Tin Sky (14 page)

The military police officer (a mature captain, rather agitated) told him, “It happened just after 09.00 hours, but I’d barely arrived here myself. We didn’t know where to reach you, Major – the men did their best.”

Bora had a commanding officer’s antipathy for the expression “one’s best”, but he couldn’t find the will to voice a critique, or anything else. Followed by the captain, he rushed inside.

Shots had been fired in the building; Bora smelt gunpowder before seeing the evidence. Behind a closed door, Mina barked ferociously: she had obviously been locked up to keep her from being felled or running away. The sergeant in charge stood at the foot of the stairs, whiter in the face than the wall behind him. “It was a raid, Herr Major, a regular raid. Headhunters, outranking us. They blocked both ends of the street. We thought they were after hidden Jews or locals, but instead they burst in. They fired into the lock when we wouldn’t turn in the key without signed orders just because they were asking for it. They broke his door down and forced him out, kicking and throwing punches —”

Headhunters were SS police. Bora heard himself shouting, as if someone else in his place were furious, as if he didn’t know in any case that the SS had authorization to proceed. “Without signed orders? Do you mean they barged in without accountability to anyone? Who led them? What unit did they belong to?”

“They wore
Adolf Hitler
cuffs, under an Untersturmführer. There was a staff car waiting below, which they pushed him into at gunpoint, and then they were gone.”

Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler
, the 1st SS Panzer Division. Trying to find out more and collect himself at the same time was a
challenge. “
Where to
, Sergeant? Out of town, into town? Did you follow them?”

The military police captain intervened. “They’d have had to shoot their way through the road blocks, Major. One of the men just told me he raced to the attic, and from there he saw the car take a left on Beleshivska. That’s all.”

An exasperated Bora ran up to the fourth floor, where Khan’s door had been smashed by rifle butts and the room showed evidence of a struggle. He was reasonably controlled when he came back down moments later. “Sergeant, what did the licence plate read? SS,
Wehrmacht
?”

“It was an Opel Kadett with a civilian plate, Herr Major.”

An Opel Kadett with a civilian plate. Bora already had an idea. He ordered the captain not to leave the premises until his return, and sped in the direction the car had reportedly taken. From Beleshivska Street one could, in theory, reach every location in downtown Kharkov, but once across the tracks he continued down Osnovinska, and travelled northwards the length of Seminary Boulevard to the great prison at the crossroads. He made no attempt to seek access there, and instead parked in the narrow side street by the boundary wall. On foot, he rounded the corner so that he could take a look at the vehicles parked along the sidewalk by the entrance of what had been the dreaded Soviet jail. Bora knew his
Amt VI-Ausland
Security Service Foreign Intelligence counterpart in Kharkov by sight, and had made it his business to know his licence plate as well. If his Opel was there, it more than suggested that he’d led the raid.

The Opel sat parked across the street. Striving to keep calm, Bora walked past it. It was useless touching the hood to check for residual warmth from the motor; the day was sunny, and enough time had passed since Tibyetsky had been taken. Given the time of day, however…

On the same side of the street and down a bit from the prison, on Kubitsky Alley, there was a small eatery where surviving
cooks and waiters from the Krasnaya and Moskva hotels now served German officers. It had been a restaurant connected to the nearby central rail station. Spartan, best known for its use as a temporary army morgue after the first battle for Kharkov: its pea-green walls and linoleum floor hadn’t changed since. Bora went straight there, looked into the anteroom, and when a faded waitress approached to show him to a seat, he strode past her to reach a table where a young man in civilian clothes sat eating half a roast chicken.

The man (more or less Bora’s age, very fair, with the sloping forehead of a badger) raised his eyes and continued to slice the meat on his plate. Bora did not salute, did not take a seat; he stood there less than five seconds before saying, “He defected to us; he is under Army guardianship.” His voice did not rise above conversation level; nothing in his appearance betrayed the rage he felt.

The plain-clothes Gestapo officer finished chewing the morsel he had in his mouth. His hands, delicate and fastidiously manicured, had buffed fingernails. When the serrated knife he held went through the chicken breast, clear juice oozed from the tender meat. “He was under
Abwehr
guardianship, Major. We heard out Brigadier General Tibyetsky and are fully aware of his requests. But he can just as well wait for your Zossen superior while in our care.”

“It’s unheard of. I demand to see him.”

“No. He’s not yours.”

“He’s not
yours
.”

“Cool your heels. You’re not the only interrogator on the face of Russia, you know.”

Those sitting at the other tables were connected with the prison one way or another; at the opposite end of the room, three
Leibstandarte
tank corps officers sipped beer and kept an eye in their direction. Bora only glanced at them. “Tibyetsky won’t eat or drink anything but his own provisions.”

“Then he’ll starve. We’re not in the habit of treating
Bolsheviks like nursery brats. Take your huff now and get out, Major Bora.”

“It doesn’t end here.”

“It
does
.”

In his mind’s eye, a well-placed kick overturned the table and sent chicken and plate flying. Outwardly, Bora turned on his heel without apparent haste and left.

Letting things settle, however, was the last thing he intended to do. He reached his vehicle and hightailed across town to the old Tschuguyev road, and, with just enough gasoline to get there, on to the Tractor Factory district and Jochen Scherer. After refuelling he headed south, mostly cutting across the open fields and at risk of driving over a mine, to Borovoye, where Lattmann walked with him to a safe distance from the radio shack to hear the news, and poured out a flood of obscenities as commentary.

“How the fuck did they find out we had Tibyetsky? All communication was encrypted!”

“They must have tapped our lines, know our new codes. Are we certain about our personnel?

“I vouch for mine here, Martin, and that’s all.”

“What about Kiev?”

Lattmann rolled his eyes.” I think the Kiev Branch is safe. Besides, you said you’d sought Zossen directly.”

“Right, and yesterday morning I was alone in the room when I did. Could it be someone in Zossen?”

“Not in Bentivegni’s own office, I don’t believe. But if we’re tapped, we’re tapped everywhere. Hell, this is fucking serious.”

“It was a ten-minute blitz, carried out as one does against hostile forces. They broke in as soon as I left for the rail station, so they might possibly have timed my departure. They couldn’t have known I’d stop by the district commissioner’s office on my way back; but even if I hadn’t, what with the train’s delay, what with having to take care of the general’s women instead of driving them directly to the detention centre, I wouldn’t
have returned to town in time. Not even if I drove straight to the station and back.”

“Well, if Khan refuses to negotiate with them —”

“The
Leibstandarte
tank men will be disappointed if they want to learn from him where we took the T-34: I never told him. But it depends on what he wants out of his defection, Bruno. Through
Amt VI
, the Reich Security Central Office may be able to offer it, or pretend they do. At the restaurant, that damned Odilo Mantau looked like the cat that ate the canary. Khan’s open show of familiarity with our nomenclature is odd; I don’t know if it’s arrogance or foolhardiness. If he’s an
Abwehr
operative or has otherwise been working for us, he probably came over because his cover was about to blow, but to me he wouldn’t say a thing: he was keeping everything for Colonel Bentivegni. If I’m correct, he’s ours by rights, and this morning’s raid is a direct attack against counterintelligence on Kaltenbrunner’s part.”

They were standing in a green patch of low grass, where Lattmann paced back and forth with his arms folded. “Oh, shit, oh, shit,” he hissed under his breath, red to the roots of his wiry crew cut, and began to chew on his nails. “Our asses are on the line. We saw how they brought down General Oster last month.”

“Not to speak of Old White Head.”

A mention of Admiral Canaris, exonerated in the spring from
Abwehr
direction, was sure to incense Lattmann even more. Never mind that to the eyes of younger officers the commanders were not without fault. “It’s starting to smell like a goddamned purge. What do
you
think?”

Bora looked away from his friend’s nail-chewing. He shook his head, which of course didn’t mean he had discounted that possibility. “They expect me to try to directly contact Bentivegni’s office or even III C, where Breuer is our liaison to RSHA, but I’ll bypass them. I’ll avoid Kiev as well. I’m off to Rogany, to see if the pilots there will let me use Luftwaffe short-wave equipment.
Some at II JG 3 are my brother Peter’s old colleagues; I trust they will.”

“The Central Security Office will track an incoming message to Bentivegni even if you call from an airfield!”

“But I won’t.” Bora reached for Lattmann’s left wrist and tilted it to read the time on his watch. Restarting and winding his own, he said, “I’ll get in touch with our people in Rome and let them scout out the colonel for me. It’s imperative for him or for another III C top rank to fly in as quickly as possible. On my way here I stopped by the Tractor Factory to warn Scherer in person, before someone got the idea of snatching the T-34 from under our noses. He and I handled the tank’s transfer directly, so they couldn’t possibly track us, and in fact the SS Tank Corps policemen never showed up on Lui Pastera Street. Besides, Field Marshal Manstein was better than his word: the T-34 had already boarded the train for Zaporozhye at dawn. Yes, at this hour Scherer and his men will be gone as well. Say, who have we got in Rome now?”

Lattmann gave respite to his battered fingertips and cracked his knuckles instead. “Until the end of the year it ought to be Ralph, Ralph Uckermann: you know him, he’s married to an Italian girl. He’s still recovering from his Stalingrad wounds, but he’s back on active duty. You watch, Martin, the Security Central Office will either close us down or take us over; I don’t know what’s worse.”

“
I
know what’s worse.” Bora started walking towards his vehicle. “You never saw me just now, Bruno. Don’t even tell Bentivegni if he asks.”

Evening came before the day’s chores were done. Bora reached Hospital 169 with a throbbing headache, the sign of a rising fever. Dr Mayr, the army surgeon, was in the operating room, and there was a long wait before they could talk. Bora spent an interminable hour and a half by the clock on the ward wall, walking up and down past a number of closed doors. Without
as much as removing his bloody gloves, the
Oberstarzt
heard his request and indifferently agreed to leave Platonov’s body in presentable shape, but otherwise acted ill-disposed towards the visitor, dismissing him with a “Yes, yes, goodnight.”

An entire wing of the hospital building, in imminent danger of collapse, was boarded off with nailed planks. The wards Bora walked past on his way out housed those maimed by mines and grenades, or severely injured while hunting (or being hunted by) partisan bands.
They’re tearing us apart piece by piece
, he gloomily told himself.
When it’s over, Russian soil will be fertilized by shreds of dismembered German flesh. We killed millions, they killed millions. All of us manure for the fields out there
.

In the vestibule, something stopped him cold. As if thoughts could materialize, his impression was that someone, disembodied from the knees up, was emerging at an angle from the earth, someone who halted when he did, stood still even as he did. It took him a few seconds to recognize the image of his own tall, spur-clad riding boots reflected in a broken mirror leaning tilted against the wall on the floor by the doorway.

It was unadvisable returning alone to Merefa in the dark; Bora did not bother to leave the hospital garden where he’d parked. He had a handful of hard tack in his vehicle: he chewed on it, drank from his canteen and fell asleep in the front seat.

4

Thursday 6 May, Merefa. Written at the outpost, 7.38 a.m.

Washed and shaved at Hospital 169 this morning, and sucked on the bottom of my fuel tank in order to arrive here. Kostya is off with the specific duty of getting me a 25-litre can of gasoline, even if he has to steal it. A review of more potential officers for the regiment begins at 8 a.m. sharp. The same was supposed to happen for non-coms this afternoon, but I have to pick up Colonel Bentivegni at Rogany at 4 p.m. (see below), so their interviews will be postponed. The non-coms are particularly important. I do hope I can get Nagel back, because I can trust him with the choice of filling the positions at those levels: one less thing to worry about. After Stalingrad he was promoted to Regimental Sergeant Major. I recommended him for a decoration as well, and will see that he gets it if he hasn’t already. My life will be easier if I have him, but it may be early June before he arrives.