Robert Craven - Get Lenin

She brought up her thick auburn hair, pinning it up to reveal a diamond necklace Kincaid had purchased in Amsterdam. Her neck was slender and long, the colour and texture of alabaster, the diamonds sparkling on it. Regaining her composure, she swept out into the dining cabin and into the open boozy leers of Schenker, Regan and Kincaid. All jumped at the chance to seat her, Kincaid winning by a hair's breadth.

Through Regan’s lens, Kincaid and Eva sat at one side, Schenker and three of Kincaid’s personal staff sitting opposite. Regan lined the film camera up, adjusted the overhead lights and roared, ‘Action!’

Through his eyepiece, framed by the flags and just below the banner, the group faced the camera, raising a toast, Kincaid beaming and acknowledging Schenker who bowed modestly. The camera seemed to love them both. Eva’s composure had returned and Regan had to hand it to the broad — she could act. She gave furtive doe-eyed glances at Kincaid while Schenker leant across flirting openly. She was going straight to the ‘A’ list as soon as this documentary was screened worldwide.

Regan panned the camera around the cabin, slowly capturing the flying boat’s splendour. The crew from the flight-deck appeared in shot, giving the thumbs-up. Later Regan would film the radio operator informing Berlin of their success, jump-cutting to Lenin’s coffin. As they were filming, another unit was preparing to film Goebbels and Himmler receiving the news. Kincaid’s team would then splice the film together at Goebbels’ private studios. The event was virtually being put together in real-time.

Once the toast was completed, Kincaid and Schenker rose to stand in front of the flags, to applause from around the table. An announcement came over the intercom from the cockpit; they

would be out of Russian airspace in two hours. Regan then turned his attention to the laboratory below. He thought about interviewing Zbarsky, maybe taking some of the sensationalism out of it by asking for a scientific slant on preserving Lenin. He hastily scribbled down some notes into a leather-bound notebook purchased from the same shop as his hero Ernest Hemingway. Pausing over the page, the idea slowly sunk into Jack Regan that he was standing on the cusp of history. He was about to become a legend and girls like Eva would flock to him.

Chainbridge asked Brandt to repeat his statement. The signal out of the Urals was weakening, voices flowing in and out in waves. A few years earlier, Klaus Brandt’s dossier had been passed to Chainbridge when he had been collating information on German Army officers. He was assessed to be a very capable soldier, cool headed and inclined to act in the army’s, rather than the Nazi party’s, interests. He was also a legend in sporting circles, particularly mountaineering and cross country skiing and shooting. An Olympic place should have been guaranteed in 1936, but he never made the German team. He was now apparently out of political favour and had been left for dead in the middle of Russia. Whatever happened next would be British collaboration with the enemy while German bombs were landing on English cities. The trick was to keep British Intelligence’s fingerprints off the whole operation.

‘No Russian assistance,’ hissed Brandt’s voice through the receiver.

De Witte shook his head. ‘If it went wrong, Churchill would have some explaining to do. Tell Stalin.’

Chainbridge decided to keep the War Office in the know. Comrade Joe couldn’t be contacted anyway. It was rumoured he had fled Moscow. ‘Can you retrieve the consignment?’ shouted Chainbridge down the microphone in fluent German.

There was a long pause. ‘Yes,’

Chainbridge looked at De Witte. ‘What have we got in their vicinity?’

‘A lot of diplomatic flights have departed Moscow. No-one was expecting the Germans to get this far,’

The Finnish Embassy staff in touch with their counterparts in the beleaguered capital checked UK diplomatic flights. De Witte, confirming the stranded unit’s co-ordinates, was also grasping the fact that an NKVD Officer was involved. He started to plan on detaining this individual and getting as much intelligence out of him as possible.

Chainbridge spoke to Churchill’s secretary to confirm that Lenin had been snatched. The Foreign Office was running twenty-four hours a day digesting recent news from Singapore about Japanese fleet movements, and now this was another situation for them to juggle.

Churchill had contacted Roosevelt’s administration in relation to flights within the USSR. A twenty minute pause on the line interspersed with clicks and hisses followed before the message came through: They had an American Transport still unloading lend-lease equipment for the Russian Army about two hundred miles ahead of German Army Group South in Ukraine. ‘Washington doesn’t want any US personnel involved,’ came the response.

Chainbridge answered in his under-stated way, remembering Eva’s photographs of Kincaid’s hidden envelope. ‘Tell them there’s a US national aiding and abetting the German High command by flying Lenin’s body out of Russia. According to our information, it’s Donald T. Kincaid. This information is solid. We have copies of signed correspondence between him and high ranking Nazi party members. Do they want a diplomatic incident to ensue with The Soviet Union?’

Twenty more tense minutes of hisses and clicks followed before Washington agreed to divert the plane.

‘Better tell them to get moving,’ said De Witte, speaking fluent German into the radio receiver instructing Brandt to stay put. He had to repeat it twice, stressing that no harm would come to Kravchenko.

The ambassador was uneasy. The embassy was still operating without any Finnish or German interference. No doubt the Finnish Secret Service would be keeping Berlin appraised. Timing was going to be a critical factor; the later Berlin knew about anything the better.

With the lockdown of the German underground, information from inside the Reich was down to a trickle. Chainbridge knew it was going to be down to luck if they could intercept Kincaid.

He went out into the freezing night and lit a cigarette. Coughing harshly, he reminded himself he had to cut down. The moon sat low on the horizon, placing the embassy in a ghostly light.

Kincaid’s private plane was probably out of Russian airspace now.

Colonel Valery Yvetschenko furrowed his brow, concerned at the lateness of the hour. He was a precise man in every way and the train transporting Lenin was overdue. He rewound his watch, a gift for his fortieth birthday, to ensure it was functioning correctly. Continuous phone and radio messages were being sent to Moscow without any reply, just a constant static.

It was possible, he mused, that Moscow had fallen to the Germans. Since the invasion, communication was at best unreliable and the Russian Army had been driven back to Moscow’s suburbs. It was also possible that the train had never left Moscow as radio contact throughout the journey had been intermittent. Tyumen was the fall-back position for the Politburo and Military Command using the Urals as a natural shield.

For months the Soviet industrial and weapons complex had been shipped in secret into Tyumen prior to the invasion. Entire populations of workers had been railed in on the hour every hour ahead of the German advance. Vast catacombs had been constructed beneath the Ural Mountains, more still being mined to accommodate further shipments. Plant and machinery were working round the clock to feed the struggling forces with equipment, ammunition and vehicles. With the River Tura frozen solid, rail links and chartered allied transport planes were the only way into and out of the facility.

If the rail link had been compromised, it was going to be a very long hard winter.