“I need to get some air,” Fleming said, simply. “The Auster leaves in fifteen minutes.” And with that, he stepped out into the night.
Stalin looked at the two reports on his desk. He picked up the first and held it to his chest for a moment in the silence of his office. The news could not have been better. All across the front, the great nine hundred and fifty kilometre front, the British had halted their advance eastwards and were digging in.
All the signs were clear. Archangel was in London. In a short time it would be in Washington too.
Sabak could feel his master’s elation.
“What about the other matter?” Stalin asked.
“The problem is solved,” Sabak said. “We have obtained the Nerchenko girl’s complete co-operation. It seems the prospect of her father being informed of her little performances for Comrade Beria terrified her more than the chief of internal security himself.”
“But has she served her purpose?” Stalin asked.
Sabak smiled. “We need make no other arrangements, Comrade Stalin. She was going to give the game away sooner or later, but as it happened, she tripped the wire sooner than we expected. It’s all in the report.”
Stalin opened the second file and read the dispatch. With scant clues available to him, Beria had none the less picked up the trail.
He read on. Shlemov had been sent to Branodz. Knowing the diligence of Beria’s most tenacious investigator he would now be roaming around the 1st Ukrainian Front pulling in the missing strands.
Shlemov was a loose canon, Stalin thought to himself. A little knowledge in his hands was certainly a dangerous thing.
He needed help.
He closed the file and started drafting the note. Sabak could ensure that it was typed up with no clue to its origins and delivered anonymously to Beria’s love nest on Kuznecki Most.
The rest would be up to him.
Herries had taken his cap off and thrown an RAF greatcoat over his shoulders to shield his uniform from the USAAF groundcrew who worked through the night to get their battle-weary Mustangs ready for operations the following morning. Despite their proximity to the front line, there was hardly any gunfire to be heard, the wind carrying most of the sound back inside the retreating borders of the Reich, but every now and again the horizon lit up as another Allied artillery barrage began to pummel the Wehrmacht’s positions around the Bavarian capital, a mere twenty kilometres away.
They jumped into the jeep. Fleming drove, while Kruze peered through the night trying to avoid any source of light, the distant gunfire, the glow of an arc-welder’s torch, or the sparks belching from the exhaust of a night fighter taxiing by. Although the moon would allow the Auster pilot good visibility for their short journey to the Achensee, he would need the help of an extra pair of eyes to spot for any Luftwaffe night stalkers that might latch onto their scent.
As they journeyed in silence to the far end of the airfield where the Auster was waiting, Kruze’s urge to speak to Fleming intensified until it became almost agonizing. But there was nothing he could say in front of Herries, who was hunched, animal-like on the back seat, shielding himself against the cold slipstream as the jeep bounced across the frozen, pitted ground.
They passed a row of sleek-looking aircraft tucked away in their dispersal pens. Kruze strained for a better look, his eyes tracing their graceful lines, the curious bulge in the middle of each wing, where the powerplants were grafted to the airframe, and the short nose, from which four lethal-looking 20mm cannon protruded.
“The Meteors that are going to give us a hand at Oberammergau?”
Fleming nodded, but said nothing.
They left the RAF jets behind and drove on for another half a minute in silence. Fleming seemed agitated. He took a wrong turn behind a hangar, cursed and set off on the right course again. Then, Kruze caught a glimpse of the Auster a few hundred yards ahead of them, its distinctive high-set wings shimmering in the blinkered headlights of the jeep.
They pulled up alongside it. The pilot was in the cockpit doing his last instrument checks, the motor was idling. Herries shed the blue-grey greatcoat, donned his peaked cap and jumped from the back of the jeep and pulled himself on board, settling himself in the rear of the cabin, which was just big enough for three.
Kruze, still in his seat, turned to Fleming, who was gripping the steering wheel, staring straight ahead. Kruze looked to the aircraft. The pilot was beckoning him towards the passenger door.
Fleming turned to face him. When the words came they were fast, urgent.
“Whatever you do, don’t look up at the aircraft,” he said. “Herries is a traitor who served in some sort of British legion in the SS on the Eastern Front. Staverton made a bargain with him: his amnesty in exchange for getting you into Oberammergau. I had to tell you, you had a right to know.”
A thousand questions churned inside the Rhodesian. Fleming carried on before Kruze had a chance to ask any of them.
“Herries has to get a code word off you before he leaves you at Oberammergau. The word itself isn’t important and as far as you’re concerned it’s to signal us that you made it to the base. But Herries knows that if anything happens to you and he doesn’t get the word, he swings.
“Piet, watch him like a hawk. If he gives any trouble, shoot him. No questions, no mercy. Same goes for you if you fall inside Russian territory. I’m sorry… Have you got that? About Herries, I mean.”
“What’s the code word?”
“How about ‘traitor’s gate’? Should be easy to remember. But for God’s sake don’t give it to him until you’re about to take the aircraft.”
Fleming could see the pilot beckoning. “About the other matter,” he said. He looked up as a cloud scudded across the face of the moon. “It hasn’t been a waste, at least, I don’t think so.” He hesitated. “Good luck.”
Kruze pulled up the collar of his coat and jumped into the passenger seat beside the pilot, who opened up the throttles and eased the Auster onto the runway. With its hybrid wheel and skid assembly it rolled down the concrete, fighting for airspeed. Then it disappeared from Fleming’s view into the night.
He carried on listening to the fading sound of its engine long after it had lifted off and turned south-east towards the Alps.
BOOK THREE
CHAPTER ONE
Malenkoy was still too excited to sleep. The Chief of the General Staff had congratulated him on his maskirovka and that was all he could think about. Now he patrolled his way around Chrudim, looking over his dummy tanks, vehicles and gun emplacements with a new sense of pride.
During this moment, even the chaos and the fear that the SS had brought into his sector had receded to the very back of his mind.
Even close to, his mock-ups seemed alive. The fires and lamps flickered around them, shadows moved, like men scurrying around their tanks, making final preparations. From the air it would look just like a camp of an army that was poised to rout the enemy. A liberating army, confident that this was the last push, an army that knew victory was close at hand.
Soon the Luftwaffe pilots would come again. This time they would bring listening equipment and hear the radio transmissions — orders from generals to men in the field, requisitions for more equipment to be sent up to the front, signals to start the engines of the T-34s.
The intelligence would fly back to Berlin. The Wehrmacht would be mobilized to meet the threat of his ghost army.