Arthur Tabolti
The Spy

Dedicated to the loving memory of my mother,

Aza Sabanti.

«No one has ever managed to evade the choice that history places before them.»

Arthur Tabolti, The Spy

Copyright © 2025 by Arthur Tabolti

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

First Edition: June 2025

Cover Design by Catherine Zolotareva

THE DEFECTOR. In lieu of a preface

On November 3, 1947 a heavy Lancaster bomber touched down at a Royal Air Force base just outside London, having arrived from Berlin. Inside the aircraft were three passengers: a civilian man in his mid-thirties—tall, sharp-featured, wearing a gabardine mackintosh and a double-breasted suit; an attractive woman of similar age, fashionably dressed; and a girl of about eight. They were escorted by a security detail of five soldiers led by a junior officer.

The plane had been expected. As soon as it taxied to a halt and its engines fell silent, a long black limousine with curtained windows rolled up to the boarding steps. The guards handed over the passengers to three plainclothes men, who ushered them into the car. Then, with a jeep full of submachine-gun-toting escorts leading the way, the limousine pulled through the gates and vanished toward London.

That same evening, the telephone rang in a house on Kingston Road. The owner picked up.

“Hopkins speaking.”

The caller was Colonel Anthony Browne, one of MI5 Director General Sir Percy Sillitoe’s deputies and the newly appointed head of the Service’s Russian Section. A veteran of the clandestine world, Browne was in his sixties—he had joined the Secret Intelligence Service back when its entire staff numbered just thirty officers. By 1947, that figure had swelled to nearly eight hundred, with MI5 handling counterintelligence while MI6 ran foreign operations.

Browne’s call to Major Hopkins was unusual. They rarely spoke directly—orders usually came through the Russian Section’s operational chain.

“I need you, George,” Browne said, his voice slightly rasping. “Urgent matter. Get dressed and come outside. A car’s waiting. Understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

Emergency summons had been routine during the war. Now, they were rare. Hopkins knew something was happening—but questions were for later. One didn’t discuss business on the telephone.

He grabbed his hat and trench coat, snatched up an umbrella, and stepped outside. The car was already there. A dark-blue Austin Seven from MI5’s motor pool—the ubiquitous Seven of the era—its polished body glistening under the misty glow of streetlamps. The driver wordlessly opened the rear door, slid behind the wheel, and started the engine without a sound.

This part of London still bore the scars of Hitler’s V-2 rockets. Some buildings had been repaired; others remained as jagged silhouettes against the night, their ruins gaping like missing teeth in the city’s skyline. Hopkins assumed they were headed for Blenheim Palace—the sprawling estate twelve miles north of Oxford where MI5 had relocated in 1940. But instead of turning north, the car swung south, tires hissing over the wet pavement as it crossed Westminster Bridge. The streets beyond were empty, watchful. Then London fell away, and they were swallowed by the blackness of the countryside, where only rain-slick heather lined the road.

“Where are we going?” Hopkins asked.

“Where we need to be, sir,” the driver replied politely, though with a tone that discouraged further inquiry. “Forty minutes.”

So Hopkins waited, staring out at the unspooling ribbon of deserted highway.

George Hopkins was thirty. Before the war, he had graduated from Trinity College, Cambridge, with a degree in Slavic studies. Even as a boy, he’d had a gift for languages—German, fluent French—but Russian had always been his passion. He dreamed of translating the enigmatic prose of Dostoevsky and Chekhov, whose existing English versions struck him as lifeless, missing the haunting depth of the originals.

Now, it seemed, his skills were about to be put to more immediate use.

But the career of a translator was not to be. The war came, and George was conscripted into the Admiralty department handling Lend-Lease negotiations with the Russian allies. Twice, he escorted convoys to Arkhangelsk. The last one ended badly—the ships were ambushed by German fighters and bombers, three freighters loaded with Studebakers sent to the bottom. During the attack, George took over a dead gunner’s position on an anti-aircraft mount. His frantic shooting did little damage to the enemy, but when shrapnel tore through his shoulder, he kept firing until the raid ended. Command noted his nerve. They awarded him the Military Medal. In the hospital, a man in an unmarked uniform visited him. Asked questions. Offered him a job in counterintelligence.

“What does the job entail?” George asked.

“Hunting German spies. We need men like you. Your languages won’t go to waste.”

“Can I think about it?”

The man smirked. “Will three minutes be enough?”

Three minutes later, George said:

“I’m in.”

After a crash course, he was commissioned as a lieutenant and assigned to MI5’s operational branch.

During the war, catching German agents had been the sole priority. By 1945, seized Abwehr files revealed that 115 Nazi spies had operated on British soil. All were caught. Only one escaped arrest—by swallowing cyanide. Some were turned, feeding Berlin carefully crafted disinformation from MI5’s desks.

Then Churchill spoke at Fulton on March 5, 1946 at Westminster College. A week later, Stalin told Pravda that Churchill was no better than Hitler—a warmonger pushing the West into conflict with the USSR. The Allies became adversaries. The Cold War began.

For MI5, the game had changed entirely. Germany’s spies had always struggled in Britain. The British distrusted Germans on principle. But the Russians? That was different. Memories of the Eastern Front still lingered—the shared sacrifice, the hard-won victory. The Communist Party operated openly, boasting fifty thousand members. Socialist ideals seduced academics, artists, even some in Whitehall. Perfect soil for Soviet recruitment.

MI5 reorganized. A new Russian Section was formed, staffed by the sharpest minds in the service. All other departments answered to it now. And among its officers was Major George Hopkins.

The car turned off the highway onto a country lane and, after some time, came to a halt before wrought iron gates.

“Here we are, sir,” the driver announced.

There was a two-storey manor at the end of a long drive, its entrance flanked by columns, the upper windows wide and generous, the lower ones barred with iron grilles. George knew the place well. Early in the war, it had been acquired—either leased or bought under a front—by MI5’s administrative branch. Here, sabotage teams had trained before being dropped behind German lines: radio operations, explosives, weapons drills under the watch of hardened instructors. Behind the house, screened by a dense stand of oaks and maples, lay a small sports ground and a firing range. George himself had spent months here overseeing the diversionists’ preparation.

Two armed guards meticulously checked their papers before swinging the gates open. The Austin crunched up the drive—its surface strewn with crushed red brick—and stopped at the manor’s entrance. Already parked was the hulking black Daimler belonging to Anthony Browne. Browne himself sat in an armchair on the first-floor drawing room, smoking a pipe and reading The Times, grey morning coat and black bow tie giving him the air of a retired gentleman at his club rather than a seasoned counterintelligence officer. “And what do I look like?” Hopkins caught himself wondering. A junior bank clerk, most likely.

Browne set aside the paper and nodded amiably.

“Come in, George, do take off your coat. Apologies for ruining your evening. You’re doubtless wondering what prompted this.”

“Intensely, sir,” Hopkins admitted.

“You’ll see directly. Come along—there’s something to show you.”

Browne tapped his pipe out into a crystal ashtray, tucked it into his coat pocket, heaved himself up, and led the way out. No guards were visible, but Hopkins knew they were there—one, sometimes two, on every floor.

Descending to the basement, Browne unlocked an iron-bound door. Beyond lay a small room with a low ceiling and a narrow, floor-to-ceiling window overlooking a larger, brightly lit chamber some meters below. This secondary room contained a long central table and four metal chairs bolted to the floor. George knew the setup: the lower room for interrogations, the upper for observation. Sound carried via hidden microphones; the glass was polarised, allowing the watcher to see everything while remaining unseen himself.

Pacing the interrogation room was a tall, powerfully built man—youngish, with black hair cut in that curious Russian military fashion, short at the sides and long on top. His face was dark with stubble, his well-cut black suit (shoulder pads fashionably prominent) sitting awkwardly on him, as civilian clothes often do on career soldiers. He smoked hand-rolled cigarettes, crimping the filter between his fingers. On the table lay a homemade cartridge-case lighter and a packet of papirosy bearing the image of a horseman against a mountain backdrop. The ashtray overflowed. But what struck George most: the man wore mismatched shoes—both black, similar, but unmistakably not a pair.

“Well, George?” Browne murmured.

“Who is he?”

“Our defector. Russian officer—Lieutenant Colonel Tokayev.”

“Not Slavic features.”

“No, Ossetian. Small republic in southern Russia. But that’s not what matters. Since ‘45, he’s been secretary to the Allied Control Council in Germany—Zhukov’s lot. Later transferred to the Military Secretariat, hunting von Braun’s rocket scientists. Recently approached our man in Berlin, asked for asylum. I approved. Brought him in today—him, his wife, and daughter. Had to scramble the RAF for extraction. Never thought I’d see the day a Lancaster flew such cargo.”

“How did he manage to evade surveillance?” Hopkins asked, surprised. “And with his family, no less! They must have been under close watch.”

“That’s precisely what we need to determine.”

“Where are his wife and daughter now?”

“Somewhere secure.”

“Do you want me to interrogate him?”

“Yes, that’s exactly what I want. He doesn’t speak English. You’ll be spending quite some time with this man—days, months maybe. He knows a great deal. Do you understand the most critical question we need answered?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then get to it.”

Hopkins descended the iron staircase into the basement. A guard armed with a STEN submachine gun opened the heavy door. At Hopkins’ entrance, the defector stopped pacing and glowered up at him from under his brow.

“Sit down, Mr. Tokayev,” Hopkins said amiably. “Let’s get acquainted. My name is George Hopkins. I work in counterintelligence. Call me George. I understand you don’t speak English, so we’ll converse in Russian. What should I call you?”

“Grigori. Where is my family? Where have they been taken?”

“Don’t worry, they’re safe. Your wife and daughter are quite comfortable.” Hopkins leaned forward slightly. “Indulge my curiosity, Grigori. I couldn’t help but notice you’re wearing mismatched shoes. Why is that?”

“Have you ever had to pack in a hurry?” Tokayev countered. “When even a minute’s delay could be fatal?”

“No.”

“I have.”

“Under what circumstances?”

“You’re asking the wrong questions first, George.” Tokayev exhaled smoke. “There’s only one thing you really want to know.”

“And what’s that?”

“Whether my defection is a Soviet intelligence operation to infiltrate me into Britain. Am I right?”

“You are. How do you answer that question?”

“If I say ‘no,’ you won’t believe me.”

“I won’t,” Hopkins agreed.

“You won’t believe anything I say.”

“That’s the nature of our job.”

“Then you’ll have to find the answer yourself.”

For the next fifty-six years—until Lieutenant Colonel Grigori Tokayev’s death—British counterintelligence officer George Hopkins would never definitively answer that most critical of questions.

1

On April 25, 1945, six armies of the First Belorussian Front and three armies of the First Ukrainian Front launched their assault on Berlin. In the early hours of May 1, the assault flag of the 150th Idritsa Rifle Division (Order of Kutuzov, 2nd Class) was raised over the Reichstag. At 22:43 Central European Time on 8 May, the German Instrument of Surrender was signed in Berlin’s Karlshorst district. The signatories were Field Marshal Keitel, Chief of the Supreme Command of the Wehrmacht; Colonel-General Stumpff of the Luftwaffe; and Admiral von Friedeburg for the Kriegsmarine. The unconditional surrender of Germany was accepted by Marshal Zhukov and British Marshal Tedder, Deputy Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force. As witnesses, American General Spaatz and French General de Lattre de Tassigny added their signatures.

The Third Reich ceased to exist. Germany was carved into four occupation zones: the Americans took the southwest, the British the northwest, the Soviets the east. France, at the expense of Anglo-American territory, received a small zone of its own. All of Berlin, however, had fallen to the Red Army—a situation unacceptable to the Allies. During the Potsdam Conference in August 1945, British Foreign Secretary Bevin and Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov struck a deal: Allied forces would withdraw from Thuringia, and in exchange, the USSR would cede the western sectors of Berlin. When Stalin was briefed on the terms, he reacted with sharp displeasure. But Molotov persuaded him, arguing the necessity of compromise on what had become one of Potsdam’s most contentious issues—German reparations.

At the Yalta Conference in February 1945, an agreement had been reached: Germany would pay reparations totaling twenty billion U.S. dollars, half of which would go to the Soviet Union. But by Potsdam, the Western delegations had backtracked, arguing that the sum was excessive—Germany had lost vast territories, and its industry lay in ruins. After tense negotiations, U.S. Secretary of State Byrnes’ proposal was adopted: no fixed reparations total; each power would extract goods from its own occupation zone, with the USSR receiving an additional 25% of dismantled industrial equipment from the Western zones. Yet the debate didn’t end there. Stalin abruptly announced that the USSR would renounce claims to German gold and foreign investments, limiting its reparations solely to its own zone. The Allies accepted—puzzled but relieved. They didn’t know that uncontrolled shipments of German machinery and materials to the USSR were already underway. By late 1945, a strict quota had been imposed: 3.6 million tons of rail cargo and 1.2 million tons by sea.

The annexation of Thuringia to the Soviet zone accelerated this plunder. Berlin’s factories had already been stripped bare; Thuringia’s industrial base was a windfall. Of particular interest were the Ore Mountains, where Soviet geologists suspected uranium deposits—critical for Stalin’s atomic program. These considerations proved decisive.

Thus, when Major Grigori Tokayev of the Engineering Corps arrived for duty in the Soviet Military Administration in Germany in autumn 1945, Berlin had already been quartered. The American sector held Neukölln, Kreuzberg, Tempelhof, Schöneberg, Steglitz, and Zehlendorf; the British took Charlottenburg, Spandau, Tiergarten, and Wilmersdorf; the French, Wedding and Reinickendorf. The Soviet zone, the largest, encompassed Pankow, Weißensee, Prenzlauer Berg, Mitte, Friedrichshain, Lichtenberg, Köpenick, and Treptow.

The Berlin that greeted Tokayev was a vision of hell. The city lay eviscerated—buildings gutted, their innards exposed like anatomical models. The Reichstag’s skeletal dome framed the low-hanging clouds. Survivors crawled from cellars to scavenge the ruins, prying charred timbers from rubble to fuel cookfires.

“I’d seen devastation before,” Tokayev later told Major George Hopkins during interrogation. “Bombed-out blocks in Moscow, the shattered ruins of Kyiv’s Khreshchatyk. But Berlin… For days afterward, I couldn’t sleep. I felt suffocated, as though walking through a graveyard. I knew war was terrible. But there, I understood it was something else—something diabolical. I swore then to do anything in my power to prevent it from ever happening again.”

“He seemed sincere,” Hopkins noted in the margin of the transcript.

2

Gogki Tokaty Akhmaty fyrt was born in 1913 on the southern fringes of the Russian Empire, in the impoverished Ossetian village Novourukhskoye, Vladikavkaz District, Terek Oblast. His father died in 1917, and by 1920, the family had been resettled to new lands in northwestern Ossetia, near the Kabardino-Balkarian border. It was there, in the village of Stavd-Dort, that he spent his childhood. Young Gogki never set foot in a schoolhouse. From the time he could walk, he worked—herding goats, gathering firewood and dung for fuel. As he grew older, he labored alongside adults in the cornfields. There was no time for formal education, but his innate curiosity burned bright: he taught himself to read and write, devouring anything printed—books, newspapers, even pre-revolutionary magazines.

Like all his peers, he came of age under Soviet rule. The promise of a radiant future, one that would replace their hardscrabble existence, resonated deeply with him. He joined the Komsomol early and became a member of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) in 1928. By then, he’d already mastered the Fordson—one of the first tractors in the North Caucasus, and the only one in the region—learning to repair it himself. His sharp mind and imposing stature caught the attention of local officials, who secured him a spot at the workers’ faculty (rabfak) of the Leningrad Mining Institute in 1928. He excelled, particularly in mathematics, earning a transfer to Moscow’s prestigious Bauman Higher Technical School. After graduation, he enlisted in the Red Army and was assigned to the Zhukovsky Air Force Academy. Within a year, he was leading one of the academy’s laboratories. By 1941, he had passed PhD defence and become dean of the aeronautical engineering faculty.

Yet he never returned home. The Ossetia of his memories—its mountains, forests, and icy rivers—remained etched in his mind. In 1989, at 76, the now-renowned Professor Tokaty was nominated for a British knighthood in recognition of his scientific contributions. But the honorific “Sir” would never precede his name. To accept, he would have had to swear an oath of allegiance to Her Majesty the Queen—a step he refused. “I, Gogki Tokaty, an Ossetian, was included in that list,” he later explained. “But it required a declaration of loyalty to the English Crown. A foreigner cannot become a ‘Sir’ without this oath. I declined. Why? I am not English—I am Ossetian. Though I am endlessly grateful to this country for the honor, I am a son of the Caucasus. It is there I first drew breath. No title or award could ever make me less Ossetian.”

By 1941, Grigori Tokayev—as he was now known—had firmly established himself in Moscow. He married Aza Baeva, a Vladikavkaz native studying at the Mendeleev Chemical-Technological Institute, and they were allotted a room in a sparsely populated communal apartment on Furmanny Lane. Their daughter, Bella, was born in 1938. Life was full: exhilarating work at the Zhukovsky Academy’s aerodynamics lab, a happy young family, a promising academic career ahead.

All of it ended on June 22, 1941.

3

From the interrogation transcript of Lieutenant Colonel Tokayev by Major Hopkins, December 14, 1947:

“Go on, Grigori. What happened to you after the war began?”

“First, explain the two-week gap in our sessions. Don’t tell me you were occupied with other matters. You have only one case now. Me.”

“You provided extensive details about your work at the Air Force Academy and the research conducted there. I couldn’t verify their accuracy. Your statements were sent to our military specialists. I only received their assessment today.”

“And?”

“No evidence of disinformation was found in your account.”

“Does that convince you of my sincerity?” “Not entirely. Everything you described was already known to our experts. Don’t ask how. London watches Soviet military developments very closely. The only novelty was your claim about aviation rocket-engine research. Our experts doubt the Russians have made significant progress there.”

“What would dispel their doubts? A squadron of Soviet jet bombers over London?”

“Your view of the political situation is overly grim.”

“It’s realistic. You still don’t grasp why I defected, George. Let me clarify. First, a question: Does your intelligence know which Red Army units are stationed in Germany?”

“I assume so.”

“Write this down. Under Marshal Sokolovsky’s command: the 3rd Shock Army (Magdeburg), 8th Guards Army (Weimar), 2nd and 1st Guards Mechanized Armies (Dresden), and the 16th Air Army (Wünsdorf)—nine fighter divisions, three ground-attack, six bomber, one night-bomber, over 2,000 aircraft total. Support troops: four artillery divisions, two tank brigades, five anti-aircraft divisions. Add the forces in Austria and Poland. Does this mean nothing to you?”

“Are you suggesting Stalin might attempt to seize all of Europe?”

“You think he wouldn’t?”

“In 1945, Churchill believed it possible. The Allies couldn’t have stopped the Red Army then. That’s why Wehrmacht units surrendering to us were held in camps along the demarcation line—kept in uniform, drilling, weapons stored nearby. They’d have absorbed the first Soviet strike. Later, when Churchill decided Stalin wouldn’t attack, the prisoners were moved inland for denazification.”

“What changed his mind?”

“The American atomic bomb.”

“Churchill was hasty. A bomb won’t deter Stalin. He knows the U.S. won’t risk using it in Central Europe—this isn’t Japan. Nothing would stop Soviet tanks. They could reach the Channel in 48 hours. They’re only waiting for the order.”

“Why do you believe such an order might come?”

“I know the state of those forces. They’re at full readiness. Meanwhile, the U.S. and Britain are demobilizing. This imbalance is dangerous. Insist your superiors heed this, George.”

“I will. Now, let’s resume.”

“Ask your questions…”

4

War, like a force of nature, rewrites destinies in a single day. A schoolteacher becomes an infantryman, a university professor turns militiaman, a medical graduate is now a combat surgeon, and a lathe operator an artillery gunner. So too, in the span of 24 hours, did Grigori Tokayev—PhD, dean of aeronautical engineering at the Zhukovsky Academy—shed his title for the rank of Military Technician 1st Class and depart for a heavy bomber regiment, barely pausing to kiss his young wife goodbye.

The regiment, part of the Special-Purpose Heavy Bomber Group, was stationed at Nikiforovka Airfield near Michurinsk, a forward base. Through the summer and autumn of 1941, its squadrons of Tupolev SB and TB-3 aircraft supported General Kuznetsov’s 51st Army, defending Crimea against Manstein’s 11th Army. The lumbering bombers hauled fuel, engines, and searchlight equipment to Kerch and Bagherovo, dropped paratroopers behind German lines, and raided rail yards at Dzhankoy and Simferopol. Stormy autumn weather grounded the Luftwaffe; fog clung to the Crimean coast like a shroud, allowing most sorties to return unscathed.

The moment the engines coughed silent and crews clambered out, ground teams swarmed the aircraft. Tokayev’s unit draped camouflage nets over the giants, refueled them, slung bombs into bays, and restocked ammunition. By dawn, the squadrons were airborne again.

A loudspeaker hung in the mess hall. When the metronome’s ticking ceased, all eyes turned to Levitan’s voice reciting Sovinformburo bulletins. The vagueness of “successfully repelled enemy attacks, inflicting significant losses” needed no decoding for the men here. It meant the Germans kept advancing. Smolensk had fallen. Leningrad was besieged. Moscow’s outskirts burned. By October, Kerch was lost, and Red Army units retreated to the Taman Peninsula.

Twenty-five bombers of the Special-Purpose Group relocated to Grabtsevo Airfield near Kaluga, preparing for the Vyazma airborne operation. But camouflage failed. On 27 January 1942, Ju-88s and He-111s struck in waves. Four aircraft from the 1st Regiment, three from the 3rd, two TB-3s each from the 14th Regiment and 4th Independent Squadron—all gone. A follow-up raid on 3 February incinerated two more bombers under repair.

The Vyazma drop was postponed; forward airfields abandoned. When the operation finally launched in late February 1942, the sorties originated from Monino outside Moscow.

In February’s final days, Tokayev secured leave. Hitchhiking on military trucks, he reached a Moscow stripped bare—balloon barrages floating over parks, windows crisscrossed with tape against blast waves. Half the apartments in his building stood empty after panicked evacuations. His own room was a shell. Aza’s last letter, months old, mentioned her research institute’s evacuation to the Urals. No word since. He sat amid the ghosts of hasty packing, then returned to Monino.

Three months later, a runner found Tokayev’s crew on the tarmac at night: “The commander wants you—now.” At HQ, orders awaited. Grigori Tokayev was to report to the Zhukovsky Air Force Academy’s command. Not in Moscow. In Sverdlovsk, where the academy had relocated. By morning, he was airborne again.

Grigori Tokayev never returned to his interrupted work on jet engines. The Air Force was desperately short of specialists, and the academy’s priority had shifted entirely to training aviation engineers. Hundreds of cadets graduated and departed for the front, while hundreds more cycled through accelerated refresher courses. The faculty worked on degaussing techniques for attack aircraft armor, designed new high-explosive and shaped-charge munitions, and developed manuals to improve bombing accuracy and optimize flight ranges. Only in rare moments of respite could Tokayev revisit his calculations for turbojet and liquid-fueled rocket engines—the inevitable successors to piston-powered aviation. The pursuit of ever-more-powerful piston engines had hit a wall: beyond 700 kilometers per hour, gains became negligible. The future lay elsewhere.

Intelligence reports at the academy tracked aviation developments in Germany, its allies, and even the USSR’s own partners. As early as 1940, Italy’s Campini-Caproni had conducted test flights. Britain’s Gloster jet took to the skies in 1941, followed by America’s Airacomet in 1942. Soon, Britain’s Meteor would see combat. By mid-war, the Luftwaffe fielded the Me-262, Me-163, and He-162—jets that outclassed Soviet Ilyushins and Lavochkins in speed and agility. Only Germany’s crippled industrial capacity prevented these machines from dominating the skies.

The USSR, too, had its jet programs—in the design bureaus of Korolev and Tsander. In early 1942, test pilot Bakhchivandhi made the first flight of the BI-1, a rocket-powered interceptor. His subsequent death during testing froze progress until war’s end, when captured German engines birthed the Yak-15 and MiG-9.

Grigori Tokayev repeatedly petitioned the academy to prioritize jet research. Each proposal was rejected. More pressing needs demanded attention.

In 1943, the academy returned from Sverdlovsk to Moscow. Later, Aza’s research institute followed. Reuniting with his wife and daughter—alive, unharmed—felt like a miracle. He learned her institute had been mere blocks from the academy in Sverdlovsk all along. She’d kept every letter he’d sent. Why none of hers reached him remained a mystery.

Victory Day found Grigory Tokaev and his family among the thousands thronging Moscow’s Red Square. At two in the morning, the radio crackled with promises of an urgent broadcast. Ten minutes later, Levitan’s baritone boomed through the static—the Act of Nazi Germany’s Surrender read aloud, followed by the Supreme Soviet’s decree: May 9th now etched into history as Victory Day. Doors flung open; strangers embraced beneath the Kremlin’s shadow, laughter and tears mingling in the cold spring air. That evening, thirty artillery salvos shook the city, their echoes giving way to fireworks that bloomed crimson and gold over the Moskva. Grigory and Aza watched in silence from their apartment window, their daughter asleep nearby. A new life was beginning. What shape it might take, neither dared voice—but for that moment, they let themselves believe it could be untainted by war.

Two weeks later, Major Tokayev was summoned by Deputy NKVD Chief General Serov.

5

The summons to Serov, delivered by an NKVD courier, unsettled Grigori Tokayev. He had never before crossed paths with state security, now folded into the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs. At the academy, as in all institutions, there existed a First Department – guardians against leaks of state secrets, perpetually surveilling staff. Grigori knew they kept a file on him. But as far as he could deduce, it contained nothing incriminating; had it otherwise, his fate would already have taken a darker turn. Yet this afforded little comfort. Grigori could recall numerous cases of academy staff – decorated, irreproachable – vanishing without trace. None dared enquire after their fates; such curiosity itself spelled danger. After soothing his wife, shaken by the abrupt summons, Grigori set out for Lubyanka.

The deputy commissar had summoned him for fourteen hundred hours. At half-past one, he entered the fourth entrance of the Lubyanka Square complex, presenting his orders to the duty officer at the pass bureau. A pass had been prearranged for Major Tokayev. The officer filled out the permit but withheld it, murmuring into an internal telephone before instructing him to wait. Ten minutes later, a junior lieutenant appeared, scrutinised Grigori’s papers, collected the pass and barked: “Follow me.”

They took the lift to the fifth floor. Grigori’s gaze swept the surroundings. The corridors struck him first – endless, coiling about the building like a serpent. Oak doors, unmarked save for numbers, lined the passageways. The halls stood deserted save for the occasional officer clutching files, faces granite. At one door, the escort halted: “Inside.”

The antechamber was cavernous, dimly lit. The lieutenant handed Tokayev’s summons and pass to a duty colonel, who snapped: “Wait to be called.”

The wait stretched forty minutes. At last, a muted buzzer sounded. The colonel heaved open a weighty door: “Come in.”

At the far end of an expansive study, behind a desk cluttered with secure-line telephones, sat a squat man of about forty. The Colonel General’s uniform hung on a frame both unremarkable and unsettling – a peasant’s face beneath thinning hair. The file spread before him left little doubt: Grigori’s life lay splayed across that desk. He reported:

“Comrade Colonel General, Major Tokayev reporting as ordered.”

“I see that,” Serov replied coldly. “Sit down, Major. It says here you’re Ossetian. Correct?”

“Correct, Comrade Colonel General.”

“Your father’s name?”

“Akhmat.”

“Then why ‘Alexandrovich’?”

“That’s what they wrote.”

“Married?”

“Yes. My wife’s a chemical engineer.”

“Children?”

“A daughter. Seven years old.”

“Good. Parents living?”

“No.”

“Relatives?”

“A sister, Nina. Cousins: Timur Begazaevich in Moscow, Khagudi Gedoevich in Nalchik. A nephew, Khariton Dzybaevich, in Mizur, Ossetia.”

“You understand, Tokayev, their fates hinge on you? They’ll answer for your mistakes.”

“What am I accused of?”

“Nothing. Yet. Consider this… foresight. Continue.” Serov flipped pages. “Decorations: ‘Excellent Worker of the Red Army’, medals for ‘Combat Service’ and ‘Victory Over Germany’. Common enough. But this Order of the Red Star – for what? You never saw combat. Here: ‘No frontline service. No wounds or shell-shock.’”

“I served in bomber aviation – airfield operations. Those were frontline airfields. That I wasn’t wounded? Luck. Many weren’t.”

“You’ve been recommended as a rocket specialist,” Serov pressed.

“Aviation jet engines,” Grigori corrected. “Years of research. The future of our air force.”

“Records show you submitted three proposals to the academy. All rejected. Did they not grasp their significance?”

“They understood. Don’t mistake caution for sabotage. The academy had other priorities.”

Serov’s brow darkened.

“What constitutes sabotage isn’t yours to judge. We decide. It notes German fluency. How?”

“The Germans outpaced us in jet technology. I studied their papers. Began with Eugen Sänger’s pre-war articles – his ‘Silbervogel’ bomber concept. His book outlined radical designs.”

“Eugen Sänger,” Serov echoed. “Intelligence suggests he fled to France. We need him extracted.”

“Comrade Colonel General, why tell me this?”

“Because you’ll handle it. Under my command. You’re prepared. Dismissed, Major. Await orders.”

Escorted back through Lubyanka’s labyrinth, Grigori emerged onto the square. A dreary, drizzly day. Outside Detsky Mir, queues snaked for rationed goods. He sensed the ground shifting beneath his life.

The orders arrived fortnight later. Major Tokayev was to fly to Berlin, where Serov now served as deputy to Marshal Zhukov – head of the Soviet Military Administration in Germany – and NKVD plenipotentiary for the Occupation Forces. His mission: secure German archives and scientists linked to Wernher von Braun.

6

From the interrogation protocol of Lieutenant Colonel Tokayev by Major Hopkins, December 24, 1947:

“So, you received orders to report to Berlin. When was this?”

“In early June 1945.”

“You travelled by train?”

“No, by air.”

“Which airfield from?”

“Vnukovo.”

“What type of plane?”

“A Li-2 military transport.”

“Alone?”

“No, with a group of airmen.”

“How many?”

“Fifteen. They were assigned to the 16th Air Army.”

“How did you know that?”

“An officer I knew told me. He’d retrained at our academy.”

“Where did you land?”

“Johannisthal.”

“Flight duration?”

“Roughly five hours.”

“Who met you at the airfield?”

“Captain Kvashnin from SMERSH, in a Willys. He was assigned to me from the start. Operational liaison.”

“Meaning?”

“Security and logistical support. When extra manpower was needed.”

“What manpower?”

“Usually up to ten soldiers. For moving archives we uncovered. Especially those in Western occupation zones.”

“Did he surveil you?”

“Constantly. Part of his duties.”

“How did you know?”

“Everyone was watched. We all knew it.”

“Was Kvashnin your only minder?”

“I think not. He had subordinates, but I never knew them.”

“After Johannisthal, where did Kvashnin take you?”

“Karlshorst. Soviet military HQ. I reported to Colonel General Serov and was given a day to settle.”

“Where were you billeted?”

“A week in Karlshorst’s officers’ quarters, then a room near Treptow Park. Kvashnin arranged it.”

“Senior Red Army officers stayed in Karlshorst. Why were you permitted elsewhere?”

“No idea. Karlshorst was full. Likely Kvashnin cleared it with his superiors.”

“How did you commute from Treptow?”

“A driver was assigned. First an old Volkswagen. Unreliable—replaced with a Hanomag.”

“Soviet driver?”

“No. A German, Norbert Binder. Paid him 200 marks monthly, reimbursed by finance. Before him, another driver—Willi Brehm. Useless with engines. Had him replaced.”

“Always with the driver?”

“No. Sometimes I drove alone. When I… preferred discretion.”

“Were your drivers SMERSH informants?”

“I never ruled it out.”

“Your task was locating von Braun’s archives and scientists. How did you become secretary of the Allied Control Council?”

“By chance. Once, Marshal Zhukov entered Serov’s office during my briefing. Serov introduced me. Zhukov asked: “Educated?” Serov: “Candidate of Technical Sciences.” Zhukov: “Legible handwriting?” Serov: “Decent.” Zhukov: “Good. You’ll draft the minutes.” The Council included Eisenhower, Montgomery, and de Tassigny. I sat beside Zhukov—he trusted me. Later, Zhukov was recalled to Moscow as Ground Forces C-in-C. Sokolovsky replaced him. Promoted to marshal soon after.”

“We’ll return to the Council. Back to your arrival in Berlin. You lived alone?”

“Until May 1946. Then permitted to summon my wife and daughter.”

“Families were rarely allowed—only senior SVAG officials[1]. Why the exception?”

“Circumstance. Once, Marshal Sokolovsky summoned me. Reports of… questionable liaisons.”

“Who reported? Kvashnin?”

“Unlikely. He reported to Serov, not Sokolovsky.”

“Serov, then?”

“Maybe. I didn’t ask; he wouldn’t have answered.”

“What liaison?”

“A German woman.”

“Who?”

“Elsa Richter. A singer at the Kronprinz Hotel on Kurfürstendamm.”

“Kurfürstendamm’s in the British zone. How’d you get there?”

“Berlin’s borders were porous. Free movement citywide.”

“Continue. Was Elsa Richter your mistress?”

“Yes.”

“How did you meet?”

“In the restaurant of the Hotel Kronprinz, I met a man who might have known a rocket scientist affiliated with von Braun. The meeting concluded in the evening. It was pouring rain. Elsa happened to be leaving the hotel. I offered her a lift; she got into my car. We talked during the drive. She was twenty-five. Her husband had died on the Eastern Front, she lived alone with her four-year-old daughter. The child had developed pneumonia—antibiotics were needed, but black-market prices were exorbitant. I promised to help. Procured penicillin from our military hospital and gave it to Elsa. She invited me to her flat on Friedhofstraße, near the old cemetery.”

“How often did you meet?”

“Varied. Sometimes once a week, sometimes less. Depended on my duties.”

“How were these meetings arranged?”

“I’d drive to the Kronprinz around the time her performance ended. She’d get into the car, and we’d go to her place.”

“Did you ever enter the hotel?”

“No. The restaurant was always full of Americans, British, and German profiteers. A Russian officer would’ve drawn unwanted attention. I avoided scrutiny.”

“Marshal Sokolovsky was informed of this affair. What did he say?”

“I could repeat his words, but you wouldn’t grasp the… tone.”

“Did he swear?”

“That’s putting it mildly. Called me an “irresponsible dog” and said it would end badly. “Who knows who that singer’s connected to?” He’d have shipped me back to Moscow immediately, if not for the importance of my work.”

“How did you respond?”

“What could I say? We’re all dogs, some more than others.”

“What was his reply?”

“He said there was only one way to end it. Ordered me to bring my wife to Berlin. Aza and Bella arrived a month later. I never saw Elsa again.”

“How did General-Colonel Serov react to your family’s arrival?”

“Furious. He’d distrusted me from the start. Truthfully, he distrusted everyone.”

Major Hopkins’ Annotation: “Lieutenant Colonel Tokaev’s testimony appears credible regarding his relocation to Berlin. His description of the NKVD headquarters on Lubyanka aligns with prior intelligence. The Li-2 aircraft’s capacity and flight duration from Moscow to Johannisthal airfield are also accurate. However, doubts linger over his permitted residence outside Karlshorst—a Soviet-patrolled district from which his eventual defection to the British sector on 3 November 1947 would have been far more challenging.

The unusual authorization to bring his family to Berlin raises further suspicion. If our theory holds—that Tokaev is a Soviet sleeper agent groomed for infiltration into Britain—it suggests he negotiated extraction guarantees for his family as a precondition.

General Colonel Serov’s distrust of Tokaev may stem from the operation’s compartmentalization: if Soviet intelligence agencies beyond Serov’s command prepared the agent’s cover, it implies a secrecy tier far above standard protocols.

I consider it necessary to note the following:

1. The defection of an asset of Lieutenant Colonel Tokaev’s clearance level is classified as high treason in the USSR, triggering reprisals against relatives and associates remaining on Soviet soil—his sister Nina, cousins Timur and Khagudi, nephew Khariton, and close colleagues at the Zhukovsky Air Force Academy. Their current status must be ascertained through discreet channels.

2. Conduct a full background inquiry into Captain Kvashnin, tasked with surveilling Tokaev. The escape of his charge would warrant severe disciplinary action: demotion, dishonourable discharge, or court-martial. Determine his present standing and whether blame has been apportioned.

3. Task our operatives in Germany to establish contact with Elsa Richter, the Kronprinz Hotel chanteuse. Cross-verify Tokaev’s claims regarding their association—her testimony may either corroborate his narrative or expose critical inconsistencies.

7

Ahead of his family’s arrival, Grigori Tokayev rented three rooms in a cottage not far from Treptow Park, owned by an elderly German couple. The proprietors had moved themselves into the basement, letting out the upper floor. Their rations, doled out by the book, amounted to three hundred grams of bread per day, twenty grams of meat, twenty grams of sugar, four hundred grams of potatoes, and seven grams of fat. In addition, each month they were entitled to twenty-five grams of coffee beans, one hundred grams of ersatz coffee, and thirty grams of salt.

There were several categories of ration cards – for workers, for office employees, and for pensioners. The highest rations were allocated to manual labourers engaged in physically demanding work. The smallest – grimly nicknamed the “cemetery rations” – were for the unemployed and the elderly. The money a Soviet officer paid to the owners of the cottage he rented helped them to survive. He also shared with them the provisions he received through the service – a lifeline, given that on the black market, food prices had climbed to staggering, almost surreal levels.

The cottage was secured by Captain Kvashnin—a brisk, dutiful SMERSH officer from Ryazan. Though aware of Kvashnin’s surveillance reports, Tokayev dismissed them, having “nothing to hide.” By then, he’d been promoted to Lieutenant Colonel, serving in the Soviet Section of the Allied Secretariat, later transferred to its Military Directorate. His primary mission remained unchanged: tracking archives and scientists tied to Wernher von Braun’s rocket program.

Wernher von Braun himself had already been seized by the Americans and spirited away to the United States. His colleagues, left behind in Germany, were doing whatever they could to stay hidden—living under false names, disappearing into the ruins of the Reich. Tracing each one of them demanded immense effort; it required interrogating dozens of Germans, chasing shadows through a devastated land.

As for the aerospace engineer Eugen Sänger, the very man Colonel General Serov had mentioned to Tokaev—he remained elusive. Together with his wife, the mathematician Irene Bredt, Sänger had taken refuge in France. At that time, Major General Vasily Stalin was stationed in Berlin. When Grigori Tokaev spoke to him about the “Silbervogel” project, it left a lasting impression. Sänger had begun work on it before the war, only to have the project shelved in 1941. He returned to it in 1944. It was a fantastic concept—truly science fiction. Had it been brought to fruition, German rockets might have reached the stratosphere, crossed the Atlantic, and bombed New York. The tale ignited Vasily Stalin’s imagination. He was gripped by the idea of travelling to France with Lieutenant Colonel Tokaev to find Sänger and bring him back to the Soviet Union. But he was deeply displeased when Colonel General Serov forbade him even to entertain the notion. “What business do you have in France without knowing the language?” Serov said curtly. “We have our people there. Let them handle Sänger.” Not long after, Vasily Stalin returned to Moscow, where he was appointed Commander of the Air Force for the Moscow Military District. His acquaintance with Tokaev would prove to be a stepping stone in the latter’s career.

Germany’s principal rocket centre lay on the Baltic coast, at Peenemünde. It was from there that the V-1 rockets were tested, and the V-2s launched—those terrifying engines of destruction that rained down upon London. In Peenemünde’s concrete bunkers toiled hundreds of German scientists, drawn from all corners of the Reich. It was with a trip to Peenemünde that Tokaev began his mission.

There was little left to find at the heart of the facility—British bombers had laid waste to it on August 17, 1943.

The A-3 rockets—later dubbed the V-1s—which the Germans had initially used to pummel London, were not particularly difficult for British air defences to neutralise. They travelled slowly and could be tracked by radar long before reaching their targets. Everything changed, however, when the Germans began deploying the V-2. These came crashing down without warning; in London, there wasn’t even time to sound the air-raid sirens. Each missile carried eight hundred kilograms of high explosives. Though their accuracy left much to be desired, the damage they inflicted on the city achieved precisely the psychological effect the Germans had hoped for. British intelligence determined that the launches originated from Peenemünde. The decision was made: the centre must be destroyed.

Late on the evening of August 17, the first squadrons of bombers passed over Peenemünde without dropping a single bomb. No air raid sirens sounded below. Then, without warning, flares lit up the sky, and the most devastating aerial assault in the town’s history began. Nearly six hundred heavy four-engine bombers rained down thousands of high-explosive and incendiary bombs upon the heart of the complex. Wave after wave followed, reducing launch facilities, factory buildings, and research laboratories to rubble. Peenemünde’s air defences were utterly overwhelmed. Night fighters, hurriedly scrambled from Berlin, managed to bring down around fifty of the American Flying Fortresses, the B-27s. But the damage was done – the rocket centre had been forced into a prolonged silence.

Over seven hundred people perished in Peenemünde, many of them leading specialists. Among the dead was Dr Walter Thiel, chief engine designer. Upon hearing the results of the raid, Colonel General Jeschonnek of the Luftwaffe – responsible for the area’s air defence – took his own life. Yet General Dornberger, head of the Peenemünde operation, along with Wernher von Braun, assured the visiting chief of the SS Security Service, Obergruppenführer Kaltenbrunner, that the surviving personnel would be able to recover from the catastrophe. By order of the Wehrmacht command, a reserve testing range was established in Poland. Development of the V-2 continued.

The group of officers under Tokayev’s command was not the first Soviet mission to arrive at Peenemünde. As early as June 1945, on orders from Colonel General Serov, personnel from Research Institute No. 1 – involved in jet aircraft development – had flown in. But they too had arrived too late. On March 10th, 1945, the 2nd Belorussian Front had moved into the Peenemünde area, and by May 2nd, the entire garrison had been evacuated to Nordhausen, where they surrendered en masse to the Americans. On the very day Russian soldiers were scrawling their names across the smoking walls of the Reichstag, the Americans were securing the war’s most valuable spoils: over four hundred of the centre’s top scientific and technical staff, crates of documentation and research reports, and, at the Mittelwerk plant, more than a hundred fully assembled V-2 rockets, ready for front-line deployment.

In 1945, a directive from President Truman was in effect in the United States, prohibiting cooperation with active members of the NSDAP. All the rocket specialists from Peenemünde had been members of the Nazi Party, and Wernher von Braun had even been appointed SS-Sturmbannführer as early as 1943. To bypass this restriction, false professional and political biographies were fabricated for the German experts, biographies that contained no compromising information, after which they were recruited to work at American rocket centres. This operation was codenamed “Paperclip”: the new biographies were attached to the personnel files with paperclips. By mid-May 1945, all the valuable specialists and archives had been shipped to the United States, leaving Soviet military specialists from Research Institute No 1 to sift through the ruins and interrogate the support staff of Peenemünde.

They were fortunate in one respect. One officer, who had stepped aside for a moment’s relief, stumbled upon a brochure amidst the rubble, its charred and waterlogged cover labeled Streng Geheim (“Top Secret”). It was a design for a jet-powered bomber, developed by Sänger. Its technical specifications stunned the Soviet specialists. The engine’s thrust was one hundred tons (compared to the barely one and a half tons of the Soviet engines), its speed thirty times the speed of sound, its flight altitude reached three hundred kilometres, and its range extended up to twenty thousand kilometres. The brochure had been printed in one hundred copies and, judging by the distribution list, had been sent to the leaders of the Wehrmacht’s high command, the Ministry of Aviation, all institutes and organisations involved in military aviation, and all German specialists in rocket technology, including General Dornberger in the weapons department of the army.

Without reporting the find to anyone, they slipped the brochure under the shirt of one of the staff members, placed him on a plane, and sent him to Moscow. Later, the section of the brochure listing the scientists involved in the project was declassified and handed over to the search teams. Using this, Tokayev and his staff hunted for the German rocket engineers throughout Germany. It was painstaking work, demanding perseverance and patience. Neither of these were qualities lacking in Lieutenant Colonel Tokayev.

Among the German aircraft designers involved in von Braun’s rocket programme, particular attention from Soviet intelligence was focused on scientist Kurt Tank. He had not been among the specialists captured by the Americans, as he was in Poland at the time, working on the construction of a reserve rocket testing range. After the Red Army entered Poland, Kurt Tank’s trail disappeared.

8

In February 1947, Kurt Tank turned forty-nine. From 1933 until the end of the war, he was the chief designer at Focke-Wulf. His designs included the fastest fighter aircraft of the war: the Fw 58 “Weihe,” Fw 190, and the high-altitude interceptor Focke-Wulf Ta 152. Towards the end of the war, he developed the design for the turbojet fighter Focke-Wulf Ta 183, which featured the most advanced ideas in jet aviation. In early 1945, he was involved in the work of the Peenemünde rocket centre, focusing on the aerodynamics of the V-2 rocket. Soviet intelligence knew that he had not been among the German rocket specialists taken by the Americans to the United States during Operation Paperclip. Most likely, he was hiding somewhere in Berlin, in the western occupation zones.

It was by sheer chance that Colonel Tokayev’s group stumbled upon Kurt Tank’s trail. One evening, at the end of February 1947, a courier arrived at Tokayev’s cottage on a motorcycle, delivering a note from Captain Kvashnin. The note read: “There’s an interesting catch, needs urgent interrogation.” Grigori immediately headed for Karlshorst, where special facilities had been set up for suspects detained on black markets.

The largest black markets in Berlin were near the Reichstag and around the Brandenburg Gate. Every day, in any weather, thousands of people gathered at these markets. It was the only place where food could be bought or exchanged. By order of the Berlin commandant, General Berzarin, all stores and bakeries were reopened, but there was nothing to sell, and no ingredients to bake bread. Even ration cards couldn’t always be redeemed. Many Berliners were surviving on soup and porridge from Red Army field kitchens, and long queues would form for them. But the main source of food was the black markets. People brought everything that had survived the bombings and fires: clothes, shoes, and cookware. A pair of boots could be exchanged for a tin of canned pork, a carpet for half a sack of potatoes. A kilogram of butter cost six hundred Reichsmarks, a kilogram of coffee about one thousand two hundred marks, and a pack of American cigarettes twenty marks. Cigarettes were used as currency, alongside dollars. Women’s stockings went for four packs of “Camels” or “Chesterfields,” and a slightly worn coat could fetch twenty packs. Everything was being speculated with. A block of cigarettes could bring in one hundred dollars, a bottle of schnapps forty dollars, and a bar of soap five dollars. The most expensive goods were medicine and watches. It was not uncommon for a Mickey Mouse watch, which in the United States cost three dollars ninety-five cents, to sell for five hundred dollars. When the Americans began importing them in bulk from home, the military command issued a special order forbidding US servicemen from appearing at the black markets. Violators were rounded up by patrols and put under arrest.

The most active buyers were Red Army soldiers, who had been paid their wages for several years. They bought anything and everything—clothes, cameras, accordions, watches—and sent them in parcels back home to the destitute Soviet Union, ravaged by years of war.

In the western occupation zones, the Germans had no ration cards. They were paid in Reichsmarks even when factories were not operating. The marks quickly devalued, and the Germans were eager to spend them as quickly as possible. In East Berlin, everything was a little cheaper, and the black markets attracted people from all over the city. They tried to avoid the Reichstag, located in the Soviet zone, and preferred the market near the Brandenburg Gate, which was considered neutral ground. There were no Soviet patrols here, but SMERSH officers in plain clothes were constantly on duty, keeping an eye out for suspicious individuals based on their intelligence reports—likely hiding Nazis.

On that day, at the end of February, the counterintelligence officers’ attention was drawn to a man of about forty, wearing worn-out clothes, with a cap pulled low over his eyes and a large duffel bag slung over his shoulder. He was constantly looking around warily, buying food without bargaining. It was clear he was in a hurry to make his purchases and leave the dangerous area as quickly as possible. His identification card read: Name—Heinrich Hill, Profession—Laboratory Technician, Residence—Steglitz district. Steglitz was in the western sector of Berlin.

Men of his age were subject to mandatory military service in the Wehrmacht. Therefore, Captain Kvashnin, who was on duty near the Brandenburg Gate that day, asked, “What military units did you serve in?” “I was exempted from military service due to flat feet, I have a medical certificate,” Hill replied. He tried to maintain an air of independence, even defiance, but it was clear that he was frightened. He had something to hide.

Hill was placed in a vehicle and taken to Karlshorst. During a search of his duffel bag, they found ten cans of American corned beef, six cans of condensed milk, a large packet of egg powder, and a small bag of natural coffee. Hill explained that he had bought the goods for the professor he had worked for in recent years. The professor was ill and couldn’t go to the market himself. “What’s the professor’s name?” Kvashnin asked. “Herr Tank,” Hill answered. “Kurt Tank.” Captain Kvashnin knew this name very well. He stopped the interrogation and sent the courier to Lieutenant Colonel Tokayev.

When Grigori arrived in Karlshorst, the detainee had somewhat calmed down. He greeted the Soviet officer with a question:

“Herr Oberst, what am I being accused of?”

“Not of anything, yet. It’s just a routine check. We are searching for prominent members of the Nazi party and SS members.”

“I was never in any party. I’m just a simple non-combatant laboratory technician. How could I have been in the SS?”

“And your employer, Professor Tank?”

“I know nothing about it. He is a scientist; never discussed poitics. If he joined the party, only because it was expected. We never talked about this.”

“What was Professor Tank’s field?” Grigori continued interrogation.

“Mathematics.”

“How long have you been working with him?”

“Five years. He hired before the war.”

“Always at his side?

“Yes, he always needed an ssistant.”

“Even at Peenemünde?”

Hill became flustered and didn’t immediately know how to respond. – I don’t understand what you’re talking about. I’ve never been to Peenemünde.

“Relax, Heinrich.” Grigori said, his tone friendly. “We know Tank’s not just a mathematician. He’s a renowned aircraft designer and was involved in von Braun’s rocket program. Its centre was in Peenemünde. We even know what he was working on there – the aerodynamics of the V-2 rockets. The very same ones that were used to bombard London.”

“If you know, why ask me?”

“To see if you’ll cooperate. So far? Disappointing.”

“And if I refuse?”

“Bad choice. We’ll dig. Find out if ‘Heinrich Hill’ is really… say, an Obersturmführer.”

“What do you want?”

“That’s a different matter,” – Grigori approved. “You, Heinrich, are of no interest to us. But Professor Tank is very interesting to us. As I understand it, he’s hiding somewhere in West Berlin. We won’t torture you to get his address. But I would very much like to meet him. We have an offer that might interest him. Will you pass on my request for a meeting?”

“I’ll pass it on, if I see him,” Hill promised vaguely.

“You’ll definitely see him. When you deliver the groceries. You won’t leave your patron hungry, will you? Here’s my number. Call me when you arrange the meeting. My name is Tokayev, Lieutenant Colonel Tokayev. Remind him that we met in Moscow in 1940 at the Air Force Academy.”

“And what if he doesn’t want to meet?”

“Then you’ll tell him there won’t be a meeting. We don’t need anything else from you. Agreed?”

“Abgemacht[2],” Hill nodded.

Grigori summoned Captain Kvashnin.

“Take a car and drive Mr. Hill home. He lives in Steglitz. All the best, Heinrich. Don’t forget your groceries.”

Hill departed. Grigori held Kvashnin back.

“Take two men from surveillance. Plain clothes. Have them follow Hill. He’ll be going to see Tank today, no doubt about it.”

The next morning, Captain Kvashnin reported in.

“We found Tank. Hill led us straight to him. He’s living in Steglitz as well, in the ruins of a house – the basement’s still intact. Comrade Lieutenant Colonel, shall we take him?”

“Not yet. We’ll need to inform Serov. It’s his call.”

Colonel General Serov greeted Lieutenant Colonel Tokayev with a sullen look.

“What have you got? Speak.”

The moment he heard they’d located Kurt Tank’s address, his mood lifted.

“Well, at least that’s something. You lot have been wasting your time with God knows what, hauling around scraps of paper.”

“Comrade Colonel General, they’re not scraps of paper,” Grigori replied. “They’re documents from secret archives. Their value will be determined by our scientists.”

“Don’t lecture me – I know,” Serov muttered. “Right, Tokayev. Your assignment: prepare a covert extraction of Tank. Where is he staying?”

“In Steglitz, in the American sector.”

“That complicates things. The operation must be planned down to the last detail. But don’t drag your feet. The sooner Tank is in Moscow, the better.”

“Comrade Colonel General, may I share a suggestion?”

“What kind of suggestion could you have? Go on, then.”

“We could, of course, abduct Tank and bring him to Moscow by force. But wouldn’t it be wiser to take a different approach?”

“A different approach? What do you mean?”

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Notes

1

Soviet Military Administration in Germany (German – Sowjetische Militäradministration in Deutschland).

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2

Agreed (German).

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