The Berkut (49 page)

62 – November 1, 1945, 4:00 P.M.

Bailov's woman turned out to be something more than she appeared. One afternoon she was on an errand with the girls and he was in the bedroom. Later he could not explain to Petrov exactly what had made him search the room. He'd been in the house for nearly four months, and their life had settled into a comfortable, if Spartan, routine. During the day he moved through the countryside, trying to get information about Brumm. Occasionally he met with Gnedin, but the doctor's luck was no better. At night Bailov slept with Janna; it was almost like being married, and his recognition of this made him laugh. Marriage was a condition he had vowed to avoid, yet here he was, and while it was only a charade, it began to get on his nerves.

The woman, he had to admit, was satisfactory for most of his needs. She was physically strong, a tireless worker and a willing partner under the comforter. But it was her intensity that made him uneasy, the fiery gaze from her large green eyes, something fanatical that she kept tightly reined, and because of this he was suspicious. He found himself drawn to the closet in the bedroom. It seemed normal, but his experienced eye discovered a crude but cleverly hidden storage compartment at one end of it, which he opened with a snap to pressure from the heel of his hand.

Inside was a small wicker trunk that contained several interesting items: an automatic pistol with clips, a small riding crop, a black SS tunic with skirt, and two albums of snapshots, all carefully labeled and mounted. The photographs were neatly glued into the black pages of the albums; legible captions had been printed below each one in white ink. There was a group pose: several uniformed women sat on the cowcatcher of a locomotive, their skirts raised almost to their crotches, their legs flung wide apart like gleeful chorus girls. In one photo Janna was surrounded by naked children, boys and girls with flowers in their hair, like small nymphs; another showed her in mock embrace with a swarthy man in a doctor's smock; still another showed a corpse in a wide-striped garment hanging over a roll of barbed wire. Beside the body stood Janna like a big-game hunter, a rifle cradled in her arms, the trophy bleeding beside her.

Janna entered the room while Bailov was sitting on the bed looking through the albums and attacked him instantly. He had expected her to be strong, but he was unprepared for her mastery of hand-to
-
hand combat. He tried to bind both of her wrists, but she twisted quickly and jerked like an animal, repeatedly kneeing his solar plexus and groin. Finally he ended the struggle by rolling her off the bed and pounding her head against the floor until her resistance ceased.

He sat and stared at her. His own weapons were hidden in the forest, so he put a clip in the pistol he'd found in the trunk and waited for her to come to. She regained consciousness with no fear in her face. Her eyes were hollow, like a cat's at night, and he could feel her hatred. She held her head where he had struck it and stared at the pistol barrel leveled at her chest.

"You have no right," she said evenly. "They are my personal belongings. "

"Granted."

"They are private."

" 'Secret' would be a more accurate characterization." "What will you do?"

"I'm not sure. It depends on you. You know what I am. I am comfortable here," he lied. "But now I'm confused. You gave me the impression that you were a defenseless
Hausfrau
in need of a man's strength-and other male services. Now you flash the talons of a harpy."

"You take yourself too seriously," she said. "It would be better for you not to pursue this."

Bailov smiled. He knew she was hoping for an opening. "Your husband dead on the Eastern front, your children starving." He nodded toward the scattered photographs. "Lies. I want to know who you are and what these mean."

She grinned and relaxed. "May I?" she asked. His look told her it was safe to sit on the bed. "I'm not ashamed," she told him. "
I only did my duty for the Fü
hrer."

"Death's Head?" He had recognized the insignia.

"Yes, Totenkopfverbande. I was one. You were army. You wouldn't understand such things."

"Try me."

"Befehl ist Befehl-an
order is an order. You understand the concept of
Befehlsnotstand
-
that
an order must be obeyed?"

"It is the basis of the military chain of command," Bailov pointed out.

"Sehr gut.
Germany was poisoned by inferior races. They weakened us and led to the disaster of Versailles. Our leaders determined that if the country was to be purified, the impure elements would have to be eliminated. I served in one of the units dedicated to this end. We were true patriots."

The girls came into the room, sized up the situation immediately and stood close to Bailov.

"Leave us," the woman hissed at them.

"Shoot her," the youngest child said matter-of-factly. Bailov's heart jumped at the words. "She's not our mother. We're not even sisters. She's a bad woman, Father. Shoot her. Please?" Bailov's senses turned on end.

"You're upset, sweetheart. Come here to me," the woman said with a warm voice and frigid eyes.

The older girl seemed to take strength from the younger one's courage. "We were at the camp, at Dachau. She took us from there. If we'd stayed we would have died. She said she'd let us live if we obeyed her. We are Jews," she said proudly but nervously. The woman sprang from the bed, but Bailov blocked her with a kick to the chest and backed her up with the pistol.

"All right," he warned. "I want the truth. Your name first."

"You have my name. I did not lie about that."

"Why are you here?"

"Bad Harzburg is my home, such as it is. I needed refuge. There was no better place than among these stupid mountain people."

"You are alone?" "That's why I came."

He decided on a more direct approach. "If you truly are of this
place, tell me who Gü
nter Brumm is."

She stared, dumbfounded. "Who are you?"

"Tell me."

"The apothecary's grandson. He was an officer in the SS, a colonel."

"You know him?"

"Who are you?" she repeated. "You're no soldier, at least not a German soldier."

He smiled. "Think of me as an instrument of poetic justice. Tell me about Brumm."

"If I do, will you let me go with my daughters?"

The girls crowded closer to him, clinging to his jacket. "We're not going with you anymore," the younger one shouted.

"Fraulein," Bailov said, "I haven't decided what to do with you, but this I will tell you: unless you tell me what I want to know, and quickly, you'll never leave this room."

She shuddered. "I knew him when he was young. A real loner. He and his grandfather camped in the Harzwald. He was the brightest student in the village, but he went away to military school in Stuttgart. Once we were on leave here at the same time. I tried to--interest him, but he hadn't changed. The SS sometimes attracted that type."

"When was this leave?" "Summer, 1944. July."

"How long was he here?"

"I don't know. He took off into the mountains, and when I left three weeks later, he still hadn't returned."

"Did he have friends here? Associates?"

She shook her head. "None. He was not the sort of man who needed others."

"You're certain it was Brumm?"

She laughed. "He was not the kind of man a woman forgets easily, especially when you've been with the dregs I have."

After getting the information he wanted, Bailov took the woman into the woods where the girls could not see them and made her dig a shallow hole. When she was finished, she stood, legs apart, and challenged him. "You lack the nerve," she said. He shot her in the eye from five feet away, then dumped her in the hole and filled it in. He felt no remorse: she was a pariah; the world was better off without her. With the woman disposed of, he burned the house, gathered her documents, reclaimed his own weapons and took the girls to Bad Harzburg, an eight-kilometer hike through the first heavy snow of winter. After marching the girls through town and up the stairs to Gnedin's surgery, he entered without knocking.

The surgeon was not happy to see him. "Idiot! You'll ruin everything."

"Shut up, my friend. I had no choice. I've learned that Brumm was here last summer and went off into the mountains, apparently for at least three weeks."

Gnedin stared past Bailov at the children. "Yours?"

"In a manner of speaking."

63 – November 7, 1945, Noon

Bailov and Gnedin arrived at the estate in motorcycles with sidecars during a flurry of wet snow. The girls were bundled in blankets and looked like miniature monks. Petrov and Rivitsky carried them into the villa and set them down by a roaring fire.

Rivitsky observed that the girls called Bailov "Father," and that whenever he left the room they clammed up and looked nervous. It
was clear that a bonding had taken place, and it amused Rivitsky to see the unit's avowed bachelor fussing over them like a parent. The question was, where had they come from?

After the girls had been fed and put to bed, the four team members assembled in the drawing room. It took two hours for Bailov and Gnedin to report their experiences to their leader. As they talked, Petrov listened attentively, his hands folded in his lap. He asked few questions. When the two men finished talking, Petrov reflected for a moment, then turned to them.

"Doctor, you are to remain here."

"That's all?" Gnedin asked. After so long in the village, a respite in Berlin, no matter how badly damaged it was, would be a welcome change.

Petrov nodded solemnly and turned to Bailov. "Comrade, the children have formed an attachment to you; there's no future in it for you or them."

Bailov's heart jumped, and his reaction surprised him: he'd been telling himself he'd be glad to be shed of the brats. "We can't just turn them out."

Petrov touched the younger man's arm. "They belong in Palestine," he said, "with their own kind. You and the doctor can make the arrangements, and after they've departed, you will go to Magdeburg to assist Ezdovo and Pogrebenoi."

His instructions delivered, Petrov left the three and went upstairs to the massive library. Rivitsky hugged his comrades. "It's too late to do anything today, so we'll celebrate our reunion," he said with a w
ink. Moments later a bottle of P
ertsovka wa
s on the table in front of them
.

64 – December 9, 1945, 3:45 P.M.

The snow was wet and heavy under a thin layer of ice, which snapped under their weight and plunged Brumm and Waller up to their knees. They had left the valley two days previously and slogged relentlessly, stopping only to eat cold food and catnap in caves and quickly assembled lean-tos along the way At last they reached a small cavern on the southwest face of the upper Harzwald. Waller huddled close to Brumm, hoping for added warmth from his bulk. At least there was no wind in the cave, so it felt warmer. "We'll build a fire when it gets dark," he told her. She understood. Against a light sky the smoke could be spotted, but at night in this kind of weather it would be invisible.

"I think we should stay together," Wal
ler
blurted out. She had been thinking about their separating ever sin
c
e they had crawled out of the valley. It was not the risk she minded; after Berlin she felt that there could never again be comparable danger in her life. The war was over, the armies dispersing; whatever threats lay outside the Harz Mountains, she felt ready to face them. But she was disturbed at the notion of parting from Gunter because for the first time in her life she felt whole and happy. In the valley she had to share him, but out here they were free, just the two of them, and she did not want to lose what she held dearest.

"No choice," Brumm answered as he slapped his ice-laden mittens together. "If one of us gets into trouble, the other must return to the valley to tell Beard."

"There won't be any trouble," she argued. "Women can tell these things."

He laughed and caressed her hair. "I put my trust in skill and preparation, not instinct, my sweet." He pulled her to him and nuzzled her neck; it was the first time he had ever done this, and it caught her by surprise. "There are three hotels on the
Strasse
near the church," Brumm went on. "Take a room in the easternmost one and sleep. A real bed will be a novelty."