‘No, sir. I mean - sorry, sir. The Germans, sir?’
‘You may have heard of them. Ugly sausage-eaters with pointy hats.’
‘Sorry, sir.’
‘Naturally we’ve been trying to get through to them by other means, telegraph, wireless. We do need to communicate from time to time. Probably the wireless will work. You are something of a last resort.’
‘Very well, sir.’ He stood waiting for details.
The lieutenant, who didn’t look much older than Smirnov, waved his arms impatiently. ‘What are you waiting for, man, a push?’
‘But how should I -’
‘Ride through the city to the German lines, and wave that bloody flag before the Germans shoot your balls off, and make them read the letters. All right? . . .’
Of course it wasn’t as simple as that.
The first part of the assignment was easy enough. On his requisitioned motorcycle, he took a direct route north-west through the most picturesque part of the city, through Palace Square, across the Neva – from the bridge he had a fine view of the Peter and Paul Fortress, the oldest building in the city, now a prison, and scarred, like so many of the city’s landmarks, by the Germans’ shelling. But that morning the streets were filling, with confused and frightened civilians; more than once he had to gun his engine and wave to clear a path. Evidently the news was out that the Martians had landed to the south, and of course one would have an impulse to flee - but where to? The north was the obvious route, but the Germans were to the north, they had not magically gone away, and a German bullet would kill you just as effectively as the Martians’ magical Heat-Ray. The driving got easier as he reached the north-west suburbs, nearer the front line, and passed along streets that were much more badly damaged, and all but deserted.
Once outside the city proper, he first had to produce his packet of papers when he got to the rear trenches of the Russian line.
He was stopped by a sentry, then taken to a corporal, and then another lieutenant, who read a covering letter with apparent amusement. He looked Smirnov over. ‘Sooner you than me carrying this, on such a fine morning. I’ll assign a couple of men to cover you – and, corporal, find him a bloody big stick to wave his flag on, will you?’
So Smirnov found himself disarmed, and sent out through a string of communications trenches to the front line. Then it was up a short ladder and out of the trenches – after the muddy enclosure, out in the sunlight so suddenly, it felt like being born - and he was led out by scouts through a gap in the wire.
After that he was on his own, marching through churned-up mud, waving a flag that seemed ever more pathetically small the further out he got. He had been to the front before but had not been beyond the trenches.
‘Halt.’
The word was in Russian, coarsely accented. A man stood before him, in grey field uniform, mud-splashed as Smirnov’s was. Smirnov did not know German insignias well enough to be able to read his rank. His heart hammered. But he said cordially, ‘Good morning.’
The man laughed. ‘And to you.’
‘You speak Russian?’
The German sighed. ‘I studied it at university. And my reward is this, a conversation with an idiot, in a position where I am likely to get my head blown in by one of your snipers at any moment.’
‘As I by yours.’
‘That’s true. But you started it. What do you want?’
‘Nothing. I come with a gift.’ Smirnov held out his pack of papers, now slightly mud-splashed. ‘This is for your commanding officer.’
‘Ah. A message from the famous General Brusilov, no doubt.’
‘As a matter of fact, yes.’
‘Who are you, his boyfriend?’
‘Just a messenger.’
The German took the papers, and eyed him shrewdly. ‘I think we both know what this is about. And what do you think Brusilov has to say, private?’
Oddly,Smirnov hadn’t thought that through. ‘If I were the General, I would suggest that you Germans lower your arms and join us in a fight against a common foe.’
The German nodded. ‘Just so. Because it will take them mere minutes to burn their way through your peasant army. Together at least we may slow them a little longer – is that the calculation?’
‘I’m just the messenger.’
The German considered the papers. ‘If it were up to me,’ he said, ‘I would join you, for two reasons. One is our common humanity. And second -’
‘Yes?’
‘We have heard – it is only rumour, here on the line – that the cylinders have fallen close to Berlin, too.’
‘Ah.’
‘Germans and Russians, two mighty hosts. If joined together, perhaps even the Martians would find us formidable opponents. Do you think?’
‘Maybe.’
The German looked over Smirnov’s shoulder. ‘Russia is unimpressive. It is only – what, sixty years? – since serfdom was abolished in your land. Sixty years! Your Tsar still rules -’
‘He answers to the Duma now. The convention of 1917 -’
‘Is that the one where they locked up all the Bolsheviks?’ Smirnov’s grasp of politics was poor. ‘Who?’
‘Never mind. And as for your army, you have millions of men in arms, but they are poorly trained, poorly equipped . . .’
‘So poor are we that our city is not yet named “Wilhelmsburg”, as your Kaiser boasted it would be years ago.’
The German laughed. ‘I give you that. Even if we fight together, the Martians may defeat us. Then what?’
Smirnov grinned. ‘Then we retreat, as before Napoleon. No conqueror in history has taken the whole of Russia. It is impossible. As the Martians too will find.’
‘Hah! Well, I must take your letter to my commander, who will give it to his commander, and then to the generals, who are probably speaking by field telephone to Brusilov already . . . I look forward to marching down the Nevsky Prospekt side by side with you, my friend.’
‘What is your name?’
‘Voigt. Hans Voigt.’
‘I am Andrei Smirnov. Farewell, Hans Voigt.’
‘Farewell, Andrei.’
They saluted each other, each in their styles, turned on their heels, and parted.
19
THE ADVANCE FROM THE ELBE
By the time of Smirnov’s meeting, the Martians had indeed fallen on Berlin, or close to it.
Walter Jenkins, huddled in his nest of communications gear and charts, maps and calculations, took some time to establish that the Martians had come down on the north bank of the Elbe, near the town of Dessau, some forty miles south-west of the city itself. Walter did not drive – he had always felt, he said, that his nerves were not up to it – but, having been a refugee once, he travelled with a motorist’s pocket atlas of local roads tucked into his overcoat pocket. A glance at this was sufficient to show that the Martians’ obvious line of attack on central Berlin would be a straight advance to the north-east – which would bring them close to Dahlem, or even through it, and other suburbs at this south-western corner of the conurbation.
Therefore Walter had to flee.
He did not leave in a panic, as he might once have done; he always said he remembered the lessons of his time with Albert Cook fifteen years earlier, when the two of them had sought to cross a Martian-infested Surrey. Having tidied away his notes in a stout fireproof box, he donned his coat and cloth cap and heavy walking boots, and he filled his pockets with bread and cheese, and matches, an electric torch, a pocket knife – and a pack of cigarettes with which to win friends. He had his pocket atlas, and a German phrase book to back up his own faulty grasp of the language. And he had a notebook and pencils; he never travelled without a means of recording his adventures, or more specifically his inner musings.
He washed his face, splashing cold water to try to induce wakefulness. Part of him regretted now his lack of sleep for so long. He scribbled a quick note to the villa’s owners and left it on the kitchen table, weighed down by an empty coffee mu
g. Then he glanced around once more with some regret at his maps and calculations and logs.
An outside observer would have thought him leisurely over these preparations. It will always be a puzzle to me how conscious Walter was or not of his own decision-making at such times – for, of course, every hour wasted brought peril closer to his door.
It was seven a.m. by the time he emerged from the house, under a clear, brightening sky. He locked the door carefully behind him, pocketing one key and hiding a spare on a lintel. Then he dug his bicycle out of its shelter at the side of the villa, near the potting sheds. This was a Raleigh, a solid English make which he had had imported at considerable expense; only two days before he had oiled the chain and checked the tyres.
Here was Walter Jenkins, caught for the second time in his life between an advancing Martian force and a vulnerable human city.
It was already an hour since, to the south-east - if they had kept to the timetable that they had used around the world - the Martians had left their pit, and they must already have been on the move; already humans must be dying as they flung themselves in the face of that advance. If he were rational, he knew, he would get out of the way altogether – head west or east, to Wustermark or Schonefeld perhaps. But if Freud and his disciples had taught Walter one thing about himself, it was that whatever drove him at times like this was deeper than the rational. Once he had walked straight into a London he believed the Martians still occupied. Fifteen years later, so it must be again.
In that German dawn, curiosity and dread warred in him; not for the first time, curiosity won. To the heart of Berlin!
He told me he grinned as he climbed aboard that bicycle, and pedalled away.
He headed towards the Rheinstrasse, one of the great highways that leads to the centre of the city.
Long before he got to the junction with the main road he was panting, his legs and backside aching. When the Martians had first come to England he had been forty-one years old; now he was in his late fifties and he felt a lot more used up. But he pedalled grimly, sweating inside his heavy coat.
He saw nothing unusual about the morning, at first. Cars and motor-cycles passed in an orderly fashion, and people came and went, many of them in smart office clothing. He was passing through a suburb of commuters; people would travel by motor-car, tram and bus to jobs in the offices and department stores in the centre of the city. He saw no schoolchildren heading for their classes – but then this was a Saturday; Walter was not sure of the local routine, but maybe lessons had been suspended. Perhaps the alarm had not yet spread. Perhaps the Kaiser’s government was still giving out reassuring messages: Work as usual! - the menace will be contained.
He came upon the first soldiers at the junction with the Rheinstrasse.
Vehicles, trucks and armoured cars and motor-cycles, and a few small artillery pieces, had been gathered at the side of the road. Landsers – German tommies in grey greatcoats - stood around smoking and talking quietly, while field wireless sets crackled. In a small park opposite, others were digging, hastily constructing a complicated earthwork. Walter got off his bicycle to see better; it would be a star-shaped formation surrounded by a trench, with machine guns placed at the corners, and a big Howitzer at the centre.
Walter approached a couple of men beside a batteredlooking artillery piece, drawn by a couple of patient horses. Walter chose these men because they weren’t smoking; now he produced the pack he had brought for this very purpose. In his clumsy German, he asked, ‘You are going to meet the Martians? I heard they landed near Dessau.’
One of the men took Walter’s cigarette with no apparent interest in conversation. The other was a corporal, smaller, darker, more shrewd-looking. He said, ‘That’s what we heard. Waiting for more units to get their backsides out of bed and form up here, and then we advance. Air cover as well, we’re promised that.’
‘They’re on the move, then. The Martians.’
‘Out of the Dessau pit, yes.’ The German word he used for ‘pit’ was Adlerhorst, ‘eagle’s nest’. ‘We already put up some resistance at Brueck, Treuenbritzen. Quite a force coming, apparently. Nobody knows quite how many. The scouts were too busy running away to count, probably. But it’s said that some of the Martians have peeled off to head for Brandenburg and Potsdam.’
There was a droning noise, high in the sky. Walter glanced up to see a brace of high-flying aeroplanes, heading back the way he had come: scouts, perhaps. ‘Soon there will be better information.’
‘Yes.’
‘Stop them before they get to the city. That the plan?’
He eyed Walter, taking in the residual burn-scars on his face. ‘You English?’
‘Is it obvious? My German is poor, I know.’
‘You seen anything of the Martians over there?’
‘Some. Especially the first lot.’ He gestured at his face. ‘I got this fleeing from their advance. But I was never a fighting man.’
‘Even so,’ said the corporal, ‘even so, to see them up close . . . No doubt I’ll have the privilege before the day is out.’
‘They are overwhelming.’
Again a glint of shrewd intelligence in the man’s eye; this was a veteran who would take nothing for granted, and not underestimate his interplanetary enemy. ‘What about you? Where will you go?’
‘Into the city.’
The corporal eyed him, then shrugged. ‘Suit yourself.’
There was a revving of engines, a stirring among the men. Walter had seen enough of the military to understand; somewhere orders had been issued and received.
The corporal nipped out his cigarette and stored the stub behind his ear. ‘Thanks for the smoke. Now you’d better get out of here before my lieutenant requisitions your bicycle.’
20
TO THE CAPITAL
It was only a few miles from Dahlem to central Berlin.
But Walter made slow progress. As he neared the centre the roads were increasingly crowded, with motor-cars, buses, even a few horse-drawn vehicles – and pedestrians, fewer officeworker types by this time, more of them with the familiar look of refugees, families on the move with children, old folk, suitcases. Walter was forced to dismount and push his cycle through the crush. Just as in London in 1907, there were boys selling newspapers, literally hot off the press, bearing the latest news of the coming of the Martians. Every so often, too, an official car would come by, military or police or government, perhaps a black Mercedes with official flags fluttering, and the civilian traffic would squeeze out of the way. There were soldiers everywhere, and police – in short, Walter reflected dryly, a plethora of uniforms.
If the Dahlem commuters had not quite fully grasped the significance of the day, by now Berlin was waking fully to the implication of the extraplanetary force that was approaching. And yet – so far at least – there was none of the sense of the breakdown of society that Walter had observed in London coming so quickly in those dreadful June days of ’07. Perhaps he should not have been surprised. Of course, if the Martians came, they would come to Berlin! And of course the Germans would be ready. To Walter’s astonishment, a cleaning truck came by, toiling along the gutter, brushes whirling. On such a day! That was Berlin for you.
But even as the truck passed he heard a sound like distant thunder – coming from the east, surely the sound of guns, big ones - and then came a stink of burning. The crowds stirred.
There was a greater sense of urgency as the pedestrians pushed on, the motor-cars began to bunch up at blockages and sounded their horns, and soldiers and police shouted commands.
Walter reached Potsdamer Platz, which he thought of as Berlin’s equivalent of Piccadilly Circus. Here the traffic was chaotic, the pavements even more crowded. But the brilliant electric advertising panels still glowed brightly in the May morning, and many of the shops and department stores were open, Walter saw, somewhat bemused.
And then, quite unexpectedly, Walter glimpsed a fighting machine. Faintly misty in the air it was,
rising above the buildings to the north and east of his position. He saw its bronze cowl, unmistakeable, glinting bright in the flat sunlight – there and gone, moving out of sight as its animal grace took it away. A brace of aeroplanes tore over the city in that direction, very high.
Electrified, Walter began to battle his way north: where the Martians were, that was where he wanted to be.
21
WITH THE MARTIANS IN BERLIN
Walter reached the Ebertstrasse, which runs along the eastern edge of the Tiergarten, the city park. Here, Walter found, people were mostly heading south, more urgently now, and he had to battle to make way – and, after a hundred yards, regretfully, he finally had to abandon his bicycle.
In the park itself – to Walter’s recollection mainly memorable before that day for its extensive collection of VERBOTEN signs – civilians had been excluded, and soldiers laboured at trenchworks and artillery emplacements. Walter thought he recognised anti-aircraft weapons, even big naval guns, as well as field artillery pieces. But he had no time to pause and study this frantic build-up as he pushed on against the flow.
He tried to understand how it was he had seen the Martian machine off to the north-east. He had been running ahead of their advance from the south-west. In the two advances they had made on London, in 1907 and 1920, they had driven more or less directly into the heart of the city. But the fightingmachines were fast, and it was evident that the Martians had become more flexible in their tactics – and indeed, it would be shown retrospectively that the Martians’ tactics varied around the planet in this war, in part for differences of geography and human resistance, in part, perhaps, through sheer experimentation. Perhaps this assault group which might number hundreds of machines - had split into packs, which were now probing into central Berlin from west, east, even north, as well as directly from the south. This would bring chaos to any planned evacuation of the city, if all possible escape routes were cut off . . . And if surrounded, Berlin would be turned into a ghetto by the Martians, and a gruesome larder. Some fate for the capital of Prussia, Germany and Mitteleuropa!
The Massacre of Mankind Page 42
