The Berkut (36 page)

General Hermann Fegelein was typical of Hitler's misfits. In the
1920s, he had been first a goom and later a jockey. In league with one of Hitler’s early supporters from German industry, he was believed to have been involved in fixing the outcome of a number of Bavarian horse races, to the advantage of his benefactor- and indirectly of Hitler, for the money was funneled directly to the party. Always the opportunist, Fegelein had joined the Waffen SS and risen quickly; he also courted and married Eva Braun’s lusty younger sister, Gretl. From that point forward he became part of the Führer’s inner circle. Even so, he did not abandon his old habits, which included frequent affairs with other women.

When Hitler learned on April 27 that Fegelein had not been seen in the bunker since the previous day, he ordered Rattenhuber to find the general. The security chief gave the assignment to his deputy, Lieutenant Colonel Peter Hoegl, who took a small patrol through the Russian lines to Charlottenburg, where he found Fegelein at home
or, more precisely, in the arms of a beautiful young woman with reddish-blond hair. Hoegl's men recognized the woman, an actress of minor fame, but after cursory questioning released her. Their mission concerned only the general.

Hoegl ordered Fegelein to get dressed, but he begged to be allowed to call his sister-in-law. Hoegl was a fair man; the general had always been friendly enough, and so he allowed him to make the call. Fegelein pleaded with Eva, asking her to intervene in his behalf, but she hung up on him.

Rattenhuber was not present for the interrogation of Fegelein, but he did get the order to carry out the sentence of death, and again it was Hoegl he called upon. A sergeant did the actual shooting, a single round fired through the base of the brain. The body was buried in a shell hole in the Chancellery garden.

Later Hoegl was killed during the breakout attempt. Rattenhuber had no idea whom Hoegl had taken with him to fetch the former jockey, so the only record of the event was based on what Hoegl had reported to him afterward. Did he know the name of the woman who'd been with Fegelein? Of course. She was an actress, quite a talented one, in fact. She was also no stranger to the parties of upper
echelon Nazis. Her name was Lisl Marchant, but she went by the stage name of Honey.

Bailov decided to search for her. Knowing of the resurgence of Berlin's bistros and small clubs, he decided to start there; even if he couldn't locate her, he'd be able to amuse himself. Since Petrov's
departure he had gone to the district several times. All the women he met claimed to be actresses and were desperate to make an arrangement with a Russian male who could protect them. Moreover, it wasn't the fun he'd thought it would be; most of them were unattractive and smelled terrible.

Bailov was forced to visit the area during the day because Soviet officials had instituted a strict night curfew; anyone caught on the streets after dark would be shot, and many were. The Red Badge gave him free passage, of course, but at night he might never get the chance to show it. He decided to save the risk of night work until there were reasons to take it.

It was early evening, warmer and more humid than ever. Bailov spent the day fencing with a collection of whores and street women. Their aggressiveness annoyed him. The last form of payment they'd accept was money; cigarettes and canned goods were the preferred currencies. They might look weak and defenseless, but they bargained hard. It was difficult for him to imagine that Russian women would have behaved in the same way had their fates been reversed, but Bailov recognized that the will to survive took precedence over all other human drives. The search for the actress, which had once seemed a promising diversion, was fast becoming a dreary chore.

Bailov was sipping a shot glass filled with bad vodka and wondering what food was being prepared back at the Special Operations Group's headquarters when a scrawny redhead in a tattered black dress slid into a seat next to him and hiked her skirt to display her bony wares. "You don't have a uniform," she cooed. He saw that her neck was filthy and that dirt was caked under her cracked fingernails. "You must be important."

"Are uniforms required?"

"You don't understand. It's said that you're looking for a certain person. I thought you'd have a uniform."

"Are you the one?" he asked. He wasn't in the mood for games. "No, but I might know something." She touched his arm. "For a price."

"Everything has a price."

She glared at him, and her fingernails clawed at his arm. "Ivan the Terrible," she said contemptuously. "The ruthless Russian master. Your arrogance turns my stomach. Don't judge what you don't know anything about. If you want information, I have it, but you'll have to pay for it. If not, go to hell and stop wasting my time."

Bailov looked her over. She was serious. "What did you hear about my interests?"

"You're trying to locate Lisl Marchant. She was the kind who got roles because of her body, not her talent. She was an ignorant Bavarian slut."

"Was?" Bailov asked.

"Was, is. There's no difference now." "Bavarian slut," Bailov said. "Not like you?"

"Pig," she cursed. "I wasn't always like this. Even for money I don't have to take your insults. Living is enough."

"Where is she?"

"Alive. My information won't be cheap. I'd rather take it to my grave than give it away."

"That can be arranged," he threatened, sensing a bluff. "How much?"

"Identification papers. A Swiss passport. A ticket to Argentina." "Who are you?"

"That's not important. What you will help me become interests me more."

He smiled. "You have a problem, Fraulein, and you need my help. You don't really have much to bargain with."

"I know where Lisl Marchant is," she said confidently, "and you want to know, so let's settle on a fair price."

Bailov laughed. "Curfew is coming. You'll crawl back into your hole and I'll walk away, but I won't be back. Where does that leave you? Without a buyer, your information has no value."

"My price is not so high," she said. "Not for your kind."

"My kind?"

"You stink of it. I can tell."

"Of what?"

She was beginning to get nervous. "Gestapo," she blurted. "I'm Russian," Bailov snorted.

"The name makes no difference. You're the same."

"The price is too high," he said. He signaled a waiter, paid him and pushed his chair back. She turned pale and began sweating heavily. As he walked quickly into the street he heard her high heels click against the cement before she caught up with him.

"Bastard,
" she whispered. She looked nerv
ously at the people around them.

"It's ten minutes until curfew. I won't pay your price, Fraulein."

She grabbed his arm. "Please!" she entreated. "You'd better go," he said, enjoying her agony.

"All right," she said, defeated. "Tell me what you will pay." "That depends."

Her eyes darted around the street, which was now nearly empty of civilians, and then she pulled at his sleeve. "We have to go." She led him down a side street, breaking into an awkward run as soon as they left the main boulevard. "Hurry!" she begged. There was still a lot of rubble, and she stumbled frequently as she made her way through it. Bailov trotted along behind her, amused at her frantic behavior.

Several blocks further along they ran headlong into a Red Army patrol. She was ahead of him and was grabbed by the soldiers. Bailov approached them slowly. They were rear-echelon troops, not experienced, and when he came nearer, they circled him. The woman was being held to one side, a gun against her head.

The group was led by a toothless sergeant, his fingers dark from nicotine. "What's the matter, Nazi? You want some of this pussy?" His German was as crude as his vocabulary.

"No, Sergeant," Bailov said in Russian. "I'm looking for new tenants for the green flats of Lubyanka." The soldiers stiffened. Bailov flashed his Red Badge, and watched with amusement as the men scurried into the shadows to escape.

The woman stared at him. "I was right about you," she said. There was both admiration and fear in her voice.

"If you don't deliver, this will be the worst day of your life," Bailov warned her.

"What's one more?" she answered with a laugh and scampered down the side street ahead of him.

The street where the woman lived looked uninhabitable. All that remained of the old stone tenements were battered fa
c
ades. She led him into a dark sub cellar containing several small rooms crudely built off a central open area. There were people in the cellar, mainly females, most of them old. A woman rocked a baby in a dark corner, squatting, her body weaving slowly to and fro, the scrawny infant at her breast. Nobody looked up when Bailov and the woman entered. Berliners no longer poked their nose into other people's business; one took care of oneself as best one could and ignored everyone else.

The woman lived in one of the small cubicles. It contained a mattress without springs, a chair and a wooden crate on which were stuck several candles. A crucifix hanging on the wall leaned so badly that the Christ figure looked as if it were in the middle of a high dive. Dried palm leaves stuck out from behind the frame. The woman lit one of the candles, and the flame produced a small yellow glow that barely illuminated the area. Bailov observed that her few clothes were hung neatly on wire hangers, and that the tiny room was swept clean. A broom with badly worn bristles stood in a corner.

"Cigarette?" he asked, tossing an unopened pack to her. He watched carefully as she opened it clumsily with her thin fingers. Her coordination was off; disease or nutritional deficiency, he told himself. She sat on the bed with her skirt pulled high up her ghostly white thighs and used the candle to light up, inhaling deeply. "Where's Lisl?" he asked abruptly.

She exhaled loudly and lay back, her arm looped over her face. "Right here," she said wearily.

Bailov grinned. "So you're the ignorant Bavarian slut with the body?"

She nodded. "The same. My ignorance is a matter of record. I said Lisl Marchant got her roles because of her body, not her talent. That's true. You assumed that I meant she had the physique of an actress." She hiked her dress higher. "As you can verify, not true. Very few actresses have what they appear to. The camera can be made to see only what the director wants it to. What counts is the willingness to use your body and, more importantly, the skill to use it. I've been especially gifted, and that's how I got my parts. That's how everyone gets a part."

"An old approach. What of it?"

"I mingled with the wrong people."

"Like SS General Fegelein?"

She sat up, coughing from the smoke, tugged at her dress and swung her legs over the side of the mattress. "Who
are
you?"

"You were with the general when the Reich Security Police came to fetch him on April twenty-seventh."

The woman held the cigarette del
icately between thumb and fore
finger and swayed from side to side. She stared at Bailov. "No."

"Don't lie to me," he said quietly. "You were in bed with him." "You
are
Gestapo."

"I am Russian," he answered patiently. "It's said that you were one of his whores."

"An interesting perspective. I've never thought of myself as a whore, though now that I hear it said, it doesn't feel so bad. I didn't know him that well. We were together a few times. I promise you, there were a lot worse people than Hermann. At leas
t
his
tastes were normal. He could get it up like a man, and he helped me."

"You were with him on the twenty-seventh."

She reclined again and sighed. "I'm not ready yet to discuss specifics. Will you guarantee me what I want?" She looked like a child, frail and frightened, but he reminded himself that she was an actress.

"It depends on the nature of the information you have. Tell me about that night."

She looked up at the ceiling. "We had just finished making love. I haven't done it since," she added quickly, glancing at him out of the corner of her eye. "They arrived unannounced-an officer and three enlisted men. The officer told Hermann to get dressed. He was petrified and tried to talk the man into forgetting that he'd found him. The officer's name was Peter. He seemed to be a decent sort."

"But they took him away anyway."

"Not immediately. First they let him make a telephone call."

"Why?"

"To talk to his wife's sister." She looked away.

"Eva Braun," Bailov said. "He was married to Eva Braun's sister, Gretl."

"Yes. His wife was pregnant. He begged Eva to intercede for him."

"What did she tell him?"