The Bleiberg Project (Consortium Thriller) (12 page)

W
e’re making good time. The
GPS estimates arrival in four hours. I didn’t see anything of Switzerland. Shame, it’s supposed to be pretty. I’d like to think I’ll take in the sights next time. If there is a next time.

Jackie’s asleep in the backseat, still dazed from Bernard’s killing and the shootout. We’re all taking it bad. Even Eytan Morg. They knew each other better than he’s letting on. Maybe he’ll tell us about it in his own sweet time. I hope so. His bathroom break hasn’t made things simpler. He drives, eyes staring at the road ahead. Tough shit, I need to talk. “Besides work and getting high, what do you do all day?” No answer. You’re out of luck, pal. I’m pigheaded. “The journey will seem shorter if we talk, don’t you think?”

He sighs. “When I’m not on an assignment, I paint.” I can’t help laughing. “You think that’s funny?”

“I’m picturing you on a stool with your palette and brush, gazing at a green valley or a snowy mountaintop. Sorry, but with your look and build, it’s funny!”

“If you’re just going to make fun of me, the trip is going to seem very, very long.” He clams up.

“There’s no harm in a little fun. OK, I’ll stop,” I snort, laughing even louder. Why do giggling fits always hit at inappropriate times?

“What about you? Besides driving home from clubs dead drunk, what do you do?”

Bastard. That’s below the belt. On second thought, I guess I deserved it. “I try to survive. I thought about blowing my brains out, but I’m too much of a coward. So I drink. I smoke like a chimney. Every day, I destroy myself a little bit more.”

“Suicide isn’t a sign of bravery, but of giving up. We all make mistakes. You don’t judge somebody by the number of blows they can give.”

“What do you judge somebody by, Mr. Freud?”

“The number of blows they can take.”

His words hit home. “You’ve taken a lot, right?” I ask. A long, long beat.

“More than you can ever imagine.”

Why am I not surprised? This guy’s been around the block. I’d bet my life on it. “How do you do it?”

“Pardon me?”

“Blowing guys away like that. How do you do it?”

“Who said it was easy?” He sighs heavily. A long awkward silence. My questions seem to carry Eytan onto a stormy sea whose crashing waves he’d do anything to avoid. I plow on.

“I saw you kill two guys in my building. Jackie told me you eliminated two more who ambushed her. And now the rest-stop massacre. No trembling, no hesitation. By my calculations, you’ve wasted eight guys in under twenty-four hours.”

“I suspect the total is closer to ten—one every three hours since we met.”

He glances at the dashboard clock. “Another hour, and I’ll have to kill somebody else to keep up my batting average.” Maybe Eytan thinks he can laugh this off. My frown disabuses him of the notion.

“Don’t try to worm your way out of it. I repeat, how do you do it? I want an answer.” Unintentionally, I raise my voice. “I need an answer!”

“Why? How will knowing help you? Am I your fantasy? Does death fascinate you or the idea of killing turn you on? Maybe it revolts you. Whatever. What do you expect me to say? Yes, I kill. Killing is my job. Watching over you is my mission. Count yourself lucky you’re not my enemy.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“For Christ’s sake, what the hell is it to you?”

“I want to understand who you are. Are you surprised?”

Eytan suddenly steers the Lexus onto the shoulder, screeches to a halt and spins toward me. “Listen up, doofus. I lied when I told Jackie I work alone. I carry centuries of oppression on my shoulders. I have an army behind me. One hell of an army! Six million men, women and children exterminated in a few short years. Not to mention the gays, gypsies and other victims of hatred and ignorance. I stand between the wackos and the innocent. I kill so nobody will have to die. That’s why I never tremble, I never hesitate, and I never regret. If I fail in my mission, the martyrs of the Shoah will have died in vain. Wolves lurk in the shadows. I smoke them out. If they still want to fight, I annihilate them. You want to know who I am, Jeremy? I am a rampart.”

Silence. I’m impressed by the huge effort he has made to express himself calmly, without raising his voice. The gravity of his argument is enough. I fiddle awkwardly, head down, staring at my feet. Put in my place.

The car pulls away again. Jackie’s still asleep. Imperturbable. Beautiful.

“What if Mossad had its own in-house Pettygrow?”

The question is provocative but not as dumb as it might seem. He nods. “Considering the apparent links between our enigmatic opponents and the Nazis, I can’t imagine any of our people allying themselves with them.”

“Of course. You’re one big family, and you stand united against aggression, right?”

“I couldn’t put it any better. Do you have any idea of the number of enemies the state of Israel has? Without unfailing solidarity, our country would lie in ruins,” Eytan retorts with a hint of irony, trotting out the official line.

But I’m not a total chump. “Remind me, Agent Morg. Who killed Yitzhak Rabin?”

Got him! Eytan shoots me a sidelong glance. His jaw twitches. “In World War II,” I add, “didn’t some Jews willingly collaborate with the Nazis?” Slowly and painfully, he turns toward me. His features are drawn.

“They did, Jeremy. I know that better than anyone.”

Berlin. May, 1945
.

A
ndrei Kourilyenko couldn’t believe his
eyes. The typically laconic intelligence reports claimed thirty to seventy percent of Berlin had been destroyed, depending on the neighborhood. But where were the parts of the city that were intact? The German capital was like a film set with only the facades of bombed-out buildings still standing. The streets were littered with the stinking, rotting corpses of members of the
Volkssturm
, the last line of resistance composed of civilians and children.

The convoys trucking in Soviet administrative units traveled by night. In the headlights, Andrei glimpsed shadowy figures fleeing the Red Army uniforms. He heard gunshots in the ruins as indiscriminate punishment was wrought on the German people. They were paying a heavy, painful price. The millions killed by Operation Barbarossa would not be resuscitated by flattening Berlin and massacring its population. As if war were not sufficiently absurd already. As if the savagery of the victors could erase the barbarity of the defeated.

Sheer stupidity,
he mused. Expressed out loud, the thought would have seen him hauled before a firing squad within the hour. Like many of his comrades, he recalled that Stalin shared Hitler’s penchant for repression. Under both regimes, silence was the only method for extending one’s life expectancy. Germany had its führer, the Soviets had a
vozhd
, a guide. The difference between them was a question of semantics.

Andrei lived hidden in the hushed corridors of scientific administration. All Sonya, his wife, and their young daughter knew of the conflict was what state propaganda wanted them to know. In Moscow, Andrei’s job was to compile lists of scientists and translate their works into layman’s language. Ten years at university and drawers full of diplomas ensured him a job. Losing an eye to a neurological disease spared him active participation in the war. His handicap advanced his career. In a terrifying world, he looked the part. Always immaculately dressed, his graying hair cropped short, he wore glasses with smoked glass concealing his missing right eye. He scared his colleagues. It was the ideal cover for a shy man and passionate lover of classical music and French literature. Such notoriously tsarist hobbies had to be kept absolutely secret.

Hunched in his seat in the black car, Andrei jumped when a woman ran frantically across the road, only just avoiding the speeding vehicle. He glimpsed her torn clothes and bare breasts. Two men chased after her. Rape on top of plunder and summary executions. Defeating the Nazis was one thing, but the blood spilled here wouldn’t bring back the millions of Russian victims. As ever, the propaganda machine would gloss over the atrocities and turn reality into a hymn to Stalin’s glory.

Andrei understood the thirst for revenge but had no desire to witness or be an accomplice to it. His presence here reflected another dimension of the war. The rout and scattering of Nazi dignitaries marked the beginning of an international bidding war. The British, using MI6’s extensive contacts in the
Abwehr
, were offering German scientists gilt-edged contracts, but they were nothing compared to the Americans’ massively funded Operation Paperclip. For months, Andrei had tracked American attempts to spirit away leading German brains. Their biggest success so far had come three weeks earlier with the acquisition of Wernher von Braun, the rocket scientist, who left for the New World with much of his research team. Frothing with rage, Stalin had ordered Department 7 of the NKGB, the Soviet secret service, to round up the remaining scientists or face serious reprisals. Quite simply, for the unit’s chiefs, failure would lead at best to a stay in Siberia, at worst, to the firing squad.

So that’s how Andrei found himself in hell, amid mostly illiterate peasant soldiers. The Soviet Union wanted a coordinator with a scientific background. Why did they have to pick him? The convoy of three cars and two trucks continued through the ruins until it came within sight of the German parliament. Powerful spotlights stood on heaps of rubble, sweeping the ground and sky. The architectural splendor of the Reichstag proved no defense against the Red Army’s shells. Andrei spotted a charred tree emerging from a mass of stone and steel. Glancing around, he saw the wreckage of a Messerschmitt, of which only the engine and propeller remained intact. He looked up and noticed the shell of the building’s bombed-out dome. Unfortunately, approaching from the south, they couldn’t see the flag raised there a few days earlier as a symbol of total victory. Three huge tanks were parked on the cratered plaza, which was covered with shards of glass from the gigantic windows blown out by the shelling.

The convoy pulled up behind the tanks. Andrei got out, relieved to get away from the taciturn driver, who had added to his boredom in the last few hours. Six men in uniforms, his personal escort, got out of the other two cars. Fifteen seconds later, seven cigarettes were lit almost simultaneously. A few minutes after that, the butts bounced off the ground at the soldiers’ feet. Vulgar jokes about the fall of the Nazi regime were shared. Laughing at other people’s problems helped them avoid issues closer to home that might provoke unease and suspicion.

Andrei thought back to the terms of his mission. The secret service would meet about twenty scientists and engineers at night outside the Reichstag. Salaries and perks would depend on the classifications that he alone would establish. His priorities, at the specific request of top brass, were rocket engineers, followed by armament specialists and the rest, who would be offered less comfortable packages. But in the current climate, less was better than nothing. The annihilation of Germany would, at least, compel the survivors to accept not very much at all, allowing the victors to sign people up cheaply. The recruits’ level of implication in the Nazi regime or possible misdeeds mattered little. The thought chilled Andrei’s blood. Revenge, liberty and ideals were already being sacrificed for potential profit. Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin, de Gaulle—none of them escaped the hollow pragmatism of economic and military interests. A new world order would soon emerge. The battle for top spot would be fierce and technology-based.

Yelling cut short the commissar’s musings. Outside the ravaged parliament building, about fifty armed soldiers were barking orders and brutally herding a huddled group of about twenty men, some of whom wore lab coats over SS or Wehrmacht uniforms, while others were in rags. All were trembling with fear. Except one, the youngest. He couldn’t have been more than thirty. His impeccable civilian suit stood out in the desolation. Hands in pockets, the incongruous character stared at the gathering with surprising haughtiness.

Andrei and his escort climbed the steps toward the terrified group. “Gentlemen, please excuse our soldiers’ rough manners. Rest assured that no harm will come to you. From today on, you are working for the Soviet Union. We will erase your relationship with the Nazi regime. You and your families will be accorded comfortable living conditions, as long as you perform your duties without complaint.”

Andrei spoke nearly flawless German. Only a slight Russian accent betrayed his lack of practice. It was one of the advantages of childhood years spent in the Bavarian branch of his cosmopolitan family. His deliberately affable tone and fluent language had the desired effect. The captives relaxed.

“I will call out your names, and you will join the three cars parked at the bottom of the steps. An agent of the NKGB will inform you of the terms and conditions of your employment, remuneration and location. Each group will be taken by truck to a Soviet base. I must emphasize the exceptional nature of the opportunity being offered to you. Refusal to comply will result in your arrest, and you will have to answer for your acts before a court of law. Do I make myself clear?”

Nodding heads confirmed the message had been understood. Everything was going as planned, and the mission was proving less complicated than he had anticipated. The herd of sheep hardly had much choice.

Andrei began calling out names from his list. Scientists and engineers filed past in an almost cordial atmosphere. Andrei was thankful for the generosity of Stalin and his henchmen. Forcing these men to work under hard conditions would result in the loss of their expertise. Or send them into the open arms of the Western powers.

Gradually, the trucks parked a hundred yards away were filled until only one recruit remained, a chemist-geneticist about whom Andrei had virtually no information besides his glittering university career.

“Bleiberg, Viktor.” The elegant young man strode forward.

“You studied with Professor Hahn. Very impressive. Radiation research—a sensitive subject. We will offer you the possibility to continue your work.” They began to walk toward the trucks.

“I don’t think so,” Bleiberg replied without so much as a glance at Andrei.

“You’d rather face trial?” the Russian asked in a barely veiled threat.

“No. You see, I’m no longer at the experimentation stage, and other people require my services.”

They paused. Their eyes locked as they stared each other down. “You are in our hands. Who will come for you now?”

Bleiberg cracked an evil grin and jutted his chin toward the convoy. “They will.”

The commissar glanced around and felt sick. Corpses were sprawled around the cars and trucks. His escort lay in pools of blood. A dozen hooded men dressed in black from head to foot had guns trained on Andrei’s herd. Not the slightest sound had accompanied the massacre.

Andrei reached for his holster, but before he could draw, he felt the cold steel of a gun barrel nudging the side of his head. Bleiberg grinned at him. The scientist leaned closer and adjusted the commissar’s uniform.

“I wish I could say that fortune played a mean trick on you. Alas, we cannot take fate into consideration. Allow me to salute the pertinence of the list you drew up despite the Americans beating you Soviets to the draw. They were quicker and smarter than you. But thanks to your expert analysis, Stalin was about to get his dirty hands on some eminent scholars, engineers and technicians.”

Shaken to his bones, the Russian stammered, “You knew of the operation? You’re an American agent?”

Bleiberg pressed his lips to the Russian’s ear. “I’m a member of an international organization for which borders, flags and patriotism have no meaning. When your list was communicated to us, I was struck by the intelligence of your selection. Excellent military choices and superb industrial vision.”

“I suppose you’re going to eliminate me now?”

“Eliminate you? You couldn’t be more wrong, Kourilyenko. I am going to complete your mission.”

Petrified since the start of their conversation, Andrei now looked on the verge of collapse. “I beg your pardon?”

Viktor Bleiberg grasped the dumbstruck commissar’s right hand. “My dear commissar, I came here to recruit you.”