Red Inferno

CHAPTER 16

Steve Burke was delighted at the turn his great European adventure had taken, all the while admitting that he was perplexed by what he was discovering. The camp for Russian POWs had been established just outside the German city of Bitburg, which itself was just inside the border with Luxembourg. He was actually in Germany, and the thought made him exultant. He had convinced others at SHAEF that he would serve a good purpose if he went and interviewed Russian captives.

But, after interviewing a number of Soviet prisoners and reviewing the scanty records of others, what he was finding disturbed him. He was trying to sort it out as he walked near the stockade in the fading light of the mid-May evening.

“Colonel Burke?”

He turned and gasped. The thing before him was an apparition from hell.

“Oh dear,” it said. “I’ve done it again. I’ve gone and startled you, haven’t I?”

The accent was decidedly British and so was the uniform, Royal Air Force to be specific. The creature’s apology seemed totally without remorse.

“Only slightly,” Burke said, gathering his composure. “I was thinking and didn’t hear you come up behind me.” It was partially the truth. He had been deep in thought.

“Are you certain it isn’t the fact that I have no face?”

Burke wondered, was he being teased? The RAF officer before him lacked a nose and eyebrows, and his skin had the appearance of stretched and shiny rubber. There was little hair on his head and only lumps that might have once been ears. Burke glanced down and saw that the man’s hands were claws. Each hand had thumbs, but only one or two other fingers on each hand to oppose them. Despite himself, he shuddered.

“Yes,” he answered truthfully. “I was shocked.”

The man laughed. “Well, finally someone who admits the sight of me scares the shit right out of them. So many are so terribly polite and assure me they see abominations like me all the time and aren’t affected at all, which is patently a fucking lie. I am Major Charles Godwin and I would shake hands with you but I really don’t have any hands left to shake with. I know you’re a colonel, but don’t expect me to salute. I stopped that a long time ago as well.” He shrugged. “Just what the hell can anyone threaten me with, eh?”

Burke managed a grin. “Sounds fair. By the way, how did you know who I was?”

“Easy. You are the visiting Russian expert from the states. I looked you up because I wanted to ask you some questions and share some thoughts. Perhaps a drink might help things along.”

Burke thought that both were wonderful ideas. Godwin had parked his jeep just a short distance away and had a bottle of brandy and a couple of glasses in it.

“Cheers,” he said after pouring. “Now, before you ask or start wondering, I lost my face and some other very important body parts in 1940 when the Hurricane I was piloting was shot down by a Messerschmitt over Plymouth. Unfortunately for me, the Hurricane turned into a flamer before I could get out, and I had to actually land the bugger since there was serious doubt whether my parachute would open under the circumstances.” He bowed. “Thus, the medical marvel you see before you.”

Burke sipped his brandy. Martell, he thought, and Godwin confirmed it.

“Since I cannot fly, the military lords often send me on errands like this one, and I hope I have been valuable to them. I am currently serving as air liaison with General Montgomery. I do not speak Russian but you do. I would like to learn what you have found out about our imprisoned ex-allies. But first, I would like to know about the London you passed through. In particular, the riots. London is my home.”

Burke recalled the incidents all too well. For a while he had been in real fear for his life. The worst incident had occurred while they had been driving along the Thames Embankment in a caravan of vehicles that included Marshall. It had begun when they had turned right onto Birdcage Walk and headed toward Buckingham Palace.

“We weren’t actually going to the palace, just by it on the way to our living quarters after a day of meetings.”

At that point he said they had been blocked by an unexpected sea of angry humanity. They were confronted by thousands of men and women of all ages who bore signs critical of Churchill and the government, but, most particularly, they were against the war with the Soviet Union. They had been protesting in front of Buckingham Palace and were, he found out later, slowly but firmly being pushed away from the palace by the London police and right into the path of the American convoy.

For a moment, the crowd just stared at the short line of slow-moving cars, but then the vehicles stopped and started to back up. At that point someone in the crowd started yelling that the fucking Yanks were here and that the Yanks were the cause of it all.

Burke shuddered and took some more brandy. “Major, it then got horrible. They started pounding on the cars and rocking them. Rocks were thrown and some of our men got dragged out of their cars and beaten. I found out later that a couple of Americans were killed by the mob, beaten or trampled. The MPs protecting General Marshall opened fire and some of the rioters were killed as well. Then the rocks and bottles started really coming down. We got Marshall’s vehicle turned around and we tried to keep the other cars between his and the mob while he got away. It didn’t work all that well. They just flowed around us like water around boulders. Somebody punched in the car window right by me and I was showered with glass and some blood where the bastard had hurt himself.”

“Where were the police?” Godwin asked. “On the other side of the crowd, right?”

“Of course. They finally came and started fighting the crowd, which was now trapped between two lines of cops. Then someone in the mob started setting fires and they spread fairly quickly to a number of buildings nearby. I saw people-police and at least one American-get thrown into the fires by the rioters. It was unbelievable. After that, we finally got away.”

“Who was doing the rioting?”

“Everyone says it was socialists and left-wing radicals. I don’t think that’s entirely correct. Some of those people looked too middle class to be typical radicals. I saw a lot of older people, grandparent types. You know what I think? I think it’s true that a large number of Britishers are totally sick of the war and scared it won’t ever end. You know what else?” The Martell was starting to warm him. “I’m not sure I blame them. The thought of this going on forever scares the shit out of me too.”

“Nor do I entirely blame them,” Godwin said softly. “Thank you for the telling. I lost a young cousin in those riots and I wanted to know how, if not why. I’m not sure anybody knows why. A number of them have broken out in Manchester, Liverpool, and other British cities. God only knows where it will end.”

Burke sighed. “Now, you said you wanted to know about the prisoners. Well, I’ve noted something peculiar.”

Before he could elaborate, the sound of sirens filled the air and searchlights quickly pointed brilliant fingers upward.

“Goddamn air raid,” snarled Godwin. “Find a shelter. The bloody Russians are going to bomb us.”

The nearest shelter was a slit trench about fifty yards away, and they piled into it. They could hear planes coming closer and there wasn’t time to be choosy and search for something more substantial. Antiaircraft guns opened fire, and they could see the Russian bombers outlined in the sky by searchlights while the tracers sought them out.

“Ilyushin 4s,” Godwin said. “They don’t have much of a bomb load, only about two tons, but they have pretty decent range, which is why they are currently overhead.”

“Marvelous,” said Burke, trying not to let the gut-tightening fear he was feeling control his voice. Two tons of bombs might not be much to Godwin, but it was an enormous amount to him.

Godwin continued. It was as if he was delivering a lecture. “No, not marvelous at all. Frankly a rather shitty plane flown by inexperienced or unskilled pilots. Do you see they are in following groups of three? Well, that’s so they can follow the leader. Otherwise they’d get lost because they are so bloody stupid.”

As they watched, one of the bombers exploded in midair. The others began dropping their bomb loads, which Burke realized were going to impact primarily on the prison camp.

Godwin thought this amusing. “What wonderful intelligence they must have. They are killing their fellow Russians.”

“Do they know this is a prisoner camp?” Burke asked.

“I would hope so. We have notified the Red Cross and the Swiss, who are supposed to inform everyone, and there are signs on the roofs of the buildings, but that presumes the Russians can read. Poor bloody bastards.”

Burke ducked as the sound of the bombings washed over them. Good God, people were dying and he was actually seeing combat. Again, he tried to keep his voice steady. “That’s what I was going to tell you. Many of them aren’t Russians.”

“What?”

“Well, a lot of them are from other, non-Russian parts of the USSR, and many of them can’t even speak Russian. I don’t understand it.”

He explained about trying to communicate with them in Russian and receiving blank stares in return. At first he’d thought it was his American accent and maybe he was talking in an elitist way to some peasant, but he was wrong. The few Russians who were there had understood him fairly easily. The non-Russians, he finally managed to ascertain, understood only a handful of Russian words, and these basically represented commands or obscenities.

A bomb went off nearby, and they ceased talking and hugged the ground at the bottom of the trench.

They waited as the sound of the planes receded and the explosions ceased. Godwin stuck his head out of the trench. “Bloody hell! My jeep’s gone. Blown off the road, I would think. Thank God I had the foresight to bring the brandy with me.”

Yes, Burke thought. Thank God that we are alive and able to have a drink. It was occurring to him that he had been in no particular great danger, but that many others in the camp had been killed or wounded. The irony that Soviets had killed their own did not mitigate the horror of the deaths.

Godwin couldn’t find any glasses so he politely passed the bottle before taking his own liberal swallow. “So,” he said, “you don’t understand the prisoner situation.”

Burke took another swallow. “Yes. First, there is the sad fact that there are so few prisoners. Only a few thousand, as far as I can tell. I guess it’s logical since they are the ones who are attacking and would have less of an opportunity to lose manpower as captives.”

“True,” said Godwin.

“And most of them are not Russians.”

“True again.”

“Charles,” Burke said, “what, in your opinion, does that mean, if anything?”

They thought on it for a while. Then it came to them.

S OME DAYS N ATALIE H OLT was sick with worry over thoughts of what could be happening to Steve Burke. The very idea of him going into a war zone was almost ludicrous. He didn’t belong there. He belonged in a classroom. Actually, she thought with a satisfied inner smirk, he belonged in her bed, where she could take damned good care of him.

Her concern for him sometimes did affect her work at the State Department. On a couple of occasions her bosses had gently chided her about her lack of attention to affairs of state, and she had apologized sincerely. After all, it wasn’t as if she was the only staffer with a loved one in harm’s way.

Fortunately, most of her work was interesting enough to keep her distracted. There was an incredible amount of information surfacing from Russian emigres in various countries, and it needed to be reviewed. It also seemed like everyone with Russian relatives wanted to be assured that they were all right, which was impossible to determine.

Like Gromyko and the rest of the Russian diplomatic corps in the United States, Ambassador Averell Harriman and his staff were confined to the embassy grounds in Moscow and dependent upon local government to provide them with food and other necessities. Consulates had been closed in both countries and a number of Soviet citizens had been detained, as had Americans in Russia.

Detained, she knew, was a euphemism for being imprisoned. Russians were being held at American military posts and were being treated well. She wondered just how Americans who weren’t ranking diplomats were faring in Russian hands. Not all American prisoners of the Russians were military or diplomatic personnel. A number of civilian American merchant marines had been either in the port of Murmansk or so close to it that they could not turn back when the war started. They too had been interned, and she did not think they were being treated gently.

Despite the constraints, both embassies were still functioning. Ever so correctly, the respective host governments did not cut off telephone or cable links and both embassies communicated with their home countries by diplomatic pouches which were carried by neutral Finnish, Swiss, or Swedish couriers. She also knew that the U.S. embassy in Moscow communicated with its counterpart in London via shortwave radio, an advantage the Soviets in North America did not have.

Of course, everything was listened to and phones were tapped, but life still went on. She understood it was because it was hoped that the presence of diplomats on one another’s soil might someday facilitate an end to the war.

Natalie prayed that it would end before something happened to poor, dear Steve.

“Miss Holt?”

Natalie looked up to see the unwelcome presence of Special Agent Tom Haven, a stocky man in his late thirties with bad breath. He also seemed to dislike everyone in the State Department and made little secret of it. He’d been heard saying everyone in State was a queer or a Commie. Haven and others from the FBI had been reviewing everyone in her group, and it was getting on their nerves. Natalie was thankful that the problem with her mother had finally been satisfactorily resolved and she no longer had to undergo interrogations by people like Haven.

“Where’s Barnes?” he asked. Walter Barnes was her immediate supervisor.

“I haven’t the foggiest idea, Agent Haven. I don’t spend my time watching him,” she snapped.

“I mean, is he on vacation today?”

Natalie checked her watch. It was already nine o’clock and Barnes, an early starter, was very late. “No, he’s not. Have you called his apartment?”

Haven nodded. “No answer. His boyfriend doesn’t know where he is either.”

This last was said with a sneer. Barnes was a frail and middle-aged homosexual. He had gone to great lengths to try to hide that fact, but everyone knew. Nobody said a word, but he always took lunch and breaks with a young man ten years his junior from Personnel. He had been a special target of ridicule and scorn by Haven ever since the agent found out. Natalie looked away so Haven would not see the look of contempt in her eyes. Why couldn’t they let the poor man live his own life and pretend that his precious secret was intact?

“We had an appointment with him this morning, Miss Holt. We were going to go over some of his conversations with a few of his friends. There are those in the FBI who think he might have discussed some very sensitive matters with people who shouldn’t have been told about them.”

Natalie folded her hands on her lap and made sure Haven didn’t see too much of her legs. “And what would you like me to do, Agent Haven?”

“Do you know anywhere else he might be?”

“No.”

“Are you certain, Miss Holt?”

Natalie stood. She was almost as tall as Haven, and he backed up a step. “Are you accusing me of lying?”

“No, ma’am. But he is your boss and your friend. You might have been tempted to do something to protect him.”

“From what?”

Haven recovered and managed a tight smile. “Maybe from being arrested, Miss Holt, if he did tell some of his queer friends about his work. Do you know where he lives?”

“Yes.”

“Good. I’m new here and not familiar with all of Washington and I’d like you to come with me.”

“No, Agent Haven, I will not. You’re a rude and bullying man and I will not take you to see where Mr. Barnes lives. You know how much you terrify and upset Barnes, and I think you take great pleasure in it.”

She was also reasonably certain Haven would make a pass at her if he got her alone in a car.

To her surprise, Haven actually laughed. Maybe he thought being disliked was a compliment. “Okay, have it your way. Will you take Forbes?”

The other agent was across the room and grinned affably upon hearing his name. Forbes was easygoing and friendly. The father of three kids, he was not always trying to mentally undress her. She quickly agreed.

Half an hour later, they pulled up in front of the undistinguished apartment building where Walter Barnes lived. Forbes used his FBI identification on the manager to gain access to the building and quickly found Barnes’s apartment. After a number of futile knocks on the door, they got the manager to give them a key.

“Should we be doing this alone?” Natalie asked.

“Probably not,” he said. The door opened to a darkened room and he flipped on a light. “But I’m not going to phone for help for what is most likely an empty set of rooms. My money says he’s run off. The Bureau’s having a field day picking on fags in State and he probably panicked. Stay here.”

After a moment he told her to come in. The apartment had a living room, a small kitchen, and a bedroom. All three rooms were fastidiously clean. The bed was made and everything on the dresser was standing as if on display. There were no socks on the floor or anything out of place. Instinctively, she knew that Steve Burke would not be so neat. Even the closets were open and the clothes hung with care, as if their owner knew someone else was going to see them. A photo of the young man from Personnel was proudly displayed on the dresser. Forbes picked it up, looked at it for a moment, and put it down.

“Have you checked the bathroom?” she asked.

“I didn’t see one. Isn’t it a shared one down the hall?” Forbes said.

“No,” she answered, “you don’t know Barnes. He was an extremely private person, especially so about any personal ablutions. It was almost a joke. He wouldn’t clip a fingernail if he thought someone might see him doing it.”

“Aw shit,” said Forbes as he looked about the room. Something was wrong and he’d missed it. He walked to a drape on the wall and jerked it aside. A door was behind it.

“So fastidious that he even hid the entrance to his damned john? Good grief,” Forbes said with nervous laughter. He had almost made a big mistake by missing the room.

He tried the door. Both he and Natalie looked at each other in growing horror. The door was locked from the inside. Forbes was a big man and he put a shoulder to it, and the cheap wood shattered immediately. He reached in and turned the knob and opened the door.

Forbes groaned and Natalie strained to see inside the bathroom. When she realized what was lying pale and naked in the brown-red water of the bathtub, she vomited on the floor and ran into the hallway outside the apartment, where she began to cry. Behind her, she heard Forbes talking on the telephone. After a moment he came out in the hallway and stood beside her.

“I’m sorry you saw that, Miss Holt.”

“So am I.”

“Are you going to be okay?”

She lit a cigarette and drew heavily. Belatedly, she offered one to Forbes, who accepted. After all, it wasn’t his fault.

“I’ll make it. How did he do it?” she finally managed to ask.

“Very creatively,” Forbes said wryly. “I would say he ran the bathwater nice and warm, got in, made it as hot as he could stand it and then, as the hot water numbed his nerves, used an extremely sharp knife to slice open his wrists and then bled to death. There’s something that looks very much like a scalpel on the floor by the tub. The ancient Romans used to do something similar to commit honorable suicide.”

“Leave it to Walter to think of something like that,” she half sobbed. “He always did have a flare for the dramatic.”

“There was a suicide note,” Forbes added. “In it he said he’d been blackmailed by the Russians and he couldn’t stand the thought of being without his lover or going to prison.”

The FBI had found what they wanted, proof that there was a leak in the State Department. Now they would dig harder. She wanted to curse her poor dead boss, but couldn’t. His life must have been so tormented with the Russians coming at him from one direction and the FBI from another.

With a start, she realized that this was how Gromyko knew so much about her. Damn Barnes.

A car had pulled up outside the apartment, and she saw Agent Haven and another man come running up the stairs. Neither looked at her as they entered the apartment, and she realized she was no longer needed. She told Forbes she would take a cab and left. She would go home and not to work. Today had been long enough and she wasn’t ready for the stares and talk of the people in the office. The war had claimed another casualty and she had yet another friend to mourn.

It was time to write another letter to Steve. Of course she wouldn’t tell him about this. It might upset him and worry him, and she would never do that. Letters overseas should contain only happy news, comforting words. She could do it. She started crying again.

“Come back to me, Steve” she whispered.