Hitler's peace

“The water. The British pipe in water from a pure source in the hills to the north. They even sell it to the Russians. It even crossed my mind that you should make this part of your plan. You see, every morning a Russian and an American water cart turn up for their water. But then again, you’d hardly want to be inside the legation walls if and when the Luftwaffe start to bomb the place.”

“Good point,” grinned Oster. “Besides, if we do manage to kill the Big Three, it won’t be water I’m drinking, but champagne. Eh, Ebtehaj?”

The wrestler gave an obsequious little bow. “Regrettably, alcohol is not permitted to Muslims,” he said.

Oster smiled politely and stared beyond the wrestler’s sturdy shoulder at the purple screen of snow-capped mountains that lay behind the city. It would not be easy getting out of Teheran after an assassination, he reflected, and suddenly Oster felt a very long way from home.

They returned to the bazaar, where, among the mosques, the crowds of people and the shops, Ebtehaj seemed to relax a little. The variety of things for sale astonished Oster: copper, book-bindings, flags, haberdashery, saddles, tin, knives, woodwork, and carpets. Once or twice he stopped to have a look at something, reasoning that not to look at all might invite suspicion. There was even a moment to enjoy a coffee at the Cafe Ferdosi, so that by the time they returned to the rug factory, Oster was feeling slightly more well-disposed toward Persia and the Persians. This feeling did not last long. As soon as the three men entered the factory, one of the Kashgai tribesmen walked quickly up to Ebtehaj and said something that left the wrestler looking very worried.

“What’s wrong?” Oster asked Schoellhorn.

“It seems that we have caught a spy,” said the German.

In the back of the factory, seated on the floor and tied to an old loom by bunches of carpet thread, was a frightened-looking man wearing Western-style clothes.

“Who is he?” asked Oster.

Untersturmfuhrers Schnabel and Shkvarzev turned away from the prisoner to answer.

“Says he’s a Pole, sir,” said Schnabel. “And that he came here looking for a carpet. There’s plenty of cash in his pocket to buy one. But he also had this.” Schnabel showed Oster a semiautomatic pistol.

“It’s a Tokarev TT,” said Shkvarzev, removing a cigarette from the corner of his unshaven mouth. “Russian-made. But here’s the thing.” He took the pistol from Schnabel, dropped the magazine out of the Tokarev’s grip, and thumbed one of the bullets onto his palm for Oster’s close inspection. “It’s Mauser ammunition. German-made, and flat-nosed, too. Filed down, so that it makes a bigger hole on impact. To make identification of the victim harder. It’s standard SMERSH procedure.”

“SMERSH?” frowned Schoellhorn. “What’s that?”

“It’s a Russian acronym,” explained Shkvarzev. “It means ‘death to spies.’ SMERSH is the counterintelligence wing of the NKVD and Stalin’s personal assassination squad.”

Oster sighed and looked at Schoellhorn and Mehdizadeh. “We’ll need to find somewhere else to stay. Can you organize it?”

“That won’t be easy,” said Mehdizadeh. “It took a while just to find this place. But I’ll see what I can do,” he said, leaving.

“What shall we do with him?” Schnabel asked, pointing to the prisoner.

“There’s no time to interrogate him properly,” Oster said. “We’ll just have to kill him and leave him here.”

“On the contrary.” Shkvarzev was grinning. “There’s plenty of time to interrogate him. Properly, improperly, it’s all the same in the end. In five minutes I can have this fellow confess to the murder of Trotsky, if that’s what you want.”

Oster disliked torture, but he knew that there was no other way to be sure about what the Russians were already aware of. “All right,” he told Shkvarzev. “Do it. Just don’t make a meal of it.”

The carpets that had been crafted in the factory were made of wool, by hand. The finished product was usually laid out on the floor, and any bumps or small imperfections flattened out with a heavy iron filled with coals from the fire. As soon as the SMERSH agent saw that the Ukrainians intended to use the hot iron on his bare feet, he started to offer information. For a moment, Shkvarzev’s men seemed a little disappointed that they were not going to have the opportunity of inflicting pain on a hated enemy.

“Yes, yes, all right, I’ll tell you everything,” blathered the man. “I was snooping around the bazaar, hoping to find out something. Everyone in Teheran knows that this is where the resistance is centered, so I figured it might be a good place to look for you.”

“What do you mean, ‘look for us’?” demanded Oster.

“You’re the German parachute team. One of your Kashgai tribesmen came to the SMERSH building on Syroos Street and told us that two teams of SS had landed somewhere outside the city. For the Big Three Conference. He sold us the information. We’ve already picked up one team, near the radar installation at the airport. And it’s only a matter of time before you are arrested, too.”