by Leo Kessler
‘What’s it like?’ Stuermer called thickly. ‘The rock face?’
‘Shitty, sir,’ Meier said, staring up at the almost perpendicular wall that rose some hundred metres above the barn. No wonder the Karatski had not bothered to post people up there. Although they were a mountain folk themselves, they hadn’t thought anyone could tackle that sort of a pitch. ‘I couldn’t do it.’
‘Could I?’
Meier hesitated for an instant. ‘I think so, sir. But it’d be a shit under these conditions.’
‘Good enough. Drop down. I can’t carry you any longer, you Bavarian bull.’
Meier dropped lightly, for such a big man, just as Haas, his face ashen, his lips pressed tightly together to prevent them from trembling, approached his C.O.
‘What is it?’
‘Sir,’ he blurted out, his face suddenly revealing the depth of his misery and self-loathing, ‘I’ve let you down!’
‘Nonsense,’ Stuermer cut him short, his mind already full of the one way of escape left to the trapped mountaineers.
‘But I have, sir. I panicked. I should have remained out there and held them off until you had a chance to get the men outside. I’m—’ he gulped before he spoke the word, ‘I’m a rotten coward.’
‘You are a young officer, who lost his nerve in his first action. Now you must let me—’
‘I know what you are going to do, sir. And I don’t think you’ve got a chance. Once they spot you attempting that climb, they’ll concentrate all their fire upon you. It stands to reason.’
‘Agreed. But we have smoke bombs. Once I’m up there—’
‘But you’ve got to be up there first.’ Again the young officer cut him short, knowing that if Stuermer didn’t accept his offer now, tried to appease him, he would break down and sink to the floor, a weeping abject mess.
‘What do you suggest then, Haas?’ Stuermer snapped, knowing how right the boy was.
With a final effort of will, Lieutenant Haas forced himself to say the two simple words, ‘A decoy!’
A knotted ball of jangling, writhing nerves filled his lower body. He felt as if he might wet himself at any moment. Hastily he grasped the rope, while below in the barn, Meier steadied it. He took one last deep gasp of the acrid air and thrust his head through the hole in the roof. Next instant he had begun the climb to the ledge on which the rope was anchored.
From below there came angry shouts. Slugs started to chip the rock all around him. Something stung his cheek. Blood spurted up hot and wet. He ignored it, concentrating now on heaving himself upwards, trying to forget that overwhelming fear, the knowledge that soon — very soon — hard, hot lead would smack into the defenceless soft flesh of his back.
Young Lieutenant Haas had begun his last climb.
Stuermer heard the new salvo of shots and knew they had spotted Haas. It was now or never. He slung the container of smoke bombs over his shoulder and reached up to the place, a little covered by the barn’s chimney, where Meier had broken open another exit. Easily, he swung himself up and through it. For an instant he knelt behind the stone chimney. Down below in the battle-littered streets, the robed figures of the tribesmen were hidden in the doorways, firing at the boy going up the steep cliff like a Bavarian mountain goat. The slugs whined off the rock in angry flurries of blue and red sparks everywhere, but he seemed to bear a charmed life. So far he hadn’t been hurt.
‘Good luck, boy!’ Stuermer whispered under his breath, and then forgot Haas. Swinging round, still concealed by the chimney, he surveyed the almost sheer face. Then he spotted what he sought: a small indentation in the rock, which might offer him some elementary cover from the riflemen down below until he was out of range of their ancient pieces.
Taking a deep breath, he sprang from his cover and grasped the rock in his practised hands. His boots dug into a fissure. They held. His race against time had commenced.
The slug had hit him in the right shoulder. It hurt like hell. Twice he slid into the darkness of near-unconsciousness and twice he struggled up from the depths of the black stupor and kept on climbing, how, he knew not. All he knew was that he must keep on going and keep attracting their fire. ‘Nightmare,’ he told himself, I’m having a nightmare. It’s not true. It’s not happening to me. I’m not crawling up a cliff face I would never have tackled in reality. I’m not wounded — and I’m not going to fall to my death in a moment. Nightmare!’
The slugs continued to whine off the rock all around him. He was hit again. He hardly felt the pain. He was halfway up now. Two or three metres away, wavering in the red mist in front of his eyes now, he saw a ledge. There he would rest. Yes, there he would rest! He crawled on, the bullets striking the stone in furious flurries of angry red sparks. He did not hear them. He did not hear the angry cries from below. Now he heard nothing, felt nothing. His sole concern was on keeping going until he reached that ledge.
He hooked his bleeding, torn fingers into the rock, his feet automatically seeking for a toe-hold. With a grunt, he levered himself upwards and onto it.
For an instant the fog which had swamped his mind lifted. He saw the burning barn below, the angry upturned faces, heard the whine of the bullets off the rock and knew fear for the last time. He was alone and going to die — and he was only eighteen; he had never even known a woman. Then the deadening fog swept over him again and the fear vanished.
Slowly, infinitely slowly, he raised himself on the ledge to his full height so that he presented a target which would anger them, keep them firing, would draw their attention from Colonel Stuermer. The bullets increased in volume. The tribesmen even forgot the fire-bombs in their anger. Now all their efforts were concentrated on bringing down the man who taunted them thus.
A burst struck the rock near his head. The chips showered his face. He felt the pain momentarily. He laughed crazily. ‘Miss—’ he began, just as the volley of rifle fire ripped open his stomach. He felt nothing. There was no fear now. There was only a vast, heedless indifference. His knees started to fold beneath him. He did not try to stop the movement, although he knew quite clearly he would fall if he didn’t. Like a stone he fell. He made no sound. That final scream of unbearable agony never passed his lips. He hit the ground with a dull sickening thud. His body bounced up again with the impact, and in that instant before his spine snapped like a rotten twig and he died, Lieutenant Haas was glad.
Stuermer heard the crash of the body hitting the ground and felt the grey bitterness of defeat; he could almost taste its sourness. So young, and dead already. Then he thought of the others and forced out of his mind the bitter lassitude which had threatened to overcome him. He must save the Stormtroop!
He fought his way up the sheer rock face, his muscles afire, the breath rasping in great gulping inhalations into his oxygen-starved lungs, keeping up an impossible pace, knowing that every second counted now. On and on. A brutal gasping agony. He was nearly there now. Still they hadn’t discovered him. He ripped off his nails as his right hand sought and failed to find a purchase on a slab of rock that gave way beneath his desperate fingers. He tried again, ignoring the pain in his hand, which made him want to scream out loud. He found a hold. He climbed on. Below, the fire bombs were hissing through the air again. He could hear the fierce crackle of the burning barn.
He reached the ledge. His bleeding fingers dug into the earth until they were locked in solid rock. He could not afford to fall now. He found a toe-hold and raised himself. He gasped with surprise. Twenty metres away a man was sitting, long rifle between his knees, with his back towards Stuermer, smoking a cigarette calmly, as if the brutal murder taking place below was happening on another planet.
Every movement as smooth and controlled as possible, Stuermer wormed his way over the edge of the cliff. Praying that the man wouldn’t hear him, grateful for the wind that blew up on the top and drowned some of his movements, he started to crawl towards the unsuspecting sentry. Fifteen metres…ten metres… Still the sentry didn’t hear him…
>
Five metres. With his good hand, Stuermer freed the mountain knife at his waist…three metres. The man must hear him now!
Suddenly Stuermer saw the sentry’s right shoulder move. He tensed. The skinny yellow claw which gripped the long rifle tightened. The man started to turn. Stuermer dived forward, knife upraised. The two of them crashed together and the impact flung the man to the ground. Stuermer’s knife flashed. He grunted. The sentry howled and the breath left him in a violent, convulsive exhalation. Stuermer heard the thud of his knife-hilt striking home against the ribs. He plunged it in once again and the sentry’s crazy writhings ceased. He went limp. He was dead!
For a moment the two of them, the dead and quick, lay there, clasped together like spent lovers. Then Stuermer pushed the dead man away and sprang to his feet, the bloody knife clattering to the rock. He doubled back to the edge of the cliff. He flung the first smoke-bomb over. It exploded with a soft plop. Almost immediately thick white smoke streamed from it. Another followed. In seconds the attacking tribesmen vanished from view. Stuermer did not waste another second. With frantic, bleeding fingers he started to play out the rope…
Note
1. The woman spoke the truth. In 1946 that bill was presented, and the Karatski disappeared from history, all quarter of a million of them (author).
SECTION THREE:
THE BATTLE FOR A PASS
ONE
He was smaller than most of them had imagined, fatter too, and with that half smile on his thick sensual lips they could understand why the Americans called him, with such disrespect, ‘Uncle Joe’. Yet there was no denying the power of the man. Even the simple gesture of stuffing a cigarette into his hooked pipe, while the most powerful officers in the Red Army waited for him to speak, revealed the might this pock-marked Georgian possessed.
Finally he was finished and began to explain the reason for their hurried summons from the Southern Front. ‘Comrades,’ he said, and his Georgian accent was very evident, ‘I don’t need to tell you that the Red Army has suffered a very severe reverse on the Southern Front. Our troops have been driven back across the Kuban and into the Caucasus.’
The generals lowered their gazes. Were heads going to roll? Was that the reason they had been called to Moscow? Siberia and the murderous labour camps of the snow wilderness — was that where they were heading after they left here?
‘I don’t need to tell you, either, what the loss of the Caucasus would mean for us. We could afford the loss of the oil. But if Turkey entered the war on the German side as a result of that loss…’ The little dictator shrugged. Well, I need to say no more, do I, comrades?’
There was a hasty murmur of agreement.
Josef Stalin puffed almost happily at his hooked pipe, his avuncular face wreathed in blue smoke, as if he didn’t have a care in the world.
In the pause, Aleksandr Poskrebyshev, Stalin’s sinister hunchbacked secretary, hobbled from general to general pouring eau de cologne on their outstretched hands. Gratefully the generals dabbed the cologne on their foreheads in the Soviet fashion — whether because of the heat in the room or whether on account of their fears about what might be coming, known only to themselves. ‘Old Leather Face’, as they called the dictator behind his back, watched them with something akin to amusement in his dark brown eyes.
Finally Stalin broke the heavy silence. ‘You understand our problem then, comrades and that it is imperative that we hold the Germans back when they attack — and our Intelligence tells us that they will attack soon. Now in what direction will they attack?’ He answered his own question, as the silent generals had expected him to. ‘The Fritzes’ alternatives are limited, due to the terrain. Down the valley of the Kuban, swing south to — say — Suchumi and then along the coastal littoral of the Black Sea south-east and into the Caucasus.’
There was a murmur of agreement from the generals and Colonel-General Kozlov, the senior officer present, said, ‘That is what we think, Comrade Stalin. The Stavka1 is of the same opinion.’
‘Is that so, Comrade Kozlov?’ Stalin said with deceptive softness. ‘And you have made your dispositions accordingly, I presume?’
‘Yes, Comrade Stalin,’ said Kozlov, a broad-chested bear of a man, whose tight-fitting tunic, with its heavy gold epaulettes, was bright with the battle ribbons of forty years of campaigning. ‘We have the mass of three armies, plus several independent artillery and armoured corps, packed into the bottle-neck, from which they must emerge on the Black Sea coast.’
‘I see. Therefore you have put all your eggs in one basket, Comrade Colonel-General,’ Stalin said, his voice still very low.
Kozlov flushed. ‘I don’t quite understand, Comrade Stalin—’ he began.
‘And because of it you deserve a kick up your damn stupid kulak arse!’ Stalin exploded, cutting into his words brutally. ‘Do you think the Fritzes are fool enough not to realize that we will be waiting for them once they move along the Black Sea coast? It is as if they are giving us a written invitation to be ready to receive them there. No, Kozlov, the Fritz generals are not as mad as their master! They do not play foolish games like that.’
Kozlov’s professional pride was hurt. ‘Comrade Stalin, aerial reconnaissance shows, however, that the Germans are massing their forces above the Black Sea coast. Besides, how else can they get out of the Kuban Basin?’
By way of an answer, Stalin clicked his fingers. The hunchback hobbled over to him, bearing the map, as if he could read his master’s mind. He spread it, uncommanded, across the great marble table at which the Czars had once signed their papers.
Stalin rapped it with his pipe. ‘Here, Comrade Generals, here!’
Kozlov looked at the dictator’s pock-marked face, as if he had gone out of his mind. ‘But Comrade Stalin,’ he objected, ‘those are the high mountains. Even in summer they are virtually unsurmountable.’
‘Did they never teach you about Hannibal in that academy to which we sent you to learn to read and write?’ Stalin sneered.
‘Hannibal did not possess armour. Nor did he have to transport heavy shells and rations for half a million men,’ Kozlov said, knowing now he was not only risking his command, but also his neck.
‘But he crossed the Alps in the dead of winter and kicked the Romans up their surprised arses, just as the Fritzes might well do to you, if I were not here to protect you from your own foolishness.’ Stalin ignored the looks on his generals’ faces. He had broken their power in ’37. Those who had survived the Army purges were yes-men; he knew he could do with them what he wished. They were all deadly afraid of him, although they had the largest army in the world under their command. ‘I want each army to relinquish one corps and transfer it to the rear of the mountains. I want armour and artillery too. You will say that you cannot afford to lose the troops. But you must! You must make do with what you, have left.’
‘Comrade Stalin.’ It was Lieutenant-General Kerst, as precise and as methodical as the Germans whom he fought and from whose country his own forefathers had emigrated to Russia. What indication have you that the Germans might attempt to cross the mountains?’ The voice was quiet and respectful, but there was iron in it all the same.
‘This. For the last three days a unit of the German High Alpine Corps has been pushing from Cherkassy up into the mountains. It is obvious that they are some kind of reconnaissance party for a large group to follow. Once the Alpine Corps has traversed the mountains, what is to stop the rest from following?’
Now the generals began to forget their initial disbelief; there was the dawning of respect on their hard wooden faces. But General Kerst was not absolutely convinced. ‘One reconnaissance party, with all due respect, Comrade Stalin, does not mean more than that there is a reconnaissance party in the area.’ He shrugged slightly. ‘There could be a good half dozen reasons for their presence there.’ There was a murmur of agreement from the others.
‘You could be right, Kerst, save for one thing — our agent reports that they are equipp
ed to climb the highest peak. That, for my poor humble self,’ he added cynically, ‘is proof enough.’
Still the methodical General was not convinced. ‘And of what calibre is this agent? What does he know of climbing?’
‘Not he, Comrade Kerst, but she,’ Stalin said, pleased that he could spring his surprise on them.
‘She?’
‘Yes, my dear comrade, no other than Comrade Roswitha Mikhailovna! Now are you convinced?’
They didn’t need to answer his question. The looks of awe on their faces told him all he wished to know; they were convinced all right. ‘Now then,’ he said briskly; leaning forward across the great table, ‘this is what we are going to do…’
Note
1. The Soviet Supreme High Command.
TWO
Roswitha Mikhailovna had been exactly ten years old when the Russian Revolution had broken out in 1917. It had changed her whole world. Her father, a humble peasant, had been murdered by the Whites, and her mother had gone off with one of the wandering bands of soldier-bandits that were constantly passing through their miserable village. She had never returned.
In 1920, after three years of living off the land, trying to feed herself as best she could in a starving countryside, fighting off the constant demands of the men of all races and all political persuasions who tried to go to bed with the handsome blonde virgin, she finally landed in an orphanage in Moscow as a ‘ward of the state’.
She had spent her next ten years in such institutions, making up for her lost schooling, developing her magnificent body in order to achieve her aim — the qualification of Master of Sport and the teaching job that went with it. The killing routine of the training camps — the six o’clock bugle, followed by Swedish drill before breakfast, the hours in the gym, the long afternoons of basketball, the para-military training — had meant nothing to her. Where many of her male colleagues were exhausted, glassy-eyed and lathered in sweat, she was still fresh, bright-eyed and eager for more.
