Sam Eastland - Berlin Red

For a man of such mythic status, Lazarev’s appearance came as something of a disappointment. He was short and hunched, with pock-marked cheeks so pale they seemed to confirm the rumours that he never travelled above ground, but migrated like a mole through secret tunnels known only to him beneath the streets of Moscow. He wore a tan shop coat, whose frayed pockets sagged from the weight of bullets, screwdrivers and gun parts. He wore this tattered coat buttoned right up to his throat, giving rise to another rumour; namely that he wore nothing underneath. This story was reinforced by the sight of Lazarev’s bare legs beneath the knee-length coat. He had a peculiar habit of never lifting his feet from the floor as he moved about the armoury, choosing instead to slide along like a man condemned to live on ice. He shaved infrequently, and the slivers of beard that jutted from his chin resembled the spines of a cactus. His eyes, watery blue in their shallow sockets, showed his patience with a world that did not understand his passion for the gun and the wheezy, reassuring growl of his voice, once heard, was unforgettable.

As soon as Lazarev caught sight of Kirov’s highly polished boots descending the stairs, he reached below the counter, whose top was strewn with gun parts, oil cans, pull-through cloths and brass-bristled brushes, coiled like the tails of newborn puppies, and lifted out a Hungarian-made Femaru Model 37 pistol, still nestled in its brown leather holster. The weapon had been taken from the body of a Hungarian tank officer on the outskirts of Stalingrad in the winter of 1942 and was delivered to Lazarev for just such an occasion as this. In preparation for Kirov’s arrival, Lazarev had cleaned the weapon and loaded its 7-round magazine with freshly oiled 7.62 ammunition.

Kirov stared at the weapon, his eye drawn to the curious eyelash-shaped extension on the magazine, designed to rest against the user’s little finger when holding the gun.

Lazarev picked up the Femaru and held it out. The metal gleamed blue in the harsh light of the bulb above their heads. ‘You will find this less elegant than your issue Tokarev,’ he explained, ‘but just as lethal under the circumstances you are likely to encounter. More importantly, it is what they’ll be expecting if you are ever searched, the point being not to use the gun at all if you can help it.’

Kirov unfastened his officer’s belt, the heavy brass buckle emblazoned with a cut-out star, slid off the holster containing his issue Tokarev automatic and placed it on the table. Then, he replaced it with the Hungarian pistol. ‘Where do I sign?’ he asked.

‘No need!’ Lazarev waved away the thought with a brush of his hands.

Kirov narrowed his eyes. ‘But we always have to sign for weapons, and I know you are a stickler for the rules.’

Lazarev began to look flustered. ‘They called me from upstairs,’ he explained. ‘They said there was no need for you to sign.’

‘Who called?’ asked Kirov.

Lazarev rolled his shoulders, as if he had a crick in his spine. ‘Upstairs,’ he repeated quietly.

‘Why would there be no signature?’ demanded Kirov.

Lazarev reached across the counter top and rested his hand on Kirov’s shoulder. ‘You can sign when you return it,’ he said, a pained expression on his face. ‘How about that?’

Mystified at this breach of protocol, Kirov headed for the door. Then he stopped and turned. ‘I almost forgot,’ he said. ‘What about a weapon for Pekkala?’

Lazarev smiled. ‘Do you honestly think you can persuade him to give up that Webley of his?’

Kirov understood immediately what an impossible task that would be.

On his way to see his wife in the records office at the top of the building, Kirov stopped at the third floor, where he picked up two sets of identity papers. They consisted of a Hungarian passport, a small, sand-coloured booklet printed with the Hungarian crown and shield and the words ‘Magyar Kiralysag’ and a German Reisepass , containing various travel permits, stamps and handwritten validations. There were also driving licences, food ration books and Hungarian Fascist Party membership cards. Kirov marvelled at the attention to detail that had gone into preparing the books. There must have been half a dozen different inks used in signatures on the pale green pages of the passport, and the books themselves had been worn down in such a way that they even matched the contours of having been carried in a man’s chest pocket. If these documents had once belonged to someone else, Kirov could find no trace of alteration in the pictures, which had been heat-sealed into the identity books, cracking the emulsion of the little photograph and overlaying Kirov’s face with an image of an eagle from a registration office in the Berlin suburb of Spandau.

‘You’d better have this, too,’ said the clerk, setting before him a stack of German Reichsmark notes. ‘Spend it quickly, if you have the chance,’ he advised. ‘Pretty soon, it won’t be worth the paper it is printed on.’

Kirov picked up the brick of cash and turned to leave.

But the clerk called him back. ‘You’re not done yet!’ he said. ‘You’ll need another set of clothes.’

Led through the office to a room at the back, Kirov found himself in a room full of garments, all of them in various states of disrepair. Here, he was handed an old set of clothes by an even older clerk whom he had never seen before.

The man wore a tape measure around his neck, although he never put it to use. Instead, with a squinting of one watery eye, he judged the length of Kirov’s arms and legs and the width of his narrow chest, of which the major was slightly ashamed.

As Kirov held out his arms, the clerk piled on shirts and trousers and a tattered coat for him to try on.

‘I do have things at home besides my uniform,’ Kirov complained, his nose twitching at the smell of other men’s sweat and dogs and unfamiliar cigarettes which had sunk into the cloth.

‘But not like these,’ explained the clerk. ‘You’d be spotted as a Russian the minute you arrived in Berlin.’

‘But how?’ asked Kirov. ‘Clothes are just clothes, after all.’

‘No.’ The clerk shook his head. ‘And I will prove it to you. See here,’ he said, holding out the collar of a shirt with a Budapest maker’s label. ‘The collar of a Hungarian shirt is more pointed than a Russian shirt and the way that the sleeves are attached here is different from what you would find on a German shirt. Even the way the buttons are attached, in two straight lines of thread as opposed to a cross are different from, say, on an English shirt.’ With his thumb, he levered up one tiny mother-of-pearl disc, letting it wink in the light to show the manner in which it had been stitched. ‘Even if those around you aren’t specifically aware of these details, they will nevertheless sense that something is not right. These clothes were carefully gathered from people who had travelled to Hungary before the war.’

‘Didn’t anybody have anything newer?’ asked Kirov. ‘Or cleaner, for that matter?’

The clerk laughed. ‘That is all part of the disguise! Nobody has new clothes in Berlin any more, or Budapest for that matter, and they haven’t for quite some time. Nor do they have the opportunity to clean their clothes as often as they should. Believe me, Major Kirov, you may not like the way you look when I am finished with you, but you will fit right in where you are going.’

‘Can you do the same thing for other countries?’ he asked.

‘Of course!’ boomed the old man and he began to sweep his hands around the room. ‘Over there is England. There is Spain, France. Turkey. Wherever you go, Major, my job is to make you invisible!’