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Hunger satisfied, the once-plump soldier became wary again; he reminded Antonov of a Bolshevik during the Revolution interrogating a prisoner suspected of Czarist sympathies, truculence tempered by grudging deference. ‘So,’ the soldier said, ‘where have you two been fighting? In the cookhouse?’
‘Nowhere much,’ Razin told him. ‘I was with the 258th Rifle Division in a small skirmish – the Battle of Moscow. Were you there?’
‘Rostov.’
‘Ah yes,’ Razin said. ‘You lost Rostov: we saved Moscow.’
‘We heard that when you saved Moscow the war was as good as over. What went wrong?’
The other soldier said: ‘Rostov was a victory,’ and when Razin laughed: ‘I mean it, Rostov was the turning point. It was after Rostov that Stalin said: “Not a step back.’”
‘And we haven’t taken any steps back?’
‘We’ll hold the bastards here. Stalingrad. This is the one.’
Razin, nipping the glowing tip off his cigarette and, pouring the residue of tobacco into a tin that had contained throat lozenges, said: ‘I was in Moscow when Panfilov’s men held the Fritzes.’
The two soldiers fell silent as Razin retold the story that had already acquired the lustre of a legend.
As the German offensive faltered outside Moscow in late 1941, nearly a year ago, twenty-eight anti-tank gunners commanded by an officer named Panfilov had defied the mailed fist of a panzer attack on the Volokolamsk Highway. They had fought with guns and grenades and petrol bombs and the political officer, mortally wounded, had grabbed a clutch of hand grenades and thrown himself under a German tank. The battle had lasted four hours. The Germans lost eighteen tanks and failed to break through.
Ah, such sacrifice. Even when Razin had finished the tale Rodina, Mother Russia, lingered in the crater and briefly Panfilov and his men with their petrol-filled bottles were more real than the outrage that was Stalingrad.
Razin said: ‘At the end of the battle for Moscow you couldn’t help feeling sorry for the Fritzes. It was so cold that the oil in their guns froze and the poor bastards were still wearing summer uniforms – greatcoats and boots if they were lucky – and when they went for a piss … snap!’ Razin picked up a splinter of wood and snapped it in half.
‘You felt sorry for the parasites?’ The soldier with the eloquent hands stared at Razin in disbelief.
‘Until I remembered what they had done to our people. Until I remembered the corpses strung up in the villages.’
‘The Fritzes might have been pissing icicles at Moscow,’ the soldier with the wounded leg remarked, ‘but when they first arrived in Stalingrad they were singing and playing mouth-organs.’ He turned to Antonov. ‘You don’t talk much, comrade. What do you think about Germans? Do you feel sorry for them?’
Antonov realised that the soldier thought he might be a Nazi sympathiser: the Red Army was obsessed with spies, and exhausted men saw them on the tattered fringes of their fatigue. But Antonov wasn’t sure what he felt about Germans. Occasionally during shell-splintered sleep, he saw young men harvesting golden wheat on the steppe or carving ice for drinking water from a frozen river or coaxing girls into the deep green depths of the taiga and the young men were neither Russians nor Germans.
When Antonov didn’t reply the other soldier, wagging one finger, asked: ‘Where are you from comrade? The Ukraine? I heard that when the Fritzes invaded last year a lot of Ukrainians fought for them.’
Razin prodded the barrel of his pistol towards the soldier. ‘I come from the Ukraine,’ he said.
‘You obviously decided to fight on the right side.’ The soldier regarded the pistol without fear. ‘But what I’m saying is true?’
‘A few joined the Germans,’ Razin admitted. ‘In Kiev, for instance, the people were bewildered. In the space of twenty years they had been occupied by Germans, Austrians, Reds, Whites, Poles … Maybe all they wanted was the use of their own backyard. And isn’t that what we’re all fighting for? One hell of a great backyard?’
The other soldier spread his hands in front of the incandescent stove. ‘That isn’t what Sergei asked. Where,’ nodding at Antonov, ‘do you come from?’
More Katyushas, Little Kates, exploded nearby. They made an awesome noise and the Germans called them Stalin Organs. For the Russians firing from the other side of the Volga it was easy enough to shell the Germans over their comrades’ heads; for the Germans it wasn’t so easy to pound the Russians because the Soviet positions were so compressed that there was always a risk that they would hit their own infantry.
‘Does it matter? We’re all Soviets.’ But to Antonov it did matter; the army had taught him that. Republics, regions, races … all harboured ancient hostilities.
The wounded soldier said: ‘A country boy by the look of you. Blue eyes, fair hair beneath that helmet … Or is it straw?’
Antonov drew a swastika on the dust on one of his tall boots. ‘Siberia,’ he said after a while. ‘A village near Novosibirsk.’
In fact it was fifty miles away from the city, a collection of wooden cottages with pink and blue fretted eaves, a pump and a wooden church that was used as a granary.
‘Well,’ the wounded soldier said, ‘you look as if you’ve had an easy war so far.’
Razin said: ‘Very easy. He’s only shot twenty-three so far. Two more won’t make much difference.’ He smiled crookedly at the two soldiers.
They began to understand, expressions tightening. ‘You’re not–’
Removing the rag from the telescopic sights of his rifle, Antonov said: ‘My name’s Yury Antonov,’ and, without pleasure, observed the effect of his name on the two visitors.
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_9114e3f3-a39a-554b-bddd-bec37e7a1f99)
Leaning against the belly of a stricken locomotive, Karl Meister ate his lunch. Stale bread, sausage and a can of sliced peaches.
He wondered what Antonov was doing. Cleaning his rifle probably. If you weren’t eating or sleeping or shooting you were cleaning your rifle.
Katyushas exploded down the ruptured track near Univermag, the department store. They sounded like elephants bellowing. Fragments of metal struck the other side of the big black engine.
Cold eased its way down from the north. No teeth to it yet but when it really began its advance – next month according to the pundits – it would be inexorable. More than anything else the Sixth Army feared the cold: it had bitten the Wehrmacht to pieces outside Moscow.
Feeling its breath, Corporal Ernst Lanz, a thirty-year-old Berliner with a bald patch and a thief’s face, said: ‘We were supposed to have gobbled up this arschloch of a place in August.’
He was leaning against a piston drinking Russian beer from a fluted brown bottle. His grey-green tunic was stained but the Iron Cross 1st class on his chest shone brightly. His helmet, upturned, lay beside him like a bucket.
‘The generals didn’t reckon with street fighters,’ Meister said. ‘The Ivans would fight for a blade of grass – if there was any left.’
‘Stalingrad!’ Lanz threw aside the empty bottle. ‘Six months ago I’d never heard of it.’
‘I doubt whether the Führer had. No one expected a battle here. We thought we’d be half way across Siberia: the Russians thought they would be across the Dneiper.’
In Lanz’s presence Meister tried to compensate for his lack of battle experience with tactical hindsight and foresight. He doubted whether either was effective: not even shared adversity could dispel the suspicions separating classes: all they had in common was a city upbringing and even that was marred by Lanz’s low opinion of Hamburg.
He wondered how, given a common tongue, he and Antonov would hit it off if they hadn’t been ordered to kill each other. According to Soviet propaganda Antonov was the son of the soil, a Siberian. Would he want to socialise with a college boy?
‘So,’ Lanz said, taking a cigarette from a looted silver case and lighting it, ‘when are you going to start hunting each other again? What is this? A rest period?’
Meister swallowed the last slippery segment of peach. ‘When I’m ready,’ he said.
‘Supposing he gets ready first? Gets a bead on you from over there,’ pointing towards what was left of a warehouse.
‘He won’t, he’s not stupid, he knows I’d see him first silhouetted against the sky.’
‘That’s what you call instinct?’
‘Antonov has instinct. He was a hunter. I have aptitude.’
Aptitude, substitute for talent. Squinting through the sights of a Karabiner 98K on the college rifle range because he knew he could never excel at sport. Muscular co-ordination, that was what he had lacked but when it came to punching bullseyes with bullets he knew no equal and when he became a crack shot he had as many girls flirting with him as any lithe-limbed athlete, one girl in particular, Elzbeth, who had blonde hair like spun glass. He kept a photograph of her in his wallet, posing with him in Berlin when he won the Cadet Marksman of the Year award, he with his black hair glossy in the flashlights smiling fiercely over the rim of the enormous cup. Elzbeth said his face was sensitive. Some qualification for a sniper!
Lanz drew on his cigarette, cupped in his hand convict fashion. ‘Instinct versus aptitude … Which will win?’
‘You’d better pray for aptitude. If I lose, you lose and there’s no place in the Third Reich for losers.’
‘Don’t worry about me,’ Lanz said. ‘I’m a survivor. And if you want to survive take a few tips from me; that’s why we’re partners. Remember?’
‘I remember,’ Meister said.
‘So make your move when we launch the next attack on Mamaev Hill.’ They had lost count of how many times the hill commanding Stalingrad had changed hands. At the moment it was shared, a pyramid of rubble, exploded shells and corpses, some not quite dead. ‘You’ll have good cover. Smoke, shell-bursts. Tanks – T-34s or Panthers.’
Which, Meister thought, is exactly what Antonov will be anticipating. I might not know the arts of survival in battle but in this lone game I am Lanz’s master.
‘You don’t agree?’ Lanz asked.
‘It’s a possibility.’
‘I didn’t ask for this job.’
‘I couldn’t have done it without you. Survived this.’ Meister gestured at the desolation that had been a city.
‘When you’ve been running from the cops all your life you know a trick or two.’
‘Did you have any trouble getting into the Army? You know, with your record …’
‘I’m not a Jew, I’m not a gypsy. It was easy.’
‘But why’ Meister asked curiously, ‘did you want to fight?’
‘Who said I did? The Kripo had other plans for me if I didn’t.’ Lanz ground out his cigarette end and rubbed his bald patch with his hand leaving behind a grey smudge. ‘And you? Weren’t you too young to be conscripted?’
Meister who was now eighteen said: ‘I volunteered.’
A shelf of trophies, a head full of golden words. For the Fatherland. For the Führer. For Elzbeth.
‘Are you scared of dying?’ Lanz asked.
‘Aren’t we all?’
‘Some people beckon death. They call them heroes. Others dispatch people to their deaths. They call them politicians. But you haven’t answered my question.’
A Stuka dropped out of the sky, bent wings predatory, its pilot looking for Russians burrowing in the ruins, or ships crossing the Volga. An anti-aircraft gun opened up on the other side of the river.
‘I don’t want to die,’ Meister said.
‘Then you must kill Antonov.’
‘Of course.’ He saw Antonov with a ploughshare, its blades turning furrows of wet black earth.
A scout car stopped beside the stricken engine and a young officer with bloodshot eyes climbed out. ‘Are you Meister?’
Meister said he was.
‘The general wants to see you.’
‘The general?’
‘General Friedrich von Paulus.’ The officer looked as incredulous as Meister felt.
***
Paulus, commander of the Sixth Army that was laying siege to Stalingrad, sat at a trestle table beneath a naked light bulb in a command post, a cellar to the west of the city, poring over two maps. He didn’t look up when Meister clattered down the stone steps.
The larger map embraced the southern front. Meister could see the arrow-heads of Army Group A piercing the Caucasus, probing for its oil; above them the arrows of Army Group B trying to cut the Russians’ artery, the Volga, and amputate the great thumb of land that linked the Soviet Union with Turkey and Iran.
But the arrows lost direction at Stalingrad, the once prosperous city of half a million inhabitants. Stalingrad was the smaller map and, standing to attention opposite Paulus, Meister was able to view the plan of battle from the Soviet positions on the east bank of the Volga.
The plight of the Russians became more apparent in the cellar than it did above ground. Stalingrad was on the west bank and the Soviet forces there were encircled and divided. They were ferociously defending the industrial north and their slender waterside footholds, but nine-tenths of the city was in German hands.
At last the general leaned back in his chair and looked at Meister. Paulus had a long handsome face and big ears and his dark hair had been pressed close to his scalp by the peaked cap lying on the table. His uniform was loose on his body but he had presence. He was smoking a cigarette and there was a mound of crushed butts on a saucer.
‘So,’ he said, ‘you’re our latest hero.’ He appraised Meister as though looking for a hidden feature. ‘Well, we could do with one. Stand at ease, man.’ He picked up a copy of Signal. ‘Have you seen this?’ handing Meister the forces’ magazine.
‘No, Herr General.’ Meister found it difficult to believe that he was alone in a cellar with a general. He riffled the pages of the magazine until he saw Elzbeth and himself. It was the same photograph that he carried in his wallet.
‘Keep it,’ Paulus said. ‘Read it later. Don’t worry, it’s very flattering. I understand from Berlin that most of the newspapers have picked up the story. You, Meister, are just the tonic the German people need. They’ve been reading too much lately about “heavy fighting”. They know by now what that means – a setback. And do you know what that makes you?’
‘No, Herr General.’
A shell exploded nearby. The cellar trembled, the lightbulb swung.
‘A diversionary tactic.’ Paulus pulled at one of his big ears and lit another cigarette. ‘A sideshow. But at the moment the German people don’t know about your co-star.’
‘Antonov?’ Meister’s throat tickled; it was a sniper’s nightmare to cough or sneeze as, target in the sights, he caressed the trigger of his rifle.
‘So far this rivalry – this feud within a battle – has been for local consumption. But not when you kill him.’
Meister cleared his throat but the tickle remained.
‘Then,’ Paulus said, ‘the whole Fatherland will know about Karl Meister’s greatest exploit. It will be symbolic, the victory of National Socialist over Bolshevism.’
The irritation scratched at Meister’s throat. Any minute now he would be racked with coughs.
Paulus unbuttoned the top pocket of his tunic. ‘I have a message for you. It’s from the Führer.’ Paulus read from a folded sheet of paper. ‘I have heard about the exploits of Karl Meister and I am profoundly moved by both his dedication and his expertise. I am led to understand that the Bolsheviks, having forcibly been made aware of Meister’s accomplishments, have produced a competitor. I confidently await your communiqué to the effect that Meister has disposed of him.’
Meister said: ‘Antonov is very good.’ He tried unsuccessfully to dislodge the irritation in his throat with one rasping cough.
‘But not as good as you?’
‘I’m not sure. He comes from the country, I come from a city, Hamburg. Maybe I have the edge, city sharpness … But he has instinct, a hunter’s instinct.’
