Get Lenin (14 page)

The stall holders were breaking down their pitches for the night and the square was beginning to clear. Eva felt as if she was a modern-day Cassandra and prayed to God that her family would believe her.

As she left she heard the mournful bugle call of the Hejnal from the Basilica. It was a sound she heard every night in her dreams, and would continue to do so until her dying day.

The house was quiet when she entered. She called out her grandfather’s name and made her way through every room searching for him. No lights were on. The old floorboards creaked under her steps as she ascended the staircase. The library was the last room past the bedrooms and a light shone underneath it. She looked in.

Henk Molenaar lay slumped at his desk, the lamplight washing his features white. Eva touched his arm and found it cold, she felt for a pulse in his neck and his wrist. Nothing. He was dead.

Eva gently kissed his cheeks and said her goodbyes, running her fingers through his hair. These past days it had regained its old sheen and texture. It felt like the hair of young man. He was smiling peacefully and his arm was held out across the desk, the fingers coiled as if holding someone else’s hand.

Eva climbed the ladder that swung across the shelves to the volume she was seeking. It was a large Bible, sturdily bound with a heavy hide cover and an extremely valuable illuminated codex.

Henk had told her it was an original Coptic Bible, possibly first century Roman, almost priceless. Moving about the house and through Henk’s writing desk, she located the house deeds. Every legal document was placed between the Bible's perfect ancient pages. She located his cashbox and removed all of the bank notes. She then went through Aga’s dusty unopened jewellery box. She found a diamond ring, and several gold bracelets and pearls. She put them all on, covering them with her dress.

Discovering her old bicycle, she rode to the train station, leaving the dead man behind in his favourite place. A man who had once gotten drunk with Rimbaud in Paris, fenced with Ezra Pound and debated with Freud was now at peace. At his favourite writing desk, he was holding his beloved Aga’s hand surrounded by his treasured tomes.

Eva was grieving, but she couldn’t show it. Her life as she had known it was gone. it was a sensation she couldn’t shake. As the train hurtled overnight toward Berlin, she said goodbye to Krakow and Warsaw, to Poland, and to the ghosts of Henk, Aga and Jonas. Absently, her thoughts drifted to Theo. Had he ever become the artist he had aspired to be?

Her conscience juggled the fact that she was saving lives but losing her very essence. Tomorrow she would drape herself in the finery that Donald T Kincaid would lavish on her. She would dine, drink and dance with the men who were engineering a war. There were plenty of girls like her, pretty little moths drawn to the flame of power, basking in its dangerous rays and loving every moment of it.

When she arrived in Berlin, she purchased sturdy brown paper. Wrapping the bible in it with the valuable documents between its pages, Eva took it to a bookstore off the Potsdam Plaza.

Amid the lines of books she found the clerk; Hugh O’Connor, an Irish friend of Chainbridges. She handed him the parcel, giving him the code word ‘Tome’. He took it and smiled. He’d have it sent to Chainbridge’s shop immediately.

One week later, at 4.45 am on Friday September the 1st 1939, the guns of the German battleship Schleswig-Holstein opened fire on the city of Gdansk on Hitler’s orders. The warship was stationed in the harbour, supposedly on a good-will visit and rained down its shells upon the population indiscriminately whereupon German Army Group North, under the command of General Von Bock, and Germany Army Group South under the command of General Von Rundstedt, commenced the invasion.

Two days later, the United Kingdom, its Commonwealth countries and France declared war on Germany. Seventeen days later, Generals Kovalev and Timoshenko poured their armoured divisions into Poland from the Russian borders. The speed of the German advance had caught everyone by surprise, and Stalin didn’t want to be left behind.

The British and French had estimated that Poland could hold out for two months, giving them time to prepare assistance. The invasion by Germany and Russia from the North, South and West, committed two million men against the Polish army numbering only 950,000.

The invaders captured every moment on film. Night after night the cinemas screened the newsreels across Germany. Eva would sit with Kincaid as the martial marching music and belligerent commentary boomed out. The audience around them would cheer and applaud at the images of their soldiers, their tanks and their fighter aircraft. These scenes would jump-cut to Hitler reviewing the progress of the invasion with his generals and sweeping his arm across maps of Poland, appearing to make brilliant decisions.

Eva flinched with every shell fired from German 88s, followed by the thick blooming explosions of Polish soil. Within a fortnight, the Polish Army had been routed once the Luftwaffe had gained air superiority. The film reels in the cinemas now showed the German armoured divisions driving through the streets of Warsaw, cutting to bombers' sights dropping their payloads onto the cities below. Eva lost contact with her cousins, all communications cut by the invasion. Then word filtered back from Gdansk that people boarding ferries were being turned away as German warships and U-Boats were now blockading the harbour and the seas around the coast. Her family never made it to the ships outward bound to England.

* * *

Thor Schenker sat nervously waiting for his meeting with Himmler. He noted that over Himmler’s door was a sign that read ‘No Jews Are Welcome Here’. Three motorised Waffen SS divisions had left without him for Poland under Metzger’s command. The SS headquarters were moving at a different pace now; communications were a constant stream, the staff going about their duties in terse silence. After the Lowe farm, he and Metzger had attacked two more isolated farm houses, repeating the massacre and ensuring that the Gestapo was involved.

Schenker had done better on these subsequent occasions. Instead of killing an old lady, he had come up against someone nearer his own age. The boy, no more than eighteen, had surprised him in a barn, brandishing a scythe. Schenker, in a panic, fired off a round before the Thompson's breech jammed, the bullets missing the boy. They wrestled to the ground, grunting, gouging and punching, the machine gun becoming wedged under Schenker’s back. The rising dust had made Schenker’s wind pipe contract so that he wheezed throughout the struggle. With tears clouding his vision, he fought with all of his strength, managing to roll on top of the boy, the muscles in his arms twitching with the strain. He looked momentarily down at him, the mouth twisted back revealing perfect white teeth, the hair tousled. He wrenched the scythe away when the boy, distracted, twisted his head up at the sounds of machine gun fire outside, and buried it into the boy's chest repeatedly.

Breathless he looked into his dying victim’s eyes, rose up onto his knees and, head tilted back, commended his soul to the almighty. Running his fingers gently through the boy’s hair, Schenker bent down and kissed him on his lips stained with blood. The sensation of that moment came back to him every time he replayed the scene in his mind.

His thoughts were broken as he was summoned into the office. Himmler was standing looking out at Berlin’s skyline. He spun on his heel as Schenker entered. The blond hair was shorn tight. Himmler thought, why did he shed those beautiful tresses?

‘
Sit down, Captain.’ Himmler indicated a leather chair in front of his desk.

He studied the young man, his poise, the ease of youth as he strode across the room. Schenker's personal file lay open on his desk; three generations of Aryan blood verified on both sides of the family, excellent health and loyal party member. Risen through the ranks of the SA as a teenager, informing on the officers targeted during the ‘Night of the Long Knives’ and then rising meteorically through the ranks of the Waffen SS.

He had distinguished himself during the Kristallnacht pogrom, co-ordinating and commanding attacks on the Jewish mercantile zones. He had displayed a ruthless streak during this operation, dispatching an eighty year old man with a Luger; this action led to him being promoted to Captain. General Metzger had mentioned him in dispatches, citing him as a future SS General.

Behind Himmler’s desk, on a small ornate table, stood a hand-made SS-Allach tea and coffee service. It had been produced to Himmler’s specifications. To him it embodied simple perfection like all things Aryan. He gestured to Schenker, who nodded, and poured two coffees from the plain coffee pot, handing one to Schenker. He admonished himself for allowing the cup to rattle on its saucer in the presence of such beauty and avoided making eye contact with the boy. They were eyes he could swim in.

‘
No doubt, Captain, you’re missing the heat of battle with your comrades,’

Schenker nodded with real conviction. He had a taste for blood now, imagining himself a rabid attack dog of the Reich. Himmler moved away from the window and took his seat. The first thing that struck Schenker was the man’s desk. Everything was neat, orderly and arranged almost like a chessboard.

Himmler cleared his throat delicately. ‘Our glorious forces will annihilate everything before them. You will, Captain, have your chance to strike a blow for the Reich. Before that, I have a very special operation for you.’ Himmler afforded himself a beguiling smile. ‘You will prepare yourself for a mission we are developing which requires your particular skills.’

Schenker’s heart sank at the prospect of being desk bound and training in a field somewhere until he heard what Himmler actually had to say when suddenly it seemed that this visit was going to be very, very worthwhile. He leaned in closer hanging on his leader’s words.

* * *

The couriers travelled as a pair of military attach
é
s hand-picked by Beria himself. They stepped out into the freezing night when every other Muscovite with half a brain was in bed. They were being dispatched from the Kremlin to Tyumen in the Urals on a 4am flight with highly classified documents.

The attaché case containing these documents was locked with a heavy set of hand-cuffs to the wrist of the one who occupied the passenger seat. Both men were armed and the car itself was an armour-plated NKVD Zil. They drove from the Kremlin out onto the main prospeckt in the direction of the airport. The wide lanes were deserted and the first early frost smattered the highway, making the heavy Zil swerve occasionally. The two men didn’t speak, fully focused as they were on their mission. In the rear view mirror, the driver could make out the lights of a similar vehicle a hundred yards behind. Obviously the Politburo was taking no chances this morning, he thought. The lights drew closer in the mirror as the car accelerated, over-taking them and racing ahead until its tail lights disappeared into the night.

Both men exchanged a glance - an escort car? The passenger decided to use the radio.

‘
Is there an escort car with us?’

There was no sound on the other end apart from a faint electronic crackle. The passenger cursed. This car was probably produced near the end of the production month when there were no parts left to use and it was just hammered together. He removed his gun from its holster and let the weapon, with its comforting weight, rest on his lap. The driver, picking up on the other man's unease, accelerated, keen to get to the military airstrip along the empty prospeckt as quickly as he could. The road was completely deserted. The brilliant Spasskaya Red Star glowed over the arabesques of the Kremlin skyline in the rear view mirror. Another light from an approaching motorcycle loomed up and appeared in the side mirrors. The driver noted too late that there was a side-car passenger armed with a machine gun mounted on the front. The pillion fired into the Zil’s rear tyres in a short accurate burst. The driver struggled to control the vehicle, twisting the wheel and letting it flow through his fingers as the front tyres tried to compensate. The motorcycle raced ahead and the side-car rider fired directly at the windscreen and front headlights. The first wave of bullets glanced off, then slowly, under sustained fire, the window began to crack.

The motorcycle weaved back and forth in front of the driver who was accelerating to hit it. The side-car rider opened fire into the windscreen and then the Zil’s front tyres. The passenger tried the
radio again. Nothing but static. The windscreen imploded, throwing chunks of glass onto the men. The passenger fired out at the motorcycle as it weaved and bobbed, the side-car rider no longer firing. The driver saw the other car ahead of it too late. The car that had passed them was stopped in the middle of the highway.

On impact, the two couriers were hurled through the shattered window, glancing off the stationary vehicle, and sliding across the tarmac. The motor cycle swerved back and pulled up alongside the injured driver who was lying prone. The side-car rider fired his machine gun into the man. The passenger tried to rise up and fire his revolver, but was killed by a sustained burst of machine gun fire. The side-car rider climbed out of his vehicle and walked up to the dead passenger. Rolling up his coat sleeve, he removed his hand with a blow from a cleaver.