The Berkut (21 page)

"How did he seem?"

"Friendly, quiet. Like there was a lot on his mind. But he was always friendly to the enlisted men. He was a corporal before he went into politics."

"His voice was the same? His hair? His eyes?" "
Yes ... well, sort of. His eyes
were different." "The color of them?"

"No, not the color. It was their intensity .... " Rudolf paused.
"They weren't bright. He stared right at me and I didn't turn away.
That
was unusual. The Fü
hrer made you feel uncomfortable when he looked directly at you."

"But not this time?"

"No," Rudolf whispered, almost as if his subconscious were trying to process the information.

"Was there anything else different?" "He didn't know my name."

"Why should he?"

"He knew my name before."

"Was there a special reason for this?"

"No, he knew the names of all his people. The FUhrer's memory for names was fantastic," Rudolf said admiringly. "He was famous for it."

"His memory lapse upset you." "Just for a moment."

"But you forgave him?"

"I said to myself, 'He's got the whole Third Reich to worry about; why should he remember your name?'"

"Tell me about the SS colonel."

"I can't. He stayed behind the FUhrer and 1 didn't dare look too hard. Those SS colonels are tough."

Petrov probed for more information about the colonel, but came up with little. To stand almost directly in front of another human being and not be noticed was a skill, not an accident.

"Are you tired now?" "Yes. And hungry."

"Just a bit more." Petrov's voice dripped with concern. "I have

only a few more questions; then you can rest."

"Thank you."

"When you went to your new post, what time were you relieved?" "Fifteen hundred hours precisely."

"Did your comrade ever come back?"

"Never."

"Not even later that night?" "We never saw him again."

"What do you think happened to him?" "Deserted. His post was by an outside door." "Why do you think that?"

"We all wanted to get out!"

"Even you?"

"Especially me."

"But you stayed."

"I was afraid to run away."

"I think it was your sense of duty that kept you there, Sergeant," Petrov said magnanimously.

Rudolf shook his head. "I was afraid. I didn't want to die out there."

"But you escaped later?" "Yes."

"What's the difference?"

"There were a lot of us. I felt safer in a group." "Yet you were captured anyway."

"Yes, but alive."

"You were captured on the other side of the river on the morning of May-" Gnedin held up three fingers. "May third."

"I'm not sure. It was after they fucked."

Petrov's eyes widened. He looked to Gnedin for an explanation as he spoke to the guard. "I don't understand."

"The Russian offic
e
r. I was in some rocks. She and one of her men came back to where I was hiding. They took off their clothes and fucked. It was still morning. They enjoyed it."

"And they saw you?"

"Yes, after they were done. The man took a piss near me, then they found me. She sat on my face."

Petrov looked baffled. Bailov giggled and fought back a laugh. "A female Russian officer
sat on your face?"
Petrov's eyebrows were standing vertically.

"With her cunt. Then the man kicked me in the balls. They beat me up. I'm still sore." He began to show them, but Petrov again caught his arm.

"Hitl
er handed your coat to you with his left hand?" "The left."

"And he walked without a limp." "He walked normally."

"And you stared him down?" "It was odd."

"And he couldn't remember your name?"

"I had to tell him what it was, but I didn't mind."
"And the other guard was never
seen again?"

"I didn't see him."

"What was his name?"

"Holzmeyer. Ernst. He was a corporal." "He was a friend of yours?"

"No."

Petrov turned to Gnedin. "Well?"

"We all heard him. It's got to be the truth. The brain retains a lot of information that we can't bring to the conscious mind on demand. Hypnotism opens some kind of door. I don't know exactly how it works~ but it does."

"In this state could he lie to us?"

"With training it can be done~ but I don't think this one could.
We can test him."

The look on Petrov's face told Gnedin to proceed.

"Rudolf~ in a moment I'm going to wake you up and you'll feel completely refreshed. Does that sound good to you?"

"Very good."

"When you awake~ you won't remember any of this. But first I want you to tell me something. The absolute truth. You understand?"

"Y
es sir."

"Do you like women?" "Very much."

"Did you have relations with the women in the Chancellery?" "Yes."

"How often?"

"Every shift I was of
f." "Do you masturbate?" Rudolf
paused. "Yes." "Often?"

His head dipped. "Yes."

"Tell me what you were thinking when the Russian officer and her soldier were making love."

Rudolf mumbled something and Gnedin asked him to repeat it. "I wanted to take his place."

"What did you want to do to her?"

Petrov stepped forward before the German could answer. "That's enough~ Doctor~" he said. "I see what you are driving at; if he'd tell us that~ the rest has to be the truth. Bring him out of it. I'm going to find Rivitsky."

25 – May 15, 1945, 11:15 A.M.

Logan rode his bicycle as far up the mountain trail as he could, but the trail ended abruptly at the base of a rock field, so he discarded the rusty vehicle and set off on foot through the rocks. It had been humid all night, and now the clouds were rolling overhead in sinister formations. When he reached the middle of the slanting field, the rain descended as if a bucket had been emptied, and in seconds he was drenched. The dust covering the rocks turned slippery, and Logan, trying to hurry, slipped and went down hard, lacerating his knee and skinning both hands.

Finding partial cover under a huge boulder, Logan tore off the bottom of a pants leg and examined the bloody knee. It was a deep cut, down to the bone, and layers of yellow fat showed when he pushed on one side of the wound: it would need stitches, he knew, and lots of them. Of all the rotten times to get hurt. He'd been sent from Zurich to deliver a coded message to Beau Valentine, code name Crawdad. Logan had been unco
mfortable from the moment he wa
s given the assignment; he was an office man, an analyst, paid to work with his brain, not his body, and this was the first time since his arrival in Switzerland two years before that he had been asked to do anything outside his normal job. Aside from the discomfort of traipsing around in the mountains, the worst part of this assignment was having to leave the amenities of Zurich; right now the
ass
was in high gear try
ing to find out what the Russians were up to in eastern Germany, and the information was coming in by bits and pieces.

After checking the wound, Logan decided he was wrong; the worst part of this assignment was that he was going to have to deal directly with Beau Valentine, and nobody in his right mind would relish that reality. It was universally agreed that Crawdad was the most unpredictable and unorthodox man in
the ass
.
When he was given a job to do, he did not care what rules he had to violate in order to finish it.

Now, in the most foreboding terrain Logan had ever seen and in weather conditions that would make the hardiest of men cringe, he would have to find and deliver a message to the legendary Valentine, who openly professed hatred for all OSS office personnel, except his own case officer, who had politely declined the opportunity to visit his charge in his native habitat. It was left to him, and all he had to go on was a crude set of directions and an old photograph of Valentine.

His knee, Logan realized, would need expert medical attention, and if he did not keep moving, the leg would stiffen and cripple him so that he would be unable to move. For now the wound was numb, so he got to his feet, pulled his collar up and moved out into the rain. In the distance, behind a range of mountains, there was the rattle of thunder, like the crackling of snare drums played in an uneven rhythm.

Finally reaching the end of the boulder field, Logan found a muddy area where three trails intersected. His instructions had included the rocks, but not this confluence of trails, and he had no idea which .one to follow. As he considered what he knew about the location of the camp where Valentine lived with his Italian and Yugoslavian partisans, a large tan cow came waddling round a bend of the southernmost trail, followed by two young boys whacking at the animal's haunches with long switches. Each of them had a shotgun slung over his back, and when the boys saw him, they quickly unslung their weapons and pointed them at him.

"I'm looking for the American," Logan told them in Italian. They smiled, reslung their weapons and motioned for him to follow. Falling into step, he hobbled along the trail behind them and their cow, his leg beginning to hurt badly. The thunder was closer now and had increased to bass-drum proportions; with it lightning began to flash, its tentacles seeming to touch distant parts of the landscape.

It took nearly two hours to reach the camp built into the rocks on the side of a steep gorge, a collection of crude canvas and corrugated metal shelters, some as simple as lean-tos. A few pigs waddled around and chickens pecked near the dwellings. As the three got closer, armed men and women began to appear, and soon a crowd formed around Logan. Occasionally someone would poke at him with the barrel of a rifle, but he reminded himself to maintain control of his emotions. He had been briefed about partisans. They had no allegiance save to themselves and one another; if you did something to offend them, they might kill you. This information had chilled him then, but now it helped steady him as they pawed at him.

As they walked deeper into the encampment he counted nearly forty dwellings; there seemed to be a hundred or more people in the knot around him, and no doubt there were more still unseen, a much larger force than he had reckoned. They were dressed in parts of uniforms from several different armies, and some of the men wore brightly colored vests.

At the end of the encampment the group stopped and looked up toward the rocks. A huge man wearing a baseball cap was standing on a rickety porch, staring down with a wide smile. Immediately Logan recognized Valentine, who was holding a white chicken in his right hand. Suddenly, with almost imperceptible rotations of his wrist, he began to spin the chicken like a propeller until it turned into a blur and some feathers flew away from it. After a few seconds Valentine stopped spinning the fowl, popped its head off, and held the bird away from him so that its blood would spurt free. The crowd laughed and the messenger suddenly felt woozy, but before he could collapse, two partisans caught him and carried him up to the dwelling.

Valentine swept a table dean with his arm, and told the men to place Logan on it. When he was in position, Valentine pushed him onto his back, ripped off the bloody pants leg and began poking roughly at the cut, making Logan flinch. "Crawdad?" he asked feebly.

"Call me Beau," Valentine said happily. "Get my kit," he told one of the partisans, who rummaged through a pile of boxes in a corner, eventually fishing out a black leather bag. Valentine placed it on the table, opened it and extracted several instruments and a roll of gauze. Tearing off a section, he draped it over Logan's leg above the wound.

Other partisans were now pushing into the small cabin. "This isn't going to hurt," Valentine announced. "Me," he added after a pause, and the men roared their appreciation of his joke.

"Do you have a doctor?" Logan asked nervously.

"Next best thing," Valentine replied as he continued sorting supplies and instruments. As he unfolded a small kit containing needles and sutures, Logan tried to sit up, but strong hands pushed him down. "Wait," he said. "You're not going to try to stitch me."

Valentine stared at Logan quizzically. "Try? Shoot, no! I'm gonna do it." Logan struggled again, but Valentine sympathetically patted his chest. "Whoa, boy. I've got lots of experience with this sort of thing." He looked around, scanning the crowd. "Where is Umberto?"