There is one last detail to this story: the undertaker, who did fight in World War One, died a mysterious and agonizing death along with his cat, about a month after the man he called John Doe was interred. It seemed that the undertaker liked Delmar’s handkerchief and decided that it shouldn’t go to waste.
Lieutenant-General Aleksandr Ivanovich Utvenko
Commanding Officer of the 104th Guards Rifle Division
Outside Toulouse, France
“This is certainly a different mission than the last time Vasily. This time we have secured a mountain pass. It should be easier than sitting in those depots for weeks waiting to connect with our slow moving compatriots.”
“You are right comrade. At least this time we can maneuver. Being stuck in those huge depots was quite a challenge. Keeping out the French Army as well as guarding for saboteurs who wanted to blow us up along with our ‘liberated’ supplies. All those German prisoners made me uneasy as well. No good place to lock them up. To the victor go the spoils, as someone said Yuri.”
“I don’t like the idea of jumping into the mountains. At least it’s the foothills, and not the real mountains. Let me look at the operational plan again… Hmm… we are expected to hold out for six days this time; quite a change for the three weeks that we held off the French.”
“Remember when those American fools tried to bluff their way through the entrance? I don’t know what their plan was but we stopped it pretty quick eh comrade? But, then again, maybe they weren’t bluffing and actually didn’t know that we had taken over their base.”
“The French didn’t press their attacks either knowing that our glorious forces were marching, like the Golden Horde through Germany and would soon be their masters. Remember that one attack on about our tenth day there?”
“Yes where they made that big yell, ran two steps, and then ran away, all the way back to Paris. I don’t think they got even close enough for us to shoot any of them; a truly bloodless victory, comrade; one to remember.”
“I heard they fought well under De Gaulle, in the Maginot Line nonetheless. Down to the last man. It helped us to be guarding massive amounts of heavy weapons and ammunition.”
“Yes, it’s amazing what the right leader can do to motivate even defeated troops. Their names will go down in history, even though their bodies will go into a shallow grave. Maybe they will be dug up again and given the honors they deserve some day.”
“Amazing that those German prisoners-of-war at the depots never gave us any concern. They just stayed in their barracks and watched. I guess when we shot their leader after he talked back to Georgy that kind of set the mood. That was the first air-drop that I remember where I was better supplied with heavy weapons and artillery than my enemy. All we had to do was to start up one of those Shermans, and that was enough to make most of them run.”
“Remember searching for those electronic wonder-boxes in the depot? The NVKD definitely wanted to gain possession of those; some kind of electronic machine that could do damage to the Yankee and Limey radios, or super artillery, or something. They never told us what they were for but they wanted them to be our first priority. I still remember what we were supposed to look for “AP-4”… find AP-4. It’s hard to do when all the labels are in a different language. They were screaming at us once we found 50 or so to guard them with our lives. I wonder what those machines were used for?
“Enough of old times, when is our day to jump?”
“September 23rd, according to the Western calendar. I cannot get a proper calendar anywhere, only these French ones. I might just miss New Years because I can’t figure out what day it is back in the Motherland. How can they have such different dates for everything? I’ll miss a number of traditions, like the yolka, oh, I meant the New Year’s Tree. I love decorating the… tree, even if it is just with homemade ornaments and then there’s Grandfather Frost and the Snegurochka. I love the part where her heart melts her when she falls in love.”
“You sound like a little girl Vasily.”
“Oh Yuri, I just miss home. I thoroughly enjoyed our leave before these svolochy Amerikosi provoked us into this war. It’s been a pretty easy fight so far. Not like Poland. Even though those Germans were defeated, they still fought like crazy men.”
“They were fighting for their homeland just like we did, comrade. Now, we are not, but neither are the Americans. How hard are they willing to fight for the Frogs? Our march through Germany and France was much like a leisurely drive down a country lane at least until we hit these damned mountains. Do you think the Americans will have the heart to fight for the Italians and Germans once again? They say the new government forming here in France has many old communists; men who have been following the teachings of Marx far longer than I have. I hear that the British have many workers that are waiting to be freed from the capitalist yoke as well.”
“Time will tell, comrade… time will tell.”
Chapter Thirty-One:
The Team “The Eyes Have It”
He looked into the eyes of a killer. One can guess that the conviction of his beliefs had given him the courage to do so. It was a courage that he never knew that he possessed. It was a courage that might get him horribly tortured, or even murdered. If he had known just how utterly ruthless his inquisitor was he may have acted differently. But what did it matter whether a man killed one person, or millions? He was still a killer.
He had to focus and stop thinking about how short the man behind the desk was. He had to ignore the pocked-marked skin and concentrate on what the cruel mouth behind the large mustache was saying. He needed to focus on what the actual words were and what the veiled threat behind them was. Because of how his mind worked, it was hard for him to tell these things.
His mind was like a machine. Everything was orderly and logical. He was usually helpless, when he had to deal with other humans’ feelings. He was not a sociopath, just not adept at picking up the physical cues that most people took for granted. The meanings of the change of tone, or emphasis on certain words eluded him. He was sorely lacking in interpersonal skills. Logically he realized this, but it did him no good. He just didn’t have the capacity to adapt to most of the difficult situations that most of us readily cope with on a daily basis. The difference between a white lie and a real lie puzzled him.
Consequently he never lied.
The man across the table from him lived to lie. He ate lies. He breathed lies. To him, it came as naturally as blinking your eyes. He was a master at it. Sergo was helpless on many levels if the man with the mustache wanted to destroy him. He could tell Sergo a lie about a subject dear to his heart and in so doing, psychologically rip his ego apart in less than three sentences. He could send his mind into the depths of hell and cause suicidal thoughts with relative ease. The man across the table has both killed and crushed the very souls of thousands of victims.
36
Spies
What this shows to me is how far reaching the Soviet spy network was. Bill Weisband informed his spy master that the US had broken its code before we started to decipher it. Pretty amazing and quite an opportunity for mischief. Read his story. He was in contact with Philby and the others we know about. If anything I think we have underplayed the amount of information that could have come out of the Soviets incredible infiltration of both the US and GB.
Quote:
Most decipherable messages were transmitted and intercepted between 1942 and 1945. Sometime in 1945, the existence of the VENONA program was revealed to the Soviet Union by the NKVD agent and United States Army SIGINT analyst and cryptologist Bill Weisband. [1] These messages were slowly and gradually decrypted beginning in 1946 and continuing (many times at a low-level of effort in the latter years) through 1980, when the VENONA program was terminated, and the remaining amount of effort that was being spent on it was moved to more important projects.
Here are some of the things the Perlo group transmitted to Moscow in 1945.
Quote:
Allen Weinstein and Alexander Vassiliev in Haunted Wood, a book written from an examination of KGB Archives in Moscow, report the KGB credits the Perlo group members with having sent, among other items, the following 1945 U.S. Government documents to Moscow:
February
Contents of a WPB memo dealing with apportionment of aircraft to the USSR in the event of war on Japan; WPB discussion of the production policy regarding war materials at an Executive Committee meeting; Documents on future territorial planning for commodities in short supply; Documents on a priority system for foreign orders for producing goods in the United States after the end of the war in Europe; Documents on trade policy and trade controls after the war; Documents on arms production in the United States in January 1945;
March
A WPB report on “Aluminum for the USSR and current political issues in the U.S. over aluminum supplies” (2/26/45);
April
Documents concerning the committee developing plans for the U.S. economy after the defeat of Germany, and also regarding war orders for the war against Japan; Documents on the production of the B-29 bomber and the B-32; Tactical characteristics of various bombers and fighters; Materials on the United States using Saudi Arabian oil resources;
June
Data concerning U.S. war industry production in May from the WPB’s secret report;
Data concerning plans for a 1945–1946 aircraft production from the WPB;
More data on specific aircraft’s technical aspects;
August
Data concerning the new Export-Import Bank; Data concerning supplies of American aircraft to the Allies in June 1945; Data from the top secret WPB report on U.S. war industry production in June;
October
Detailed data concerning the industrial capacities of the Western occupation zones of Germany that could be brought out as war reparations; Information on views within the U.S. Army circles concerning the inevitability of war against the USSR as well as statements by an air force general supporting U.S. acquisition of advanced bases in Europe for building missiles.
Just amazing!
Here are the members and their positions in the government. WPA is War Productions Board. They decided what was produced and in what quantities. Many credit them with winning the war.
Quote:
Victor Perlo headed the Perlo group. Perlo was originally allegedly a member of the Ware group before World War II. After receiving a master’s degree in mathematics from Columbia University in 1933, Perlo worked at a number of New Deal government agencies among a group of economists known as “Harry Hopkins’ bright young men.” The group worked, among other things, for creation and implementation of the WPA jobs program, and helped push through unemployment compensation, the Wagner National Labor Relations Act, the Fair Labor Standards Act, and Social Security. During World War II, Perlo served in several capacities, working first as chief of the Aviation Section of the War Production Board, then in the Office of Price Administration, and later for the Treasury Department. Perlo left the government in 1947. Perlo also worked for the Brookings Institution and wrote American Imperialism. Perlo’s code name in Soviet intelligence was “Eck” and “Raid” appearing in Venona project as “Raider”.
Victor Perlo, Chief of the Aviation Section of the War Production Board; head of branch in Research Section, Office of Price Administration Department of Commerce; Division of Monetary Research Department of Treasury; Brookings Institution
Edward Fitzgerald, War Production Board Harold Glasser, Deputy Director, Division of Monetary Research, United States Department of the Treasury; United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration; War Production Board; Advisor on North African Affairs Committee; United States Treasury Representative to the Allied High Commission in Italy
Charles Kramer, Senate Subcommittee on War Mobilization; Office of Price Administration; National Labor Relations Board; Senate Subcommittee on Wartime Health and Education; Agricultural Adjustment Administration; Senate Subcommittee on Civil Liberties; Senate Labor and Public Welfare Committee; Democratic National Committee
Harry Magdoff, Statistical Division of War Production Board and Office of Emergency Management; Bureau of Research and Statistics, WTB; Tools Division, War Production Board; Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, United States Department of Commerce
Allen Rosenberg, Board of Economic Warfare; Chief of the Economic Institution Staff, Foreign Economic Administration; Senate Subcommittee on Civil Liberties; Senate Committee on Education and Labor; Railroad Retirement Board; Council to the Secretary of the National Labor Relations Board
Donald Wheeler, Office of Strategic Services Research and Analysis division