Part VI
April 1941
CHAPTER 30
Milev’s mind was somewhere else when he stepped from the curb into the wet street. He was wondering if Lupus really knew what he was up to. And he was also considering the impact of yesterday’s news from Yugoslavia and Greece.
The Germans bombed the Yugoslav capital of Belgrade, inflicting heavy casualties. The same day, Field Marshall List’s 12th Army invaded southern Yugoslavia and Greece from Bulgaria. Only two days later, List’s 18th Corp broke through the Metaxas Line with a huge herd of donkeys, no less, overran the hopelessly outgunned Greek Army, and captured Solonika. Today, it appeared that Hitler’s dream of “living space” for Germans in the Balkans and Eastern Europe was about to be fulfilled. Wasn’t this another reason to stick with the Germans and not go over to the British? After all, only a fool would defect to the losing side, so why would he …
“Look out!” Milev heard someone shout.
Startled, Milev looked up to his left and saw a car swerve toward him from around the corner, its tires screeching. With the car only a short distance away, Milev tried to react as the car accelerated and zeroed in on him, but his old leg muscles froze like two rusty, high-tension springs. Milev was sure that his life was going to end, so he closed his eyes and cried, “Dear God, have mercy on my soul!”
God must have heard him, because as he was about to be hit by the car, someone grabbed him from behind by his coat collar and jerked him backward out of the street and onto the wet pavement. Instead of lying dead in a pool of blood and broken bones, Milev sat on the sidewalk, splattered with mud as the car sped away.
“Sir, are you hurt? Shall I call an ambulance?”
“No, no. I’m okay,” Milev said as he looked up to see a young man in a loose-fitting Bulgarian army uniform. However, with surprising strength, the gangly man yanked Milev to his feet and carefully brushed the mud from his coat.
“I didn’t see the bastard,” Milev said. “I was thinking about something. Thank God you were there, or I’d probably be dead.”
“The car was a 1939 dark blue Opel,” the man said. “The registration numbers were covered with mud. I’m sorry.”
“Did you see the driver?” Milev asked. He stuffed his still-shaking hands into his coat pockets.
“A man, but I couldn’t see his face. I’ll go for help. Maybe we can catch him!”
“Don’t bother,” Milev said, his voice still quivering a bit. “He’s probably halfway to Plovdiv by now.”
Milev’s legs felt weak. He was wobbly, and his heart pounded as the young man escorted him across the street to the back entrance of the police station. Milev looked at the man who saved him. The fellow’s bare shadow of a mustache and his eagerness reminded him of himself as a young recruit.
“Are you sure you’re okay, sir?” he again inquired.
“Yes, yes. I’m fine, just a little shook up, that’s all. Where did you come from? I didn’t see you standing there.”
“Ah, well I …”
“Oh, never mind,” Milev said, “You saved my life…ah, your name is…?”
“Corporal Ivan Letchkov, General Milev, sir.”
“Ah, so you know who I am?”
“Of course, General Milev, sir.” He snapped to attention, his eyes forward-looking, waiting for Milev to speak.
Milev took a deep breath. Maybe Czar Boris III was right when he said that Tuesdays are unlucky. The Chief of the Secret Police was nearly run down right in front of his own police station—and not, he thought, by accident! He had been lucky to escape death this Tuesday, but perhaps another Tuesday he wouldn’t be so fortunate.
Until this incident, Milev had been unwilling to admit that it was dangerous for him to be unprotected on Sofia’s streets. However, the attempt on his life convinced him otherwise. That close call made Milev realize that if he wanted to survive this nasty war, he’d better get someone to watch his back more closely.
“Perhaps I could use an alert fellow like you to accompany me on my walk from home to the station each morning. How would you feel about a promotion and a new assignment, Corporal Letchkov? Or should I say, Sergeant Letchkov?”
Without waiting for his answer, Milev ordered him into his office.
Certainly Milev had plenty of enemies in Sofia who would have liked to help him into an early grave. He knew that whoever it was that tried to kill him and failed would try again—and probably soon. Milev’s suspicions turned to Lupus. Had the Gestapo discovered Milev’s spying for the British and, rather than risk a reprimand from headquarters in Berlin for being deceived, decided to have him run down like a mongrel? When Milev considered this possibility, he shook his head. Lupus could just as easily have had him shot on some dark back street, and no one would have been the wiser. Besides, he also needed Milev to find his radio spy. No, the attack had to be the work of someone else.
Milev gulped down a brandy to calm his nerves. Letchkov stood at attention, awaiting orders. “The faster we discover the owner of that car, the sooner we will find my would-be assassin,” Milev said. “I want the name of anyone living in or around Sofia who owns a dark blue Opel. Then check our files to see if anything shows up that might help us.”
The following day, Sergeant Letchkov had a list of seven owners of dark blue Opels, two of whom had police files. The first name belonged to the son of an old man whom Milev’s men had arrested by mistake a few years back. Perhaps the son sought revenge because his father had never left the police station alive.
Milev’s men often didn’t know when to stop beating prisoners, so he had sent the man’s family an official apology, but he was sure they still hated him. However, after a few telephone calls, Sergeant Letchkov found that the son had died and that the car had been sold to a German officer presently stationed in Plevin.
After more calls, they eliminated all of the other people on the list with the exception of a Bulgarian army officer assigned to a tank battalion stationed at Simeonovo. As a cadet in Plovdiv, Captain Dragan Iliev had participated in a riot staged by the Communists in 1923 on orders from Moscow. Although the revolt was quickly suppressed, Milev would have bet a bottle of cognac that Iliev still worked for his old Russian friends. So, that afternoon, Sergeant Letchkov, along with several of Milev’s toughest men, arrested Captain Iliev. By that evening, he confessed to the crime and admitted that the Russian Communists had sent him. Although it wasn’t Tuesday, this was definitely a bad day for Captain Dragan Iliev.
The method Milev employed to find his would-be assassin gave him an idea about how to track down the elusive radio spy whose intelligence reports upset the German high command in Bulgaria and made Lupus’s life so miserable.
Gestapo agents in Sofia constantly failed to establish the specific location from which the radio operator sent his messages, so there was a good possibility that the spy used a car to escape detection. With a war going on, few people in Bulgaria could afford a luxury such as a car. Perhaps the radio spy had recently bought a car to keep one step ahead of the Gestapo. Milev ordered his new bloodhound, Sergeant Letchkov, to prepare a list of all cars purchased and registered in the Sofia area between January and March, since the German Signal Intelligence first detected the clandestine radio signal in the spring.
Once again, Letchkov quickly produced a list of suspects. Twelve cars had been registered to private parties in the Sofia area during that three-month period. After examining the possible suspects, Milev eliminated three high-ranking Bulgarian pro-Nazi government officials, two Italian diplomats who were back in Rome, and five German businessmen from the list. Now his short list consisted of only two individuals who had recently purchased cars after traveling to foreign cities crawling with enemy agents. One was Plamen Kalinov, a young assistant diplomat who worked in the Bulgarian embassy in Madrid. The other was Dr. Manol Belevski, a prominent surgeon in Sofia.
Was there anyone in Sofia who had not heard about Dr.
Manol Belevski’s remarkable medical achievement in Istanbul last month? His name and picture were on the front pages of newspapers all over Bulgaria, and it was reported that the Turkish Vice President had paid Belevski handsomely for saving his son’s life. Why shouldn’t he buy himself a new car with his reward? Also, it was highly unlikely that a man with Belevski’s reputation and now considerable wealth would become involved in any foreign mischief. All the facts suggested that Belevski was a loyal, honest citizen, and not in need of money. In Milev’s opinion, the doctor was a poor candidate as a radio spy.
With Belevski scratched from his list of suspects, Milev concentrated his attention on Plamen Kalinov. Although Kalinov traveled in diplomatic circles, he was rather a bohemian. Neither rich nor famous, he led quite an active social life, especially since his return from Spain. Kalinov had bought a Benz only two days before the German Signal Intelligence detected the first radio transmission from Sofia. Milev wondered how an assistant diplomat could afford to buy such an expensive German car. Could British Intelligence be footing the bill? For the next week, Milev had his new assistant follow Kalinov every moment of the day and night.
Sergeant Letchkov reported that after Kalinov performed his duties at the embassy, he filled his remaining hours flitting from one expensive restaurant and dance club to another. Although he spent plenty of money on women, alcohol, clothes, and gifts far beyond his official salary, Letchkov failed to catch Kalinov doing anything suspicious, much less transmitting radio messages to the Allies. But Milev wasn’t satisfied. He wanted to know what this fellow was up to.
“Sergeant Letchkov, this gadabout may not be a spy, but he owes his lavish lifestyle to someone else’s fat purse, and I want to know who it is.” It took only a few more days and a quiet break-in to his flat to discover the source of Kalinov’s funds.
“He’s diddling a Spanish countess in Madrid, sir, and apparently getting paid well for his services,” Letchkov said. “I discovered these in his flat. The originals smelled as sweet as a French whore’s ass.”
He handed Milev an envelope with copies of letters and photographs that showed a bejeweled but otherwise nude woman in her fifties with Kalinov in various sexual positions. Her letters contained flowery prose, references to his new car, and promises of plenty more money when he visited her again.
It was obvious that all Kalinov cared about was money, partying, and dipping his cock into the countess’s honey pot. The gigolo was no spy, and the mystery of his hidden wealth was solved. Milev was back where he had started, but he was sure that he was on the right track as far as the radio operator and the car were concerned. Perhaps Milev had prematurely eliminated someone from his list of suspects.
“Sergeant Letchkov! My back hurts. Make an appointment for me to see the famous Dr. Belevski.”
CHAPTER 31
“Oh shit!” Belevski said. He sat alone in his study at home. “Even when I do what Noverman and Lopié want, my troubles only increase. Why don’t they just leave me alone?”
He stared at the walls and tried to figure out what to do. Evidently, the radio transmission he had sent about the Germans using Bulgarian donkeys to clear the minefields around the Metaxas Line had impressed some highly placed officials in British Intelligence. He didn’t know why, since it hadn’t prevented Greece from falling to the Nazis less than a week later.
Even so, they doubled Belevski’s monthly payments and called him “their most valuable agent in Sofia.” And now Lopié ordered the doctor back to Istanbul for another assignment.
“But what good will more money or flattery do me if I’m dead or rotting in some Gestapo torture chamber?” Belevski moaned. “Oh, where is Saint Peter when I need him?”
The thought of returning to Istanbul sent chills down his spine. The Gestapo and the Bulgarian Police had arrested dozens of spies and traitors just last week. Why on earth did Lopié and Noverman want to call attention to him now?
“Don’t they know that I was doing everything in my power to stay out of sight? Shit!” he said so loudly that his wife knocked on the door of the room and asked if he was okay.
“Yes, Spasia, I’m fine. I just remembered something, that’s all,” he said through the closed door. Turkey, of all places, he thought, would require a travel visa approved by the Bulgarian police. “God damn them! Haven’t Noverman and Lopié made my life miserable enough, or are they trying to get me killed, too?”
Up to this point, Belevski had eluded the German spy-catchers, but how long could he keep it up without getting caught? He was sure that sooner or later, some nosy neighbor would report his lights on at all hours of the night. He figured that the police probably knew about his trips to the Boyana church and must be wondering what he was really up to. The Gestapo could probably find out that Dr. Belevski’s name belonged to a secret Swiss bank account that was growing far beyond the means of his medical practice. And what about the stranger he spotted standing outside his office all week?
“Get a grip on yourself, Manol,” he whispered. “If the Gestapo knew a fraction of what you thought they did, you wouldn’t be sitting here right now.”
Belevski may have imagined that the Germans suspected him of being a spy, but there was no question that Spasia knew her husband was up to something. Her suspicions and frustration boiled over after the girls had gone to bed. After pacing alone in the kitchen for a half-hour, she stormed into his study.
“If you’re sleeping with another woman, I’ll kill her and you, I swear! You’re seeing another woman, aren’t you? Where do you go every Sunday by yourself? Not to church, that’s for sure. Tell me or I’ll…”
“I go to Boyana, Spasia,” he said. “That’s the truth, I swear.”
“Liar. You don’t really think that I believe your ridiculous story about ‘wanting to be alone with God,’ do you? What do you take me for, an idiot?”
“No, Spasia, you are no idiot. You’re right, there is something I have to tell you.”
Belevski took a deep breath and began a sanitized story that he hoped would ease her fear and the tension between them.
“Over the last few months I know our home life has become nearly unbearable. It’s my fault, and I’m sorry. Spasia, you must believe me that I’m not seeing another woman. The fact is, I’ve gotten involved in something that has to do with the war. I can’t go into too much detail, but that’s why I go to Boyana sometimes on Sunday.”
Spasia looked confused and scared. “The war? Is what you’re doing dangerous?” she whispered.
“No, it’s really nothing. It’s just that I’m under strict orders not to talk about it.”
“Strict orders? From whom? A woman? Your lover?” Spasia’s temper flared again like a wildcat raging out of control.
Belevski hesitated and thought for a moment. His wife had a right to know what was going on, but for her safety and his, the less she knew, the better.
“Spasia, please! I have no lover except for you, my dearest.” He looked straight into her eyes. “Everything is going to be all right, but you just have to trust me. You do trust me, don’t you?”
Spasia stared silently at him with her doubting eyes. She knew he wasn’t telling her the whole story, but she didn’t press him any further. Belevski supposed that she wanted to believe he was faithful and not involved in an affair. And he wasn’t, at least not at the moment.
Of course, if he hadn’t slept with Helen Noverman, he would never have been in this mess. But it was too late for regrets. Now Belevski had to calm his wife and keep war from breaking out inside his home, because if Spasia ever did find out about his tryst, there was no telling what she was capable of.
Belevski apologized for keeping this secret from her, and she apologized for doubting his loyalty. They made love right there on the couch in his study. As they lay next to each other, Belevski was happy. It had been a long time since they had been intimate, but his joy didn’t last long. Soon Belevski’s stomach turned sour with a mixture of pity, deceit, and
guilt. He actually prayed that Lopié and Noverman would die so he could be rid of their curse. But deep down inside, Belevski knew that it was unlikely and that he would never be free again.
When Belevski told Spasia that he had to travel to Istanbul again for a brief examination of the Vice President’s son, she blew up like a volcano.
“I told you not to go to that godforsaken country in the first place, but you wouldn’t listen! Now you’re going back? What about me? What about our children? Tell them no! Or are you more interested in money and glory than what happens to us and our marriage?”
Without waiting for his answer, Spasia stormed out of his study and slammed the door so hard that the whole house shook. For the next several days, she barely spoke to him. She finally broke her silence by telling him that she was taking the girls away and considering a divorce, since it was obvious that he thought so little of her and their children.
“Dear God, my marriage has unraveled and my wife and children think I have deserted them.”
And the truth was, he had. Belevski felt so guilty, but what could he do about it now? Nothing.
As if things weren’t bad enough, the day after he submitted his visa application to the government for his trip to Turkey, General George Milev, the Bulgarian Chief of the Secret Police, came to his clinic. He complained of back pain, but Belevski’s instincts told him something different. From the moment the policeman walked into the doctor’s office, his power over people was obvious. Belevski knew he was under suspicion, but he did everything he could not to show any fear or guilt. Belevski smiled and welcomed his new patient.
Laugh of the Hyenas Page 21
