July 16,1945; Berlin, Germany:

Artillery Colonel Vasily Semashko walked like a tourist through the skeletal remains of what had recently been a seat of world power, trying to sketch a mental picture of what the city had looked like before his guns had reduced it to rubble. At the north end of Wilhelmstrasse he gained his first view of the Reichstag, now a shell, but once the source of agonies beyond number for the motherland. From there, he knew, had come the orders to turn against the Russias; to unleash the ruthless Wehrmacht on the Soviet States. The pendulum had come full swing, and now, as a conqueror, he owed it to himself to savor one of the lesser fruits of victory. He found his wallet and withdrew the pass that allowed him free movement throughout the city. Already Berlin was being sectioned into irregular little wedges for division among the Allies. ‘Allies,’ he thought. “Now there’s a misnomer with a limited life expectancy.”

At a checkpoint that bordered on what was discreetly being termed ‘The Western Zone,’ Vasily presented his pass to have it, and himself, carefully scrutinized by a trio of sentries, one of whom he was certain was from the NKGB. Once they located his name on one of the many lists and verified his existence with headquarters, the two men he thought were regular army stood deferentially aside while the third apologetically explained how a few malcontents had taken to killing field grade officers for their passes to ‘defect’ to the West. They hoped the colonel would be careful and wished him a pleasant day.

‘Defect’ was such a typical word, he thought as he strolled; a noun reborn as a verb, it carried the implication of faultiness, as though there were some latent flaw within the individuals involved. He could picture the entire general staff poring over volumes of lexicons searching to unearth so appropriate a word before presenting the desertion figures to comrade Stalin. With effort he forced all aspects of the High Command from the front of his mind, refusing to let it ruin his day. They would be here, in person, soon enough.

Ahead of him loomed the remains of the structure, still possessing its own sense of strength and morbidity. He had intended to relish the time of his exploration as long as he could by first circling the building at a short distance and then getting as close as he could, perhaps even to examining the remnants of the interior. He began by entering the Tiegarten, the park where he knew Hitler and his entire staff would stroll on sunny afternoons while making plans for their new world order. His first steps took him along Burger Chausse, towards the proposed site of the Soviet War Memorial. About this once meticulously kept road that divides the eastern end of the Tiegarten remained many signs of fierce savagery marked by splintered and broken trees of great age and huge gaping craters. Some had been caused by him and others by the American Eighth Air Force. He remembered the days of blood when each building was its own fortress and how the broad open streets belonged to the snipers. At first, he had thought he was punishing the same army that had sacked the western end of his homeland, but then, when the prisoners started coming, the tired old men, the frightened boys in their early teens and even old women with their failing yellow teeth, then he began to feel like little more than a butcher. He knew then that, like Hitler, most of those who deserved punishment would elude their proper reckoning. God grant that, at least, they should end as he had, but that too was yet another ‘state secret’, and one that he was not supposed to be privy to. An interesting world that lies ahead, he thought, where a shred of knowledge could get you confined to a gulag, or worse.

It was as he was about to leave the pathway by the road that he spotted the other man walking briskly in his direction and recognized him, and not without surprise. He looked thinner, but the fighting had done that to most, and he had on neatly tailored civilian clothes cut in that crisp style one associates with excess wealth. Still, there could be no mistake about it; it was Inostrantsev. Semashko wondered what he could possibly be doing in Berlin and in such clothes of all things. As he watched the other’s approach he remembered the weeks they had spent playing chess in the hospital at Penza and how, despite the total physical depletion imposed by typhus, Fyodor Inostrantsev’s mind had stayed keen and alert, able to play the game like Petrov himself. More surprising was that this tactical genius had refused to become an officer. The thought barely passed his mind leaving in its wake the words of the sentries; words that carried with them an annoying sense of disappointment. The last he had heard, Fyodor was part of the Latvian Army of Occupation in Riga. Though the Baltic States seemed far removed, the real distance would be a small obstacle to a deserter. Disgust gave way to mild anger at the thought. Gathering what composure he could, Colonel Semashko set his feet slightly apart and squarely in the middle of the path as he braced himself for the coming lies and denials. As the distance between them closed to less than twenty feet he forced himself to smile and set stern eyes on the other pedestrian. What happened he was not prepared for. Inostrantsev looked his way, smiled back, in flawless English said, “Good afternoon, Colonel,” and without a hint of recognition, brushed on by the colonel.

It took a second for him to recover, and then in very broken English say, “Excoose me, sir. Might I see your papers?”

The man stopped reluctantly. He doubted that any Russian officer had the authority, particularly in this zone, to demand papers, but the way things were you couldn’t be sure. He decided to humor the officer. He reached into his jacket pocket; an innocent move that sent the colonel’s hand to his Tokarev pistol. Very slowly now, he opened the jacket to show that there was no shoulder holster and eased out his passport and identification. From now on he would remember at least to carry them on the other side, and to fully open his coat first. He took a deep breath when the colonel reholstered his gun.

Again, the English was natural and perfect. “I’m sorry for that. I didn’t mean to alarm you.” Colonel Semashko nodded and pretended to study the papers carefully. He had no idea what proper western papers would look like, but that was not the point. He was thinking as quickly as he could. It had to be Fyodor, yet the papers were orderly, as far as he could tell. An American passport, a United States Naval Reserve officer’s card, and even an American Press card. But the voice; so similar, as was the carriage of the man. It must be Fyodor.

“What is your business in Berlin?”

“I’m covering the Potsdam conference for the American Press.”

Semashko smiled benignly and held out the papers. “Be sure to do a good job. It is our great triumph: yours and mine.”

“Thank you. I will.” With that the man took back his papers and resumed his striding pace along the pathway leaving a very troubled Colonel Semashko behind.

During the months at Penza, Vasily had grown fond of the young Inostrantsev and even enjoyed his iconoclastic remarks on that he called ‘Stalinism.’ He knew well the free-mindedness that pervaded Fyodor’s day to day life and had faced the daily challenge of keeping this bedridden jokester from playing his tricks on the ubiquitous informer-of-the-floor, or from breaching any of the foolish regulations. Always, he had felt, behind all the pranks and cynicism, Fyodor was a patriot of special character; the kind that would be badly needed once he and the rest of the army had been put out to pasture. In his youth Fyodor had learned to endure all that was necessary for the long-term goals. Vasily would, with deepest regret, turn him in as a deserter.

He looked fleetingly at the Reichstag and set out for his office in the Soviet zone knowing that Fyodor had stolen from him whatever pleasure might have been left in this day. Now, he had paper work to do.