“But out there, in a swamp, in the dead of winter...”
“I know it is hard,” Jennie said. “But she will manage. Ah, here is Galina, come to join us for tea. Galina’s daughter, Sophie, is serving with Tatiana, in the Pripet.”
Elaine could not imagine that she could calmly serve tea to guests if her daughter was fighting and freezing in a swamp. Thank God she didn’t have a daughter! The door opened.
“Ivan Ivanovich!” Jennie exclaimed. “I am so glad you could make it. This is my cousin Alex, and a friend of his, Dr Mitchell.”
Ivan scarcely gave the young people a glance. His face was glowing, his whole being redolent of excitement. “You have not heard the news!”
Everyone turned towards him. “We have gained a victory!” Galina said.
“No! We have not gained a victory. But we have gained an ally! The United States is in the war. With us!”
Chapter 6 – The Task
The train pulled into the Tiergarten, the doors opened. But Alexander von Holzbach hesitated for several seconds before stepping out into the crisp January night air, because it would be stepping into another world. The one he had left a week ago had been hell, rising out of the pit to spread itself across the surface of the globe. In the one he had just arrived in even the temperature belonged in another world. Berlin was about three degrees below zero Centigrade, he reckoned. Once he would have thought that cold! Berlin was a glow of light. There was a black-out law — British bombers came often enough — but there was always sufficient warning of them when they crossed Belgium and Holland to enable the sirens to be sounded hours before they reached the city. Until that happened, the Berliners could enjoy themselves, with the enthusiasm that was essentially Berliner.
Officials saluted the major as he hurried from the station and sought a cab. Everyone was happily excited. Christmas was recent enough to be remembered, and they lived in the best of all possible worlds, at the centre of an empire that stretched from the English Channel and the Mediterranean to halfway across European Russia. Only Napoleon Bonaparte had ever held so much in the palm of his hand at one moment. No one seemed prepared to remember that Napoleon had held that much for less than a year.
As for the Americans, the German declaration of war had been the principal topic of conversation on the train; it had aroused even more opinions, pro and con, than Hitler’s decision personally to take over operational command of all German armed forces. Again, no one had seemed to question why it had been necessary to declare war on the United States at all. The American quarrel was with Japan, who had so treacherously attacked her. Japan’s alliance with Germany contained no mutual assistance clauses. In fact Alexander, who was a close friend of a good many generals and senior Party officials, was pretty sure that no one in Germany had suspected, much less been informed, that the simultaneous attacks on Pearl Harbor, the Philippines, and Malaysia had even been planned, much less reached the stage of execution.
But within hours Hitler had carelessly declared war on the greatest industrial power in the world. No matter that the Americans seemed a very long way away, that their armed forces were regarded as something of a joke, or that before they could interfere in Europe they needed to defeat Japan, or in order to do that they needed a fleet which they no longer possessed. The declaration had introduced, quite unnecessarily, a new set of parameters within which the war was being fought. With America in the War, Allied military strength had to grow, where German military strength had to diminish, unless Russia could be knocked out sooner than later. Alexander wondered if he was the only man in the German army who doubted that was possible.
Alexander’s apartment was on the first floor of a block only just off the Unter den Linden. As there had been many stories of how Berlin had been bombed he approached it with some apprehension, although he had seen little damage on his way from the station. And to his great relief the building was untouched. Not even, so far as he could see, a pane of glass broken. He paid the fare and carried his bag into the entry hall. The concierge gaped at him as if he were a ghost. “Major von Holzbach?”
“Do I not look like him, Franz?”
“Oh, yes, Major. Oh, yes. Ah...welcome back!”
“I assume my wife is at home?”
“Oh, yes, Herr Major! Oh, yes!”
“Good.”
He went to the stairs, aware of being more sexually aroused than for a long time. It did not pay to become sexually aroused in Russia, although Russian girls were available, either as prisoners or in the army-controlled brothels. But one never knew with a Russian girl when she would commit suicide by killing, or at least maiming, her partner. Besides, however much they had been washed and checked for disease, one could never be sure that Russian girls did not have lice. Alexander felt that sex should be a time for mutual enjoyment, and mutual satisfaction, and above all, mutual cleanliness. A glance over his shoulder as he went up the stairs, through the open door of the concierge’s office, revealed that Franz was on the phone. Well, in this new Germany where everyone spied on everyone else, he no doubt had a duty to report every arrival or departure in his apartment building, even the owner of one of the apartments. It was not something Alexander supposed would bother him.
He climbed the stairs, inserted the key in the lock, and it opened for him. Anna stood there, arms outstretched.
“Alexander!” she screamed. Alexander was surprised, and not only by her apparent clairvoyance in knowing it was him at the door before he had opened it. It was only nine o’clock at night, yet she was in a dressing gown, and as he set down his bag and took her in his arms, he realised that she must have just got out of bed; she was as warm as toast and had that sensuous feel. He kissed her mouth. “Oh, Alexander,” she said. “It is so good to have your back! I have been so worried. I had hoped you would be home for Christmas. But no matter, what is Christmas?” She appeared to be in a highly nervous state.
Alexander squeezed her. “It is so good to be back, I can tell you.”
“Champagne!” she said, freeing herself and hurrying for the cold box. “I always keep one on ice, for this occasion.”
“Why were you in bed? You are not sick?” He took the bottle from her and removed the cork while she held out the two flutes.
“No, no! But what else is there to do?”
He brushed her glass with his. “And I was afraid you would be out.”
“Out where?”
He shrugged. “Dancing with some handsome man? Or at least at the pictures.”
“Would you have been cross if I had been dancing with some handsome man?”
“Of course! I would probably have shot him, and beaten you.”
She peered at him, as if uncertain that he was joking.
Then she asked, “Have you eaten?”
“Nothing that could really be called food.”
“Then let me prepare some supper.”
“I’m more hungry for you,” he said.
She even smelt of sex; he had an idea that one reason she might have gone to bed early was because she had been masturbating. But she was as responsive as ever, although the moment he had climaxed she was out of bed and putting on her dressing gown before hurrying into the kitchen. “How long have you got?” she asked over her shoulder.
“A week.”
“Oh, how marvellous! Will we be in Moscow in a week?”
He gave a grim laugh, and got out of bed himself. “No.”
She refilled their glasses, frowning at him. “Everyone here says that the Russians are beaten.”
“Everyone here is so stuffed with propaganda they cannot tell the difference between white and black.”
She set sausage and bread and lettuce on the table. “Then tell me the truth.”
“The truth!” He drank some champagne. “The truth is that we are fighting a war for which we are quite unprepared. We were supposed to reach Moscow before the winter. No one gave any thought to the fact that before winter comes to Russia, there are alwa
ys a couple of months of heavy rain. We were issued with maps, showing us all the great metalled roads which led directly to Red Square. Do you realise that there is perhaps one metalled road in all Russia? The rest, however they may be shown on maps, are mere tracks. No doubt they are planned as roads, but they have not yet been built. A few inches of rain and they become mud rivers. You should see a column of panzers ploughing through the mud at one mile an hour, if that. It would make you laugh if it wasn’t so tragic.”
“But you are within fifty miles, so it is said. One more push...”
“What are we supposed to push with? We have been within fifty miles of Moscow for weeks, in places, and have advanced not a step. Now that the rain has stopped, it has frozen. Can you imagine temperatures of forty below? It paralyses the brain. Do you realise that to start our tanks we have to light fires under the engines, for more than an hour? That our guns won’t fire? That we have to saw our food into chunks to be melted? Do you know that I have seen a hundred men, with mules, trying to drag a field gun out of the ice in which it has been frozen?”
“But at least you have the hundred men and the mules,” Anna suggested, dismayed by his pessimism.
“Ha! What do you think happened? We eventually pulled the gun free, But not its carriage as well. That remained firmly stuck, and will stay there until the thaw. But the worst thing of all is the effect the cold has on the men. They were not prepared for it, psychologically. They are not equipped for it, physically. They are losing toes and fingers and ears faster than you use that ersatz stuff they call coffee.”
“My darling!” She put her arms round his neck and hugged him. “You are feeling depressed. A week in Berlin will restore your spirits. Remember that winter is only a season. It will end, in a couple of months, and then our armies will resume their advance, and I will meet you, as we arranged, in Moscow. I am so looking forward to that.”
Alexander stood inside the doorway of the huge office and saluted, “Heil Hitler!”
“As you say, Holzbach. Sit down.” Alexander crossed the room and sat, to attention, in the chair before the desk. He had only met Reinhard Heydrich half-a-dozen times before, and every time he had been more impressed, or perhaps, he thought, obsessed, by the cold good looks of the man, and the even colder clarity of vision of what he sought from life and for Germany. “What do you think of the situation?” Heydrich asked.
“I think it stinks, with respect.”
Heydrich smiled. Alexander von Holzbach was a man who always spoke his mind. But he was also a man who got results. “There have been mistakes,” he agreed. “On the other hand, it should all be brought to a successful conclusion, once the weather improves. These Russian counter-attacks are no more than pin-pricks. Their claims to have recaptured territory is pure propaganda; the Fuehrer has forbidden any withdrawals.”
Alexander decided not to comment upon that; Heydrich had obviously been listening to the same handouts from Goebbels’s propaganda department as had Anna. “However,” Heydrich went on, “there can be no doubt that the Russians are tougher than we supposed, and that an immense effort is required to bring them down before any American influence can be imposed upon the war. This goes from the highest to the lowest, or the seemingly least important. As for example, are you aware that something like ten per cent of our army is tied down coping with the partisans behind our lines? Or that at least ten per cent of our materiel is sabotaged or destroyed by these partisans before it can reach our forces at the front?”
Alexander had already encountered bands of partisans, behind the Moscow front; every German soldier had done so. “I do not understand why they cannot be dealt with in the ordinary way,” he remarked.
“My dear Holzbach, these people are not human. They are Slavs. That is a sub-species akin to the Neanderthals. They are brutish, unfeeling. They lack all sentiment. Announce that we will shoot a hundred people for every attack on our trains, they still attack the trains. So we shoot them. Nobody seems to care. Not even the hundred, one feels. It is becoming quite a problem.” He got up and walked to the huge map of Russia on the wall. “And the biggest problem is here.” He tapped the Pripet Marshes. “It is estimated that there are several thousand Russian soldiers and partisans hiding in these marshes. They are split up into several groups, but they are all nuisances.” He grinned. “Of course, it is always possible to hope that they will all freeze this winter. Or starve. But we cannot assume this is going to happen. What is going to have to happen is that someone is going to have to go into those marshes and destroy these vermin. This has to be done, without fail, the moment the weather improves.”
“You are giving me this assignment, Herr General?”
“Yes. With promotion to colonel.”
“I am flattered. Would I be speaking out of turn if I said that I would rather fight Russian soldiers than Russian civilians?”
“I am sure you would, Holzbach. Although, as I have said, there are quite a few soldiers mixed in with these partisans. However, it is a necessary task, and it is one which has to be carried out by someone who has no doubt where his duty lies. I know you are one of those men. We are not talking about straightforward fighting here. We are talking about extermination, by any means possible. They are using every means possible, I can tell you. Do you know what happened only a week ago? These wretched people came from their lair and took prisoner a patrol of eight men and a sergeant. Well, you or I might suppose those fools should have fought to the death rather than surrender. But surrender they did when they realised they were outnumbered and surrounded. We found them three days later, stripped naked.”
Alexander nodded. “And castrated?”
“No. They had not been harmed in any way,” Heydrich said. “But they had been tied up, together, and water had been poured over them. A great deal of water. Presumably this water had once been ice which had been melted over a fire, because the temperature was twenty degrees below freezing. In any event, this water very rapidly turned back into ice. So what we found was a kind of ice sculpture,” Heydrich said. “Nine naked men, leaning against each other, frozen solid. I can tell you, it was not very good for morale. We must retaliate in kind. If they want atrocities, they will have atrocities. Does this bother you?”
“I do not like the idea of waging war in such a barbaric manner.”
“War is barbarism, Holzbach.”
“I understand that. I will make an example of these people, if I have to.”
“There is another reason why I am giving you this assignment, Holzbach,” Heydrich said. “Does the name Tatiana Gosykinya mean anything to you?”
Alexander frowned. “Tatiana Gosykinya is the daughter of Andrei Gosykin and Jennie Cromb.”
“Correct. And Andrei Gosykin?”
“Murdered my wife’s brother.”
“Absolutely.”
“This Tatiana murdered a German officer, did she not?”
“Two German officers, Holzbach.”
“And then disappeared, and is no doubt dead.”
“Well, she did disappear, yes. For a while we thought she was, dead. But she wasn’t dead, she was in the Pripet. And now the Russians are making a lot of propaganda noises about how she is a commissar, and a leader of the Partisans.”
Alexander’s frown deepened. “This girl cannot be more than nineteen.”
“I understand she is eighteen. That does not mean she cannot be a mass-murderess. She is Gosykin’s daughter, and if I remember the details of his trial, he was accused of killing several million people during Stalin’s collectivisation programme. Oh, he was undoubtedly acting on Stalin’s orders, even if Stalin eventually shot him for it. But he still killed those people. As for this child being a commissar, that is pure propaganda. But it is propaganda we intend to use in return. Your prime duty is to capture this Red Maiden, as she is called, and execute her as barbarously as possible with all the publicity you can manage. Let me know when you have accomplished her capture, and I will provide you with a f
ilm crew to record her last moments, moments in which she will be revealed for what she is, a snivelling, murdering, frightened little girl. You have no problem with this?”
“It will be a pleasure to avenge my brother-in-law, Herr General. I but wish to know my resources.”
“There is an SS regiment in Pinsk, with a company in Brest-Litovsk. You will make your headquarters in Brest-Litovsk. You have carte blanche to employ as many of its people as you need, and to call on reinforcements from Pinsk if need be. I will give you a letter to General von Blasewitz, informing him of your mission and requesting him to give you all the assistance possible.”
Alexander saluted. “Heil Hitler!”
Heydrich acknowledged the salute. “I will wish you Godspeed, Colonel von Holzbach. Carry out this mission speedily and efficiently, and you will command that regiment yourself.”
“You did not mention that other matter to Major von Holzbach, Herr General?” inquired von Buelow, the adjutant.
“You mean that his wife has been seeing other men?” Heydrich stroked his chin.
“She had a man with her when von Holzbach arrived in Berlin, Herr General.”
“And managed to get rid of him?”
“The concierge is in her pay, Herr General. He must have got word up to her, and that building has an interior fire staircase.”
“That is very sad,” Heydrich said. “Holzbach will go far, if he survives. And presumably his wife will rise as well, even if she is a two-timing bitch. But I am not about to interfere in the domestic life of a man to whom I have just given a very important mission. He needs to concentrate on his job.”
Buelow cleared his throat. “It is our business, Herr General, to keep files upon all important Party members, and their wives.”
“And I am sure you have done so most efficiently, Buelow. But I have just said, I wish Frau von Holzbach’s file locked away, at least for the time being.”
“Maintaining a file does not only imply surveillance, Herr General. It implies investigation, of the subject’s background and ancestry.”
The Scarlet Generation Page 12
