The Berkut (54 page)

Brumm and Rau kept to the shadows on their return to Stone Cave. When they arrived the girls were gathered inside and bombarded them with questions about the airborne intruder.

"Were they looking for us?" "Have we been discovered?"

"We have to get out," another said, with fear in her voice.

"Calm down," Brumm said. "Don't panic. That's the first rule in battle. They are looking for something, though I doubt if it's us. There was a camera mounted on the aircraft and they got close enough to see what's here. It may
or may not cause our discovery, but we cannot assume we're safe; we must presume that their pictures will reveal our camp. Therefore we must leave; it's a matter of prudence. Don't be concerned, my Valkyries; in any event, we are nearly ready for departure, you've been properly trained, we're packed and tonight we'll celebrate. Tomorrow we'll sleep all day, then move out at nightfall."

His speech done, Brumm saw that they were calmer, but Beard had stared at the ground the entire time. Wondering if Rau was up to what had to be done, he patted him reassuringly on the arm and went to help with the preparation of their final meal.

72 – March 24, 1946, 6:00 P.M.

They did not wait for the film to be developed. When Pogrebenoi telephoned Petrov in Berlin, Rivitsky answered. “It’s Talia,” she said. “We’ve found something.”

"We're on our way," Rivitsky said and hung up.

Early in the winter Petrov had arranged for a photographic laboratory to be transferred from Poland along with two technicians. Ezdovo and Pogrebenoi were impressed by their arsenal of equipment and the two motion-picture cameras the men helped them mount on the Arado.

The two Russians were still weak-legged when they delivered the exposed film to the lab. It had been a close call and they both knew it. After the pair had had a dinner of black bread and white cheese washed down with local lager, the technicians delivered the film, set up the projector and left. Pogrebenoi hung a sheet on the wall to serve as a screen and they waited patiently for the others.

It was dark when Petrov and Rivitsky arrived in a light aircraft.

Without preliminaries, Petrov entered the building and took a seat as Ezdovo switched on the projector. Pogrebenoi narrated as the projector whirred loudly. "Belly camera. First pass down the valley," she said, and cited its grid number. "Near the end I thought I saw someone on the rocks." They all watched the screen. "I didn't see anyone," Gnedin said.

Ezdovo rewound the film. "Play it at slow speed," Talia told him, and the scene flashed again more slowly. She pointed to a speck in the gray rocks. "There," she said. Again the valley rolled before them. The quality of the film was not bad, but neither was it good. "I'm sure I got something," Pogrebenoi said firmly.

"Can we get stills?" Rivitsky asked. "Already ordered," Ezdovo told him.

"Let me see it again," Petrov said. It was the first time he had spoken.

They watched in silence as the sequence unfolded from the nose camera. When it was over, Bailov hugged Ezdovo. "The Air Force doesn't know what it missed, eh?"

"It wasn't bad," the Siberian said modest
ly. "Run the side-camera reel,"
Petrov said.

Again they were quiet. When it ended Petrov called for lights. "The stills will tell us more," he said.

One of the technicians complained to Ezdovo about the rush order on the prints. "We'll be up all night," he whined.

"Better awake all night than asleep for eternity," the Siberian growled. The two men went to work immediately.

73 – March 24, 1946, 9:30 P.M.

As they prepared the meal there was a sense of excitement, and the girls vented their nervousness with constant chatter. Waller called it their "Last Supper" and soon they all picked up the refrain.

Even Herr Wolf got into the spirit of things. His hair had been freshly cropped, his upper lip shaved. He had regained some weight, but his puffiness was gone and he looked lean and fit. They drank many bottles of wine and ate without concern for conservation. Over their months in hiding they had behaved with propriety, but now the wine and the moment loosened their discipline, and the girls openly made overtures toward the men. Near midnight they all ended up in the hot pool. Brumm began to lose track of what was happening. Some small bottles of clear liqueur made from gentian root were passed around, and its effect further distorted their minds. At one point Herr Wolf called down to the cavern to tell them to extinguish their torches; he was going to join them. Beard dropped his light into the water where it gave off a loud hiss, and then they heard Herr Wolf splash wildly into the water calling for Stefanie. They heard the voice of Razia Scheel as well, but it was dark and they could not tell where she was.

Eventually one of the girls crawled out of the pool and vomited.

Her retching lasted for a long time, ending in dry heaves that wracked her body and reverberated off the walls in the cavern. Her nausea infected another girl, who stumbled out of the water, fell, picked herself up and ran for their living quarters.

Brumm drank little, but fell asleep on a rock ledge and awoke a few hours later with a pounding headache and a dry mouth. The torch had been relit. Waller was lying against him in the narrow space on her back. She was in a deep sleep, snoring lightly in little bursts, her blond hair matted to her head. He stared at her for a long time, not wanting to think about what he had to do. Finally he slid her off the ledge into the water. She did not open her eyes as he supported her back with his hand and watched her breasts peek up at him through
the steaming water. He looked around quickly. The sick girl was asleep nearby. Waller's head moved; her eyelids fluttered and she smiled up at him. "I love you," she whispered. He kissed her for a long time, then pulled away as she smiled up at him. Grasping her firmly around the neck, he drove her under the water with a powerful thrust of his forearms. At first, thinking it a game, she did not struggle, but her lungs quickly turned to fire and she began to paw at his grip tentatively, then frantically. One of her legs broke the surface and slapped down, raising a small rooster tail. Brumm quickly hooked a heavy leg over her to keep her underwater and held her there, unrelenting.

Gretchen's hands fell away and opened, palms up to him, pleading.

He pulled her head closer to the surface to see her face. The whites of her eyes were huge, like eggs, and her mouth was open. As their eyes met, her mouth moved to form words. There was a sudden gulp and a small whirlpool formed near the surface as she expended her final breath and inhaled water into her lungs. He knew it was over, but he kept her under for a while longer to be certain.

Not looking back, he climbed out of the pool and moved quickly to the other girl. As he slid his hand onto her throat, she opened her eyes and smiled, thinking his attention was for another reason. She smelled terrible; vomit was matted in her hair and had dried on her shoulders and breasts. With a quick motion he broke her neck and let her fall back to the rock with a dull smack.

Ahead of him there was a shot. He grabbed a shotgun from a wooden rack and rushed forward into the living area. The door to Herr Wolf's room was open. Stefanie was naked astride Herr Wolf, her arm hanging over the side of the bed, her chin on his face; blood was cascading onto him from a gaping wound in her chest. Brumm took in the scene in an instant, instinctively rolled to one side and backed up into a crouch. Razia Scheel was standing a few feet from the bed with Herr Wolf's revolver in one hand and a small knife in the other; her arm shook wildly as she tried to line up another shot. "It was my place," she shrieked. "Mine!" Brumm fired a single round of buckshot; it cut through her arms into her bare chest, severing one arm and leaving the other connected only by a fleshy ribbon. The knife clattered on the floor and Brumm kicked it aside; then he yanked Stefanie's body off Herr Wolf. With disgust he grabbed up a handful of clothes and threw them at him.

Herr Wolf's shoes were near Scheel, and as he crawled over to
reclaim them he whimpered, "The dirty Jew. She tried to kill me. The dirty Jew-"

"Shut up," Brumm ordered angrily.

Beard met his colonel in the hall, his Schmeisser at the ready, as Brumm pushed by him into another bedroom. Two of the girls were in a large bed under a gray quilt, their eyes wide with fear. Beard raised his pistol to fire, but Brumm pushed his arm down. "I'll do it," he said. He broke open the shotgun, ejecting the spent casing to the floor, inserted another round, snapped the weapon shut and swung it toward the bed. One of the girls pulled the covers over her head; the other jumped up and ran to the corner, turning her back on Brumm. He shot the one on the bed first, hitting her just under the throat, almost taking her head off. Then he turned and shot the other one in the middle of her bare back. She fell forward against the wall.

Rau slipped past him and Brumm followed him into the sergeant's room. Before he could act, Beard stepped to the bed, put the barrel of his Schmeisser against the white flesh under Ilse's throat and loosed a short burst. "My ... honor is ... loyalty," he stammered.

Brumm tapped him on the shoulder. "Let's go."

Because they had packed the night before, it took less than an hour for the men to prepare for their departure.

Herr Wolf came out of his room and sulked on the hearth while they gave a final check to their packs and weapons. Satisfied that all was in order, Brumm went back into the rooms and cavern alone. Beginning with Gretchen, he used his knife to cut a familiar symbol into the dead girls' foreheads. He was gone for only a few moments; when he returned, his trousers were wet up to his knees.

They left without looking back and moved quickly up the valley to the entrance. Brumm threw three grenades into the minefield, setting off a number of explosions in a chain reaction, and blew the rock used to block their entrance with a quarter pound of explosives and a short fuse. The boulder was blown into several large parts away from the entrance. Inside the tunnel he led the way as they crawled hurriedly through the narrow cavern, scraping themselves as they pushed their packs ahead of them.

Once clear of the valley, they moved at double time through a nearby canyon. At the summit, as they paused for Herr Wolf to catch his breath, Brumm took stock of their situation. Wolf had made the climb relatively easily. His health was better, and it was apparent that now he could handle a moderate physical load. His emotional condition was still questionable, however.

Beard searched the valley below them with his field glasses. "All clear," he reported.

"We have at least a two-day head start. Maybe more," Brumm said.

74 – March 25, 1946, 6:15 A.M.

The team ate an early breakfast and sat back to wait. Ezdovo, Pogrebenoi and Bailov took Rivitsky with them to the hangar to show him the Arado. Chips had been knocked out of the wooden prop, tree branches had torn a gaping hole in the aft fuselage, and the starboard strut was bent.

When they returned, Gnedin was tacking still-wet photographs to the wall and Petrov was grinning. He tapped one of the photos with the back of his forefinger. "Look at this," he said to Pogrebenoi, handing her a magnifying glass. On the rock where she had seen someone, a small arrow had been drawn. It was not a good shot, but at the very end of the shadow behind the rock, there were two feet cut off at the ankles.

Pogrebenoi beamed.

"Diving into the shadows," Petrov said. "Have this enlarged again," he ordered, "but it will only confirm what we know. Someone's in there and your presence alarmed them. Did you scan the valley before yesterday?"

"No," Ezdovo said. "Only from a distance."

Petrov lit a small cigar. A technician brought in another batch of stills, these from the side camera, then ducked out of the room. He did not know who these strange people were, but they smelled of big trouble.

The near-suicide pass had paid off. In the new stills they saw a man standing in the valley near the stream. "I never saw that one when we flew over," Pogrebenoi said. Other photographs showed the face of a building constructed within the cliff, its front door standing open. They could also see that the wide place in the stream had been created by a dam.

Petrov walked over to the wall chart. "Show me," he said to Talia. By late afternoon they knew where they were going and how they were going to get there. They would drive west from Nordhausen and go in from the south side of the mountains. They spent the evening preparing charts and assigning duties. All of them could feel their anticipation rising, and welcomed the feeling.

75 – March 25, 1946, 10:30 A.M.

On a scale of ten Beau Valentine put the Swiss at two: one point for the physical beauty of their country and another for cleanliness. These were the only redeeming qualities he could find in them. That the Swiss had remained neutral throughout the war had been useful to American intelligence operations, but to Valentine's way of thinking, they were no more than antiseptic Krauts. He didn't like them and made no bones about it. Whenever he had felt the need to cross into Swiss territory he had felt depressed about it long after he left. The Swiss drowned themselves in pragmatism. There were no great Swiss philosophers, and in his opinion no painters or composers worth a second look or listen. But the time had come to find out what was going on, and there was no way he was going to report into some ragtag army intelligence unit.