Man Who Wanted Tomorrow (22 page)

It was a perfectly coordinated ambush, fire coming from the four corners of the courtyard into the tightly grouped squad. Only two shots were fired by the Nazis, and there was insufficient sound even to penetrate the set-back apartments.

Out in the street, both watchers stood casually against their vehicles, unaware of what had happened fifty yards away. Both scarcely glanced at the pedestrians approaching until they were almost upon them, and then it was too late. Both died instantly and were caught by their assassins and eased back into their cars. Within three minutes, both looked like men asleep.

It took just seven minutes to kill the fifteen Nazis, but it was a further five before the assassins walked calmly from the courtyard, hesitated at the entrance and then dispersed along Rathenowerstrasse, three streets away from the other Buckow apartment that Kurnov had entered three hours earlier.

Four miles away, Muntz stirred painfully, unable to sleep. It would be morning before he learned he was the sole survivor of the Organisation der Ehemaligen S.S. Angehörgen.

Suvlov had been flown to Moscow immediately he had been released, after intense diplomatic protest, by the West German authorities. It had been ridiculous to attempt sleep on the military plane and now he stood, cowed before the full Praesidium of the Soviet Union, feeling the fatigue press down upon him. It was still only 6 a.m. and everyone showed signs of having been hurried from their beds. They had insisted he review the entire history of surveillance, even though he had submitted reports that they had before them. When he had omitted a fact, either Mavetsky or Shepalin had jumped, anxious nothing should be missed.

The account over, he waited before them, recognizing the questioning that had already been put as the avoidance of responsibility by everyone else involved. He'd be sent to a prison camp, he accepted. He
hoped
that would be the punishment. He couldn't face the incarceration in a psychiatric hospital, like Grigorenko. Thank God psychiatric imprisonment was confined to political dissidents. He shifted, suddenly frightened. Kurnov was obviously a political matter. Surely his mistakes didn't come under the same category?

“So he had help?” pressed Shepalin, at last.

Suvlov stiffened to even more rigid attention.

“Undoubtedly, in my opinion. The following car was perfectly positioned to slow any surveillance vehicle, and the furniture lorry was carefully in place to block the road.”

“Why hadn't you anticipated such planning?” demanded the chairman.

It was the weakness of his account, accepted Suvlov, reducing him to incompetence.

“There had been no indication that he had assistance … He had wandered about Berlin almost like a man who was lost …”

“You knew he had
some
contact,” insisted Mavetsky, fluttering the report in which the meeting with Bock was recorded.

Suvlov nodded, dismally.

“The man recognized the surveillance and employed a reasonably simply maneuver to avoid it continuing,” bulldozed Mavetsky, deciding to sacrifice the colonel. “And beat you completely.”

Suvlov remained silent. Bastard, he thought.

Shepalin waved him dismissively to a chair, looking at the men gathered around him. Slowly, the chairman began reviewing the affair.

“The conference that he tricked us into being allowed to attend …”, he paused, looking at Mavetsky, letting the criticism settle, “… concludes tomorrow. I feel what happened tonight was the culmination of what he's been doing for the past week … tonight he was making the final contact with his Nazi friends …”

He waited for reaction. No one spoke.

“If he knew he was being watched … and every indication is that he did, from what happened, then he has no intention of returning to the Soviet Union …”

“… So …” tried Mavetsky, anticipating the chairman's idea. Shepalin waved him to silence.

“… The Soviet Union must act immediately,” continued the chairman. “We don't know what has happened in Berlin, but it can only mean difficulties for us. I propose we immediately announce the defection of Vladimir Kurnov …”

He stopped, enjoying the looks registered on the faces along the table.

“… And include in the announcement that, according to our inquiries, the man is a former Nazi, wanted by the authorities …”

He sat, waiting. The tired men considered the proposition, one by one nodding acceptance.

“Any contrary thought?” invited Shepalin.

“No,” said Mavetsky, speaking for all of them.

“Then let's hope we can get the announcement out in time,” said the chairman.

The declaration of the Israeli government was very short. Following the world outcry at their intrusion into Austria and their apparent willingness to pay a ransom—a practice they had always criticized in aircraft terrorism—they had decided to conclude the matter of the Toplitz evidence in a fashion befitting a civilized state. All contacts that had been made with the person claiming to have the contents of the Lake Toplitz box had therefore been communicated to the West German authorities. Israel was withdrawing from any negotiations, confident the Germans would successfully pursue all inquiries and bring to trial anyone thought guilty of any crime. The Israeli government regretted any offense it had caused to any other country by its action, but trusted the announcement indicated their future intention to abide by international law.

(18)

The effect of the inhaled anaesthetic welled up within him and Kurnov retched, helplessly. Immediately he felt the coldness of a surgical kidney-bowl pressed against his cheek. He coughed, choking almost, but managed to stop himself vomiting.

“I think he'll be all right,” said a voice, and the bowl was withdrawn.

Kurnov tried to move and found he couldn't. His arms were clamped to the chair, pulled tightly by his side. Whatever tied him was looped beneath the seat, he thought. His legs were manacled, too, allowing almost no movement. But neither restriction was as bad as the pain in his neck. His head was being held rigidly and forced upwards. He realized there was a securing band around his throat.

“Why not open your eyes, now that you've tested everything?” invited Grüber.

Hesitantly, Kurnov blinked into the room, the nausea returning. But it was fear now, he knew, not anaesthetic.

Grüber was perched on the edge of the desk, one leg swinging easily in front of him. He was out of S.S. uniform now, casual in shirt and slacks. Something else was different, thought Kurnov. He squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them, trying to clear his vision, but couldn't isolate what it was.

“Feeling better now, Heinrich?”

For the first time, Kurnov experienced the numbness in his face. The moment he moved his tongue to explore the cause, he knew why he had been rendered unconscious. Grüber saw the probing and smiled.

“We had to do it, Heinrich,” he said, conversationally. “An old S.S. man like yourself, with the facilities you've had constantly available, would obviously have maintained the cyanide implant. And we couldn't have you escaping us, after all this trouble, could we?”

Kurnov's tongue came away from the empty socket. He was going to be killed, he thought, calmly. He would have expected the realization to have frightened him more. Perhaps it would, later.

“But you must admit we were very humane about it,” went on Grüber. “No one ever bothered about the niceties of anaesthetic or novocain, extracting teeth in the camps, did they?”

“What …?” tried Kurnov. The anaesthetic had dried his mouth and his voice was very weak.

“You've been trapped, Heinrich,” said Grüber, simply. “You've been brought from the safety of the Soviet Union and put into a situation from which there's absolutely no escape. You're as helpless now as all those Jews you tormented.”

Belatedly, Kurnov realized the difference in the man facing him. The eye was no longer dead. Grüber was looking steadily at him, both eyes focusing upon his face. Kurnov looked away, his mind slipping.

“Confusing, isn't it, Heinrich? Don't you remember those experiments you conducted at Dachau, working with Mengele, trying to assess how long a person's sanity would last under sustained, unremitting pressure that apparently had no correlation? That's what's happened to you, Heinrich. I've been particularly careful about that. Every psychological pressure that had been applied upon you is one that you've worked upon.”

“You're Jewish,” accused Kurnov. He desperately wanted a drink.

“That's right,” agreed the man, facing him. “My name is Uri Perez …”

He paused, his voice becoming almost toneless. “… And until the age of eleven,” he went on, “I was an inmate of Buchenwald …”

Kurnov wondered if there would be torture before they killed him. The frequent fear returned. He'd collapse immediately there was any physical pain. He stared up at the man with Grüber's face. Perez saw the look and fingered the folds of skin irritably, as if trying to pull them away.

“It's very good, isn't it?” he asked. “Much better than that plastic surgeon of yours could have done. It took a long time to get right. And it was very painful. But I've got this face engraved on my memory, so I knew it was right … that it would deceive you completely. The eye was an advantage, of course. No two people could have possibly looked like Grüber, could they? … I knew the sight of his face would throw you completely off-balance. Any doubt you might have had would have disappeared at seeing Grüber … and I knew you'd over-compensate, imagining you had an old imbecile to placate …” He paused. “Imagine, Heinrich. You've actually knelt before a Jew, to beg forgiveness …”

He reached behind him, picking up a small piece of plastic. “The eye was easy,” he said, tossing the object in his hand. “A contact lens.”

Again the tonelessness came into his voice.

“Remember how good an assistant he was, Heinrich? Remember how dutifully he obeyed your instructions? I saw him freeze my mother and sister to death. It took a long time … nearly all morning, in fact. You wouldn't recall it, of course. It was just part of the experiment … there were dozens of others. I had to watch. So did my father. But you'll know about the double experiments, of course. You devised them, after all. The relatives had to observe what was happening to see how long they could stand it. My father went insane. A lot of them did, didn't they? Grüber was particularly interested in how unmoved I appeared to be … personally tested me for a long time, imagining he had encountered a mental condition he hadn't known before. That's how I came to have the face imprinted in my memory … Every day, for nearly a month, he spent several hours with me … he and that relation of his, Fritz … and they talked. That's how I know so much about what you were doing … There isn't a word I've forgotten, after all these years …”

Again he tugged at the skin of his face.

“… Can you imagine how determined we were to get you?” he said. “I actually agreed to have grafted on to my body the face of a man I hate only slightly less than you … a face it's going to take six months to have removed … just to catch you …”

He moved off the desk, standing over him. “And it's been easy, incredibly easy. Because you were so arrogant. I never guessed you'd have such an inflated idea of your own mental strength, making you so easy to control … like a well-trained animal …”

He laughed and went back to the desk. Kurnov's head began moving, from side to side, and a series of moans broke through his lips. From far away, he heard Perez's voice continue, but recognized he wasn't addressing him. It was as if he were lecturing a class.

“… This is important,” he heard Perez say. “This is the moment of complete realization … the acceptance of defeat. It's impossible to guarantee, but the collapse can't be far away now …”

Kurnov stifled the sound he discovered was coming from him, blinking up at the man.

“… Ah, notice that,” went on Perez. “He's fighting against it …”

The Israeli came back to Kurnov. “That was very good, Heinrich,” he praised. “You've drawn back, haven't you?”

“You're going to kill me,” challenged Kurnov.

Perez smiled. “In a way,” he agreed.

“I don't understand.”

“There's so much you don't understand, isn't there, Heinrich? You still don't know what's really happened, do you?”

“Please don't hurt,” pleaded Kurnov.

“Notice the sudden relapse,” said Perez. He'd turned his head slightly, Kurnov saw. He strained against the neckband, but could see nothing.

“It's a shame, really,” came back Perez. “That the whole operation that has so enmeshed you will never be known … It's my plan, you see. I'd quite like to be known as the originator of it.”

Kurnov tried to block the man's voice from his mind, staring over his shoulder at Hitler's picture. How easy it was to hear again in his mind the vibrancy of the Führer's voice … remember the dynamism he instilled in everyone by his leadership. The adulation at the 1936 Olympic Games had been wonderful to witness. Later, he recollected, he had cried at the Nuremberg rallies. Why had he had to die in the Bunker, like a squalid gangster?

Again the lecturing voice intruded. “… Regression into the past,” he heard Perez dictate. “The need to go back to hide with known memories …”

With difficulty, Kurnov came back to the Israeli. It was much better, thinking of the past.

“It was all staged for you, Heinrich. Everything … the raid on the lake … the Jerusalem announcements … all those bizarre telephone calls …”

Again a stop. The hesitations were carefully staged, guessed Kurnov, to enable every point to be assimilated, and hurry his confusion.

“… We were worried about those calls. Everyone said you'd become suspicious because of them. It was the most artificial part of the whole operation. I argued that I would already have made sufficient inroads into your mind by that time so that you wouldn't be panicked by them …”