Kitabı oku: «The Spy», sayfa 2

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 officials¹. 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.