Berlin Red (5 page)

It was only when a special programme appeared, narrated by a jovial, but disgruntled SS officer known only as Der Chef, that Berlin began to take notice. Der Chef spoke in the blunt, abbreviated language of a front-line soldier. His informal chats, broadcast for five or ten minutes between long stretches of popular music, were filled with sneering remarks about the effete quality of British soldiers, the drunkenness of Russians and the overindulgence of Americans. But he also did not hesitate to share whatever gossip he had picked up about the leadership in Berlin. It was Der Chef who exposed the juicy goings-on between Gerda Daranovski, one of Hitler’s private clerks, and Hitler’s chauffeur, Erich Kempka. Having left the womanising Kempka, Gerda married Luftwaffe General Christian. Soon afterwards, the jilted Kempka married a known prostitute from Berchtesgaden. Gerda, meanwhile, had begun an affair with SS Lieutenant-Colonel Schulze-Kossens. In other news, Hitler’s chief architect, Albert Speer, was having a fling with film-maker Leni Riefenstahl. Three members of Hitler’s private staff had been sent to a special venereal disease clinic in Austria. Martin Bormann, chief of Hitler’s secretarial staff, kept a mistress at his ski chalet in Obersalzberg, with the complicity of his wife.

There was never anything critical about Hitler himself. That would have been going too far. But these lesser players in the Berlin entourage were fair game.

It was not Der Chef’s rambling gossip that troubled Hitler and his staff. What bothered them was that Der Chef was right. Whoever this man was, he obviously had a source very near to the nerve centre of the German war machine.

When the existence of the Calais network was first reported, Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels immediately ordered the signal to be jammed. The signal was so powerful, however, that jamming it also disabled several legitimate sender stations, and Goebbels was forced to rescind the order.

The Ministry of Propaganda then considered broadcasting the truth about the Calais Sender on all the other sender stations, warning soldiers not to listen to Calais and threatening anyone who did with execution. But this idea was also abandoned. To acknowledge the existence of the Calais network would not only call into question the entire German propaganda apparatus, it would also require an explanation as to how the Allies were privy to such sensitive and personal information.

In the end, the Calais Sender was allowed to continue uninterrupted.

Soon after the Normandy invasion, in June of 1944, Sender Calais began rebroadcasting as Sender Caen, and after that as Sender Alsace. This gave the impression that the sender station was setting up shop in the line of the German retreat across Western Europe. In reality, the base of operations never changed and the pirate radio station continued to broadcast from England as it had always done.

Even if Der Chef was correct in his unearthing of such sordid details, the mere mention of them, embarrassing as they might be, had no serious effect upon the German war effort.

But it was not the gossip that caused such great anxiety among those few members of the German High Command who were aware of the station’s true source. If Der Chef knew about the sleazy parlour games of Hitler’s closest circle, then what else did he know?

This was the question which had been nagging Hitler ever since he first tuned in to Der Chef, whose seemingly inexhaustible supply of titbits echoed in Hitler’s brain like the relentless ticking of a metronome.

He had ordered his Chief of Security, General Rattenhuber, to conduct a full investigation. But Rattenhuber had found nothing. The best he could do was to tell Hitler that the informant probably worked somewhere in the Chancellery, was probably a low-level employee and had probably been there for a long time.

Probably.

In an attempt to play down Hitler’s concerns, as well as his own lack of results, Rattenhuber went on to assure the Führer that once the High Command had relocated down into the bunker complex, where security was considerably tighter than up among the ruins of the Chancellery building, Der Chef’s source of information would undoubtedly dry up.

Every day since, Hitler had listened to the radio station, putting Rattenhuber’s pronouncement to the test.

This morning, Der Chef, speaking in his unmistakable Berlin accent, went off on a tirade against the kind of clothing worn by American civilians. Hula shirts. Zoot suits. In spite of himself, Hitler snuffled out a laugh at the description of these preposterous outfits. Other than what he had read in the cowboy novels of Zane Grey, Hitler knew very little about American culture, and what he did know left him unimpressed. Then Der Chef went on to congratulate a number of SS officers who had recently been awarded the Knight’s Cross, Germany’s highest award for service in the field.

Hitler felt his jaw muscles clench. He had approved that list of Knight’s Cross candidates himself not five days before. The award ceremony wasn’t even due to take place until next week.

So much for Rattenhuber’s fortune-telling, he thought.

He was just about to remove the headphones, after which he would carefully reorient the signal dials to their original position, when suddenly he froze.

That list of officers.

There was something about it.

He struggled to recall. There had been so many lists drawn up recently, so many meetings. It was hard to remember them all.

The candidates had been put forward by his old comrade Sepp Dietrich, now in command of the 6th SS Panzer Army. Initially, Hitler had approved the list as a matter of course but following the failure of the 6th Army to hold back Red Army forces attacking the city of Budapest, Hitler had ordered his approval to be withheld. His secretary, Bormann, had dutifully filed it away among those documents consigned to limbo at the headquarters. Withholding the document was not an outright refusal to issue the medals, only a sign of his disapproval at the performance of Dietrich’s soldiers. In practical terms, all it meant was that Dietrich would have to resubmit his request, but Hitler’s gesture would not go unnoticed.

What mattered now was not the list itself, but the fact that it had never left the bunker. And yet, here was Der Chef, reading it off word for word.

‘The spy is here among us!’ Hitler muttered hoarsely.

Misch had, by now, returned from his cigarette break and was busy sucking on a mint in order to hide the odour of smoke on his breath. Hitler could not stand the smell of tobacco.

Hitler turned in his chair and eyed the man. ‘He’s here!’ he whispered.

Misch stared at him blankly. Is he talking about me, wondered the sergeant. Is he seeing ghosts? Has he finally gone out of his mind?

Hitler had hooked his left knee around the leg of the table in order to stop the incessant trembling of his calf muscle. Now he untangled himself from his chair and rose to his feet. Just as he was handing the headphones to Misch, he spotted the message form which Zeltner had filled out the night before. ‘What is this?’ he asked.

‘Something that came last night from a certain General Hagemann,’ Misch explained hastily. ‘I was going to give it to you.’

Hitler fished out a pair of reading glasses. Shakily, he perched them on his nose. Then he picked up the form. ‘Diamond Stream,’ he said. Then he glanced at Misch. ‘Are you sure this is correct?’

‘The message came through on Zeltner’s shift,’ Misch explained nervously. ‘I doubt there has been a mistake.’

Hitler folded up the message form and tucked it away in his pocket. ‘Bring me General Hagemann,’ he commanded softly.

The sun had just risen above the onion-shaped domes of St Basil’s Cathedral when Major Kirov and Pekkala arrived at the Kremlin.

Escorting them to their destination was Stalin’s personal secretary, a short and irritable man named Poskrebychev. Although he held no rank or badge of office, Poskrebychev was nevertheless one of the most powerful men in the country. Anyone who desired an audience with the Boss had first to go through Stalin’s outer office, where Poskrebychev ruled over a dreary cubicle of filing cabinets, a chair, a telephone and an intercom which sat like a big black toad upon Poskrebychev’s desk.

After showing visitors into Stalin’s room, Poskrebychev always departed, closing the double doors behind him with a dance-like movement that resembled a courtier’s bow.

Poskrebychev never attended these meetings but, returning to his desk, he would invariably switch on the intercom and eavesdrop on the conversation. He was able to do this without arousing suspicion because, although a small red light switched to green whenever the intercom was in use, Poskrebychev, after hours of fiddling with the machine, had discovered that, if the intercom button was only half switched, the red light would stay on and he could still hear every word of what was said.

This malfunction of technology was the true source of Poskrebychev’s power, although it did not come without a price. Often, lying in bed at night in the flat he shared with his mother, Poskrebychev would twitch and shudder as the vastness of the treacheries and horrors which Stalin had conjured into being echoed from the rafters of his skull.

‘He has another visitor,’ Poskrebychev whispered to Pekkala as they reached the door to Stalin’s office. ‘Some teacher or other. A strange bird if ever I saw one!’

Pekkala nodded thanks.

The doors were opened.

The two men walked into the room and Poskrebychev, with his usual dramatic flourish, closed the door behind them.

Stalin sat behind his desk. As usual, the heavy curtains were drawn. The room smelled of beeswax polish and of the fifty cigarettes that Stalin smoked each day.

Standing at the far end of the room, where he had been admiring the portrait of Lenin on the wall, was a man in a tweed jacket and grey flannel trousers. He turned as Pekkala walked in and bowed his head sharply in greeting. The man had a thick crop of grey hair and a matching grey moustache. His eyes, a cold, cornflower blue, betrayed the falseness of his smile.

He is no Russian, thought Pekkala.

Confirming Pekkala’s suspicion, Stalin introduced him as Deacon Swift, a member of the British Trade Commission. ‘But of course,’ added Stalin, ‘we all know that is a lie.’

The smile on Swift’s face quickly faded. ‘I wouldn’t call it that, exactly,’ he said.

‘Whatever your role with the Trade Commission,’ continued Stalin, ‘you are also a member of British Intelligence, a post you have held for many years, in Egypt, in Rome and now here, in Moscow.’ Stalin glanced across at the Englishman. ‘Am I leaving anything out?’

‘No,’ admitted Swift, ‘except perhaps the reason for my visit.’

Stalin gestured towards Pekkala. ‘By all means attend to your business.’

Swift drew in a deep breath. ‘Inspector Pekkala,’ he began, ‘I have been sent here by His Majesty’s Government on a matter of great importance. You see, we might soon need your help in retrieving one of our agents from Berlin.’

‘I imagine you have several agents in Berlin,’ said Pekkala.

Swift nodded cautiously. ‘That is altogether likely, yes.’

‘Then what makes this one so special?’

‘This is someone we felt might be of particular significance to you,’ explained Swift.

‘And why is that?’

‘The agent, whose code name is Christophe, has been supplying us with snippets of propaganda.’

‘Snippets?’ asked Pekkala.

‘Oh,’ Swift let the word drag out, ‘nothing of great importance, really. Just the odd detail here and there about goings-on among the German High Command, which we then cycle back into our radio broadcasts throughout the liberated territories. Of course, the Germans listen to these broadcasts, too. It lets them know we have our eye on them.’

‘So far,’ remarked Pekkala, ‘I have not heard anything that might be of significance to me.’

‘The thing is,’ explained Swift, ‘this person is known to you.’

Pekkala narrowed his eyes in confusion. ‘I don’t know any British agents, and no one at all named Christophe.’

‘Ah!’ Swift raised one finger in the air. ‘But you do, Inspector, whether you realise it or not. Christophe is the code name for a woman named Lilya Simonova.’

Pekkala’s heart stumbled in his chest. Instinctively, he reached into his pocket, rough fingertips brushing across the crackled surface of the only photo that had ever been taken of the two of them together.

‘When was the last time you saw her?’ asked Swift.

It had been in Petrograd in the last week of February, 1917.

Entire army regiments – the Volhynian, the Semyonovsky, the Preobrazhensky – had mutinied. Many of the officers had already been shot. The clattering of machine-gun fire sounded from the Liteiny Prospekt. Along with the army, striking factory workers and sailors from the fortress island of Kronstadt began systematically looting the shops. They stormed the offices of the Petrograd Police and destroyed the Register of Criminals.

The Tsar had finally been persuaded to send in a troop of Cossacks to fight against the revolutionaries, but the decision came too late. Seeing that the Revolution was gaining momentum, the Cossacks themselves had rebelled against the government. Now they were roaming the streets of the city, beating or killing anyone who showed any signs of resistance.

It was after midnight when the Tsar called him in to his study at the Alexander Palace. He sat at his desk, his jacket draped over the back of his chair. Olive-coloured braces stretched over his shoulders and he had rolled up the sleeves of his rumpled white shirt.

Pekkala bowed his head. ‘You sent for me, Majesty.’

‘I did,’ replied the Tsar. ‘Where is your fiancée?’

‘Majesty?’

‘Your fiancée!’ he repeated angrily. ‘Where is she?’

‘At home,’ answered Pekkala. ‘Why do you ask?’

‘Because you need to get her out of here,’ said the Tsar, ‘and as soon as possible.’

‘Out of Petrograd?’

‘Out of Russia!’ The Tsar reached behind him and pulled a folded piece of paper from the pocket of his tunic. He slid it across the desk to Pekkala. ‘This is her travel permit to Paris. She will have to travel via Finland, Sweden and Norway, but that’s the only safe route at the moment. The train leaves in three hours. I have it on good authority that it is the last one on which permits authorised by me will be accepted. After that, my signature will probably be worth nothing.’

‘Three hours?’ asked Pekkala.

The Tsar fixed him with a stare. ‘If you hesitate now, even for a minute, you may well be condemning her to death. The time will come when you can join her, but for now I need you here. Do you understand?’

‘Yes, Majesty.’

‘Good. Then go. And give her my regards.’

Three hours later, Lilya and Pekkala stood on the crowded railway platform of the Nikolaevsky station in Petrograd.

Many of those fleeing had come with huge steamer trunks, sets of matching luggage, even birds in cages. Hauling this baggage were exhausted porters in their pill-box hats and dark blue uniforms with a single red stripe, like a trickle of blood, down the sides of their trousers. There were too many people. Nobody could move without shoving. One by one, passengers left their baggage and pressed forward to the train, tickets raised above their heads. Their shouts rose above the panting roar of the steam train as it prepared to move out. High above, beneath the glass-paned roof, condensation beaded on the dirty glass and fell back as black rain upon the passengers.

A conductor leaned out of a doorway, whistle clenched between his teeth. He blew three shrill blasts.

‘That’s a two-minute warning,’ said Pekkala. ‘The train won’t wait.’ He reached inside his shirt and pulled a leather cord from around his neck. Looped into the cord was a gold signet ring. ‘Look after this for me.’

‘But that’s your wedding ring!’

‘It will be,’ he replied, ‘when I see you again.’

Sensing that there would not be enough room in the carriages, the crowd began to panic. Passengers ebbed back and forth, as if a wind was blowing them like grain stalks in a field.

‘I could wait for the next train,’ Lilya pleaded. In her hands, she clutched a single bag made out of brightly patterned carpet material, containing some books, a few pictures and a change of clothes. As of now, they were her only possessions in the world.

‘There might not be a next train. Please. You must leave now.’

‘But how will you find me?’ she asked.

He smiled faintly, reaching out and running his fingers through her hair. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, ‘that’s what I’m good at.’

The clamour of those still struggling to get aboard had risen to a constant roar. A pile of luggage lurched and fell. Fur-coated passengers went sprawling. Immediately, the crowd closed up around them.

‘Now!’ said Pekkala. ‘Before it’s too late.’

When, at last, Lilya had climbed aboard the carriage, she turned and waved to him.

Pekkala waved back. And then he lost sight of her as a tide of people poured past him, pursuing the rumour that another train had pulled in at the Finland station on the other side of the river.

Before Pekkala knew what was happening, he had been swept out into the street. From there, he watched the train pull out, wagons rifling past. Then suddenly the tracks were empty and there was only the rhythmic clatter of the wheels, fading away into the distance.

For Pekkala, that day had been like a fork in the road of his life. His heart went one way and his body set off another, lugging its jumbled soul like a suitcase full of rusty nails.

‘What is she doing in Berlin?’ Pekkala asked, hardly able to speak. ‘And why is she working for you?’

‘She volunteered,’ Swift replied matter-of-factly.

Now Stalin raised his voice. ‘If she’s working for you, then why do you need us to get her out? Why not just leave her there until Berlin has fallen? I promise it won’t be long now.’

‘We feel a certain sense of urgency,’ Swift replied vaguely, ‘and given your army’s proximity to the city, such a task might better be accomplished by a man such as Pekkala. It is a small gesture in the grand scheme of things,’ Swift said magnanimously. ‘We see it as evidence of the many things which bind us in this struggle against a common enemy.’

‘When do I leave?’ asked Pekkala.

‘Soon,’ replied Swift. ‘Perhaps very soon. Of course we will notify you as far in advance as we can.’

‘Then we look forward to hearing from you,’ said Stalin.

Bowing his head with gratitude, Swift made his way out of the room.

Until that moment, Stalin’s face had remained a mask of unreadable emotions. But as soon as the Englishman departed, Stalin slammed his fist down on the desk. ‘A gesture of solidarity! Who the hell do they think we are? A pack of errand boys?’

Pekkala was still reeling from the news. Stalin’s voice reached him as if through the rush and tumble of waves breaking on a nearby shore.

‘What are we going to do?’ asked Kirov.

‘You will do exactly as they say,’ replied Stalin. ‘You will go to Berlin and you will bring that woman back.’

In spite of his confusion, Kirov managed to nod in agreement.

‘But not’, continued Stalin, ‘before you discover the real reason they want her.’

‘The real reason?’ asked Kirov.

‘Whatever her value to the Inspector, do you honestly think they would go to all this trouble to retrieve an agent who is merely supplying them with gossip?’ Stalin swept one stubby finger back and forth. ‘No, Major Kirov, there is more to this than their compassion for a missing operative. She must have got hold of something important, something they want now, or they would simply leave her where she is to wait until the city has fallen. And I want to know what it is.’

‘But how are we to manage that?’ asked Kirov.

Stalin took out a pen and scribbled an address on a pad of notepaper, then tore away the sheet and handed it to Pekkala. ‘Here is the address of someone who might have the answer.’