Last Flight to Stalingrad

by Graham Hurley

  The thought drew a nod of agreement from Schultz. They were slowing for a turn into a biggish building surrounded by an apron of concrete.

  ‘The Ministry of Wishful Thinking,’ he growled. ‘That little man of yours has a lot to answer for.’

  *

  Schultz had pitched camp in the basement of what had once been a bus depot. Concrete stairs disappeared into the gloom below. Old route schedules were peeling from the dampness of the walls. Candles in glass jam jars threw a thin yellow light, flickering wildly every time a fresh gust of wind came in from the street outside. A heavy curtain hung over the door at the foot of the stairs. The constant drumbeat of artillery fire was audible through the thick concrete walls and from time to time a near miss made the entire building shudder.

  Schultz pushed the curtain aside and stepped in through the door. Now, Nehmann could hear the low chatter of a generator. The basement must once have been used for storage, but Schultz had found a couple of tables from somewhere and these served as desks. Faces looked up at Schultz. Both men wore headphones and were bent over radios. When one of them began to struggle to his feet Schultz motioned him back to his seat. In the far corner, a pot of coffee bubbled on an army field stove.

  ‘You live here?’ Nehmann was gazing round.

  ‘We do. Our visitors call this place the Adlon. It’s a compliment, Nehmann. If you think this is primitive, you should see what else is on offer. Light and just a little heat? We’re blessed…’

  Nehmann smiled. The Adlon was probably the best hotel in Berlin, certainly the most celebrated. When he asked about fuel, Schultz said they had enough for another week if they were careful.

  ‘And after that?’

  ‘After that? We’re assuming our brilliant German forces drive the Ivans back over the river. If that happens, the city is ours. If it doesn’t, we definitely have a problem. But either way we’re relying on your man for everything. So far he’s delivering. Just.’

  ‘My man?’

  ‘Richthofen.’

  ‘But why my man?’

  ‘Because he’s taken a fancy to you, Nehmann. As no doubt he should. Kaffee?’

  Without waiting for an answer, Schultz poured two mugs of coffee from the pot in the corner. Beside the trestle table was a sofa that might once have graced a respectable salon. Now, sadly, horsehair stuffing bulged through tears in the upholstery.

  ‘We’ve got a couple of cats, Nehmann. The shelling upsets them and they take it out on whatever they can claw. I’d get rid of them, but you never know when they might come in handy.’

  ‘You’ve got rats?’

  ‘Ja. Them, too. Anything on four legs, eh?’

  For a moment, Nehmann was nonplussed. Then he remembered the old woman bent over the horse in the field.

  ‘That bad?’ he murmured.

  Schultz held his gaze for a moment, then shrugged. In any situation, he said, it always pays to plan for the worst. A wise man always carries water. And maybe a handful of spices. Spices, he said, could soften anything. Even rat.

  He invited Nehmann to sit down. He had a proposition.

  ‘Is that why I’m here?’

  ‘In a way, yes. In another, no. Let’s start with the proposition. Your Russian is much better than mine. I can understand the lad we picked up last night. I can pick the bones from what he wants to tell us. But intelligence, proper intelligence, worthwhile intelligence, as we both know, is all nuance. And nuance, I’m afraid, is beyond an old donkey like me.’

  ‘You want an interpreter?’

  ‘I want someone who speaks Russian. I also want someone who can think like a Russian, who can play the child and make that little jump into someone else’s head. You’ve been doing that all your life, Nehmann, whether you admit it or not, and now the time has come to share a little of that talent, that gift, with the Abwehr.’

  ‘Do I have a choice? Be honest.’

  ‘Of course, you do. I can let you go now, this minute. I can take you upstairs, out into the snow, and I can point you in the direction of a thousand stories, right there on the front line. Maybe the grain silo. Maybe the Mamaev Kurgan. Maybe, if you’re really lucky, the riverbank itself. Just think, Nehmann, one of the first scribblers to dip his toe in the Volga. Your master would love you. Your other friends at the Promi would write you into history. Werner Nehmann. Proof that Stalingrad has been taken by the brilliant German forces. Wunderbar, ja? Except that the city isn’t our property at all. And in any case, you’d be dead by sunrise. Maybe enemy action. Maybe not.’

  Nehmann was eyeing the two figures at the table. One of them had quietly removed his earphones to listen to Schultz at full throttle and Nehmann wondered how many other arms had been bent on this falling-apart sofa. The Abwehr man had always had a gift for persuasion, a talent Nehmann much admired.

  ‘So, if the Ivans don’t kill me,’ he said carefully, ‘who else might?’

  Schultz declined to answer the question head-on. Instead, he asked Nehmann if he remembered a cameraman from the Propaganda Company at Tatsinskaya.

  ‘Of course. Helmut. How is he?’

  ‘He isn’t, Nehmann. He’s dead.’

  Nehmann, about to swallow the last of his coffee, was staring at Schultz. In a war like this there were a million ways a man could meet his end but already he sensed a complication.

  Maybe enemy action. Maybe not.

  ‘Where did it happen?’

  ‘In Berlin.’

  ‘But where?’

  ‘Guess.’

  ‘Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘In the basement?’

  ‘In the rear courtyard. A bullet in the back of the head. Very Ukrainian, Nehmann, and the way we hear it, the man had no chance to state his case. The war is getting ugly, my old friend. No time for the smaller courtesies.’

  Nehmann sat back, grateful for the warmth of the coffee between his hands. Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse housed the Berlin headquarters of the Gestapo where a team of imported specialists, mainly Hungarian, honed their skills. Maybe Helmut was lucky to have been spared the journey to the basement torture cells, he thought. Maybe a brisk adieu in the courtyard had been a blessing.

  ‘He saw a truck full of bodies on the airfield,’ Nehmann said softly. ‘The truck belonged to the SS. According to Helmut, the bodies, the faces, were a mess.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘He took photos.’

  ‘Did he have a name at all? An SS officer, maybe?’

  ‘No. Just the photos.’

  ‘And the SS found out?’

  ‘Yes, I think they did.’

  ‘You know that?’

  ‘I checked where he kept them,’ Nehmann said. ‘The photos were in a locked box in his darkroom. They’d gone. As soon as Helmut found out, he was a different man.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘He was frightened. I think he knew they’d come for him.’

  ‘He was right. They did.’

  Nehmann nodded. Said nothing. The photos, he thought, of the faces from the back of the SS truck. The sour sweetness of the developing bath that night had stayed with him ever since.

  ‘I have a name for you, Nehmann,’ Schultz said. ‘Jürgen Kalb. He’s a Standartenführer, SS of course. You want a guarantee? You’ll never meet another fucker as damaged as this one.’

  ‘You know him?’

  ‘I do. He set up shop in Kyiv after we moved in. I told you about the Einsatzgruppen? The killing squads? These people are off the leash. Kalb got a leg-up for his contribution to Babi Yar. Help kill thirty thousand people and you’re looking at a bigger pension. Kalb also had dealings with a woman I admired. She was English. What a fucking waste.’

  Nehmann nodded. He wanted to know more about Kalb.

  ‘He was at Tatsinskaya? At the airfield?’

  ‘Yes. And at Kalmach beforehand. We took a lot of prisoners there, both military and civilian. Not all of them survived.’

  ‘And now?’


  ‘Now’s different.’

  Nehmann blinked. Suddenly, it was so obvious.

  ‘And you’re telling me Kalb’s here? In the city?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Good question. The way I see it, the man believes the place is ours for the taking and he can’t wait to clean up afterwards. The SS will never admit it but they’re the detergent in the Reich bottle. They’re here to make Russia safe for us Aryans. It sounds twisted but people like Kalb regard their brand of butchery as a higher calling. It’s a priesthood. Except you pledge your oath in other people’s blood.’

  ‘That’s crazy.’

  ‘Of course it is.’

  ‘And me? We’re talking my blood?’

  ‘Possibly. In this life it pays not to upset people.’

  ‘Like?’

  Schultz wouldn’t say. Goebbels, Nehmann thought. It has to be Goebbels. Just in case Stalingrad doesn’t kill me, then the SS would take care of the job.

  He was about to put this proposition to Schultz, but it was too late. The Abwehr man had already moved on. Time was tight. He wanted a decision about the Georgian lad. They’d wasted far too much time discussing scum like Kalb. Even this corner of the war, he seemed to be implying, could offer unexpected rewards.

  ‘Like staying alive?’ Nehmann enquired.

  ‘Like finding out what the Ivans are really up to.’

  22

  STALINGRAD, 18 SEPTEMBER 1942

  Nehmann slept that night at the bus depot, sharing a small basement alcove with Schultz. The chorus of explosions rose and fell, some nearby, some more distant, but gradually he began to accept the Abwehr man’s word that they were as safe as anyone could be in this abattoir of a city.

  Schultz, a scavenger of genius, had laid hands on a small pile of women’s fur coats which he shared with his five-man staff. Nehmann dozed fully clothed on a mattress on the floor, warmed by silver fox, trying to fend off thoughts about what the SS might have done to the bodies in the back of their truck on the airfield at Tatsinskaya. An otherwise colourful life had so far spared him the sight of this kind of obscenity, but it was hard to forget Helmut’s terror the night they’d both got drunk. It was the act of a decent man to try and make a record of crimes like these, but the SS viewed decency as a mark of weakness and in the end the gesture had got Helmut killed.

  Next morning, Schultz despatched one of his staff to fetch the Georgian. He must have been held nearby because the prisoner was back within minutes in the care of a tall, cadaverous Leutnant from the Feldgendarmerie. The military policeman wore a metal gorget on a chain around his neck and deferred at once to Schultz when he wanted the prisoner’s wrists unshackled.

  ‘Of course, Herr Oberst.’

  The prisoner couldn’t have been older than twenty. Like his captor, he was thin and pale. His eyes were deep-set, and he had tiny razor nicks where someone had recently shaved his head. Schultz had assigned another cubbyhole off the main basement space for the interview, two wooden boxes almost within touching distance, both stamped with Cyrillic characters, and Nehmann waited for the youth to settle before he took his seat. Schultz was nowhere to be seen, an absence that Nehmann regarded as a mark of trust.

  The prisoner’s name was Kirile. He said he came from Tbilisi and the moment he started talking about the city in late autumn, the first snows dusting the heights overlooking the river, Nehmann had no reason to doubt him. He’d been to school in the Rustaveli district. His father had been a cobbler, like Stalin’s, while his mother took in washing for the whole street. He’d never known Georgia under anything but Soviet rule and, when war came last year, he’d abandoned his university course and enlisted in the Red Army. As a volunteer in the Great Patriotic War, that made Kirile unusual.

  By now, the interview had all the makings of a normal conversation and when the Georgian expressed curiosity about Nehmann’s fluency in Russian, Nehmann saw no reason to lie.

  ‘That’s because I’m Georgian.’ He smiled. ‘Like you.’

  ‘Really?’ Kirile couldn’t believe it. ‘So how come…’ he frowned ‘…you end up here?’

  ‘With the Germans, you mean?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Because I made a choice. My uncle wanted me to be a butcher. My family name is Magalashvili. I did the training. We lived in Svengati.’

  ‘I know Svengati. Beautiful, especially in winter. You didn’t like it?’

  ‘I didn’t want to be a butcher. I didn’t want to be tied down. I wanted to travel. I wanted to write. I had to make a living. As a writer in Georgia that was hard to do. Have you ever been to Paris?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘Paris turns you into many people. A writer, if you’re lucky, is just one of them.’

  ‘And now you’re a soldier?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘A butcher, maybe?’

  ‘Definitely not.’

  ‘What, then?’

  ‘I’m…’ Nehmann shrugged ‘…talking to you. That’s my job. That’s what they want, just now. Life could be tougher, my friend. For both of us.’

  Nehmann got up for a moment or two, leaving the young Georgian in the care of the Leutnant from the Feldgendarmerie. He climbed the stairs to the ground floor and stepped out into the fresh air. The thunder of battle was as relentless as ever but much of the smoke had cleared and thin sunshine puddled on the wet concrete. Looking up, shading his eyes, Nehmann could see tiny silver fish high in the sky, then came the roar of heavier aircraft and he watched the big Heinkels positioning themselves for a bomb run. The release point was barely a couple of kilometres away, and he watched the tiny black dots falling earthwards. Then came a series of explosions almost blurring into one and a shiver deep beneath his feet as the bombs found their targets.

  ‘Well, Nehmann? You’re making progress?’

  It was Schultz. He was smoking a small cigar. When Nehmann expressed surprise at the boy’s intelligence, Schultz nodded.

  ‘That’s why it’s you doing the talking and not me,’ he grunted. ‘We think he knows a great deal more than he’s said so far. According to another prisoner, he’s been in and out of Chuikov’s headquarters since the man arrived, but we seem to have picked him up by chance, which always makes me wonder.’

  ‘He told me he was studying languages at university. His German is good. I’m assuming Chuikov would be glad of some of that.’

  ‘You think he likes you, Nehmann?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Trusts you?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Excellent. This shitfest gets more chaotic by the minute. You need to apply a little pressure, my friend.’ A rare smile. ‘And this is how you do it.’

  *

  Minutes later, back on his box in the airless cubbyhole, Nehmann insisted on sharing a jug of coffee. The coffee was Turkish and Kirile, it turned out, hadn’t tasted anything like this since leaving Tbilisi. He sucked greedily at the scalding liquid and used a dirty finger to scoop up the grounds at the bottom of his mug.

  Nehmann waited for him to finish and then enquired about a flood of fresh equipment coming into the city on ferries across the Volga at night. Rumours suggested that some of these tanks hadn’t even been painted. Might that be true?

  Kirile was frowning. This was the moment he’d obviously been expecting, the moment when a pleasant chat became an exchange of a totally different kind. This fellow Georgian with access to the coffee of his dreams was asking him to share a military secret.

  ‘I can’t say.’ He shook his head.

  ‘You can, Kirile, you can. Don’t tell me you don’t know because I don’t believe you. This isn’t about your courage. You people fight like lions. Everyone knows that. Everyone respects it. Would we do the same defending Berlin? I hope so. No, this is simply a question about the means, not the end. We accept that you mean to fight to the death. But we also believe that such a thing is unnecessary. Why? Because you lack the equipment.’

  ‘T
hat’s not true.’ The boy was angry, and it showed. ‘We have everything we need. Shells. Reinforcements. Even food.’

  ‘Tanks?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Unpainted?’

  ‘Of course. The factories are a couple of days away on the other side of the Urals. Why waste time with a tin of paint? A tank’s a tank. This fucking war’s no beauty contest.’

  The phrase struck Nehmann with some force. No beauty contest. He couldn’t think of a better way of putting it.

  ‘You hate it, don’t you?’ he said. ‘The fighting? The killing?’

  ‘We hate you. You’re the thief who comes in the night. Every Russian has a choice. Fight or surrender. Surrender opens your door. In comes the thief. You lose everything. Your house. Your valuables. Your daughters. Everything. There’s a poem going around just now. You want to hear it?’

  Without waiting for an answer, he launched into the poem. Evidently, he knew it by heart.

  The tears of women and children

  Are boiling in my heart

  Hitler the murderer and his hordes

  Shall pay for these tears

  With their wolfish blood…

  ‘Blood of the wolf?’ Nehmann said. ‘That sounds like Stalin.’

  ‘It isn’t Stalin. It was written by a soldier.’

  ‘I meant the sentiment.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Stalin’s a fellow Georgian, Kirile. Maybe that’s one of history’s ironies.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘You don’t? Then maybe you’re not old enough. I was in Svengati when the Russians came. It was 1921. I was eleven. There were hotheads in Tbilisi, in your town, who wanted revolution, Communism, all the rest of that Lenin shit, but most people hated the Russians. The country was ours, Kirile. And they were the thieves. Did you ever talk to your father about any of this? Your mother, maybe?’

  The boy was looking confused now. The coffee was a memory.

  ‘We’ve got lots of tanks.’ He was looking at his hands. ‘Lots of everything. Winter is coming. You know the word rasputitsa?’ His head came up at last. ‘The moment when the rain and the snow turn everything to mud? When there are no more roads? When life stops completely? Have your generals thought about that?’