Get Lenin (19 page)

The interior of the flying boat was plush; mahogany, soft leather, polished oak and gold at every turn. Eva sat in a living room area with bedrooms and a bathroom behind it. A liveried steward hovered nearby. She had just finished a meal; fillet of sturgeon, with fresh asparagus and grilled vegetables. This was followed by a Martini, and she lit another expensive French cigarette.

Two of Regan’s cameras were set up at either end of the room. A long table with crystal goblets and champagne bottles on ice sat in line between them. On the far wall hung an American flag and on the opposite side, a Swastika. A banner between them read ‘Mission accomplished!’

Below the floor was a hold with a compatible generator system for the sarcophagus and quarters for the embalming team. It was dependant on Zbarsky’s mind after that and whether or not he would co-operate. Kincaid’s and Schenker’s view was simple: if he and his embalmers refused to help, they’d be shot.

Eva sipped her Martini, waiting for the moment she would contact Chainbridge and Peter. The pilots started their final check before take-off. Below, the fighter pilots climbed into their cockpits and started preparing for take-off, their engines rising to a screech from a whine.

The flying-boat’s radio operator was communicating with Berlin on a secure channel and excited chatter went back and forth.

Looking out, Eva could see the airship filling the sky and manoeuvring to the rail link. It banked slightly, descended, and dropped anchors either side of the rail. Eva started to seek out Brandt among the men slipping down the ropes. She spotted him and found herself watching his every move.

She pushed her hair behind her ear almost as a reflex and chided herself immediately for doing so.

The carriage was placed perfectly onto the rail. She spotted the SS officer hovering near the carriage door, his gun twitching in his gloved hand.

He had changed out of combat wear to full SS regalia: black uniform, brown shirt, armband and highly polished boots. Regan slid down from the airship with a pack on his back. From it he quickly assembled a tripod for a camera and mounted one from the pack. Still filming the airship with a hand camera as it inched into position, he shouted instructions to Schenker. Preening himself for film, Schenker stepped back from the door, preparing for Regan to switch cameras. Regan loaded some cameras he had finished with into a basket hung from the airship. He tugged on the line and it was hauled up for shipping on to Berlin. Brandt’s team then released the harnesses and the carriage glided down the incline to a stop.

Brandt and his tall lanky sergeant gave a hand signal and, with a roar, the airship rose and banked toward the west, bound for Army Group Central.

Kravchenko worked his way through the forest. There was little to salvage after the German devices had destroyed the carriages. He had walked along both sides of the destruction hoping to find the other two men in his carriage but found only corpses.

He managed to salvage some supplies, ammunition and, by a miracle, vodka, black bread and cold sausage. Undoing his bandaged hand, he poured the alcohol over the wound, winced, and then drank the last few mouthfuls.

His choices were stark. Get Lenin back before the Germans could remove him from Russia or trudge back to Tyumen and report what happened.

Either way he was a dead man.

The airship was easy enough to follow with the carriage weighing it down, but following it on foot wasn’t easy. Having been raised in the Urals, Kravchenko knew that the wolves would be drawn to the smell of the dead. As an afterthought he could add them to the firing squad and the Gulag as his options for the future.

He picked his way between the trees, listening for the airship. Occasionally the top-most branches would shake as the carriage was dragged along. It was heading in the direction of the River Tura, which meant he would probably encounter more Germans - yet another way to die, he thought wryly. He kept the vodka bottle as an opportunity to fill it with petrol and use it as a bomb might present itself later.

He began to recover from the shock of the attack and his mind started to focus on what, if anything, he could do. He needed above all else to get hold of a radio. It was still two hours at least before anyone would suspect anything was wrong. The forest began to part and he could hear heavy vehicles roaring, trying to keep the diesel flowing in the dropping temperature. He skirted along the edge and stopped in his tracks.

The flying boat out on the ice seemed to go on forever, the crew moving around like ants with the fighters dwarfed by its bulk. Glinting in the faint light like a prehistoric bird, its engines shook the surrounding air like a gun battery.

Kincaid had stepped down onto the ice and joined the German team. They were relaxed and laughing, drinking coffee laced with strong Irish whiskey. Snow was falling lightly, giving the air a festive feel. Brandt and Kant smoked quietly, talking low and looking around. Olga joined them, wrapping her arms around Kant briefly.

The message from Berlin was, 'Congratulations - keep moving - U-806 is en-route.'

An SS trooper descended from the plane and trotted over to Schenker. He motioned the captain to lean closer and uttered something into his ear. He handed Schenker a message. Schenker straightened slowly and nodded. The trooper trotted back up into the plane.

After reading it, Schenker produced a lighter and lit the paper. It burned to his glove as he lit a cigarette from it, the ashes scattering in the breeze. Separated from its locomotive, the carriage doors were easy to prise open and Kincaid and Schenker strode in.

Dr Zbarsky and his team raised their hands in surrender, blinking in the glare of torches and powerful lights for Regan to film with. Schenker and Kincaid leaned in to look at Lenin. He was intact and showing no signs of damage. Schenker turned to Zbarsky, smiling coldly. ‘Good evening, Herr Zbarsky. I trust you had a good flight.’ He smiled at his own joke and pointed his idle Luger at the Doctor. ‘We have much to discuss.’

Zbarsky just stared ahead.

Bader and Hauptmann watched Lenin’s technicians and Zbarsky, Kincaid and Schenker walk toward the flying boat. Instinct warned them that something wasn’t quite right. They exchanged glances. Brandt and Kant hadn’t been invited to board the plane. Regan had cameras standing idle and he wasn’t making any effort to use them.

Schultz was radioing in co-ordinates for their collection by transport, his broad back sitting like a boulder on the ice. He looked up, sensing something too. Years of training and combat operations gave the unit a collective intuition for danger. Bader and Hauptmann started scanning the tree-line along the shore, their fingers resting lightly on their machine gun triggers.

Schultz shouted in frustration, ‘Scheisse! The signal is still jammed. That bloody half-track over there – I’m going over to kick their arses!’ He trudged toward the half-track, cursing loudly and waving his fist,

‘
Poor bastards are in for a roasting,’ grinned Bader. The unease was growing in his gut, but he was unable to pinpoint it.

Hauptmann tried to smile about it. Schultz’s finely honed perfectionism was the butt of endless jokes. Hauptman’s eyes kept flicking from Brandt and his sergeant to the tree line, back to his officers and to the river’s edge.

Olga stiffened nearby and unslung her rifle, almost sniffing the air for impending doom. The Alpine commandos and the Chechen were now collectively coiled tight like a spring.

Distracted by the activity on the ice, the three crewmen in the cockpit craned their necks, watching the airship’s departure. The stewards and attendants blocked the plane’s doorway laughing and cheering standing out on the steps.

Regan was trying to get them to pose for a photograph. Kincaid standing at the bottom step was sweeping his arm back toward them.

Eva slipped out of her seat, pretending to get a better view. Smiling sweetly at the crewmen in the cockpit, she stumbled onto the radio operator. He blushed intently under her smile, grabbing her waist and helping her steady her feet.

His headset slipped off his head, and as he swivelled on his chair looking for them, Eva twisted the band-width dial several times in succession, counting 1-2-3. As the radio operator tried to pull himself together, she pushed into him again, giggling as if tipsy. Apologising, she got out of the cockpit and made a good attempt at a blush.

The crewmen smiled and laughed back, saying it was ok with hands raised. Smiles all round and she made her way back to her seat. She smiled coyly at the radio operator as if sharing a private joke. He returned the smile, blushing deeper and without even noticing the radio channel had changed resumed radioing into Berlin on a secure channel.

* * *

The snow was falling heavily in Helsinki. Chainbridge and De Witte sat in the British Embassy on Itäinen Puistotie with the head of Overseas Intelligence.

Eva’s reports had been sporadic. The Germans had uncovered a spy and were now tightening the net within the Reich. The underground in Berlin were being hunted down and they could no longer forward Eva’s Braille. She had got word to Chainbridge through Kincaid’s studios via her agent in London. Kincaid would be leaving for the Baltic within the next week and she was accompanying him. On receipt of this, the two men had arranged to travel to Helsinki, a hazardous trip that had taken over a week aboard a Portuguese merchant ship, avoiding German commercial raiders and U-Boats.

The small basement room was filled with cigarette smoke, the smell of coffee and a faint undertow of sweat. A large tri-band radio receiver was tracking any and all radio signals out of The Soviet Union. The highly experienced radio operator would crane his neck forward at the slightest change in signal.

An unnaturally distorted signal in the Urals area suddenly wavered in quick succession like jabs. It was Eva. The Germans had Lenin.

‘
What are you going to do, Kincaid?’ murmured Chainbridge aloud.

Finland was allied to Germany so it would probably be safer to ship there than overland through Russia. With so many small islands off the Finnish coast, it’d be ideal for a U-Boat or flying boat to slip in unnoticed. Chainbridge knew Kincaid had a private airliner; maybe it was big enough to freight a sarcophagus.

De Witte leaned back in his chair. A sense of dread had come over him, as if being denied sight gave him another sense. He was desperately worried about Eva.

The head of O.S.I. began preparing a coded message to the War Office requesting advice.

‘
If they get Lenin out of Russia, that’s it,’ said De Witte.

Chainbridge seemed to stare through the walls. ‘We could generate disinformation, call it a hoax, a stunt, a gimmick...’

‘
Kincaid’s world-famous; a potential Senator or President. If he pulls this off, he’ll be regarded as a bold adventurer who made a fool of the Soviet Union,’ retorted De Witte, spinning his cane around his fingers, the only outward sign of the stress he was suffering.

Chainbridge pondered his options. Maps and charts lay strewn across the table. He studied the vast topographical swathe of the Urkraine, Siberia and the Ural mountains. And somewhere within this thousand mile radius was a Polish girl whose chances of getting out alive were diminishing by the minute.

Tyumen was a secret facility and Moscow was denying its existence despite Churchill’s offer of military and logistical assistance. The British Embassy here had a small detachment of commandos but if Lenin was now airborne he would be halfway through Russian airspace in three or four hours, not enough time to get men on the ground, not enough time for any kind of preventative action.

De Witte’s suggestion was the simplest – tell Stalin directly that Lenin was in German hands, let him and the Politburo figure out what to do, make the communiqué for his-eyes-only.

Chainbridge phoned the embassy desk to notify the ambassador of the plan and request that the commander of the embassies detachment join them below. Turning to the radio operator, he inquired, ‘Can you get a position on that interrupted broadcast?’

* * *

The carriage was rolled down to the edge of the flying boat’s wings. Lenin’s sarcophagus was hoisted out and placed carefully onto a trestle on wheels and loaded smoothly into the cargo hold.

Bader’s peripheral vision detected movement from the half-track. Eight or nine SS storm-troopers alighted from the back of it. Schultz didn’t have time to draw his weapon before he was gunned down and killed.

Brandt and Kant froze for a split second before diving onto the ice. Olga was already returning fire and a storm-trooper crumpled into the snow. Bullets landed around her. In quick succession she eliminated four anti-aircraft personnel before they could target the people on the ice. With tracer fire streaking around her, she stayed put until the gunners stopped moving. She turned her attention back to the SS troopers; dropping onto her chest and making herself as small a target as possible. She coldly dispatched two more in quick succession.