A Sherman tank attached to the armoured section of the US 44th Infantry Division made its way slowly along a muddy road north of Reutte in the Austrian Alps.
The tank was called the Glory B, a name coined by its commander, twenty-two-year-old Lieutenant Silas Hood from Jamestown, Rhode Island.
Hood had been ordered to patrol the roads north of Reutte. For this, he had requested infantry support but none was available so the tank set out by itself along the forest roads.
German resistance had all but disintegrated in this area, but men continued to be killed by mines, some of which had been planted in the ground months ago.
Standing in the turret, Hood watched the road ahead of him through a pair of binoculars, searching for any tell-tale changes in the earth that might signal the presence of a mine. There were several different kinds of mine used by the Germans. The first was an anti-personnel device known as a Schu-mine. When stepped on, a small canister the size of a coffee can would spring into the air and explode, spraying the area with ball-bearings. The second kind was a glass mine, which had no metal parts that could be picked up by a metal detector. They would tear out of the ground in a shower of jagged shards, causing terrible injuries to anyone standing nearby, but of no real concern to the crew inside a tank. The third sort was known as a Teller mine. It was a large, round disc, about as thick as a man’s outstretched hand, containing a shaped charge of 1 kilogram of ammonite explosives, which could blow the track off a Sherman tank, shattering the wheel bogies and leaving the vehicle helpless. With bad luck, the charge could penetrate the underside, in which case the crew would be cut to pieces by ricocheting chunks of metal.
‘Slowly,’ Hood called down to the driver. He focused his binoculars on the road fifty feet ahead of the tank. ‘Slowly,’ he called down again. A fine rain had begun to fall and Hood pulled out a handkerchief to wipe the moisture off the binocular lenses.
Then the tank came to a sudden halt.
‘Not that slow!’ barked Hood.
‘Lieutenant,’ called a voice from down below. It was the driver, Elmer Hoyt. ‘There’s a guy standing in the road.’
Hood raised his binoculars again and a German officer suddenly leaped into view. He was a tall, dignified looking older man, wearing a long greenish-grey coat with red facing on the lapels. The braid on his peaked cap was gold. In one hand, he clutched a white pillowcase. In his other hand he held a leather tube about the length and thickness of his arm. The man looked tired, as if he had been waiting a long time for someone to come along. But he did not look afraid.
‘Son of a bitch,’ said Hood. ‘I think that is a general.’
‘What the hell is he doing?’ asked Hoyt.
‘He’s trying to surrender, I guess.’ Hood waved at the man to come forward.
The general set off unhurriedly towards the tank, his arms held out to the sides and the white pillow case hanging limply in the damp air. A few paces short of the iron monster, he stopped. ‘My name is General Hagemann,’ he said, ‘and I wish to surrender with my men.’
Inside the tank, Hoyt laughed. ‘Looks like his men made up their own minds what to do.’
‘What’s that you’re carrying?’ asked Hood, nodding towards the leather tube. ‘Is that some kind of weapon?’
‘Documents,’ answered Hagemann, ‘which I believe will be of interest to your superiors.’
‘And what about these men of yours?’
‘With your permission,’ said Hagemann. Then he turned and nodded towards the forest. ‘Come out!’
The woods began to stir, as if the trees were tearing themselves free of their roots. A moment later, the first of Hagemann’s technicians appeared out of the shadows, hands raised. Then came another and another and soon there were almost fifty men, standing with their hands raised on the road.
Hood watched this in amazement. It was not lost on him how differently his day might have turned out if these soldiers had chosen to fight. ‘Turn us around,’ he called to Hoyt.
As slowly as before, the Glory B returned to Reutte, with General Hagemann and his exhausted comrades shuffling behind.
Kirov woke that morning to the rumble of thunder.
At least, that’s what he thought it was.
Since leaving Berlin two days before, they had kept to the back roads, avoiding the highway and veering to the north, where the landscape was forested and offered them greater protection.
Throughout that time, the air had been filled with the distant booming of artillery. But this was different. As sleep peeled away from his bones, Kirov realised that it was not thunder, after all, but rather the noise of machines. Tanks. Hundreds of them, by the sound of it. He could feel the vibration of their engines through the ground on which he lay.
Kirov raised himself up on one elbow and looked around the clearing. The small fire they had lit the night before had burned down to a nest of powdery grey ash.
Pekkala and Lilya were gone. Except for Lilya’s suitcase, which remained where she had left it, and marks on the ground where they had each settled down by the fire, there was no sign of them at all.
Kirov didn’t think much of it, assuming they had simply woken before him and now, perhaps, were gathering sticks to rekindle the campfire, over which they might cook breakfast from their meagre stores of food.
As Kirov rubbed the sleep out of his eyes, he recalled a moment from the night before, when he had been woken by the crackle of a burning twig.
By the coppery light of the flames, he saw that his companions had not yet gone to bed. They sat cross-legged on the ground, their faces almost touching as they spoke in voices too faint for Kirov to hear.
Pekkala must have sensed that he was being watched. Suddenly, he turned and stared at Kirov, so quickly that there was no time to look away.
Ashamed to have been eavesdropping, Kirov opened his mouth, ready to apologise.
But Pekkala smiled at him, to show that there was nothing to forgive.
For a second longer the two men watched each other, coils of smoke rising lazily between them.
Then Kirov closed his eyes and slept again.
Now he climbed to his feet and hauled on the crumpled coat which had served him as a groundsheet in the night. The rumble of the tanks became a constant in his ears. They appeared to be coming from the east and heading for Berlin, but they could just as easily have been retreating German forces as advance units of the Red Army, so he decided to stay where he was, hidden from the road, until he knew one way or the other.
Hoping to track down Pekkala, Kirov ventured away from the stone ring of the campfire and began to wander through the woods. Morning sunlight, flickering down through the first leaves of the spring, dappled the earth on which he trod. As he clambered across the trackless ground, Kirov thought back to the day in Siberia he had parked his car at the end of a dirt logging road and went to find the legendary Inspector in order to tell him he was needed once again. It seemed so distant now, like memories stolen from a man who had lived long before him.
Eventually, Kirov arrived back the campfire, hoping they might have returned. But except for the suitcase, there was still no sign of the Inspector, or of Lilya.
A great uneasiness began to spread across his mind.
The sound of the tanks was louder now. Kirov could make out the rumble of individual engines and the monstrous squeaking clatter of tracks.
Perhaps they are out on the road, thought Kirov, and he looked down at the suitcase, thinking he should pick it up and join them. He took hold of the case, lifted it up and was startled by the fact that it felt empty except for a single object rattling about inside. Kirov dropped to one knee and opened the case. It contained only a clunky dynamo torch, engraved with the words ‘Electro-Automate’.