The Berkut (24 page)

They returned to their headquarters at nightfall, exhilarated. Petrov read the dossier on Skorzeny slowly to himself, then out loud to his men. Like Hitler, Skorzeny was an Austrian, born in Vienna. He had once applied to the Luftwaffe, but had been turned down for flight duty. Subsequently he joined the Liebstandarte Adolf Hitler Regiment in 1940, serving with his unit in several campaigns in France, Holland and Russia, where he suffered a serious bout with gallstones and was returned to Germany for treatment. The medical record was extensive. In Berlin, Skorzeny was assigned initially to an administrative position, but in 1943 he was transferred to a subsection of the Reich Main Security Office and given command of the Friedenthal special operations unit. The unit had been based near Berlin, but had a training
facility near Munich. The last entry in the folder indicated that Skorzeny was serving as a division commander in Bach-Zelewski's army corps on the Oder River front.

When Petrov finished reading, the men were unanimous in their opinion: someone would have to go to Munich.

"American territory," Gnedin cautioned them.

"If Skorzeny was on the Oder, he's probably dead," Rivitsky told the others.

"Possibly," Petrov interjected. "But he does not seem the type to let himself perish in a mere battle. He may have been on the Oder at some point, but I'd guess that he wasn't there when we went through. He'll be somewhere else if he's alive."

"So we go to Munich?" Gnedin asked.

"Rivitsky and Ezdovo go to Munich. I'll make the arrangements through Comrade Vishinsky. Right now the Americans are friendly toward us. With English agitation, this won't last, so we have to act quickly."

Petrov told the pair what he wanted. "I don't care about Skorzeny himself; 1 want his records. 1 want the names of all the officers of the Friedenthal-the key ones at minimum, the complete roll if possible."

28 – May 19, 1945, 12:05 P.M.

The Americans were receptive to the request put through official channels by Vishinsky. Their only condition was that the Russians had to be escorted at all times while they were in the American zone. Ezdovo and Rivitsky would be met at the airport by their escort. The flight to Bavaria was rough; a heavy spring front had hit the Alps and hung like gauze over southern Germany.

They found their American escort, an army captain, waiting for them. He was middle-aged, gaunt, with short brown hair and a straight nose that sat flat between high cheekbones. His ears stuck out under a cowboy hat that had once been white but was now a dirty gray, and his sweat-stained uniform hung loosely over a meatless frame. The man wore combat fatigues bleached nearly white by sweat and weather, and the toes of his leather jump boots were scuffed down to the grain. A Browning .45 hung on his hip in a wrinkled black leather holster that was tied to his thigh with a faded shoelace. A bayonet was strapped to the outside of his right calf, and a metal paratrooper badge was pinned above his left breast pocket. The captain's eyes were dear as a eat's, and the overall impression he gave was one of menace. Rivitsky and Ezdovo recognized the signs; he was a frontline officer, an equal, not some rear-echelon mouse.

"Comrades Rivitsky and Ezdovo," the captain said in surprisingly good Russian, "welcome to Munich. I'm Captain Molanaro. Supposed to show you around and take care of you. VIP treatment." Looking directly at Ezdovo, he said, "Neither of you looks like the kind who needs much care." All three men laughed.

"Thank you," Rivitsky said. "We appreciate your speaking our language, but it isn't necessary. We welcome the opportunity to practice our English."

"If you don't mind, comrade, I'd like to practice my Russian. Have to say I'm a bit disappointed, because we thought we were going to meet you people in Berlin, but I guess it just didn't work out that way." Rivitsky thought he detected some bitterness in the officer's comment. "What unit are you with?" the captain asked.

"We're not at liberty to say." Rivitsky smiled.

"No skin off my ass," the captain said in English. The Russians weren't familiar with the slang, but the tone made his meaning dear. "What will it be, Frauleins or Nazis?"

"We're here to investigate an SS unit that trained nearby. Our mission is to find its personnel records." Rivitsky gave the captain a small piece of paper bearing the unit's name and number.

"War criminals?" Molanaro asked. "Something to do with the death camps?"

"Something like that," Rivitsky said blandly.

"There's a concentration camp near here," the captain said. "Dachau. We liberated it. I never want to go through something like that again as long as I live. It was a sonofabitch. They killed Jews in the camp. Gassed them, then burned the bodies in ovens-men, women, little kids. Never seen anything like it, even in a nightmare. If you're after the people who ran that place or anything like it, we'll help all we can. We want them too."

"We will carve their balls off together," Ezdovo growled. He swished a finger through the air to add emphasis to his words.

"Right," the captain said, patting his knife. "I have a jeep." They could have walked almost as fast as they drove. Munich was heavily damaged, its downtown reduced to clusters of broken buildings and rubble. German civilians were picking at the debris with shovels and sledgehammers. The rubble was being loaded on horse-drawn flatbed wagons with rubber wheels. The animals in their harnesses stood quietly swishing at flies with their tails.

"You are heavily armed," Rivitsky observed as they drove. "There's still resistance in the area. Occasional snipers. Some SS units managed to stay together at the end, just over the Austrian border. Every now and then one of them filters its way back to Germany, so we still have some fighting. Fanatical bastards. On the other hand, there isn't a Nazi left in Munich. All the Nazis left or diedjust like that," the captain said sarcastically as he threaded the jeep between pedestrians and other Allied vehicles. "A month ago they were the superior race, and now they're kissing our boots as liberators. You can't trust Germans."

"You're learning," Ezdovo responded. "We knew a long time ago not to trust them."

"But your government signed a treaty with them," Molanaro countered.

"True. Our government. We don't control our politicians any more than you do. I'm sure there were good reasons for the treaty, just as I'm sure that Comrade Stalin will never call me to Moscow to explain them," Rivitsky said flatly.

"I know what you mean. Truman doesn't let me in on anything, and neither did Roosevelt." They all laughed.

Near the center of Munich the American stopped at a provost marshal's temporary headquarters, a large oval canvas held aloft by poles from freshly cut pine trees. The captain disappeared inside and returned after a few moments with a smile on his face. "No sweat," he said. "Our MPs always know where everything is. Major inside says the SS had a camp south of town, up in the foothills. I got us a pass to get through our security."

The captain bounced the jeep through a series of bomb craters. When they reached the outskirts of the city, buildings were less damaged and life seemed more normal. Driving higher and deeper into the foothills, they occasionally passed checkpoints manned by small patrols of GIs. Fields were dotted with burned-out vehicles, and twice they saw large contingents of civilians digging in the fields under the
supervision of American soldiers. "There was a real nasty fight in this area right at the end," the captain said in English. "They're still burying bodies."

Their destination was a small camp nestled at the end of a narrow valley and surrounded by a pine forest. Lilacs were blooming along the road, and red and white wildflowers were beginning to peek from the high grasses. The aroma was delightful and the sun was high and bright. The weather front seemed to be finally breaking up. To the unpracticed eye the camp was just another small military installation, but both the Russians and the American saw immediately that there was something odd about it.

"Jump towers. Weird place to do jump training," the American captain said, pointing. "Too hilly."

The camp was ringed by several strands of barbed wire more than ten feet high, laid out in three circles. They guessed that the open areas between the fences were mined and soon saw signs in English and German confirming this. An MP in a pea-green undershirt stopped them at the gate, glanced at their passes and waved them in without speaking. The main camp comprised a dozen wooden buildings clustered around a central dirt courtyard. A flagpole stuck out of a loose pile of white rocks in the center. Near the buildings was a large outdoor swimming pool with platforms several meters high at one end. There was a firing range against the hill; the receiving end was battered, its naked earth an ocher scar. Signs in English had been erected on all the buildings.

The men found the headquarters building and parked the jeep in front. The interior resembled the staff bay of any orderly room of any army in the world: wooden desks, chairs and roughly hewn board walls. Someone had removed a painting or photograph from the wall, leaving a dusty outline of the frame; no doubt it had been Hitler's portrait. The metal filing cabinets in the orderly room were empty, but after a brief search they located the contents of the files in boxes in an earthen cellar under the building. The folders themselves were dry and neatly arranged.

The three of them spent the rest of the day going through the folders, the American as eager as the Russians to locate the information. Slowly the list grew from the files, and the unit that had begun as a name and number began to take shape as a living entity, one that amazed them all because of the sheer audacity of the missions the unit had undertaken.

Late in the afternoon the American captain suddenly looked dumbfounded. "Goddamn," he shouted at them, "this is Skorzeny's outfit!" The Russians stared back, not understanding his outburst. They had been reading documents all day that were signed by Skorzeny. That it should register so belatedly with the captain struck them as odd.

"Major General
Otto Skorzeny," Rivitsky said.

"Wow!" the captain whistled. "Last we heard he was a lousy colonel. My outfit tangled with that bastard in the Bulge. He infiltrated his units behind our lines in American uniforms. Fuckers spoke English like Americans; they changed signs, blew bridges, really played havoc with us. Lost a lot of my boys because of this guy; we'd like to get even with this
S.O.B.”

"Skorzeny ran a special commando operation," Ezdovo said. "You ain't just whistling Dixie, friend," Molana
r
o said. "Skorzeny sent a special team to kill Ike in Paris during the Bulge. Parachuted his men into France wearing nuns' habits. Can you picture that?"

"Who?" Ezdovo asked.

"General Dee-Wight-Dee-Fucking-Ike-Eisenhower, number one commander of the whole Allied shebang," Molanaro explained.

"Nuns' habits?" Rivitsky asked.

"Roman Catholic sisters-holy women in black dresses with big white bibs," Molanaro said.

"Papal women," Rivitsky said, understanding.

"I forgot," the captain said with a loud laugh. "You people probably don't see too many mackerel snappers, you being atheists and all." He saw that the Russians did not understand. "Roman Catholics eat fish," he added. "Mackerel is a fish."

Ezdovo and Rivitsky nodded. "There are Catholics in Russia," Ezdovo said. "There used to be many before the Revolution. We're not all atheists. People still go to their churches, but the churches and priests can't interfere in matters of the state. I believe your American constitution also separates church and state."

By dusk Rivitsky felt they had what they needed. One gap remained: there was no file or name for the unit's operations and plans officer. All the organization's documents were signed by Skorzeny or a sergeant major named Rau, whose personnel dossier was also conspicuous by its absence. They did manage to find a half-dozen documents where Skorzeny's name was typed, but without a signature; in its place only the initial "B" appeared. Because there were no further
records, and because they had photographed all the originals, they decided to return to Munich.

Before leaving, they made a quick tour of the camp.
In
the armory, the largest of several wood-frame buildings, they found an array of weapons that none of them had ever before seen assembled in one place. There were firearms of all calibers and sizes; grenades, rockets, mortars, mines and gas canisters; scuba and deep-sea diving gear, along with breathing devices used by submariners; skis; several parachutes, including one with a square canopy that resembled an airplane wing; cartons of
plastit
explosives; a lab with dozens of jars marked "Poison" but otherwise unidentified; and a room filled with fuses, many of which they couldn't identify. They also found a water-cooled .50caliber machine gun of Czech manufacture with a sight that used a beam of light, and a strange-looking flying machine with its propeller mounted on top. "Autogyro," Rivitsky told the American. "It goes straight up and down for takeoffs. There were two prototypes, both destroyed. Perhaps our information was wrong and this is the third."

On the way out, the captain picked up a short-barreled shotgun with a clip shaped like a cake pan, which looked like an oversize Thompson submachine gun. It was an imposing weapon and they guessed it might hold as many as fifty rounds of 12-gauge ammo.

They drove slowly on their way back to Munich, enjoying the warm evening breeze. Near the city the captain stopped the jeep and turned to the Russians. "We can go back to camp---or, if you're a couple of regular guys, we can celebrate."