Field Gray (29 page)

I tucked the papers and the money inside my boots, the gun under my waistband, and walked toward the gate, where Lieutenant Rascher and a Blue sergeant were waiting for me, as predicted. The only trouble was that Major Weltz was waiting for me as well. Killing two men was going to be hard enough. Three looked like a much taller order. But there was no going back now. They were standing beside a black ZIM saloon that looked more American than Russian. I was halfway there when I heard someone call my name. I glanced around to see Bingel nod at me.

“Sign the pact in blood, did you, Gunther?” he asked. “Your soul. I hope you got a good price for it, you bastard. I just hope I live long enough to have the chance to send you to hell myself.”

I felt pretty low at this. I went to the car and held out my wrists for the manacles. Then we got in and the Blue drove us away.

“What did that man say?” asked Rascher.

“He wished me all the best.”

“Really?”

“No, but I reckon I can live with it.”

In the little railway station in Johannesgeorgenstadt there was a train already waiting. The steam locomotive was black with a red star on the front, like something from hell, which, in the circumstances, was entirely suitable. I couldn’t rid myself of the feeling that even though I was planning to escape, I was doing something inherently shameful. I almost couldn’t have felt worse if I really had been intending to join the Fifth Kommissariat.

The four of us climbed up into a carriage with the word for Berlin in Cyrillic chalk-marked on the side. We had it all to ourselves. The train had no central corridor. All of the carriages were separate. So much for coming out of the toilet with all guns blazing. The rest of the carriages were full of Red Army soldiers headed for Dresden, which hardly made things any easier.

Our own Russian sergeant was sweating and nervous-looking, and before he boarded the train behind me I noticed that he crossed himself. Which seemed a little curious, as even in the Soviet zone, rail travel was really not that hazardous. By contrast, the two German MVD officers appeared composed and relaxed. As we sat down and waited for the train to move, I asked the
starshina
if he spoke any German. He shook his head.

“The fellow’s Ukrainian, I think,” said Major Weltz. “He doesn’t speak a word of German.”

The Ivan lit a cigarette and stared out of the window, avoiding my eye.

“He’s an ugly sonofabitch, isn’t he?” I remarked. “I imagine his mother must have been a whore, like all Ukrainian women.”

The Ivan didn’t flinch at any of that.

“All right,” I said. “I really do think he doesn’t speak German. So. It’s probably safe to talk.”

Weltz frowned. “What on earth are you driving at?”

“Listen. Sir. All our lives could depend on us trusting each other now. We three Germans. Don’t look at him. But how much do you know about our smelly friend here?”

The major glanced at the lieutenant, who shook his head. “Nothing at all,” he said. “Why?”

“Nothing?”

“He was posted to the camp at Johannesgeorgenstadt just a few days ago,” said Rascher. “From Berlin. That’s really all I know about him.”

“And he’s going back already?”

“What’s all this about, Gunther?” said Weltz.

“There’s something about him that’s not quite right,” I said. “No. Don’t look at him. But he’s nervous when he shouldn’t be nervous. And I saw him crossing himself a minute ago—”

“I don’t know what you think you’re playing at, Gunther, but—”

“Shut up and listen. I was an intelligence officer. And before that I worked for the War Crimes Bureau in Berlin. One of the crimes we investigated was the murders of twenty-six thousand Polish officers, four thousand of them at a place I’m not going to mention in case it makes this dog prick up his ears. They were all of them murdered and buried in a forest clearing by NKVD.”

“Oh, that’s nonsense,” insisted the major. “Everyone knows that was the SS.”

“Look, it’s vital you believe that they weren’t killed by the SS. I know. I saw the bodies. Look, this man, this Blue sitting next to us, is wearing several medals on his chest, one of which is the Merited NKVD Worker medal. Like I said, I was an intelligence officer, and I happen to know that this medal was commissioned by the Council of the People’s Commissars of the USSR—in other words, Uncle Joe himself—in October 1940, as a special thank-you to all of those who did the killings in April of that same year.”

The major tutted loudly and rolled his eyes in exasperation. Outside our carriage, the stationmaster blew his whistle and the locomotive expelled a loud cloud of steam. “Where are you going with this conversation?”

“Don’t you get it? He’s an assassin. I wouldn’t mind betting that Comrade General Mielke has placed him on this train to kill all three of us.”

The train started to move.

“Ridiculous,” said Weltz. “Look, if this is the beginning of an attempt at escape, it’s a pretty clumsy one. Everyone knows that those Poles were murdered by the fascists.”

“You mean everyone except everyone in Poland,” I said. “There’s not much doubt there who was responsible. But if you don’t believe that, then maybe you’ll believe this: Mielke’s already screwed you in the ass, Major. He gave me a gun that I’m supposed to use to help make my escape. But my bet is that the gun isn’t going to work.”

“Why would the comrade general do such a thing?” asked Weltz, shaking his head. “It makes absolutely no sense.”

“It makes a lot of sense if you know Mielke as well as I do. I think he wants me dead because of what I could tell you about him. And he probably wants you both dead in case I already have.”

“It couldn’t hurt to see if he’s telling the truth about the gun, sir,” said Lieutenant Rascher.

“All right. Stand up, Gunther.”

Staying exactly where I was, I glanced quickly at the Russian sergeant. He had a large Stalin-size mustache and one continuous matching eyebrow; the nose was round and red, almost comical-looking; the ears had more hair on and in them than a wild pig’s.

“If you search me, Major, the Ivan will figure something’s wrong and draw his gun. And it will be too late for us all when he’s done that.”

“What if Gunther’s right, sir?” said Lieutenant Rascher. “We don’t know anything about this fellow.”

“I gave you an order, Gunther. Now do as you’re told.”

The major was already unbuttoning the flap on his holstered Nagant. There was no telling if he was about to pull the gun on me or the MVD
starshina,
but the Ivan saw it and then met my eye, and when he met my eye he saw what I had seen in his—something lethal. He reached for his own pistol, and this prompted Lieutenant Rascher to abandon the idea of searching me and fumble for his own gun.

Still wearing handcuffs and with no time to decide if the major was with me or not, I swung my fists at the Ivan as if I had been driving a golf ball, connecting hard with the outside of his porcine head. The blow knocked him onto the floor between the two rows of seats, but the big thirty-eight was already in his greasy fist. Someone else fired and the glass in the carriage door above him shattered. A split second later, the Ivan fired back. I felt the bullet zip past my head and hit something or someone behind me. I kicked at the Russian’s face and turned to see the major dead on the seat, the lieutenant aiming his revolver at the Ivan with both hands but still hesitating to pull the trigger, as if he’d never shot anyone before.

“Shoot him, you idiot!” I yelled.

But even as I spoke, the more experienced Ukrainian fired again, punctuating the young German’s forehead with a single red full stop.

Gritting my teeth, I stamped at the Russian’s face with the heel of my boot, and this time I kept on going, as if I were stamping on something verminous. One last uppercut of a kick caught him under the jaw and I felt something give way. I stamped again, and his throat seemed to collapse under the force of my boot. He made a loud choking noise that lasted as long as my next kick, and then he stopped moving.

I collapsed back onto the seat of the railway carriage and surveyed the scene.

Rascher was dead. Weltz was dead. I didn’t need to check for a pulse to know that. When he’s shot dead, a man’s face wears a certain look that’s a mixture of surprise and repose—as if someone stopped a movie in the very middle of an actor’s big scene, with his mouth agape and his eye half open. There was that and there was the fact that their brains and what these had been swimming in were all over the floor.

The MVD
starshina
made a long, slow gurgling noise, and adjusting my balance against the movement of the railway carriage, I kicked him hard—as hard as I could—against the side of his head. There had been enough shooting for one day.

My ears were still ringing from the shots and the carriage smelled strongly of cordite. But I wasn’t disturbed by any of this. After the Battle of Königsberg, nothing like that bothered me much, and my mind was disposed to interpret the ringing in my ears as an alarm and a call to action. If I kept my nerve, I could still complete my escape. In other circumstances, I might easily have panicked, jumped off the train, and tried to make for the American zone, as I’d originally intended; but a better plan was already presenting itself, and this depended on my acting quickly, before the blood spreading on the floor spoiled everything.

Both the German MVD officers had luggage. I opened up the bags and found that each man had brought a spare
gimnasterka
. This was just as well, as there was blood on both of their tunics. But the all-important blue trousers were still unmarked. First I emptied their pockets and removed their decorations, their blue shoulder boards, and their
portupeya
cross-belts. Then I pulled their tunics up and wrapped their shattered heads in the thick cloth to help staunch the blood. Weltz’s skull felt like a bag full of marbles.

You have to be a certain type of man to clean up efficiently after a murder, and no one does that better than a cop. Maybe what I was planning wouldn’t work, maybe I’d get caught, but the two Germans had bigger problems. They were both as dead as Weimar.

I took off their boots, unlaced the legs of their blue breeches, and then hauled those off, too. I put both pairs carefully up on the luggage rack, well out of the way of what I was going to do next.

It would have been a mistake to have opened the carriage door. A Red Army soldier in one of the other carriages might have seen me doing it. So I slid down the window, balanced the major’s naked body on the sill, and waited for a tunnel. It was fortunate that we were traveling through the Erzgebirge. There are lots of tunnels for the railway line that runs through the Erzgebirge.

By the time I had defenestrated the two dead Germans I was exhausted, but working down in the mine shaft had given me the capacity to go beyond the limits of my own exhaustion, to say nothing of a wiry muscularity in my arms and shoulders, and in this respect I was also fortunate. I might add that I was also desperate.

I wasn’t sure if the Ukrainian was dead, but I hardly cared. His NKVD assassin’s badge did not inspire my sympathy. In his pockets I found some money—quite a lot of money—and, more interesting, a piece of paper bearing an address in Cyrillic, and a note in German; it was the same address as on the envelope Mielke had given me for his friend, and I guessed that, my assassin once he had killed me, was detailed to deliver the dollars and the note in the envelope himself. That envelope had been a nice touch, partly allaying any fears of a double cross on Mielke’s part. After all, who would give an envelope full of money to a man he intended to have killed? There was also an identity document that gave the Ukrainian’s name as Vasili Karpovich Lebyediev; he was stationed at MVD headquarters in Berlin, at Karlshorst, which I remembered better as a villa colony with a race-course. He worked not for the MVD but for the Ministry of Military Forces—the MBC—whatever that was. The Nagant revolver in his apparently lifeless hand was dated 1937 and had been well looked after. I wondered how many innocent victims of Stalin it had been used to kill. For that reason, I took a certain pleasure in pushing his naked body out of the carriage window. It felt like a kind of justice.

I used the Ivan’s tunic and my old uniform to mop the floor and wipe the walls of any remaining blood and brain tissue, then threw them out of the window. I put the pieces of glass into the Russian’s cap alongside his decorations and threw that out of the window, too. And when everything apart from me looked almost respectable, I dressed carefully in the lieutenant’s blue breeches—the major’s were too big around the waist—and his spare tunic, and prepared to face down any Ivans who might come aboard at Dresden. I was ready for that.

What I wasn’t ready for was Dresden. The train went straight past the ruins of the city’s eighteenth-century cathedral. I could hardly believe my own eyes. The bell-shaped dome was completely gone. And the rest of the city was no better. Dresden had never seemed like an important town or one with any strategic significance, and I began to worry about what Berlin might look like. Did I even have a hometown that was worth returning to?

The Red Army sergeant who came aboard the carriage at Dresden and asked to see my papers glanced at the broken window with mild surprise.

“What happened in here?” he asked.

“I don’t know, but it must have been some party.”

He shook his head and frowned. “Some of these young lads they have in uniform now. They’re just
kolkhoznik
s. Peasants who don’t know how to behave. Half of them have never even seen a proper passenger train, let alone traveled on one.”

“You can’t blame them for that,” I said generously. “And for letting off a bit of steam now and again. Especially when you consider what the fascists did to Russia.”

“Right now I’m more concerned about what they’ve done to this train.” He glanced at Lieutenant Rascher’s identity document and then at me.

I met his gaze with steady-eyed innocence.