Herries was relieved to see that over one of the jeep’s rear seats was an officer’s greatcoat. It would cover up the bloodstain that was now spreading over the man’s tunic with the rapidity of ink on blotting paper. He had to get the uniform off him, but it was too dangerous to do it in that exposed place. Better to drive further along the road and swing off into the trees, where he would have time to change into the Russian’s clothes and dispose of the body.
He pushed the corpse onto the passenger seat and cast a quick glance around to familiarize himself with the controls. The ignition caught the engine straight away and first gear engaged with no difficulty, but he lifted the clutch pedal up too quickly and the jeep hopped forward with such a jolt as it stalled that Herries was thrown back in his seat.
At that precise moment, Dietz, a hundred metres behind, fired.
The bullet hit the frame around the windscreen and whined off into the trees. Herries saw the point of impact out of the corner of his eye.
Then he saw the movement reflected in the windshield.
He already knew who it was before he spun round and saw the massive frame of Dietz pounding down the road towards him. It took two seconds for Herries to make a choice between turning to face his sergeant with a machine pistol on single shot or trying to restart the jeep. His dithering took Dietz fifteen metres closer. Herries made his choice, but his reactions were dulled by the sickening panic that caused the blood to pound in his head. His eyes raced over the dashboard. Where was the fucking ignition key? His fingers groped around the base of the steering column until he felt the angular edges of the key. He turned it and the engine coughed and died. In the mirror he could see Dietz, very close now, raising his rifle to his shoulder for a second shot on the run. He turned the key again.
The vehicle hopped a foot and stalled. The limp body of the Russian slumped forward onto his lap. Shit! He had left the bloody gear in first. Herries’ mind was numb now to anything that was going on outside the jeep. The blood rushing in his head made his eardrums feel as if they would explode, while everything on the periphery of his sight greyed out until he was left with a narrow tunnel of vision whose only point of focus was the ignition key. He did not even hear the report from Dietz’s next shot, nor the bullet that screamed past his head by inches.
Dietz knew that he had Herries. He pounded his legs along the pot-holed surface of the road with all his strength over the final twenty yards to the jeep.
Herries turned the key with such force that his clammy thumb and forefinger slipped off the shiny metal surface, but the engine caught, the clutch engaged and he shot back in his seat as the jeep surged forward. Dietz hurled his rifle into the rear of the vehicle and lunged for the tail-gate, grasping it with one hand, then two. Herries was into second gear, the engine screaming as he brought the speed up to 40 kph, but Dietz held on, slowly hauling in his dragging feet, preparing himself for the final effort which would propel him into the rear of the vehicle.
Herries could see it all in the mirror. The two white hands on the tailgate and between them the grotesquely twisted face, blood and dirt still caked to the stubble on the cheeks and chin, wincing with every jerking movement of his body which brought him one second nearer to jumping onto the back seat.
Herries threw the corpse off his legs and groped for the MP40 which was lying between the two front seats. He grabbed it by the barrel, took one last look at the needle on the speedometer as it nudged past 55 kph, and then swung round, crashing the stock of his machine pistol down onto Dietz’s knuckles. The mouth curled back silently with the pain and the red eyes bored into Herries’ for a second, then he was gone. He watched in the mirror as the body rolled, bounced and fell along the road, before coming to rest. Then he rounded a corner and it was gone.
Herries drove fast for another two kilometres before he felt he had put enough distance between himself and the man whom he was sure he had killed two days before. This time he would take no chances, even if Dietz had hit the road hard enough to break every bone in his body.
Herries swung down a muddy track lined with high pines and, when he was satisfied that the vehicle could no longer be seen from the road, he slewed to a halt. His body trembled with deep convulsions as the events of the last few minutes caught up with him. He leant over the side of the jeep and retched until his stomach was emptied of the berries and leaves that had been his only nourishment for the past few days.
Ten minutes later Herries was back in the driving seat dressed in the uniform of the Soviet lieutenant. He wrapped the greatcoat around his body to hide the large dark stain on the chest and was about to set off back for the road when he noticed the wretched appearance of his face in the mirror. He jumped out of the jeep and went over to his bundle of clothes which partially hid the body of the Russian behind the nearest pine. He found his razor and set about shaving his dry face, his cheeks and chin still too numb to protest as the rusty blade scraped away the two-day old stubble.
Satisfied that his cleaner image would not draw undue attention from passing factions of the Red Army, Herries drove off in the open-topped jeep, paused at the main road to make sure the coast was clear, and then took a left in the direction of Pilzen.
Shaposhnikov and Krilov settled back into the canvas seats in the rear of the Ilyushin as the pilot opened up the throttles and the bomber trundled down the long runway before lifting off from Kubinka, the military airfield fifty kilometres from Moscow.
It was a four hour flight to Ostrava, the main Soviet rail-head and logistics station for the Red Army build-up in Czechoslovakia. There they would pick up transport for the two hundred kilometre journey to the front, but not before Shaposhnikov ensured the consignment from Factory 497 at Berezniki, a facility at the base of the Urals, had arrived safely at the marshalling yards. Shaposhnikov wanted to oversee some of the unloading operation personally.
As Krilov stared out of the window at the receding city of Moscow, he felt an immense wave of relief. Every minute that passed put another five kilometres between them and Beria’s internal security police, the NKVD. The events of the last few days had made him anxious. Paliev’s attempted defection, Nerchenko’s jitters, the coded exchanges between Moscow and Branodz; they had all risked exposure unnecessarily. Finally there was the news that Paliev had been ambushed by the fascists. But somehow the leadership of Shaposhnikov had kept them as one, kept them strong. He relished the moment when they would all be together; Shaposhnikov, himself, and the three generals, Badunov, Vorontin and Nerchenko, from each respective front. Five men who would change the face of the world. His whole body tingled with excitement.
The village of Krazna Hora had long been ordained as the meeting place for the final briefing on Archangel. Krilov had had to send out urgent despatches within the past few hours to the three generals in the field to tell them that the plan had been brought forward. It would be up to Shaposhnikov tomorrow to tell them by how much the scheme had been affected.
Archangel would work because good men, pure Bolsheviks, committed to the ideals on which their Revolution had been founded, were behind it. It would work because their mentor was not only true to those beliefs, he was also the best strategist in the Allied command — Western or Eastern. It had been planned down to the last detail.
By the time Generalissimo Stalin, once a great man, now paranoid and divorced from reality, realized they were gone, the steamroller would be heading for Paris.
It would work because they had the ultimate weapon known to man, the last resort if all else failed. And they had the balls to use it.