Last Flight to Stalingrad

by Graham Hurley

  ‘I used to invite them both out in this little boat,’ he murmured. ‘Other guests came, too. It was innocent. It was fun.’

  ‘And your wife? Magda?’

  ‘Away somewhere.’ He flapped his hand, dismissive. ‘Always away.’

  ‘Your children?’

  ‘We had help.’ He paused, his eyes still closed. ‘A name for you, Nehmann. Kurt Ludecke.’

  ‘I’ve never heard of him. It means nothing.’

  ‘It wouldn’t. He was with us in the early days, but then his nerve failed and he fled. In the end, it was that madman Rosenberg who told me.’

  ‘Told you what?’

  ‘About Ludecke. About him fucking my wife. I had to confront her before she’d admit it. Yes, Nehmann. My wife. The mother of my children. Unfaithful. You begin to understand now? About Lida?’

  His eyes were open at last and it suddenly dawned on Nehmann that this man probably had no one else in the world to talk to. Surrounded by potential enemies, often of his own making, he’d sentenced himself to an isolation that would, from time to time, be hard to bear. One of the conditions of surviving at the top of the Nazi Party was that you trusted no one, confided in no one, offered no one ammunition of any sort. No wonder he’d needed a mistress.

  ‘She was responsive? Your Lida?’

  ‘She was careful. As she should be. We talked a great deal. Some evenings there was no one else in this little boat, just us. I could make her laugh. She liked that. Maybe it was the sound of my voice. I used to tell her stories all the time, things we used to get up to in the old days, and she’d tell me that the sound of my voice would make her tingle all over. Were we intimate? Yes, but not physically, not at first, and, oddly, that made the attraction all the more powerful. We both knew it had to happen. But not quite yet.’

  That year, at the Nuremberg Rally, Goebbels spoke from the podium. Before the speech began, he told Lida that there’d come a moment when he’d briefly touch his face with a white handkerchief. She was to watch out for this gesture because it meant that he was passionately in love with her.

  ‘And you did it? It happened?’

  ‘Of course. It was a promise as well as a confession.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘She said she was flattered. And perhaps a little more than that.’

  On one of the evenings at Nuremberg, Goebbels described arranging for Baarova’s latest film to be shown for the first time. The story was set in the world of spies and the audience at the premiere included the likes of Himmler and the Abwehr chief, Wilhelm Canaris.

  ‘It was a decent script, Nehmann, I made sure of that. She had the lead role, and everyone agreed she was sensational. I also had the film retitled. I insisted it be called Traitor. I was sending a message, a personal little billet-doux to my faithless devil of a wife. Canaris understood at once, of course. That man insists on a code for everything.’

  Nehmann smiled. He’d once interviewed Canaris. This was a man who spent his life chasing enemies of the Reich yet Nehmann left Abwehr headquarters suspecting that their Chief’s own support for the Führer was less than total. Given his role in the Nazi machine, Nehmann had loved the irony.

  ‘And Lida? At Nuremberg?’ he asked.

  ‘She agreed to stay on for a day or two. We had a meal that night with some of the film people at the Ufa studios. In my position it isn’t easy to hide yourself away but somehow we managed it. A miracle, Nehmann. That night I prayed to God, and God delivered.’

  Next morning, he said, Lida insisted on returning to Berlin. Distraught, Goebbels sent a messenger to the station to intercept her.

  ‘He was carrying a huge bunch of roses, Nehmann, and a photograph I’d managed to lay hands on.’

  ‘Of?’

  ‘Me.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘She didn’t get on the train.’

  He smiled at the memory, and then trailed his fingers in the water.

  ‘Something precious comes into your life, Nehmann, you’ll do anything to keep it. Don’t you find that? Don’t you agree it pays to be Master of the Hunt? Time waits for no man. Hesitate, and all is lost.’

  He was looking at the villa again, the low waterside property that Frolich had been sharing with Lida. The summer had come and gone. The Master of the Hunt, in his own words, was besotted.

  ‘I was putty in her hands, Nehmann. Sometimes there’s nothing sweeter than an act of total surrender, not just to the moment, but to all the moments to come. I had to write to her. I had to talk to her. I had to hear the sound of her voice, if only to reassure myself that I hadn’t made her up. I used to put calls through to the house there. Actors work strange hours. Frolich was often still at home. He got a lot of calls from Herr Muller.’

  ‘That’s what you called yourself?’

  ‘Yes. And I loved it. The excitement. The subterfuge. All that hiding your real self away.’

  ‘Except for the one who really mattered.’

  ‘Of course. Exactly. The one who really mattered. Our secret got out in the end. There were all kinds of unpleasantness. With Frolich, of course, and Magda, and finally the Führer himself. Some days the pressures were unbearable but we both knew we had to be true to ourselves, to what we had. There’s a cabin out in the woods at the Bodensee. I still visit it sometimes, even now, although the pain can be intense. We had a big fur rug in front of the log fire. We spent hours there together, summer, autumn, deepest winter, it didn’t matter, just as long as we had each other.’

  He nodded and lay back in the sunshine, the faintest smile on his face. Goebbels had long struck Nehmann as an actor manqué. Face to face or roaring at tens of thousands at some tribal meeting or other, he could adopt whatever persona the occasion required. His repertoire of tricks – physical gestures large and small – was extensive. He used his voice like a musical instrument. He was the master, as he’d just admitted, of hiding his real self away. But what if this life of constant camouflage, of artful self-concealment, was all there was? What if nothing lay behind it but an emptiness he could never properly fill?

  Nehmann reached for his towel and mopped the sweat from his face. Goebbels hadn’t moved. His eyes were still closed, and he seemed to be barely breathing. In some ways, thought Nehmann, this was his deathbed pose. He’d loved and, ultimately, he’d lost but he regretted nothing. A life of suffering, of constant harassment from his many enemies, was chaff in the wind compared to those two precious years with Lida Baarova.

  Then, quite suddenly, his lips began to move.

  ‘A question, Nehmann.’ His eyes opened. ‘Where’s my fucking letter?’

  ‘The real one? The one in your own hand?’

  ‘The one I gave you. You still have it?’

  ‘Of course, I have.’

  ‘Then when do I get it back?’

  ‘You don’t. Not yet. It’s safe. Very safe. No one else will ever lay hands on it. You have my absolute word on that. But for the time being it’s mine. Why? Because it makes me feel safe.’

  ‘From?’

  ‘You.’

  Goebbels threw his head back and began to laugh. Finally, he composed himself. Nehmann thought he caught just a hint of admiration in his voice.

  ‘You know something, Nehmann? People are never honest with me. Never. Sometimes I think it’s fear. Other days I put it down to malice. But whatever the motive, people always say what they think I want to hear. Everyone, that is, except you. I like that, Nehmann. For a deeply dishonest man, you never let me down. That’s very rare. And very distinctive.’

  The pebble Nehmann had fetched up from the bottom of the lake lay between them. It had long since dried in the sun. Goebbels picked it up and gave it to Nehmann.

  ‘This may bring you luck, my little Georgian friend. Where you’re going, you’ll need it.’

  Nehmann studied it a moment. The flatness of the pebble was veined with something darker. Then he stood up, steadying himself as the boat rocked. As a kid he’d been good at this. In fact,
he’d been the best. Once the boat had settled, he drew his arm back and then – with that little remembered flick of the wrist at the end – he sent the pebble dancing across the water, ever onward, splash, splash, splash.

  Then he turned back. Goebbels, from his seat in the stern, had been watching his every move.

  ‘I made that nine, Nehmann. Let’s hope it’s enough.’

  13

  KALACH, 22 AUGUST 1942

  Messner was back at Kalach. A brisk crosswind had given him problems on landing, but he’d retained a mental map of the deeper potholes and settled the Storch without breaking another strut.

  Klaus, the orderly, met him with a battered old Kübelwagen. In the ten days since Messner had been here last, the town appeared to have emptied. Messner knew that Sixth Army had crossed the Don River only yesterday, but it was Klaus who had the latest news.

  ‘We secured the bridgeheads OK and the pontoon bridges were in place by dawn this morning. Sixteenth Panzer should begin crossing any time now. Have you seen those boys in action? God help the Ivans.’

  Messner had only watched them from the air, an endless column of tanks, half-tracks, self-propelled assault guns, eight-wheeled reconnaissance vehicles and hundreds of trucks that served as a crowbar to lever Soviet defensive positions aside and open the way to Stalingrad. Face an onslaught like that at ground level and you’d know that your days were numbered.

  Klaus was grinning. Fellow NCOs were taking bets on the day the first units got to the Volga. The huge river entered Stalingrad from the north and then flowed hundreds of miles south-east until it emptied into the Caspian Sea. Among Russians, Messner knew that the waterway had an almost religious significance. On the one bank, Europe. On the other, Asia.

  ‘Well?’ Messner wanted to know about the betting.

  ‘September—,’ Klaus swerved to avoid a goat. ‘My money’s on the first week, or maybe the start of the second. Either way, the Ivans will be on their knees. No one’s seen an army like this. Ever.’

  They were heading west. On the outskirts of the town, among the battlefield debris that had yet to be cleared, the going got tougher.

  Messner wanted to know where they were going. The message from Standartenführer Kalb had arrived at Richthofen’s Mariupol headquarters only last night. It was marked Immediate, Eyes Only.

  ‘The SS operate from a little church out here on the steppe,’ Klaus said. ‘They keep themselves to themselves, which suits us nicely.’

  Away from the town, the steppe seemed to stretch forever, not a tree or the barest hint of rising ground to disturb the distant line of the horizon. From time to time, an oncoming vehicle would raise a gaggle of little birds, tiny brown dots that would dart away and disappear into nowhere, but otherwise there was no sign of life.

  Then, minutes later, Messner saw the outline of a building a little to the left. At first it looked like a child’s addition to the greens and greys of this nothing landscape, a poorly formed collection of angles surmounted by an onion-shaped dome that might once have glowed silver in the brightness of the sunshine. Then he realised that Klaus had been right. He was looking at a church.

  ‘I’m told it was a shrine, Herr Oberst. Some miracle occurred here. Don’t ask me what.’

  Messner nodded. He was wondering why the SS had chosen a place like this as a base. A path led from the dirt road to the gaggle of vehicles parked outside. Klaus got out and opened the passenger door. Messner was watching two men in uniform who’d just rounded the corner of the building. They were both wearing masks and one of them paused to tip his face to the sun.

  Messner got out of the car. When he asked Klaus whether he was coming with him, the orderly shook his head.

  ‘I’ll stay here,’ he said. ‘These people will thieve anything.’

  Messner approached the nearest of the two men.

  ‘Standartenführer Kalb?’

  ‘He’s in there. Downstairs. And you are?’

  ‘Oberst Messner. Fliegerkorps VIII.’

  The two SS men exchanged smiles. Messner followed them around the corner of the church. Outside an open door was a row of metal ammunition boxes, full of silverware. Messner had time to glimpse a pair of altar crosses before he was beckoned inside. Thieves, he thought. Klaus was right.

  The moment he stepped into the gloom of the church, Messner caught the smell. At first it had a sweetness, slightly perfumed, that took him by surprise. Then he became aware of something much earthier, fouler, more pungent, that lay beneath it. The taller of the two SS men was leading the way down the aisle, his steel-shod boots echoing in the confined space. A fresco of thin-faced saints gazed glumly down from the plastered walls, and a huge bible, propped on a wooden lectern, appeared to have survived the rapacity of the shrine’s new keepers.

  A door in the depths of the nave was shut. When the SS officer pulled it open and announced their presence a bird appeared from nowhere and flapped madly around before finding another perch.

  Silence again. Except for the keening of the wind.

  The SS man had put his mask back on and the moment Messner stepped through the door he knew why. The stench here was overpowering. He’d smelled something similar in countless postings across the Greater Reich and normally it was nothing worse than blocked latrines, but this smell had a texture of its own. The sweetness he’d first noticed was definitely there but with it came the ripeness of offal. An abattoir, he thought. Dead bodies. And he was right.

  Kalb was waiting at the foot of the wooden steps. He hadn’t bothered with a mask.

  ‘Herr Oberst!’

  The stiff salute drew no response from Messner. He was staring at lines of corpses laid side by side on the earth floor. There must have been dozens of them. Most were the size of adults. Others were anything but. Each was wrapped in something that looked like canvas, heavily stained, but their faces were visible, their eyes mostly open.

  ‘You want to take a closer look? Be my guest.’

  Kalb stepped aside. He might have been an artist, Messner thought, a painter welcoming specially invited guests for a private viewing ahead of his latest show. Take your time. See what I’ve managed to achieve here. All you need, ladies and gentlemen, is a little time and a little talent and the courage to break new ground.

  New ground.

  Messner was gazing at one of the longer parcels of human flesh. The sheer depth of the smell, sweetened by the thin grey curls of smoke from a pair of hanging censers, suggested these people had been dead for a while, days certainly, maybe even longer, but their faces were still intact, entirely recognisable, and Messner knew with a terrible certainty that three of the faces would be familiar.

  He was right. He found the schoolmaster at the end of the line, the same strength in his face, the same hint of a smile. His daughter lay beside him, doll-like in death, her head turned slightly to one side, her blonde curls all too familiar. For some reason she’d raised her tiny hands to cover her ears.

  Had she been frightened of something? Had something taken her by surprise? Messner didn’t know but it was all too easy to speculate. He took a step backwards, shaking his head. These people had probably been shot. The SS, according to Renke, were meticulous about saving ammunition. Just the one bullet. To the nape of the neck.

  ‘You know this couple?’ It was Kalb.

  ‘I stayed in their house. There were photographs.’ He turned to face the Standartenführer. ‘What are they doing here? What have you done to them?’

  ‘These people were terrorists. Someone has to deal with scum like that.’

  ‘Terrorists? This man was a schoolteacher. You dealt with his daughter, too. Explain that to me.’

  Kalb said nothing. If he felt uncomfortable, it certainly didn’t show.

  ‘We didn’t invite you here for a debate on Reich policy, Herr Oberst. What’s done is done, and for very good reason.’

  ‘We have something else to discuss?’

  ‘Indeed. Tomorrow you intend to bomb Stal
ingrad. Am I right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Many aircraft?’

  ‘Hundreds.’

  ‘We need just one. A point I think I made when we last met. I’m not a flyer, Herr Oberst. I need a little guidance about the kind of loads your aircraft can manage. You’ll be using the Heinkels, ja?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And the bomb bay?’ He nodded at the bodies on the floor. ‘How many could you take?’

  Messner shook his head. He’d never had to deal with a question like this and he knew that his first impressions of Kalb had been right. The man came from a different place. He was insane.

  ‘What do you intend to do with them?’ Messner asked.

  ‘We intend for you to fly them to Stalingrad. I have a map upstairs. We need to have them dropped in the Volga, upstream from the city. The question, Herr Oberst, is how many?’

  ‘But why? Why are you dropping them?’

  ‘The current will take them through the city. Each corpse is carrying Russian identification papers. These are doctors, administrators, merchants and – yes – your precious schoolmaster. Once we know how many you can carry, we need to make our preparations.’ His gloved hand made a limp circle in the air.

  Messner was staring at him. Madder and madder, he thought.

  ‘Preparations, Herr Standartenführer?’

  ‘Of course. The bodies will need to be unpacked. We have in mind various mutilations. You want me to be specific? Eyes gouged out. Fingers missing. Stomachs opened. Where appropriate, castration. These bodies will be retrieved from the river and each one will serve as a warning. A city like Stalingrad is full of people like these, people with a position in the city, people with influence, people with a voice. Once they know what lies in wait, the more eager they will be to flee. It’s human nature, Herr Oberst. And, once they flee, once they pack up their chattels and head east, then others will follow, millions of others, and the city will be ours for the taking. You spill a little blood to save our own. Is that such a terrible thing to contemplate? Or would you prefer a fight to the death?’