The Berkut (62 page)

Brumm left the other two and moved in a crouch around the church, hugging the wall closely.
In
front he stopped to listen, but the night was filled only with the sounds of the rain drumming loudly. Although he was wet and cold, he was glad for the weather, which allowed him to move in complete security. Pausing in a dark shadow near the door, he screwed the silencer tightly onto his pistol, then tried the door handle. It turned with little sound; when he heard the catch release, he pushed the door open just enough to squeeze through.

Inside, candles were burning on the small altar. He tucked his cap into a jacket pocket, pushed his wet hair back from his forehead and walked ahead quietly, trying to keep the sound of his wet boots to a minimum. The church seemed empty, but at a small open door to one side of the altar he could hear rhythmic breathing, the regular drone of a heavy sleeper. Peeking inside, he saw that the man was against the wall away from the door. Checking behind him, he studied the church one more time to be certain there were no doors other than the one covered by Beard. Then, gripping his pistol tightly, he took a deep breath and leaped across the room in a swift charge, knocking the sleeping man onto his back with a firm kick. Dropping to his knees, he held the barrel of his pistol hard against the man's head.

"Not a word," he growled. The man looked up at him, confused, blinking wildly to clear the sleep from his head.

"Werwolf,"
Brumm said.

"A beast of myth," the man stuttered. "There are none for you to fear in this place." The words let Brumm breathe easier.

"You have something for me?"

The man nodded and pointed toward a parcel on a small circular table in a corner of the sacristy.

"Get it," Brumm ordered, sending him forward with a shove. The man caught his balance and grabbed clumsily at the package.

"Open it," Brumm said. The man tore wildly at it until the contents spilled on the table. The colonel pushed the man to his knees, bent his head forward and rested the pistol barrel on the nape of his neck. "Don't think too loudly, my friend." Using his flashlight, he quickly inspected the contents of the package. It contained exactly what had been promised. He lifted the man to his feet by an arm and pushed him toward the door. At the back entrance to the church he whistled and Beard answered. The nearby candles wiggled in the air current from outside.

Father Nefiore trembled as two dark forms rushed into the alcove.

"There's a room behind the altar," Brumm said. "There's a package on the table in the corner."

The smaller of the two men pushed past the priest and darted into the room, then reappeared shortly. "Put it in your bag," Brumm ordered. Nefiore watched in fascinatio
n as the man knelt and opened a
duffel. When he stood, the light revealed his features clearly, and Nefiore, recognizing him, sucked in his breath so violently that the sound startled Brumm, who wheeled to see the priest and Herr Wolf eye to eye.

The priest's eyes were wide, his mouth agape. In his mind countless images flashed and he heard Farraro's words:
We don't care about their politics. They are all Catholics.

Brumm led Nefiore out into the night and rain. They moved quickly through the graveyard, stopping once to pick up the priest when he stumbled over a broken headstone. At a corner of the cemetery the colonel told the others to wait. Vaulting the iron fence, he disappeared into the darkness. When he returned, he helped the priest over the fence. They moved as one into the field and stopped at a circular pile of rocks. "Move them," Brumm told the priest, who immediately dropped to his knees and began pawing wildly at the pile.

Nefiore bloodied his knuckles on the rocks, and by the time he had removed one section, revealing heavy planking, he was so weak that Brumm shoved him back into the grass. Beard took his place, hoisting the planks and pushing them back to reveal the blackness of an old well. Brumm tested its depth with a rock the size of his fist and grunted with satisfaction when the sound of it striking bottom was nearly inaudible. "If you have prayers to make, now's the time," he told the priest.

"Have mercy," Nefiore pleaded.

"I do," Brumm answered. Nefiore's rosary rattled as he slipped it from a pocket, and the three waited impatiently as he muttered on his knees. "Hurry up," Brumm whispered angrily. "We can't wait all night." As soon as Nefiore had finished his prayer, blessed himself and joined his hands, Brumm shot him once through the head. Beard slid the body headfirst into the well, and while Herr Wolf stood nearby with his arms crossed over his chest the two soldiers re-covered the opening.

Satisfied that the body was beyond easy discovery, they moved across the field at a brisk trot and kept up the pace for nearly an hour. Finally they took shelter under an overhang of flat rocks in an alder swale. It was not deep, but it was dry in back and out of the wind, which seemed to be decreasing, a sign that the storm might be abating. Opening Herr Wolf's duffel, Brumm held up three diplomatic passports bearing the official seal of the Vatican. The two soldiers smiled at each other while Herr Wolf tucked himself into a ball and went to sleep with a frown on his face.

87 – April 4, 1946, 8:00 A.M.

It was raining hard when Bailov and Ezdovo crossed the field that harbored the Christianburg church. They crouched in the grass, their weapons at the ready. The trail had petered out some hours before, but Ezdovo was confident that their prey was on a straight course, so they had kept pushing hard in order to catch up. If the rain continued, the Siberian knew they might lose the Germans entirely; it was imperative that they establish contact soon. When they had started in the morning, he'd had a feeling that the German lead was no more than a few hours. When the trail vaporized in the rain, he simply stayed on the course heading, gambling that sooner or later they'd either pick up new signs or overrun their quarry.

Now, as they looked at the tiny church in the distance, Bailov raised his eyebrows as if to say, What do you think?

"Territory's different here. No dwellings in two days. No people. Their heading led us this way; now we know why. They must have been heading for this place," Ezdovo said.

"Do we go in?"

Ezdovo answered by tightening the straps of his pack and checking his weapon. "Our Germans won't be in there," Ezdovo said, "but somebody else may be." They moved out, splitting up, keeping communication to quick hand signals.

Bailov stayed on one side of the church while Ezdovo circled and returned. They decided to go in from the two ends simultaneously. Having learned long ago the value of direct assault, they checked their watches, got into position, flung themselves through the doors at nearly the same instant, rolled across the stone floor and came to their feet fluidly in a crouch.

They seemed to be alone. They searched the church quickly but thoroughly, and in the sacristy found signs that someone had been there recently. A table contained bread wheels, American canned goods with Red Cross markings and slices of cooked meat. Bailov sniffed at the food, then stuffed it into his pack.
In
the transept they salvaged small candles from their holders, and Ezdovo found an unopened bottle of red wine in the sacristy.

"A meeting place," Ezdovo said as they hunkered in the cemetery. "They added someone to the party?"

Ezdovo shook his head emphatically. They fanned out to begin searching for evidence. Soon the Siberian found prints in the mud near a corner of the fence around the ancient graveyard. Putting a hand on the rail, he vaulted over and landed on the other side without a sound. Bailov watched in fascination. Sometimes his friend seemed to think and act more like an animal than a man.

The trail led Ezdovo to a pile of rocks. He squatted and read the signs. "Four came, three left," he told Bailov as they began unstacking the stones. When they had uncovered the planks, Ezdovo stepped out of his pack, uncoi
led a long rope and looped it ar
ound his waist, under each leg and up under his armpits, creating a harness with a series of half hitches. "Let me down," he said. Bailov looped the other end of the rope around his waist, cinched it tight and braced his feet against the rocks to give himself a purchase as Ezdovo disappeared down into the hole.

After several minutes the rope went slack, then Bailov heard a short whistle from below and began the hard job of pulling.
In
a minute the Siberian popped out as if he had run up the vertical wall. "A priest," he said as he began to free himself of his harness. "Shot once through the back of the head. There must have been a drop. Papers, perhaps, passports-something of that nature. But he was waiting here for them, and he wasn't a local. The food inside shows that."

"How long ago?"

"Six hours, maybe less. We're close now. If we're lucky, tomorrow will be the day we connect," Ezdovo said.

88 – April 4, 1946, 9:30 P.M.

Beau Valentine was on his back, gasping for air, darts of pain leaping from his tailbone to his upper back. With enormous effort he rolled over and saw his jeep on its side; it was covered with mud, and clumps of scrub brush were caught in the twisted metal. Instinctively he started to crawl toward it, but instantly the odor of gasoline sent him quickly in the other direction. When he reached an uprooted tree, he slid into the hole under the roots, expecting an explosion at any moment. When none came, he turned his attention to examining his condition; there seemed to be no broken bones, but the pain in his tailbone persisted and his left shoulder was sore.

Climbing back up to the road above, Valentine tried to figure out what had happened to him. It had been raining for almost an hour and the visibility had gotten progressively worse. He'd considered stopping to put the canvas top up on the vehicle, but by then he was so wet that it didn't matter. The road was wash
-
boarded and slippery. These conditions, coupled with the play in the steering mechanism had forced him into a prolonged, semi
-
controlled skid along the mountain road. Then he was in the ravine, his wind knocked out. There was a small hump in the road and his tire marks showed that he'd fishtailed, though he didn't remember it. Maybe he'd fallen asleep.

His destination had been Berchtesgaden, a town in the mountainous area called the Obersalzberg about thirty-five kilometers south of Salzburg, Austria. It had been Hitler's favorite place, and here he'd had both an estate and a mountain headquarters, which he called the Eagle's Nest. At about the time the American army reached the Elbe River, Ike's intelligence people were advising him that Hitler was in the Berchtesgaden area, getting ready to conduct a final stand from the mountains that he had dubbed the Alpine Redoubt.

There was some indication that this information had been planted by Nazi agents and that Eisenhower and his staff had taken the bait, resulting in Berlin being abandoned to the Russians. This turn of events did not sit well with a lot of Americans, and it was now being whispered in many circles that Eisenhower had not been as effective a leader as he should have been. In fact, a few Nazi stragglers had found their way into the mountains and made a halfhearted try at resistance, but the effort petered out as winter came and food became scarce.
To Valent
ine all of this was irrelevant; what mattered was that Hitler had spent a great deal of time at Berchtesgaden and had made many of his decisions there. Now he was hoping to find people who had been involved with Hitler or his operations in peripheral ways. In trying to develop leads, he had learned early on that "little people," those in menial jobs and with minor responsibilities, often offered insights that full-blown insiders couldn't. Precisely what he was looking for here was not fully formulated. The decision to go to Berchtesgaden was not one derived from reason; rather, it was instinctive, based on directions provided by his inner compass that always took control when there was no clear course to steer.

The extent of his plan had been to go to Berchtesgaden; the rest he'd play by ear. But now even this first step was screwed up; he was still about fifteen kilometers from the town and the rain was getting worse. The investigation would have to wait; for the moment he needed shelter and sleep. A kilometer or two back he'd seen several small houses near the road. He decided to backtrack and seek help.

Valentine had walked only a short distance when he heard a muffled sound behind him. Turning, he saw a horse-drawn cart hurtling toward him out of the darkness; a whip was cracking as the horse thundered on. Valentine stepped to the middle of the road so that the driver could see him, but when the horse was only a few meters away, its nostrils flaring and foam flying from its mouth, he knew he had not been seen, and threw himself to the side. As the cart passed, the horse stumbled, the whip cracked several times, the vehicle slid sideways to a halt and a gruff voice cursed.

The driver wore a flying coat and a leather helmet with flaps that stuck out like wings. His face was round and covered with light-colored stubble. "Your jeep?" he asked in perfect English.