The Berkut (58 page)

They stared at him, not understanding the last remark. "Someone has carved a small Star of David into the sole of the shoe of the one who drags his leg," Ezdovo said with a laugh.

Petrov stared in the direction the Germans had gone, then slowly lifted his arm and pointed. "Go after them," he told Ezdovo and Bailov. "Get close, but do not engage them. Pressure them as circumstances allow; I want them to know you're behind them. They will already be nervous and wary; your pressure may force them into telegraphing their plans, even their ultimate destination. Understand?"

Ezdovo acknowledged the orders with a grunt. "Where are they going?" Bailov asked. "Italy," Petrov replied.

The four remaining members of the Special Operations Group watched silently as their comrades moved into the forest. Near a line of trees Ezdovo stopped briefly and looked back, then pivoted and disappeared behind Bailov. Pogrebenoi felt her heart beat faster; she knew the Siberian was saying good-bye to her.

80 – March 28, 1946, 10:30 A.M.

There was a small park a few blocks from the OSS office. It was sunny, but the children sailing boats in the pond were wearing heavy wool coats. Beau Valentine waited near a small fountain and watched the others in the area carefully, telling himself that he was beginning to get paranoid.

Ermine arrived precisely at 10:30 A.M. When she reached him she looked over her shoulder, then furtively thrust a thick manila envelope at him. "I'm scared, Beau."

"Look," he said. "Don't worry about your job. If they fire you, I'll take care of you. My word." He tried to kiss her, but she pulled away and slammed him on the chest with the heel of her hand.

"My job! They'll
kill
me if they find out that I've told you what's going on."

He laughed. "You've been reading too many spy stories."

"Laugh," she said angrily. "You don't know what the hell's going on. The old bunch acted like fraternity boys on a lark. The new ones
are something else entirely." Her tone of voice told him he'd better listen. "The Vatican's running some kind of underground railroad for German Catholics. It runs from Bremen to Frankfurt to Stuttgart to Memmingen. Little parishes along the route are used as safe houses and supply points. Priests are feeding and housing people, then passing them down the chain. From Memmingen they're moved to Innsbruck in Austria, and from there into Italy. They call it the Monastery Route. Our people are trying to get people into the system to do some talent scouting. "

"For prosecution?"

"You aren't listening," she scolded. "They're looking to turn those people around. There's a big push to get German rocket scientists out before the Russians snatch them. They call that Operation Alsos. The same with intelligence agents, especially those who were on the Eastern front. Us, the Russians, the Brits, the French and even the Canadians
,
everybody's trying to get a share of the German talent pool. It's all top secret."

He knew about Operation Alsos; he'd been an unofficial part of it. "What else?"

She tapped the envelope. "It's in there, but there's a lot more I don't know. I heard that General Gehlen and his whole espionage network are in the States right now being debriefed. He's not listed as a prisoner, but we have him."

"What about the political types?"

"Too hot, too well known. The focus is on professional cadre
technicians and academics."

Valentine squeezed her knee affectionately, but she pulled away.

"What about the other thing?" He'd also asked her to pay attention to any "unusual" events, such as murders or robberies; he wasn't sure how to define it by any other word.

"Several cases, all murders of American personnel by German nationals or presumed German nationals. All but one case has been solved. A WAC from Frankfurt, a major, got herself a pass and took off in a car from the motor pool. She was supposed to be gone for a week. After ten days they put out the bloodhounds. That was in December. They finally found her when the thaw began this month. Ran her car off a mountain road."

"So?"

"It was murder. The car was burned up, but her body had been thrown clear from the wreck and frozen. She'd been stabbed in the heart-a real professional job, according to the postmortem. Somebody went to a lot of work to make it look accidental."

"Hmm," Valentine said. "What else was there on the woman?" "She was a dyke."

Beau raised his eyebrows and frowned. "She liked girls?" "Apparently she wasn't long for the army. The provost marshal

had been in the process of investigating a complaint from an enlisted WAC who worked in her section at the Frankfurt Medical Depot. It seems the major pulled rank to make the girl cooperate."

"Where'd they find the body?"

"That's the funny part. The car was in a ravine about fifteen miles from a little town called Bad Harzburg, right in the area you wanted to know about. That's a long drive from Frankfurt."

"Yep, and right on the perimeter of the Russian zone. Any signs the Russians were involved in this? Maybe she got lost and some of our Russian comrades had a little sport with her."

"No. She had a whole set of charts with her." "Charts ?"

"Uh-huh. She got a complete set of up-to-date security zone maps from a light colonel in the transportation depot. They showed troop dispositions, checkpoints, the works. Turns out the colonel was a doctor who was holding down the motor pool job until a transportation officer arrived, and he gave her the maps so that she'd have an easier time getting around. They never found them, and the colonel who'd given them to her figured they'd burned up in the wreck and kept his mouth shut. But since then, his maps popped up as missing during some kind of administrative review. So now they know that she had the maps, and though they figure they were burned in the crash, the fact is that nobody really knows."

The maps opened a lot of possibilities.

Ermine stood up. "I've got to get back. I hope this helps." She pulled away before he could kiss her. "Not in public. Maybe we're being watched."

"So what? We were the worst-kept secret in the
OSS
."

"Call me," Ermine said sadly over her shoulder.

"You bet," Valentine said uneasily. He watched her until she disappeared into a crowd at the edge of the park. He'd been using her for a long time, and only now did it occur to him that he fit the classic description of a heel.

81 – March 30, 1946, 7:15 A.M.

The rest of the team had arrived at the estate early the previous day. Today they had risen early and were waiting for orders from Petrov. He called them into the dark library one at a time.

Rivitsky was first. "You will remain with me, comrade. I need your mind. Stay while I instruct the others. If something happens to me, you will assume command." Rivitsky had always assumed this, but it had never been said before, and his mind swam.

Pogrebenoi was next. She stood before the pair with her feet firmly planted, her legs slightly apart. Again reminded of how striking she was, Petrov now was certain he had made the right decision. "You are going to Italy," he told her. He watched her eyes carefully to see how she took the news. There was a brief flash of surprise, then a perfect blank. To her credit, she did not question the order or
the logic behind it, and Petro
v felt better because of her response. He outlined her mission for her: she would travel by a roundabout route, by plane from Berlin to Trieste through Budapest; from there she would board a train for Rome. He gave her instructions for contacting an agent in the Italian capital and described the method for doing so. He harbored no misgivings about her ability to perform. "My Italian will be a little rough for a while" was her only comment, and it was accompanied by a broad smile.

Gnedin was dispatched to Switzerland, first to Basel, then depending on developments he would go to Zurich. Petrov explained to him that there was a Vatican effort to help Nazis move out of Germany into Italy. In both Zurich and Basel there were agents of every nationality and plenty of information to be had for a price-or extracted if opportunities presented themselves.

Each member of the Special Operations Group was told how to contact their leader; the final item of business was to select a reassembly site and a date.

That night Pogrebenoi and Gnedin drove to Berlin to catch their flights. Rivitsky watched them go, then went back inside and poured himself a drink. His hand was shaking; Petrov had told him of Stalin's threat after they'd been stymied in Berlin. Now the Special Operations Group was dispersing, each member expected to do his job, and Rivitsky was keenly aware that his life, like theirs, hung in the balance.

82 – April 1, 1946, 5:00 P.M.

Bad Harzburg was a beautiful, compact village of ancient buildings packed into a steep elbow of the Harz Mountains. Valentine found that its people were at first suspicious of him and nervous in his presence, just as careful as countryfolk in the States tended to be.

Throughout the day he used the cover and credentials of an American journalist for
Life,
and this earned him a certain amount of respect or fear; with Germans it was sometimes hard to tell the difference. "Bad Harzburg has been left to German rule," he told the mayor. "Many cities in Germany don't have freedom. Apparently your village has been found to be relatively free of Nazi sympathies." The conclusion was just what the mayor and the villagers wanted to hear; after his first interview, Valentine found the town leader cooperative, and others in the town soon followed suit.

Of the tools and approaches available, Valentine found the camera the best. It seemed that by merely pointing a camera at a German, you could almost instantly get a fix on what level of support the individual had given the National Socialists; it was a behavioral litmus that seemed effective for both sexes and all ages. Even those who had not belonged to a Nazi organization but who had sympathized with the fascists avoided his camera like the plague. Such responses helped him to frame his questions and to evaluate the information he received.

It was early evening, and he was in the mayor's home. They were sharing a bottle of Riesling before a crackling fire while a starchy meal settled in their bellies.

"There are legions of refugees in Germany, but I don't see any here. Why not?"

"We had them," the mayor replied. "It was unbelievable how many came through here. You know that in the final days of the war there
was a huge battle on the edge of the Harz Mountains? Many died, but the Americans pulled away and rolled on to the east, leaving us to ourselves. From the east there were hundreds of thousands trying to escape from the Russians. Many of them came to the mountains for refuge, but the Harz is an inhospitable place even for those who understand it, so they moved on."

"How did you manage to cope with the influx?"

The mayor laughed. "There was nothing to organize, nothing to share. Mostly we ignored the strangers, and when they saw how poor we were they just kept going."

"None stayed?"

"None permanently. Now and then, here and there, one would remain for a while, but eventually they all moved on. It was no loss to us; it was hard enough to care for our own. We tried to help even though they were strangers-Germans, to be sure, but with different customs, different ways. Like oil and water, it was a bad mix. The only one I regretted losing was the doctor; he stayed for a few weeks. He seemed to fit in and he was an excellent physician, very good with people, though he seemed to be much better educated than we're accustomed to in these parts." T
he mayor took a long drink of win
e.

Valentine leaned forward. "A Nazi? My government is looking for a large number of German doctors who did experiments on Jews in your extermination camps."

The mayor was visibly shaken by the word "your." "They were not
our
camps," he complained. "We didn't know what went on in them. We were told they were work camps for criminals."

"A lot of Germans are saying the same thing."

"It's the truth," the mayor said with anguish, sweat trickling from his temples.

"What about the doctor?"

"He was no Nazi. He seemed to be a Prussian in manner and culture, though he said he was from Dortmund. Poor man-his wife and children had died in the bombings. His papers were in order. He told us he had been with the medical corps when his unit was routed near Katowice, in Poland. He was taken prisoner by the Ivans, but escaped. A very calm and deliberate sort. His language was precise. He seemed more an intellectual than a criminal."