Текст книги "Snow Wolf"

Автор книги: Glenn Meade

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That first evening a doctor had come to see her.

He was young, in his middle thirties, with the compassionate blue eyes of a good listener. He spoke softly in Russian, explaining that he was a psychiatrist. He asked her about her past and she repeated what she had told Massey. The doctor seemed especially interested in her treatment at the camp, but when he had tried to probe her about Ivan and Sasha she had become withdrawn.

On the following day she turned on the radio and the music that came on was soft and classical and she recognized the strains of Dvofdk. It was music Ivan had loved and it made her think of him and Sasha and suddenly a terrible black wave swept in and she felt utterly alone.

As she stood at the window trying to shake off the anguish, she saw a young couple come through the hospital gates.

It was visiting time and a little girl walked between them. She couldn't have been more than two or three and she wore a blue coat and a red scarf. Her woollen cap was pulled down on her head and her hands were wrapped snugly in mittens.

She stared down at the child's face for a long time before the man swept her up in his arms and they all disappeared into the hospital.

As she turned away from the window she switched off the music. She went to lie on the bed and closed her eyes. The sobbing that came then racked her body in convulsions until she felt she could cry no more.

Sooner or later, she told herself, it would have to stop. She couldn't live with grief forever.

On the third morning Massey came to see her and he suggested they go for a walk down to the lake where they could talk in private. A tree had been uprooted in a long-ago storm, its rotting tendrils exposed, patches of moss growing on the dead roots. Massey sat beside her on a wooden bench and lit a cigarette. Anna said, "May I have one too?"

"I didn't know you smoked."

"I don't. Not since the war. But I think I would like one now."

Massey saw the nervousness in her face as he lit her cigarette but he was amazed by the change in her appearance. She had been given new clothes; a thick pale blue woollen sweater that she had tucked into tight black ski pants. One of the staff nurses had loaned her a winter coat that was a size too big for her and it made her look vulnerable, but there was no denying her beauty.

She was different from any of the other Russian women he had met. He had been one of the first Americans to reach Berlin after the Reds had taken the city, and it was the first time he saw female Russian soldiers. There were few beauties among them. Most had been muscled, tough peasant women who looked like they shaved twice a day. He guessed so would he if the Germans had been dropping shells on him for four years.

"Have they been treating you well, Anna?"

"Very well, thank you."

Massey looked out toward the lake and spoke quietly. "I had a talk with Doctor Harlan. He thinks there's something you should be aware of, Anna. It's not going to be easy for you to get over what you've been through. He thinks you'll need time to deal with your pain." He looked at her. "I guess what it comes down to is, no matter what happens you have to try and forget about your husband and your child. Put everything bad that's happened behind you. It sounds easy me saying that, but I know it isn't." She looked at him without speaking, then said, "I don't think I will ever forget Ivan and Sasha. The other things, maybe, but not Ivan and Sasha."

Massey looked at her. He thought he saw tears in the corners of her eyes. She was struggling hard to fight her emotions, then she bit her lip and looked away. She didn't look back at him when she spoke.

"May I ask you a question, Massey?"

:"Sure."

"Where did you learn your Russian?"

He knew her question was a way of deflecting her pain and he looked at her and smiled.

:"My parents came from St. Petersburg."

"But Massey isn't a Russian name."

"Polish. It used to be Masensky. My father's people originally came from Warsaw; my mother's were pure Russian."

"But you don't like Russians?"

"What makes you say that?"

"The day you first came to see me at the hospital. The way you looked at me. There was distrust in your eyes, even dislike."

Massey shook his head. "That's not true, Anna. On the contrary. For the most part the Russians are a fine and generous people. It's communism I hate. It kills everything that's noble and good in mankind. Make no mistake, Anna, the men in the Kremlin are only interested in one thing, and that's power. You're looking at the mirror image of Nazism. But instead of a swastika on the flag there's a hammer and sickle and a red star." He paused. "Anna, there's something I have to tell you. Someone from your embassy wants to talk with you."

She looked at him and Massey saw the fear in her eyes. "Talk about what?"

He explained what Canning had told him. "It's only a formality but it's got to be done. Do you think you can go through with it?"

She hesitated. "If you want me to. When?"

"This afternoon. After that, the American Ambassador will make his decision on your case. The Russian official, his name is Romulka. Don't be afraid, I'll be with you all the time. Romulka's not entitled to ask you questions about the crimes you allegedly committed, but he will ask you to return to face trial, and he will promise you leniency. But I guess you know that would hardly be the case."

"The doctor asked me a question this morning. He asked if I regretted killing the men. The camp officer and the guard at the border."

"What did you tell him?"

"I said that I could feel for their wives and children, if they had any. But I didn't regret killing them. I wanted to escape. What was done to me was wrong. I remember Ivan telling me something once. Something he had read. That those to whom evil is done, do evil in return. I only returned the evil that was done to me. It was me or them."

"Then I guess that answers it."

As Massey and Anna sat in the interview room in the city police station, the two Russians in civilian suits stepped in past the policeman who opened the door.

The older of the two was in his early forties, and looked like a powerhouse of energy, tall and broad, his muscled body straining under his suit.

A pair of cold blue eyes were set in a brutal-looking face that was pockmarked with acne scars, and part of the man's left ear was missing. He carried a briefcase and curtly introduced himself as Nikita Romulka, a senior official from Moscow.

The second Russian, a young embassy aide, sat beside him and handed him a file.

Romulka flicked it open and said, "You are Anna Khorev."

The man barely looked at her as he spoke.

Massey nodded to Anna and she answered, "Yes."

When the man looked up he stared at her coldly.

"Under the terms of the Soviet-Finnish Protocol I am here to offer you a chance to redeem yourself by facing the serious crimes you have committed on Soviet soil. I am authorized to inform you that should you return to Moscow your entire case will be reviewed and resubmitted for trial and that you will be accorded the utmost leniency that is due to every Soviet citizen. Do you understand me?"

Anna hesitated, and before she could reply, Massey said in fluent Russian, "Let's cut out all the formal crap, Romulka. What exactly are you saying?"

The cold eyes stared over at Massey, and Romulka's voice was full of scorn. "The question was addressed to the woman, not YOU."

"Then make it simple so she understands the situation perfectly."

Romulka glared at Massey, then smiled coldly and sat back.

"Basically this-if she agrees to return to Moscow there will be a retrial for her past deeds. If the courts decide she was harshly treated or wrongly accused, then her recent crimes, shooting the border guards and escaping from a prison camp, will be judged in that light. Can I put it any simpler, even for an obviously simple man such as yourself"

Massey ignored the remark and looked at Anna. "What do you say, Anna?"

"I don't want to go back." Romulka said firmly, "Diplomatic efforts will be made to ensure you do. But I'm giving you the opportunity to return of your own free will and have your case reviewed. If I were you I would give such a proposal serious thought."

"I told you. I don't want to go back. I was imprisoned for no wrong, I committed no crime before I was sent to the Gulag. And it's not me who ought to be tried, but the people who sent me to a prison camp."

Romulka's face suddenly twisted in anger. "Listen to me, you stupid bitch. Imagine how unpleasant we could make things for your child. Come back and face the courts and you may see her again. Don't, and I swear to you the rest of her life in that orphanage could be made very unpleasant indeed. Do you understand me?"

Massey tried hard to control the urge to hit the man, and then he saw the emotion welling in Anna's eyes, the pain growing on her face until she seemed to snap, all the anguish suddenly flooding out. She lunged across the table and her nails dug into Romulka's face, drawing blood.

"No! You won't hurt my daughter like that ... You won't!"

As Massey fought to restrain her, Romulka went to grab her hair.

"You bitch!"

Massey and the aide stepped in between them, before the policeman appeared at the door and Massey quickly ushered Anna from the room.

As Romulka removed a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed blood from his face, he glared at Massey. "You haven't heard the last of this! Your embassy will learn of this outrage!"

Massey stared angrily at the Russian. "Tell who you goddamned like, you piece of shit. But she's made her decision and we'll make ours." Massey jabbed a finger hard in Romulka's chest. "Now get the hell out of here before I hit you myself."

For a moment it seemed as if Romulka would rise to the threat as he glared back at Massey, a fierce rage in his eyes, but suddenly he snapped up his briefcase and stormed out of the room.

Romulka's aide lit a cigarette and looked over at Massey. "Not a very sensible thing the woman just did, considering our embassy will most likely succeed in getting her back. And besides, Romulka is a dangerous man to cross."

"So am i, buddy."

Massey arrived at the hospital that evening and they walked down to the lake. They sat on one of the benches and Anna said, "What I did today didn't help, did it? Has your Ambassador decided what's going to happen to me?"

She looked at Massey uncertainly but he smiled. "After he heard about Romulka's threat he agreed to grant you asylum. We're going to help you start a new life in America, Anna. Give you a new identity and help you settle down and find a job. You won't be given citizenship right away but that's normal in cases like yours. You'll have to be a resident for five years, just like any other legal immigrant. But if you don't break the law or do anything crazy it shouldn't be a problem."

Massey saw her close her eyes, then open them again slowly. There was a look of relief on her face.

"Thank you."

Massey smiled. "Don't thank me, thank the Ambassador. Or maybe you should thank Romulka. Tomorrow you'll be flown to Germany. There you'll be filled in on the arrangements that are being made to help you. After that you'll be flown to the United States. Where to, I don't know. That kind of detail isn't up to me.

For a long time Anna Khorev said nothing. She looked out at the cold lake. Finally she said, "Do you think I'll be happy in America?"

Massey saw the sudden fear in her face, as if it was only now she realized the enormity of what had happened and the uncertainty that lay ahead.

"It's a good country to make a fresh start in. You've been badly hurt and your emotions are in turmoil. You don't know what the future holds for you and your past is a painful memory. Right now you're living in a kind of twilight zone. You'll probably feel confused and lost for a long time. You'll be in a new country with no friends. But you're going to heal with time, I know you will. That's about it. Except for the bad news. And that is we'll probably never meet again. But I wish you happiness, Anna."

"You know something, Massey?"

"What?"

"If things were different, I would have liked to have seen you again. Just to talk. To have been friends. I think you're one of the nicest men I've ever met."

Massey smiled. "Thanks for the compliment. But I guess u haven't known many men, Anna. I'm just an ordinary guy, believe me."

"Will you come to say goodbye at the air-port?"

"Sure, if you like." He looked down at her and some instinct made him touch her shoulder gently. "You'll be OK. I know you will. Time will heal your heart."

"I wish I could believe that."

Massey smiled. "Trust me."

There was a patina of snow on the ground as Massey and the two men walked with her to the aircraft. The Finnish Constellation was waiting on the apron and the passengers were already boarding.

Massey hesitated at the foot of the metal steps.

He offered her his hand and she kissed him on the cheek.

"So long, Anna. Take care of yourself."

"I hope I see you again, Massey."

She was looking at his face as she boarded and he thought he saw tears at the corners of her eyes. He knew he had been the first real emotional contact she had had in the last six months and he guessed he had made an impression. He knew it would have been the same with most people who escaped over the Soviet border. Frightened and alone, they grasped the first kind hand offered to them.

He also knew that no matter what his intuition told him he could have been wrong about her and the Finnish SUPO officer who doubted her story could have been right; Massey didn't believe he was wrong but knew only time would tell.

It was five minutes later when he stood in the Departures lounge and watched as the Constellation trundled down the runway before being finally sucked up into the Baltic twilight, its flashing lights sending an eerie glow out into the surrounding cloud.

Massey looked at the empty sky for a few moments before he said softly, "Do svidaniva."

As he pulled up his coat collar and walked back toward the exit, he was too preoccupied to notice the dark-haired young man lounging by the newspaper stand, watching the departing aircraft.

January 13th-27th 1953

Bavaria, Germany. January 13th, 11 Pm.

It was raining hard all over southern Germany that night, lightning flickering on the horizon, and no weather for flying.

The airfield barracks complex in the heart of the Bavarian lake district was shrouded in low cloud and mist. No more than a runway and a collection of wooden huts that had once belonged to the Luftwaffe's crack Southern Air Command, it now housed the CIA's Soviet Operations Division in Germany.

As Jake Massey came out of the Nissen hut that served as the Operations Room he looked up at the filthy black sky, then pulled up his collar and ran across to a covered army jeep waiting in the pouring rain. A fork of lightning streaked across the darkness and as he slid into the jeep the man sitting in the driver's seat said, "A night for the bed, I'd say. With a good woman beside you and a bottle of Scotch."

Massey smiled as the jeep started along a tarmac road. "You could do worse, Janne."

"So who have I got tonight?"

"A couple of former Ukrainian SS men bound for Moscow, via Kiev."

"Charming. You always did keep the best of company, Jake."

"It's either work for us or they face a war crimes trial. Nast@ types, both of them, part of an SS group who executed a number of women and children in Riga, but beggars like us can't be choosers."

"That's what I like about working for the CIA, you get to meet the most interesting people."

The man beside Massey wore a pilot's leather flying jacket d a white silk scarf. He had a cheerful face and although he was short and stocky his straw-blond hair was unmistakably Nordic.

At thirty-one, Janne Saarinen had already seen more trouble than most men. Like some Finns after the Winter War with Russia in '40 who saw their country's allegiance with Hitler's Germany as a chance to get even with Moscow, Saarinen had thrown in his lot with the Germans but paid a price.

His right leg had been blown off below the knee by a Russian shrapnel burst that tore into the cockpit of his Luftwaffe Messerschmitt at five thousand feet during a Baltic skirmish, and now he had to make do with a wooden contraption that passed for a leg. There was still a piece of the Russian metal somewhere in the ugly mass of scar tissue where the German surgeon had sewn the stump together, but at least Saarinen was still walking, even if with a pronounced limp.

The jeep drove down to a runway situated near a rather large lake, a collection of hangars nearby, the doors of one of them open and arc lights blazing inside.

Massey climbed out of the jeep and ran in out of the rain, followed by Saarinen.

Two men were sitting in a corner by a table, parachutes beside them, smoking cigarettes as they waited near a black-painted DC-3 aircraft with no markings which was parked just inside the hangar, a flight of metal steps leading up into the open cargo door in the side of the fuselage.

One of the men was in his late twenties, tall and thin, a nervous look on his anxious face, which already looked brutal despite his relative youth.

The second was older, a rough-looking specimen and heavily built, with red hair and a hard face that seemed hewn out of rock.

He had a look of insolence about him and he stood up when he saw Massey enter the hangar, and as he walked across the man tossed away his cigarette.

He said to Massey in Russian, "No night for man or beast, let alone flying. Are we still going, Americanski?"

"I'm afraid so."

The man shrugged and quickly lit another cigarette, his nerves obviously on edge, then looked back toward his whitefaced companion.

"Sergei here has a bad case of the frights. From the look of him he thinks we're doomed. And on a night like this I'm inclined to agree. If the Russian radar doesn't help put us in an early grave, the lousy weather probably will."

Massey smiled. "Oh, I wouldn't say that. You're in good hands. Say hello to your pilot."

Massey introduced Saarinen but because of regulations didn offer the Finn's name and the two men shook hands briefly.

"Charmed, I'm sure," said the Ukrainian. He looked at him!

"seriously," a small nervous grin flickering on his face. "A small point, but your pilot's got a false leg. I just thought I'd mention it." Saarinen said, offended, "You could always try taking off without me if it bothers you. And you and your friend ov( there had better put out those damned cigarettes or none of us will be going anywhere." He nodded over to the aircraft. "There are six thousand pounds of highly inflammable fuel in those tanks. Do it, now!"

The younger man stubbed out his cigarette the moment Sariiien barked the order, but the older Ukrainian stared at Saarinen sullenly, then grudgingly followed suit.

"Who knows? Perhaps it might be a better way to die than taking our chances with a pilot who's a cripple."

Massey saw the anger flare on Saarinen's face and he said quickly to the Ukrainian, "That's enough, Boris. Just remember, your life's in this man's hands so be nice to him. And for your information, you've got the best pilot in the business. And he knows the route as well."

"Let's hope so." The Ukrainian shrugged and said grudgingly to Saarinen as he nodded over to the DC-3, "So you think we'll make it in this American crate?"

Saarinen bit back his temper and said evenly, "I don't know why not. It might be a lousy night for flying but then that means the Reds won't be too anxious to put their own planes up. It should be all right. The danger point is approaching the Soviet Czech border. After that it's roses all the way."

"Then we're in your hands, it seems."

The second man came over and nodded to Massey and Saarinen. Massey introduced them and the young man said to Massey, "Something tells me I should have taken my chances with a war crimes trial."

"Too late now. OK, let's run through a final check. Paper belongings, money. On the table."

The Ukrainians emptied out their pockets on the table as Massey sifted through their belongings. "Everything looks in order. Once you get to Moscow and get yourselves organized you know what to do."

Both men nodded.

"That's it, then. Good luck to both of you." The red-haired Ukrainian grunted and said to Saarinen, "If we get to Moscow. Whenever you're ready, my little crippled friend."

Saarinen glared at the man and went to move toward him, but Massey gripped the Finn's shoulder as the Ukrainian turned dismissively and he and his companion walked toward the aircraft, parachutes over their shoulders, both of them laughing.

"Maybe I should drop them in the wrong zone, just for the fun of it, and let the KGB do the work for me."

"Don't worry, the life expectancy of those two isn't long. If they do make it to Moscow, they'll be lucky. You ought to know-most of the agents we send in get caught in the first forty-eight hours, but it's still a chance that's better than a rope or a firing squad."

"And I have to say some of the bastards you use deserve it, Jake. Right, I suppose I'd better get moving."

As Saarinen picked up a parachute and went to move toward the stairs up to the DC-3, a jeep pulled up outside the hangar and a young man in civilian clothes climbed out and went over to Massey.

"Message for you, sir."

He handed across a telegram and Massey tore it open, read the contents, then said to the man, "Carry on, Lieutenant. There's no reply needed."

The man climbed back into the jeep and drove off into heavy rain as Saarinen came over.

"Bad news? Don't tell me, the drop's canceled because of the weather?"

He grinned. "Never mind that I've flown in much worse without a copilot, like tonight. With a bit of luck I might just make it to a nightclub in Munich, and those two bastards on board can live on their nerves for another night." Massey said, "Afraid not. And it depends on what you mean by bad news. I've been recalled to Washington as soon as I've finished this week's parachute drops."

" Lucky for you." Saarinen smiled. "Me, I'm taking a rest after this one, Jake. Time to throttle back and rest my wings. Some of these former SS scum you're using are starting to get on my nerves."

Saarinen went up the metal stairs of the aircraft and at the top he hauled in the steps.

"Wish me luck."

"Break a leg."

It was almost nine when Jake Massey drove down to the lake and lit a cigarette as he stared out at the choppy water in the drizzling rain. He wondered about the signal from Washington and why they wanted him home.

As he switched off the engine he heard the faint blast of a fog-horn out on the water, glanced up and saw the distant lights of a boat moving in the cold darkness near the far shore.

That sound always reminded him, and for a moment he sat there and closed his eyes.

It was a long ago winter's evening like this when he had first seen the lights of America as a child.

He was only seven years of age but Jakob Masensky still remembered the body smells and the babble of strange voices on Ellis Island.

Ukrainians, Russians, mixed with Irish and Italians and Spanish and Germans. All hoping to start a new life in the promise of the New World.

He had arrived with his parents from Russia in 1919, two years after the Bolshevik Revolution.

In St. Petersburg, where his father's family had emigrated from Poland two generations before, Stanistas Masensky had been employed by the royal household. Jakob Masensky still had a sharp memory of being taken for winter walks in the grounds of the magnificent gilded palaces of Catherine the Great. Stanislas Masensky was an intelligent man, a reader and chess player who, were it not for the accident of being born into an impoverished family, might have become a lawyer or a doctor and not the humble master carpenter that he was.

And Stanislas Masensky also had a secret which, were it known to his employers, would have caused his instant dismissal.

He was an ardent Menshevik supporter who in his heart despised the nobility and everything it stood for. He believed that Russia's future lay in democracy and freedom and that change was coming whether the Tsar wanted it or not, so when the Reds took St. Petersburg he was not a pleased man.

"Believe me, Jakob," his father was fond of saying. "We will pay the price of this Red folly. We need a new Russia, but not that kind of new Russia."

And no one had been more surprised by the Reds' revolution than Stanislas Masensky. It had come like a whirlwind almost out of nowhere, for the Mensheviks had long been the dominant force for change in Russia. And Lenin's Bolsheviks knew this, and that any threat to their promised revolution would have to be crushed mercilessly.

The Reds had come one day; three men with rifles.

They had marched Stanislas away at the point of their bayonets. His pregnant wife and child didn't see him until his release three days later. He had been beaten almost to a pulp and his arms had been broken. He had been lucky not to get a bullet in the neck but that might come soon, and Stanislas knew it.