But as the purges wore on they began to turn on the hunters. More and more members of the NKVD and OGPU received their own fatal midnight summons. Each day brought another former colleague to Azov to confess.
During these years of the terror he slept with one eye open awaiting the knock for him. The knock often came between midnight and one in the morning. He would lurch up in panic, his heart thumping, and dress in a state of drowsy fear. He would try to recall what he had said wrong or to whom he had spoken. Perhaps it was his own son! They had argued!
By some miracle the summons for Azov always came from Stalin. He would be whisked through the empty Moscow streets in the middle of the night at terrifying speeds to the villa in the suburbs hidden in a pine forest. Here Stalin held his nightly court. Those people summoned arrived one by one in black cars. Each time the cast changed; only Molotov and a personal secretary were there every time.
Stalin, in plain proletarian tunic, looking much like the millions of his portraits, greeted them and led them into a banquet room. The table buckled beneath the weight of roast pig, steaks, caviar, champagne, vodka, borsch, and rare lamb dishes of his native Georgia.
During these nightly orgies of food and drink the business of the Soviet Union was conducted by despots. Molotov and the aides made quick notes of Stalin’s edicts and random ramblings. Sometimes a word or a nod meant moving a half-million persons, putting a thousand to death.
The nights Azov attended it was generally for the purpose of getting the list of new persons to liquidate in the purge for the charges of being a Trotskyite, Bukharanite, deviationist, saboteur, speculator, traitor, opportunist or anti-party. He was stunned to receive names of marshals of the Red Army, members of the Politburo, heroes of the revolution, and great Leninists.
At four or five each morning Stalin would become quite drunk and took pleasure in berating everyone in the room, making them the butt of crude jokes. He shredded their dignity with drunken boisterousness. But Comrade Stalin never got so drunk as to lose his astuteness or deadliness.
“Comrade Azov! I have proposed a toast in honor of our Chief Prosecutor for People’s Justice, Comrade Vishinsky. Why do you refuse to drink? Fill his glass!”
Stalin knew very well of Azov’s ulcers, but Azov drank and his insides turned to flame and his eyeballs rolled back in his head and he burst into an icy sweat. Once during each summons Stalin made him drink a whole glass of vodka. Azov dared not pass out until the meeting broke up at dawn and he was in the car on the way to his office to carry out the new liquidations.
The years of the nightmare waned slowly with the police arms devouring each other and their own members. It was, indeed, a delicate time for Azov.
The climactic Purge Trial ended with a bit of poetic justice when Yagoda, the head of NKVD, was brought to people’s justice. V. V. Azov’s supreme achievement was in obtaining Yagoda’s confession.
Because of his past experience in Sovietizing the reluctant Ukraine, Azov was assigned during the Great Patriotic War to form a German People’s Liberation Committee.
And now, here in Berlin, it was Azov’s turn to do the midnight summoning. His table was not so lavish as Stalin’s, but his rule in Germany was as absolute, and what was more, no one could force him to drink vodka at this table.
Azov peeked through the drapes. In the driveway below the cars began to arrive: Wohlman, Hirsch, the rest of the Liberation Committee, Red Army commanders, and military government officials.
Tonight would be special indeed. Tonight he would introduce a secret plan detailing The Harassment of the Western Allies in Berlin.
Part 3
The Linden Trees Will Never Bloom Again
Chapter One
July 1, 1945
DAYBREAK CAME AT 0548. SEAN O’Sullivan’s convoy assembled in the parade grounds of the former Wehrmacht barracks in the town of Halle where they had been gathered, and waited with growing restlessness to move up to Berlin among the first American echelons.
A curious mixture of vehicles took to the road, conventional military trucks and jeeps interspersed with a variety of confiscated German automobiles. Four armored troop carriers hauled a platoon of infantry to guard against attack by German Werewolves and straggler bands.
Sean rode in a Horsche sedan which had been unsuccessfully hidden by its former Nazi owner. Shenandoah Blessing and Bolinski, who spoke some Russian, shared the huge touring car. Nelson Goodfellow Bradbury and a photographer drove in a jeep directly behind Sean.
The convoy progressed north to Dessau, and crossed the Elbe River on a pontoon bridge built by American engineers, who left it to the Russians after they withdrew.
The first curious contact with their Russian allies was made when a Russian military policewoman of elephantine proportions signaled them to halt with a pair of traffic flags, then leaped ungracefully on the running board of Sean’s Horsche and pointed down the road. They slowed their speed as they passed beneath a flower-bedecked, newly erected archway which held portraits readily identified as comrades Lenin, Stalin, and Marx. A blaring red and white sign leaped out at them: WELCOME TO DEMOCRATIC GERMANY!
Just beyond the “welcome” arch they came to a vicious-looking barrier on the road flanked by barbed wire and concrete emplacements.
“This looks meaner than trying to run moonshine into Kentucky,” Blessing said.
“The dawn came up like thunder,” emoted Big Nellie.
The woman MP shouted at a pair of drowsy Russian soldiers who raised the barrier. Sean swung his car to the head of the convoy and drove through. The next point of contact was a farmhouse near the roadside. A half-dozen Russians kept reserved and suspicious distance from the arrivals as a slovenly dressed officer emerged from the house, leaned into the sedan, and snarled, “You are now under the protection of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. I demand that your soldiers put their weapons away.”
Bolinski translated to Sean, then answered, “The weapons are for the purpose of protecting the convoy from German stragglers.”
“Not allowed,” the Russian answered. “Soviet territory.”
Sean recalled the specifics of his orders: Get the convoy to Berlin without incident. “Tell the admiral here,” he said to Bolinski, “that I will order my men to keep all weapons out of sight.”
The Russian figured that was compliance enough to suit him. He got into his own vehicle, a badly abused German auto, ordered the convoy to follow him, and turned off the four-lane autobahn.
“This isn’t the way to Berlin,” Big Nellie said to his photographer.
In a half hour they came to the town of Wittenberg and halted at the Rathaus, which now served as Russian Headquarters for the district. The Russian quickly disappeared into the confines leaving Sean’s convoy waiting. They were being observed by Russian soldiers from a cautious distance. It was a far cry from the pictures of the brotherhood of Russians and Americans embracing on meeting at the Elbe only two months earlier.
Sean appraised the Russians. These troops were neatly uniformed, well-armed, appeared to be under good discipline. He guessed they were NKVD, political troops.
Twenty minutes went by before a new officer, a Russian lieutenant, came from the building and introduced himself in broken English. “I demand,” he said, “that you and your men come inside for an official welcome.”
Sean’s troops followed him into the typical bulky German city-hall affair, down an oil-painting-lined corridor of heroes, to a foyer which would serve as a reception room, smack into a platoon of Cossacks, who were, to a man, tall, blond, spit and polish, and obviously show troops.