Sam Eastland - Berlin Red

‘There is always a chance,’ said Pekkala.

An image appeared in Kirov’s mind of the two of them, shuffling from house to house and knocking at every door they came to. It would take them the rest of their lives. Kirov paused before he spoke again. It did not surprise him that Pekkala did not want to turn back, especially with what was now at stake. He knew he would have to choose his words carefully if he was to have any hope of persuading the Inspector to come home. ‘Inspector,’ he began, as he attempted to reason with Pekkala, ‘please consider the possibility that your judgement might be clouded in this instance.’

‘It might well be,’ replied Pekkala.

Encouraged by the Inspector’s admission, Kirov felt it safe to go on.

‘When morning comes,’ he said firmly, ‘we’ll return to the Soviet lines.’

‘Whatever you think of my judgement,’ Pekkala told him, ‘I have come too far to turn back now.’

‘But it isn’t so far!’ Kirov tried to reason with him. ‘It can’t be more than a day or two if we keep up a steady pace. All we have to do is head east. The Red Army is massing on the Seelow Heights. Once we reach the River Oder, we’ll be safe.’

‘Safe?’ echoed Pekkala. ‘How safe do you think you will be if we return to the Kremlin empty-handed?’

‘But we won’t,’ insisted Kirov. ‘As soon as we reach the Soviet lines, we can make contact with Special Operations in Moscow. They can reschedule the rendezvous at the safe house and find another guide to take us there. We’ll make it to Berlin, Inspector. It just might take a little longer than we thought.’

‘That is the problem, Major Kirov.’ Pekkala picked up a stick and jabbed it at the embers. ‘It might only be a matter of hours before Hunyadi tracks her down. So even if we did have the time to spare, Lilya Simonova does not.’

Having tried and failed to reason with Pekkala, Kirov realised that he had only one card left to play. ‘Inspector,’ he said, ‘by the authority of Comrade Stalin, I am giving you an order.’

For a moment, there was only the sound of the wind in the branches of the trees.

‘And if Stalin was here with us now,’ Pekkala gestured at a patch of dirt beside the fire, ‘do you think that would change my opinion?’

Kirov stared at the place where Pekkala was pointing, half expecting Stalin to rise like some hideous mushroom from the patchwork collage of dead leaves. ‘What would you have us do, Inspector?’

‘Give me until the deadline for the rendezvous has passed,’ answered Pekkala. ‘That’s all the time I’ll need.’

‘How on earth do you expect to find her in three days, with no idea of where she might be hiding?’ asked Kirov.

‘You let me worry about that,’ replied Pekkala.

That same night, Peter Garlinski, former supervisor of British Special Operations Relay Station 53A, was woken by a heavy hand rapping on his Moscow flat door.

Bleary-eyed with sleep, Garlinski went to see what the fuss was about and found himself face to face with a sergeant of NKVD, the Soviet Internal Security Agency. The sergeant was crisply dressed, with dark blue trousers and a gymnastiorka tunic. Across his waist, he wore a heavy leather belt with a plain iron buckle and a Tokarev in its polished leather holster.

Garlinski was simultaneously worried by the sight of this man and grateful for the visit. He had not spoken to anyone since the arrival of Inspector Pekkala some days before.

‘I have come to get you out of here!’ announced the sergeant, a rosy-cheeked man with a double chin and thick, dark eyebrows. His short-fingered hands, the colour of raw pork, were criss-crossed with scars across the knuckles, as if he had once punched his way through a window.

‘Out of here?’ Garlinski asked suspiciously. ‘Where to?’

The sergeant poked his head into the room. ‘Some place better than this.’

‘Finally!’ sighed Garlinski.

‘Pack your things,’ said the sergeant.

‘I have no things.’

‘All the better. Follow me!’

They walked towards the gate, the sergeant’s iron heel plates sparking off the flint stones of the courtyard. Outside in the street, a car was parked, its engine running.

The sergeant got behind the wheel.

Garlinski climbed into the back.

‘We have to make a stop at Lubyanka,’ said the sergeant, as he put the car in gear and set off down the road. ‘You haven’t been debriefed yet.’

‘I know!’ Garlinski replied excitedly. ‘I’ve been waiting for that.’

‘It won’t take long,’ said the sergeant. ‘Then we can get you to your new apartment.’

‘What about employment?’ asked Garlinski. ‘I think I could be very useful. I’m trained as a decoder, you know. I was head of a listening post back in England.’

The sergeant glanced at him in the rear-view mirror and smiled broadly. ‘Sounds like you’ll have your pick of assignments. Not like me. I have no special talents.’

Garlinski found his gaze drawn to the scars on the sergeant’s knuckles, but he could make nothing of them and soon turned his attention to the sight of the people walking in the streets, passing through the cones of street-lamp light, still bundled in their winter scarves and furs.

The car pulled in to the Lubyanka courtyard.

Garlinski climbed out and looked around. He had heard that Lubyanka was once a fashionable neo-baroque building and it was still possible to see how grand it must have been before the Revolution. Now the windows were covered by angled metal shields, which prevented anyone from looking out, and strong lights glared down from the rooftops, obscuring his view of the sky.

A shudder passed through Garlinski. Even though he knew that he was being welcomed as a hero for his many years of service to the Soviet cause, the Lubyanka was still a place of nightmares for anyone who knew its history.

‘Where do I go?’ asked Garlinski.

‘I’ll walk you in,’ said the sergeant.

They entered the building and Garlinski was made to sign a register. The page on which he wrote was partially covered by a heavy metal screen, which hid all but the space in which he wrote his name.

‘This way.’ The sergeant beckoned for Garlinski to follow him.

The two men made their way downstairs and along a narrow corridor lined with pale green painted doors. Along the way, they passed two guards, with a prisoner shuffling along between them.

The prisoner, a young man with coal-black hair and narrow eyes, immediately turned to face the wall as Garlinski and the sergeant walked by.

There was complete silence in the corridor. Even the floor on which they walked had been covered with thick grey carpeting which dampened the sound of their footsteps.

Garlinski wanted to ask how much further they would have to go but the quiet was so threatening and profound that he did not dare to speak.

At the end of the corridor, they came to another door, which was made of dark, heavy panels and had a slightly arched top.

‘It’s the old wine cellar,’ whispered the sergeant, as he reached into his pocket for the key. ‘The men who worked at this place, back when it was still an insurance company, kept a king’s ransom in bottles down here for entertaining their wealthy clients. That’s all gone now, though, men and bottles both.’ He swung open the door and gestured grandly. ‘After you, Comrade Garlinski.’

Garlinski stepped inside. The ceiling of the room was arched and the walls were made of brick. The floor had been laid with tiles and there were shallow gutters running along the edges of the floor. He wondered why a wine cellar needed gutters. He looked around for furniture, but there was none. Not even a chair in which to sit.