by Sam Eastland
Skorzeny was telling the truth, and the source of this rancour between the two departments had largely been the result of a dispute between the SS and the Abwehr in the very area where Vasko would be carrying out his mission. Soon after the German invasion of Russia in 1941, Abwehr agents had begun working with local Ukrainian leaders to consolidate anti-Communist militias. Abwehr’s Eastern Group I, which was given responsibility for this large-scale operation, operated out of Sulejowek, across the border in occupied Poland. They succeeded not only in winning the support of the influential partisan leader Melnyk, who worked for the Germans under the code name ‘Konsul I’, but they were also able to recruit several companies of Ukrainian troops, who became known as the Gruppe Nachtigall.
How far-reaching this operation might have been would never be known, because it was derailed by the arrival of SS execution squads, known as Einsatzgruppen, which began a series of mass executions in the same region where Abwehr had been working to win over the local population.
Disillusioned Ukrainians, who had initially welcomed the arrival of German troops, now turned upon those they had seen as liberators and began a struggle against both the Fascists and the Communists.
Canaris had never forgiven the SS for their role in the failure of the Abwehr’s operations in the East. He had made no secret of that fact, which was why Skorzeny had good reason to wonder why the leader of the Abwehr would seek the assistance of an SS Sturmbannführer.
‘I chose you,’ explained Canaris, ‘because you are the best we’ve got, and also because this operation is too important to be waylaid by departmental politics.’
‘I understand, Admiral, and I am grateful for your confidence in me.’
‘And with that confidence in mind, I order you to maintain absolute secrecy with regard to this operation. No activity report is to be filed. No communication is to be made once the operation is under way. There will be no debriefing afterwards. No one may know. Absolutely no one. Not even Himmler!’
Skorzeny’s eyebrows rose almost imperceptibly.
‘Is that clear?’ asked Canaris.
‘Yes, Admiral. It is.’
‘You have your orders.’ Canaris waved him away. ‘Make them so.’
Immediately after Skorzeny’s departure, Canaris picked up the phone. ‘Get me Vasko,’ he ordered.
Two hours later, Vasko was standing in the room. He was of middle height, with a small mouth and large, staring blue eyes, which seemed to take in everything around him without looking at anything in particular. His hair, which he combed straight back on his head, was thin and the same dull shade of brown as the fur on the back of a mouse. He had an unremarkable face that appealed neither to women nor to men, and which allowed him to vanish in a crowd, ignored even by those who had stood in his presence, some of whom he had sent to their graves on the orders of Admiral Canaris.
‘Sit,’ Canaris gestured towards a chair. ‘Are you hungry? Thirsty?’
‘No, Admiral. Thank you.’
‘Skorzeny has agreed to transport you across the lines. You leave tonight. The mission is going ahead.’
‘But why bring in Skorzeny?’ demanded Vasko. ‘Surely the Abwehr have people who can get me through the lines.’
‘None who are as capable as Skorzeny,’ replied Canaris, ‘and if this mission goes wrong, I will need someone to take responsibility. Who better than the SS?’
‘And if it succeeds?’
‘Then Hitler’s flagging confidence in the Abwehr will be restored, and that slack-jawed chicken farmer Himmler will have no choice except to sing our praises to the heavens.’ Canaris lifted a sealed envelope from his desk and held it out.
Vasko leaned forward and slipped it from the Admiral’s grasp.
‘Once Skorzeny has brought you through the lines,’ Canaris continued, ‘you will be guided to your target by a partisan named Malashenko. He is a member of the Barabanschikov Atrad, and has served as an informant to the Secret Field Police in Rovno. The rendezvous point is an old hunter’s cabin in the forest south of Rovno. You’ll find the map coordinates inside that envelope.’
Vasko tucked it into the inside chest pocket of his coat. ‘How much did you tell Skorzeny about the operation?’
‘As much as he needs to know, but no more. Skorzeny is aware that you are going in to liquidate Colonel Andrich but, like you, he knows nothing at all about the full extent of the mission, or the agent who will be carrying out the secondary phase.’
‘Forgive me, Admiral, but are you sure it’s right to separate the two phases of the mission so completely? If I knew who this second agent was. .’
‘Then you would be in a position to give up the name of the agent if, God forbid, you were ever captured. Or vice versa. He does not know you and you do not know him. That is how I want it and, believe me, so do you.’
‘Yes, Admiral.’ Vasko stood up to leave.
‘There is one more thing.’ Opening a drawer in his desk, Canaris removed a bar of gold as long as his outstretched hand and as wide as his first three fingers. The finish of the gold was not shiny but rather a dusty brass colour. The surface bore several stamps, indicating its weight, purity and Reichsbank inventory number. Carefully, he set it down in front of Vasko. ‘Your guide is expecting to be paid.’
‘As much as that?’ remarked Vasko.
‘If everything goes according to plan, Colonel Andrich will soon be dead, and Stalin himself will not be far behind. For that,’ said Canaris, ‘one bar of gold is a small asking price.’
*
Malashenko stood in the doorway to his cabin, smoking a cigarette as he watched a man approaching down the centre of the path.
He wore the uniform of a Red Army officer, and all he carried with him was a leather satchel of the type used by blacksmiths for holding horse shoes. ‘You must be Malashenko,’ he said.
‘I am. And who are you?’
‘A stranger bearing gifts. That’s all you need to know.’
Malashenko flicked away his cigarette and stood aside to let him pass.
Inside the cabin, Vasko removed his gun belt, from which hung a holstered Tokarev and a Russian army canteen. He laid them on the table, then sat down and waited while Malashenko brewed coffee made from chicory in an old pan on the stove.
‘What is it you want from me?’ asked the partisan, as he poured the dark and bitter-smelling drink into a chipped enamel cup.
Vasko took the mug and turned it so that the handle was facing away from him but he did not lift it from the table. ‘You recently passed on information about a man named Colonel Andrich.’
‘That’s right. He arrived in Rovno two days ago.’
‘I need you to tell me where I can find him.’
‘That’s a nice pistol,’ said Malashenko, eyeing the gun belt on the table. Slowly, he reached out towards it.
‘If you want to keep those fingers,’ said Vasko, ‘don’t touch anything that doesn’t belong to you.’
Grumbling, Malashenko withdrew his hand.
‘Just do as you’re told and you will be well rewarded,’ Vasko told him.
‘How well?’
Vasko opened the satchel and pulled out something which had been placed inside an old grey sock. He set it on the table and pushed it across to Malashenko.
Malashenko picked up the sock and tipped the bar of gold on to the table. The spit dried up in his mouth. ‘Why are you paying me so much?’ he asked warily.
‘If it were up to me, I wouldn’t, but this is what the Admiral thinks you’re worth.’
Malashenko thought about Antonina’s advice, to leave Rovno and never come back. Better to travel with one bar of gold, he told himself, than with a hundred bags of salt.
Vasko slid the bar back into the sock and returned it to his farrier’s satchel. ‘Are we agreed?’
Malashenko nodded slowly. ‘Stay here tonight,’ he said. ‘You will be safe. I’ll be back in the morning, after I have found your Colonel Andrich.’
; *
That first night in the cabin, as Vasko lay in the bunk, surrounded by the distantly familiar smells of Russian black bread, Russian tobacco and the fishy reek of Russian boot grease distilled from the rotted husks of Lake Baikal shrimp, he listened to the steady thudding of artillery in the distance.
He put his hands against his ears, hoping to block out the sound. But it didn’t work. The relentless pounding of the guns seemed to rise up from the earth beneath the cabin, until even the air he breathed appeared to tremble.
Vasko moaned and rocked from side to side, plagued by memories of the days he had spent in the hold of that prison ship bound for Kolyma after it had run aground on the shoals of Reshiri Island. Each wave that struck that crippled vessel sounded like a cannon ball against the iron hull. As the freezing water rose higher and higher in the cargo bays where he and the others had been left to die, Vasko had focused on the sound of the waves in order to drown out first the screams, then the pleas, then prayers and at last only the whimpering of those who had abandoned any hope of rescue. By the time the Japanese Coastguard peeled away a section of the hull to let them out, the sound of those waves had fixed forever in Vasko’s mind, until it had become like the beating of a second heart, driving him so close to madness that he could no longer recall how it felt to be sane.
*
It did not take long for Malashenko to learn both where and when Andrich’s meeting with the partisan leaders would take place. For a man of his particular abilities, few secrets could stay hidden in the rubble of that town.
First thing the following morning, he delivered the information to Vasko.
Within six hours, Andrich and the partisans who’d been with him were dead. Not long afterwards came the news that Commander Yakushkin had also been murdered.
As soon as Malashenko had dropped off the little girl at her grandmother’s house, ignoring the old woman’s questions about her daughter, he made his way back to the cabin where Vasko had been hiding in order to collect his bar of gold.
But Vasko wasn’t there.
Assuming that he had been tricked, Malashenko turned around and headed back to Rovno, roaring curses at the treetops on his way.
*
Admiral Canaris was sleeping in his chair, as he often did after a lunch at Horchner’s, his favourite restaurant in Berlin. With his hands folded across his stomach and a pair of slippers on his feet, these brief moments of oblivion had lately become his only respite from the unending stream of bad news which occupied his waking hours.
There was a gentle knocking on the door and Canaris’s adjutant, Lieutenant Wolke, entered the room. He was a young man, with a straight back, rosy cheeks and honest-looking eyes. He carried a print-out of a message just received from an informant behind the Russian lines.
The Admiral’s dachshunds, which had also been taking a nap, looked up from their cushioned chair and, recognising Wolke’s familiar face, lowered their heads and went back to sleep.
Moving almost silently across the room, Wolke placed the message upon the Admiral’s desk.
The Admiral breathed in deeply, then exhaled in a long, snuffling breath, but did not wake.
Wolke gritted his teeth. The Admiral did not like to be woken, but the message had been classified A3, which meant it was of the highest importance and required immediate attention. Which meant waking Canaris, whether he liked it or not.
Wolke cleared his throat.
Canaris’s eyes slid open. He blinked uncomprehendingly at Wolke, as if he had never seen the man before.
‘Admiral,’ said Wolke, his voice barely above a whisper. ‘An A3 has just come in.’
Slowly, Canaris sat forward, rubbing the sleep from his face, and picked up the piece of paper with one hand. At the same time, he reached out with his other hand, fetched his glasses and perched them upon his long and dignified nose.
The message contained an intercepted Soviet radio transmission indicating that Colonel Andrich had been killed in a shoot-out with Soviet partisans.
‘Good,’ muttered Canaris. ‘They have taken the bait.’ It was exactly what he had been hoping for.
But the second half of the message was not.
It went on to say that Commander Yakushkin, of the NKVD’s motorised rifle battalion, currently stationed in Rovno, had also been found dead. It gave no details about where Yakushkin had died or who had killed him or what the circumstances had been. Canaris cursed under his breath.
‘Is everything all right, Admiral?’ asked Wolke.
‘No,’ replied Canaris. ‘No, it is not.’ But he did not explain further, and Wolke knew better than to ask. ‘Has there been any word from Vasko?’
‘No news yet, Admiral.’
Canaris let the telegram slip from his fingers. ‘As soon as he returns to Berlin, have him sent straight to my office.’
‘Yes, Admiral.’
‘And Wolke. .’
‘Yes, Admiral?’
‘In the event that Vasko does not appear, type up a report placing the blame upon Otto Skorzeny.’
Wolke nodded. ‘Zu Befehl, Herr Admiral.’
*
Having carried out the liquidation of Colonel Andrich, Vasko spent the rest of that day, as well as the following day, lying low in the ruins of an abandoned house not far from the hospital where Major Kirov was being treated for his gunshot wound.
By doing so, he was directly disobeying the orders of Admiral Canaris to immediately transmit the message that his task had been carried out, after which Skorzeny would dispatch a guide to escort him back across the lines.
He guessed that, by now, word of the colonel’s murder might already have reached Berlin. If so, Skorzeny would be waiting for the signal.
But the news that Pekkala was alive had thrown Vasko’s mind into confusion. When that gawky Commissar had stumbled down into the bunker, calling out Pekkala’s name like some fragment of an ancient spell, Vasko heard again his mother’s voice, assuring him and his sister that their father would soon be back where he belonged, thanks to the work of the incorruptible Inspector. ‘Our prayers have been answered,’ she assured them and, for a while, at least, the young Vasko had believed this fairy tale.
It wasn’t until his mother’s arrest on the charge of possessing foreign currency that Vasko realised Pekkala had betrayed them. But only when the judge at the People’s Tribunal read out the length of their sentences, to be served in the Gulag at Kolyma, did Vasko understand the magnitude of this treachery.
Weeks later, when their ship ran aground on the shoals of Tetsumu, and Vasko had remained alive in the freezing darkness of that flooded compartment by clinging to the grotesque heap of drowned bodies, he swore that if he ever made it out of there he would consecrate his life to avenging the deaths of his family.
By 1941, under the personal guidance of Admiral Canaris, Vasko had become an agent of the Abwehr. Late that same year, news reached him that Pekkala had been killed not far from the Tsar’s summer estate at Tsarskoye Selo. At the time, Vasko did not know whether to feel satisfaction that the Emerald Eye was dead or disappointment that he had not been responsible for it.
But when he learned that Pekkala had somehow cheated death, Vasko knew at once what he must do, even if it meant disobeying Canaris.
This was the reason why Vasko had not executed Commissar Kirov that night in the bunker. He reasoned that, once Pekkala learned of Major Kirov’s injuries, the Inspector would visit him at the hospital. All that Vasko had to do was wait until Pekkala made contact with the major, then finish them both off together.
That first night, from his hiding place among the ruins, Vasko kept watch on the front door of the hospital, waiting for the moment when Pekkala would arrive. But after waiting for almost two days, and with no sign of the Inspector, Vasko knew he had to act or risk losing his chance to kill Pekkala. He waited until the middle of the night, then made his way into the hospital, determined either to extract the Inspector’s whereabouts from the major or, i
f Kirov didn’t know, to kidnap the wounded man and thereby, he hoped, to draw Pekkala out into the open.
When Vasko learned from Captain Dombrowsky that the major had already gone, he pursued the only lead he had left, which brought him to the nurse’s house. There, Vasko stumbled across Commander Yakushkin and his bodyguard. The killing of Yakushkin, although it must have seemed a calculated attack to those who found his body, was no more than a collateral necessity. Vasko’s real target that night had been the nurse, from whom he hoped to learn the major’s location, but Yakushkin, mistaking Vasko’s presence for that of a rival, had foiled his plan with a bullet through the woman’s heart.
After leaving the apartment, Vasko had returned to the ruined house where he had hidden for the past two days. Knowing that even in the uniform of a Red Army officer, his solitary presence at that time of night would attract unwanted attention, Vasko decided to wait until first light before returning to the cabin, which was some distance outside the town. Once there, he would enlist Malashenko’s help in tracking down Pekkala.
Shortly before dawn, a group of partisans arrived in a battered truck and entered the house where Yakushkin and the nurse had been killed. When Vasko recognised Malashenko among them, he knew that this must be the famous Barabanschikov Atrad. They departed soon afterwards, leaving Malashenko behind to guard the place.
While Vasko was debating whether to leave cover and approach Malashenko, to see if the partisan knew anything of Kirov’s whereabouts, the Barabanschikovs returned.
Vasko was astonished to see Major Kirov climb down from the truck, along with a tall man in civilian clothes. The moment Vasko realised he was looking at Pekkala, he felt his whole body go numb. His first thought was to open fire immediately and keep shooting until he ran out of bullets, in the hopes that a lucky shot might bring down the Inspector. It took all his self-control not to squander the only chance he knew he was likely to get. With a truckload of partisans between him and the Inspector, and only a pistol for a weapon, especially one loaded with bullets which were only accurate at close range, Vasko knew that he would never make the shot before the partisans gunned him down.
