Nick Cook
Angel, Archangel
To
Julian Cook,
my father
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
To everyone who helped coax Angel, Archangel out of my weary typewriter — family, friends and literary ‘boffins’ — go my heartfelt thanks. I am especially grateful to Colonel Maurice Buckmaster OBE, for listening patiently to Plan Archangel and pronouncing it feasible; Sheila Mills for her in-depth analysis; and Harry Hawker for his excellent technical advice. Finally, had it not been for Mark Lucas’s constant encouragement and help, Kruze never would have taken to the skies. This book is as much his as it is mine (well, almost).
PROLOGUE
The aide-de-camp to the Chief of the General Staff of the Red Army worked furiously to decipher the signal that had just come in from General Nerchenko on the First Ukrainian front, but long before he reached the end he reckoned that Plan Archangel was dead.
For a moment, the colonel considered flight, then thought better of it. How could he hide from the eyes and ears of the NKVD in Moscow?
Nerchenko said he could contain the situation, but it was still desperate news. Yuri Petrovich Paliev, whom they had entrusted with the secret of Archangel, was gone.
Colonel Nikolai Ivanovich Krilov did not feel any fear. After almost two years of burying himself in Archangel, Nerchenko’s message merely served to trigger the exhaustion he had suppressed for so long.
If Paliev managed to reach the NKVD, the Comrade Marshal had friends in the Kremlin who could give them enough warning to take a walk with their revolvers into the woods off Komsomolsky Prospekt.
He wanted to see his wife one last time if it came to that. He would hold her a little more closely than he had done since the early days of their marriage, but it was essential that he did not arouse her suspicions. When they came to her with the news of his death, her shock would have to be genuine and absolute. He had not loved Valla for many years, that was true, but he cared for her too much to let her become another victim of the NKVD’s interrogation techniques.
Krilov put the code book down on his desk and folded the piece of paper, carefully placing it in the top pocket of his tunic. He doused the lights in his office and then headed for the end of the great Kremlin corridor where he would find his commander and mentor of the past two years.
Marshal Boris Shaposhnikov, Hero of the Soviet Union, did not look up from his paperwork when Krilov knocked and entered the room. Krilov realized that after months of listening to the coming and going of his footsteps on the marble floor of the great corridor, the Marshal knew immediately that it was he who had entered.
“Comrade Marshal, Archangel has been badly compromised.”
Krilov had got to know his master well. When Shaposhnikov and he had first taught doctrine to junior officers at the Voroshilov Military Academy shortly after the relief of Stalingrad, Shaposhnikov had expounded the value of keeping a clear head through the crises that a commander inevitably faced on the field of battle.
Shaposhnikov maintained his legendary ice-cold facade.
“What has happened, Kolya?” Still he called him by that diminutive of his given name. Usually he found it comforting, almost fatherly. Now it meant nothing.
The Marshal had stopped writing and was looking up at Krilov’s face. The blue eyes had not lost their lustre, Krilov thought, trying to keep his voice even.
“Nerchenko just reported in from Branodz. Paliev took the plans from his safe last night, commandeered a jeep, an escort vehicle and a platoon, and was last seen heading east towards Ostrava.”
“East? You are sure?”
“East, west, what does it matter, Comrade Marshal? He’s gone and the plans with him. Yuri Petrovich has betrayed us.”
“What made him turn?” Shaposhnikov had risen and was facing the window, seemingly more interested in the snow that fell on the Palace of Congresses than in the crisis that was unfolding in his office.
“Nerchenko’s safe not only contained everything on Archangel, it also detailed the arrangements for deploying the Berezniki consignment at Branodz.”
“Nerchenko has been most careless,” Shaposhnikov said.
“He obviously intends to bargain this knowledge for his life,” Krilov continued. “I believe he wants to lay the plans at the feet of the NKVD. Who knows, maybe he wants to present them to Stalin himself.”
Krilov studied the lined features of the sixty-two-year-old man in the reflection on the window. It displayed little emotion.
“And what is General Nerchenko doing to save the situation, Kolya?”
“He has despatched one of his Siberian units after the traitor. He has also sent word to depot-level HQ at Ostrava that Paliev is a dangerous deserter who is likely to be making for one of the airfields or the railhead there. He has issued orders for Paliev to be shot on sight.”
“Yuri Petrovich will find the road to Ostrava is longer than he thought,’ Shaposhnikov said.
Krilov saw the reflection smile.
Paliev had to negotiate some two hundred kilometres of hostile Czechoslovakian terrain before he reached Ostrava, the main marshalling point between the industrial heartland of Russia and their southern front. Aircraft and trains shuttled back and forth ceaselessly with their cargos of men, matériel and munitions. In Krilov’s mind, there was little doubt that Ostrava was Paliev’s initial waypoint on the way back to Moscow.
But Nerchenko would have ordered checkpoints on the larger roads, forcing the traitor on to mountain and forest tracks. It was the type of country where the Siberians performed best. They had to. Paliev had become a needle in a very large haystack.
“It won’t be easy to find him, Comrade Marshal.”
Shaposhnikov turned to the younger man. His face, Krilov was still surprised to notice, wore an expression of complete serenity. But his voice, when he spoke, had the edge which had helped to maintain the Marshal as Stalin’s right-hand man throughout the Patriotic War.
“It is too late for doubt, Kolya. Our contact at Berezniki tells me the consignment is on its way to the front. There is no stopping the train now. So go back to your wife. Sleep well tonight. If Paliev reaches Moscow, I will see to it that he never delivers his cargo. And what if he does? No one will believe him. Go home, Kolya. Everything will be all right.”
Shaposhnikov waited until Krilov closed the door behind him before slumping on to the rough wooden chair by his desk.
He had been waiting for Paliev to make his move, but now that it had come, he was puzzled. Paliev had gone east, to Ostrava, and that was not what he had expected at all.
He thought of Krilov, newly reassured that everything was under control. He only wished he had believed the words himself.
BOOK ONE
CHAPTER ONE
Fleming pulled the parachute harness tight over his shoulders and cursed lightly as his finger snagged on the rough metal catch.
The first stabs of light rising above the black hangar sheds at the far end of the airfield caught the condensation from his expletive as it swirled momentarily in the cold dawn air. He watched the crimson tear quiver at the end of his finger, hang there for a second, then splash onto the crisp carpet of snow that lay on the tarmac outside the ops room.
He felt no pain. His hands had been numb ever since he had crawled from the warmth of his bed into the musty, chill air of the Nissen hut. He had welcomed the numbness that spread over him like an anaesthetic, helping him forget the task that lay out there, somewhere between the frozen English countryside and the cloudless heavens.