noticed that he crossed himself. Which seemed a little curious, as even in the Soviet zone, rail travel was really not that hazardous. By contrast, the two German MVD officers appeared composed and relaxed. As we sat down and waited for the train to move I asked the starshina if he spoke any German. He shook his head.
'The fellow's Ukrainian, I think,' said Major Weltz. 'He doesn't speak a word of German.'
The Ivan lit a cigarette and stared out of the window, avoiding my eye.
'He's an ugly sonofabitch, isn't he?' I remarked. 'I imagine his mother must have been a whore, like all Ukrainian women.'
The Ivan didn't flinch at any of that.
'All right,' I said. 'I really do think he doesn't speak German. So. It's probably safe to talk.'
Weltz frowned. 'What on earth are you driving at?'
'Listen. Sir. All our lives could depend on us trusting each other now. We three Germans. Don't look at him. But how much do you know about our smelly friend here?'
The major glanced at the lieutenant, who shook his head. 'Nothing at all,' he said. 'Why?'
'Nothing?'
'He was posted to the camp at Johannesgeorgenstadt just a few days ago,' said Rascher. 'From Berlin. That's really all I know about him.'
'And he's going back already?'
'What's all this about, Gunther?' said Weltz.
'There's something about him that's not quite right,' I said. 'No. Don't look at him. But he's nervous when he shouldn't be nervous. And I saw him crossing himself a minute ago.'
'I don't know what you think you're playing at, Gunther but-'
'Shut up and listen. I was an intelligence officer. And before that I worked for the War Crimes Bureau, in Berlin. One of the crimes we investigated was the murders of twenty-six thousand Polish officers, four thousand of them at a place I'm not going to mention in case it makes this dog prick up his ears. They were all of them murdered and buried in a forest clearing by the NKVD.'
'Oh, that's nonsense,' insisted the major. 'Everyone knows that was the SS.'
'Look, it's vital you believe that they weren't killed by the SS. I know. I saw the bodies. Look, this man, this Blue sitting next to us, is wearing several medals on his chest, one of which is the 'Merited NKVD Worker' medal. Like I said, I was an intelligence officer, and I happen to know that this medal was commissioned by the Council of the People's Commissars of the USSR – in other words, Uncle Joe himself – in October 1940, as a special thank you to all of those who did the killings in April of that same year.'
The major tutted loudly and rolled his eyes in exasperation. Outside our carriage the stationmaster blew his whistle and the locomotive expelled a loud cloud of steam. 'Where are you going with this conversation?'
'Don't you get it? He's an assassin. I wouldn't mind betting that Comrade General Mielke has placed him on this train to kill all three of us.'
The train started to move.
'Ridiculous,' said Weltz. 'Look, if this is the beginning of an attempt at escape, it's a pretty clumsy one. Everyone knows that those Poles were murdered by the fascists.'
'You mean everyone except everyone in Poland,' I said. 'There's not much doubt there who was responsible. But if you don't believe that then maybe you'll believe this: Mielke's already screwed you in the ass, Major. He gave me a gun that I'm supposed to use to help make my escape. But my bet is that the gun isn't going to work.'
'Why would the Comrade General do such a thing?' asked Weltz, shaking his head. 'It makes absolutely no sense.'
'It makes a lot of sense if you know Mielke as well as I do. I think he wants me dead because of what I could tell you about him. And he probably wants you both dead in case I already have.'
'It couldn't hurt to see if he's telling the truth about the gun, sir,' said Lieutenant Rascher.
'All right. Stand up, Gunther.'
Staying exactly where I was I glanced quickly at the Russian sergeant. He had a large Stalin-sized moustache and one continuous matching eyebrow; the nose was round and red, almost comical-looking; the ears had more hair on and in them than a wild pig.
'If you search me, Major, the Ivan will figure something's wrong and draw his gun. And it will be too late for us all when he's done that.'
'What if Gunther's right, sir?' said Lieutenant Rascher. 'We don't know anything about this fellow.'
'I gave you an order, Gunther. Now do as you're told.'
The major was already unbuttoning the flap on his holstered Nagant. There was no telling if he was about to pull the gun on me or the MVD starshina, but the Ivan saw it and then met my eye; and when he met my eye he saw what I had seen in his: something lethal. He reached for his own pistol and this prompted Lieutenant Rascher to abandon the idea of searching me and fumble for his own gun.
Still wearing handcuffs and with no time to decide if the major was with me or not, I swung my fists at the Ivan as if I had been driving a golf ball, and connected hard with the outside of his porcine head. The blow knocked him onto the floor between the two rows of seats but the big thirty-eight was already in his greasy fist. Someone else fired and the glass in the carriage door above him shattered. A split second later the Ivan fired back. I felt the bullet zip past my head and hit something or someone behind me. I kicked at the Russian's face and turned to see the major dead on the seat and the lieutenant aiming his revolver at the Ivan with both hands but still hesitating to pull the trigger as if he'd never shot anyone before.
'Shoot him you idiot,' I yelled.
But even as I spoke the more experienced Ukrainian fired again, punctuating the young German's forehead with a single red full-stop.
Gritting my teeth I stamped at the Russian's face with the heel of my boot, and this time I kept on going as if I was stamping on something verminous. One last uppercut of a kick caught him under the jaw and I felt something give way. I stamped again and his throat seemed to collapse under the force of my boot. He made a loud choking noise that lasted as long as my next kick, and then he stopped moving.
I collapsed back onto the seat of the railway carriage and surveyed the scene.
Rascher was dead. Weltz was dead. I didn't need to check for a pulse to know that. When he's shot dead, a man's face wears a certain look that's a mixture of surprise and repose; as if someone stopped a movie in the very middle of an actor's big scene, with his mouth agape and his eyes half-open. There was that and there was the fact that their brains and what these had been swimming in were all over the floor.
The MVD starshina made a long, slow gurgling noise, and adjusting my balance against the movement of the railway carriage I kicked him hard – as hard as I could – against the side of his head. There'd been enough shooting for one day.
My ears were still ringing from the shots and the carriage smelt strongly of cordite. But I wasn't disturbed by any of this. After the battle of Konigsberg, nothing like that bothered me much, and my mind was disposed to interpret the ringing in my ears as an alarm and a call to action. If I kept my nerve I could still complete my escape. In other circumstances I might easily have panicked, jumped off the train and tried to make for the American zone, as I'd originally intended; but a better plan was already presenting itself, and this depended on my acting quickly, before the blood spreading on the floor spoiled everything.
Both the German MVD officers had luggage. I opened up the bags and found that each man had brought a spare gimnasterka. This was just as well, as there was blood on both of their tunics. But the all-important blue trousers were still unmarked. First I emptied their pockets and removed their decorations, their blue shoulder boards and their portupeya crossbelts. Then I pulled their tunics up and wrapped their shattered heads in the thick cloth to help staunch the blood. Weltz's skull felt like a bag full of marbles.
You have to be a certain type of man to clean up efficiently after a murder, and no one does that better than a cop. Maybe what I was planning wouldn't work, maybe I'd get caught, but the two Germans had bigger problems. They were both as dead as Weimar.
I took off their boots, unlaced the legs of their blue breeches and then hauled those off, too. I put both pairs carefully up on the luggage rack, well out of the way of what I was going to do next.
It would have been a mistake to have opened the carriage door. A Red Army soldier in one of the other carriages might have seen me doing it. So I slid down the window, balanced the major's naked body on the sill and waited for a tunnel. It was fortunate that we were travelling through the Erzgebirge Mountains. There are lots
