Sam Eastland - Berlin Red

‘You must be mistaken,’ Lilya insisted.

‘But I’m not,’ said Olga Komarova. ‘I saw them drag her body from the ashes. She was still holding that camera of hers. Aside from you and that school, I think it was the only thing she valued in this world.’

The next day, Lilya Simonova went back to the bank manager and told him what she had learned.

‘There’s a simple explanation,’ said the man. ‘She must have left it to you in her will. The executors of her estate must have arranged for these payments to be made.’

Lilya took him at his word but, even though it was a tidy explanation, her suspicions were never completely laid to rest. Then, in June of 1941, when the German army launched its campaign against Russia, banking routes between Moscow and Paris, which had been occupied by Germany for the previous year, shut down and the money stopped coming in as abruptly as it had first appeared.

An hour after leaving Lubyanka, Kirov was back at the office on Pitnikov Street.

There, Pekkala informed them that a car was already on its way to transport them to a military airfield on the outskirts of Moscow. As yet, neither of the men knew exactly how they would be arriving in Berlin.

Gloomily, Kirov slouched in the chair by the stove. Little clouds of raw cotton peeked from the chair’s tattered upholstery. Kirov’s condition did not look much better than that of his chair. He had already traded in his uniform and was now dressed in the Hungarian clothes he had been given. He looked depressingly shabby, unemployed and unemployable.

‘You don’t look so bad,’ said Pekkala, trying to cheer him up.

‘That’s easy for you to say,’ grumbled Kirov. ‘You get to wear your own kit.’

‘It’s because I have a certain universal quality,’ Pekkala announced grandly.

‘He said you were a barbarian.’

‘There are worse things to be called.’

Realising that he was never going to gain the upper hand in this conversation, Kirov turned his attention to the pistol given to him by Lazarev. ‘I can’t understand it,’ he said. ‘You have to sign for everything in that place! And you get in all kinds of trouble if you don’t return every little scrap of equipment you are issued. Why would they change their minds, all of a sudden?’

‘What would be the point of having you sign for a gun you will never return?’ asked Pekkala.

‘But of course I would return it!’ protested Kirov.

‘Not if we don’t make it back,’ replied Pekkala.

Kirov stared at him in amazement. ‘Do you mean they don’t expect us to survive?’

‘It looks that way to me.’

Kirov launched himself to his feet, as if he meant to march back to NKVD headquarters and demand an explanation. Then, realising the futility of such a gesture, he slumped back into his chair.

Just then, they heard the squeak of brakes.

Pekkala walked over to the window and glanced down into the street. ‘It’s time for us to leave,’ he said.

As Kirov and Pekkala set off on their journey to Berlin, Inspector Leopold Hunyadi had only just arrived in the city, still wearing the rags of his prison uniform.

Now he stood face to face with Adolf Hitler.

For this meeting, Hitler had chosen the rubble-strewn Chancellery gardens, where he was in the habit of walking his German shepherd dog, Blondi, at least once every day. He had dismissed his usual escort of armed guards, determined to keep his time with Hunyadi as secret as possible.

‘Hunyadi,’ muttered Hitler, drawing out the man’s name like a growl. ‘What have I done to deserve this?’

Hunyadi had no idea what Hitler was talking about, but it occurred to him that if he so much as asked, he might find himself on the next plane back to Flossenburg. So, for now at least, he held his tongue.

Hitler began to walk along the pathway, which had once been lined with flowers but now resembled a gangplank laid across a cratered field of mud. The dog walked on ahead, straining at its leash.

‘There is a spy,’ continued Hitler.

Hunyadi looked around at the jagged teeth of broken windows. ‘Here?’ he asked. ‘Now?’

Hitler shook his head, then jerked his chin towards the ground. ‘Down there, in the bunker.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Information has leaked out. The Allies are broadcasting it on the radio, as if to taunt me for my ignorance. I cannot allow it to continue. That is why I brought you here.’

‘You want me to find the spy?’

‘Exactly.’

‘But what about your own security service?’

Hitler breathed out sharply. ‘If Rattenhuber and his gang of Munich Bulls had done their jobs when they were supposed to, you would not be standing there now.’

‘No,’ answered Hunyadi. ‘I would be dead.’

Hitler glanced at him and shrugged. ‘Death awaits us all, Hunyadi.’

Hunyadi cleared his throat. ‘If I may ask, why call on me for this? I do not see why you would place your faith in me, especially since you yourself ordered my execution for what you have termed crimes against the state.’

‘Ah!’ sighed Hitler, resting his hand briefly on Hunyadi’s shoulder. ‘Yours was a crime inspired by love, misguided of course, but understandable in the circumstances. It is because of this love that I know I can trust you to carry out your task.’

‘I don’t understand,’ said Hunyadi.

‘At my request, your wife Franziska has been taken into custody by some friends who have remained loyal to me among the Spanish authorities.’

Hunyadi felt the bile rise in his throat. ‘On what charges?’ he spluttered.

‘I am sure they have come up with something,’ remarked Hitler.

‘Why don’t you just take me back to Flossenburg and hang me?’ demanded Hunyadi. ‘Why must you put me through this?’

‘Because, my old friend, I no longer know whom to trust,’ Hitler stamped his heel into the sandy soil, as if to trample out a fire which had broken out beneath his feet, ‘down there in the bowels of the Reich. If I give this mission to a member of my own security, who is to say I am not entrusting an investigation to the very people who should be investigated? No, I needed someone from outside. Someone I know will not smile in my face and then stab me in the back, as others have tried to do. Don’t you see, Hunyadi? It is your hatred which convinces me that you are the right man for the job, and your love for that woman which has guaranteed your loyalty.’ Now he fixed Hunyadi with a stare. ‘Do you honestly mean to turn me down?’

‘Under the circumstances,’ answered the detective, ‘I don’t see how I can.’

Hitler nodded with satisfaction. ‘Then it is settled.’ He reached into his tunic and removed a thick envelope. ‘Here is everything I know about the case.’ He handed the envelope to Hunyadi.

‘If what you say is true,’ said the detective, ‘I may need to question some very high-ranking people.’

‘Yes.’

‘I doubt they will appreciate the intrusion.’

‘Indeed they won’t, but you have my word they will endure it. In the envelope I have just given you,’ said Hitler, ‘you’ll find a number that will connect you directly to the main switchboard in the bunker. If anybody tries to obstruct you in your duties, no matter who they are, just have them call and I will personally explain the situation.’

They had reached a place where they could go no further. The path was blocked by a huge piece of smashed masonry and the ground beyond had been cratered by explosions.

From the moment he had set eyes on Hitler that day, Hunyadi’s first thought had been to kill the man, with a rock, with his bare hands, with his teeth, and then to simply vanish among the ruins. But what Hitler had said about Franziska paralysed him. He had no doubt that, even with the Allies and the Red Army closing in upon Berlin and the German army little more than a heap of wreckage propped up by pensioners and teenage boys, there were some still prepared to carry out their Fuhrer’s wishes. When these men learned of what he’d done, Franziska would be dead within the hour.