The Red Eagles (21 page)

“None for now.”

“Who are the other two men?”

Kuznetsky grinned. “Two serving German officers.”

Sjoberg showed his astonishment. “How—”

“Don’t worry, I’ll deal with them when the time comes.” He looked out across the sea. “How will your captain react if they are suddenly missing, do you think?”

“Difficult to say.” Sjoberg had recovered his poise quickly, which encouraged Kuznetsky. “He won’t turn the ship around and search the Atlantic for them, but he might ask awkward questions. And he might arrange a police welcome in Gothenburg.”

“That won’t matter. You contacted Rodrigues?”

“Yes, he’ll have watched the loading.”

“Good. Moscow will take all the necessary steps.”

“You haven’t told Zhdanov, I suppose,” Fyedorova said with a malicious grin. “I seem to remember you told him there was no chance of a German atomic bomb.”

“There still isn’t,” Sheslakov snapped. “And no, I haven’t told him,” he added more thoughtfully.

“Intriguing though, isn’t it?” she said in a similar tone. “It’s hard to find any reasonable explanation for the presence of the two Germans.”

“There must be one. The question is, what will we do about it?”

“Nothing.”

“We do have a U-boat, you know. It was grounded in the Gulf of Finland in 1942. It’s been repaired and it’s ready for service.”

“What service?” she asked.

“Well … I’m considering sending the Swedish boat an escort, even perhaps transferring the uranium to the U-boat at sea.”

She swung her legs to the floor in the familiar move. “No,” she said earnestly. He waited for the explanation as she went through the usual process of putting her thoughts in order. “For one thing,” she said, “it’s too elaborate. You’re seducing yourself with your own trickery again. For another, and much more important, imagine Kuznetsky’s reaction to the sudden appearance of a U-boat. He’ll throw the stuff over the side.”

Sheslakov looked at her appreciatively. “Why didn’t I think of that?”

“Because you’re itching to interfere. Look, the Germans must still think it’s a German operation, so there’s no reason for them to do anything before the ship reaches Gothenburg. And even if they do discover something before that, what can they do? They can’t hijack a Swedish ship with the crew and our people against them. It’s much more likely that Kuznetsky will dispose of them before the ship reaches Sweden.”

“Nothing then,” he muttered.

“Just make sure Gothenburg is swarming with our people when the ship comes in, including a few German-speakers in case the need arises.”

“Right. And if necessary we can dispose of them when we dispose of the other two.”

“What?”

“I forgot to tell you.” He passed across a sheet of paper bearing the General Secretary’s signature.

“For reasons of state security,” she said impassively. “And us?” she asked him.

He shrugged. “A good question. I doubt whether we’ll be sent advance notification.”

The days passed, blue seas giving way to green, calm waters to the rolling ocean swell. On clear days the thin line of the American coast was visible on the western horizon, emphasizing the distance still to be traveled.

Of the four of them, only Paul showed any inclination to mix with the Swedish crew, and this, it seemed to Gerd, had more to do with avoiding the three of them than with any genuine desire to play nonstop poker in the galley. He understood his friend’s need, but felt unable to share his means of assuaging it.

For many days he was haunted by the expression on Amy’s face that afternoon in Havana harbour. It had seemed out of
all proportion when measured against what he knew of her and Paul. He sensed that she was hiding something, but he had no idea what it might be.

As the
Balboa
plowed northward this absorption faded, giving way to another. Sitting in Schellenberg’s office all those weeks before the whole business – America, atomic bombs, trains, and U-boats – it had all seemed quite fantastic, a crazy game that the mad masters of his country had decided to play.

Now, with the crates sitting out there on the deck, a few weeks at most from Germany, he was experiencing a growing feeling of revulsion at the thought of delivering them. Did he want to be one of the men who’d brought Hitler a weapon like that? “Defeat will have its compensations,” he’d told the U-boat captain, and that had been an understatement. Leaving the U-boat that night had been like stepping out of the war, giving him his first chance in years to look at the whole ghastly mess from the outside. And he knew now, as clearly as he’d ever known anything, that a German defeat would be the best possible outcome for everyone, the German people included. A swift defeat moreover, while the country was still in one piece.

And here he was helping to prolong the war, perhaps even to change its outcome. He didn’t want that. Aboard the U-boat they’d heard Hitler’s account of the bomb plot against him, the chilling voice announcing the revenge to come. And though a part of him still, almost reflexively, condemned the conspirators for breaking their soldier’s oath, the rest of him, most of him, had never felt prouder to be a Wehrmacht officer.

God knows, they should have acted sooner. They’d been blind, completely blind, and once the war had begun their eyes had been looking outward, their minds full of that shameful intoxication with victory, with sheer motion really, right up to that dreadful month outside Moscow.

But that was the East, not the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Was it too late for treason? If he and Paul heaved the crates overboard, it wouldn’t make him very popular with Smith or Amy or the reception party that would be waiting in Sweden – in fact it might well prove to be their last meaningful act on earth. But as the days passed the vision of those crates sinking through the Atlantic swell seemed more and more like the only appropriate swan song for his war.

Kuznetsky spent his days sitting in the bow, hardly moving for hours save to light his cigarettes, staring ahead at the ocean still to be crossed. He had decided to kill the Germans on the penultimate night of the voyage. By then, he reasoned, he would be fit again, and there would only be around thirty-six hours for Torstensson to discover that two of his passengers had gone over the side. Twelve hours would have been better, but he didn’t completely trust Amy, and had told her it would be the final night. If by some chance her feelings got the better of her it would be too late.

Not that she’d shown any such inclinations when he’d told her. “You know they have to die,” he’d said on the occasion of their only conversation since leaving Havana.

“There’s no other way, is there?” she’d said simply, not even avoiding his eyes.

“There never has been. From the moment Sheslakov drew up the plan those two were dead, one way or another.”

She’d picked up on the name quick enough. “I’m slipping,” Kuznetsky had said, “no one should have known that name.”

“Do I have to die too now?” she’d asked with the same, almost unreal detachment.

“There’s a good chance that both of us will be considered unnecessary risks. You knew that, didn’t you?” And she had – he could tell by the expression in her eyes.

“It’s insane,” she’d said quietly, “but it makes perfect sense.”

Back in her cabin, its walls seeming to mock the dreadful openness of her mind, Amy sat on the floor, her back against the bunk, her legs splayed and straight like a little girl’s.

It did make sense: that was what seemed so terrifying. It made sense that Paul should die, should be killed, if not by her then at least with her active connivance. It made perfect sense. Richard had died for the same reason, and Joe, and the guards, and the boy who had appeared from nowhere. And Paul would die. To make it all work. If he didn’t, it wouldn’t work. Her feelings had no power to change the logic of it.

She wanted Paul, but only for herself. She wanted it all to work, for herself perhaps, but for others, too, and that was the difference. At times during the days at sea the distinction had escaped her, her motivation had been impossible to pin down in words, and she’d wondered whether she’d spent ten years trapped in an illusion. But she hadn’t.

The distinction
was
real, the struggle
was
real, existing outside as well as inside herself. She couldn’t release herself from it even if she wanted to. If Paul’s death was the price demanded, then she would pay. It wasn’t what you felt that counted, it was what you did.

She could remember the very day Aunt Rosa had said that to her mother. The two women had been arguing, as they often did, but this time with more anger than usual, and at the end of the argument they’d hugged each other. She had watched from the stairs, had rushed to join the hugging, not knowing what it was for but knowing that it was important.

Aunt Rosa. She had a picture of herself and Effi sitting in that same kitchen listening to one of Aunt Rosa’s “history lessons” as they prepared the evening meal. The man in the factory working all day and getting next to no money, the owner in his big house sitting around doing nothing, getting
richer and richer. And how they should even feel sorry for the rich man, because all his riches were things, cold and empty things.

It must have been in the month following Aunt Rosa’s release from prison; she’d been weak, thinner than before, but her face at that time had seemed almost luminescent, like the pictures of the Virgin Mary in stained-glass windows. And she and Effi had sat there, sometimes not understanding what this wonderful woman was saying, but captivated by the face and the kindness and the simple intensity of belief. The world could be better, fairer, more human.

Fables for children perhaps. But they’d carried a truth she’d never been able to deny, because all the people she’d ever loved – all except Paul – had lived it, had worked and struggled and died for something beyond themselves. And their deaths had not been an illusion.

The Soviet Union might be; she didn’t know. But the alternative was not: an American world in which no one cared for anything but themselves and Aunt Rosa’s cold and empty things. If the material in the crates could prevent that, they were worth any cost.

Only a few more days. Kuznetsky would kill Paul and then he and she would die. It was fair and just.

There was no other way.

Kuznetsky looked at his watch as he inhaled the cigarette. It was almost two in the morning. He checked the Walther once more and sat for another ten minutes adjusting his eyes to the darkness.

“Thy kingdom come, the Party’s will be done,” he murmured to himself as he stood up. “On earth as it is at sea.”

The two Germans had taken separate cabins. Perhaps Paul had hoped to resume his affair with Amy, perhaps they were fed up with each other’s snoring. Either way, it simplified matters.

He stepped out onto the deck, found the light brighter than he’d anticipated. The sky was overcast, but every now and then the moon would find a thinner layer of cloud to shine through, bathing the freighter and the sea in a silvery glow. A few miles to the south, the dark bumpy line of the Shetland Islands divided the ocean from the sky.

The sea was choppy rather than rough, and not as noisy as he’d hoped. Still, Sjoberg had arranged for the helmsman that night to be a Party sympathizer, and he himself took the stern watch. No one would hear anything. He took the strangling cord from his pocket, stood outside Gerd’s door, and listened. Nothing. He eased the door open and slipped noiselessly inside, closing it behind him. There was no one in the bunk.

He went to the cabin next door, but it was empty too. A white square shone in the gloom, a note pinned to the mirror. He struck a match and read it: “Amy, Bremerhaven Bahnhof, 14 July.” For an instant Kuznetsky saw the expression of surprise on his own face in the mirror, an expression he’d forgotten he had.

He went back on deck, walked purposefully back toward the stern. Above the sound of the ship’s passage he heard a scraping noise, recognized it from the loading in Havana. They were moving the crates. He peered out around the corner of the ship’s superstructure, saw the silhouettes of the two Germans pushing a crate toward the starboard rail, and as the sky momentarily lightened, he caught a glimpse of a body, Sjoberg’s, lying motionless on the stern deck.

Somehow they’d found him out, and had decided to take the uranium to Germany on their own. He felt almost proud of them.

He worked his way nearer, dodging silently through the crates of general merchandise stacked amidships until he was no more than ten yards away. Raising the Walther with both arms extended, his feet splayed to compensate for the ship’s
motion, he took aim at the back of Gerd’s head.

He couldn’t do it. Didn’t want to do it. They deserved to see his face as he pulled the trigger. Private executions were bad enough, and even then the victim could see his executioner.

As he stepped forward the moonlight suddenly brightened, giving his entrance an almost theatrical quality. The two Germans stiffened, then relaxed as they saw the gun, relaxed in the way he had once seen a Siberian tiger relax, with a casualness that obscured the alertness of their poise. They didn’t expect a chance, but were ready for one if it came.

“Where are you planning to go, gentlemen?” he asked softly.

“We’re sleepwalking,” Paul said, edging away from Gerd. Kuznetsky stopped him with a flick of his wrist.

“We decided the Führer’s genius didn’t require any assistance,” Gerd said sarcastically.

Kuznetsky smiled at his own misjudgment and admired them even more. “They’re not intended for your Führer,” he said. “Or Nazi Germany.”

A tiny voice inside him said, “Let them go,” but was instantly silenced by the familiar voice of duty.

“Somehow,” Gerd said, “that doesn’t seem as surprising as it should.”

Amy lay awake on the bunk watching the play of light on her cabin walls. Another twenty-four hours. What could be wrong in spending the last night with Paul? It would change nothing. In the dark there would be no deception, in the dark their love would be real. And the thought of it, of one more meeting, one last immersion in that other world, had held her together through the weeks at sea.

She climbed out of the bunk, wrapped a blanket around her shoulders, and left her cabin. The iron plate felt cold
beneath her feet. She went to tap on Paul’s door but it was ajar, the cabin empty, the note shining on the mirror.

“Why?” Gerd asked, almost disinterestedly. His gun lay on the crate, hidden from Kuznetsky by a bag of food they’d brought for the journey. If only it wasn’t lying with the butt farthest away from him.

“Why?” Kuznetsky seemed to find the question ridiculous. “I serve a cause I believe in. Could you say the same?”