War of The Rats - A Novel of Stalingrad - [World War II 01]

by David Robbins

  The third dawn at Ninth of January Square, just as the sun restored the park’s colors, Nikki heard Thorvald’s tinny voice.

  “Corporal. We’ve got company.”

  Nikki unwrapped the blanket from his shoulders and grabbed his binoculars. He prepared to raise his eyes above the parapet. Then Thorvald hissed from inside his lair.

  “Stay down. Snipers.”

  For the rest of the morning, Nikki sat hunched at the foot of the wall. He was on edge, wondering if the Hare himself was finally within the colonel’s sights.

  He waited for hours. Boredom jangled against his alertness; his nerves wore raw. At midday, with the sun at its highest and the shadows underfoot, Thorvald’s voice slunk out of the hole.

  “Go thirty meters to the left. Stop there and put your helmet on the shovel handle. Raise it over the wall just enough to make it look like your head. Walk with it to the left. Nikki, do you hear me?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Do it. And if the helmet gets hit, drop it quickly.”

  Nikki snatched up the shovel. On his knees, he scurried to his left the thirty meters. He took off his helmet and raised it on the shovel handle just above the wall.

  After moving no more than ten meters, the helmet snapped around with a clang, struck by a bullet. The shovel blade stung his hand. He dropped the shovel and heard the trailing echoes of a shot from across the park. He gathered in the tool and helmet and rushed back to his perch behind Thorvald.

  “I didn’t hear you shoot, Colonel,” he called into the hole. “Did you?”

  “Yes.” The canned voice sounded tired.

  “One-two, Colonel?”

  “One-two.”

  Nikki waited, then asked, “Was it Zaitsev?”

  Thorvald blew out a breath. Nikki imagined the colonel rolling over now to nap in the warmth of the blankets and the afternoon heat radiating from the metal sheet, like a bear that has eaten its fill.

  “We’ll find out tomorrow.”

  * * * *

  FIRST LIGHT WAS AN HOUR AWAY. NIKKI SAT BESIDE Thorvald, their backs against the stone wall. The colonel rested before his crawl down the shallow trench into his shooting cell.

  Nikki’s anticipation ran high on this fourth morning at Ninth of January Square. He agreed with Thorvald that the Russian snipers of the previous day had most likely been only some of Zaitsev’s recruits. The Red master sniper himself was probably not among them. The ruse of carrying the helmet had been too basic, too poorly executed to be the work of the Headmaster. Had Zaitsev, the keen man of the forest, been the one watching, he wouldn’t have taken the bait. Surely he would have recognized the feint as the work of an ordinary German marksman and would not have gone on the attack the way those two Red snipers did. Zaitsev’s goal was Thorvald, no one else. The Hare would not have given up his position for any lesser prey. But if the Ivan snipers across the park had been just a hunting party, perhaps scouting on Zaitsev’s behalf, they would have been more likely to engage any target that presented itself, especially a German sniper heartless enough to fire on wounded and medical staff.

  Today and tomorrow will tell. If Zaitsev is dead, there’ll be no response. The Reds won’t send any more pupils after Thorvald. He’s shown them several times over that such an act is suicide. If there’s more Red sniper activity across the park this morning or tomorrow, it’ll be Zaitsev.

  At last, it will be Zaitsev.

  Thorvald had rested enough. He gathered up the pack containing his thermos and the sandwiches made from his remaining cheeses and meats. He had enough to keep them in lunches for four more days. That, the colonel supposed, should be ample.

  Thorvald took up the captured Moisin-Nagant. He grimaced, turning to crawl into the cell. Nikki wondered, Where does he get the patience to watch and wait all day? Look at him. He’s flabby and delicate. Where does the will come from to be this supersniper, the most dangerous marksman in the Third Reich? If there were such a powerful force inside him, wouldn’t it be on his outside as well, in his muscles, in his flesh?

  But it is, it is, Nikki; he could hear the colonel’s voice explaining it to him. It’s in my eyes and in my hands, you’ve seen it. Sometimes in my voice. I put it in my bullets. The will is in the flash of powder, it flies inside the lead and copper jacket. I become the German supersniper when I grip my rifle.

  “Stay on your toes today,” the colonel said. Thorvald was up on his knees. “Don’t move until I give you instructions. I think we might snare ourselves a rabbit before the day is out.”

  The colonel crawled on his belly behind the wall and under the metal sheet. He pushed his pack and rifle in front of him through the light snow that had fallen in the night.

  Nikki sat bundled in a blanket. The dawn smelled crisp. The wet, heavy weather that had lain over Stalingrad like a damp sponge for the past week had sailed through the night before; this day was going to be clear, with little wind.

  The last star of the waning eve winked low on the eastern horizon above the Volga. The star fought with the rose and purple hues of the climbing sun for its last glowing moments. Sound and sight will carry a long way today, Nikki mused. It’ll be a good day for hunting.

  * * * *

  NIKKI WOKE TO THE SUN FULL IN HIS FACE. HE RAISED his chin to warm his neck. He pulled back his white camouflage hood and took off his helmet. The sun was not high enough to warm the top of his head, but the absence of wind gave the chill a pleasant touch. He thought back to the dry cold and powdery snows covering his father’s fields in Westphalia, how the cattle and sheep stood still in the middle of the great white open spaces after a snow, stupidly wondering where their earth had gone. He thought about his sister, how on those coldest days she made lunches of ham and cabbage for him and his father when they came in kicking snow and dung off their boots. They’d sit in the kitchen beneath the brown photo of his mother, dead many years, as many years as Nikki was old. She would have made you a good mother, his father always said, and Nikki would smile at his sister across the table, the sister who mothered him.

  It was never so cold at home, never so deep in the bones as the cold you felt in a foreign country, at war, waiting to die, to kill, to survive, waiting.

  He took off a mitten and reached for his two sandwiches. He unwrapped one of them and ate it. He should have saved the food for when he grew hungrier later in the day. But uncertainty made him eat it now, when he wanted it.

  Nikki sat in the cemetery silence of the wall, the rare blue sky and the hard wreckage strewn all around. For a while he did not think about Thorvald, curled up fat and white on the ground like a grub. Nikki looked up to the height of Mamayev Kurgan, at the railroad tracks running behind the alleys, everything charred and broken, so clear today. He imagined himself the only man alive in Stalingrad. What would he do if that were so? Build himself a home from the pieces? Rise to his feet and walk away ... to where? No, he would sit right here in the sun. He’d eat his last sandwich. Maybe he’d go into the grub’s nest and eat his sandwiches, too.

  Nikki sat through the afternoon. He couldn’t move away from his spot near the break in the wall, for Thorvald might at any moment need him. He stretched, rolled onto his stomach, and pulled the blanket over him. He wanted to hum or sing to himself but would not. He wondered, Does the colonel believe in God? Does he ask God for strength? Or is he like me, a believer only when he needs God, when he’s in trouble? God, get me out of this. Please, God, I believe, I always believe, even when you don’t hear from me. Get me home safely and I’ll believe harder, I promise.

  In the late afternoon the sun splashed long shadows across the park, lowering itself to shine over Thorvald’s hidden shoulder in his hutch. Nikki ate his last sandwich after playing a game with himself to see how great a hunger he could accumulate. He’d passed the hours watching the hunger grow. The pang in his stomach helped keep him alert.

  Thorvald’s voice. “Nikki. Are you there?”

  Nikki, so long bored, had to think of an
answer.

  “Nikki?”

  “Yes, Colonel, I’m here.”

  “It’s time to see if we have any company.”

  Nikki held his breath.

  “Did you see anything, Colonel?”

  “Perhaps. I’m not sure, but I might’ve just caught a flash in the same spot where the two snipers were yesterday.”

  “Is it the Hare?”

  Thorvald’s stunted, buzzing voice carried a grin. “Well, it’s where I believe Zaitsev would be.”

  Yes, Nikki thought, it is. Zaitsev, the newspaper hero. He would come to the same spot where his friends had died. His sense of revenge would bend toward the dramatic. The Hare doesn’t know Thorvald, but the colonel knows him. He’s been watching that same spot all day, waiting for the sun to drop just so, to create just such a reflection.

  “Put your helmet on the shovel handle again. Move fifty meters to the left, then hoist it and walk to the right.”

  Nikki scrambled for the shovel. Behind him, he heard Thorvald speak, or sing, to himself in his nook.

  “Here, little rabbit. Here, bunny, bunny.”

  * * * *

  TWENTY-THREE

  “THERE. THERE, VASHA! I SEE SOMETHING. A ... A helmet. Look. Quick, damn it!”

  Zaitsev had just finished his hour-long shift poring over the park through his periscope. His eyes were exhausted. He’d slid on his mittens and been slumped back against the wall for no more than a minute when Kulikov spotted something.

  He pulled off the gloves and scrambled fast for his periscope. Kulikov continued to curse.

  “Where?” Zaitsev asked, slamming his chest against the wall. He raised the periscope above the bricks. “Where?”

  “The wall at the far end of the park. Behind that tank. There. There!”

  “Nikolay, calm down. I’ll find it.” This was as animated as he’d ever seen Kulikov. He’s very intrigued by this Headmaster. Oh well, I’ve been living with Thorvald for a week now. Nikolay has just gotten started.

  “He’s moving right to left,” Kulikov whispered.

  No need to whisper, Zaitsev mused. Thorvald’s close enough for a bullet, but we can still speak normally.

  Zaitsev panned across the wall 250 meters away. The sun setting in front of him made it difficult to identify shapes, giving everything in his scope a ghostly aura. Thorvald, of course, knows this. He’s positioned himself so that the sun makes this his time of day, his advantage. Mine was this morning. Thorvald knows that, too; the morning passed with no sign of him.

  “Found him?” whispered Kulikov.

  Not yet. Not there. Past the tank. Along the wall, not there . . . what is that? Is it a stone? No, it . . . yes, it moved. A helmet, it must be. The range of the periscope was taxed at this distance, but right now Zaitsev trusted Kulikov’s vision and instincts more than his own. Is it actually moving, he wondered, or is Kulikov’s nervous chatter making me want to see it move? “I see it,” he said before he was sure he really did. He watched closely the wavering gray lump at the edge of the wall. His tired eyes slowly began their automatic task of compensating for the glare and the hazy focus of the scope’s optics at this distance. The lump did move. There. Certainly. It was a helmet.

  “I see it,” he repeated.

  “He’s your meat, Vasha. What do we do?”

  Zaitsev watched the swaying helmet. It moved unnaturally, in jerks rising and falling, not at all like a man walking behind the far wall. It was a poor imitation, a helmet on a stick, bobbing as if the wearer had only one leg or were walking on his knees. The wall there was tall enough for a man not to have to walk on his knees to stay covered unless the man were holding up a stick with a helmet on it. No, this is not the Headmaster. The bastard is lying hidden elsewhere, within sight and range, waiting for me to fire as Shaikin and Morozov did. He’s waiting for me to give away my position. This helmet carrier is an assistant, a clumsy assistant.

  With a pang, Zaitsev lowered his eyes from the periscope. This lowly ruse, this freshman bit from the Headmaster, insulted him. This was not the opening move he’d anticipated. He didn’t know what he’d expected, but it was not this.

  “It’s a trick. A very poor one.” Zaitsev blinked to ease the tension around his eyes. “We’ll do nothing.”

  Zaitsev and Kulikov watched the helmet rise and fall along the ridge of the brick wall. After several minutes, whoever was carrying it grew weary in the arms and lowered it.

  The sun dropped until it lurched below the ruins on the western edge of the park. The light was too low for telescopic sights now. The only target this late in the day, the kind Viktor Medvedev and his bears excelled at would be a lit cigarette or a muzzle flash somewhere in the gathering darkness, not the kind of error the Headmaster would make. Or would he? After all, he’d walked a helmet on a stick in front of the Hare, a disappointment. The Nazi’s far less than brilliant; he was not even craftsmanlike,

  Thirty minutes later, after full night had descended, Zaitsev and Kulikov gathered their packs and rifles to leave.

  “Where is he?” Kulikov muttered. “Damn him.”

  Amused, Zaitsev observed to himself how Nikolay, the quiet one, had grown absolutely talkative over Thorvald.

  When they returned to the snipers’ bunker, Medvedev and Tania were waiting. Zaitsev reported on the day’s long inactivity, ending with the helmet ploy. For half an hour he listened to their opinions on what tactics he and Kulikov should employ. Then Kulikov raised himself off the floor in silence and left.

  “Did we hurt his feelings?” Medvedev asked.

  “No,” Zaitsev said, “but he’s taken this duel with Thorvald personally. My guess is he wants it too much to listen to advice. I don’t know. It might still be Baugderis bothering him. He’ll be all right. I think that’s enough for tonight.”

  Medvedev rose from the floor. “Maybe I’ll hunt your park tonight,” he said. “Perhaps the Headmaster smokes.”

  Zaitsev laughed. “If he does, light one up for him.”

  Across from Zaitsev, Tania sat cross-legged, watching Viktor take his leave.

  “How is Shaikin?” he asked her.

  “I don’t know. I don’t want to know. I tell myself he’s alive.”

  Tania rubbed her palms on her knees. Zaitsev sat with her in the hush, trying to calm the percolating things in his breast that wanted to reach out and pull her in.

  She spoke. “Thorvald. Why is he behaving like a freshman?”

  Zaitsev shook his head. “To make me think it’s not him. To make me mad. I can come up with ten reasons why he does everything he does. And then I don’t know anything.”

  Tania stretched her legs. The outlines of her calves and the stems of her pelvis showed through her white canvas pants.

  “The Headmaster wants to know if it’s you he’s facing. He knows you, Vasha. We can assume he’s read all the articles about you. He knows the Hare wouldn’t shoot at a helmet on a stick. When you held your fire today, you told him you were there.”

  Tania rubbed her hands together. Then she stopped and looked into her palms as if looking into the bottom of a teacup for mystical clues.

  She continued: “He’s being unpredictable. You’re the one who’s acting in a pattern.”

  Zaitsev lay back on his bedroll, ignoring her comment. What does she know? he thought. A woman, still mostly a freshman herself. She’s not out there with me staring into the haze and shadows, looking for her own personal assassin. Pattern. The only pattern I’ll follow is this one: When I shoot, somebody dies. One man, one bullet. Thorvald will be no exception.

  But Tania’s comment gnawed at him. Is she right? I’m hounded by detail and nuance in this battle with Thorvald. Could she be seeing it more clearly from a distance than I see it up close?

  Shit. She’s right. A pattern. Thorvald knows it. One man, one bullet. My stated, printed creed. No, not a creed. My damned brag is what it is. He knows it. He’s read it I don’t know how many times in those articles. I ought to
wring Danilov’s thick neck for putting all that information about me into In Our Country’s Defense. He’s put strings on me, made me into a puppet Thorvald can pick up and make dance. Thorvald knows how I hunt, all my patterns. When I didn’t fire at the helmet this morning, he knew it was me, just like Tania says. And when Shaikin and Morozov did fire yesterday, Thorvald knew he wasn’t facing me then. I should have stopped talking to Danilov, told the little troll there would be no more interviews. But I didn’t, did I? I liked it; I rolled in it like a dog in high grass. And now my smell is so strong, Thorvald can track me with it. Hero? Fucking idiot! I’m facing a supersniper I know nothing about, and he’s staring across no-man’s-land at an enemy he’s read a book on.