Kyiv (Spoils of War) Read online

‘She does.’

  ‘So what do you need from me?’

  ‘I need to know what she’s doing here. I need to know why she was sent, why she was allowed in, why she hasn’t been arrested. In May, she’d have been the enemy. Pre-Barbarossa, we’d have taken her down to 020 and set the dogs on her. If she was very lucky, she might have survived. Otherwise, we’d have strung her up.’

  Camp 020 was MI5 parlance for Latchmere House, MI5’s interrogation centre out in the wilds of Richmond. While it was true that some double agents could face the death penalty, Barton was looking – if anything – amused.

  ‘That was almost a speech,’ she said. ‘Do I hear a thank-you?’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For Miss Menzies,’ her smile widened. ‘Bella.’

  Moncrieff studied her for a moment, not quite believing what he’d just heard.

  ‘You’re telling me she was some kind of present?’

  ‘I’m suggesting we take your welfare seriously. And hers, too. She did a wonderful job in the Wilhelmstrasse, before she decided to push off. Everyone says so. The fact that she’d made friends in the wrong quarters and swallowed all the Soviet claptrap was unfortunate, but at the time we assumed she was barely old enough to know better.’ 70 Wilhelmstrasse was home to the British Embassy in Berlin.

  ‘That sounds like forgiveness,’ Moncrieff said. ‘Have we all kissed and made up? Or is it just me?’

  ‘Under any other circumstances, Tam, that might be funny. The sad truth is that the Russians have been lucky. For whatever reason, they’ve acquired a prime asset. She appears to be a real convert and that, to be frank, comes as a surprise. We need to test that faith of hers and we’re rather hoping you might shed a little light on why on earth she ever went there in the first place.’ The smile again, colder. ‘Is there anything you might like to share with us?’

  ‘Sadly not.’

  ‘She wouldn’t tell you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But you asked?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘She told me about a boyfriend, a man she met at Oxford. Love of her life. Committed Communist. Made no secret of it.’

  ‘We understand he wanted to join your lot, the Marines.’

  ‘Indeed. And when they wouldn’t have him, he went to Spain and died in some Republican trench.’

  ‘For the cause.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Anything else? Anything we didn’t know already?’

  Moncrieff shook his head. He still wanted to know how Bella, a self-declared defector, had managed to arrive in Britain just a week ago and avoid arrest.

  ‘Our MI6 friends brought her back. They had the conversations in the Big House in Moscow and cobbled together some kind of démarche. One of them in London counter-signed the laissez-passer and guaranteed to look after her.’

  ‘Would this be Mr Philby?’

  ‘It would, Tam, and when the time came Broadway guaranteed that she’d be returned to Moscow intact.’ Broadway housed the London headquarters of MI6.

  ‘But what was the point?’ Moncrieff asked. ‘Why did she want to come home?’

  ‘To see you, Tam. For whatever reason, she missed your company.’

  ‘Sweet.’

  ‘You don’t believe me?’

  ‘Of course I don’t. Since when have MI6 been paying so much attention to my welfare? There has to be another reason.’

  ‘You’re right.’

  ‘So, what is it? Am I allowed to ask?’

  Barton wouldn’t answer. Instead, she scribbled herself a note and then checked her watch again.

  ‘I suggest you pay MI6 a visit. Their Section Five, to be precise.’ She ducked her head and began to write again. ‘They’re camping out in St Albans. The MI6 central registry is nearby. A place called Prae Wood. Miss Menzies will doubtless have a file of her own. That might be a useful place to start.’

  Moncrieff nodded. Section Five acted as a bridge between MI6 and MI5, analysing intelligence reports from foreign out-stations and passing on relevant items to the home Security Service. In theory, this created neutral ground between the two organisations, but MI6 kept their secrets close to their chests and were scrupulous in defending their territory.

  ‘So why am I there? What do I tell them? What’s the cover story?’

  ‘You’re tidying up after the Hess operation. Take something they might like to add to their own operational file. Go in the spirit of peace and goodwill. The officer in charge at the Registry drinks like a fish, which may or may not be an advantage.’ She looked up at last. ‘Be honest, Tam. Are you having difficulties with this proposition?’

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘Then do I hear a yes?’

  Moncrieff nodded. As ever, Ursula Barton appeared to have conjured a plan from the merest handful of clues, but Moncrieff knew that nothing this woman did ever happened by accident. He was about to push her harder about Bella but the door to the adjoining office opened and he found himself looking up at the rumpled figure of Guy Liddell.

  Moncrieff got to his feet. The proffered handshake was the MI5 equivalent of a salute.

  ‘Sir…’ he muttered.

  Liddell gazed at him for a moment. At first glance, he looked like a country solicitor – benign, well fed, slightly vague – but Moncrieff understood only too well the perils of underestimating this man. The sleepy eyes missed nothing.

  ‘Tam,’ he murmured peaceably. ‘Good to have you back.’

  4

  THURSDAY 11 SEPTEMBER 1941

  War, as Ilya Glivenko gently pointed out, is no friend of the clock. He and Bella had been waiting in the grey dust at the airfield outside Kharkov for nearly a day, sprawled on a threadbare Army blanket just metres away from the aircraft that was to take Glivenko and his precious wooden crates to the beleaguered city of Kyiv. The crates had already been transferred from the Halifax bomber that had brought them from Cairo, but a couple of engineers were still kneeling on the wing of the Soviet Il-2, working on the starboard engine.

  Stripped to the waist in the late-summer heat, they paused from time to time to wipe the sweat from their faces and then shake their heads. According to Glivenko, there was a leak in the oil system they couldn’t locate, and the more of the engine they dismantled the worse the prognosis became. Maybe tonight. Maybe tomorrow morning. A spare aircraft? With things as bad as they are? Forget it.

  Bella had never been in a war zone before and found the changes of tempo fascinating. Gibraltar, in the early afternoon after leaving Northolt, had been bathed in sunshine. The landing strip lay at the foot of the looming Rock. She and Glivenko, plus a handful of other passengers, stayed aboard to save time while ground crew pumped fuel into the wing tanks. Watching them through the open door, Bella was grateful for the silence and the warmth after the deafening hours at altitude en route south.

  The Halifax had never been designed to carry passengers and the conversion offered few comforts: a handful of canvas seats, earplugs fashioned from twists of cotton waste, plus a couple of blankets each to fend off the intense chill. For hour after hour, flying a huge loop over the Bay of Biscay to stay clear of Luftwaffe fighters, she’d done her best to relax but the thunder of the engines made sleep impossible. Now, back on the ground with the sudden heat seeping into her bones, she felt herself dropping off. Glivenko, sitting beside her, tapped his own shoulder. I’m a pillow, he murmured. Don’t be shy.

  They were on the move again within the hour, the engines roaring as they climbed away from the curl of Algeciras Bay and left Europe behind them. In Cairo, eleven hours later, it was five in the morning, the rising sun casting long shadows from the pyramids beside the Nile. This time they were allowed to clamber down from the aircraft and stretch their legs. A khaki marquee, open-sided, offered tea and a selection of fruit, and Bella was grateful for a latrine with a door after squatting unsteadily over a bucket at the back of the aircraft. When she’d soothed the Despatch Officer’s worries
about the cargo they were carrying, and returned to the marquee, she found Glivenko nursing a kitten.

  ‘Meet Mitya,’ he was eyeing the nearby table of food. ‘Here, take her.’

  Bella reached for the tiny bundle, feeling the sharpness of her bones through the thin veil of flesh. One of the kitten’s eyes was gummy with an infection, and when Bella held her close she felt the needle prick of her claws as she sought for something to eat. Then Glivenko was back with a bowl of goat’s milk. He dipped a finger and offered it to the kitten. The sudden pinkness of Mitya’s lapping tongue made Bella laugh.

  ‘More,’ she told Glivenko. ‘The poor scrap’s starving.’

  In the end, with the Despatch Officer trying to hurry them back to the waiting bomber, Mitya had drunk the lot. Bella held the kitten close while Glivenko returned the empty bowl. A single exchange of glances, a tiny nod from Glivenko, and Bella slipped the tiny bundle inside her blouse. Moments later, with a helping hand from Glivenko, she was climbing the aluminium ladder into the belly of the Halifax. Days later, in very different circumstances, she knew she owed a great deal to this moment of complicity.

  *

  Now, still marooned at Kharkov, still nursing Mitya, she was getting to know the little Russian sapper. He’d been lucky enough to be born in St Petersburg, he told her, and luckier still to have had access to a piano in his grandparents’ apartment. His grandmother had taught him to play and his infant talents had caught the attention of the music teacher at his school. At the age of fifteen, he won himself a place at the Conservatoire. The city of his birth had now been renamed Petrograd and by the time the Bolsheviks seized power he was in his final year.

  Lenin’s mob, he said, had raided the city’s richer districts in search of booty, and as winter settled on Petrograd the young Ilya found himself in a borrowed greatcoat and a pair of his sister’s woollen gloves playing a liberated grand piano beside the big tram intersection round the corner from the Hermitage.

  ‘Rachmaninoff and Bach and lots of folksongs,’ he said, ‘at minus nine degrees. Frost in your nostrils and the audience stamping their feet to keep warm.’

  ‘Lots of people?’

  ‘Hundreds. I knew I’d never be good enough to play at concert level but in a way this was better. Those October days had taken people out of themselves. Play the right tunes and everyone would sing. You’d see the same faces day after day. We called ourselves the Kerbside Choir.’

  ‘And you? What did they call you?’

  ‘The Pianist. And people who really know me still do. There was another Pianist in the city called Zhdanov. He became the party boss after Kirov was killed in ’34, but that’s another story. You should come to Kyiv with me. Bring little Mitya.’

  ‘I’d love to.’

  ‘So why not? We get along fine. You’ve been a great help. Anything’s possible in this bloody war. Just do it.’

  Anything’s possible in this bloody war. Bella smiled, watching the battle-scarred Soviet aircraft come and go, trailing clouds of dust across the busy chaos of the airfield, and lying on the grass she held the little kitten even closer, aware of its soft mewing. En route to Kharkov, especially with the Despatch Officer in Cairo, she’d done Philby’s bidding and smoothed Glivenko’s path through the usual tangle of self-important military busybodies. She was still clueless about the contents of the wooden boxes, but nobody seemed to care. Now, again according to Philby, she was due for a rendezvous with a senior NKVD officer called Bezkrovny with whom she’d return to Moscow. She knew this man by reputation and didn’t much like what she’d heard. He was Jewish, and clever, and ambitious, and was rumoured to have the ear of Lavrentiy Beria, a career sadist who specialised in breaking the toughest men in the name, as ever, of the Proletariat.

  So far there’d been no sign of Bezkrovny, and for that she was glad. She needed, above all, time. Time to take stock. Time to fathom exactly what kind of catastrophe was threatening to overwhelm her. Her years at the heart of the pitiless Soviet machine had sharpened both her instinct for danger and the survival skills that went with it. Tam had been right. Best, at all costs, to avoid Moscow.

  Glivenko, as calm as ever, was still waiting for some kind of decision. His offer of a ride appeared to be genuine.

  ‘I speak German,’ Bella said lightly, ‘as well as Russian and English. Might that be useful in Kyiv?’

  Glivenko’s derisive bark of laughter made the kitten jump. Bella gentled it as best she could. Nearby, two young soldiers had started trading blows over a can of gasoline. Glivenko was on his feet at once. Older, and much smaller, he chose the bigger of the two men to attack. A flurry of blows, and the man was on the ground, holding his face while blood pumped from his shattered nose. The other soldier stared at Glivenko for a moment while the little man delivered a volley of abuse, and then turned and ran, leaving the gasoline behind.

  Glivenko seized the can and carried it across towards the aircraft. Like Bella, the engineers on the wing had been watching the brief fight. The gasoline, one of them said, would be more than welcome. The engine was back in one piece, the oil leak rectified, and – yes – the plane should be ready as soon as they woke the pilot up. He called Glivenko Otets, Father, and Bella recognised the respect in his voice.

  ‘Miss Menzies?’

  Bella looked round. Bezkrovny, she thought. He was wearing a belted brown jacket. His blue jodhpurs were tucked into knee-length leather boots, and his shoulder boards told Bella everything she wanted to know.

  ‘Senior Major of State Security?’ she feigned approval. ‘I’m flattered.’

  ‘I’m down here on other business,’ Bezkrovny pocketed his purple NKVD card. ‘It will be a pleasure to escort you back home.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Our plane has yet to arrive. It will be two hours, at least. Have you eaten?’

  ‘No. But everything is taken care of.’ It was Glivenko. He was standing in the sunshine, rubbing his knuckles. The sight of senior NKVD officers disturbed most serving soldiers but Glivenko seemed untroubled. When Bezkrovny asked for his papers, he produced his Army ID. Bezkrovny inspected it carefully, turning the worn pages one by one.

  ‘And you are going where?’

  ‘Kyiv.’ Glivenko nodded towards the nearby Il-2.

  ‘Kyiv is under siege. The city’s fucked. You have to be crazy to go to Kyiv.’

  ‘I know. That’s the point.’

  ‘Being crazy?’

  ‘Making sure the city’s fucked.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  Glivenko shrugged, then gestured at Bella.

  ‘You’re taking her to Moscow?’ he asked Bezkrovny.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you’re over there? With your comrades?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Then it will be my pleasure to bring Miss Menzies over when we’ve finished our conversation. Might that be in order?’

  Bezkrovny looked uncertain for a moment, then nodded, tapped his watch, muttered something about ‘soon’, and turned on his heel. Bella watched him striding across to a group of fellow NKVD officers, deep in conversation. He’s as impressed by The Pianist as I am, she thought. Anyone heading for Kyiv obviously deserves a degree of respect.

  ‘You work for these people?’ Glivenko asked.

  ‘With them, yes.’

  ‘And you sleep at night?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘You’re on some kind of assignment? From the British?’

  ‘In a way, yes.’ It seemed a small lie.

  Glivenko nodded. He was still watching the tight little circle of NKVD officers and he was looking thoughtful. Then his brown eyes found Bella again.

  ‘You still want to go to Kyiv? With me?’

  ‘I do, yes.’

  ‘Might I ask why?’

  ‘Not here. Not now.’ Bella smiled. ‘Maybe later.’

  ‘But you realise how dangerous this might be? The flight in? What has to happen afterwards?’

  ‘Ye
s. Trust me, please. I don’t know what you’re up to but the answer’s yes.’

  ‘It’s really that important? That you don’t go on to Moscow?’

  ‘I’m afraid it is, yes.’ She heard the nearby cough of the engines starting, one after the other, but her eyes were still on Bezkrovny. The way he commanded attention among his fellow officers told her a great deal. ‘If I get on that plane it might not go well with you, either,’ she murmured. ‘Isn’t that a concern?’

  Glivenko laughed softly.

  ‘From where we’re going,’ he said, ‘there’ll be no coming back.’

  *

  They began to taxi out towards the take-off point minutes later. Watching through the quaintly curtained window, Bella had the satisfaction of watching Bezkrovny throw an inquisitive glance over his shoulder, then frown and stiffen and reach for the pistol hanging from his belt. Bella alerted Glivenko, who was sitting in the seat behind. He took a look for himself, and then laughed. This aircraft, he said, was the Soviet copy of the American DC-3. It could soak up endless punishment and it would take more than a gramme or two of NKVD lead to bring it to a halt. Let the man shoot all he likes. We’re still going to Kyiv.

  Anything’s possible in this bloody war.

  Bella smiled, the kitten curled peaceably in her lap, stretches of the airfield bumping past the window. For the first time since the day the Germans crossed the border and fell on Mother Russia, she felt truly at peace. What might happen next was totally beyond her control, but she trusted this man. He had the dignity and the brave fatalism she’d met so often in Moscow – in the street, on the new Metro, in countless chance encounters – and she sensed that in his company it would be a privilege, as well as a pleasure, to confront whatever Kyiv might have in store.

  The flight was brief compared to the interminable haul from Northolt. The pilot flew very low, dragging the shadow of the aircraft over the endless steppe as the sun began to set in the west, and when Glivenko appeared at her elbow and shouted that the pilot was trying to avoid German fighters she said she understood. It turned out that he’d paid the cockpit a visit. The NKVD bastard, according to the pilot, had loosed off a couple of rounds, aiming for the aircraft’s undercarriage, but only when they landed would anyone know whether the tyres were still intact.