And the Russians had the uranium-as Shchepkin had just said, there were important mines in their German zone. If a point was reached where the atomic arsenals cancelled each other out, the Red Army could then presumably roll right over the Western armies.
Except the Russians really had been ripping up the railways in eastern Germany. Which made no sense at all if they intended marching westward. Their willingness to fight another war had to be a bluff. But would the Americans have the sense to call it? Or the balls? Russell guessed they would soon find out.
Was this why no one seemed eager to reconstruct the city? he asked himself, casting his eye across the still-serrated skyline. Why bother if another battle was coming?
BOB’s HQ in Berlin was an innocent-looking mansion on Fohrenweg, a quiet, leafy Dahlem street not five minutes walk from Thomas’s and Hanna’s. There were more floors underground than above, and the starkly lit interrogation suite on the second floor of the basement reminded Russell of a ship deck below the waterline.
There were two defectors to process that Friday afternoon. Both had presented themselves at American barracks on the previous afternoon, one in Schonfeld, the other in Neukolln; but as neither had yet arrived from the military holding cells where they’d spent the night, Russell and his colleague John Eustis spent most of the morning chatting, sweating, and twiddling their thumbs.
Eustis was from Providence, Rhode Island. He had been with CIC for almost four years, and had no compunction in telling all and sundry that the work was beginning to bore him. Which didn’t surprise Russell. Eustis was clever but lazy, and his only real interest in other human beings was what half of them had under their skirts. He was nominally in charge, but usually he allowed Russell to just get on with it-the interrogations took so much longer if every last question and answer was translated. This suited Russell in more ways than one-the job was done quicker, and it was easier for him to pick and choose which pieces of intelligence he passed on, and which little nuggets he squirrelled away.
Their first Russian arrived soon after eleven A.M., loudly complaining that he hadn’t had breakfast. Once this had been provided and eaten it was almost lunch time, and by mid-afternoon, Eustis was beginning to glance at his watch. The second Russian would be waiting a few doors down, and this one seemed incapable of answering the simplest question without setting the scene like a novelist with verbal diarrhoea. He was a long-serving Major in an artillery unit-he had apparently fought his way from the Polish border to Moscow and back again-and would doubtless prove a mine of basic information on the Red Army and its workings, should anyone have the patience to hear him out. By the time several hours had passed, Russell and Eustis were fully agreed that Army Intelligence should be given the chance.
‘Why don’t we leave the second guy till tomorrow?’ Eustis suggested, once the first Russian had been taken away. ‘I’ve got a hot date tonight, and preparation is everything.’
Russell laughed. ‘A fraulein?’
‘No, no. I’ve been there. Sweet but short-not much in it for us, other than the obvious. No, this is an American girl-a general’s daughter, spending the summer with Daddy. She’s gorgeous, and he’s rich, and I hope to God she’s willing.’
‘It’s only four P.M.,’ Russell said, checking his watch. ‘Let’s see the guy at least-maybe we can just move him on, and then you’ll have tomorrow free to show her the city. Johannsen’ll be pissed off if he sees us sneaking off this early.’
Eustis threw up a weary arm in surrender. ‘Okay, let’s see the bastard.’
His name was Konstantin Merzhanov, and he said he was twenty-five years old. With blond hair, blue eyes, and clean-cut features, he could easily have passed for a young American. He described himself as a technician, which seemed boring enough until he mentioned his place of work-the MGB HQ at Karlshorst-and the nature of his expertise, which was cinematic.
Russell was just about to translate these facts for Eustis, when Merzhanov dropped his bombshell. ‘I am in possession of a film,’ the Russian said carefully. ‘A film in which the Minister in charge of the MGB kills a young German woman.’
‘The Minister?’
‘Beria. You know who he is?’
Even Eustis’s ears pricked up at that. ‘Did he say Beria?’
‘Yes,’ Russell said, rapidly thinking on his feet. The Russian mightn’t be saying what Russell thought he was saying, but if he was … ‘He says he’s the devil himself,’ he told Eustis, before turning back to Merzhanov. ‘We’ll talk about your film later,’ he told the Russian. ‘For now, we need your history and personal details, your reasons for wishing to defect.’
Merzhanov gave Russell a doubtful look, but shrugged his acceptance, and over the next hour he answered questions with a precision his predecessor in the chair had so sadly lacked. Russell dutifully translated most of the answers, omitting only the Russian’s references to his time at film school in Moscow, which had been cut short by the German attack in 1941.
At five o’clock Eustis suggested they call it a day, and Russell offered to finish up on his own. ‘A small fish,’ he assured the American. ‘I won’t need much longer.’
Once the door had closed behind his colleague, Russell wasted no time. ‘We can talk about your film now,’ he said. ‘You said it shows Lavrenti Beria killing a German girl. Really killing her, right? This is not a work of fiction?’
‘No, no, this is real.’
‘Okay. So where, when, why?’
‘The film was shot at a house just outside Berlin, the one where important visitors stay. Beria came to Berlin in February, and he stayed there for several days. During that time he entertained several girls.’
‘And he was being filmed?’ Russell found this hard to believe.
‘He didn’t know it. All the rooms have hidden cameras, and of course this one should never have been turned on-it was a mistake. But I watched it, and I saw him kill one of the girls. And I knew what I had. This would be great propaganda for the West, yes?’
‘I should think it would,’ Russell said drily. ‘Where is it now?’
‘My girlfriend Janica has it.’
‘And where is she?’
‘In Prague. She’s a Czech.’ He took a dog-eared photograph from his jacket pocket and passed it across. The ‘girl’ looked about thirty, but she wasn’t unattractive, and there was definite intelligence in the gaze she offered the camera. ‘I met her when we liberated the city,’ Merzhanov went on. ‘She was being attacked by some of my comrades, and I managed to rescue her. We’ve been in love ever since.’ The Russian’s eyes were shining, Russell noticed, and when the young man offered a long list of the girl’s qualities and charms he didn’t interrupt.
‘But why does she have the film?’ he quietly asked, once the panegyric was over.
Merzhanov gave him an almost triumphant look. ‘Because I didn’t feel safe keeping it here in Berlin, and because bringing her out will be your only way to get hold of it.’
‘That’s your price?’
‘We don’t want money,’ Merzhanov insisted, as if he wouldn’t soil his hands on the stuff. ‘But you must take us somewhere safe-once the film is made public, they will realise that I must have taken it, and they will try to hunt us down.’
They all said that, Russell thought, but in this case it would be true. The Rat Line came to mind. If he could get them to Draganovic’s man outside Salzburg, they would be on their way to safety. Theirs, and his. ‘So how do we contact Janica?’ he asked. ‘What’s her surname?’
‘You don’t need to know that. She will be waiting on the Masaryk Station concourse at five P.M. on Wednesday the sixteenth. With the film. And you people will bring her out to the West.’
It sounded simple, and maybe it was. It occurred to Russell that a film was easier to get across a border than a woman, and that after she’d handed it over, he could simply leave her there. She would be no position to call the police.