Opening Moves

The three senior officers deep in conversation in the GAZ behind noticed nothing, the last two vehicle’s drivers would not have recognised the error in any case.

One large lorry, a signal truck, and two staff 4x4’s make quite a lot of noise, especially when driven in the Russian style down unmade roads.

Without that warning, things might have been different.

However, the racket the four vehicles made ensured that the matter was never in doubt, as the Ainauwald contained nothing but a swift death for anything with a Red Star.

Davydov had just finished remonstrating against Rassov’s accusation about the possible effects on his health of the obvious deviation from standard procedures regarding positioning of battle fuel stocks. Angry, he turned away and slowly became aware of his surroundings. He started to question the driver, an extremely average looking leviathan called Anasimova, picked for her driving ability and nothing else.

The security lorry disappeared in a wall of flame as it drove straight over a teller mine chain, three devices exploding virtually in unison.

The radio truck and crew lasted less than three seconds more as two panzerfausts arrowed in, one from each side, obliterating the cab.

The rattle of small arms fire suddenly exceeded the screams from the dying and the air was filled with deadly metal insects, each capable of taking a life.

Three, fired from an ST44 assault rifle, took Olga Anasimova in the chest, stopping her heart in an instant.

The vehicle continued forward, losing momentum and coming to a halt by bumping into the rear of the burning Studebaker.

The front seat passenger, Colonel Rassov, was hit by the same burst that killed Anasimova. Eyes wide open in shock and horror, he was conscious but unable to move, his spine severed by one strike, his arms broken and chest penetrated by the five others. Rassov’s death was noisy, protracted and excruciating as the flames advanced.

Davydov and Sakhno had bailed out, each already hit and bleeding, firing with their pistols at imagined shapes in the undergrowth.

Nodding at a thicker clump of bushes to their rear, the two gathered themselves for a superhuman effort.

They burst from behind their cover and made for relative safety behind them, from where emerged a middle-aged man wearing an SS camouflage smock.

“Sieg Heil!”

Instead of attacking that morning and exploiting the break in the line caused by the collapse of the French division, 10th Tank Corps was paralysed by the loss of its allocated fuel supply and the loss of its two key senior commanders.

Commander of 5th Guards Tank Army, Lieutenant-General Mikhail Ivanovich Savelev stepped in, reorganising the hierarchy of the 10th, mourning the loss of two competent veteran officers, and spared no thought whatsoever for the weasel he had despised.

The hiding place of Kommando Lenz had been well and truly blown and the armed group, led by the former SS Hauptsturmfuhrer of Fallschirmjager, had long disappeared.

1959 hrs Friday 10th August 1945, The Kremlin, Moscow, USSR.

Leaning back into his comfortable chair and drawing deeply on a simple pipe, the General-Secretary read the military intelligence estimate compiled following the Spanish radio message that same day, something that they had been forewarned of by agents in Spain.

Beria sat similarly comfortably polishing his glasses, enjoying the fact that Pekunin was in the limelight. Of course, he had himself been quizzed but the NKVD had already done some of the basic footwork, so his report had been examined and accepted some time before the GRU one arrived. It was delivered by a strikingly attractive GRU female Colonel, in itself a novelty.

Beria made a mental note to check out this Nazarbayeva more thoroughly, as she must have achieved her status by clever use of her obvious charms, and to his mind that meant leverage and compliance to any proposition he might put to her in future.

As she stood there, he studied how she favoured her left leg whilst stood at attention and amused himself with reaching into the recesses of his mind for the details he must have read on her at one time or another.

The shiny star on the upper left chest helped prod him in the right direction and he recalled her report on the French symposiums and then brought forward details of her service.

‘You have a husband too,’ he reflected, smiling inside but not out,

‘All the better for what I have in mind Tatiana.’

Catching her eye accidentally, he was immediately aware of a strength and resilience in her gaze, and part of him spoke a warning, whereas another part relished the challenge.

His warped thought process was interrupted.

“So Comrade Colonel, you conclude that this new development will interfere with our schedule?”

Nazarbayeva, inwardly feeling slightly overwhelmed at her present company but outwardly cool and composed briefly replied.

“Most certainly Comrade General-Secretary, I can see no other conclusion.”