A panzergrenadier lieutenant seemed to be working his way round the square, talking to men and probably canvassing opinions. He looked like an officer who knew what he was doing, and Paul hoped he was planning a further withdrawal.
More men were trickling in all the time, but Hannes was not among them. Most of the arrivals looked as if they hadn’t slept for days, and when a Soviet plane roared across the rooftops only a few bothered to take evasive action. One man raised a weary fist at the sky, but his heart wasn’t it. This plane dropped nothing, but more would be back. It was time to move.
A few minutes later the roar of approaching tanks did get men reaching for their rifles. And then, to general amazement, two Tigers rumbled into view. This was good news and bad news, Paul thought. Good because it made the village slightly more defensible, bad because it would encourage the idiots to defend it.
The latter forecast proved distressingly accurate. While village beds were stripped of mattresses to bolster the tanks – a trick learned from Ivan – trenches were started at either end of the single street. But the earth had barely been broken when the familiar roar sent everyone rushing for cover. Paul made a run for the nearest building and threw himself down behind a large wooden horse trough. With hands over head and knees almost up to his chest, he shook with the earth and tried to think of something beautiful. Madeleine came to mind, but she was dead. Another shower of human flesh.
When it became clear that the barrage was over, he stayed where he was, shaking gently to and fro, feeling the burn of uncried tears.
A few minutes later, walking aimlessly up the street, he came upon a young officer he hadn’t seen before. The man was foaming at the mouth, talking gibberish, and several of his subordinates were standing there looking at him, not unkindly, but with a sort of grim impatience.
Both military policemen had been seriously injured. ‘That’ll teach ’em to get this close to the front,’ one grenadier joked in Paul’s hearing.
The Tigers were unscathed, their crews sufficiently humbled by their irrelevance to be moving out. The village would be abandoned, which seemed just as well, as there wasn’t much left of it to defend.
The panzergrenadier lieutenant had also been slightly wounded, and the shock had apparently removed any inhibitions he had about taking charge. When darkness fell they would withdraw into the woods that lay west of the village, and try to shake off the Russians with a night march into the west.
The Lightning Tower
April 18 – 20
The PS-84 transport rumbled down the sparsely-lit runway for what seemed an eternity, before bouncing itself hopefully into the sky. The four men glanced at each other, feeling, for the first time, the solidarity of danger shared. Even Kazankin gave Russell a rueful smile, and he was probably the designated executioner.
It had been a day of waiting, first for news of their inflatable boat, and then for departure. Their dinghy had eventually shown up somewhat the worse for wear, having collected two bullet holes crossing the Oder crossing. They’d been patched to Kazankin’s satisfaction, and survived a trial inflation. There had been better news from the front – the German defences on the Seelow Heights had been penetrated, and Zhukov’s tanks were on the last lap of their thousand-mile journey to Berlin. It seemed unlikely that they would reach the city in time for Lenin’s birthday, but they were only a couple of days behind schedule.
These had been the day’s high points – the four of them had spent most of the morning poring over maps, checking their equipment and endlessly rehearsing contingency plans for when things went wrong. Russell had then spent several hours watching the Soviet bombers run through their routine: taking off and heading south, returning two hours later for another bellyful of bombs, taking off again. There had been 80,000 Germans in Breslau when the Soviets surrounded the city in February, and each receding plane would subtract a few more. Like a fist that couldn’t stop hitting a face.
Now, as their transport droned on towards Berlin, he wondered how badly the German capital had suffered. He had seen aerial photographs of the destruction, but somehow they hadn’t seemed real, and whenever he imagined the city it was the old Berlin, the one he had lived in, that appeared in his mind’s eye. The one that wasn’t there anymore.
He would soon have a new picture. His task was to guide the team to the Institute that night, get them back before dawn to the safety of the Grunewald, then move them on to the Hochschule on the following evening. Their last stop, as Nikoladze had told him that afternoon, would be the railway yards outside Potsdam Station, where an underground cell of German comrades was still in contact with their Soviet mentors. They would hide out there until the Red Army arrived.
In case of accidents or misunderstandings, the members of the team had letters signed by Nikoladze sewn into their jackets. These testified that the holders were on an important mission for the NKVD, and demanded that any Red Army soldier who ran into one or all of them should both provide any necessary protection and immediately notify the relevant authorities.
In the meantime, there was the small matter of the Nazi authorities. How tight was their grip in these final days? One could hope that the demands of the front had thinned the police presence in Berlin, though it seemed more likely that all of the bastards would be needed to keep the population in order as the Russians approached. But who would be out on the streets – the Kripo, the military police, the SS? All of them? As Nikoladze had reluctantly admitted, their knowledge of the restrictions placed on foreign workers was several weeks old. Would the four of them be challenged as they made their way across the city, or simply taken for granted?
How easy was movement, come to that? Were any trains or trams still running, or had they been bombed to a halt? And if public transport continued to function, were foreign workers still allowed to use it?
Not to worry, Russell decided, as the plane took a sudden lurch – the parachute drop would probably kill him.
They seemed to be veering northwards now, and he thought he could detect the faintest of glows in the eastern sky. They’d been hoping for more, but the recently risen quarter-moon was concealed behind a thick layer of cloud, and the drop looked set to take place in almost total darkness. That might lessen the chances of their descent being spotted, but there didn’t seem much point in arriving unnoticed with a broken neck.
The minutes ticked by. The pilot was under orders to draw a wide arc around the southern outskirts, in the sanguine hope that Berlin’s air defences would all be narrowly focussed on the approaches used by the British. So far, it seemed to be working – no searchlights had leapt to embrace them, and neither flak nor fighter had sought to blow them away.
‘Five minutes,’ the navigator shouted from the cockpit doorway. Russell felt his stomach lurch, and this time it wasn’t the plane.
Kazankin and Gusakovsky were instantly on their feet, checking their harnesses one last time. According to Varennikov, both men had served with the partisans, and had ample experience of landing behind enemy lines. He was in excellent hands, Russell reminded himself. Up until the moment that they no longer needed him.
Varennikov, he noticed, had lost his usual smile, and was tugging at his own harness with what seemed unnecessary violence. Kazankin took over, testing each strap, jollying the young physicist along. Satisfied that his charge was under control, he gestured Russell to his position at the front of the queue. A position that Russell realised was logical – jumping last, the two experienced men would have a better shot at working out where everyone was – but it still seemed a bit like punishment.
‘One minute,’ the navigator shouted.
The door was wrenched open and the wind swept in, causing the plane to rock, almost blowing them over. Recovering his balance, Russell looked out and down. There were no lights, no hint of land, only a writhing pit of darkness and cloud. ‘Oh shit,’ he muttered.
‘Go!’ the dispatcher yelled in his ear, and out he leapt, childishly intent on pre-emp
ting the helpful shove. Proud of himself, he forgot to pull the ripcord until several seconds had passed, and then tugged at it with a ferocity born of panic. As the chute burst open the quality of darkness suddenly shifted – he had fallen out of the clouds and into the lightless air beneath. There was still no sign of a world below, and no sign of other chutes above.
As he drifted down he noticed that the sky to his right was slightly lighter. The hidden moon, he realised, and felt strangely comforted – there were shades and dimensions, an east and a west, an up and a down.
The world below took form and shape, one second a blur, the next a faceful of wet grass and the smell of loamy earth. He lay there for a second, checking his body for pain, and almost shouted for joy when he realised there was none. He had done it. He had jumped out of a plane in total darkness and lived to tell the fucking tale.
But where were the others? He gathered in the chute, rolled it up, and looked around for somewhere to stuff it. There was nowhere. A flat open field stretched into nothingness in all directions. There were no trees, no moving shadows, no sounds of other humans. His three companions had been swallowed by the night.
First things first, he told himself – work out where you are. The paler sky away to his left had to be the east. He sought confirmation from his Red Army compass, but there wasn’t enough light to read it. Still, it had to be the east. And since the plane was flying roughly northward when he jumped, his companions would have hit the ground further to the north. ‘Somewhere over there,’ he murmured to himself, turning on his heels and peering hopefully into the gloom.
Should he go looking for them? Or wait for them to find him? They knew when he had jumped, and should have a pretty good idea of where he was. And if they didn’t show up in, say, twenty minutes, he could head for the rendezvous point they’d arranged for exactly this contingency.
Or perhaps not. Was this the moment to abandon his new Soviet buddies? They’d gotten him into Berlin – well, almost – and there was nothing more he needed from them. Not this week, in any case. And he was fairly sure that they intended to kill him before the week was out. So why hang around?
Because, he told himself, he believed in Nikoladze’s promise of retribution. Given that they were planning to kill him anyway, that particular threat was only designed to keep him on board, but they’d still be hell-bent on punishment if he left them in the lurch. The Soviets would own half the world in a month or so’s time, and their assassins would be roaming the other half. It wouldn’t be wise to antagonise them. Do the job and then get lost – that was the best of several poor options. Once the war was over, everyone would calm down a bit. He could promise to keep their secrets, and mention in passing that he’d arranged for their publication in the event of his sudden demise.
He couldn’t read his watch either, but it must have been at least ten minutes since he fell to earth. He would give them another ten.
There was noise above, he realised – a low drone in the distance. For a moment he thought their plane must be circling, but soon realised his mistake. This sound was slowly filling the sky.
As if in reply, a beam of light reached into the sky. Others swiftly followed, like the lights going on in a theatre. The lowness of the clouds was visible now, so the bombers would be up above them. The gunners below had no more chance of seeing their prey than the bombardiers had of picking out targets. Either someone had got the weather forecast wrong or the Allies no longer cared where their bombs fell.
The invisible bombers seemed almost above him, perhaps a little to the north. The first flashes erupted away to the north-east, swiftly followed by a staccato series of distant explosions. Spandau, he guessed. And Siemenstadt. Industrial areas.
Over the next few minutes the line of flashes crept around to the east, heading for the city centre. He heard the booms of the flak guns, saw flashes of exploding shells through newly diaphanous clouds. But no blazing plane fell through the veil.
His twenty minutes were up, and there was still no sign of the others. It was, he decided with some reluctance, time to move on. With the bundled-up chute under one arm, he began working his way across the increasingly boggy field, hoping to find the first of two roads. On several occasions his second-hand boots – stolen by the NKVD from God knows who – sunk deep into patches of mire, and a misjudged leap across a small stream resulted in one waterlogged foot.
A line of trees loomed ahead, and perhaps marked the looked-for road. He was some thirty metres away when voices rose above the almost constant rumble of distant explosions. German voices. Russell sank to his haunches, thankful that what light there was, was ahead of him.
He could see them now, two male figures walking northward, one wheeling a bicycle. What were they doing out here after midnight?
‘Spandau’s catching it,’ one of them said, with the tone of someone lamenting bad weather.
‘Seed potatoes!’ the other one exclaimed. ‘That’s what I forgot.’
‘You can pick them up tomorrow,’ his friend told him.
They walked on out of earshot, apparently heading for the cluster of roofs to the north, silhouetted by burning Spandau.
Bombers were still droning overhead.
He clambered in and out of a ditch that ran alongside the road, slipped across the narrow ribbon of tarmac, and slid down a small bank on the other side. The new field seemed even boggier, and the smell of shit grew steadily stronger as he worked his way across the waterlogged ground. The Soviet map of the area had placed a sewage farm slightly to the north-east of their intended route, so he was probably in the right area.
Above the horizon yellow-white flares crackled and danced in an almost orange sky. The word ‘devilish’ came to mind. He was walking towards hell.
If he was remembering the map correctly, another kilometre would bring him to a second, wider highway, which ran south from Seeburg towards Gross Glienicke and Kladow. The point, a kilometre south of Seeburg, where this road entered a sizable wood, had been chosen for the reunion of an accidentally scattered team.
It took him twenty minutes to reach the empty road, and another five to sight the dark wall of trees that lay ahead. A direct approach seemed unwise – there might be other locals about, and who knew what sort of strain the night’s events had wrought on Kazankin’s nerves – so he took the long way round, walking out across the adjoining field and entering the wood from the west, before working his way back to the rendezvous point.
But the only cracking twigs were the ones he stepped on, the only sounds of breathing the ones provided by his own lungs. There was no one there.
He settled down to wait. His watch told him it was almost one – they were supposed to have reached the Havelsee by one-thirty. There was no chance of that now, but he had always thought the timetable absurdly optimistic. Expecting to reach, search and get away from the Institute before a six o’clock sunrise had never been on.
He closed his eyes. His feet were wet and cold, and he was feeling his age. One war was enough for anyone. What had his generation done to deserve two?
The intensity of the bombing was lessening, and the sky above seemed empty of planes. It occurred to him that once the searchlights went off movement would again become difficult.
Noises away to his left jerked his eyes open. It sounded like footsteps coming his way. There were whispers, a louder rustle, a muttered curse. Three vague shadows moving between the tree trunks.
‘Russell,’ a voice hissed. It was Kazankin.
‘I’m here,’ he murmured, mostly to himself. ‘This way,’ he added, with rather more volume. It was hard to believe that anyone else would be skulking in this particular patch of forest.
Kazankin was the first to reach him, and his surprise at finding Russell was written on his face. He was holding a large canvas holdall in one hand, like a plumber with his tools.
‘What happened?’ Russell asked.
The Russian exhaled with unnecessary violence. ‘Comrade Varennikov
decided his chute was faulty,’ he said coldly. ‘By the time we got him through the door you were long gone. We landed on the other side of Seeburg.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Varennikov said, for what was probably the hundredth time. ‘I panicked,’ he explained to Russell. ‘It was just…’ His voice tailed off.
‘We need to get going,’ Kazankin said, looking at his watch.
‘It’s too late,’ Russell told him. ‘We’re already an hour behind schedule, and we didn’t have one to spare.’
He expected Kazankin to argue with him, but the Russian just looked at his watch again, as if hoping for a different time. ‘So what do you suggest?’ he asked when none was forthcoming.
‘Get as close to the lake as we can tonight, lie low during the day, and then cross as soon as it looks safe tomorrow evening. That’ll give you most of the night to ransack the Institute.’
‘We still have time to get across the lake tonight.’
‘Yes, but the Grunewald is popular with walkers. They’ll be more chance of our being spotted on that side of the water.’
‘You think the people of Berlin are still going for walks?’
It was a reasonable question, Russell realised. And he had no idea what the answer might be. ‘I don’t know,’ he admitted.
‘We’ll go on,’ Kazankin decided.
They crossed the road, and plunged into the wood on the other side. Kazankin took the lead, with Russell behind him, then Varennikov. Gusakovsky, carrying the inflatable dinghy, brought up the rear. They had hardly gone a hundred metres when the light suddenly dimmed. The searchlights were being turned off.
Their progress slowed, but Kazankin, as Russell reluctantly acknowledged, was good at picking a path. It only took them an hour to reach the wide and empty Spandau-Potsdam highway, and soon after two-thirty they emerged from the forest close to the road connecting Gatow to Gross Glienicke. They followed this for a while, and almost ran into trouble, hearing the raised voices of some approaching cyclists with barely enough time to find cover. The cyclists, who looked in the dark to be wearing Luftwaffe caps, had obviously been drinking, and were singing a rather ribald song about that organisation’s beloved leader. They were presumably heading home to Gatow Airfield, which lay a couple of kilometres to the south.
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