During his time in the Spanish Civil War, Kramer had learned Russian as a Brigade Commander. He translated for Kravchenko as he spoke to Brandt. In three hours every Russian soldier within a hundred mile radius would be descending on this location. Then he’d be hunted down along with Brandt’s unit. The Russian High Command would not look kindly on their prize possession being snatched so easily.
Brandt studied the man opposite him. The Russian was unusually tall with tightly cropped red hair, deep-set brown eyes and a few days' stubble. He was in his late-thirties, possibly early forties. The slashes and chevrons on his tattered uniform told him that he was Special Forces — NKVD. He would be formidable if he decided to up and leave and take them on as a guerrilla. He was professional enough to accept that a few hours earlier his unit had been killed and lucky to be alive.
Brandt admired this, the Russian quality of accepting the worst at face value and moving on, his priority now being to stay alive which was Brandt's priority too. His hand had a make-shift bandage over a deep cut and he was suffering from lacerations and small burns to his face. In the half-light he looked like a heavy-weight boxer who’d gone ten rounds with Joe Louis and lost. Brandt, Kant and Bader sat in the carriage with him and Olga. She regarded him with barely disguised contempt. ‘Why did you save us?’ she asked.
Kravchenko paused. Her accent was Chechen and he noted her eyes blazed with hatred. He had to turn this back to his advantage. He was gambling on the Germans wanting to square the ambush with the SS Captain and the civilian with the flying boat.
‘I was tempted, very tempted to let you finish each other off, but I thought the only chance of getting out of here alive is with us working together. To be honest, it all happened so fast I wasn’t really thinking, luckily for you,’
Olga’s steely glare didn’t waver. She didn’t trust him. She would watch and wait, then strike. Until Chechnya was free she made it her mission to hunt every Russian down she met and kill them. She recognised Kravchenko’s rank and unit. Her mother had been raped in the 30s by the NKVD hunting down local insurgents. During her ordeal the woman had hidden Olga and her sisters under the living room floor. Her father, returning from the market, had beaten the woman in rage and humiliation. The elders of the village convened and the option of stoning her to death for adultery was suggested before Olga’s grandfather intervened. He took Olga, her sisters and mother up into the hills to his village and gave them sanctuary. As soon as she was able, Olga had mastered her sharpshooting, learning from her grandfather, spending days in the surrounding forests hunting. She discovered she had a natural talent for taking life. As soon as the opportunity arose she was going to cut the Russian’s throat. Looking into her coal-black eyes, Kravchenko knew this also. He gave her the slightest of nods — try it, you’ll regret it. Her gaze remained steady and accusing.
Brandt felt cut adrift with no role in the army any more as, for all intents and purposes, his unit had ceased to exist. That chicken farmer Himmler’s SS could make up any story they wanted. He felt spent. The past few weeks he had witnessed professional soldiers cracking under extreme pressure. He himself had noticed a shake developing in his hand after a mission to take a village a week earlier. It had not gone well and his unit had taken heavy casualties. The Russians had fought bravely even through heavy artillery shelling and JU 87 bombardments. One of his junior officers, Peter Schelling, a former sales clerk from Bremen, had blown his brains out in his quarters to be found by Brandt a few hours later, an empty bottle of vodka lying by his side. It was becoming a common occurrence. Russia was sucking in the German army and grinding it into the snow beneath its heel.
He knew also this situation they were in was payback for what had happened in Norway four months earlier where an SS officer had lost his footing during an ascent, dragging Brandt’s unit almost off a cliff-face into the fjord below. Brandt cut the man’s rope, saving his comrades and spilling the officer over the side. Himmler hadn’t liked that. Within a week they were on the Eastern Front fighting on the frontline.
Brandt stared out through the carriage door. Absent-mindedly he wound his father’s wrist watch, his thoughts drifting to home. Every day through his childhood he would cycle out to the veterans' hospital where his father, Michael, lay twisted and broken. A Captain at Verdun, he was a strong physical man, an accomplished rower who had been in a trench heavily shelled by the French Army in April 1917. The sole survivor, he had been buried for days under the mud before being recovered. His two arms had had to be amputated from the elbow and his spine was mangled, yet his desire to survive drove him. As he lay motionless in the sheets, he kept his mind active. He learned to play chess and would call out moves to the other veterans in the ward. Within a year all the men were holding tournaments in their heads playing against each other. Brandt admired his father and came to love his flattened features, a portion of the man who went to war. He admired the way he accepted and adapted to his circumstances while others in the ward had lost their minds or attempted suicide. Despite Brandt missing out on a place in the 1936 Olympic squad, Michael in turn admired his son's stoicism and encouraged him to keep going.
‘In the end that’s all there is,’ he’d say. ‘Be like a shark, Nicky. Never stop, ever. If you stop, you sink and drown,’
He had to keep going. His team needed it. They, including the Russian, were now his responsibility. He had to lead them out of this mess. This new situation presented an opportunity for operating with greater latitude. They were, in the words of the Russian, ‘walking in dead men’s shoes’. He liked him not as an efficient enemy soldier but as a man. There was as simple solution: they had to move quickly to keep Lenin in Russia.
The carriage had sustained heavy damage from the fighter attack. Outside, Uwe Koheller lay dead. Brandt had removed Koheller’s dog-tags then had his body carefully placed alongside Schultz away from the SS troopers. Brandt recited the snatches of a prayer he’d remembered over his two fallen comrades. ‘When these days are forever past, please bring to all a peace to last. When the sun shines through the rain, thy weary heart shall bear no pain. And when you bring this peace to men, please send us homeward — once again.’
He recalled their first mission in Poland’s Tatra Mountains, their actions in the French Alps and their love of climbing above politics, beliefs or war. They were climbers who were conscripted soldiers. A toast of vodka was raised and Kravchenko was invited to toast also. He saluted in Russian. Brandt realised at that point they were a very, very long way from home.
He looked around the carriage. They were all looking at him. He’d have loved to hand the command over to the Russian, but he was injured and exhausted. Brandt sighed; it took a moment to follow through with his thoughts;
‘We retrieve the cameras and kill Kincaid and Regan. We have to make this look like it never happened. We’ll use Lenin as a guarantee of safe passage to Switzerland. The high command don’t want us to exist. We’ll oblige them on our terms. I’ve had enough of this war,’
As Kramer translated Brandt's words, Kravchenko pondered the idea. His thoughts were of home and his family, his young wife Sonja and his four year old son. The damage done to the train meant he could now be listed as dead. Should he be caught, he’d be branded a political traitor and he and his family would be residing in Kolyma before the end of the year. He could be either dead as a hero or dead as a traitor. He smiled wryly to himself that death seemed to be joined to his hip since this afternoon. The German’s plan added another option to lying in an unmarked grave somewhere. Tears welled up in his eyes, possibly delayed shock, but more that he would never see little Oleg again.
He nodded in agreement. If he came out of this in one piece, he’d slip into some other Russian unit heading home when the war ended. He vowed to see Oleg and his wife Sonja again, alive.
Kramer, Kant, Olga, Koheller, Bader and Hauptmann sat quietly, letting the idea of deserting and living in a neutral country sink in. This was the first time they had heard their leader, their friend, ever speak like this. They, like him, were sickened at the betrayal. In war life was cheap but this was straightforward treachery. Had Fretter-Pico known? Rathenow? He hadn’t turned the airship around once the shooting started. How high up the chain of command did this set-up go?
‘I climbed the Eiger before the war; a very difficult climb. We could sit out the war in Berne sipping Kirsch,’ mused Kramer aloud, his voice echoing around the carriage. He started to grin at the thought. His creased face resembled a relief map of the moon.
Kant pulled Olga closer. ‘I go where this little lady goes.’
Rank and enemy status were forgottten for an instant. They could’ve been strangers on a train in peacetime striking up a conversation. Then, with a collective grunt, they started preparations for departure.
Hauptmann, Bader and Voight gathered provisions, prepared a fire and began an inventory of weapons, equipment and, most importantly; ammunition.
The half-track was destroyed with no possibility of its being used ever again. The remaining German bodies were lined up on the river bank and any useful item — knives, pistols, ammunition and warm clothing — removed. There was one odd discovery — none of the SS had dog-tags. Kramer checked under the arm of each corpse for tattoos identifying regiment and blood group. They had none. The fighter pilots' billets yielded more cold food, coffee and chocolate, a full bottle of vodka, some half-eaten bread, cheese and sausage abandoned when the carriage arrived. They were quickly consumed.
Kravchenko declined to eat, allowing his new-found comrades to enjoy his ration. If they were to push out on foot avoiding the Russian Army, they were going to need nutrition. Olga had sourced her lichen for brewing and once the small fire was blazing, some of Kincaid’s silver coffee pots were placed on it for the water to boil.
A hurried meal was consumed and the vodka bottle was passed around. Lichen tea followed and those that didn’t retch felt the beginnings of being alive again.
Russian and German army maps were examined on the table where the sarcophagus had lain. One of Regan’s lamps, jerry-rigged to the on-board generator, cast harsh light and shadows across the page. Sunken cheekbones and eyes worked in deep shadows as the lights began to flicker. The generator was beginning to fail.
Brandt thought the best solution lay with the Luftwaffe. ‘We need to get a transport aircraft here and hi-jack it. We need some kind of a ruse.’
‘How about a medical consignment retrieved from a skirmish with the Russian army?’ Kant suggested,
‘They would scramble a whole squadron for a prize like that,’ agreed Brandt.
Looking into the distance, Kravchenko calculated that the flying boat would be out of Russian airspace within four hours. Kramer translated this for him. Brandt and Kant knew about the small islands off the coast of Helsinki and the planned transfer to the U-Boat. The flying boat couldn’t be shot down because of the precious cargo on board.
Brandt’s thoughts suddenly turned to the girl in sable with Kincaid, Eva. She was a witness to what had happened and therefore expendable. He thought of those grey intelligent eyes and felt a stirring across his chest which consumed him for a moment. He’d caught her looking at him a couple of times at least before suddenly finding something else to look at when their eyes met. He smiled for the first time in twenty-four hours and decided he was going to see her again, no matter what. His attention was broken by the sound of wolves howling in the night which sent a primordial chill through everyone.
Schultz’s radio was working and Bader was hunched over it, incrementally tuning for a signal. He paused. Inclining his head and practically resting his headset against the radio, he summoned Brandt over to him. ‘You’re not going to believe this, sir. It’s the British Embassy in Helsinki inquiring if we require assistance.’
‘How did they find us?’ Brandt was suspicious. If The British had their co-ordinates they could alert the Russians.
‘It’s the only German Army bandwidth signal in the area.’
Brandt still wasn’t happy. He got Bader to ask ‘How do you know we need assistance?’
There was a pause. Bader’s jaw clenched as he repeated the message. ‘They’ve intercepted a coded message from an American flying boat in Russian airspace. Part of the fragment decoded is — Alpine Unit eliminated.’
‘How quickly can they get a plane here and turn it around to the Finnish coast?’
Zbarsky worked silently in the flying boat’s hold. The laboratory was state-of-the-art but the available chemicals useless. He was trying to re-think his formulae in his head and instruct his team simultaneously. He made some rough jottings on a page and cross-checked them against the chemicals. Once his decision was made, he tore the jottings up and chewed them when no-one was watching. They were close to the end of the treatments supplied for the train journey and now they had to preserve the body indefinitely. Pinching the bridge of his nose in exhaustion, he pondered his options: not co-operate and be shot in the head as the SS officer had threatened, or do his best.
No point in being a hero both for him or his team.
He blended the preservatives and began to work quickly and thoroughly. They had to hope against hope that keeping Lenin preserved and intact gave their countrymen a reason to get him back. The American’s pretty companion was with them translating for them. She looked uneasy and was clearly acting under duress. Oblivious to her discomfort, the SS officer and the American had almost begun a tug-of-war over her.
Zbarsky asked her to instruct that the hold’s temperature be set to the sarcophagus’ settings immediately. Her accent was Eastern European, which meant either traitor or ally. He’d watch her closely before asking for her help. The fact that she was scared was a good start. The SS officer regarded him with distaste as Kincaid hollered the instruction through the plane’s communications systerm. Lights were instructed to be dimmed and only the team remained whilst the body was out of its coffin.
Eva sensed that time was running out, that the net around her was snapping shut. She couldn’t disguise her horror at the attack on Brandt’s men. As the flying boat pulled away, the small Chechen girl was under heavy fire and Eva had screamed out a warning. She pounded on the glass with tears running down her face. She then looked around to see how she could get the plane back on the ground. Toying with the brooch laden with chemicals, she tried calculate the distance she could cover to immobilise the pilot. The flying boat’s engines had catapulted them off the ice and, with the fighter’s staying in tight formation, she was out of options.
Her heart ached for the German officer and the pointless ending to his and his comrades' lives. Schenker and Kincaid had roared with laughter at their success and Regan was positioned somewhere aft filming the whole event. The flying boat had radioed Berlin, informing them that they were airborne and that a ‘partisan attack’ had been repelled during take-off.
Kincaid’s personal secretary was being wired to start drafting an account of the events from Kincaid’s offices in Burbank, California.
Regan had come back into the cabin area and was hovering. Eva was drying her eyes and trying to light a cigarette at the same time. Regan cranked his wind-proof lighter and the smell of petroleum filled her nostrils.
‘Allow me, miss.' He was now almost on top of her, leaning in. Despite working for most of the day in freezing temperatures, a cloying smell of stale sweat came from him. Her cigarette helped kill it off but she found his closeness intimidating. ‘Too bad about the mountaineers.’ He was now across her, looking out at the fighter plane alongside. He managed a quick glance down at her cleavage. ‘According to the member of the master race over there — ’ Schenker was positioning himself in front of the camera, looking to see if he was equidistant between the flags, and had started on the champagne once he had come up from the hold, his face its usual red rage ‘- they were racially suspect.’
‘Because of Olga?’
‘Yup. Better get your face straight, doll. The boss is coming over.’
Kincaid studied Eva for a few moments before he spoke. ‘Honey, I find your presence soothing,’ he assured her. He took her hand in his and Eva fought the urge to retch. His fatherly demeanour didn’t reach his eyes. ‘You’re very, very special to me and I’m sorry, very sorry, you had to see that … and, yes, the ambush was shocking but necessary. The SS don’t have any experienced mountaineering units, so common soldiers had to be used and alas dispensed with. The newsreels couldn’t contain any inferior races, only prime Aryan soldiers.’
He told her he also had information that one of the soldiers was a Communist and former International Brigadist in Spain, then added that a Chechen woman couldn’t be seen to be serving with the German Army. Kincaid was searching for a reaction but satisfied in himself that she was teary-eyed more out of fright. Eva summoned her smile from her heels. Trained in emotional mapping by the late Herr Gruber, she struggled to find convincing happy memories to bring to her eyes. Kincaid thankfully never looked past the smile, wishing only to see a pretty adoring face. She gave him that in spades, thinking of De Witte’s arms, and oddly and perhaps cruelly, of Brandt’s eyes.
Regan, who had filmed for most of his life, knew she was faking and wondered what leverage he’d get with that information.
The table was set in the best crystal and silver. Eva had never seen such opulence. It had to be said these villains loved their neatly-laid tables. Kincaid's fussing over table settings and throwing a tantrum over the cut-crystal gave him a prissy quality. She had been awake for nearly twenty hours and, as she re-did her make-up and changed into the low-cut evening wear Kincaid had bought, she wondered how long it would be before she slept again. She positioned her brooch along the halter-neck.
She brought up her thick auburn hair, pinning it up to reveal a diamond necklace Kincaid had purchased in Amsterdam. Her neck was slender and long, the colour and texture of alabaster, the diamonds sparkling on it. Regaining her composure, she swept out into the dining cabin and into the open boozy leers of Schenker, Regan and Kincaid. All jumped at the chance to seat her, Kincaid winning by a hair's breadth.
Through Regan’s lens, Kincaid and Eva sat at one side, Schenker and three of Kincaid’s personal staff sitting opposite. Regan lined the film camera up, adjusted the overhead lights and roared, ‘Action!’
Through his eyepiece, framed by the flags and just below the banner, the group faced the camera, raising a toast, Kincaid beaming and acknowledging Schenker who bowed modestly. The camera seemed to love them both. Eva’s composure had returned and Regan had to hand it to the broad — she could act. She gave furtive doe-eyed glances at Kincaid while Schenker leant across flirting openly. She was going straight to the ‘A’ list as soon as this documentary was screened worldwide.
Regan panned the camera around the cabin, slowly capturing the flying boat’s splendour. The crew from the flight-deck appeared in shot, giving the thumbs-up. Later Regan would film the radio operator informing Berlin of their success, jump-cutting to Lenin’s coffin. As they were filming, another unit was preparing to film Goebbels and Himmler receiving the news. Kincaid’s team would then splice the film together at Goebbels’ private studios. The event was virtually being put together in real-time.
Once the toast was completed, Kincaid and Schenker rose to stand in front of the flags, to applause from around the table. An announcement came over the intercom from the cockpit; they
would be out of Russian airspace in two hours. Regan then turned his attention to the laboratory below. He thought about interviewing Zbarsky, maybe taking some of the sensationalism out of it by asking for a scientific slant on preserving Lenin. He hastily scribbled down some notes into a leather-bound notebook purchased from the same shop as his hero Ernest Hemingway. Pausing over the page, the idea slowly sunk into Jack Regan that he was standing on the cusp of history. He was about to become a legend and girls like Eva would flock to him.
Chainbridge asked Brandt to repeat his statement. The signal out of the Urals was weakening, voices flowing in and out in waves. A few years earlier, Klaus Brandt’s dossier had been passed to Chainbridge when he had been collating information on German Army officers. He was assessed to be a very capable soldier, cool headed and inclined to act in the army’s, rather than the Nazi party’s, interests. He was also a legend in sporting circles, particularly mountaineering and cross country skiing and shooting. An Olympic place should have been guaranteed in 1936, but he never made the German team. He was now apparently out of political favour and had been left for dead in the middle of Russia. Whatever happened next would be British collaboration with the enemy while German bombs were landing on English cities. The trick was to keep British Intelligence’s fingerprints off the whole operation.
‘No Russian assistance,’ hissed Brandt’s voice through the receiver.
De Witte shook his head. ‘If it went wrong, Churchill would have some explaining to do. Tell Stalin.’
Chainbridge decided to keep the War Office in the know. Comrade Joe couldn’t be contacted anyway. It was rumoured he had fled Moscow. ‘Can you retrieve the consignment?’ shouted Chainbridge down the microphone in fluent German.
There was a long pause. ‘Yes,’
Chainbridge looked at De Witte. ‘What have we got in their vicinity?’
‘A lot of diplomatic flights have departed Moscow. No-one was expecting the Germans to get this far,’
The Finnish Embassy staff in touch with their counterparts in the beleaguered capital checked UK diplomatic flights. De Witte, confirming the stranded unit’s co-ordinates, was also grasping the fact that an NKVD Officer was involved. He started to plan on detaining this individual and getting as much intelligence out of him as possible.
Chainbridge spoke to Churchill’s secretary to confirm that Lenin had been snatched. The Foreign Office was running twenty-four hours a day digesting recent news from Singapore about Japanese fleet movements, and now this was another situation for them to juggle.
Churchill had contacted Roosevelt’s administration in relation to flights within the USSR. A twenty minute pause on the line interspersed with clicks and hisses followed before the message came through: They had an American Transport still unloading lend-lease equipment for the Russian Army about two hundred miles ahead of German Army Group South in Ukraine. ‘Washington doesn’t want any US personnel involved,’ came the response.
Chainbridge answered in his under-stated way, remembering Eva’s photographs of Kincaid’s hidden envelope. ‘Tell them there’s a US national aiding and abetting the German High command by flying Lenin’s body out of Russia. According to our information, it’s Donald T. Kincaid. This information is solid. We have copies of signed correspondence between him and high ranking Nazi party members. Do they want a diplomatic incident to ensue with The Soviet Union?’
Twenty more tense minutes of hisses and clicks followed before Washington agreed to divert the plane.
‘Better tell them to get moving,’ said De Witte, speaking fluent German into the radio receiver instructing Brandt to stay put. He had to repeat it twice, stressing that no harm would come to Kravchenko.
The ambassador was uneasy. The embassy was still operating without any Finnish or German interference. No doubt the Finnish Secret Service would be keeping Berlin appraised. Timing was going to be a critical factor; the later Berlin knew about anything the better.
With the lockdown of the German underground, information from inside the Reich was down to a trickle. Chainbridge knew it was going to be down to luck if they could intercept Kincaid.
He went out into the freezing night and lit a cigarette. Coughing harshly, he reminded himself he had to cut down. The moon sat low on the horizon, placing the embassy in a ghostly light.
Kincaid’s private plane was probably out of Russian airspace now.
Colonel Valery Yvetschenko furrowed his brow, concerned at the lateness of the hour. He was a precise man in every way and the train transporting Lenin was overdue. He rewound his watch, a gift for his fortieth birthday, to ensure it was functioning correctly. Continuous phone and radio messages were being sent to Moscow without any reply, just a constant static.
It was possible, he mused, that Moscow had fallen to the Germans. Since the invasion, communication was at best unreliable and the Russian Army had been driven back to Moscow’s suburbs. It was also possible that the train had never left Moscow as radio contact throughout the journey had been intermittent. Tyumen was the fall-back position for the Politburo and Military Command using the Urals as a natural shield.
For months the Soviet industrial and weapons complex had been shipped in secret into Tyumen prior to the invasion. Entire populations of workers had been railed in on the hour every hour ahead of the German advance. Vast catacombs had been constructed beneath the Ural Mountains, more still being mined to accommodate further shipments. Plant and machinery were working round the clock to feed the struggling forces with equipment, ammunition and vehicles. With the River Tura frozen solid, rail links and chartered allied transport planes were the only way into and out of the facility.
If the rail link had been compromised, it was going to be a very long hard winter.
It was ten-past-midnight and the snow was falling with such intensity that a search operation was nigh-on suicidal until morning. He peered into the wall of white falling before him, hoping to make out the shape of the locomotive coming in. His breath was crystallizing in the air, and with every inhalation it felt like tiny needles piercing his throat. He ordered the blast doors on the cavern to close for the night and, stomping up into the radio hut, instructed that messages were to be sent on the hour every hour. All that was coming back from Moscow was white noise.
Five hours had passed and the sound of aircraft engines filled the air. The dawn was still a few hours away and Brandt’s unit and Kravchenko had slept fitfully in the carriage. Olga and Kant, taking first watch, had killed three wolves that got too close. The animals lay on their sides with single bullet wounds to their heads. There were a great many more in the woods howling, watching and waiting for their moment to strike. Packs were feeding on the dead German soldiers, snarling and fighting over the remains. Schultz's body had been pulled up from its shallow grave and dragged into the forest.
The snow had at last stopped and the radio had sparked into life. Brandt’s English was poor but he recognised the codeword ‘Iskra’ as the US Transport banked in to land.
The C-47 Skytrain bounced along the frozen river, overshooting the carriage by a few feet. It turned quickly, blowing plumes of snow in its wake and pulled up alongside. Running below the length of the wing, the team boarded the plane. Before he climbed aboard, Brandt looked at the far bank. At least twenty wolves scattered into the forest from the din of the engines. The pilots gunned the engine and within minutes Brandt, Kant, Olga, Kravchenko, Hauptman, Bader and Voight, lost in their thoughts, were clattering pell-mell across the Russian dawn. Steaming hot coffee was served along with chocolate and emergency rations by a smiling American Navigator.
‘Looks like we’re all on the same side now!!’ he yelled over the din of the engines before heading back to the cockpit. He produced a hip flask and spiked the coffee with bourbon followed by a wink. The two pilots seemed to be flying in frenzy; pitching rather than flying the aircraft through the clouds. Sleep was going to be impossible, though there was one luxury — an on-board latrine. Olga went first to freshen up and was astonished that the taps produced running hot water.
Exhaustion took over and they tried to doze as the plane clattered toward Finland.
Wrapped in a heavy flight blanket, Eva slept in her seat. Its width allowed her to curl up, the soft leather soothing. Kincaid had wandered off to his room in a drunken stupor, roaring and shouting once the drink had taken hold. Regan never seemed to sleep. Behind her eyelids, Eva thought she could make out his shadow flitting in and out of her dreams. The cabin lights had been dimmed and the Captain informed the passengers that arrival time would be in a few hours. Bad weather had forced the flying boat out by several hundred miles and it was skirting a heavy weather front over the Russian coast.
Eva woke with a start to see Schenker facing her sitting in the seat opposite. He was clearly drunk, red-eyed and blinking through the alcohol. His Luger lay on the table, gleaming under the cabin lights. Eva coiled like a cat, her fingers locating the brooch on her dress. Beneath the blankets folds, she unclasped the brooch and switched to her free left hand. She could hit the jugular as his head was tilted sideways revealing his slim razor-burned neck.
‘Frauliein De Witte, Molenaar, I’m a bit confused..’
He leant forward, fingertips touching his nose in concentration.
‘I’m not sure what you mean, Captain.’ Eva smiled sweetly as if dazzled by his handsome features. He smiled back a saccharine smirk as his drunken mind tried to reach a point.
Her hand was free of the blanket and just below the table’s edge.
‘My headquarters in Berlin detected radio disruption from this plane’s cockpit. They’ve spoken to me about this. The radio operator is one of ours and he tells me you collided with him. What were you doing in the cockpit, Fraulein?’
‘Watching the airship, Captain, it was very big and impressive.’ Her heartbeat had doubled and her reactions were becoming electric. She glanced up and down the aisle for Regan. He was five seats up with his back to her. He was jotting in his notebook.
She looked back steadily at the S.S. officer. Schenker never seemed to blink, she noticed.
‘I made further inquiries from your colleagues in the German underground. They are currently enjoying the hospitality of my colleagues.'
Eva’s blood ran cold.
‘They were very, very helpful. You are Polish, yes?’ He smiled at his brilliance, the way he teased her gently. He was getting excited at the thought of breaking her after this journey, once he’d prised her away from that stupid industrialist.
But that pleasure was for later; he had other pleasures in mind after this conversation.
Eva made no reply. She inhaled, slowly preparing to strike. She could almost see Schenker’s pulse beating in his neck. His smile seemed to stretch his jaw to breaking point.
‘You are a British agent and you’re handler is the head of a European spy network.’
‘You are mistaken, Captain,’ Eva purred ‘I’m from the Sudetenland, and I believe my racial papers, signed personally by Herr Goebbels, are in order. Before Donald Kincaid, he was a very dear friend of mine.’
Schenker’s composure slipped for a moment.
‘Perhaps, Captain, I can explain a little more carefully.’ Eva shook the blanket from her shoulders and leaned in. Schenker smiled at the way this clever seduction was unfolding. Eva slipped a leg free and ran her foot along his boot. She shifted her weight forward putting her head close. He could smell faint perfume in her hair and anticipated pulling it closer to him.
‘Have you mentioned this to Kincaid? she whispered, letting her lips linger on his earlobe.
‘It’ll be our little secret Fraulein, if you’ll be perhaps ….. a little accommodating with me?’
‘My pleasure, my handsome, naughty Captain….’
He felt a faint prick to his neck. He tried to bring his hand up to it, but it wouldn’t move. Seconds passed and Schenker's entire body went into seizure. He could see, hear and taste but his body was inert. As consciousness slipped away, he could hear Eva shouting for help.
When he came to he was paralysed. His eyes bulged in terror as air was coming in through his mouth in tiny gasps. He was lying on Kincaid’s bed, his head propped up on pillows. His eyes stared at his polished boots at the end of the bed. He couldn’t get his feet to move. Outside the room he could hear voices; a male Russian voice and the lilting inflections of Eva translating. Zbarsky was insisting he was not a medical doctor but, after examining the S.S. officer closely, concluded he’d had some seizure or stroke. Schenker was gripped with terror. He wanted to crawl down off the bed and to Eva’s feet. Tears flowed down his face and he blinked them away. He was only partially successful. Kincaid and Regan came in and stood over him.
‘Too bad,’ said Kincaid, staring down at the helpless soldier.
‘We could cut the footage, re-shoot with just you,’ suggested Regan.
‘Died as a result of wounds sustained helping all of us escape,’ Kincaid decided.
Sharing a look, they leant over him, pulling the pillows from behind his head.
‘A posthumous Iron Cross for you, bud …. ’
The last thing Thor Schenker saw was the pillow coming down over his face. His very last thought was that Eva had his Luger.
The ME-109s were at the end of their operational range and banked away from the flying boat, leaving it unescorted over the Gulf of Finland. Behind it lay Russia; its army on the verge of defeat, their cities ablaze and leaderless; a nation on the brink of ruin.
The radio operator had heard that Schenker was dead, from a stroke apparently. He was unsure what to do next. He was just a secret policeman watching Kincaid. It had something to do with the girl, though. The communications between Schenker and Berlin were private and the line between Gestapo and the Waffen S.S. was distinct. You just didn’t cross it. He watched the fighters regroup in formation and dive back toward the cursed land. He decided to say nothing about the S.S. Officer for the moment and returned to fine-tuning the bandwidths. In his headphones a message arrived. It was repeated in a loop over several minutes. Looking up at the pilots, he tapped them on the shoulder and when they looked around he wrote on his pad: U-Boat 806. He responded in code that the message had been received and they were awaiting co-ordinates.
The American transport had ploughed straight through the storm, its engines screaming in protest. It had dived and recovered alarmingly, pitching everyone into the air and clattering them off the airframe.
The pilots and navigator kept pointing to their watches and giving the thumbs up between nosedives with big toothy smiles to the passengers. The Americans had laughed about the team insisting on maps to study as if the answers would jump out of the cartographer’s lines.
‘If we ever go to war with these guys, we can beat them just by hiding all their maps!’ the navigator quipped to the pilots.
The sky ahead was murky but it was alive, lit up with lightning streaks and the clatter of hail-stones. For all they knew they could be ten feet above the ground heading for a mountain. Another bout of turbulence plunged the plane downward before tossing it upward to the hoots and hollers of the pilots. Kravchenko shook his head. These cowboys were actually enjoying this. Tyumen will have found the train by now and he would be labelled a fugitive unless they decided the wolves had dragged his corpse into the forest. He looked at his companions all hanging on for dear life. No-one was making eye-contact because they were focused on the new mission, trained professionals cut loose from their world with no purpose except to chase a millionaire body-snatcher into Finland.
Kravchenko had served in Finland two years earlier fighting at Salla and respected the Finns as resourceful fighters. The Germans on the other hand he had no compassion for, nor had he shown any mercy until today. These Germans could’ve killed him and he acknowledged a blood debt. As soon as he had Lenin back, he would return with him and help these Germans cross the Swiss border.
Olga felt ill. She held Kant’s hand, almost tearing the flesh with her nails. She found herself watching the Russian, the enemy. His facial swellings had gone down, leaving bruising around his eyes. His hand had been cleaned and dressed by the navigator and he was poring over a map with tiny islets around the Gulf of Finland. He tipped her a knowing wink. She just kept staring at him, then through him.
Sunlight burst through the windows as the transport cleared the storm. One side of the cockpit’s window had a spider’s web of cracks, and the starboard engine sounded in trouble. It had a racking cough and smoke was pouring from the propeller housing. The pilots and navigator whooped for joy, turning around to their passengers to shout in unison, ‘Next stop Finland, folks!’
‘Great,’ muttered Kant, ’we’re flying with the bloody Marx Brothers.’