The Folks at Fifty-Eight (6 page)

She heard the howling wind suddenly quieten, and felt as if she had been falling for ever, but then hit the ground with a thump that jolted the wind from her lungs. She cartwheeled once and jarred her shoulder, and then began rolling down the slope at the side of the track.

She hadn’t felt the pain of impact, she was too excited for that, not until she had lain where she stopped rolling for a full twenty seconds. She lay still as ordered, feeling the adrenaline ebb and hearing the train disappearing into the distance. Then she heard Hammond’s voice shouting at her.

“Right, you can get up now. Come on, on your feet. Now we run. . . and I do mean run.”

Suddenly her shoulder hurt like hell.

As the nine a.m. train from Magdeburg to Leipzig was passing some fields to the south of Wiederitzsch, a haughty-looking woman in a fur-collared coat stood in the corridor and stared out of the window. She watched two people jump from farther up the train, and then saw them rolling down the embankment. One of them looked like the drunk who had staggered against her in the corridor. The other was the girl she’d seen handcuffed at the station. The woman in the coat was sure of that. For a moment of indecision she thought of sending for help, maybe even stopping the train.

But then she remembered the feel of a Mosin-Nagant rifle butt in the back of the head. She gingerly rubbed at the bruise and smiled quietly into the passing countryside.

When he wasn’t chasing women, and sometimes even when he was, Alan Carlisle worked for the U.S. State Department, under the rapidly expanding remit of the Office of Occupied Territories. His published brief was to aid America in better understanding European cultures and traditions. His unpublished brief was an altogether different and less worthy one.

A product of privilege and Princeton, Alan Carlisle was something of a State Department rising star. Those who worked with him thought him the Office of Occupied Territories’ proverbial rough diamond: undeniably flawed, but with the potential for brilliance. Those who slept with him, however, and that included a fair number of their wives, found themselves only able to recount the flaws.

Carlisle spent his working hours commuting between glamorous locations along the U.S. eastern seaboard and a dour-looking building in U.S. occupied Germany. The glamorous locations included upmarket addresses on New York City’s Manhattan Island, a multi-millionaire’s sprawling estate in Connecticut, and the corridors of power in Washington D.C.

The dour-looking building was the main debriefing block at Camp King, a U.S. military base to the north-west of Frankfurt. Before the war, Camp King had served as a Wehrmacht detention centre. It was now one of America’s most secret military establishments.

Carlisle was making his third visit to the base in less than a month. Pacing the floor of interview room two, in reality a euphemism for a holding cell and not a particularly pleasant one at that, he gathered his thoughts.

Interview room two’s walls were soiled and defaced with all manner of graffiti. Its ceiling had been stained yellow with nicotine. Its air was damp and stale and thick with cigarette smoke. An electric bulb, surface wired and out of reach, was its only source of light. A wooden desk, two wooden chairs, and an iron bed with an enamel chamber pot beneath were its only amenities.

Carlisle finished pacing and sat down at the table. He briefly scanned one of the documents laid out in front of him, and then boomed an order to the prisoner, who had only recently arrived from Berlin and now stood waiting outside.

“Come along in, Herr Kube, and tell me some interesting things about Prague.”

Two military policemen brought in the shackled and prison-suited Martin Kube. Carlisle assumed an air of arrogance and indifference while he studied the overweight Gestapo chief. Finding nothing remarkable, just another overweight and underwhelming Gestapo thug, he told the guards to wait outside and gestured for Kube to sit.

The guards stepped out. The door swung closed with a thud that shook the walls. Kube slumped on to the chair. Carlisle tried a disarming smile.

“My name is Alan Carlisle. I work for The U.S. State Department. My brief is to identify suitable candidates, who might aid America in better understanding European cultures and traditions. We think you might be one of those people, Herr Kube.”

Kube shook his head and spoke in a voice heavily laced with exasperation.

“My name is Linz, Martin Linz. I told them at the hospital.”

Carlisle held the smile as he read from his notes.

“Now that is strange. It says here there’s a warrant out for Martin Linz, issued by the Nuremberg Tribunals people; something about war crimes in the Prague and Warsaw ghettos.” He looked up, and the smile was gone. “Are you sure your name is Linz?”

Carlisle was lying. He had no knowledge of anyone called Linz, but he knew the man sitting before him; knew who he was, and what he was.

Kube’s eyes shifted left and right.

“That must be some other Martin Linz. I was only a clerk.”

Carlisle abandoned the lie and pronounced the most terrible of indictments.

“Your name is not Martin Linz. Your name is Martin Kube, and you were one of the most senior Gestapo agents in occupied Europe. In the Warsaw ghettos you were responsible for the deaths of hundreds of innocent civilians; in Prague many more. We know you reported directly to some of the most senior members of Adolf Hitler’s regime, firstly to Oberführer Josef Conrad Schmidt, and then to Reichsprotektor Reinhard Heydrich’s successor, Karl Hermann Frank. We also know that at one time you reported directly to Heinrich Himmler.”

Kube met the accusation with a vehement denial.

“But, that is simply not true. My name is Linz, Martin Linz. I was a Stabszahlmeister. That is a hauptmann; a captain with the administrative corps. I was the most senior cipher clerk in Wehrmacht headquarters Prague, but I was only a clerk. I remember Kube. I knew him quite well. He was Gestapo, you are right, but now he is dead. They say he died protecting the Führer’s bunker, slaughtered, like so many others, slaughtered by the bloody Bolsheviks.”

It had been a good performance, maybe even a great performance. Carlisle was suitably impressed, or he might have been if he hadn’t already known the truth.

“If that is so, then what happened to his body?”

“Check the records. They burned his body and scattered the ashes to the winds.”

“And what happened to your documents?”

“Bandits stole my money and papers, probably the same bandits who gave me up to you. Cowards and deserters and the scum of mankind.”

Alan Carlisle took a cigarette from the packet on the desk. He lit it, inhaled deeply, then tilted his head back and slowly exhaled. Kube looked longingly at the open packet. Carlisle saw, but didn’t offer. Instead, he began a carefully-rehearsed speech.

“Herr Kube, you have the time that it takes me to finish this cigarette to start telling the truth. After that I will order your immediate transfer to the tribunals at Nuremberg. Make no mistake, this is your last chance to save yourself from the hangman, and that chance is literally going up in smoke as I speak. Do not try my patience any further. Tell me something interesting, and tell me now, or I do promise that your overdue appointment to burn in hell will be sooner rather than later.”

Carlisle could give a good performance, too, when it suited him. He watched the German stare straight ahead and knew exactly what he was thinking. Kube was waiting for a further comment, some sort of inducement to give up what he knew. Carlisle wasn’t about to provide one. He stared blankly back, watching nervous perspiration gathering along Kube’s temples and forehead before running slowly down. It trickled into the German’s eyes. He blinked away the intrusion, and held the stare. Carlisle quietly watched, and waited, and smoked his cigarette.

The cigarette was almost done now. He lifted the remnants to his lips, and. . .

Suddenly, there it was. Kube’s eyes briefly flickered to the rapidly-dwindling stem of that vital cigarette and Carlisle knew that he had him. All he had to do was wait.

When the German slowly nodded his head, it came as no surprise.

“Most convincing, Herr Carlisle. I believe you would do exactly that, and so I will tell you what you want to know. I only hope that I am dealing with a gentleman. . . ?”

Carlisle read the pause, but refused to provide the answer that Kube was obviously hoping for. He took a last long drag on the cigarette and moved to stub it out. When Kube hurriedly continued, Carlisle held the smouldering remains hovering theatrically above the ashtray, while he waited for the German to place his head all the way into the noose.

“You are, of course, correct. My name is Martin Kube, and I was a Kriminaldirektor with Section Four of Reich security. And yes, I served in both Warsaw and Prague. However, what you obviously do not know is that I was also head of all counter-intelligence, and foreign surveillance, for the Reich Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.”

Carlisle had already known that. He allowed himself a fleeting smile of triumph, finished stubbing out his cigarette, and fired a question.

“Why should I believe you now, after listening to so many lies?”

Martin Kube’s sneer of confidence told its own tale.

“Oh, you believe me. I can see it in your face. And you need me. I can see that, too.”

So far so good, but Carlisle didn’t want Kube getting too comfortable.

“We already have Gehlen. Why should we need you?”

“You have Reinhard Gehlen?”

When Carlisle nodded, a look of puzzlement disrupted the German’s flabby features. It seemed the enormity of that statement was taking time to register. Then a look of excitement replaced the confusion and an animated Martin Kube began babbling.

“But that is even better. Gehlen only ran the eastern front. He had no responsibility for Bohemia and Moravia. You need me, Herr Carlisle. You need me more than ever. Consider the geography. With my networks you have a wedge to drive right into the communist heartland, a wedge to divide the puppet states and link with Gehlen’s eastern front. Between the two operations they will put you ten years ahead of Lavrenti Beria. . . You know they will.”

Alan Carlisle knew exactly what combining the two operations would mean. He had known it long before fat Martin Kube had fallen so conveniently into his hands. Until now it had been just another pipe dream; it still might be. To this point, Kube had only confirmed information that Carlisle already held. The most important question was next. Its answer would either fulfil that pipe dream or send Martin Kube to the gallows.

“And you can simply remember all of this, can you? All the contacts, all the details?”

“There are also documents. I have them hidden. They contain all the detail you require.”

Whether or not Kube was aware of it, he had just saved himself from the hangman. Carlisle wondered if he knew.

“And where can I find these documents?”

“All in good time, Herr Carlisle. We have much to agree before that.”

It seemed he did.

Carlisle was now in touching distance of what he had worked towards and dreamed of for so many months: an entire dormant Nazi spy network, running right through Czechoslovakia. Once reactivated, it would be like a dagger plunged into the heart of Soviet state security. Now he needed to get the news back to his masters in Washington and New York. The haggling could wait. That seamier side of things had always bored him.

He collected his papers, picked up his briefcase and made ready to leave, but not before he had fired a passing shot to disrupt the German’s fragile arrogance.

“Don’t be too confident, Herr Kube. You haven’t evaded the hangman’s noose just yet.”

Carlisle banged on the cell door. It opened immediately. He left the room without looking back, threaded his way between the guards, and then stood quietly collecting his thoughts as the door slammed shut behind him. Moments later, he strode along the featureless corridor to an office at the far end. Two more guards stood outside that. He nodded as they snapped to attention. The sign on the door read: Colonel H. H. Strecker, OIC Briefings.

A token knock served both to announce his arrival and accommodate etiquette.

“No, don’t get up, Colonel.”

He wandered in, slammed the door shut with his foot, and waved Howard Strecker back into his seat. Then he picked up the telephone and began tapping at the cradle.

An apologetic female voice answered. He gave his name and asked for hers. She answered with a delightful lilt that told him she just might be open to giving up more than just a name. She said it was Melody Strand. He smirked. This sounded promising.

The name was twinkling and catchy, and the twang pure Louisiana. To a spoiled and silver-spooned rich-kid from New Hampshire it conjured images of nineteenth-century southern plantations and submissive doe-eyed slave girls. Alan Carlisle’s sexual proclivities were many, but if he loved one thing more than any other, it was the erotic contrast of a smooth-skinned ebony beauty, lying sprawled and ready for him on a crisp white cotton sheet.

He made a couple of double-entendres. She responded with suitable gasps of maidenly outrage, but the laughter in her voice had remained. She apologized and said she had to go. America was waking up, and the switchboard was busy. He asked her to get him his home number, then replaced the receiver and turned to face the waiting Howard Strecker.

“Hope you don’t mind, Colonel, but the hotel’s a little too public.”