Angel of Destruction Read online

  ‘We could force the issue,’ Beria suggested, cautiously. ‘Before any such alliance can be formed. If we were to shoot down one of their aircraft, instead of merely buzzing them . . .’

  ‘We would be at war. Again.’

  ‘Well, now that we have the atom bomb as well—’

  ‘Lavrenty, at this moment we do not have the physical resources to fight a war; we are still recovering from the last one. So we have the Bomb. We could devastate North America. But while we were doing that, they would be destroying Russia. Where would be the profit in that, for either side? And now the scientists are telling us that the fall-out from these bombs could contaminate the earth, the very air we breathe, for years, perhaps centuries. We would in effect be destroying the human race. Where would be the point in that?’

  Beria preferred not to comment. He had never heard his boss, who he knew had personally commanded the death of more than ten million people during the purges of the 1930s, not to mention accepting the loss of perhaps double that number during the recent war, with apparent equanimity, express concern about the human race.

  ‘So,’ Stalin said. ‘I have given orders for talks to begin with the democracies with a view to ending the Berlin blockade.’

  ‘But Josef, won’t that be seen as a humiliating climb down?’

  ‘A formula will be found. The West are as keen to end this crisis as we.’

  ‘I was thinking of here at home.’

  ‘The idea was flawed from the beginning. But it was Molotov’s idea. He will have to go.’

  ‘You mean . . .?’ Beria was aghast. He did not like Molotov, because Vyacheslav Molotov was a difficult man to like. But they had been comrades for a good many years, and through some very uncertain times.

  ‘No, I do not mean that I wish him executed,’ Stalin said. ‘He has been a faithful servant. But he has never been able to understand the Western mentality. He will be retired and replaced by Gromyko. Andrei has done a very good job in the United Nations, and he certainly knows, and understands, the nature of the beast with which we are dealing. But still . . .’ He sighed, and laid down his pipe. ‘It is a defeat. Our first, for a long time. I am growing old, Lavrenty.’

  ‘You, Josef? Your brain is as sharp as ever.’

  ‘The brain is the servant of the body,’ Stalin said sombrely. ‘I am seventy years old. That is, I have reached the end of my allotted span.’

  ‘Age, by years, is a man-made invention,’ Beria argued. ‘A man is as old as he feels. And I would have said that the body is the servant of the brain.’

  ‘That is because your body is still fully functioning. There comes a time when one must face facts. When one needs to consider the events of one’s life, whether one has been a success or a failure.’

  ‘Well,’ Beria said, ‘You have the satisfaction of knowing that you are the greatest Russian of all time, perhaps the greatest man of all time. You have raised our motherland to heights of prosperity and international prestige not even dreamed about by the greatest of the tsars.’

  Stalin regarded him for some seconds – there were limits to the most outrageous flattery – then said quietly, ‘Yet I have had my failures.’

  ‘You are allowing this Berlin fiasco to get you down. But as you rightly say, the fault is entirely Molotov’s.’

  ‘There have been others. One in particular.’

  Beria held his breath. Every time he came to this office he dreaded this moment, but it had been some time since the subject had been raised. Simply because his boss had been so preoccupied with political matters since the end of the war. Now . . .

  ‘Do you know,’ Stalin said, ‘the last time I saw her she was sitting in that chair, smiling at me. That was in June 1941, and she was just twenty-one years old. She was so young, but so calm, so poised, so inexpressively beautiful. Her voice was perfection, low and throaty. Her hair was like a shroud of fine-spun gold. Her eyes beckoned, so blue, so deep. Her legs were things to keep a man awake at night. Do you know, Lavrenty, I actually invited her to come down to Yalta with me. And as she sipped tea and smiled at me, she was choosing how to kill me.’ His voice suddenly became brittle. ‘I have never trusted a woman since.’

  Beria licked his lips. ‘You are not the only man the Countess von Widerstand seduced by merely looking at him.’

  ‘But not you, eh?’

  ‘I, sir, have never had the privilege of meeting the Countess.’

  ‘But you did once have her in your cells.’

  ‘Yes, I did. But at that time I did not realize her importance, and left her to my underlings.’

  ‘Who all got themselves killed,’ Stalin mused. ‘But you also signed the order for her release.’

  ‘That, sir, will haunt me to my grave. I was completely taken in by that smooth-talking American scoundrel, Joseph Andrews, and at that time I still did not realize just who she was.’

  ‘Well, I suppose we all make mistakes, although fortunately not all of our mistakes have had consequences quite so serious.’

  Beria gulped, and again held his breath.

  ‘That was nearly eight years ago,’ Stalin mused. ‘Eight years in which she has left a trail of destruction halfway round the world. How many of our operatives has she killed?’

  ‘Ah . . . I am not quite sure, sir.’

  Stalin raised his eyebrows.

  ‘I mean,’ Beria hurried on, ‘I think she has been responsible for the deaths of fifty-one of our people, but twenty-two of these were in that shoot-out in Germany in 1946, and Fehrbach had several people with her, so we do not know how many she killed, personally.’

  ‘On her record, it was probably most of them. But as you say, she was certainly responsible for them. That was three years ago. So where is she now?’

  ‘I do not know,’ Beria confessed, miserably.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Well, Josef, as you may remember, she undertook that raid into our controlled territory in Germany to reclaim ten million dollars’ worth of gold that she had concealed there during the last days of the Reich.’

  ‘At which she was successful.’ Stalin pointed out.

  ‘Ah . . . yes. And that is the problem. Possessing that much money enabled her to do anything she wished, go anywhere she wished. To disappear.’

  ‘It is not possible to disappear, completely, in this day and age. Unless she is dead. And as we never succeeded in killing her it is unlikely that anyone else has managed to do so. But however many successes I may have had, I would regard my life as a complete failure were I to go to my grave without putting that devil’s spawn in hers.’

  ‘If we had the slightest lead—’

  ‘Lavrenty, you are not thinking clearly. So she got away with ten million dollars, in gold bullion. That is not the sort of wealth even Anna Fehrbach can carry around, even in her infamous shoulder bag.’

  ‘Well, of course we understand that, Josef. And we traced the gold, very rapidly. She and her associates had an aircraft waiting for them at Geneva, and they were flown to Paris, with the bullion. There they dealt with a very reputable banker, who converted the gold into currency and invested it, in the name of Resistance Holdings. You understand the significance of this?’

  ‘Certainly. The German word for resistance is Widerstand, which is the spurious title given to Fehrbach by her SD employers to give the impression to the world, and especially her victims, that she was an aristocrat. Well, then, that was a start.’

  ‘Unfortunately, it was also a finish. The original investment was then split up a hundred times, into smaller companies, scattered all over the world, and reinvested, again under a variety of names.’

  ‘And you have been able to trace none of them?’

  ‘We have traced several of them, but the names of the directors are all different, although apparently legitimate, all lawyers or bankers who, so far as we have been able to ascertain, are quite unaware of the identity of their principal. Nor, in view of the handsome fees they are paid, do they wi
sh to. But there is no mention whatsoever of anyone answering to the name Fehrbach or Widerstand.’

  ‘But the income from these investments must go somewhere for her to access?’

  ‘Obviously. But as yet we have not been able to trace any of it. You must understand, Josef, that it is mostly channelled through American banks; with conditions the way they are, our people are labouring under a severe handicap when they attempt to follow up financial matters in the West. Since Churchill and Truman began spreading this atmosphere of hostility towards us, creating what their press is calling a ‘Cold War’, everything and everyone regarded as Soviet is being treated like pariahs. My agents tell me there is even a movement in the United States to outlaw Communism; this in a country which holds that free speech is an inalienable right. It would be contemptible, but it could also be catastrophic for those people we have infiltrated into the various government departments. And of course things like the Berlin Confrontation, which has been well publicized in the West, have exacerbated the situation.’ He paused, indicating that what was happening was the fault of neither him personally nor the MGB.

  ‘So your people are getting “cold feet”,’ Stalin remarked, with some satisfaction at his pun. ‘Very good. Let us accept for the moment that your efforts to trace the money have proved negative. But there is another area you do not seem to have explored. Anna Fehrbach entered the Soviet Zone three years ago and removed a very large, and very heavy, amount of gold. Where, initially, did she remove this money to?’

  ‘Well, she, and her gang, stole a truck, loaded it with the bullion, and drove it across a bridge into the American Sector.’

  ‘Did we not have border guards on this bridge?’

  ‘Well, of course, sir.’

  ‘And they did nothing to prevent this happening?’

  ‘They tried to stop it. And when it would not stop, they opened fire, but immediately fire was returned from the American side, and in the confusion the truck got across. You remember, Josef, we protested in the strongest possible terms, but the Americans claimed that it had been a misunderstanding, that their guards had assumed our people were shooting at them.’

  ‘But they did not return the truck?’

  ‘Oh, they did. A few days later. But it was quite empty.’

  ‘How odd.’

  Beria found a handkerchief to wipe his neck; his boss was not usually given to sarcasm. ‘And, you may remember, sir, that there was a quid pro quo. Fehrbach’s ten million was only a small percentage of the total Nazi reserves. Thanks to her, the Americans knew where the bulk of the bullion was hidden. And they were willing to share that knowledge, and the gold, if we did not press the matter.’

  ‘So she was allowed to get away with her ill-gotten gains. But are there not other paths we can follow? You say that you discovered that Fehrbach and her gang flew out of Geneva a couple of days after her escape. Do you know how they did that? What airline did they use? It must have been booked well in advance.’

  ‘We have no proof. But as it happens there was an RAF plane which had made an unexpected visit to Geneva the day before, and which flew out that very evening.’

  ‘And you have not drawn any conclusions from these so coincidental events?’

  ‘Well, obviously she had friends . . . I mean, as she was the only one who knew where the bulk of the bullion was hidden—’

  ‘Oh, come now, Lavrenty. A half share in a hundred tons of gold? That money was important to us. But the Americans claim to be the richest country in the world. That gold was peanuts to them. Yet they were willing to risk a diplomatic incident to get Fehrbach out of Germany before we could catch up with her. And the British were willing to lay on an aircraft to get her out of Switzerland before she could be traced there. We are not talking about friends, Lavrenty, we are talking about support at a very high level.’

  ‘Well . . .’

  ‘And why should the British and the Americans go to such lengths to protect a woman who is a wanted war criminal, who worked for the Nazis, who killed for them, for at least seven years? Is not the conclusion obvious?’

  ‘You mean she had a lover, or more than one . . .’

  Stalin gave him one of his devastating stares. ‘I am quite sure she has lovers scattered all over the place. But men only go to such lengths to protect their mistresses in novels. The conclusion is obvious. She works for them. She works for MI6, and she almost certainly also works for the American OSS, or this new CIA they have created. It would be very interesting to know for how long she has worked for them, while masquerading as Himmler’s personal assistant. I would say that it is a long time. You remember that in 1944 we presented irrefutable proof to the Americans that she was a Nazi agent, and they promised to eliminate her. And she is still here.’

  ‘But . . . if she was a double agent all of those years ago, and in the very heart of the Nazi establishment . . . I mean to say, Himmler’s personal assistant! . . . She must be a quite exceptional woman.’

  ‘We already know that, don’t we?’

  ‘But Josef, if she is working for MI6, or the CIA, or both, then we have lost her. These are two of the most secret organizations in the world.’

  ‘Agreed. But they are not philanthropic institutions. They did not take those risks and go to all that trouble just to pat her on the back and say goodbye and good luck. She is still working for them.’

  ‘I agree that is likely,’ Beria conceded. ‘But if so, I cannot see that we are any further ahead. Spies, by definition, work in secret, move in secret, live in secret.’

  ‘Lavrenty, Anna Fehrbach is not a spy. She may have spied for her employers, whether they were German or British or American, from time to time. But her prime profession is that of assassin. Spies are two a penny. Assassins in her class are worth their weight in gold. Which is what she is to the Western governments. But Western, Christian, morality considers assassination a dirty word. Thus while everyone knows that it is practised, it must never be admitted, or brought into the open. Thus a shadowy figure like Fehrbach, whose very existence is known to only a handful of people, is invaluable. What you need to do is investigate every political assassination in the past three years committed by a lone operative, in which the assassin escaped. You will of course exclude those carried out by our people. Then you correlate that information, and you will obtain a pattern which will lead you to Fehrbach.’

  Beria pulled his ear. ‘That will be an immense task.’

  ‘Nevertheless, it must be carried out, and the sooner the better. And it is not so immense. We located her in Scotland in 1946. She managed to escape us then, but we know that she then went, or was taken, to South America. But after what happened in Brazil, we also know that she is wanted by the police there. England, Europe is no longer safe for her. Neither is South America. She is running out of places to hide, save in North America, where, as I have said, there can be no doubt that she is protected by the United States Government.’

  ‘You do understand, Josef, that if and when we do find her, it is liable to cost God knows how many more lives. I have sent four separate disposal units after her, never less than four of my best people at a time, and not one of them has ever returned to tell us what happened. She got out of Scotland by shooting four of my people. She killed four more in Brazil when they tried to kidnap her. When I think of what happened in Warsaw in 1944 . . .’

  ‘That was six, wasn’t it? And another six in that catastrophic attempt to kidnap her in Washington in 1941. And then there was that fiasco outside Berlin in 1945.’

  ‘That is exactly it,’ Beria said. ‘Whoever I send after her now will be virtually on a suicide mission.’

  ‘That has been your recurring mistake.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Anna Fehrbach can see one of our operatives coming a mile away, much less four or six of them, and as you have just said, she is a lethal machine who kills first and worries about the consequences or the reason later. That is supposing she worries about it at a
ll. You need a different approach.’

  Beria returned to polishing his pince nez, now less from apprehension than bewilderment.

  ‘You need,’ Stalin said, ‘someone who either is capable of taking her out at a very long range, or who is capable of getting right up to her.’

  ‘I thought . . .’

  ‘That I wanted her alive, sitting in that chair, bound and helpless. I would like that, yes. But one must be realistic. If that is not to be, I want her dead.’

  ‘I understand. But . . . even supposing I can find her, where am I to find someone who will not immediately arouse her suspicions? Especially now all westerners are being encouraged to be hostile to us.’

  ‘Have you never heard of an organization known as the Mafia?’

  Beria frowned. ‘I believe it is some kind of a criminal brotherhood.’

  ‘That is very well put. It is certainly an organization that, like Fehrbach, deals in assassination, of anyone who opposes it, but, if the money is right, will carry out . . . I think they call it a ‘hit’, on any selected target, with no questions asked, again, if the money is right. And, as I believe it has tentacles all over America, it may well be able to locate our target for us. The operative they will employ will be as American as jazz music, someone of a type Fehrbach has never dealt with before, and will have no reason to suspect. I wish you to contact these people. As I have said, they do not inquire too deeply into motive, but we will supply one. Do you still have that photograph of her taken in 1940?’

  ‘Yes, I do. But, Josef, that was nine years ago.’

  ‘I don’t think she will have changed that much. Like all women of her type, she is too proud of her beauty to do that. So you will send an agent to find an appropriate Mafia . . . I think they call them ‘families’. He will give this family the photograph, tell them that she is an escaped Nazi war criminal named Anna Fehrbach, Countess von Widerstand – although I shouldn’t think she will be using that name to live in America – whose penchant was killing Jews or sending them to Auschwitz – the Americans are being very supportive of the Jews right now – and that we are certain she is living somewhere in America, and that his principal wishes her dead. You have carte blanche to spend whatever is necessary to employ their people to carry out this hit, which will be for the good of all mankind.’