straining for any indication that the crime had been witnessed. There was only the rumble of distant explosions.
Satisfied, they each grabbed a pair of legs, hauled the fresh corpses across to the low hedge bordering the road, and tipped them over. They would doubtless be visible in daylight, but by then…
Varennikov's mouth was hanging open, his eyes reflecting the shock that Russell felt. He had seen a lot of dead bodies over the last few years, but he couldn't remember ever watching another human being lose his life at such close quarters, and with such astonishing suddenness. And the sangfroid of the Soviet security men was breathtaking. Two Germans, two bullets, two bodies dumped in the shadows. And if there were wives or mothers who loved them, who the hell cared?
Kazankin urged them back into motion with the jerk of an arm. They had to be nearly there, and sure enough, a sign for Ihne Strasse soon emerged out of the gloom. They were only a block away.
Russell had visited the Institute once before, on a journalistic assignment in early 1940. He had made an appointment to see Peter Debye, the Dutch physicist then in charge, but had received a less than fulsome welcome when he reported at reception. Debye, it later transpired, had just been fired for refusing to accept Reich citizenship, but the news had not been cleared for official release, and Russell had spent an hour strolling around the grounds before he received the definitive no. If Nikoladze was right and it hadn't been bombed, he was fairly sure he would recognise the building. The Lightning Tower – the large cylindrical structure at its western end – was too distinctive to miss.
It would probably still be. The Americans would have done their damnedest to destroy the whole complex once they discovered that atomic research was going on there, and they would have redoubled those efforts once they knew that the Soviets would be reaching Berlin before them. But trying and succeeding were two very different things where aerial bombing was concerned. If any country's bomber command had won medals for precision in this war, then Russell hadn't heard about it. The fact that they'd been aiming at the Institute seemed a near-guarantee of its survival.
A few moments later his cynicism was rewarded, as the stark silhouette of the Lightning Tower reared up against the flare of a distant explosion. They had reached their first objective, and much quicker than he had expected. 'That's it,' he told Kazankin in a whisper.
They advanced along their barely discernible road, and crossed another. Beyond the dim shape of the tower, the long three-storeyed building stretched away. As they drew nearer the deepening orange of the sky reflected in the even rows of windows that lined the sides and roof. There were no lights visible, but blackout curtains were bound to be in place. The whole German scientific establishment might be inside, all working flat out on some new monstrosity for the Wehrmacht to use.
But Russell didn't think so. The building felt empty. In fact the whole area – all the large shapes in the darkness that made up Wilhelm II's dream of 'a German Oxford' – felt empty. As if the German scientific establishment had finally summoned the nerve to say 'Fuck you, Adolf', and headed on home.
He remembered the building standing in an open, well-manicured square of parkland, but the war had taken a toll, and patches of unkempt vegetation now offered useful camouflage for a raiding party. Kazankin pushed his way through the surrounding hedge and led them to one such patch, not far from the base of the Lightning Tower. Looking up, Russell could see the vertical ribs, and the small rectangular windows just below the coolie hat roof which gave the tower its resemblance to a fat medieval turret. When the war began it had housed a particle accelerator for atomic experiments, but that was probably long gone.
The eastern sky was growing lighter with each new blaze, and Kazankin found he could read his watch. 'Almost eleven,' he told Gusakovsky – they were slightly ahead of schedule. The moon would rise in twenty minutes, and on a clear night like this would make a considerable difference. But it would only be up for four hours, which they'd spend in the hopefully empty Institute, out of sight and searching for secrets. When it went down at a quarter past three, they would still have three hours of darkness in which to reach the sanctuary of the Grunewald forest.
They crouched there for what seemed an age, until Kazankin was satisfied that no one had seen them. He then led them across to the nearest porticoed entrance, and hopefully depressed the handle on one of the double doors. It swung slowly open. This implied human occupancy, but the complete lack of light suggested the opposite. Which was it? Had the Institute been closed down? Had its scientists decided that the war was over and gone back to their families? Or had the whole shebang been transferred to some safer location? That would explain the absence of security – there would be nothing left to guard.
There should at least be a caretaker, though. Some hapless old man, down in the basement, waiting for the all-clear to sound.
Kazankin disappeared into the darkness, and for what seemed like several minutes the others waited where they were, listening to the muffled sounds of his exploration. Finally the thin beam of the Russian's masked flashlight blinked on, revealing a long corridor in which every door seemed to be closed.
'Is it empty?' Varennikov asked in a whisper.
'No,' Kazankin answered shortly. 'There are no blackout curtains down in the offices, so we must lower them ourselves before we use any light. Now…' He took the folded diagram of the building out from inside his jacket, flattened it against the corridor wall, and shone the flashlight on it. Several rooms at the western end, close to where they stood, were marked with crosses. So was the Lightning Tower.
'I think we're wasting our time,' Russell heard himself say.
'That is possible,' Kazankin said coldly. 'But since we have three hours to waste I suggest you and Comrade Varennikov start here' – he picked out the nearest cross in the diagram, which marked a large room facing onto the inner courtyard – 'and work your way down this side of the building to the tower.'
'Where will you be?' Russell asked, thinking about the possible caretaker.
Kazankin paused for a long moment, as if he was wondering whether to divulge the information. 'Shota will stay here by the entrance,' he said eventually. 'I will check the building next door. According to our information, it has a lead-lined basement area known as the Virus House where certain experiments have been performed. If I can find it, and if anything looks interesting, I will come back for Comrade Varennikov. If not, you must be back here by three-fifteen. Understood?'
Russell nodded. It was the first time he'd heard Gusakovsky's first name, and the extra intimacy was somehow comforting. Once he and Varennikov were inside the first office, Russell closed the door behind them and carefully closed the blackout curtains before trying the light. Unsurprisingly, the electricity was off – they would have to rely on their flashlights. Which was probably no bad thing, he decided. Most curtains bled a little light around the edges, and the brighter the source the sharper the glint.
Varennikov started rummaging through the desks and filing cabinets. They had not been cleared out, which might bode well, but the young physicist gave no sign of finding anything significant. Outside, the level of bombing seemed to have abated, although it might just have moved further away. 'There's nothing here,' the Russian concluded.
They moved on to the next room, a laboratory. Once Russell had blanked off all three windows, Varennikov used his flashlight to explore the room. The various items of scientific equipment meant nothing to Russell, but the physicist seemed encouraged, and swiftly applied himself to sifting through several filing cabinets' worth of experimental results.
To no avail. 'Nothing,' he said, slamming the last cabinet shut with a loud bang, and then wincing at his own stupidity. 'Sorry.'
The next room was almost bare, the laboratory that followed devoid of anything useful. Only two small offices remained on this side of the corridor, and the first was replete with papers. Halfway through the first pile, Varennikov extracted a single sheet and sat staring at it for what seemed a long time.
'Interesting?' Russell asked.
'Maybe,' the Russian said. He put that sheet and several others to one side.
The next office was even more rewarding. Halfway through one folder of papers the Russian's excitement became almost palpable. 'This is very interesting,' he murmured, apparently to himself. 'An ingenious solution,' he added in the same tone, taking out the relevant sheet and placing it with the one he had taken from the previous room. Others followed: the beginnings of a nuclear pile in more ways than one.
At the end of the corridor a door and small passage brought them into the Lightning Tower. The particle accelerator had been removed, leaving a vast echoing space, and only the metal stairway spiralling up the sides
