The Beast in the Red Forest (17 page)

But the next year brought changes. First came the defeat of the German Sixth Army at Stalingrad. Then the mighty clash of armour at Kursk, from which the Red Army emerged victorious. By the autumn of 1943, the German army was in full retreat. Even the most fanatical among them began to realise that their fate was sealed. Soon, Malashenko knew, the Soviets would be his masters once again.

This conclusion came without a trace of joy or gratitude that the hour of Russian liberation was at hand. Instead, all that Malashenko felt was a shudder of dread, clattering like a knife blade down the ladder of his spine. He harboured no illusions that the defeat of Germany would bring peace to his world. The terror meted out by Nazi gauleiters would simply be replaced by the heavy-handed justice of the commissars, as it had been before the war began.

Anticipating the imminent arrival of the Soviets, partisan activity in the forests around Rovno had increased. Some of their attacks, on railway lines, German patrols and even on Rovno itself had turned into full-scale battles. Successive air raids, first by the Red Air Force and then by the Luftwaffe, had reduced the lives of those few surviving inhabitants of the town to something out of the Stone Age.

Although he continued to supply information to Krug, and Krug continued to pay for it as generously as ever, Malashenko knew the day was fast approaching when this arrangement would come to an end.

The last piece of intelligence he sold to Krug was a rumour he had picked up about a former partisan, Viktor Andrich, who would soon be arriving from Moscow with a mission to negotiate an end to all partisan activity in the region. At this time, the Red Army was only 20 kilometres from Rovno and Malashenko knew that this might be his final chance to profit from his arrangement with Krug.

Arriving at Feldpolizei headquarters, Malashenko found the place in a shambles. In the hotel courtyard, clerks were pitching armfuls of documents into a huge fire. Stray pages wafted away from the blaze, flecking the ground with rectangles of white so that the courtyard resembled a jigsaw puzzle with half its pieces missing.

Malashenko discovered the garrison commander at his desk, still wearing his doeskin gloves and cradling a litre of Napoleon brandy, not the cheap apricot schnapps with which he plied his informants. With this brandy, Krug had once hoped to celebrate the unconditional surrender of Russia. He had entertained great notions of his role in the future of this country. In these moments of supreme confidence, he had whispered to himself the titles and awards he believed would soon garnish his name. But now Krug’s career lay in tatters, and he glimpsed the future – of a Berlin consumed in flames and Red Army soldiers fighting house to house among the ruins. By the time Malashenko entered the room, Krug had drunk most of the brandy and his vision was so blurred that at first he barely recognised the partisan.

‘I have information for you,’ said Malashenko, eyes fixed on Krug’s Luger, which lay upon the desk, just as it had done at their first meeting.

‘And I have some for you,’ replied Krug. ‘We’re leaving!’

‘So I see.’

‘Which means,’ Krug paused to swig from the bottle, ‘that your information is no longer of any use to me.’

‘Very well,’ said Malashenko, turning to leave. He didn’t put it past Krug to finish him off with that Luger, now that their dealings were done, and he made up his mind to get out of the building as quickly as possible.

‘On the other hand,’ said Krug.

Malashenko turned. ‘Yes?’ He expected to find Krug’s Luger aimed in his direction, but was relieved to see the weapon still lying on the desk.

‘You may as well tell me what it is.’

Malashenko explained what he had heard about Colonel Andrich.

‘That’s it?’ asked Krug. ‘That’s all you’ve got?’

‘It ought to be worth something,’ answered Malashenko.

Krug breathed in deeply, the air whistling in through his long, thin nose. ‘That’s what you all say,’ he muttered.

‘All who?’ demanded Malashenko. ‘It’s just me standing here.’

Krug laughed. ‘You think you are the only partisan who works for me?’

‘Maybe not,’ admitted Malashenko, ‘but after all I’ve done for you, are you really going to send me away empty-handed?’

Krug sighed. ‘I suppose you haven’t been completely useless.’ He reached down beside his chair, lifted up a bag of salt and tossed it on to the desk. ‘My last one,’ he whispered. ‘Take it. Take it and get out of here.’

Malashenko did as he was told.

After the partisan had gone, Krug raised himself uncertainly to his feet, crossed the room to an Enigma coding machine and relayed a message to Berlin, stating that Rovno was in imminent danger of being overrun by the Red Army. The message went on to say that a Soviet colonel named Andrich had been dispatched by Moscow to negotiate a ceasefire between the various partisan groups after the German army had pulled out of the region. From other sources, Krug had learned that a force of Soviet Counter Intelligence troops was also on its way to Rovno, to deal with the situation by force if Andrich’s negotiations proved unsuccessful.

As the message transmitted, Krug thought about the plans he had made for himself, tracing the arc of his ambition higher and higher through the ranks until, at last, he would find himself sitting side by side with the great and living gods of the thousand-year empire to which he had sworn his allegiance. His musings were interrupted by a rustling at his windowpane. He turned to see a piece of paper, smouldering at its edges, blown by a gust of wind against the glass. Walking over to the window, he squinted at the document. It was a copy of a recommendation, made out to Krug himself, for an Iron Cross First Class. In exchange for a month’s leave, Krug had persuaded his second-in-command to fill out and sign the necessary paperwork. The recommendation had been sent to Berlin several weeks previously but there had been no acknowledgement of its receipt. Another gust of wind snatched away the paper, giving Krug a view down into the courtyard below, where men from his staff were still burning heaps of documents. Caught in the rising smoke, more pieces of paper fluttered up into the air beyond Krug’s window and, for a while, he watched them with the fascination of a child as they side-slipped into the milky sky. Then Krug sat down at his desk, put the barrel of the Luger in his mouth and blew his brains out.

One week after the death of Commander Krug, and with Red Army troops now in full control of Rovno, Malashenko was contacted by another person who had been collaborating with the Germans during their occupation of the town.

Malashenko was astonished to discover that this person was nurse Antonina from the Rovno hospital, who had regularly supplied him with stolen medications and who had, more recently, been seen in the company of Commander Yakushkin. The meeting took place when Malashenko arrived at the hospital, ostensibly to receive treatment for scabies. In fact, he was there to collect penicillin, bandages and suture thread for the partisan medical officer, a former butcher named Leiferkus, who had turned his old trade of disassembling the carcasses of animals into reassembling his fellow men as best he could when no actual doctors could be found.

Even though the Germans had pulled out of Rovno, most of the Atrads, the Barabanschikovs included, had no intention yet of simply laying down their arms before the Soviets. This meant that, for Malashenko, his missions into Rovno continued just as they had done before.

In the dozens of times Malashenko had met with Antonina over the years, he never once considered that she might also be collaborating with the enemy. But this, Malashenko realised, was the genius of the disguise which Krug had fashioned for her. Krug had said there were others, and Malashenko wondered how many, whose paths he crossed each day, were hiding the same lie as his own.

Antonina, for her part, was equally amazed to learn the truth about Malashenko. She had received a message from Berlin on a radio provided by Krug, to be used only if Krug himself was captured or killed by the enemy. ‘In two days, you will receive a visitor,’ she told Malashenko.

‘What visitor?’ he asked nervously.

‘I don’t know who,’ replied Antonina, ‘but they have ordered you to rendezvous with him three days from now.’

‘Ordered?’

‘Did you think you were finished with these people?’ Antonina laughed. ‘You will only be finished when you, or they, or both of you are dead.’

‘All right,’ grumbled Malashenko, ‘but I expect to get paid.’

‘That is between you and them,’ she said. ‘Where shall I say you’ll be meeting this visitor?’

Malashenko thought for a moment and then gave her directions to Pitoniak’s cabin. ‘Tell them I’ll be there at dusk. I’d feel better if I knew what this was about.’

‘So would I,’ replied Antonina, ‘but neither of us do so there’s no point in worrying about it.’ She put several vials of penicillin in front of him, along with a stack of bandages, medical tape and suture thread. ‘You’d better carry those out of here, in case your people wonder what you’re doing.’

Malashenko rolled up his trouser leg and used the medical tape to strap the vials to his calves. Bald patches on his skin showed where previously applied strips of tape had been pulled away, leaving freckles of dried blood in the flesh.

‘How are you planning to get out of here,’ asked Antonina, ‘now that the Red Army has arrived?’

‘Out?’ replied Malashenko. ‘Where would I go?’

‘Any place at all, as long as it is far from here.’

‘I hadn’t thought about it.’

‘Well, you’d better start,’ Antonina told him. ‘If they find out you’ve been collaborating with the Germans . . .’

Malashenko stopped wrapping the tape around his leg. ‘Why would they find out,’ he asked menacingly, ‘unless somebody told them?’

‘You should worry less about somebody giving you up and a little bit more about how things will change for us now that the Red Army is here. Better to leave and find some place where you can start again.’

‘Is that what you’re going to do?’ asked Malashenko, suddenly nervous that he did not have a plan of his own.

‘I’ve got an idea,’ she answered cryptically, ‘and if all goes well, I’ll be riding out of here in the arms of Commander Yakushkin.’

You’re a cold-hearted bitch, thought Malashenko, but he just nodded and smiled and hurried on his way.

The operation to assassinate Colonel Andrich had begun within hours of Krug’s message arriving at Abwehr Headquarters. Admiral Canaris, head of German Intelligence, had immediately grasped the vulnerability of the Kremlin’s plan. If Andrich could be liquidated, the Red Army would become bogged down in a war with their own people, diverting valuable troops from the front line and weakening the strength of the Soviet advance. All this, and significantly more if the full extent of the Admiral’s plan could be achieved, would be accomplished with the death of a single man, provided he was found in time.

Realising that the only way to achieve their objective would be to send an assassin, Admiral Canaris summoned SS Sturmbannführer Otto Skorzeny of the Brandenburg Kommando to a private meeting.

Skorzeny had carried out numerous commando operations during the course of the war including, in September of 1943, the rescue of Benito Mussolini from the castle of Gran Sasso, where the Duce was being held in captivity by Italian Communist partisans.

At his office on the Bendlerstrasse in Berlin, Canaris explained the situation to the six-foot-four-inch Skorzeny, who stood uncomfortably in Canaris’s drawing room, boots creaking as he tilted slowly between his heels and the balls of his feet, while the Admiral’s two dachshunds sniffed at his legs.

‘It could be done,’ said Skorzeny, when he had listened to the Admiral’s plan, ‘but doesn’t Abwehr have agents of its own to carry out the task?’

‘We do,’ replied Canaris. He was a tall man, with a gaunt face and deep-set eyes. His once blond hair had turned almost completely white and his lips twitched nervously whenever he listened to other people speak, as if forcing himself not to interrupt.

‘So why do you need me?’ asked Skorzeny.

‘Because what we don’t have is someone I can count on to deliver that agent to Rovno. That is why I’ve called on you, Skorzeny, because I know you can get the job done.’

‘As I understand it, Admiral, Rovno is now under Red Army control.’

‘And does that represent an insurmountable obstacle for you, Skorzeny?’

Skorzeny paused for a moment. ‘Not at all, Admiral, provided I am given the necessary resources.’

‘You may have whatever you need.’

‘And who is this agent, Admiral?’

‘His name is Peter Vasko.’

‘That sounds vaguely familiar.’

‘He came to us through the Embassy in Tokyo, back in ’38.’

‘Yes,’ said Skorzeny, ‘now I remember. The American.’

‘I would not call him that, if I were you. But yes, that is the man in question. Provided you can get him across the lines, Vasko will have no difficulty infiltrating Rovno as a Russian. He speaks the language and, thanks to his training with us, he is also an expert in firearms and explosives.’

At that moment, the phone rang, loud and jarring in the cramped space of the office.

Canaris picked up the phone. ‘Yes?’ As he spoke, he turned in his chair, until he was facing away from Skorzeny, and lowered his voice to a murmur.

Skorzeny took advantage of the disruption to kick one of the dachshunds and send it yelping under the Admiral’s desk.

Canaris turned to see what had caused the commotion, but by then Skorzeny appeared to be engrossed in studying the books which lined one wall of Canaris’s study.

Canaris hung up the phone. ‘You leave tonight, Skorzeny. Vasko will be ready. Any questions?’

‘I do have one.’

Canaris held out a hand, palm up, in a conciliatory gesture. ‘By all means.’

‘Are you certain it is wise to involve the SS in an Abwehr operation? Our two departments have been in conflict ever since the war began, and especially after Himmler took over the Intelligence Branch of the SS following the death of Reinhardt Heydrich.’

Skorzeny was telling the truth, and the source of this rancour between the two departments had largely been the result of a dispute between the SS and the Abwehr in the very area where Vasko would be carrying out his mission. Soon after the German invasion of Russia in 1941, Abwehr agents had begun working with local Ukrainian leaders to consolidate anti-Communist militias. Abwehr’s Eastern Group I, which was given responsibility for this large-scale operation, operated out of Sulejowek, across the border in occupied Poland. They succeeded not only in winning the support of the influential partisan leader Melnyk, who worked for the Germans under the code name ‘Konsul I’, but they were also able to recruit several companies of Ukrainian troops, who became known as the Gruppe Nachtigall.

How far-reaching this operation might have been would never be known, because it was derailed by the arrival of SS execution squads, known as Einsatzgruppen, which began a series of mass executions in the same region where Abwehr had been working to win over the local population.

Disillusioned Ukrainians, who had initially welcomed the arrival of German troops, now turned upon those they had seen as liberators and began a struggle against both the Fascists and the Communists.

Canaris had never forgiven the SS for their role in the failure of the Abwehr’s operations in the East. He had made no secret of that fact, which was why Skorzeny had good reason to wonder why the leader of the Abwehr would seek the assistance of an SS Sturmbannführer.

‘I chose you,’ explained Canaris, ‘because you are the best we’ve got, and also because this operation is too important to be waylaid by departmental politics.’

‘I understand, Admiral, and I am grateful for your confidence in me.’

‘And with that confidence in mind, I order you to maintain absolute secrecy with regard to this operation. No activity report is to be filed. No communication is to be made once the operation is under way. There will be no debriefing afterwards. No one may know. Absolutely no one. Not even Himmler!’

Skorzeny’s eyebrows rose almost imperceptibly.

‘Is that clear?’ asked Canaris.

‘Yes, Admiral. It is.’

‘You have your orders.’ Canaris waved him away. ‘Make them so.’

Immediately after Skorzeny’s departure, Canaris picked up the phone. ‘Get me Vasko,’ he ordered.

Two hours later, Vasko was standing in the room. He was of middle height, with a small mouth and large, staring blue eyes, which seemed to take in everything around him without looking at anything in particular. His hair, which he combed straight back on his head, was thin and the same dull shade of brown as the fur on the back of a mouse. He had an unremarkable face that appealed neither to women nor to men, and which allowed him to vanish in a crowd, ignored even by those who had stood in his presence, some of whom he had sent to their graves on the orders of Admiral Canaris.

‘Sit,’ Canaris gestured towards a chair. ‘Are you hungry? Thirsty?’

‘No, Admiral. Thank you.’

‘Skorzeny has agreed to transport you across the lines. You leave tonight. The mission is going ahead.’

‘But why bring in Skorzeny?’ demanded Vasko. ‘Surely the Abwehr have people who can get me through the lines.’

‘None who are as capable as Skorzeny,’ replied Canaris, ‘and if this mission goes wrong, I will need someone to take responsibility. Who better than the SS?’

‘And if it succeeds?’

‘Then Hitler’s flagging confidence in the Abwehr will be restored, and that slack-jawed chicken farmer Himmler will have no choice except to sing our praises to the heavens.’ Canaris lifted a sealed envelope from his desk and held it out.

Vasko leaned forward and slipped it from the Admiral’s grasp.

‘Once Skorzeny has brought you through the lines,’ Canaris continued, ‘you will be guided to your target by a partisan named Malashenko. He is a member of the Barabanschikov Atrad, and has served as an informant to the Secret Field Police in Rovno. The rendezvous point is an old hunter’s cabin in the forest south of Rovno. You’ll find the map coordinates inside that envelope.’

Vasko tucked it into the inside chest pocket of his coat. ‘How much did you tell Skorzeny about the operation?’

‘As much as he needs to know, but no more. Skorzeny is aware that you are going in to liquidate Colonel Andrich but, like you, he knows nothing at all about the full extent of the mission, or the agent who will be carrying out the secondary phase.’

‘Forgive me, Admiral, but are you sure it’s right to separate the two phases of the mission so completely? If I knew who this second agent was . . .’

‘Then you would be in a position to give up the name of the agent if, God forbid, you were ever captured. Or vice versa. He does not know you and you do not know him. That is how I want it and, believe me, so do you.’

‘Yes, Admiral.’ Vasko stood up to leave.

‘There is one more thing.’ Opening a drawer in his desk, Canaris removed a bar of gold as long as his outstretched hand and as wide as his first three fingers. The finish of the gold was not shiny but rather a dusty brass colour. The surface bore several stamps, indicating its weight, purity and Reichsbank inventory number. Carefully, he set it down in front of Vasko. ‘Your guide is expecting to be paid.’

‘As much as that?’ remarked Vasko.

‘If everything goes according to plan, Colonel Andrich will soon be dead, and Stalin himself will not be far behind. For that,’ said Canaris, ‘one bar of gold is a small asking price.’

Malashenko stood in the doorway to his cabin, smoking a cigarette as he watched a man approaching down the centre of the path.

He wore the uniform of a Red Army officer, and all he carried with him was a leather satchel of the type used by blacksmiths for holding horse shoes. ‘You must be Malashenko,’ he said.

‘I am. And who are you?’

‘A stranger bearing gifts. That’s all you need to know.’

Malashenko flicked away his cigarette and stood aside to let him pass.

Inside the cabin, Vasko removed his gun belt, from which hung a holstered Tokarev and a Russian army canteen. He laid them on the table, then sat down and waited while Malashenko brewed coffee made from chicory in an old pan on the stove.

‘What is it you want from me?’ asked the partisan, as he poured the dark and bitter-smelling drink into a chipped enamel cup.