At the moment, 1st Guards Mechanised Rifle Division was withdrawn from 16th Guards Rifle Corps and placed under the command of STAVKA and, apparently, also within the jurisdiction of the headquarters of Red Banner Forces of Soviet Europe.
On more than one occasion, the problems associated with that dual command had surfaced to challenge the staff officers of the division.
Lunch was a simple affair, but tasty. Moreover, the prisoner appreciated that, for a change, the soup was hot and the bread was fresh.
The real prize had been a glass of milk, which was a first in his present surroundings. The new gaoler who gave it to him insisted that it was now part of his feeding routine, so perhaps his treatment would improve even further.
Not that it had been bad since he had been taken, all those weeks ago.
Stretching after his satisfying lunch, he gazed out of his window, the view still impressive despite the iron bars that made his room a cell.
He smiled as a middle-aged couple drove down the nearby track in the battered old Morris in which they did whatever they did, regular as clockwork every week. The car ground through the mud and slush, turning off into the woods for some moments of intimacy. He had seen them many times before, and often mused on their ‘romance’.
However, today he felt tired and decided that his bed would receive a visit ahead of schedule.
Leonard Brown had waited patiently until the prisoner was snoring gently.
Slipping into the room, he left everything just as it was, except the empty glass, which he removed and wrapped in a cloth.
Downstairs, he quickly washed the glass, removing all traces of the barbiturate that had been contained in the milk, and placed it back with its five companions, careful not to step on the body of the actual gaoler.
For skilled hands, it had been the work of a moment to break the young man’s neck as he turned to answer the phone.
As he had lowered the body down, he congratulated himself on the masterful piece of distraction and timing.
Now he needed to act quickly, in order to discharge his instructions.
Rearranging the corpse to give a passable imitation of someone who had fallen accidentally, he grabbed the paraffin stove and laid it down, working dead fingers around the carrying handle to complete the ‘story’ he hoped would be swallowed by those who came later.
The reservoir in the heater would normally hold about a third of a gallon, but Brown decided not to stint on the accelerant, so poured the entire amount around the heater, through the kitchen, and to the bottom of the stairs.
The fumes were overpowering and he felt light-headed almost immediately.
Quickly moving to the back door. Brown took a few deep breaths of good cold air before moving back into the kitchen and igniting the candle on the kitchen table.
He pushed the metal holder off and moved away as fast as he could, the satisfying whoof of an instant fire speeding him into fresh air.
Brown did not dally, and was cycling away long before the flames gained the first floor.
“I’m cumming, babe!”
The two lovers moaned through their orgasms, she with her arms wrapped around the driver’s seat in front, he with his arms wrapped around her.
As her senses recovered, quicker than her still moaning man, the woman became aware of something out of the ordinary.
“What’s that?”
He, suddenly alert, for fear of discovery, listened intently, whereas his lover was sniffing the air.
“There’s summat on fire somewhere. I can smell it.”
He could too.
Both rearranged their clothes to mask their recent activity, and he drove the car out of the wood.
The source of the smell was immediately apparent.
“Fucking hell! It’s the farmhouse!”
Thompson’s Farm was a sea of yellow and orange, and all the firemen in the world could not have saved the building.
As the couple drove back down the track to the main road, it was consumed before their eyes.
By the time the Fire Brigade arrived, the roof had already collapsed into the first floor.
A cyclist came up, dismounted, and stood with the couple. The three shared cigarettes as they watched firemen extinguish the blaze and take out what could only be bodies, the two covered shapes dealt with in a manner of respect by the crews.
The Essex Constabulary were also there, so before they could take start taking statements from anyone who might have seen the fire, the three decided, each for their own reasons, to make themselves scarce.
Leonard Brown slipped off his cycle clips and fluffed his trouser bottoms back into shape.
Abandoning the bike in an alley next to Shenfield Railway station, he slipped behind the wheel of his Hillman Minx saloon and set out to leave a chalk mark on an entranceway to Southwark Cathedral, which would signal success to his controller.
In turn, the controller would report back to his NKVD master, confirming that the kill order had been obeyed.
The message would then end up in front of Marshal Beria, part-author of the kill order, who would, when circumstances permitted, confirm to the other part-author that his instructions had been carried out to the letter.
Stalin, when told, grunted in satisfaction that the risk of blackmail against the GRU General Tatiana Nazarbayeva had been removed.
He spared no further thought for her son, Captain-Lieutenant Ilya Yurievich Nazarbayev, murdered on his order.
The NKVD boss, wallowing in his continuing revenge upon Nazarbayeva, did not communicate to her the news of the death of her child, understanding that to do so would undoubtedly reveal his part in the young man’s death.
Instead, he said nothing, and no-one else was privy.
A silence that was to cost the Red Navy dearly in the weeks to come.
It was a simple matter of codes, and of Glenlara.
In the London headquarters of OSS, the news from Essex was badly received, despite the first reports suggesting that it was nothing more than a horrible accident.
The Achilles/Thetis file was as dead as the man it detailed, and it was set aside, pending the report on the fire and any other final inclusions.
De Walle had personally handed Knocke the unpalatable report from Gehlen’s intelligence service the previous evening.
Orders were issued, bringing one of the five men to the divisional headquarters for 1600 hrs on the 25th.
Ulrich Weiss had been known to them, and had been closely watched from the time he had been detected.
Weiss came to attention in front of Knocke’s desk and saluted.
“Standartenfuhrer, reporting as ordered.”
Knocke looked up from his position and his eyes burned straight through the Soviet agent. Weiss immediately knew that he was lost.
“Personally, you disgust me, Weiss. If it were down to me I’d have you shot immediately. But… others seem to think that you can be of use to us, rather than being placed in front of a firing squad.”
For a second, the desperate man thought about the pistol at his side, for either assassinating Knocke, or shooting his way out of the building, or both.
The realist in him understood he would no more than twitch before he would be dead, shot down by one of the officers behind him.
He was not mistaken.
His arrest was swift and silent, and he was taken away to see if he could contribute positively to the Allied war effort before paying his dues to both comrades and country.