Sam Eastland - Berlin Red

One was a .455 calibre Webley revolver with solid brass handles, a gift from King George V of England to his cousin the Tsar, and passed on to Pekkala by Nicholas II as a token of his esteem. The second trophy was the emerald eye itself, which Stalin had kept in a purple velvet bag in his desk drawer. The jewelled emblem had been one of his most prized possessions. Often, over the years, when Stalin found himself alone in his red-carpeted office in the Kremlin, he would take out the badge and hold it in the palm of his hand, watching the jungle-green stone drink in the sunlight, as if it were a living thing.

Since that time, maintaining an uneasy truce with his former enemies, Pekkala had continued in his role as Special Investigator, answerable only to the ruler of the Russian people.

‘There you are!’ exclaimed a Red Army major as he stepped into the fuggy air of Cafe Tilsit. He was tall and wiry, with rosy cheeks and arching eyebrows which gave him an expression of perpetual astonishment.

On each sleeve of his close-fitting gymnastiorka tunic, he wore a red star etched out in gold-coloured thread, to indicate the rank of commissar. Riding breeches, the same dull colour as rotten apples, had been tucked into a set of highly polished knee-length boots. He strode across the room and joined Pekkala at his table.

While they were openly curious about Pekkala, the diners at the cafe immediately averted their gaze from this officer, having recognised the red stars of the commissar upon his sleeves. Now they busied themselves with scraping dirty fingernails, or reading scraps of newspaper or with a sudden fascination for their soup.

The man who sat before Pekkala now was that same officer who had trudged through the Siberian wilderness to deliver the news that Stalin required his services again.

They had been working side by side for many years now, each having learned to tolerate the eccentricities of the other.

Kirov reached across the table, picked up the half-drunk mug of kvass, took a sip and winced. ‘For breakfast?’ he asked.

Pekkala answered with a question of his own. ‘What brings you here at this ungodly hour?’

‘I came to deliver a message.’

‘Then deliver it, Major Kirov,’ said Pekkala.

‘We are wanted at the Kremlin.’

‘Why?’ asked Pekkala.

‘Whatever it is, it can’t wait,’ replied Kirov, rising to his feet.

At the V-2 rocket site, General Hagemann’s technicians had just completed the dismantling of the mobile launch platform, which they referred to as a ‘table’. The heavy scaffolding, bearing the scorch marks of numerous ignition blasts, had been stacked upon the Meillerwagen, which had been fitted with a double set of rear wheels to take the extra weight of a fully loaded rocket.

The technicians, using their helmets as seats, sat in the road smoking cigarettes which, these days, consisted mostly of corn silk and acorns, while they waited for the order to move out. Assembling and dismantling the V-2 platforms had become second nature to these men. It had to, since their lives depended on the speed with which they worked. During the hours of daylight, once the enemy had spotted the tell-tale fire of a V-2 launch, it was only a matter of time before artillery was brought to bear on the position, or fighter planes equipped with armour-piercing bullets roared in at treetop level. It was the job of these technicians to be long gone by then, and they required little encouragement to carry out their work.

But night-time launches were different, especially this far from the front line. They did not have to fear the prying eyes of artillery spotters, and no fighter-bombers would take to the skies for low-level missions unless they could see where they were going.

For the men of the V-2 programme, darkness had become the only thing they trusted in the world. That and their ability to vanish before the heat had even left the metal of the launch scaffolds.

General Hagemann waited by the communications truck, in which an Enigma machine, set to the same rotor configuration as the one on the trawler, would receive the message sent by Captain Hildebrand, giving the coordinates of this particular’s rocket’s crash site.

It was to be the last test launch for at least a week. The reason for this was that the bulk of available V-2 rockets were being pulled back from their launch sites in Holland, where they had been used for bombarding London and the port of Antwerp, and were now to be redirected towards targets in the east. Overseeing the safe transport of the rockets, as well as scouting out new launch sites, was about to become a full-time job for Hagemann.

His troubles did not end there.

Targeting the Russians would only increase the pressure placed upon him by the High Command to solve the guidance problems which had plagued the V-2 programme from the start. Thanks to wildly over-optimistic predictions from Propaganda Minister Goebbels, the German public had been led to believe that miracle weapons were being developed which would turn the tide of the entire war. Even some members of the High Command believed that such things might be possible. But time was running out. Soon not even miracles would save them.

By the small dusty red light of the radio’s main console, Hagemann watched the operators scribbling down the trawler’s message as it emerged from the Enigma machine. It was a longer message than usual. Normally, Hildebrand just relayed the coordinates of the V-2’s splash point. Hagemann immediately began to worry that something had gone wrong.

The radio operator finished transcribing the message, tore off the page on which he had written it down and handed the page to the general.

The first thing Hagemann noticed was that there were no numbers written down, which would have indicated the coordinates where the rocket, or ‘needle’ as it was always referred to in the messages, had landed. These numbers would then have been tallied with the adjustments made for this particular flight, indicating whether or not they had improved the V-2’s accuracy.

Instead, the message read: ‘Needle overshot to north-north-east. No splash point indicated. Unusual exhaust pattern observed.’

When Hagemann read those last words, his whole face went numb. ‘Reply,’ he croaked, barely able to speak.

The radio operator rested his first two fingers on the keyboard of the Enigma machine. ‘Ready,’ he said quietly.

‘Explain unusual exhaust pattern,’ Hagemann told the operator.

The operator tapped in the four words.

They waited.

‘What’s taking them so long?’ snapped Hagemann.

Before the operator could reply, a new message flickered across the Enigma’s light board.

Hurriedly, the operator decoded the message. ‘It says “Silver cloud in halo”.’

The general’s heart slammed into his ribcage. ‘Silver cloud?’

‘That is correct, Herr General. Shall I ask for further clarification?’ asked the radio man.

‘No,’ replied Hagemann, barely able to speak. ‘Send a new message, this one to FHQ.’

The operator glanced up. Those three letters stood for Fuhrerhauptquartier and meant that the message would be going directly to Hitler’s private switchboard. He hesitated, unsure that he had heard the general correctly.

‘Is there a problem?’ barked Hagemann.

‘No, Herr General!’ the radio man waited, fingers poised over the keys.

‘The message should read: “Needle overshot Target Area”.’

‘That’s all?’

‘No.’ But then Hagemann hesitated.

‘Herr General?’ asked the signalman.

‘Diamond Stream observed,’ said Hagemann. ‘Add that to the message. Send it now.’

Hitler had been waiting for that message for almost two years. Hagemann just hoped to God those boys floating out there on the Baltic were right about what they had seen.