Kyiv (Spoils of War) Read online

  KYIV

  BY THE SAME AUTHOR

  DI Joe Faraday Investigations

  Turnstone

  The Take

  Angels Passing

  Deadlight

  Cut to Black

  Blood and Honey

  One Under

  The Price of Darkness

  No Lovelier Death

  Beyond Reach

  Borrowed Light

  Happy Days

  DS Jimmy Suttle Investigations

  Western Approaches

  Touching Distance

  Sins of the Father

  The Order of Things

  Spoils of War

  Finisterre

  Aurore

  Estocada

  Raid 42

  Last Flight to Stalingrad

  Kyiv

  FICTION

  Rules of Engagement

  Reaper

  The Devil’s Breath

  Thunder in the Blood

  Sabbathman

  The Perfect Soldier

  Heaven’s Light

  Nocturne

  Permissible Limits

  The Chop

  The Ghosts of 2012

  Strictly No Flowers

  NON-FICTION

  Lucky Break

  Airshow

  Estuary

  Backstory

  Enora Andressen

  Curtain Call

  Sight Unseen

  Off Script

  Limelight

  KYIV

  GRAHAM HURLEY

  www.headofzeus.com

  First published in the UK in 2021 by Head of Zeus Ltd

  Copyright © Graham Hurley, 2021

  The moral right of Graham Hurley to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, organisations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN (HB) 9781838938321

  ISBN (XTPB) 9781838938338

  ISBN (E) 9781838938352

  Head of Zeus Ltd

  First Floor East

  5–8 Hardwick Street

  London EC1R 4RG

  WWW.HEADOFZEUS.COM

  For Yuri

  with thanks

  ‘Nothing works until it does’

  – Russian proverb

  Contents

  By the Same Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Afterwards

  About the Author

  An Invitation from the Publisher

  1

  SUNDAY 22 JUNE 1941

  They called him The Pianist, and for a while no one knew why because his real name was Ilya Glivenko. He looked old. Fifty-five? Older? Again, no one knew. Most of the time he kept himself to himself. He appeared to have no friends, and no need for friends. He was small, rotund, and people who’d seen him with his shirt off, down by the river in the blazing heat of mid-June, thought he might once have been a weightlifter. He had the shoulders for it, the once-firm ledges of muscle around the base of the neck, the deep chest, thighs like tree trunks, and when he splashed waist-deep into the Dnieper some of the older women on the riverbank paused to take a look. He swam, murmured one of them, like a bear. And she meant it as a compliment.

  Then came the Sunday evening, that same Sunday the Germans invaded, and a handful of the NKVD guys from the Big House in Kyiv found themselves in a nightclub in the bowels of one of the hotels on Khreshchatyk. They’d got drunk the way Russians get drunk when the news is especially bad, abandoned and morose by turns, tossing down vodka, plum brandy, anything to stop the Germans in their tracks and turn the clock back. There was a small stage in the nightclub, partly occupied by a battered piano, badly out of tune. The guys from the Big House were on their feet, looking for a fight with a neighbouring table of Ukrainian locals, when a little old man, broad in the beam, appeared from nowhere and settled himself at the piano. He had a drinker’s face, scarlet with blotches, and he wore a full moustache, a relic from the last war, the grey threaded with yellow nicotine stains. He had glasses, too, slightly crooked on his bulb of a nose, and when he was in a good mood – which was often – there was a hint of gold in one corner of his crooked smile.

  The Ukrainians were on their feet now. They hated the Russians and, thanks to the vodka, whatever fear they had for the Big House had gone. No one remembered who threw the first punch, but it didn’t matter. Within seconds, the nightclub was a battlefield, the militia men swinging wildly at any available target, the Ukrainians forming a tight little circle, moving slowly outwards, glasses smashing, women screaming, anyone still sober making for the door. Then came chords from the piano, a jazz version of a waltz, upbeat, slightly out of tune, a glorious cascade of music that briefly stilled the violence.

  The NKVD men looked round, as if a fugitive was loose in the room, a hint of anarchy, definitely a threat. One of the Ukrainians wiped the blood from his face and beckoned a comrade closer and began to waltz. Others kicked chairs and tables aside and cleared a space on the floor. Then the pianist changed key and quickened the tempo before reining back again and roaring an invitation for everyone to dance. Remarkably, it worked, and it was at least five minutes before the militiamen slipped their jackets off, rolled up their sleeves and set to again.

  *

  Nearly a month later, German armies were deep into Russia, and Ilya Glivenko, the little man at the piano, found himself in the deepest of the two basements at the Museum of Vladimir Lenin off Khreshchatyk. A dim light came from a smoky kerosene lamp and shadows danced on the bare stone walls, glistening with the moisture that infested this tomb. Glivenko was squatting beside an apparatus the size of a small cabin trunk. Cables and what looked like valves were encased in metal. When Glivenko tried to move it, the effort made him grunt. Beside the apparatus was a big battery, the kind you’d find in a truck. Two wires ran from the battery to the apparatus, but what drew Glivenko’s attention was a light bulb held by another man he addressed as Osip. A single wire trailed from the apparatus to the light bulb.

  Glivenko asked for the light bulb, and then gestured vaguely towards the door.

  ‘You want me to do it now?’ Osip was already on his feet.

  ‘Yes. Quick as you like.’

  ‘Just the one transmission?’

  ‘Yes. The red button. Press it down and hold it on a count of five.’

  Osip nodded. He’d been
coughing from the kerosene fumes. He was glad to get out. Two NKVD guards watched him leave.

  One of them turned back to Glivenko.

  ‘This is OK?’ he said. ‘Safe?’

  ‘Sure,’ Glivenko was looking at the light bulb.

  Nothing happened. Within a minute Osip was back again.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘It didn’t work.’

  ‘Again?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Osip disappeared. Glivenko took off his glasses and gave them a polish. The guard watched him for a moment or two. This time he was bolder.

  ‘You’re the specialist, the one who blows everything up. Am I right?’

  Glivenko had put his glasses back on. Still squatting beside the apparatus, he didn’t move, didn’t answer. All that mattered was the light bulb. Then came the clump-clump of Osip’s heavy footsteps on the wooden stairs outside, and the familiar white face at the door.

  ‘Five seconds,’ he said. ‘I counted.’

  Glivenko was still gazing at the light bulb. At length, he got to his feet, put the light bulb carefully to one side, wiped his face with the back of his hand, and produced a packet of cigarettes. Ignoring the guards, he tossed one to Osip and lit his own.

  ‘This stuff is shit,’ he said at length, stirring the apparatus with his boot. ‘We’ll need to start again.’

  2

  TUESDAY 9 SEPTEMBER, 1941

  Scotland. Isobel Menzies was upstairs at the Glebe House, asleep in the big enamel bath, when Kim Philby appeared at the open door. A moment of contemplation, then a cough, politely muffled. Bella opened one eye. Startled, she reached for a towel. She’d been helping Tam saw timber all day but now Moncrieff had gone, summoned to Aberdeen by a surprise phone call.

  ‘You,’ she said.

  ‘Me.’

  ‘How did you get in?’

  ‘The front door was open. I took the liberty of coming in. I called,’ he nodded down at the bath. ‘You must have been having a doze in there.’

  ‘So, what is it? You’re supposed to be in St Albans with all those chums of yours. What on earth are you doing here?’

  Philby shook his head, wouldn’t answer. Unusually, he was wearing a suit and tie. He’d be outside in the sunshine, he said. He had a plane on standby at Dyce. The airfield was an hour or so away. The pilot needed to be in the air by seven at the latest.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘We need to get you down to London. You’ll be briefed at Northolt. You’ll need clothes for at least a month. We’re thinking Kyiv by the end of the week. Back to the homestead after that.’

  The homestead was an apartment in a grey government block overlooking the Moscow River, three cluttered rooms that already belonged to another life.

  ‘This is official? Not some kind of joke? You know I’m on leave up here? Six whole days, so far? Nearly a fortnight to come?’ Bella was on her feet now, ankle-deep in the bath, drying herself off with the towel. ‘So, what’s so important it can’t wait?’

  ‘A war? Barbarossa? How does that sound? Hitler is pushing south-west as fast as he can. He wants the Ukraine bound hand and foot by the end of the month.’

  ‘And I’m supposed to stop him? Little me?’

  ‘Northolt,’ Philby repeated. ‘I’m simply here to deliver you in one piece.’

  ‘You’re telling me I don’t have a choice?’

  ‘I’m telling you we’re wasting precious time. And the answer is no.’

  Bella hated the word, always had done, but three years in Moscow had made her even more aware of how helpless you could be when your masters called.

  She carefully folded the towel and stepped out of the bath. Philby’s eyes never left her face.

  ‘Is the prisoner allowed to leave a note?’ she enquired. ‘For Tam?’

  ‘As you wish, my dear. We leave in five minutes.’

  ‘That sounds like a diktat.’

  ‘I’m afraid it is.’

  ‘No room for negotiation?’

  ‘None.’

  Bella nodded, holding his gaze.

  ‘This is very NKVD,’ she said. ‘But I’m guessing you might know that already.’

  Philby stared at her for a long moment. There was little warmth in his smile.

  ‘Five minutes,’ he repeated. ‘I’ll be waiting outside.’

  *

  Barbarossa was the German code name for the invasion of Russia. Back in June, more than three million Wehrmacht troops had plunged into the vastness of the Soviet Union, supported by thousands of aircraft and tanks. After roasting Poland, France and the Low Countries on the spit of blitzkrieg, Hitler now needed to fire up the barbecue pit again, and torch Leningrad and Moscow by the onset of winter. Both Russian cities reduced to ashes was the Christmas present he’d promised the German Volk, but the real prize lay in the rich grain basin of Ukraine, and the priceless oil fields of the Caucasus beyond.

  Bella Menzies had first heard the news in a phone call from an NKVD colonel named Shebalin. It was a Sunday morning, and she’d been invited to a picnic at a dacha in the woods north of Moscow.

  ‘Don’t bother,’ Shebalin had growled on the phone. ‘The Vodzh can’t believe it, and neither can anyone else. War feeds on rumours but never anything like this. Thieves in the fucking night. Millions of them.’

  The Vodzh was Stalin, the Great Leader, and lately Adolf Hitler’s key ally. The last time Bella had seen him in the flesh was the evening earlier in the year when he’d addressed senior members of Molotov’s Foreign Ministry at a Kremlin reception. As a valued defector, with inside knowledge of the workings of British intelligence, Bella had won herself an invitation. She’d always thought that Stalin was hopeless on his feet, or even on the radio. The man was a mumbler, stolid, flat as a pancake, full of menace, yes, but no fire, no imagination, none of Lenin’s magic. This was an opinion you’d be wise to keep to yourself, but that evening the Vodzh had surprised her. He was playful. He was light on his feet. He radiated confidence. The class enemies, he’d said, were tearing each other to pieces while the Soviet Union lay in wait, readying herself for the moment when the global Proletariat would be ripe for the many blessings of Marxism-Leninism.

  Now, barely months later, this.

  *

  The twin-engined aircraft, an Avro Anson, was small, slow, cold and very noisy. The airfield outside Aberdeen was an hour behind them. Bella and Philby were seated side by side in the narrow cabin behind the pilot and only by shouting was any conversation possible. Bella was huddled in a full-length fur coat that had once belonged to Tam’s mother. Bringing it along for the ride had been Philby’s idea.

  Now, as the aircraft hit yet another pocket of turbulence, she leaned across the aisle and gestured Philby closer. She wanted to know the latest from the Eastern Front.

  ‘How bad?’

  ‘Very. The northern thrust is closing on Leningrad. In the centre, Panzers are within sight of the October Railway.’

  Bella nodded. The October Railway tied Leningrad to Moscow. She’d ridden it herself on a number of occasions, taking advantage of the modest luxuries offered to those favoured by the Party, and spending most of the journey beside the window, marvelling at the sheer size of the country, but she knew only too well that western Russia would be only a nibble for someone with Hitler’s gargantuan appetite. Further east, beyond Moscow, lay thousands of miles of barren nowhere. This is Napoleon, she thought, with thousands of tanks.

  ‘And the south? He’s still pushing hard?’

  ‘He is. He wants Kyiv in the bag first. I gather le mot juste is encirclement.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘He’s throwing a noose around the place. Tighten the rope, and the Ukrainians will be learning German in no time.’

  ‘That bad?’

  ‘Probably worse.’

  ‘So why am I going there?’

  Philby studied her for a moment. The pilot had frowned on cigarettes but he’d been smoking non-stop since take-off. Close to, she could s
mell the tobacco on his breath, on the folds of his jacket. She’d also noticed a slight tremor in his right hand, and a rather endearing stammer that surfaced from time to time. This man had immense charm – she’d thought so from the moment she’d first met him – but there was a hint of vulnerability as well. Maybe his age, she thought. Twenty-nine was young for someone who was already a high-flyer in the Secret Intelligence Service.

  ‘You mean Kyiv?’ he said at last, in answer to her question.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Wait until we land. This bloody war is no friend of the obvious.’

  *

  It was dark and wet by the time they arrived at Northolt aerodrome, the sprawl of north London invisible under the blackout. The pilot nursed the aircraft to a bumpy landing, the runway marked by a line of burning kerosene flares, and after the Anson had rolled to a halt Philby waited at the foot of the aluminium ladder before leading Bella to the low outline of the building that served as a reception centre.

  Bella had never met Colonel Stewart Menzies before. ‘C’, the Chief of MI6, was wearing a light tweed overcoat and was carrying a black homburg pebbled with raindrops. Bella noticed his ears, unusually large, his carefully clipped moustache and the attention he’d obviously paid to his immaculately polished shoes. According to the NKVD file she’d read back in Moscow, ‘C’ was immensely wealthy, a rumour confirmed from what she’d heard from other sources. He’d attended Eton, fought a gallant war on the Western Front, rode to hounds and never missed a day of Royal Ascot. He was also, said the file, the rumoured love child of Edward VII and drank a great deal.

  When Philby offered a deferential handshake, the Chief shook it warmly. Then he turned to Bella. Pre-war, with a desk in the British Embassy in Berlin, and the ear of key journalists and diplomats in the capital, Bella had been sending back intelligence to this man’s organisation for nearly a year, but the fact that she’d later betrayed it, disappearing one dank Berlin afternoon only to surface three days later in Moscow, seemed of no importance. On the contrary, ‘C’ was extremely civil. He apologised for the abrupt flight south, and then introduced her to the two colleagues who were to serve as a briefing team. Maybe it was the fact that they shared a surname. Maybe.