Armageddon_ A Novel of Berlin - Leon Uris [196]
He puckered his lips, opened his briefcase. “I have here,” he began, “signed contracts for the four hundred German volunteer technicians. It is conclusive proof there was no kidnaping. These lies spread by the Western press are sinister provocations for which we demand an apology.”
“Just keep your goddamned forgeries in your briefcase,” Hazzard snapped in the first open rage he had ever shown.
Trepovitch remained calm, too calm, Hazzard thought. The Russian whispered to one of his aides, and a moment later a German civilian was marched into the room and asked to be seated at the conference table.
“What is your name?” Trepovitch asked.
“Joachim Mangold.”
“And why did you ask for permission to appear before this body?”
“I am the spokesman for the Committee of Four Hundred Free German Technicians.”
“You are authorized to speak for all of them?”
“Yes. I was selected in a free and democratic election.”
“You are aware of American and British charges that you and your colleagues were abducted.”
“That is a lie. We volunteered.”
“Not forced?”
“No force was used.”
“Why do you wish to work in the Soviet Union and why did you seek us out and ask us for contracts?”
Mangold cleared his throat and recited carefully, “Because in the Soviet Union my comrades and I will have the opportunity to work and research for the benefit of mankind. Here, we fear we will be used for warmongering imperialist purposes of the reactionary West.”
“Jesus H. Christ,” Hazzard blurted aloud.
The outrage set off a chain of demonstrations. With mixed desperation, anger, and fear the free parties sent out a call for unity.
In a showdown the Soviet Union had displayed naked power and there would be further atrocities, for the West did not answer the kidnapings ... and the Berliners were trapped.
Chapter Twenty-eight
V. V. AZOV’S ULCERS flared when Captain Brusilov arrived from Moscow. Despite his inconspicuous rank, he was a personal courier of Stalin. Azov was aware that Captain Brusilov was never dispatched for the purpose of passing out medals.
His entry into Berlin just before the Foreign Minister’s Conference was no accident.
In his career, Azov had known some of Stalin’s other couriers. When he was Sovietizing the Ukraine a word from one of them could set off a hundred thousand deportations. During the purges, a message often sealed the doom of a marshal of the Red Army or a ranking member of the Politburo. During the war a courier gave him orders to slaughter the Germans who had surrendered in an East Prussian pocket.
Captain Brusilov traveled in a private plane in the company of fifteen NKVD and spoke to no one outside his immediate circle.
Of the five couriers Azov had known prior to Brusilov, each had disappeared as Stalin’s abnormal suspicions doomed them for possessing too many secrets.
The night before he was to confer with Brusilov, V. V. Azov displayed open fear that only Madam Azov was aware of. He told his wife that he was growing old and had served faithfully for nearly four decades. Had he not made a Soviet State out of the Russian Zone of Germany? Certainly Stalin could not complain about that. Yet he knew Comrade
Stalin could find fault without apparent reason. Had he fallen from favor? What was his crime? He had never been able to explain the defection of Heinrich Hirsch to the West. This stayed on his record as a blunder. He cursed General Hansen and those British and American officers for making his troubles. Yet, he had pushed them as far as Moscow had permitted.
For a long time, Azov dreamed of retirement to a small dacha, a modest pension, and complete anonymity.
The memory of the past terrorized him. In his time he had obtained “confessions” from hundreds of political commissars. After they had achieved the rank he now held, few of them died in bed of old age.
NKVD spies were all around him, watched his every move, monitored his words, speculated on his thoughts. Had they detected his secret yearning for peace? Had they reported