Beata nodded. Then she said she had no use for a dead rabbit. Better to keep it as a pet. Nehmann swore he saw the baby nodding. Messner was astonished.
‘You don’t want it for the pot?’ he asked. ‘In times like these?’
‘No, thank you.’
‘But you’re serious? About keeping it?’
‘I am. Wait. I have a box inside.’
‘Don’t worry. Here—’
Messner dropped the rabbit back into the canvas bag and handed it over. Then he said he needed a favour.
‘You remember those little model aeroplanes I had as a kid? Biplanes? Triplanes?’
‘Upstairs,’ she said again. ‘I know exactly where they are.’
Messner stepped towards the door but Beata shook her head.
‘Stay here,’ she said.
‘You won’t let me in?’
‘No. Any plane in particular? Or the whole lot?’
‘The whole lot.’
Still nursing the baby, Beata disappeared inside with the bagged rabbit, closing the door with one foot. Minutes passed. Nehmann wanted to know more about the property, whether they’d swum in the lake, how cold it got in winter, but Messner didn’t seem to hear him. Instead, he was staring at a corner of the front garden where clumps of daffodils softened a little area of raised earth. On top, Nehmann thought he could make out a makeshift wooden cross.
When Beata finally opened the door again, she was carrying a bulging pillow slip. Of the baby and the rabbit there was no sign.
‘Seven.’ She gave Messner the pillow slip. ‘I counted them.’
‘And the red triplane?’
‘That’s there, too.’ For the first time, a genuine smile. ‘We’ll call the rabbit Schnurrhaar. What do you think?’
Schnurrhaar meant ‘whiskers’. Messner stared at her for a long moment and for the first time it occurred to Nehmann that he might want a little privacy. He handed the dead chicken over and stepped back towards the gate. At the airfield he’d got the impression that the rabbit had been offered in exchange for the lift out to Wannsee but having met Beata he decided that it deserved a good home. A little walk, he thought. A chance to size up the rest of the neighbourhood.
Out on the pavement he turned to wave goodbye, but the front door was already closed again, Beata gone, and Messner’s tall figure was striding down the path towards him.
At the kerbside, Messner carefully stowed the pillow slip on the back seat of the car and told Nehmann to get in the front. Nehmann didn’t move. He wanted to know what was so special about the stands of white daffodils in the corner of the front garden, and the little mound of earth surmounted with a cross.
‘Where?’ The question appeared to take Messner by surprise.
‘There.’ Nehmann took him by the arm and pointed out the daffodils. Messner stared at them again. Then he frowned.
‘We kept a rabbit in the early days,’ he grunted. ‘And that’s where we buried her when she died.’
Nehmann nodded. He thought he understood.
‘This rabbit had a name?’
‘Of course.’
‘Schnurrhaar?’
‘Ja.’
*
With Messner at the wheel they drove back to the airfield. Nehmann was good with difficult people. One of the reasons he’d won Goebbels’ favour was his talent for getting inside other people’s heads, having a good look round and then stealing away with whatever took his fancy. This talent for breaking and entering had served him well in assignment after assignment, as well as with a small army of women, but in the shape of this mutilated air ace he knew he’d met a special challenge. The man was so unpredictable, silent one minute, terse the next, then offering sudden unexpected moments of near-intimacy.
Take the nest of toy aeroplanes on the back seat. They’d skirted Berlin and were barely ten minutes away from the airfield where Messner’s Me-110 had been refuelled for the return flight to the Crimea, but a queue of traffic had lengthened behind a farm cart and everyone was travelling at the speed of the horse.
Nehmann, aware of Messner’s impatience at the wheel, asked about the model aircraft. Was he young when he’d put these things together?
‘I was seven. Just.’
‘And you knew how to do it?’
‘Of course. Every child wants to be a bird. Wood. Glue. Time. That’s all it took.’
His face contorted at the memory and it took Nehmann a moment or two before he realised he was looking at a smile.
‘Your father was a flier?’
‘My father was a drunk. We lived in Hamburg, an old house, freezing cold. The place had been in the family forever but my father was hopeless with money, and with everything else as far as I remember. Evenings and weekends, it paid to lock yourself away because he could be violent, too, so you had to have something to do.’
‘Planes.’
‘Indeed. My mother used to cut photos out of magazines. Those little Fokker monoplanes. Big Gotha trainers. A Junkers float plane, way ahead of its time. Once my father bought a medal from a man he met in a Bierkeller. He gave it to me for Christmas. He said it was really valuable but it turned out to be a cheap copy. Not that it mattered. I wore it day and night for the rest of the winter. My own campaign medal. Pour le Mérite.’ He barked with laughter. ‘Bravery in the face of impossible domestic odds.’
The queue of traffic had come to a halt. Nehmann twisted in his seat and reached for the pillow slip.
‘Do you mind if I take a look?’
‘Go ahead. Should I be flattered?’
Nehmann didn’t answer. One by one he fetched the toy aircraft out. Each one was a work of art, neatly put together, beautifully painted. No wonder he’d asked for them back.
‘You were really seven?’
‘Ja, to begin with. They came in pieces. All you had to do was glue them together. After a while I had a flight, then a squadron, then a whole wing. As a kid you can invent any fantasy you like.’ He nodded down at Nehmann’s lap. ‘They were mine.’
‘But you turned it into real life? Later?’
‘Yes.’
‘And now?’
‘It’s still a fantasy. Except in real life there’s usually someone trying to kill you.’
‘I meant the models. They’re beautiful. You’ll take them back to the east?’
‘Yes, they’ll keep me company. All except one.’
One? Nehmann looked down at the spread on aircraft on his lap, then asked for a clue.
‘A clue?’ Messner looked briefly amused. ‘The best things in life always come in threes. Think about it, ja?’
Nehmann nodded. Then he remembered Messner’s query on the doorstep back at Wannsee. His fingers crabbed towards a tiny Fokker triplane, painted a fierce red.
‘This one?’
‘Ja. And you know why? Because that one belonged to the Red Baron. Manfred von Richthofen? You’ve heard of him? I work now for his cousin, Wolfram. Another legend.’
‘You’re giving it to him? This is some kind of present?’
‘No. Better than that.’
The traffic was on the move again, faster this time, and Nehmann glimpsed the back of the farmer’s cart disappearing into a field of potatoes. He still had the Fokker, the fuselage gripped lightly between his thumb and forefinger, and when Messner suggested he tried a loop or two, he held it at arm’s length, the tiny fighter silhouetted against the brightness of the sun through the windscreen.
Ahead lay the airfield at Schönwalde. Messner wanted to finish his story. Very recently he’d flown a Wehrmacht Oberst on a recce over the Caucasus. The Oberst had a regiment of mountain troops under his command and he wanted to take a look at some of the bigger peaks.
‘The highest is Mount Elbrus: 5,633 metres. It’s cold at that height, very thin air, but he was pleased with what he saw. When the sun’s out, the glaciers glow green as well as white. He was looking for a route to the summit and he found one.’
‘He’s going to cli
mb it?’
‘Ja.’
‘When?’
‘In the summer. After we’ve dealt with Sevastopol. Imagine a single flag up there on the very top. Can you picture that? Das Hakenkreuz? Up there among the ice fields?’
Das Hakenkreuz. The swastika flag. Scarlet and white and black against the surrounding peaks. Irresistible, Nehmann thought. A perfect coda after all that spilled Soviet blood.
‘And this?’ He was looking at the tiny triplane.
‘I’ll give it to the Oberst. He’s agreed to find a place for it on top of the mountain.’
‘Why?’
‘Because this was the Red Baron’s plane.’ That strange rictus smile again. ‘And his cousin is winning the war in the south.’
4
BERLIN, 22 MAY 1942
Nehmann was back at the Promi an hour ahead of his deadline for the edit. He’d delivered Messner to his Me-110, helping him stow the collection of model aircraft below the spare seat in the cockpit. A final handshake, a gruff farewell and Oberstleutnant Messner was gone. Watching the tiny black speck climbing away towards a line of distant clouds in the east, Nehmann wondered what lay in store for this solitary man. Rarely had he met anyone so damaged, both inside and out.
At the Promi, the film Nehmann had delivered earlier had already been developed. The Ministry’s three editing suites were in the basement of the building, dark, cell-like rooms perfectly suited for the editors to work their magic on the footage from the Kerch Peninsula.
In charge this afternoon was a youngish Rhinelander called Erich, who’d learned his trade at the Ufa newsreel studios across town. He knew instinctively how to tell a story onscreen, weaving that subtle mix of interview and action shots, telling close-ups and lingering pans across the ravaged landscapes of Hitler’s wars, and his work had caught Goebbels’ eye within weeks of his arrival at Ufa.
Now, he was running yet another roll of rushes on the editing table, pausing to mark up a series of cutaways with his yellow chinagraph pencil. Already a line of these telling little vignettes hung over the big green bin beside the editing table, glimpses of yet another Wehrmacht triumph that would find their way into cinema after cinema across the Reich.
‘Here, Werner. Look at this.’ Erich rolled the spare chair in front of the editing table. ‘Thank fuck we’re not Russian, eh?’
Werner took the proffered seat and found himself gazing at a line of Soviet tanks, two of which were ablaze. Crewmen were scrambling out of the closest turret, their hands already raised, only to be scythed down by German bullets. More corpses ringed a neighbouring tank.
Nehmann shook his head. He knew that none of this material would ever bother German domestic audiences who preferred to think of their kinsmen as gallant, fearless, and – above all – sternly compassionate. The Minister, on the other hand, liked nothing better than a taste of the war’s darker side. Victory, he often said, would in the end go to the side which showed the least mercy. Which was presumably why Erich was saving these little treats for a personal viewing.
Goebbels turned up nearly an hour later. He favoured Nehmann with a brief nod, clapped Erich on the shoulder and demanded a look at progress to date. Erich had just completed an overlength rough cut, a provisional assembly of shots which would end the half-hour newsreel covering the entire Kerch campaign. As yet there was no soundtrack, but the moment the grainy black and white images appeared on the tiny screen Goebbels bent forward, eager, excited, Hitler’s favourite alchemist when it came to transforming the base metal of live combat into an experience cinema audiences would never forget.
The rough cut began with cockpit footage from a diving Stuka, the grey steppe resolving itself into columns of Soviet armour and the hunched infantry that followed every tank. This tableau was filling the screen before the pilot hauled back on the controls, and the steppe was suddenly flattened at an alarming angle as the Stuka banked and pulled out of the dive. At this point, Erich had cut to footage shot from ground level, the aircraft climbing again and one of its two bombs exploding in a fountain of earth among the luckless Soviet troops. Then, in the blink of an eye, came a third angle, and yet another explosion, a direct hit this time on the tank itself.
Nehmann had seen enough of Erich’s editing to know that this was sleight of hand, a conjuring trick, three separate incidents artfully compressed into one, but what really fascinated him was Goebbels. He, too, understood the dark arts of newsreel compilation yet he was like a child watching his favourite magician. He’d suspended disbelief. He had total faith in every frame. And in his bones he knew that what worked for him would work for millions of fellow Germans.
Recently, in a fawning article in Völkischer Beobachter, a once-honest Berlin journalist had described Goebbels as ‘the Heinz Guderian of mass propaganda’. Guderian was the architect of blitzkrieg, the battlefield genius who’d perfected the lightning uppercuts that had knocked out nation after nation across Western Europe. Even Nehmann had to admit that there was some merit in the comparison and, watching Goebbels now, as Erich’s next sequence pictured a wave of Heinkels, wingtip to wingtip, it was impossible not to share the raw power of these images. After a close-up of the pilot, lantern-jawed, a camera inside the belly of the plane caught the slow, lazy descent of yet another stick of bombs. Then came the wide shot, ground level, seconds later as each of these parcels of high explosive erupted in a storm of torn metal and warm enemy flesh.
At the end of the rough cut the screen went blank and there was a moment of total silence before the Minister sat back and clapped his hands in a gesture of both delight and approval. On these occasions he never made notes, but his recall was perfect. He’d prefer a more brutal cut between this sequence and that. Erich was to be careful about the sheer length of a particular pan. But, overall, once he’d laid the sound effects against the action and thought hard about music, the effect would be mesmeric.
‘Try Tannhäuser,’ he said, ‘for that sequence at the very end.’ He turned to Nehmann and got to his feet. ‘Come.’ He nodded towards the door. ‘Ten minutes of your precious time?’
*
They talked in Goebbels’ office on the first floor. Through a single window Nehmann could see the three secretaries who policed his ever-expanding empire. Goebbels certainly inspired a degree of loyalty but Nehmann knew it was based largely on fear. Over the past few weeks, everyone agreed that the Minister had become more and more unreasonable, barking at minions and quick to assign blame when a word or two of encouragement or at least understanding might have been wiser. Just now, though, much to Nehmann’s surprise, he was almost gleeful.
‘Wolfram von Richthofen dined with the Führer last night,’ he announced. ‘Alone.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning that the Fat One is shitting his pants.’ He nodded at the phone. ‘He called earlier. I think he might have been drinking. He said he had no choice but to take this insult personally. Richthofen is Luftwaffe, of course. He’s working miracles down in the Crimea, as we all know, and nothing makes the Führer happier than a man who delivers. That’s why Richthofen has personal access. That’s why Hitler gives him everything he asks for. The Fat One has at last understood that. But it’s far, far too late.’
The Fat One was Hermann Goering, father of the Luftwaffe. His downfall, according to Goebbels, began at Dunkirk when he failed to bomb the British Army into oblivion, and continued over the following months when the RAF wrecked Hitler’s plan for landings along the English Channel coast. Since then, he’d retreated to his lavish new ministry and sulked, testing Hitler’s patience to its limits.
‘And now Richthofen,’ Goebbels repeated. ‘If this was a novel, I wouldn’t change a sentence.’
‘You think he’s in trouble?’
‘I think he’s fucked. What he wants is a big fat slice of Richthofen’s glory, but he knows there isn’t a chance in hell. Good things happen in the Luftwaffe in spite of the Fat One, not because of him. Very troubling…and you know why?
Because vanity and disappointment never mix. Fucked. And fucked good.’
Nehmann could only nod in mute agreement. Lately he’d become a sounding board for Goebbels’ wilder outbursts, and it was becoming tiresome. Hitler quietly encouraged murderous turf wars among his courtiers but Nehmann was beginning to resent getting caught in the crossfire.
‘Any ideas?’ Goebbels was watching him carefully.
‘About what, Minister?’
‘Us. This.’ Goebbels’ gesture took in his own office and the secretaries beyond. ‘The Fat One is wounded. Ribbentrop needs putting out of his misery. Hess has gone mad and fled. We have the advantage, Nehmann. The stars are shining down upon us. Thanks to people like Richthofen and Manstein, we could be sitting on a great deal of oil within months. That, believe me, will transform everything. Hitler knows it. Stalin knows it. Roosevelt knows it. Even that drunkard Churchill knows it. So now is the moment to cash in on all that glory. Something inventive. Some initiative that will really bring it home to people. The winter was hard. The food situation is a real problem. Fuel is even worse. The home front is where this war will really be lost or won. The people deserve a bit of good news. And the summer is exactly the right time to let them have it. So…’ he tapped his desk ‘…any ideas?’
Nehmann took his time. Goebbels, in common with a number of other Nazi chieftains, loved the sound of his own voice but for the last minute or so Nehmann had been paying special attention. Not simply because his lord and master was putting him on the spot but because, thanks to Georg Messner, he realised he had exactly the answer the little dwarf was after.
‘How much do you know about Mount Elbrus?’ he asked.
5
BERLIN, SATURDAY 18 JULY 1942
The fortress at Sevastopol fell to Manstein’s 11th Army on 1 July 1942. An ecstatic Führer received the news at the Wolf’s Lair, his headquarters in East Prussia. Four weeks of ceaseless bombardment and heavy fighting had reduced whole areas of the fortifications to rubble, killed tens of thousands of Soviet troops and humiliated Stalin. The threat to German armies in the south had ceased to exist and the road to the oil fields lay open. That very same day, by radio message, Hitler promoted Manstein to Generalfeldmarschall, news that left a sour taste in the mouth of Generaloberst Wolfram von Richthofen.
Last Flight to Stalingrad Page 4