Katastrophe, page 7
Moncrieff nodded. Walter Schellenberg was a spy catcher of genius who liked nothing more than laying traps for both his enemies and his friends. In the early months of the war he’d lured two British agents, both of them working for Broadway, to a meeting on the Dutch border. Kidnapped at gunpoint and hauled back to the Fatherland, they’d blown network after network across countless European cities, prompting Ursula Barton’s resignation from the embassy in The Hague, and subsequent appearance at MI5 headquarters in St James’s Street. Schellenberg’s giddy rise through the ranks of Himmler’s Sicherheitsdienst had followed, and now he controlled the intelligence arm of the SS. Willi Schultz, who worked for the rival Abwehr, loathed him.
‘So what happened to Wolff?’ Moncrieff reached for a bread roll.
‘It seems he had a run of bad luck. First his health gave out, waterworks problems, kidney stones, then he was foolish enough to get divorced and marry his mistress, which didn’t please Himmler at all. By last summer, he’d been banished to Italy where he passed his days sorting out the partisans. By all accounts he did a good job. He holds the rank of General, which puts him in charge of the Waffen-SS down there. After Kesselring, he’s the top man on the Italian front. He has credibility, no one questions that, and he also has motive, which in the current context might be more interesting.’
Moncrieff smiled. In Wolff’s shoes, anyone with an interest in their own survival would be worried. The war was undoubtedly coming to an end. Not even Hitler could prevent that. And in the aftermath, assuming you got through the final spasms of violence on the battlefield, there would be some kind of reckoning. For months, reports of death camps in the east had been filtering back to listening ears in St James’s Street. The sheer numbers of alleged victims defied belief, and with the war over, there would be awkward questions for would-be accomplices in a crime like this to answer.
‘You think Wolff’s after some kind of deal?’
‘Everyone’s after some kind of deal. But that’s hardly the point. Does Wolff have the authority to negotiate a surrender in Italy? With Kesselring’s blessing, yes he probably does. Are there elements in Berlin that might scent the potential for mischief in whatever happens next? Again, yes.’
‘Mischief?’
‘Our friend in Moscow trusts no one, least of all his erstwhile allies. He took a good look at us at Yalta and drew his own conclusions. He thinks Churchill is a thief and a drunkard and talks far too much. He’s pretty sure Roosevelt is dying. He’s also stuffed most of Eastern Europe down his trousers and is now eyeing Berlin. It’s there for the taking but it will cost him yet more blood. This, believe it or not, upsets him. And what would upset him more would be word that the Allies, in other words us, intend to make some kind of separate peace, slope arms and retire from the field of battle, thus releasing umpteen Nazi armies to kill yet more Russians. That, for Uncle Joe, would be…’ he was eyeing the newly arrived bottle of Margaux, ‘… less than welcome. Are you with me here?’ He glanced up, smiling now. ‘If so, it might be wise to lay a plan or two.’
5
On the third night of the journey, Nehmann dreamed about the train. Not the train he was sitting on, not exactly. Not even the succession of dirty carriages that had stretched away to the very end of the platform at the Krasnoyarsk station. But a different train, longer, sleeker, serpentine, a train glimpsed one moment between pine trees in a forest, seen the next moment across a vast expanse of steppe, then viewed from above, the mind’s eye swooping and wheeling and climbing, an accomplice to this stealthy wriggle towards a faraway destination.
What might await the train at journey’s end? Were there passengers aboard? Would high hopes end in disappointment? Tormented by these questions, Nehmann remained asleep for long enough to find an answer of sorts. The station at the end of the line had the girth of a cathedral. And metres beyond the huge buffers tiny figures were manoeuvring a giant saucer into place. The saucer was brimming with kasha, grey, steaming, and the little helpers clapped as the engine dipped its head and began to eat.
Nehmann awoke with a jerk. Leon was dozing beside him and around him, in the gloom, were the same faces, the same bodies, some asleep, some not, but all of them swaying in unison with the motion of the train, a chorus line of ill-dressed volunteer performers as the five-year drama of the Great Patriotic War approached its final act.
A couple of nights before, in the station restaurant, Leon had told him about the Red Army pushing west across Poland, deep into Prussia in the north, Romania in the south, pausing to gobble up a stray German army or two, titbits consumed on the Revolution’s irresistible march to glory. Hitler, he said, had gambled on Russian weakness, on Russian incompetence, but successive winters, and the iron in the Soviet soul, had proved him wrong and now – like a spendthrift dining way beyond his means – Hitler was faced with a bill he couldn’t possibly pay. And so, in these dog days of the war, the Motherland was due a little revenge and within weeks, he promised, the Red Army would be feasting on Berlin.
Berlin. Nehmann’s memories were mercifully untainted by the last two years of war. The last time he’d been there, the city had already adjusted itself to night after night of violence at the hands of the British. The big four-engined bombers dumped hundreds of tons of high explosive into the darkness between the searchlights that probed for targets, and it was rare to emerge from the shelters after the all-clear and not smell burning and taste brick dust in the air. Gaps had begun to appear in the streets around the Wilhelmstrasse, and in the factory areas further out, but even then Nehmann had known that there was far, far worse to come. Had the Germans, so obedient, so naïvely trusting, brought this conflagration on themselves? Had they believed the outrageous lies that he – Werner Nehmann – had helped to peddle? He suspected that the answer was yes, but there was another truth, infinitely simpler: that this war, patriotic or otherwise, had affected everyone in some way or another. You didn’t need to be German to have suffered. Neither did you need to be rich.
By now, nearly half past eight by Leon’s watch, the thin, cold light of dawn was overtaking the train as it plodded west. Nehmann rubbed his eyes, taking stock. The carriage was packed, which was a blessing because bodies meant heat, and his gaze drifted from face to face, avoiding eye contact but noting the little details that always mattered. The tell-tale clues on leather belts that circled waist after waist, tightened and retightened over the years of war. The youngish man across the corridor, his head lolling on his chest, his curly hair prematurely grey. The stand of hoes and rakes, bound with fraying string, lodged in a far corner of the carriage. And the blind beggarwoman, whom the carriage looked after, her tin mug still clasped in one bony hand, the other protecting the stub of a scavenged cigarette.
The seats in the carriage were arranged in squares of four, and Nehmann looked down to find the bent finger of the old woman in the seat opposite stabbing at his knee. She wore a moth-eaten shawl she’d probably knitted herself and a pair of stout trousers she might have inherited from her dead husband. She had a gap-toothed smile and watery eyes, and she always woke up far too early.
‘Bol-she,’ she said. More.
Nehmann pulled a face, nodded at the still-sleeping Leon, murmured an apology. Far too early. Think of others.
The woman shook her head. She wasn’t interested in Leon.
‘Bol-she,’ she repeated.
Nehmann did his best to ignore her, but it was hopeless. Her whole hand, this time, giving Nehmann’s knee a little squeeze.
‘Bol-she.’
‘Do as she says. Give her what she wants.’ Leon was awake after all.
‘You’re sure?’
Leon nodded, stifled a yawn, checked his watch, and Nehmann shrugged, giving in to the old woman. He’d tucked the book down the side of his seat. That first full day out of Krasnoyarsk, bored with gazing at the interminable pine forests, he’d buried himself in Tolstoy’s story, aware of the old woman’s eyes on the book. After an hour or so, he’d offered to lend it to her, but she’d shaken her head. She said she couldn’t read. She wanted him to do it for her.
‘Do what?’
‘Read.’ The old woman had touched her lips. ‘Aloud.’
Leon had been monitoring this conversation and told Nehmann to go ahead. The journey would last for days and days. Anything to distract from the view, anything to bring a little light relief. And so Nehmann had done the old woman’s bidding, returning to the opening page of The Kreutzer Sonata, bending to the smallness of the print, and using what talents he had to bring light and shade to Tolstoy’s prose.
It had helped that the story began on a train, with passengers coming and going, one of them with a story to tell, and before he’d reached the foot of the first page, the old woman was clapping her hands, delighted, asking whether Nehmann was making all this up. He should speak more loudly, she insisted. Everyone should listen. Everyone in the train. Because this young man was a teller of stories, a weaver of yarns, and he’s going to have a part for every single one of us.
This little episode brought a smile to Leon’s face, largely because the old woman had – whether she knew it or not – summed up Nehmann’s entire professional life. The teller of stories and weaver of yarns had fallen into the lap of the regime’s evil genius, the Minister of Propaganda, and although Nehmann had later paid a savage price, that talent had brought him many rewards. And so he’d finished the paragraph, and turned the page, and an hour or so later, when he’d paused for a break, there was a soft ripple of applause from the passengers who’d lent an ear.
The Kreutzer Sonata was over a hundred pages long, and it was Leon who’d had the wit to suggest that Nehmann ration his readings to, say, fifteen pages per day. That way he’d spare his voice, while keeping his audience in suspense. This Nehmann had been only too happy to do and as the train rolled ever westwards, word of his performance had spread throughout the carriage. Strangers began to consult each other on missing episodes, on parts of the back story that might be key to whatever happened next, and this morning – based on murmurs he’d heard around him – he was anticipating a number of visitors to vacate their seats and squat or stand in the narrowness of the aisle to better keep up with the cuckolded civil servant and his doomed wife.
This, to the old woman’s delight, is exactly what happened and as more and more faces appeared she kept interrupting the flow of the story, telling Nehmann to stop for a moment while listeners found some small token of their appreciation – a heel of stale bread, a mouthful of pepper vodka, a puff or two on a soggy cigarette. These she piled on her ample lap, and once Nehmann had come to the end of the day’s instalment, she spent the afternoon and most of the evening sharing these windfalls between them. This, to Nehmann, was a wonderful clue to the real meaning of Mother Russia, a thought he shared with Leon. Tolstoy had penned the story during the reign of the Tsars. No matter how hard Marxism tried to fence off the past, ordinary folk – given the small blessings of capitalism – were still happy to make themselves at home there.
Leon, visibly amused, helped himself to the remains of a bottle of kvass, donated by a visitor from the end of the carriage who’d somehow remained fat.
‘You’ll appreciate Moscow, my friend.’ He emptied the bottle and wiped his mouth, still looking at Nehmann. ‘It will be my pleasure.’
*
Nearly a week later, after endless stops on loop lines to allow troop trains to hurry westward, they were approaching the suburbs of the capital. The Kreutzer Sonata, after briefer and briefer readings to eke the story out, had finally come to an end with the wife knifed to death, and the tearful husband struggling with the consequences of what he’d done. The women in the carriage, almost all of them, sided with the wife. Such a presence in the house would, they agreed, bore any woman to death. In those days, as in these, you took your pleasures where you could. The men, on the other hand, were more cautious. The civil servant had done his duty. He’d fathered five children, earned a decent living, put food on the table, and the least he could expect was a wife who kept her frustrations to herself. This difference of opinion sparked a lively debate as Moscow rolled ever nearer, a compliment – in Nehmann’s eyes – to Lev Tolstoy. Even Leon, his keeper and increasingly his companion, enquired whether he might borrow the book and try another story or two.
‘And me?’ Nehmann asked. ‘What do I get to read?’
‘We’ll find you a bookshop. You’ll be glad to know they still exist.’
‘We?’
‘You and me.’ Leon was smiling again. ‘And our friend with the handcuffs.’
This was the first time Nehmann realised that he was still under escort. It turned out that the NKVD guard was travelling in the adjoining carriage, getting out at every stop to make sure that Nehmann had no plans to escape. This struck him as a very benign form of restraint, a tribute to Leon’s judgement and perhaps the trust he was extending, and as the wooden trackside houses that signalled the Moscow suburbs began to thicken, he gazed out of the window, eager for the sight of a proper city. A fresh carpet of snow had fallen overnight but already, by mid-morning, people were sweeping paths to their front doors. Every space between every house showed signs of cultivation, rows of cabbages, of onions, of something that looked like beets.
‘Victory gardens.’ Leon saw them, too. ‘The harder you dig, the longer you live.’
By now, the debates about marital fidelity over, the carriage was on the move. Passengers who knew Moscow recognised familiar landmarks and prepared for the approach of the terminus where the journey would finally come to an end. Hands reached for carefully stowed bags. The hoes and the rakes were readied for arrival. The beggarwoman was pocketing the handful of kopeks she’d collected since dawn.
Once the train had stopped, Nehmann tried to struggle to his feet, but Leon restrained him.
‘We wait,’ he said. ‘Until everyone has gone.’
‘And then?’
‘Hot water.’
*
The Hotel Savoy lay within easy walking distance of Red Square. Nehmann knew this because Leon instructed the NKVD driver awaiting them at the station to make a detour in order to show off the jewel in Moscow’s crown. Maybe he’s decided I don’t believe him, Nehmann thought. Maybe he’s trying to prove that none of this is a figment of my imagination.
They’d come to a halt beside a sizeable building in orange brick, hard against the Kremlin walls. Nehmann recognised it from photographs published in the Berlin Morgenpost the day after the signing of the Nazi−Soviet Non-Aggression Pact.
‘Lenin’s mausoleum,’ he murmured. ‘Do I get a look?’
‘Sadly not. He’s still in Siberia. He’s been there a while but we’re bringing him back at the end of the month. Operation Object Number One. Strange, isn’t it? Lenin never believed in the afterlife, yet the truth is he’s still with us.’
‘And you?’ Nehmann couldn’t resist the question.
‘We?’ That same smile, wry, reflective. ‘You’re right. We broke open the coffins of the Orthodox saints and despoiled the contents. Yet here we are, still preserving a relic of our own. A bath, I think. Is that you smelling, or me?’
*
The Hotel Savoy was a relic from the days of the Tsar, and once again there were two keys awaiting Leon at reception. Nehmann’s assigned room was on the top floor. The ancient lift shuddered upwards until the doors opened to the smell of boiled cabbage and the sight of a bear’s head mounted high on the wall. Leon led the way down the corridor, opened the door of the room and stood aside. Nehmann, he said, would have a guard at his door day and night. For the rest of the day he might like to take advantage of the facilities supplied. A call to reception would conjure anything from a modest menu. For the time being Leon had business to take care of, but tomorrow morning he would be very happy to show Nehmann a little of his native city.
‘You live here?’
‘I do.’
‘Born here?’
‘Yes.’
‘And the Vozhd?’ Stalin?
‘We await his pleasure.’ He nodded beyond the open door. ‘I took the liberty of making a phone call from one of the stops yesterday. Under your pillow, I think.’
He gestured for Nehmann to step into the room. Still in the corridor, Leon closed and locked the door behind him, leaving Nehmann to look around. The room was enormous, high ceiling, walls painted an oppressive shade of the darkest green, the space cluttered with a confusion of couches, double wardrobes and a bed that could have slept a platoon of soldiers. The wallpaper, once ornate, had begun to peel but there was a mural above the picture rail that ran the length of three of the four walls and featured mounted cavalry and the smoke of some long-ago battle.
Nehmann gazed up at it, shaking his head, then crossed the room to the biggest of three windows. From here he had a perfect view of the street many storeys below. There was a scatter of traffic, biggish cars trailing curls of blue exhaust in the freezing air, and he spent a moment or two watching a woman in a stylish fur coat pausing to check each way before crossing the street. From up here there was no telling her age, but Nehmann chose to believe that she was young, and smelled good, and could turn any head in any bar.
Maybe she lurked on the edges of fame, he thought. Maybe she moved in the right circles, attracted attention, won the hearts of the powerful. Maybe, even now, she was en route to some assignation, either her well-placed lover or some new contact, someone with the key to a door she’d never opened. Curiosity, he knew, was only a starting point in anybody’s life, but wedded to determination and raw nerve it could take you anywhere.
