Last Citadel

by David L. Robbins

  Daniel stood from his straw pile. ‘I’ll go along, Colonel. I owe her one.’

  Big Ivan rose, too, coming alongside Daniel and nodding his great head.

  ‘We were supposed to bring him in, Colonel,’ he said. ‘I think we still ought to try if we can.’

  Katya promised Plokhoi she would deliver the prisoner after retrieving Leonid.

  ‘Where is your pilot?’ Plokhoi asked her.

  Katya did not look at Daniel and Ivan. She did not know who the traitor was in their cell. It could even be Plokhoi himself. But if they were going to help her retrieve Leonid, she would have to risk trusting them.

  ‘He’s close by,’ she answered. ‘Just fifteen kilometers away, in Kazatskoe. We’ll set out at sunrise as soon as curfew ends. After we have him, we can make our way northwest across the lines. I’ll hand your German over. But, Colonel, you have to let me do this first.’

  Plokhoi scratched in his beard with dirty nails. ‘Josef will come with you. You’ll need him if there’s going to be more of your heroics, Witch.’

  She heaved a sigh of gratitude. ‘Thank you, Colonel.’

  Plokhoi put on his hat, expressionless. Daniel and Ivan went back to lying on their straw beds. Katya reached out to squeeze Filip’s arm.

  The partisan leader opened the barn door. The day’s light blazed behind him. He called out, ‘Witch?’

  ‘Yes, Colonel?’

  ‘After you save this pilot of yours and deliver the prisoner, will you be going back to your air unit?’

  ‘I don’t know’

  Colonel Bad tipped his cap to her.

  ‘Please consider it.’

  * * * *

  July 9

  2130 hours

  A farmer’s wife brought in a pot of stew. Outside the open barn door the first blushes of the long dusk filtered through the fields. Katya watched the villagers and partisans shuffle in together from the furrows, to move inside the huts and houses before the German-imposed curfew took hold here in the occupied land. The old woman shuffled past the enemy prisoner bound against the post, surprised to see him; this made sense, she did not know he was here. She stopped to look him over. The stew pot steamed in her hands, she gripped the kettle through her lifted apron. She nodded looking down at Breit, perhaps imagining some justice she wanted to befall this SS man. She set out four bowls on the straw-strewn floor.

  ‘Five, Mother,’ Filip said. He jabbed his long nose at the German. ‘He has to go a long way tomorrow.’

  The woman tossed another bowl to the ground. She did not pour the stew into them but set the pot down and smoothed her apron. She stared down at Breit. The German looked only at her dusty shoes. Katya knew this woman did not see one German tied up for her but all of them. Her old head sagged and she began to whimper. Filip rose and stood beside her, he put his arm gently around her shoulders and turned her away

  ‘If he’s too much trouble,’ the woman said, walking for the door, her voice trembling, ‘you can leave him here.’

  Filip closed the barn door behind her. Ivan poured the stew into the bowls. Daniel handed them out. It was left to Filip to give food to the German.

  ‘Danke,’ Breit said.

  Filip spoke with the German. They kept their voices low in the fading light of the barn. Katya listened from where she sat. The language the two men spoke was harsh, it sounded like a sweeping broom. She thought about how little she knew of Germans and Germany. There had never been a need to be familiar with them, they were targets, invaders of Russia. Nothing ever written or spoken about them by the Soviets had given the impression that these were men at all. Just cruel creatures to be stamped out by any means possible, no sacrifice was too great to kill a German. She watched this one sip stew out of the bowl with his tied hands, the way any man would. Filip squatted on his haunches at the prisoner’s feet. The two chatted. Filip nodded many times to things the German had to say.

  Katya finished her bowl and set it down. Lana licked at it through the stall gate. Katya walked over to Filip and Breit.

  ‘The two of you be quiet,’ she said. ‘Filip, feed him and leave him alone.’

  ‘Witch,’ said Filip, looking up at her with a crinkled face, a serious mien. ‘Wait. This is an educated man.’

  ‘Educated in what?’ Katya wanted to kick the German’s ribs again. ‘Murder? Rape?’

  Filip shushed her. He motioned Katya to come lower and to ease her voice.

  Whatever he had to say on behalf of this German was not for Daniel and Ivan to hear.

  Katya sighed with impatience. She took a knee beside Filip. The old starosta leaned close.

  ‘This is Colonel Abram Breit. He’s an intelligence officer. He says he’s not a combat soldier.’

  ‘Look at him, Filip. He’s covered in dirt. Look at his face, he was wearing damn goggles. He’s a tanker, an artillery man. He’s been fighting on the front lines. He’s even got a medal for it.’

  While Katya growled, pointing at Breit’s uniform, medallion, and gritty face, Filip turned her words into quiet German so Breit could follow and reply. The German waited until Katya paused. He spoke to Filip, still avoiding Katya’s eyes.

  The elder translated while the German talked.

  ‘I’m not dirty from fighting. I rode a motorcycle from Belgorod to the airfield. I wore goggles then, the road was crowded with trucks. Look, I carried no gun on me, not even a holster or a knife. The medal is for administrative work. I was an art historian. I am not a fighter. I have never shot anyone.’

  Filip whispered all this to Katya. She listened, watching Breit’s lips while the elder spoke for him.

  ‘I don’t believe you. You were shot down in a bomber.’

  ‘I was heading back to Berlin. A bomber was the plane arranged for me. I had nothing to do with it.’

  ‘Why were you going to Berlin?’

  ‘I’m an intelligence officer. I was going to make a report.’

  An art historian. An intelligence officer. If that’s what you say, good. Now you’re a prisoner. That’s all you are anymore.’

  ‘No. I’m something else.’

  The German looked squarely at Katya. He studied her face. He pivoted his eyes to Filip and whispered a question.

  Filip turned to Katya.

  ‘He wants to know if he can trust you.’

  Katya almost laughed when Filip gave these words to the German. She laid a finger to her own breast.

  ‘Me? Trust me? I’m not the one he has to worry about. If he tries anything, Ivan over there will break his neck. Or Josef will cut it.’

  The German shook his head even before Filip had translated any of this.

  Filip said to Katya, ‘No, Witch. I don’t think that’s what he means.’

  The starosta sat on crossed legs in front of the prisoner. The elder liked the mystery of this tied-up German, he was intrigued with the secrets that came in the barn with him. Filip was a Russian peasant, the ancient kind who had always loved his betters, a slave for the Tsars and now the Soviets. It was plain this prisoner had been schooled, he had bearing even tied to a post, he might even be a gentleman in Berlin. He worked some thrall over simple Filip.

  ‘Why are you here?’ Katya asked Breit. She wanted the German to say it, to admit in front of Filip that he beheld himself the master race, a destiny in his bloodline, to rule. She would kick him again for it and go back to her horse.

  ‘I was hit on the head.’

  ‘No…’ He tested Katya’s patience. ‘No, why is Germany here? In Russia. Making war.’

  Breit composed his answer. He said only ‘Conquest.’

  ‘There,’ she said, slapping Filip’s arm when he translated the word. The starosta nodded that she was right.

  The prisoner continued. Filip perked up and listened, then sweetened more harsh German into Russian.

  ‘Conquest is merely a shorthand to greatness. It’s a sickness that every nation endures at some point when its pride has grown too fast. The urge to take over
whelms the will to create. It’s a malady of power. It’s something your country will go through, young lady. If you win this war, you watch. Keep an eye on what Russia does, then judge Germany.’

  These words spilled from Filip, making the old man more eloquent than he likely had ever been. Filip had a German speaking for him now. A shiver crept through Katya. Filip talking this way seemed very wrong, a little invasion and occupation here in the barn.

  She meant to put a stop to the conversation. She didn’t want to know any more about this SS officer. She was going to deliver him across the lines or see him killed in the process. She would send him back into his prisoner’s silence and give Filip back his volnitsa from this German’s tongue.

  ‘We will win,’ she said. ‘We are winning.’

  ‘Are you? What do you know?’

  Breit cocked his head at her. Katya took in the gesture, then glanced over at Filip. The starosta was dumb, waiting for the German’s next utterance.

  ‘Do you know,’ Breit said through the elder, ‘that in the south the SS has penetrated to your last defense belt? That the fighting has moved within sight of the towers of Oboyan? Your Soviet army is losing three men for every German soldier. Three tanks for every German tank. Planes. Artillery. Everything. Do you know how long you can stand this kind of carnage until the weight of the battle shifts away from you? Do you? I don’t. And I know a great deal more than you can imagine.’

  Katya reeled at this. She had no idea, just as the prisoner implied. What foot soldier or running partisan could ever know beyond what they saw? She had been shot down behind the lines just as the battle started. This was the first news, not even Plokhoi told their cell how things were going. The battle for Kursk was surely huge, ranging over so much steppe, far beyond the struggles of one, beyond the rivers and bends in the earth, even past what she had glimpsed from her cockpit. But was this German telling the truth? Probably not. Why would he? He’s spouting propaganda. Perhaps he believes what he says because it’s what he’s been told. Even so, she recalled the hundred-plus night bombing missions she’d been on. The Germans always had more supplies to be blown up. Always another train puffing in. Germany was an industrial giant next to Russia. They’d declared war on England and America, too. What kind of people can do that? Could they still win in Russia?

  Breit leaned forward against his ropes. ‘You do not know how important it is that Russia win this battle. The world will turn on what happens here. You have no idea.’

  Katya made no reply. Why would an SS officer say that? The look on her face must have told the prisoner to keep talking.

  ‘I have in my head every fact. Every detail and number about the German assault on Kursk. I must get this information to the Soviets.’

  Katya was befuddled. Of course that’s what he was going to do. Tomorrow, after she’d gotten Leonid back. This Abram Breit was going to be handed over. He will tell whatever he has in that head to whoever puts a gun to it and asks. What was he talking about?

  Breit said something to Filip. The old man gasped and rattled his gray head in wonderment.

  Katya prodded. ‘What?’

  ‘He says,’ Filip whispered, ‘he is a spy. For Russia.’

  Katya rubbed a hand across her forehead. She could not restrain a little chuckle. ‘So this is why he wants to know if he can trust me?’

  ‘Yes,’ Filip answered without speaking for the German, knowing what Breit would say. ‘He wants you to let him go.’

  Katya nodded into the German’s eyes. She grinned mockingly.

  ‘Please,’ Breit said through Filip, ‘tell no one else. If either of you tells your commander, he will radio that he has captured a spy and ask for orders. There are many German spies in Moscow, in your army and your government. One of them will find out who I am. I’ll be intercepted and killed, either in Moscow or back in Berlin. You have to let me slip away. I am helping Russia. You must believe me.’

  Katya puzzled at the tale. It was fantastic, that anyone would say these things after being captured. This German was inventive, and plausible in his performance, quietly frantic. This was a plot out of an adventure book, a fiction about a swashbuckling spy. She gazed at the thin, dirty German wrapped in ropes on this plank floor. This was no hero.

  ‘I will turn you over to a commissar tomorrow evening, Colonel. That’s when I will let you go. You can tell him all your numbers then. You’ll be a great help. Russia will thank you appropriately, I’m sure.’

  Filip translated this without the sarcasm from her tone. Breit grew urgent.

  ‘You can’t! I must get back to Berlin!’

  Katya stood, feeling the whiplash of anger. This was enough of Breit; he was something she’d been curious about - an enemy brought close for a little while, for an afternoon and night in a remote village barn - but like a cave she’d wandered into, now she was far enough from the light at the opening to turn around and go back. She lacked the desire to delve farther. Tomorrow she would try to rescue Leonid, she may die in the attempt along with this German and the old starosta. She worried every day for Papa and Valentin, she grieved for Vera and too many others already. Where was the room in her for Breit’s pleading? If by any chance he was a spy, then he was a traitor to his own country, and the Cossack in her found that sour and wormy. If not, then he was just a liar and a coward. In either case, his story was not worth reporting to Colonel Bad. She would keep the prisoner’s secret, not because he asked her but because she would look foolish repeating it.

  She was done with Breit. Time for him to become what he was, all he was, spy or no. A prisoner.

  She walked away. She was not going to let him go. No one was going to do that.

  * * * *

  CHAPTER 18

  July 9

  2250 hours

  Hill 260.8

  Luis dropped a knee to the ground. He laid his palm on the earth. There was not a blade of grass under his fingers, or anywhere on the crest of the hill, just scorched flat ash. The dirt glowed pregnant with heat, not from the slanting sun but explosions. And it trembled.

  His crew tottered around the Tiger. The men were the incarnations of exhaustion. Sooted faces gazed at shaking hands. The tank itself, as stern and hard a thing as it was, seemed to rest, steaming from the engine compartment, sighing gases out of the cabin through open hatches. In a hundred places on its skin, the zimmerit paste was cracked and dented from bullets and shells. Luis scooped a handful of dirt from this defended hill and let the grains dribble through his fingers, like a farmer with his black soil. He loved this ground because it was conquered.

  The wreckage of the Russian resistance on this crest was everywhere. Abandoned American trucks tilted on blown tires bearing empty Katyusha missile racks in the beds. Artillery pieces with spiked barrels were left aimed at level trajectories, the fighting had been so close. Only a few Red tanks remained behind when they retreated off Hill 260.8, just the ones blown to hell beyond repair. The battle for Kursk had become a tank battle, the Reds and Germans alike knew that, and the Soviets were uncanny at getting their smoking T-34s off the battlefield and ready for combat the next day. This was their genius, Luis thought, numbers. Men and machines and the dead. Around him lay more bodies than he’d ever seen on one field; the Russians got their tanks off this hill but there were too many dead to cart away.

  Balthasar the gunner came to stand beside him, binoculars around his neck. The man smelled the worst of anyone in the crew. In days of intense fighting, Balthasar had worked the hardest, spinning the handwheel to elevate the giant gun, pressing his eyes to the padded browpieces to take aim, firing and finding another target. The others did their jobs, hoisting shells, working the radio and machine-gun, driving. But this one was the reaper. There is a God, Luis thought, and to undo His work there is a toll. Balthasar showed that cost in his stink and in eyes that were barely able to focus after staring so long through magnifying optics, past cross-hatches and range numerals.

  The young sergeant’
s eyes blinked south over the reddening plain below the hill, where they had fought all that day. To the right, the battered Wehrmacht divisions of Grossdeutschland and 11th Panzer battled northward. Their infantry and armor swarmed along the Oboyan road to hold the gains of the day. Theirs was the heavy quiver in the earth because they were the only German forces moving up. Leftward spread the rest of Leibstandarte, holding its position, stretching five kilometers to the east and Sukho-Solotino.

  Balthasar wanted something from the panorama below, he squinted to see deep into the ranks of Leibstandarte. Smoke filtered into the air from a dozen smoldering hulks, ruined and juxtaposed against the fifty tanks and twenty assault guns surviving in the division. A handful of shot-down airplanes littered the grassland too, bent propellers like dried daisies. Luis studied the young gunner beside him and for the first time wondered about him. So cool and competent, such a chill in his fighting, angular and Germanic in profile in the waning day. No wonder Hitler had been so confident to make his war, with a nation of these boys to do it. Their uniforms were designed dark for a reason, to show off how white his soldiers were against them, how pure and potent they were. Not like the Soviets, in their yellow-brown khakis, earthen creatures, muddy. Balthasar stirred. He pointed.