Winner Lose All Read online

  Out of breath, Beria skidded to a halt in the center of the room. Stalin lay sprawled on an old, cracked-leather couch in front of the glowing embers in the big fireplace. He wore a simple homespun tunic, baggy peasant pants, and badly scuffed, knee-high leather boots. His left arm draped across his forehead, shielding his eyes, while his right arm hung on the floor, his fingers circling the neck of a nearly empty vodka bottle. This was Stalin’s usual late-night pose. Beria also knew there would be at least one 9-millimeter Makarov pistol tucked between the cushions, within easy reach. For several long minutes, Stalin let Beria stand in front of him without even acknowledging his presence. Finally, the great man spoke, his voice thick, slurred with alcohol. “Where have you been, Beria? I thought you fell into one of those dungeons of yours and got lost.”

  “My apologies, Koba, but the weather out there is abysmal,” he answered, squinting as his glasses became hopelessly fogged in the hot room.

  “Weather?” Stalin shot back with a malevolent laugh. “Weather? Is that your new whore’s name? Weather? Surely you know that even the spymaster is spied upon these days. So here, drink, Lavrenti Pavlovich,” Stalin said as he raised the bottle of vodka for him to take. “You have the cold eyes of an undertaker tonight. You look like you need a stiff one.”

  Beria took the bottle from Stalin’s hand and sloshed the white-hot liquid down his throat. Beria realized that Stalin had called him by his first name and his patronymic, always a good sign. He also knew that not to accept the bottle and not to drink deeply from it when proffered could also be fatal. However, he knew to be careful with the vodka. Stalin loved to get a man drunk and provoke him, or make him sing and dance to see how he would react. Those were some of his other favorite tests.

  “I have a question for you, Beria.”

  “Anything, Koba, anything. You need but ask.”

  “Tell me why you think we won this war.”

  “Won? Comrade Stalin?” Beria froze, sensing a trap. “I… I would not say that we have won… not yet anyway.”

  “A matter of weeks.” He dismissed the argument with a wave of his hand. “We shall be in Berlin before summer. That should be obvious even to a toad like you.”

  “Yes, yes, Koba, if you think…”

  “I do, Beria. I do!” Stalin’s voice thundered. “So answer my question, spy-master-in-chief. Why did we win this cursed war?”

  The NKVD chief was now in a near panic. Surely this was another well-crafted trap, because Stalin never asked for opinions. “They are like bastard orphans,” he had growled many times before. “No one wants them and no one needs them.”

  In desperation, Beria finally took a stab in the dark. “It is because the Fascists could not stand up to the wrath of the great Soviet people, to Vanka, our simple Russian foot soldier, and, of course, to your brilliant leadership.”

  “No, no, no,” Stalin cut him off with a disgusted wave of his hand. “Oh, we threw poor Vanka at the Germans, well enough. We threw Vanka at them by the tens of millions. Then we retreated, giving them so much land that they choked on it until the early snows came and saved us. There was no brilliant strategy in that. Vanka, land, and old General Winter were indeed our best weapons, but the real reason we won was time. Time, Beria. We traded land for time over and over again, until we eventually turned the tables on the Fascists. Even you can see the simple truth in that.”

  Beria stared at him, speechless, not knowing whether he should agree or disagree.

  “Well, we will not be that lucky next time,” Stalin warned. “Wars will be fought between machines, not men. They will start after breakfast and be over before lunch, with the battles fought up there in the skies.” He pointed his finger toward the ceiling. “It will be with rockets and jet airplanes, and neither Vanka nor General Winter will be able to save us then. That is why we shall lose. Mark my words, Beria, there will be a next time, Churchill will see to it, and we will lose.”

  “Those damned British, they are always hatching plots.”

  The hard expression on Stalin’s face silenced the sycophant and Beria began to sweat once again. “That is why we must have the Germans who built those things, Beria. We must have the engineers and scientists who designed their airplanes, their rockets, and all the rest of it. The Germans are decades ahead of us,” Stalin reminded him. “Decades, and the Americans and the British are not far behind. We can never catch up without them.”

  “I will put my best agents on it, Comrade Stalin, whole networks of them. Crack agents, bloodhounds. It will be their top priority, and they shall not fail you!”

  “Good, because it is our only chance to survive,” Stalin said as he slowly raised his head and locked his eyes on Beria’s. “You do understand survival, don’t you, spymaster?”

  “Yes! Oh yes, Koba, I…”

  Stalin tossed the empty vodka bottle into the fireplace with a loud ‘Smash!’ and Beria nearly jumped out of his skin. “Bring me those German scientists, Beria, not another load of your mealy-mouthed excuses. Do you hear me?”

  “Yes, yes,” Beria babbled as he shuffled backward toward the door, not daring to turn away or break eye contact.

  “I can feel Churchill plotting against me already,” Stalin’s voice followed the NKVD chief as he slipped out the door. “I can feel him, Beria. That old bastard will snatch those Germans from under your nose and have them marching down Whitehall before you even know he was there.”

  “I won’t let that happen, Comrade, never, never, I swear.”

  “Then you had better hurry, Beria; you had better run like hell!”

  Beria needed no further coaxing or motivating. His short, fat legs propelled him out the door, down the hall, down the broad staircase, and out the front door into the empty Kremlin courtyard. He forgot his greatcoat, leaving it lying on the floor at the bottom of the stairs, but he did not care. He also forgot about the delicious blonde waiting back at his apartment. All he could think about now was staring down the rifle barrels of an NKVD firing squad, because he had just told a gaping, bold-faced lie to Josef Stalin.

  Crack agents inside Germany? Bloodhounds? Whole networks of them? Beria’s spy network in Germany had been in shambles for months. Most had been broken up by the Gestapo, and the only agents still left inside Germany who might be able to help at all were a smattering in Berlin, Essen, Hamburg, and the remnant of an old cell in Leipzig — mostly old men, if any of them were still alive. To make matters worse, it was a young woman who commanded that cell, and a Jew on top of that.

  Beria leaped inside his car as an icy shiver ran down his spine. “Go, go!” he screamed to the driver. “To the office!” He did not have the slightest idea how they could deliver what Stalin wanted, but if they did not, Beria knew he was doomed.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Scanlon had come to hate Colonel George Bromley. He closed his eyes and imagined wrapping his fingers around the bastard’s bony neck and squeezing it like a chicken’s. That pleasant thought provided some consolation, but not much; because, when he opened his eyes again, Bromley was still sitting there, and he would not leave him alone.

  The Colonel leaned forward over the desk, his eyes boring into Scanlon’s like twin drill bits, hot and painful. “Tell me, my boy,” he asked. “Can you really see yourself at the bar of some provincial country club in Connecticut, or wherever, with nothing to fill the long hours but large portions of whiskey and self-pity, telling war stories to your politely embarrassed golf companions, people who could never in a million years understand the war or what you have suffered?”

  Scanlon broke into a cold sweat. He wanted ever so desperately to make Bromley stop his damned inquisition.

  “No, I didn’t think so. Believe it or not, I know what you are going through. Truly, I do,” the Colonel’s voice softened. “I saw this same deadly cancer take hold in many a good man after the last war. You could see them wasting away on every park bench and pub in England — thin, pale, broken men. No one deserves that fate, Scanlon
, not even you.”

  “Colonel, I can’t do it anymore,” Scanlon finally admitted. After four months inside Germany where they measure the life span of an agent in hours and days, Ed Scanlon had given everything he had to give and he had nothing left. In the end, the Gestapo broke him; Chief Inspector Otto Dietrich broke him; and he talked. That was the worst thing an agent could do. It was as simple as that. He talked and he told the bastard all about the network, all about Will Kenyon, and all about Hanni Steiner. Kenyon was soon dead in the shootout at Gestapo Headquarters, and by now, he was certain the others were dead too, including Hanni. It wasn’t that the Gestapo would not have eventually rolled up the network and caught them all anyway. With all the manpower and equipment the Germans had at their command, it was inevitable. Still, it was Scanlon who talked, and that left him a shattered emotional wreck.

  Bromley could tell that the sale was not working and he was losing his grip on the young American. That was when he dropped his bomb and watched it explode in Scanlon’s lap. “Oh, by the way, old chap,” the Colonel said in his smoothest, most syrupy voice. “It seems your old friend Hanni Steiner is alive after all.” A contented smile spread across Bromley’s face as he saw the pain he was inflicting on the stunned American. “Imagine that.”

  Scanlon sat bolt upright, stunned. “If this is more of your crap, Colonel…” he said, as his eyes flared, hot and angry.

  “Oh, she’s alive all right,” Bromley cut him off. “The boys over at MI-6 bought themselves a pair of ears in the Russian Foreign Ministry in Moscow. Their man tips the vodka now and then with some staffers from the NKVD — on our tab, of course,” he added gratuitously, letting the story trickle out as Scanlon hung in agony on every word. “Anyway, according to them, your young fraulein is alive and well in Leipzig. Apparently, she went back into the family business and has been in regular contact with her handlers back in Moscow Center, if you can believe the nerve of the woman.”

  Oh yes, Scanlon could believe it. Hanni alive? Now, nothing could keep him from going back.

  “The NKVD boys said the carpet between the radio room and the top floor of the Lubyanka has been worn thin ever since she went operational again. Odd, but the NKVD staffers got very, very nervous when her name came up. It seems she now has a very big friend upstairs.”

  “Beria,” Scanlon answered quietly. “She always reported directly to Beria.”

  “So it would appear.” Bromley paused, studying Scanlon like a fisherman gauging the thickness of the ice on a crisp winter morning. Would the woman be bait enough to reel him in? “If she is operating again, it would appear Fraulein Steiner managed to avoid Herr Dietrich’s clutches without your help — a bloody miracle, if you ask me.” Scanlon said nothing, still stunned by the news. “So the real question isn’t if your blonde Brunnhilde is alive, but how, and why. Would you not agree?”

  “I’ll be sure to ask her when I see her,” Scanlon answered as his steel-gray eyes narrowed into two angry slits.

  “Good! I assume that means you have changed your mind and that you will now grace this operation with your presence, Captain. Best for all concerned, I have to agree. However, I must burst your pretty red balloon on one small point. Hanni Steiner is not the reason we are sending you back to Germany. Our business with the Goering’s airplane designers takes precedence, and that must be attended to first. It is a damned sight more important than your sordid little affair with the lovely red tart.”

  “Really? How are you going to stop me, Colonel?”

  “Ah, an excellent point, and I am pleased you asked. In truth, we probably can’t. However, we have a proposal to offer you, Captain — a very good one, actually — and one which you would be a damned fool not to take. Once you have attended to our business and those Germans are safely through Allied lines, all your debts will be cancelled. You will be given a discharge, full pay, medals, a hero’s welcome, and you may bring anyone back to the States with you that you wish, with an American passport and a free ticket to New York for her. All you need do is stay away from Leipzig and away from her until our business with the airplane designers is finished. Do we have your agreement on that one small point, Captain? You want to get her out. Well, here is your gold-plated opportunity.”

  Scanlon paused, and then slowly nodded. The deal still stunk and he knew he could never trust Bromley, but once he got over there, he could do what he wanted. Those days and nights with her had been the highest highs and the lowest lows any life could possibly offer — love, victory, comradeship, danger, excitement, fear, and pain. Together, they had stretched the envelope of life as far as it would stretch, and nothing would ever be the same for him. However, for the past two months, memories were all he thought he would ever have of her. He thought she was dead and that it was his fault. The thought of spending the next thirty or forty years with that dead weight hanging around his neck was more than he could bear. He knew he could not do that, and now he would not have to. Hanni was alive and nothing else mattered.

  George Bromley was a man with limitless limitations. One thing he could do, however, was read men and he knew he had the young American hooked. “You are indeed a lucky chap, Scanlon,” he continued. “Life is giving you a second chance. It has laid hands upon you, and like Lazarus, it is raising you from the dead. Only a fool would say no. When your job for SOE is done, you may track down that Steiner woman if you want, or you may track down that bastard Otto Dietrich and put a bullet in him for all I care. That is entirely your choice. Remember, though, bringing those German engineers out is a valuable and honorable task. It is something you will take pride in for the rest of your life, which is more than you or any other man has a right to ask.”

  Valuable? Honorable? And way over your pay grade, Bromley thought. The young American was damaged goods. Damaged or not, however, he was a perfect fit for this job. As the Colonel’s miserable, embarrassing shop clerk of a father once told him, “Give the customer what he wants, boy, always give him what he wants.” Not that the Colonel didn’t feel a twinge of sympathy for Scanlon, but the Yank was getting what he wanted and his OSS masters were getting what they wanted too. The lad was an emotional time bomb who had been dumped back on Bromley’s doorstep by that master craftsman of perversity, Gestapo Chief Inspector Otto Dietrich himself. Give the customer what he wants! Well, no one wanted Scanlon, but they shall get him back anyway, ever-so-carefully gift wrapped and tossed into their laps before the bomb goes off.

  “Why do I keep thinking you’re using me again?” Scanlon asked.

  “Using you? Oh, no question about it,” Bromley smiled, “and you would be a damn fool if you don’t use me right back. Use me, because I am the last chance you are likely to get.”

  Scanlon looked across at him and slowly nodded. “All right, then what about this?” he asked as he raised his left hand and showed him the scarred, broken fingertips. “You’re the master of undercover operations, Colonel; tell me how I’m supposed to hide this little problem?”

  Bromley did not even blink. “Not a problem, Captain. With all the one-armed, one-legged, and one-eyed cripples walking about Germany these days, a young officer with a gloved hand should pass without comment.”

  Bromley seemed to have all the answers, Scanlon thought. That was what made the whole thing too slick by half. “All right, what’s the catch?” he finally asked. “Why’s this deal so important?”

  “Catch? There is no catch,” the Colonel scoffed at the suggestion. “Have you ever heard of the Me-262?”

  Scanlon answered with a blank stare.

  “It is one of Willi Messerschmitt’s new creations — a fighter plane with no propellers or piston engines. It is powered by two jet turbines and I’m told it is as quick as a thief. It has been clocked at over six hundred miles an hour, and we have nothing in the sky that can come close, not even on the drawing board. Last week, four of them swooped down on fourteen of your B-17s on their way to Berlin and shot most of them down with machineguns and some ki
nd of air-to-air rockets. Your Mustangs never even put a scratch on them. Needless to say, they have our Air Ministry and your Air Corps in a tizzy.”

  “What difference does any of that make now?” Scanlon asked. “In a few weeks the Germans won’t have any air fields, much less gasoline, or repair parts to keep them in the air. The war’s over, Colonel. Doesn’t anyone understand that?”

  “Yes, this one is indeed over, or it will be very soon; but you’re missing the point, boy. That isn’t what HQ is all worried about, it is the next one. The men who designed that infernal thing work at the Hermann Goering Research Institute at Volkenrode in the Harz Mountains just west of Leipzig, right in the path of Marshall Zhukov’s tanks. They don’t relish the thought of being carted off to Moscow with their blueprints and research notes, and neither do we. You can imagine the warm glow that would give Comrade Stalin.”

  “Why not just bomb the place?” Scanlon said.

  “It has been discussed, but cooler heads have suggested the Germans there would be much more useful to us alive. Waste not, want not, eh?”

  “Then tell them to pack up and head west. I’ve never seen a Russian tank that could catch up with a scared German.”

  “A noble thought, but there is one small problem.”

  Somehow, Scanlon knew there would be. With Bromley, there was always a catch.

  “It appears they don’t trust us.”

  “Imagine that. Wherever do you think they got that idea?”