Curtain of Death (Clandestine Operations 3)

[ ONE ]

Kloster Grünau

Schollbrunn, Bavaria

American Zone of Occupation, Germany

0920 27 January 1946

“How’s the shoulder this morning, Comrade?” Max Ostrowski asked in Russian.

There was no response from the man sitting up in a hospital bed in the cell under what had been the chapel of Kloster Grünau.

“And how was your breakfast?” Max went on in Russian, indicating the remnants of a breakfast sitting on a tray. “Get everything you want?”

The man didn’t respond.

“You really should build up your strength,” Max said. “After what you’ve been through.”

The man continued to look without expression at him.

“Mr. Smith and Miss Mata Hari here have brought some photographs to show you of an old comrade of yours who also fell into our hands,” Ostrowski said.

He held out a manila envelope to him.

The man made no move to take it.

“Some of them are pretty grim,” Max went on. “Especially the ones showing us poisoning former Polkóvnik Likharev’s sons. Here, have a look.”

He took one of the photographs from the envelope and laid it on the man’s lap.

“What Pavel is eating is an empanada, a meat sandwich,” Max said. “And that’s the Colón, in Buenos Aires, in the background. The world’s largest opera house. Next week they’ll be doing Borodin’s Prince Igor.”

Cronley saw the man’s eyes drop to the photograph.

Ostrowski laid the other photographs, one at a time, on the man’s lap.

When he had finished, Ostrowski gathered them up and put them back in the envelope.

“The reason we’re showing these to you, Comrade, is to show that you have an alternative to what you might be thinking is your future. Mr. Smith and I are thinking you’re thinking you have two alternatives. The best of these is that you can somehow be returned to the NKGB. We don’t think that would be a happy reunion. I mean, how are you going to explain to Comrade Serov your failure not only to kidnap two U.S. Army enlisted women, but to lose three of your men in the process and get yourself captured?

“From what I know of Polkóvnik Serov, your failure has made him quite unhappy. If you’re lucky, he might send you to Siberia after your interrogation. Or he might not. And I’m sure, Comrade, that you’ve been thinking of what might happen to you here when our patience with you is exhausted.”

The man showed no expression.

“Well, Comrade, we’ll leave you to think things over,” Ostrowski said, and gestured for Cronley and Johansen to precede him from the cell.

—

“Since I don’t speak Russian, I don’t know what you said to him, but it looked to me that that worked well,” Cronley said when they were climbing the stairs up to the chapel.

“He took in the pictures,” Janice said. “I saw that.”

“I think we’re getting to him,” Max said. “Let him think about it a little.”

As they were walking through what had been the chapel itself, First Sergeant Abraham Lincoln Tedworth walked up to them.

“Major Wallace is holding on a secure line for you, Captain.”