Hauptman’s eyes kept flicking from Brandt and his sergeant to the tree line, back to his officers and to the river’s edge.
Olga stiffened nearby and unslung her rifle, almost sniffing the air for impending doom. The Alpine commandos and the Chechen were now collectively coiled tight like a spring.
Distracted by the activity on the ice, the three crewmen in the cockpit craned their necks, watching the airship’s departure. The stewards and attendants blocked the plane’s doorway laughing and cheering standing out on the steps.
Regan was trying to get them to pose for a photograph. Kincaid standing at the bottom step was sweeping his arm back toward them.
Eva slipped out of her seat, pretending to get a better view. Smiling sweetly at the crewmen in the cockpit, she stumbled onto the radio operator. He blushed intently under her smile, grabbing her waist and helping her steady her feet.
His headset slipped off his head, and as he swivelled on his chair looking for them, Eva twisted the band- width dial several times in succession, counting 1-2-3. As the radio operator tried to pull himself together, she pushed into him again, giggling as if tipsy. Apologising, she got out of the cockpit and made a good attempt at a blush.
The crewmen smiled and laughed back, saying it was ok with hands raised. Smiles all round and she made her way back to her seat. She smiled coyly at the radio operator as if sharing a private joke. He returned the smile, blushing deeper and without even noticing the radio channel had changed resumed radioing into Berlin on a secure channel.
The snow was falling heavily in Helsinki. Chainbridge and De Witte sat in the British Embassy on Itainen Puistotie with the head of Overseas Intelligence.
Eva’s reports had been sporadic. The Germans had uncovered a spy and were now tightening the net within the Reich. The underground in Berlin were being hunted down and they could no longer forward Eva’s Braille. She had got word to Chainbridge through Kincaid’s studios via her agent in London. Kincaid would be leaving for the Baltic within the next week and she was accompanying him. On receipt of this, the two men had arranged to travel to Helsinki, a hazardous trip that had taken over a week aboard a Portuguese merchant ship, avoiding German commercial raiders and U-Boats.
The small basement room was filled with cigarette smoke, the smell of coffee and a faint undertow of sweat. A large tri-band radio receiver was tracking any and all radio signals out of The Soviet Union. The highly experienced radio operator would crane his neck forward at the slightest change in signal.
An unnaturally distorted signal in the Urals area suddenly wavered in quick succession like jabs. It was Eva. The Germans had Lenin.
‘What are you going to do, Kincaid?’ murmured Chainbridge aloud.
Finland was allied to Germany so it would probably be safer to ship there than overland through Russia. With so many small islands off the Finnish coast, it’d be ideal for a U-Boat or flying boat to slip in unnoticed. Chainbridge knew Kincaid had a private airliner; maybe it was big enough to freight a sarcophagus.
De Witte leaned back in his chair. A sense of dread had come over him, as if being denied sight gave him another sense. He was desperately worried about Eva.
The head of O.S.I. began preparing a coded message to the War Office requesting advice.
‘If they get Lenin out of Russia, that’s it,’ said De Witte.
Chainbridge seemed to stare through the walls. ‘We could generate disinformation, call it a hoax, a stunt, a gimmick…’
‘Kincaid’s world-famous; a potential Senator or President. If he pulls this off, he’ll be regarded as a bold adventurer who made a fool of the Soviet Union,’ retorted De Witte, spinning his cane around his fingers, the only outward sign of the stress he was suffering.
Chainbridge pondered his options. Maps and charts lay strewn across the table. He studied the vast topographical swathe of the Urkraine, Siberia and the Ural mountains. And somewhere within this thousand mile radius was a Polish girl whose chances of getting out alive were diminishing by the minute.
Tyumen was a secret facility and Moscow was denying its existence despite Churchill’s offer of military and logistical assistance. The British Embassy here had a small detachment of commandos but if Lenin was now airborne he would be halfway through Russian airspace in three or four hours, not enough time to get men on the ground, not enough time for any kind of preventative action.
De Witte’s suggestion was the simplest — tell Stalin directly that Lenin was in German hands, let him and the Politburo figure out what to do, make the communique for his-eyes-only.
Chainbridge phoned the embassy desk to notify the ambassador of the plan and request that the commander of the embassies detachment join them below. Turning to the radio operator, he inquired, ‘Can you get a position on that interrupted broadcast?’
The carriage was rolled down to the edge of the flying boat’s wings. Lenin’s sarcophagus was hoisted out and placed carefully onto a trestle on wheels and loaded smoothly into the cargo hold.
Bader’s peripheral vision detected movement from the half-track. Eight or nine SS storm-troopers alighted from the back of it. Schultz didn’t have time to draw his weapon before he was gunned down and killed.
Brandt and Kant froze for a split second before diving onto the ice. Olga was already returning fire and a storm-trooper crumpled into the snow. Bullets landed around her. In quick succession she eliminated four anti- aircraft personnel before they could target the people on the ice. With tracer fire streaking around her, she stayed put until the gunners stopped moving. She turned her attention back to the SS troopers; dropping onto her chest and making herself as small a target as possible. She coldly dispatched two more in quick succession.
Kincaid was already aboard with Regan, and Schenker and four armed SS soldiers bundled the embalmers into the hold.
The flying boat’s engines revved, blowing equipment and Brandt’s unit across the ice. Brandt watched Schenker give a cheery wave before closing the aircraft door.
Covering Olga, Kant’s MG-34 started blasting, causing the half-track’s radio antennae to collapse into it. Kramer stood alongside him, targeting the cab, killing the driver and his passenger. They then concentrated on its front tyres. The half-track’s bonnet slumped into the slush with a sigh.
A bullet had penetrated the fuel tank, forcing the remaining storm-troopers out from its protection. Sliding across the ice to Brandt, Bader and Hauptmann pointed toward the carriage as cover. Kramer and Kant half-ran, half-slid, across the ice backwards, shooting. Bader, using Schultz’s radio as a make-shift sledge, was already trying to source a bandwidth now that the jamming had stopped.
The flying boat was accelerating down the ice with the fighter aircraft in tow. Two fighters were already airborne ahead of the behemoth. Amid the whistling bullets, Brandt was desperately looking for an escape route as he scrambled back from being blown down the ice toward the carriage. Ordinance whizzed past him, sending up clouds of snow around him. The carriage offered some protection but they could hear one of the ME-109s coming back around for a sortie.
From its open doors Olga, Koheller, Kramer and Voight were giving Kant and Kramer covering fire. The half- track was now ablaze and its ammunition popped and sputtered like fireworks.
Kravchenko couldn’t believe his eyes. The SS were shooting at their own troops. He didn’t feel any compassion toward the men on the ice. He was impressed though with the speed the small one put the anti-aircraft crews down; one shot, one kill.
He spotted some SS heading out onto the ice out of her line of vision. They were setting up a heavy machine gun with belt-feed bullets. Then he made a decision: the Germans on the ice might be of help to him having been double-crossed.
He lined up his PPSh-1941G, bracing his back against the tree, and opened up with it. The two soldiers writhed under the withering fire, blood pooling across the ice. He surprised two others, shooting them in the back. He stepped toward, the burning half-track slowly, Almost coming face-to-face with another SS trooper, he opened fire from a few feet away.
The scream of a fighter plane beginning its attack run filled the air and an ME-109 swooped past, its on-board cannons blazing. Brandt’s unit crouched, shooting upwards. The fighter's bullets clattered off the carriage,
