A Single Spy

by William Christie

  He followed Ressler down the stairs, carefully observing him for a limp or other signs of rough usage. But this time they were headed out a side door. “Where are we going?” Alexsi asked.

  “Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse.”

  Ressler turned as he said it, as if he wanted to see Lieutenant Shultz’s reaction. Alexsi gave him no satisfaction. “The air force main photo branch?”

  “No.”

  There was an automobile waiting outside, though it was only about six blocks to the west, on the other side of the rail station.

  Even in light sandstone, Alexsi thought, those old mansions from the Kaiser’s time all looked like they were standing over you with clenched fists. Though with age, and time, and grime, that Berlin sandstone wasn’t as light as it had been. They drove just past the building to the beginning of a multicolored-stone-block wall. A wooden gate stood between two pillars of pale brick. The driver used his horn. The gate opened and an armed guard checked all their identification before admitting them to the courtyard inside.

  As they exited the automobile, Alexsi looked up at the Gestapo headquarters.

  They had to show their papers one more time to gain admittance, and the guard meticulously entered their names into his ledger along with the time. Another waiting guard took them through a steel door onto the ground floor. Alexsi didn’t hesitate, though; like the Lubyanka the lower levels of such places were like the lower levels of hell: where you never wanted to end up.

  The walls were whitewashed brick. At each steel door their escort would unlock it from his ring of keys, and lock it again on the other side once they were through.

  They passed rows of cells. Finally the escort knocked at one of the doors near the end of the hallway. A flap opened up and a pair of eyes examined them through a barred grate. The door was unlocked and they were inside some sort of anteroom with two desks and some chairs. Behind one desk sat a female secretary with a face like a straight razor. She made Ressler’s Amazon streetwalker look as innocent as a schoolgirl. She was wearing earphones and operating a stenotype machine. An obvious Gestapo officer in civilian dress, but only his shirtsleeves, was smoking a cigarette and looking them over. He had a policeman’s face and forearms like logs.

  Ressler said, “Lieutenant Walter Shultz, Kriminalkommissar Gerhard.”

  The Gestapo equivalent of an army captain. Alexsi was used to being outranked. He gave the Hitler salute. “Heil Hitler!”

  “Heil Hitler!” Captain Gerhard replied, returning the salute. “So. My friend Ressler’s Russian linguist. I’ve heard of you.”

  Alexsi only gave a half smile in response. Everyone in the room seemed to be waiting for him to say something, but he didn’t indulge them.

  Finally Gerhard said, “Perhaps you can help us out.”

  “Happy to,” Alexsi replied. “But no one has told me with what.”

  “Ah, I see now,” said Gerhard. “My friend Ressler being discreet as always. Here’s the story. We’ve caught ourselves a spy. The fellow who wrote the shopping list you were good enough to translate on the fly.”

  “So he is a Russian spy?” Alexsi said.

  “I should think so,” Gerhard replied. “He had a Russian wireless transmitter in his rooms. But according to him he doesn’t speak Russian.”

  Alexsi’s first thought was, This was the radio they were looking for when they found him in the hotel. And the fool had kept his under his bed. Now he absolutely knew why Yakushev hated radio. “You need me to translate something?”

  “No,” said Gerhard. “He had nothing besides a list of frequencies and transmission times. No codebook, no coding materials whatsoever. No documents of any kind.”

  “Then you have me at a loss,” Alexsi said.

  “He’s already been through standard interrogation,” said Gerhard. “Now he’s having enhanced interrogation. We’d like you to go in and speak to him in Russian. See what happens; maybe you can jar him awake.”

  “I warn you, interrogation isn’t my line,” Alexsi said. “I’m fresh out of training. I don’t want to spoil whatever you’re doing.”

  “Not to worry,” Gerhard said.

  “Then what should I say?” Alexsi asked.

  “Just tell him the game is up, that he needs to start talking,” said Gerhard. “I want to see his reaction.”

  “As you like,” Alexsi said.

  Gerhard gestured to the stenographer to be ready. “Leave your cap on the desk,” he told Alexsi.

  Alexsi set down his dress cap. Gerhard unlocked a door on the far wall and ushered them through.

  The room was the same pale brick as the pillars of the gatepost outside. The entire foundation of the building must have been made from it.

  The first thing was the smell. All jails smelled of fear and piss and disinfectant, but this room assaulted you with it. A rough heavy wooden table took up the center, with grim rows of iron rings bolted along the sides. As he came through the doorway, Alexsi had to turn to see the naked man hanging in the corner. His arms were handcuffed behind his back, and a hook through the handcuff chain suspended him from a rope pulley attached to the ceiling. Hanging from just his wrists behind his back. Alexsi was sure the fellow’s shoulders had dislocated long ago. There was a small pool of blood on the concrete floor below him, understandable because his toenails had been removed. Probably with pincers. Another Gestapo man in his shirtsleeves, smoking a cigarette, was standing beside the hanging man, whispering to him. This one didn’t have the usual pug policeman’s face. He was as young as Alexsi and quite handsome. Alexsi couldn’t see the hanging man’s face—his head was dropped down to his chest.

  Gerhard made another gesture and the handsome young man ground out his cigarette on the hanging man’s neck. The hanging man cried out. Then Gerhard motioned Alexsi forward.

  Alexsi walked up, flanked on either side by Gerhard and Ressler. The handsome Gestapo man yanked his victim’s head back so he was nearly eye to eye with Alexsi.

  The fellow’s face was swollen up from beating and caked with scabbed blood, so Alexsi couldn’t tell how old he was. Just that he wasn’t old. He looked back at Alexsi blankly.

  “Listen, Comrade,” Alexsi said in Russian, careful not to be too fluent. “You’re good and caught. I’m sure back in Moscow they told you fine stories about all the heroes who wouldn’t talk. Let me tell you something: They were lying. Everyone talks. You will too, sooner or later. And no one will ever hear the glorious tale of how long you held out. What’s more, they won’t care. So you might as well spare yourself and get it over with now.”

  The two bloody eyes contemplated him, and Alexsi knew exactly what was coming next. He took a quick step back, dodged to his right, and the wad of spittle aimed at him hit Ressler square in the face.

  Ressler stood there in shock for an instant. Then he screamed in rage and punched the hanging man square in the testicles. A much louder scream rose up in reply, and Ressler, having completely lost control, showered the hanging man with a rain of furious punches. Alexsi retreated far back to the neutral corner.

  The Gestapo didn’t mind more beating, but when Ressler began fumbling for his sidearm, Gerhard came from behind and picked him up in a bear hug, pinning his arms. While all this was going on the handsome Gestapo man calmly set an army field telephone on the wooden table and began unrolling telephone wire attached to large serrated clips. He snapped the clips onto the hanging man’s nipples and his testicles and ran the wire back to the phone.

  Alexsi put his fingers to his ears before the Gestapo man began cranking the phone, because he knew how much of an electric jolt the magneto of a Field Telephone 33 could put out. He’d seen signalmen attach wires to the fingers of a sleeping man for a joke, and the victim nearly flew through the top of a tent. But this was no joke. The screams bounced off the brick walls.

  Amidst all that, it took him some time to realize that Gerhard was shouting at him. Still trying to keep his grip on a still hysterical Ressler. Alexsi finally
made out “Open the door, for Christ’s sake!”

  Alexsi did, and Gerhard practically threw Ressler through the open doorway. Alexsi closed the door, shutting the screams out. In the anteroom Gerhard was still trying to keep Ressler from charging back in. Alexsi noticed that the stenographer had knocked the earphones from her head onto the desk while she typed away at her machine. He could only imagine what all that screaming sounded like through a microphone.

  “Go clean yourself up, old man,” Gerhard was saying reasonably, while watching that pistol holster like a hawk.

  “I’ll be back!” Ressler raged. “The bastard will drink my spit like it was champagne, I promise you!” Practically weeping with rage, he stamped his feet until the guard opened the steel door to the hallway.

  Breathing hard, Gerhard dropped into a chair and shook out a cigarette. “Thanks for all the help,” he said acerbically, lighting up.

  Alexsi held out both hands in his own defense. “I have to live in the same building with him. I can’t go about manhandling SD captains.”

  Gerhard took a deep drag. “I see your point,” he conceded. “You’re quick on your feet, I’ll give you that. Well, you ended up getting more of a reaction from Ressler than our prisoner, but thanks for the help anyway.”

  “If you don’t need me anymore,” said Alexsi. “I imagine Captain Ressler will be staying here.”

  “No, he won’t,” Gerhard said flatly. “You can’t get emotional in this business. Anyway, we’ll be running shifts on our friend in there day and night until he cracks. We don’t get our hands on a Moscow illegal very often, and he has a lot to tell us.”

  “Good luck,” Alexsi said.

  Gerhard blew out smoke and peered at him through it. “You’re not the typical lieutenant, I’ll say. Usually they’re nothing but questions.”

  “I’m an infantry officer, new to intelligence,” Alexsi told him. “If it’s my job, I ask plenty of questions because I’m trying to learn. But if it’s not my job, like this, then I figure you’ll tell me what I need to know.”

  “No, not the typical lieutenant at all,” said Gerhard. “In all the excitement I forgot to have you tell me what you said to our friend in there.”

  Alexsi gave it back to him, word for word. The idea that he and the prisoner were the only ones who spoke Russian was laughable.

  “Very good,” said Gerhard. “And quite correct, also.” He raised his eyes up to the guard. “Manfred will see you out. You can wait in your vehicle for Ressler. He’ll come charging back in here soon, and I’ll need to have a little talk with him.”

  Alexsi popped his heels and raised his right hand. “Heil Hitler!”

  Still seated, Gerhard gave a weary little bob of the hand, to the stenographer’s open disapproval. “Heil Hitler!”

  37

  1940 Berlin

  Ressler didn’t say a single word on the drive back to Abwehr headquarters. He just sat there hunched up in the corner of the backseat, glowering.

  Mounting the grand stairway, from above came an echoing boom like the voice of God. “Shultz!”

  What, again? Alexsi looked up. There was no mistaking that balding head with those outthrust ears extending over the railing. They all belonged to Colonel Hans Piekenbrock, chief of Abwehr I. The sight made Alexsi take the stairs much faster than usual. “Sir!”

  Piekenbrock was not one of those officers who inspired terror; he was actually quite good-humored in that worldly upper-class German way that considered it vulgar to let the foibles of the world upset you unduly. Though he could be stern when he wished. He was tall enough to look down on nearly everyone, and even if he hadn’t been he was aristocratic enough to do it anyway. “Where have you been, Shultz? People have been looking for you everywhere.”

  Alexsi just gestured helplessly down the stairs, where Captain Ressler was lagging behind.

  Piekenbrock looked even farther down his nose. “Ah, Ressler.” He was old army, and not inclined to accept the SS as anything approaching a military organization. “I realize we’re all shorthanded, but I can’t have counterintelligence poaching my people.”

  Ressler finally made it to the top of the stairs, and popped his heels. “Apologies, sir. But we’re finding it impossible to lay our hands on Russian speakers at short notice.”

  “Yes, yes,” Piekenbrock said impatiently. And then he smiled. “Everyone loves lieutenants for odd jobs, because they can’t protest. As it happens I don’t have many lieutenants, and I have an urgent lieutenant job. Shultz, I need an officer with the proper security clearance to supervise the moving of Red Army files to Foreign Armies East at Maybach. Colonel Kinzel is briefing General Tippelskirch, and this constant messengering of files back and forth is making a real mess. So go down to Sergeant Dormer in records. He’ll handle everything—you just make sure it’s all correct. You’ll move the entire cabinets in trucks, no mucking about. Just for the love of God make sure the receipts are filled out properly. If you can manage not to leave a trail of secret files scattered along the road to Zossen I’ll be well pleased.”

  “As you order, Colonel,” Alexsi replied formally.

  “Sir, a moment,” said Ressler.

  Piekenbrock allowed himself to be led down the hallway. Alexsi waited at the head of the stairs, watching Ressler speaking urgently. Piekenbrock had his head cocked to one side, then he seemed to ask a very sharp question. Ressler shook his head. Another sharp question from Piekenbrock, and another shake of the head. Now a rapid-fire series of questions, and to each one negative shakes of the head. Then Piekenbrock was done and Ressler was summarily dismissed with a curt gesture.

  Piekenbrock came back down the hallway with his rolling cavalryman’s gait, and said, “Shultz, walk with me.”

  Alexsi fell in beside him.

  “What does Ressler have against you?” Piekenbrock demanded.

  “Sir, all I can think is that the captain is one of those policemen who believes that any German who speaks a foreign language is suspicious.”

  “Yes, policemen,” Piekenbrock muttered with distaste. And then more pointed: “There’s something else. What is it?”

  “I’d prefer not to say, sir,” Alexsi replied.

  “I’d prefer you to answer,” Piekenbrock said coldly.

  “The captain invited me out on the town one evening,” Alexsi said reluctantly. “Perhaps he thinks I would gossip about what happened.”

  “Well, what happened?” Piekenbrock demanded.

  “I don’t gossip, sir,” Alexsi said flatly. “And certainly not about a fellow officer after duty hours. Not even if ordered, sir.” Now that was pleasing. If you refused to talk you could always count on your audience to fill in the very worst they could think of, all on their own. And character assassination, done well, poisoned anything they tried to say about you later.

  Piekenbrock folded his arms across his chest and stared down at him. “Quite right,” he said finally. “That’s how we felt in the old school, too. It’s good to see a young officer with some sense.” And then he was finished once again. “No more of Ressler and his errands, understand? Between his little jobs and my little jobs we’ll never get you out on your mission. If you must, refer him to me.”

  Alexsi saluted. Not the Hitler salute—this was another traditionalist. “Yes, sir.”

  Not wearing a cap, Piekenbrock only nodded. “On your way, Shultz.” And then he gifted him a cheerful smile. “Try not to foul this up.”

  * * *

  MAYBACH WAS the code name everyone used for the army general staff field headquarters at Zossen, a little town about thirty-two kilometers south of Berlin. Tucked inside a much larger training ground that was used for artillery firing and protected by wire fence and a subtle but heavy guard force was what looked from a distance like a tiny village. Except that the twelve whitewashed A-frame houses with shingle roofs were actually cleverly camouflaged solid concrete bunkers. The steeply pitched roofs were designed so that bombs would hopefully skip off the
m, and if that didn’t work there were another two levels belowground under meters of concrete. There was also an underground communications facility, which controlled the entire German Army and all its conquests, called Zeppelin. All of it connected by tunnels.

  On the other side of that little compound was a steam shovel and an excavator, busy digging down into the brown dirt and concealed by camouflage nets flung over the tops of the trees. Clearing out more space to be able to rule the rest of the world, Alexsi thought. What was interesting was that the rest of the world thought it all part of some merciless master plan, but to the German Army the speed of their conquests was more like an unexpected pleasant surprise. Not that they weren’t drunk with victory and certain they were invincible now.

  After Alexsi had his identification and orders checked three times at three different checkpoints, he and his four trucks backed up through the slender pine trees to the bunker/building they were directed to. The one housing Foreign Armies East. Close in, you could see that the windows were just boards attached to the walls with shutters on either side, and the chimneys actually ventilation towers. The door was solid steel, like a bank vault.

  Sergeant Dormer, his old friend from the first day at Abwehr headquarters, was in the truck behind. The sergeant was the intelligent and efficient type who had made himself indispensable in the Abwehr records section and would have a very safe war among the files. All Alexsi had to do was stand there, look like he was in charge, and get the receipts signed. But he knew it wasn’t going to be quite that easy when, before the truck had even stopped, there was a peevish-looking staff captain perched beside his door.

  Alexsi stepped out, came to attention, and saluted. “Lieutenant Shultz, sir!”

  “Captain Horn, Colonel Kinzel’s adjutant. It’s about time you got here.” Without another word he plucked the thick portfolio from Alexsi’s hands and examined it. “Well, let’s make sure this is all right.”

  Alexsi calmed himself by imagining the look on the captain’s face when a knife went into his guts. Sergeant Dormer had already established friendly relations with his opposite number in the bunker and had the soldiers they brought with them stack their rifles. He was waiting the order to begin. Alexsi said, “All right, Sergeant.”