov had stolen the initiative.
He was tempted to play his trump card.

“Yes, really.”
Shaposhnikov was cool, full of menace, even when faced with death.
“After the war, the Americans will strengthen their position in Europe, you can be sure of that.
By the time they are ensconced on the continent, there will be little we can do through military action to remove them.”

“And what do you think the Americans and the British would have done if you ever made it to the Channel ports?
Just sit there and wait for you to go away?
They would have come back in force.”

Shaposhnikov shook his head.
“The stupidity of the NKVD,” he said slowly.
“Just because we are not politicians do you think we had not thought the whole thing through?
We had plans to negotiate a buffer zone.
Our forces would have moved back to the Rhine, the Red Army remaining behind the river so long as no British and American troops ever crossed the Channel.
We would have let communism take its natural course in France and the Low Countries.
If the Allies behaved themselves we would have even released their POWs on a piecemeal basis to let them finish off the Japanese.”

Malenkoy saw the logic of Archangel strike home with Shlemov, despite the investigator’s attempts to hide it.

Across the clearing, Nerchenko’s groaning reached a crescendo.
A momentary twitch of irritation appeared at the corner of the investigator’s left eye, then he cut the air with his hand, a swift final gesture.

Malenkoy tried not to watch, but he could not tear himself away from the awful spectacle of Nerchenko stretched out on his stomach, with one soldier standing on his hands, while the other dug a foot into the small of his back.
As Nerchenko wriggled in desperation, the soldier applied more pressure onto his back.
Then he drew back the bolt of his Sudayev, flicked the switch to single-fire and shot Nerchenko through the back of the head.

“Thus ended the lives of Badunov and Vorontin, also,” Shlemov said dramatically, the shot still echoing through the forest.

Krilov lunged for the investigator, but took no more than a pace before a guard crashed a rifle butt down on his head, sending him sprawling at Shlemov’s feet.

“Archangel would have given Russia everything she could have wanted,” Krilov muttered defiantly, as he struggled back on to his feet.
“An impregnable divide between us and the capitalists, without bartering anything.
But Stalin had to do worthless deals and betray us all.
Comrade Shaposhnikov would have made him pay with our plan.”

“Is that what you believe, Comrade Marshal?”
Shlemov asked.

Shaposhnikov said nothing.
He stared impassively at the investigator.

“Shame on you,” Shlemov said to him, “for leading these idealists astray.”

Krilov turned to Shaposhnikov and caught his eye.
He looked imploringly at the Chief of the General Staff.

“Perhaps I can speak for him,” Shlemov said softly.
“I know enough to surprise even you, Krilov,” Shlemov added, pulling his notepad from his greatcoat.
He began to read the jottings of his radio communication with Beria.

“In the early part of 1918, Shaposhnikov was a young militiaman fighting the Czarists in the Pomoroskiy marshlands, to the north of St Petersburg.
He was encouraged in his endeavours, no doubt, because he was not just defending the principles of the Revolution; he had a more, shall we say, local and quite understandable interest in defending the region against the enemy.
Is that not right, comrade?”
Shlemov turned to the marshal.

Shaposhnikov said nothing.

“Prior to the Revolution, before the last war in fact, Shaposhnikov had worked hard on the land around the hamlet where he had been brought up, a few scattered houses made of mud and straw on the banks of the Onega Estuary.

“It’s a desolate sort of place.
The swift waters of the river keep the White Sea open for most of the year, but when winter really bites, even the ocean freezes and then the place becomes truly inaccessible, by land or sea.
But to Comrade Shaposhnikov, it was home.
And just before the outbreak of the Kaiser’s War, he had saved enough money to buy his plot of land and build a house for his bride-to-be.

“He finished it just before he was pulled away to the battlefields of Europe, where he fought against the Prussians and achieved distinction for three long years.
When the October Revolution broke, Shaposhnikov marched back to the mouth of the Onega and was reunited with his wife and three-year-old son.
By all accounts, they were a rather happy little family.”

“What has all this to do with now?”
Krilov asked.

Shlemov ignored him.
He was in full flow.

“In the spring of 1918, the Czarists attacked the Pomoroskiy sector, but were rallied in the West by a militia force, which had been honed into a highly effective fighting unit by Shaposhnikov.
Your mentor, as you are undoubtedly aware, Krilov, routed the infinitely superior forces of the Czar and pushed them back to the Urals.
But in the meantime, the British Expeditionary Force in support of the Czar which had landed earlier in the year, mainly at the instigation of one Winston Churchill, was fighting its way back to the northern ports.
Our revolutionary forces, skilled in the ways of fighting a winter war, made short work of the British who, by the time they clawed their way to the little hamlet on the banks of the Onega, cold and hungry to a man, mutinied against their commander, General Ironside.”

Shlemov seemed to relish the confusion on Krilov’s face for a moment, before continuing.

“Militiaman Shaposhnikov, returning home after his triumphant push to the Urals, found a mutinous enemy occupying his beloved district.
His forces attacked and the British retreated, but not before they had raped every woman and girl in the hamlet.
It was unfortunate for Shaposhnikov that he arrived at his house too late to save his wife and child.
In retaliation for Shaposhnikov’s counter attack the British burned every building in the village; they found his family days later charred to a crisp in the smouldering ruins of his house.
In the meantime, the British renegades retreated to their home port, where they turned themselves in to the authorities.
The name of that port should be familiar to you Krilov; it, too, was called Archangel.”

Krilov looked over to Shaposhnikov.
“Tell me it’s not true,” he said.

Shlemov smiled slowly and gestured to the man standing silently before him.

“Look at your Marshal.
Yesterday he was the great leader, rallying you all to a cause in which he himself did not believe.
And now he is nothing.
That is what revenge does to you, Krilov; it drives you for so long - and then it burns you out.”

Shlemov turned to the trees and waved his hand in the air.
The guards pushed the marshal and his aide to the edge of the clearing.
Shlemov then moved to the back of the truck, out of sight.

Malenkoy saw Krilov turn to Shaposhnikov as the Sudayevs were levelled at their bodies.

“Who informed on us?”
the colonel asked, his voice cracking.

Shaposhnikov dropped his head.
“It was Stalin himself, Kolya,” the Marshal whispered.

Malenkoy saw the incomprehension etched on Krilov’s face even after the guns had barked and the two bodies fell as one onto the carpet of pine needles.

When the ringing echo had subsided, Shlemov wandered over to Krilov’s body and flicked it over with his foot.
There was no movement.

The Marshal let out an almost imperceptible groan and opened his eyes.

“There’s just one to go now, you realize that,” the investigator said.

“He is nothing to do with us,” Shaposhnikov whispered, the pain carving deep lines into his face.
He turned his gaze to Malenkoy with a supreme effort.

Shlemov followed suit.
“I know,” he said.
“But it is important to Russia that no one ever finds out what happened here today, you know that.
The NKVD can be trusted to keep the secret of Archangel, but he .
.
.
well, he is just a major of tanks.
He knows nothing about codes of silence.”

“He won’t talk.
Look at him.”
There was a rattle in Shaposhnikov’s throat.

“Why should I believe what you -” But when he looked back, Shaposhnikov’s eyes had rolled into his forehead.
Shlemov shook his head and walked away from the body.

“Bury them in the woods,” he said to the senior NCO of the party.
Then he gestured towards Malenkoy and spoke softly to the NKVD lieutenant.
“Put him in the back of the truck and go back to Branodz.
The killing is over.”

* * * * *

The hum of the air-conditioning vents sounded loudly over the silence that fell upon the underground room.

“We all believe in the effectiveness of the EAEU,” Welland said, somewhat patronizingly, “but there is still the possibility that your man in Reisen has put too much faith in this Luftwaffe transmission interception.”

Staverton rubbed his eyes.
“Cochrane’s a good man.
We were damned lucky he was there when the FW 189 came in.
The German was scared out of his wits.
He literally fell into Cochrane’s arms and said he was turning himself in because the Soviets had deployed chemicals at a place in western Czechoslovakia called Branodz.
By the time Cochrane had developed the Uhu’s film and had conducted a thorough debrief, he believed him.
Only then did he put a call through to the Bunker.”

“But these crates next to the HQ, how can you be sure that they contain the hydrogen cyanide?”
Deering asked.

“We can’t be a hundred per cent.
But we know what Shaposhnikov is planning at Branodz and we know that he’s capable of anything.
Then some Luftwaffe reconnaissance aircraft makes an emergency landing at one of our airfields in southern Germany with its crew babbling about Russian chemical weapons being stored in the very same place.
Why should they make it up?
We have to believe it - we can’t afford not to.

“The worst thing is Shaposhnikov has located the dump right next to his headquarters, the very place my man is programmed to bomb tomorrow morning.”

“Kruze has been stopped, I take it,” Deering said.

“Don’t worry, George, we’re taking care of that right now.
Our concern is what we do next.”