Tin Sky (15 page)

I’m still reeling from yesterday’s events. By the time I fell asleep behind the wheel, Kiev learnt of Platonov’s death (they were understandably put out); Colonel Bentivegni was informed of Tibyetsky’s unconscionable kidnapping (I can’t use another word) and anticipated his arrival in 24 hours’ time; for what it’s worth, I delivered Khan’s provisions to SS Hauptsturmführer Mantau, about whom I know more than he imagines. We all spy on one another, and after the so-called “Ten Points” we had to agree on a year ago with Amt IV, the Central Security Office has leeway to interfere with our activities in the occupied territories. Mantau belongs to Amt IV E5, so I can only make a fuss about the mode
of Khan’s removal. As it was (and still is) my strong suspicion that they might try to shut down our special detention centre, I drove back there after connecting with Bentivegni, to make sure I’d left nothing behind for Odilo Mantau to rummage through, just in case.

What a difference a day makes! Yesterday at this time the old man was still alive, and Khan/Uncle Terry was sipping orange drink from a gold-rimmed goblet that now lies in pieces on the floor. I stepped on glass shards when I first went into his room after the raid. Later, when I returned in the afternoon to retrieve his empty trunk and vainglorious photograph (it reads
Narodnaya Slava
– National Glory, no less! – in pencil behind it), I thoroughly searched the premises, as if there were clues for me to follow. What was I looking for?

It is checkmate, nothing less. No use recriminating about Headquarters’ insistence that Khan be kept in Kharkov, after I all but begged them to let me fly him out of Rogany or Krestovoy. He’d have been safe at our interrogation camp near Frankfurt, or at Colonel Gehlen’s Foreign Army East HQ in East Prussia. I daresay Khan would have been safer even in Merefa. Now, as the chess expert he claims to be, he will be tempted to play the Central Security Office against us, selling himself to the highest bidder. Over there, they’ll do anything to learn about our network as much as they will to hear about STAVKA’s plans.

As for the Kiev Branch Office, they’ll start working at once on what we got out of Platonov (Lattmann will hand-deliver the packet to ensure there are no more interferences). It must be said they were against the use of the general’s family to convince him to talk; I insisted it would be the only method, and still believe this. Did shock (hope, surprise) contribute to his death? Mayr said no, but he wasn’t in the room while I grilled the old man. Am I sorry he died? Only because I didn’t obtain all I wanted. I’d have shot him without regret at least three times during his detention, because of his arrogant attitude and (especially) for trying to buy me off.

The more I think about it, the more his attempted bribery puzzles me. I wish I’d asked him what he meant, but I didn’t want
to appear interested. If it wasn’t mere braggadocio or a bluff, did the “something else” Platonov spoke of have any role in his Purge trial? Some of the top ranks were accused of profiteering, in addition to the usual charges of diversionism and espionage. And now, even the one man who might possibly know something about it is out of my reach. Not that Khan Tibyetsky would necessarily be inclined to tell, but he did seem – what’s the word? – glad, or even relieved, that his old colleague had died. Of course, if Uncle Terry sat as a witness against him during the Purge, after Platonov was rehabilitated their relations might have been strained, to say the least.

It exasperates me that I lost two prize catches in one week; not good at all for my fine performance as an interrogator thus far. But if in the first case I might have been too heavy-handed, in the second there was nothing I could have done to keep it from happening.

Khan–Terry is an acquired and remote member of our enlarged family; still, he’s a Soviet star of the highest magnitude. My connection with him was the very reason I was chosen to carry out research about him in Moscow: the
Abwehr
saw it as a plus. I wonder how it might be seen by the Central Security Office if it comes out. Oh well. Will he keep his word, and speak to no one but our own Colonel Bentivegni? Or will he be enticed into sharing the wealth of his knowledge anyway? Rightly employed, a defector’s information will benefit our military aims, no matter where it is deposited.

All the same, the raid marks a serious escalation in the infighting between intelligence services. We’ve lost much ground since our 1936 protocol with RSHA on mutual responsibilities and areas of competence. What does it mean for us who work in the field? As Grandfather Wilhelm Heinrich was reported to have quoted African wisdom (after his stint in the German Cameroon), “Where two elephants engage in combat, the grass below is thoroughly mashed.”

Oh, and a shock to start the day. The grumpy
Oberstarzt
saw me in the hospital vestibule early this morning and told me – implying
that it was my fault or by my order – that his young medic is being transferred without notice. No such thing, I told him just as curtly. “What do you expect me to do? Sudden reassignment is routine.” Still, I wonder. They were so put out at our Kiev office, Weller
could
be a victim of Platonov’s passing. Dr Mayr waved in disgust and grumbled something about the general’s post-mortem and calling me about the results before nightfall.

At 7.50 a.m. Kostya was back with the fuel. Judging by the state of his boots and white canvas trousers, he’d stepped through a sluice or wetland to get it, and Bora had a hunch where he’d gone pilfering (the army-run sheds and deposit by the river).

“Kostya,” he said, “where are the babushkas? I want to have a word with them before they start work.”

The young man clapped his hands, as if he’d just remembered something he ought to have said before. “They weren’t on the train,
povazhany
Major
.
The conductor told me they were made to get off at Pokatilovka.”

“A station earlier? Why? By whom?”

“I took the liberty of asking. The guards on the train said they were needed elsewhere, that’s all. I went to Pokatilovka, and they weren’t there either.”

“And I signed them out!”

Bora immediately called the district commissioner’s office. Stark wasn’t in yet, but his assistant assured him they knew nothing of it. “That’s highly irregular. I am not at liberty to look in the commissioner’s desk, but we’ll see what we can do, Major.”

Until 1 p.m., Bora interviewed ten promising officers, a couple of whom he knew well and was glad to meet again. It started thundering around noon; the light coming through the windows dimmed more and more, and eventually the weather took a turn for the worse. By the time the officers left, it smelt like rain. Hoping it would not start pouring in earnest, with all that it meant to dirt roads and parking spaces everywhere, Bora walked to the doorstep to look at the sky. A radiant azure
overarched the horizon of the Donets. Towards it, sweeping from the Poltava region, a storm front drew an immense fan of dusty grey, the colour of ostrich feathers: strong, high altitude winds must be driving it eastwards. Westwards, all was ink-black and gravid with lightning. It must be pouring in Kiev, where Bentivegni was expected to make a stop before flying to Kharkov. At the edge of the schoolyard, Kostya, in off-white canvas fatigues that looked phosphorescent in the muted light, gathered the hens. He pointed out the storm clouds to Bora and wagged his head to mean there was trouble ahead.

Ordinarily, it would take between an hour and an hour and half to travel to the airfield. Bora decided to leave no later than 2 p.m., to be on the safe side. When Stark’s assistant called back to suggest an appointment first thing in the morning, so that the matter of the vanishing babushkas could be discussed, he took his time. Bentivegni would have many questions for him regarding Khan Tibyetsky, and possibly Platonov as well. “I won’t be able to confirm until this evening,” he said. “What time does your office open?”

“The district commissioner will be out of town later in the day, so he plans to be at his desk as early as 07.00 hours.”

“If you don’t hear from me, it means I’ll not be able to make it, and we’ll have to reschedule.”

Heavy rain had started to fall in the meantime. Coin-sized drops punched the dirt heaped on the graves, made a drumming sound on the canvas top of Bora’s vehicle; Kostya’s pail let out a clacking noise as water gathered at its bottom. The ostrich-coloured clouds had folded across the sky, in a green scent of wet leaves and grass. Bora did some mental reckoning, having flown (in good weather) the route Bentivegni was to follow: leaving Berlin at 6 a.m., after a flight of two-and-a-half hours he would reach Warsaw at 8.30 a.m.; averaging a twenty-minute layover for refuelling, and considering the three-and-a-half hours of the next leg, he’d be in Kiev at about 12.20 p.m., or 1.20 p.m. local time. Half an hour of layover and two more hours in the
air meant he would be landing at Kharkov–Rogany just before 4 p.m. In good weather.

But the conditions were going from bad to worse. At 1.45 p.m., Bora telephoned the airfield’s Luftwaffe personnel for last-minute information about the weather in Kiev. They told him rain was reported, but knew of no particular difficulties to flights in and out of the city. He left for Rogany shortly thereafter, unaware that Bentivegni had already been delayed by adverse conditions in Warsaw, and was running nearly two hours late; as a matter of fact, he hadn’t yet been able to board the Kiev-bound plane.

Despite the many spots where muddy streams had spread gravel and dirt across the road, Bora reached the vicinity of the airfield well in advance of the scheduled landing. Through the windshield, the stormy sky was dramatic, a study in contrast worthy of a grand painting.
It might be worth taking the time,
he thought. At reduced speed, he approached a dirt lane to the left and turned on to it. On his map, he’d pencil-marked (so that it could be erased) a wooded area near Podvorki, cleft by a picturesque gully known as Drobytsky Yar. Before the war, there had been a therapeutic colony in the vicinity, but it was all deserted now, trees and fleeing birds under a spectacular play of rain clouds. Bora allowed himself the small detour, putting the camera he had carried along since the Polish campaign to good use.

At Rogany, German fighters were grounded by bad weather. Four p.m. came and went, and then another hour, and another. Bora was worried. At the control tower they had no details on Bentivegni’s flight, and were inclined to think it had not left Kiev. This was only confirmed after 6 p.m., when Bora was told that worsening meteorological conditions in central Ukraine had forced the pilot to cancel the flight altogether. With more than five hundred kilometres separating Kiev from Kharkov, any attempt to travel by land – unadvisable at night, on unsafe, poor roads – would not deliver the colonel to his destination
before the morning. Bora had to wait another half-hour to learn that, weather permitting, Bentivegni would be departing Kiev at 7.45 a.m. the following day, and would land at around 9.45 a.m. not at Rogany but at the Aerodrome, Kharkov’s landing field by the horse track, on the highway to Belgorod. “Do you know where that is, Major?”

“I know where that is, thank you.”

He left the airfield in the pelting rain. An entire afternoon of work had been wasted, but there was no arguing with thunderstorms. Every hour Khan Tibyetsky passed in RSHA custody increased the possibility that he would strike a deal with them, even though – considering how temperamental he was – a refusal to meet his demands regarding food and other comforts might make him ill-disposed toward his new hosts.

Past the old Soviet Army burial ground, Kharkov’s darkened, war-torn city streets eventually clustered around Bora’s vehicle. Curfew had depopulated them. Less than ten years earlier, the NKVD purge had decimated the undesirable – from intellectuals to beggars – in a city swollen with peasants escaping the great famine. Grass, dirt and manure had become food for thousands in those days. Orphans had roamed, and bands of famished dogs had reverted to a feral state throughout the once-prosperous region.
And then we came
, Bora thought.
It’s partly our fault that they turned on us. We could have played Ukrainian nationalism to our advantage; some of us were successfully working to that end when political orders to the contrary broke the eggs in our basket
. He found that he resented SS interference even more than the fact of it per se. Past the Donbas Station Bridge, he travelled the last kilometre in the curdling, wet dusk, rounding the corner to Hospital 169 using the map he had memorized.

“I tried to reach you to say the post-mortem has been completed,” Dr Mayr told him, “but didn’t find you. Do you have a Russian answering your telephone?”

“My
Hiwi
orderly. Why?”

“Russians should not be allowed to do such things as answering our telephones.”

“Don’t house servants answer telephones, Herr Oberstarzt? A phone is the only luxury I have there. Besides, Kostya is a Volga German.” Kostya was in fact a full-blooded Ukrainian. Bora, raised in a class-bound family where no one showed disrespect to, or used the familiar form of address with subordinates, never ceased to wonder at how humanity stops at certain boundaries, even among those supposed to look beyond differences. But maybe the surgeon was only making a point, or using him as a sounding board. “I’d be grateful for the results.”

“Well, Major, the findings are wholly consistent with my initial diagnosis: the man died of a myocardial infarction. I detected extensive scarring in the myocardium, and a ventricular aneurysm that only hadn’t ruptured because it was lined with scar tissue. There is evidence of prior inflammatory processes; in my estimation he had suffered an acute cardiac episode at least once before. As for anything else, and keeping in mind I’m no medical examiner, there were no wounds, no internal trauma, no traces of poison in the system, and the stomach was empty.”