There was one other small difference between the maps. The one which showed Branodz as the centre of the buildup had been given the title “Archangel”. The simple word, scrawled in a shaky hand along the northern edge of the map, provided the best clue so far to unravelling the mystery. Herries delved into the Red Army-issue despatch case looking for some text that he had noticed earlier with the maps.
He found some soggy and crumpled pages in the bottom of the bag. They were typed and barely legible, but he leafed through them, searching for the information he required.
The words on the pages seemed strangely unfamiliar. Herries had spoken plenty of Russian over the last few years, mainly interrogating prisoners or beating information out of local civilians, but this was almost the first time since Oxford that he had picked up Cyrillic. There was just not enough time to go over the whole of the twenty-page document so he scoured down the lines for “Archangel”, his index finger weaving a precarious course through words and sentences which gradually built up a picture of a pending Russian assault. At the back of his mind Herries wondered what a lowly major in the Red Army was doing with such sensitive items of strategy. Ivan must be getting complacent.
Archangel jumped out at him from the middle of the fifth page. He picked up the text from the top of the sheet, praying that there had been some mistake and that Branodz was an insignificant and poorly garrisoned town which did not require them to make a massive detour. That way, they could be back behind their own lines by the day after tomorrow. Picking a path through both sides’ front lines would be a nightmare he would worry about when the German positions were in sight.
It should have taken Herries five minutes to absorb the details about Archangel, but instead he reread the account twice, at first thinking that his grasp of the Russian language had left him, then that the lack of food and sleep over the last few days had caused him to lose a grip on reality. When he had finished, he rolled onto his back and let the rain fall on his face. Herries was past feeling the freezing cold droplets and the dampness of his clothes. His mind raced at the information that he now knew he had interpreted correctly.
Herries sprang to his feet. He started to break into a run, but slowed as he passed the two men on watch. When he had left McCowan and Dyer out of sight further up the hill, Herries charged through the trees, ignoring the pine branches that whipped and stung his face, until he reached the spot on the edge of the forest where they had first spotted Chrudim. Just before he approached the clearing he slowed to draw breath, cursing himself for the way he had breached one of the most elementary rules for survival behind enemy lines. So often the insurgent who momentarily took his eyes off his surroundings wound up dead, taken by surprise by a Soviet patrol for failing to look and listen.
Herries crouched behind a tree trunk and watched the dark interior of the wood for signs of life. It was still, apart from the sounds of the raindrops which had managed to penetrate the foliage, splattering the leaves on the forest floor around him. Satisfied he was on his own, he unslung his Zeisses and turned his attention to Chrudim, nestling in the middle of the valley floor almost a kilometre away. Nothing much had changed in the past hour. There were no tanks on the move, only a few jeeps scuttling in and out of the square in the centre of the town. Eventually Herries found what he wanted, a line of T-34s several hundred metres from his position, which unlike all the other tanks in the area, had not yet been covered with camouflaged netting.
He raised the binoculars.
He had seen hundreds of T-34s on the Eastern Front, and they had never failed to chill his soul. But there was something strange and unmenacing about this one. It was too clean, even for a vehicle that had left the factory that morning. It had none of the trappings that made up a fully functional and operational tank. Usually they brimmed with oil cans, spades, pickaxes, spare pieces of track, but this one was bare. There wasn’t even the customary slogan painted on the side of the driver’s cupola. “For Moscow”, “Long live Stalin”, “To the Front from the Kolkhoz Workers of Novosibirsk District”, or some other such crap was usually daubed on tanks by workers before they left the factories for the front.
Then there was the gun. It was far too big for a T-34, unless the Russians had suddenly equipped the type with a long-barrel 90mm instead of the standard 76mm. After Herries had focused on the length of the barrel he knew that what he had read about Chrudim was valid. The T-34s gun had not been forged in a factory, but sculpted from wood. Ivan had done a good job with the telegraph pole; it was hard to tell that it had been lashed to the front of the turret with rope. Herries went down the rest of the line before he was satisfied. They were fakes, all of them. Impossible to identify as such from the air, but unmistakable at close range. He picked out other armoured vehicles at random, but it was the same story. None of the tanks in or around Chrudim was going anywhere, just as the documents had said.
So he could trust them. And that meant he could use them.
Two maps. One showing a mythical assault against the German positions, the other all too real.
He sat back against the nearest tree and scarcely moved for the next half-hour. When he got up and started to move back towards the camp, every nerve-end in Obersturmführer Christian Herries’ body was tingling.
Archangel was not a plan to feint the Germans towards Chrudim and then outflank them from Branodz. Archangel wasn’t aimed at the Germans at all.
Ivan was poised to launch a pre-emptive strike on the West — against their own allies the British and the Americans, for God’s sake! The Red Army was going to bulldoze its way through the crumbling Reich to Paris and, if the momentum was still there, push on to the Channel ports, driving the British and the Americans into the sea.
Herries felt a smile crease his face.
Archangel was his ticket home.
Just before he re-entered the clearing where most of his men were asleep, his jacket caught a branch, snapping it with the noise of a gun shot. Before he could even curse, Herries heard two machine-pistol bolts being drawn back as McCowan and Dyer prepared themselves for ambush from a Russian patrol.
He threw himself flat.
“It’s Herries,” he said through clenched teeth.
When he heard two more clicks and knew that the MP40S had been made safe, Herries picked himself up and walked into the clearing that housed their makeshift camp.
The two men on watch were standing with guns at the ready on each side of the open patch of forest. The other four, who had been huddled around a small fire, were also prepared for a fight. Dietz, Herries observed wryly, still held a bead on him with his rifle.
“All of you get some sleep, and that includes you two.” Herries looked at McCowan and Dyer. “We’re all edgy, but we must be rested when we break out of Chrudim later tonight. Any nervous behaviour like that could bring a whole Siberian division down on us. In the meantime, I’ll take over the watch.”
Herries felt the tension ease. He was satisfied that his voice had not faltered. If the plan was to work, he had to maintain their respect. Even Dietz, at any time a moment away from insurrection, had lowered his rifle and was settling down to rest again.