Malenkoy decided to back down. He had seen the General in this mood before. Anyway, his superior was right. What was the point in making a fuss? Nerchenko had used his own argument about the consequences of this renegade Nazi spotting the maskirovka and seemed quite relaxed about the whole affair. It was time to get back to Chrudim and put the finishing touches to the dummy tanks. He had had quite enough of chasing fascists around the dense forests of Czechoslovakia. If he could finish the job by tomorrow he would get back into Nerchenko’s favour again.
“Oh, we did solve one mystery, Comrade General.”
He had almost forgotten about it, but the thought of currying favour had jogged his memory about Yuri Petrovich. He reached into his pocket, pulled out Paliev’s battered ID papers and placed them onto the General’s makeshift desk.
Nerchenko stopped massaging his eyes and studied the bloodied document. The room was as silent as a mausoleum, disturbed only by a row of Nerchenko’s medals, two Orders of Lenin and three of the Red Banner, which sounded like distant bells as they danced on his chest. Malenkoy noticed his general’s complexion turn a shade of greyish white.
Malenkoy was surprised to see that the General had a heart after all. Paliev had been his trusted aide for almost two years, that was true, but he never would have guessed that Nerchenko had been this attached to him.
Malenkoy waited several seconds for Nerchenko to regain his usual ice-cold composure, but instead he appeared to be sickening.
“I’m sorry, Comrade General, that it had to be me who broke the news. Yuri Petrovich was a good man. We were friends, you know.”
“Where did you find these?” The voice was low and almost quavering.
“We didn’t find these on him, Comrade General, they were in the pockets of one of the SS. He must have kept it to show to their intelligence people. Well, he won’t be showing it to anyone now.”
“Did you find anything else of his? Papers, plans, I mean. Things that the enemy could use.” Malenkoy could hardly hear the General now. His voice was little more than a whisper.
“No, Comrade General. The SS terrorists were clean. They did not even carry ID papers of their own. It is possible that the survivor tried to destroy all evidence of their identity before he left the camp. Perhaps he overlooked Paliev’s papers.”
Nerchenko’s hands shook as he tried to light a cigarette. He was clearly too upset to speak any more, so Malenkoy dismissed himself, leaving him alone and deep in thought.
It was a measure of Nerchenko’s desperation, Krilov thought, that he had sent two coded messages about Archangel to Moscow in one week.
Archangel had been given a reprieve as soon as the news came in that Paliev’s charred body had eventually been found by his burnt out jeep, the victim of a random partisan attack; or so they had thought. The plans, it seemed, had gone up in smoke with him.
The Marshal listened carefully, his chin resting on his clasped hands, while Krilov read out the decoded transcript of Nerchenko’s latest bulletin. When he finished, Krilov held the paper over his lighter and dropped it, burning, into the wastepaper bin beside his master’s desk.
“It sounds as if Comrade General Nerchenko is upset by this latest development,” Shaposhnikov said calmly, watching the smoke rise from the bin. Krilov had never seen his mentor quite so resplendent as he was today, in his bright green uniform, with its red piping and heavy gold embroidery.
“And not without some justification this time,” Krilov added.
“Let us go over what we know, and I stress ‘know’ Kolya, before we do anything rash. We know that Paliev took the plans from Nerchenko’s safe and we know that he was prevented from carrying out his treachery by, of all things, an SS unit operating behind our lines.” Shaposhnikov smiled, perhaps in the knowledge of what the SS did to their Russian prisoners, Krilov thought. “Now we also know,” the Marshal continued, “that Paliev’s identification papers were found on the body of one of the Germans who foiled our traitor’s plans, which were probably to inform Stalin exactly what is happening on the First Ukrainian Front. However, that is where the firm evidence ends.”
“What about the report by the major who found the SS commandos’ bodies that there may be survivors from the unit still at large?”
“This is only the belief of a major of tanks, Kolya, it is not backed by proof. But let us suppose that it is true and, worse still, that this survivor, or these survivors, have the plans to Archangel. What can they do? They are some fifty kilometres behind our lines and even if they do make it back to their own troops, which I very much doubt as the sector is crawling with our own men, they will be powerless to stop the plan going ahead.”
“Not entirely, Comrade Marshal. If the Archangel document does end up in Berlin it would be simple for the Nazis to deliver this plan to Stalin, perhaps in return for some sort of ceasefire. They still have agents who are active in Moscow, according to the NKVD.”
“Kolya, you helped me to prepare the plans for our generals in the field and you know that to an outsider Archangel would appear to have the full backing of the Chiefs of Staff and Stalin himself. You forget that it is only we and a handful of loyalists at the front who know that Stalin does not have an inkling about Archangel. No, it will go ahead, but the plan will have one significant change.” Shaposhnikov moved over to the window and paused to watch the first shift of a working party arrive by lorry at the construction site on the other side of the square.
“Change, Comrade Marshal?”
“Yes, Kolya.” Shaposhnikov turned to face his subordinate. “I agree that there is some risk to Archangel between now and the great day. But there is a simple remedy. We will bring the attack forward. That will be our insurance in case these insurgents do make it back to their lines and drop Archangel into the lap of the German High Command, or what’s left of it.”
Krilov was impressed. Once more he had come to Shaposhnikov, urging him to exercise caution in the face of another setback to their plans. Yet the Marshal had brushed off his concern as he would a piece of fluff from his uniform. Instead of playing safe he had gone on the attack.
“There is, of course, an alternative,” Krilov said. “If Archangel is compromised, then we could always play our ace right at the start. If the enemy is mobilizing to meet us, then we hit them on day one with the special… means at our disposal. Even as I speak, the Berezniki consignment is approaching Ostrava.”
The Marshal smiled, his lips thinning out until, to Krilov, they seemed almost opaque.
“It should never need come to that, Kolya. The Berezniki consignment is a failsafe, a weapon of last resort. That should be enough.”
“Indeed, Comrade Marshal.”
The older man clapped Krilov on the shoulder.
“Go, Kolya. Get word to our men on all three fronts. Archangel has been brought forward by a week to the 17th. The tanks roll in five days’ time. That and the Berezniki consignment should be all the insurance we need.”
As soon as he entered his village he knew that evil lay in wait for him. The horse sensed it too, at first shaking its head violently from side to side, then rearing up on its hind legs, uttering a cry that sounded more human than animal. He looked round for the rest of his Cossacks, but they were not there. He tried to turn back, but the horse broke into a gallop and carried him down the path he had known so well since the early days of his childhood.
And then he was on the ground. He looked up just in time to see the horse galloping away. He was quite alone in that place. There was not a soul in the entire village. Except they were in his house. He was outside it now and he could hear her moaning. He had to go in to save her, but he knew the evil was there and he cowered on the ground, sobbing quietly, begging to be allowed to stay away. Her cries for him cut right through his head, but he did nothing, save to block his ears and try to escape the sound of her pleas for help.