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Serov’s smile froze for a moment, and then brightened.

“It’s always a pleasure to play mental chess with someone of your caliber, Ludwig,” he said.

Then he came to attention, saluted, and marched back down the Russian side of the bridge.

—

“Colonel,” Dunwiddie asked, as they drove away from the bridge, “can I ask what that rank business with Serov was all about?”

“Serious answer?”

“Please, sir.”

“Usually, it’s better that your adversary think you have less knowledge than is the case,” Mannberg explained. “Sometimes, when dealing with Russians, it’s better to challenge their superiority. He let us know he knows Max is Polish—which also meant he wanted us to know he has a mole in the Compound. So I let him know I knew more about him than he thinks I did.”

“How did you know he’s really a major general?”

“I don’t know. I do know that it’s highly unlikely the NKGB would have a lieutenant colonel running an operation like this. So I took a chance with major general, which seemed to be a realistic rank for someone serving as first deputy to Commissar of State Security Nikolayevich Merkulov. And I think my dart struck home.”

Ostrowski chuckled.

“Another question from an amateur,” Dunwiddie said. “We now have pictures of Colonel Mattingly sitting chained to a chair in that truck. So why don’t we just go to the Allied Commandantura with them. ‘Here’s proof you have our officer chained to a chair. Now let him go.’”

Mannberg considered his reply for a moment before making it.

“The Communists have one advantage over us in any confrontation,” he said finally. “We enter such proceedings weighed down by Exodus 20:1–17, and Deuteronomy 5:4–21. ‘You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.’ The Russians enter a meeting expecting to lie through their teeth to get what they want.

“If we went to the Commandantura with this, the most likely thing that would happen is that they would first deny any knowledge of anything. Then if we pressed them—with photos of poor Mattingly in that

chair, for example—they would accuse us first of lying and then of provocation. And then—unless they had something important they wanted from the Commandantura—they would storm out of the meeting in righteous indignation, and stay out until they wanted something from the Commandantura. And then, when the question of Mattingly came up, they would say that was in the past, and, for everyone’s mutual benefit, there should be a fresh start with a new slate.”

“In Russia,” Max Ostrowski said, “the state religion is Communism, Tiny. Officially, there is no God.”

“Then what’s this business about giving Christian burials to the guys Claudette put down?”

“I don’t really know,” Mannberg said. “It could be that Serov is really a Christian. Or not.”

“‘Russia is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma,’” Ostrowski said, obviously quoting. “‘But perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest.’”

“He does have a way with words, doesn’t he?” Mannberg said, chuckling.

“Who does?” Tiny asked.

“Winston Churchill,” Ostrowski replied. “He said that in a speech in 1939.”

“I suspect this burial business has a meaning,” Mannberg said. “We have no choice but to play along with it until we find out what that is.”

“Do you suppose it might have something to do with Russian nationalism?” Max asked drily.

[ TWO ]

München-Ostfriedhof Cemetery

St.-Martins-Platz

Munich, American Zone of Occupation, Germany

1050 1 February 1946