‘They’re running out of eyes to peck,’ he grunted. ‘That’s what those bastards have for lunch.’
Eyes, thought Nehmann. The hostages trussed in the back of the SS truck. Kirile sprawled on the floor in the vestry, nothing left of his face. Kalb had done that.
Kalb.
*
In the second week, Russian envoys crossed the front line with a demand that the Germans surrender. Their position was hopeless. Sixth Army was running out of food and fuel. Almost all the ammunition had gone. On days when the weather was kind, permitting supply flights, Soviet fighters were causing havoc among the lumbering Tante-Jus. In short, the game was up.
Schultz knew about the Russian offer. The good General, he said, had just twelve hours to make a decision. Naturally, Paulus consulted Hitler. The Führer dismissed any thought of retreat. Sixth Army would have to fight on.
With what?
*
In the middle of the month, Nehmann found himself once again at Pitomnik airfield. Schultz had done his best to locate Kalb’s SS detachment but was beginning to suspect that it had gone. Commandeering a place on one of the handful of departing flights would be easy, he said, for someone in Kalb’s position. He’d use the uniform, and perhaps a word or two from Berlin, to pull rank and save his life. That’s what any sane man would do, Schultz insisted, but Nehmann had disagreed. Kalb, he muttered, wasn’t sane. That was the whole point. And that was why he was probably still here.
‘You have to believe it, don’t you?’ Schultz had said.
‘Yes.’
‘Then find the fucker.’
Nehmann had done his best but in a city where no one ever exposed more than a centimetre or two of bare flesh, the search was almost impossible. Grimberger had been reassigned to his infantry unit. Alone, for day after day, Nehmann set out to find Kalb among the endless torrent of broken warriors falling back from the front line, many of them wounded, all of them nameless, anonymous, indistinguishable. Pointless, Schultz kept telling him. Spare yourself the frustration, the misery, the pain. The man’s gone. Either that or he’s dead. You’re living with a ghost.
Schultz, of course, was right but it made no difference. Nehmann had to find out, he had to be sure, and so this morning he found himself back at Pitomnik, scanning the mob of lightly wounded soldiers desperate to force their way onto one of the departing aircraft, only too aware that bad had abruptly become worse.
The Russians, according to Schultz, were now only kilometres away, pushing hard from the south-west. It was only a matter of days, perhaps even hours, before the airfield would have to be evacuated. Trucks had arrived from the front line full of wounded men. There was nowhere for them to go because the trucks had run out of fuel, and the flights out were already full, and so many of these men, their faces blue-black, had already frozen to death. More bodies were stacked like cords of timber, no names, no obvious injuries, no indication of what might be done about them next.
Then, as Nehmann watched, a Ju-52 appeared against the western sky, drawing thick black clots of anti-aircraft fire, and somehow managed to land. The pilot taxied as fast as he dared, weaving left and right to avoid the bigger shell craters, finally coming to a halt. Nehmann, his body hunched against the fierce cold, had a clear view of what followed.
Someone inside the aircraft kicked open the door and began to heave wooden crates onto the frozen turf. One of them splintered on impact and was attacked at once. Hands tore at the contents, desperate for food, and the moment someone emerged with a case of something tinned he disappeared under a mass of bodies, kicking and clawing at each other. A burly looking Unteroffizier in a Wehrmacht greatcoat emerged from the melee, a single tin held aloft, and Nehmann watched as he plunged a bayonet through the lid. The tin was full of frankfurter sausages and he tipped it to his lips, sucking greedily at the liquor before prising the metal open, plunging his fingers in and swallowing the sausages whole.
The plane was empty within minutes. The Chain Dogs from the Feldgendarmerie had arrived with drawn pistols. When no one paid them the slightest attention they began to fire blindly into the tangle of bodies and at last some kind of order was restored.
Men were on their feet again, brushing themselves down, ignoring the scatter of bodies. With the Feldgendarmerie was another figure. He wore a grey Russian army greatcoat, full-length, wide lapels, with the yellow shoulder boards of a tank captain, but his head was covered with a standard issue Wehrmacht helmet. He moved from body to body, stooping to inspect one who still appeared to be alive. Moments later, he drew an automatic and shot the man twice through the head. The circle of watchers around him stared at the fountain of blood and then began to back away.
Nehmann was still very close and his eyes never left the face above the Russian army greatcoat. It was largely obscured by a black balaclava and the moment the lips parted in the oval hole around the mouth he knew his search hadn’t been in vain.
A single silver tooth. Kalb.
The empty plane was beginning to take on passengers. Kalb seemed to have put himself in charge. He stood beside the ladder propped against the metal body of the fuselage, subjecting each exemption card to detailed scrutiny. One in three of the walking wounded he turned away. When desperation drove them to argue their case, or even try and force their way aboard, he simply signalled to the nearest Chain Dog. The gesture, barely a lift of an arm, had Kalb’s trademark indifference. Under arrest, the unlucky ones were handcuffed and marched away to God knows where. Within minutes, the plane was full.
Nehmann was within touching distance of the SS Standartenführer. Might now be the time to find a way of killing this man? Of settling the debts he owed to the bodies in the back of the truck? To Kirile? And to the thousands of Jews Schultz had told him about in Kyiv? Watching his every movement, every cloud of expelled breath that condensed in front of the balaclava, every brief order he issued to this man or that, Nehmann knew that the answer was no. It wasn’t simply a question of killing him. He had to make Kalb bleed.
The plane began to move. Kalb was checking his watch. He beckoned the nearest Chain Dog closer. Nehmann recognised the Leutnant that had been responsible for keeping Kirile under guard. The man was nodding. The conversation over, he drew himself up, offered a smart Hitler salute and hurried away. Kalb was watching a distant Heinkel running the gauntlet of Soviet flak as it lined up for its approach run. The Russian gunners appeared to have the range at last. A pair of explosions bracketed the aircraft, left and right. For a second or two it seemed to hang in the air, wreathed in coils of dirty black smoke, then one wing disintegrated, sending the Heinkel into a flat spin. Nehmann turned away, knowing the aircraft was doomed. Kalb watched it until the end, the eyes behind the woollen mask giving nothing away.
The Leutnant was back moments later. Nehmann heard him apologising for the lack of transport. If they were to go now, it had to be on foot. Kalb offered a curt nod and then checked his watch again before setting off at a brisk pace, leaving the Leutnant in charge of the next incoming aircraft to make it safely onto the airfield. Nehmann, his head down, his hands plunged deep into the pockets of his borrowed Wehrmacht greatcoat, set off in pursuit. Finding Kalb had been a miracle but what was especially sweet were the odds so suddenly stacked in his, Nehmann’s, favour. Just as Stalingrad had hidden Kalb all this time, so the city would make Nehmann equally invisible. All he had to do now was stay close.
Nehmann was back at the bus depot by dusk. Schultz was at his desk in the office. He barely lifted his head to acknowledge Nehmann’s return.
‘You’re late,’ he growled. ‘We’ve been worried. Where the fuck have you been?’
‘Kalb,’ Nehmann said simply. ‘I’ve got him. I’ve found him. I know where he’s quartered.’
Schultz’s head finally came up. If he was pleased, Nehmann thought, it didn’t show.
‘How? Where?’
Nehmann described the scene out at Pitomnik and the way that Kalb seemed to have materialise
d from thin air.
‘One minute I’m looking at a Russian tank captain,’ he said. ‘The next I realise it’s Kalb. He’s with the Chain Dogs. I should have worked that out weeks ago.’
‘You’re right, you should.’ Schultz had got to his feet and crossed the office to the big map of the city that showed all the bus routes. ‘So how do we find the fucker?’
‘Here.’ Nehmann’s finger settled on an area called Tsaritsyn. ‘I followed him back from the airfield. The building is only half demolished. He must have commandeered it.’
‘How do you know he lives there?’
‘There’s a well nearby. It still works. There were a couple of old women dropping rocks to break the ice at the bottom.’
‘And?’
‘I talked to one of them. Pretended I was a journalist. Asked all those sweet questions that disguise your real interest.’
‘And?’ Schultz had never learned how to mask his impatience.
‘The man dressed like a Russian lives in the house I mentioned, draws his water from the same well.’
‘He’s alone in the house?’
‘She thought not. She thought there might be more men in there. They might have something to do with the field hospital at Gumrak. It’s a forty-minute walk away.’
Schultz nodded. He was still staring at the map.
‘And the terrain?’ he asked at last.
‘Flat. Like everywhere else.’
‘Any cover?’
‘Not much. Except for a little stream about six hundred metres away.’
‘Frozen?’
‘Of course. But there are banks on both sides, maybe about this high,’ Nehmann’s hand briefly hovered at waist height.
‘You checked?’
‘Yes. Why does that amuse you?’
‘Because you’ve been thinking snipers, Nehmann. Just like I would.’
*
That night they emptied the last bottle of vodka. Schultz, Nehmann realised, had only half believed that he’d really found the SS Standartenführer but when Nehmann sat him down and made him listen to a detailed description of what had happened beside the Tante-Ju, he acknowledged that it must be Kalb. More importantly, he began to visibly warm to the script Nehmann had written for himself. His entire professional life, Nehmann had always stood a challenge on its head. First work out what you want to achieve. Then work backwards until you know how.
‘I want him crippled,’ he told Nehmann. ‘I want him injured enough so we can take him to Gumrak.’
‘The field hospital?’
‘Yes. He’ll need attention. Happily, we’ll be in a position to take him there.’
‘And you think they’ll have the time to deal with him? Have you been inside that place? It’s a tomb, a charnel house. They have nothing. No drugs. No anaesthetic. No bandages. No plaster of Paris. On a good day they scrape lice off uniforms and skin with a spoon and throw them in the fire, but mostly they don’t bother. They have no food, either, nothing to keep these men alive. Most of them die from starvation. I’m told the busiest man in the hospital is the Catholic chaplain. He gives extreme unction hundreds of times a day. They call him the Tote König.’
The Death King.
‘It’s not important,’ Nehmann said.
‘It’s not? We pick up the bastard? He’s bleeding all over us? We take him to this place? And it’s not important?’
‘Not in the slightest, Willi. Because the trick is he never arrives.’
‘This is some kind of kidnapping?’
‘It is. We’ll need a place to take him. Somewhere private. Somewhere out of earshot.’
Schultz reached for his glass, not saying anything. He swallowed the vodka in a single gulp and told Nehmann to fill the glass again. There was a darkness around his eyes that Nehmann had seen in a thousand Stalingrad faces. He looked exhausted. And old.
‘You’ve thought this through, haven’t you, Nehmann,’ he muttered at last.
‘I have, yes.’
‘The sniper takes the shot while he’s at the well?’
‘Yes. He aims for the legs, preferably the knee.’
‘Why?’
‘Because it will be agony.’
‘And us? What do we do?’
‘We wait. In the Kübelwagen. And then we turn up and play the patriot.’
‘Good.’ Schultz nodded. ‘Very good. One more death? Who’s counting?’
‘Death?’ Nehmann made light of the word.
‘You’re telling me you won’t kill him?’
‘I’m telling you we’ll have lots of time. Plan it right and you won’t believe what might be possible.’
Another silence. Nehmann thought Schultz might be having second thoughts but it turned out he was thinking about the sniper. Over the past few months, he’d met most of the men who were making themselves a reputation in the front line. The sheer brutality of close-quarters combat left little room for heroes but the ongoing battle between Soviet and German marksmen had caught the imagination of both armies. Indeed, a long interview Nehmann had done with one of these magicians, had been a Goebbels favourite. The man, now sadly dead, had ended the interview with a quote Nehmann would remember for a very long time. My job, he’d said, is to make the cleanest of kills on the dirtiest of battlefields. Perfect.
‘I know two,’ Schultz said at last, ‘who’d gladly do it. One of them lost his brother to the Gestapo. An SS Standartenführer would make a very acceptable target.’
‘And the other?’
‘He owes me a very big favour. You’ll love the man.’
*
His name was Schmidt. He was small, even smaller than Nehmann, and he had a smile that must have won him an assortment of beautiful women. With the smile went a peaceable acceptance that life was always going to be shit in this war, and that once you understood that, then neither Stalingrad, nor the weather, nor the Ivans, nor any other of the torments of this hideous city mattered in the slightest.
Schmidt was here to master the challenge of the long-distance ambush, to plot the rise and fall of his bullet, to take into account a breath or two of God’s wind, and finally – if he got everything exactly right – to watch the face in his telescopic sight explode. It seemed that the latter image, a thin film of crimson that hung in the air after the body had dropped, had become a bit of an obsession. That may or may not have been true, but it was said that Schmidt always slept with a smile on his face; after getting to know him a little, Schultz believed he knew the reason why. The man was an artist.
The favour, according to Schultz, had to do with Schmidt’s sister. She lived in Berlin. She was as small as her brother and – said Schmidt – perfectly formed in every respect. She’d attracted a number of admirers and one of the least welcome and most persistent had been a highly placed diplomat in Ribbentrop’s Foreign Ministry. The man had used his standing to make life deeply uncomfortable for little Hannelore, and Schultz, in turn, had used an Abwehr colleague to warn him off.
‘He has a name? This man you want me to kill?’ Schmidt had paid the bus depot a visit.
‘Kalb,’ Nehmann said. ‘And please don’t kill him. A knee shot is all we need.’
‘Range?’
‘Six hundred metres. I paced it out.’
‘No problem. Right knee? Left knee? You have a preference?’
Schultz was sitting with them. The question made him laugh. Nehmann, on the other hand, gave it some thought.
‘Left knee,’ he said. ‘That’s the one he dreams of bending if he’s ever awarded the Ritterkreuz.’
*
The next three days, while the roar of Soviet artillery grew louder and the slender thread of resupply flights threatened to break entirely, Nehmann made his way to the empty stretch of steppe in Tsarytsin. On each outing he wore a different set of clothes in case anyone was watching. On foot, especially when the going got treacherous, the journey seemed to last forever, and on the third morning, when heavy snow arrived, he had to depend on
the handful of waypoints that were already familiar. Three eyeless horse cadavers, blown apart by the same shell. An abandoned tank, the lid of its turret still open. The frozen body of a young girl with blonde plaits, inexplicably undamaged, her tiny ears full of snowflakes.
Once he’d found the frozen stream, Nehmann made himself as comfortable as he could, belly down on the freezing gravel bank, only his head exposed. The binoculars belonged to Schultz, who’d stolen them from a captured Russian tank commander, and the optics, Nehmann thought, were a tribute to Soviet science. From his perch beside the stream, he tried to put himself in the head of a sniper, and as the hours ticked slowly by, his admiration for Schmidt’s patience grew and grew.
Despite five layers of clothing, he was freezing cold, a deep chill that had stolen into the very middle of him. He had two pairs of gloves but after a while even holding the binoculars steady became impossible. His teeth ached. His nose was full of icicles. How would you manage with a sniper rifle? How could you possibly keep something as small as a knee in the scope under these conditions?
On the first day, to his astonishment, a thin bundle of fur emerged from nowhere. It was a hare. Nehmann tried to track it through the binoculars as it hopped around, suddenly pausing, erect, attentive. Did it hear the Russians coming? Did it feel the shake of the earth as yet another shell exploded in the middle of nowhere? Would it be a pair of gloves by the time spring arrived, and the melt came, and the city began to smell like the abattoir it had already become?
At the well, very little happened. Civilians appeared, mainly women, not very many and not very often. On the first two days, there was no sight of the long Russian greatcoat, and it was only on the third day, after the snowstorm had gone, that Kalb paid the well a visit.
It was mid-afternoon. Kalb was carrying what looked like a canvas bucket. He attached it to a rope and lowered it into the well. The bad news was that he was gone within a minute. The good news was that he seemed to favour the side of the well that faced the stream, thus presenting his back to Schmidt’s rifle. But how on earth do you gauge the whereabouts of a knee beneath an ankle-length coat?
Last Flight to Stalingrad Page 30