The flying boat had radioed Berlin, informing them that they were airborne and that a ‘partisan attack’ had been repelled during take-off.
Kincaid’s personal secretary was being wired to start drafting an account of the events from Kincaid’s offices in Burbank, California.
Regan had come back into the cabin area and was hovering. Eva was drying her eyes and trying to light a cigarette at the same time. Regan cranked his wind-proof lighter and the smell of petroleum filled her nostrils.
‘Allow me, miss.' He was now almost on top of her, leaning in. Despite working for most of the day in freezing temperatures, a cloying smell of stale sweat came from him. Her cigarette helped kill it off but she found his closeness intimidating. ‘Too bad about the mountaineers.’ He was now across her, looking out at the fighter plane alongside. He managed a quick glance down at her cleavage. ‘According to the member of the master race over there — ’ Schenker was positioning himself in front of the camera, looking to see if he was equidistant between the flags, and had started on the champagne once he had come up from the hold, his face its usual red rage ‘- they were racially suspect.’
‘Because of Olga?’
‘Yup. Better get your face straight, doll. The boss is coming over.’
Kincaid studied Eva for a few moments before he spoke. ‘Honey, I find your presence soothing,’ he assured her. He took her hand in his and Eva fought the urge to retch. His fatherly demeanour didn’t reach his eyes. ‘You’re very, very special to me and I’m sorry, very sorry, you had to see that … and, yes, the ambush was shocking but necessary. The SS don’t have any experienced mountaineering units, so common soldiers had to be used and alas dispensed with. The newsreels couldn’t contain any inferior races, only prime Aryan soldiers.’
He told her he also had information that one of the soldiers was a Communist and former International Brigadist in Spain, then added that a Chechen woman couldn’t be seen to be serving with the German Army. Kincaid was searching for a reaction but satisfied in himself that she was teary-eyed more out of fright. Eva summoned her smile from her heels. Trained in emotional mapping by the late Herr Gruber, she struggled to find convincing happy memories to bring to her eyes. Kincaid thankfully never looked past the smile, wishing only to see a pretty adoring face. She gave him that in spades, thinking of De Witte’s arms, and oddly and perhaps cruelly, of Brandt’s eyes.
Regan, who had filmed for most of his life, knew she was faking and wondered what leverage he’d get with that information.
The table was set in the best crystal and silver. Eva had never seen such opulence. It had to be said these villains loved their neatly-laid tables. Kincaid's fussing over table settings and throwing a tantrum over the cut- crystal gave him a prissy quality. She had been awake for nearly twenty hours and, as she re-did her make-up and changed into the low-cut evening wear Kincaid had bought, she wondered how long it would be before she slept again. She positioned her brooch along the halter-neck.
She brought up her thick auburn hair, pinning it up to reveal a diamond necklace Kincaid had purchased in Amsterdam. Her neck was slender and long, the colour and texture of alabaster, the diamonds sparkling on it. Regaining her composure, she swept out into the dining cabin and into the open boozy leers of Schenker, Regan and Kincaid. All jumped at the chance to seat her, Kincaid winning by a hair's breadth.
Through Regan’s lens, Kincaid and Eva sat at one side, Schenker and three of Kincaid’s personal staff sitting opposite. Regan lined the film camera up, adjusted the overhead lights and roared, ‘Action!’
Through his eyepiece, framed by the flags and just below the banner, the group faced the camera, raising a toast, Kincaid beaming and acknowledging Schenker who bowed modestly. The camera seemed to love them both. Eva’s composure had returned and Regan had to hand it to the broad — she could act. She gave furtive doe-eyed glances at Kincaid while Schenker leant across flirting openly. She was going straight to the ‘A’ list as soon as this documentary was screened worldwide.
Regan panned the camera around the cabin, slowly capturing the flying boat’s splendour. The crew from the flight-deck appeared in shot, giving the thumbs-up. Later Regan would film the radio operator informing Berlin of their success, jump-cutting to Lenin’s coffin. As they were filming, another unit was preparing to film Goebbels and Himmler receiving the news. Kincaid’s team would then splice the film together at Goebbels’ private studios. The event was virtually being put together in real-time.
Once the toast was completed, Kincaid and Schenker rose to stand in front of the flags, to applause from around the table. An announcement came over the intercom from the cockpit; they
would be out of Russian airspace in two hours. Regan then turned his attention to the laboratory below. He thought about interviewing Zbarsky, maybe taking some of the sensationalism out of it by asking for a scientific slant on preserving Lenin. He hastily scribbled down some notes into a leather-bound notebook purchased from the same shop as his hero Ernest Hemingway. Pausing over the page, the idea slowly sunk into Jack Regan that he was standing on the cusp of history. He was about to become a legend and girls like Eva would flock to him.
Chainbridge asked Brandt to repeat his statement. The signal out of the Urals was weakening, voices flowing in and out in waves. A few years earlier, Klaus Brandt’s dossier had been passed to Chainbridge when he had been collating information on German Army officers. He was assessed to be a very capable soldier, cool headed and inclined to act in the army’s, rather than the Nazi party’s, interests. He was also a legend in sporting circles, particularly mountaineering and cross country skiing and shooting. An Olympic place should have been guaranteed in 1936, but he never made the German team. He was now apparently out of political favour and had been left for dead in the middle of Russia. Whatever happened next would be British collaboration with the enemy while German bombs were landing on English cities. The trick was to keep British Intelligence’s fingerprints off the whole operation.
‘No Russian assistance,’ hissed Brandt’s voice through the receiver.
De Witte shook his head. ‘If it went wrong, Churchill would have some explaining to do. Tell Stalin.’
Chainbridge decided to keep the War Office in the know. Comrade Joe couldn’t be contacted anyway. It was rumoured he had fled Moscow. ‘Can you retrieve the consignment?’ shouted Chainbridge down the microphone in fluent German.
There was a long pause. ‘Yes,’
Chainbridge looked at De Witte. ‘What have we got in their vicinity?’
‘A lot of diplomatic flights have departed Moscow. No-one was expecting the Germans to get this far,’
The Finnish Embassy staff in touch with their counterparts in the beleaguered capital checked UK diplomatic flights. De Witte, confirming the stranded unit’s co-ordinates, was also grasping the fact that an NKVD Officer was involved. He started to plan on detaining this individual and getting as much intelligence out of him as possible.
Chainbridge spoke to Churchill’s secretary to confirm that Lenin had been snatched. The Foreign Office was running twenty-four hours a day digesting recent news from Singapore about Japanese fleet movements, and now this was another situation for them to juggle.
Churchill had contacted Roosevelt’s administration in relation to flights within the USSR. A twenty minute pause on the line interspersed with clicks and hisses followed before the message came through: They had an American Transport still unloading lend-lease equipment for the Russian Army about two hundred miles ahead of German Army Group South in Ukraine. ‘Washington doesn’t want any US personnel involved,’ came the response.
Chainbridge answered in his under-stated way, remembering Eva’s photographs of Kincaid’s hidden envelope. ‘Tell them there’s a US national aiding and abetting the German High command by flying Lenin’s body out of Russia. According to our information, it’s Donald T. Kincaid. This information is solid. We have copies of signed correspondence between him and high ranking Nazi party members. Do they want a diplomatic incident to ensue with The Soviet Union?’
Twenty more tense minutes of hisses and clicks followed before Washington agreed to divert the plane.
‘Better tell them to get moving,’ said De Witte, speaking fluent German into the radio receiver instructing Brandt to stay put. He had to repeat it twice, stressing that no harm would come to Kravchenko.
The ambassador was uneasy. The embassy was still operating without any Finnish or German interference. No doubt the Finnish Secret Service would be keeping Berlin appraised. Timing was going to be a critical factor; the later Berlin knew about anything the better.
