by Leo Kessler
‘Yes, Comrade Captain?’
‘The rope — and start with the big one.’
Lydia needed no further instructions. While Roswitha kept the three Germans covered with her pistol, an unwavering look in her eyes, although her injured hand was now throbbing again painfully, Lydia crawled behind a glowering Meier and started to tie his hands together by the wrist, before finally looping the rope around his big neck so that he would strangle himself if he attempted to move his wrists overly much. ‘What are you trying to do, you little slit,’ Ox-Jo growled sourly, ‘cut my turnip off?’
Lydia, who understood no German, shrugged and crawled on to the next man, Jap. She began to repeat the performance, before starting on Colonel Stuermer, who fought off the feeling of heart-sickening defeat, telling himself that he must concentrate solely on the present, be ready to take advantage of any moment of weakness on the part of the two women.
‘Now we sleep,’ Roswitha announced, apparently satisfied with her companion’s work. ‘First my comrade and then myself. But beware, one false move and we shall shoot.’
She said something in Russian to the other girl. Gratefully Lydia crawled into the nearest sleeping bag, sighing with undisguised pleasure as she felt its warmth. Within moments she was fast asleep, not even noticing the other sleeping bag which Roswitha draped across her body gently and lovingly.
‘I’d rather fuck ’em than fight ’em,’ Ox-Jo whispered wearily.
‘You and fucking,’ Jap whispered back contemptuously. ‘You didn’t do her much good back in Cherkassy, did yer? She must have liked that salami sausage of yourn a lot — I don’t think!’
Colonel Stuermer shifted his position for the umpteenth time, straining at the rope and feeling it cut cruelly into his neck as he tried to get comfortable and at the same time fight off the creeping icy cold. But no matter how he twisted and turned, he was still chilled to the bone. The little woman must know her rope and knots, he told himself wearily.
‘What do you think they’re gonna do to us, the slits I mean, sir?’ Meier hissed, noting Stuermer’s movement.
Stuermer shrugged and wished a moment later he hadn’t.
‘Kill us?’ Meier persisted. ‘They can’t do that. They’re slits after all, even if they are Ivans.’
‘They say that the female of the species is the more deadly,’ Stuermer commented drily.
‘Stop that talk!’ Roswitha said and jerked her pistol up threateningly.
‘We’ll take the little slit,’ Meier hissed swiftly, and closing his eyes he pretended to sleep.
Now it was two hours later. The other woman was on guard, a shapeless blur in the white gloom of the hut — the primus had long since gone out. But the three men feigning sleep knew that she held a pistol pointed towards them and they knew too that the light was good enough for her to blast them to eternity at any sign that they were attempting to escape.
Still Meier worked on doggedly at his task. Half an hour before, Jap had managed to pass him his bridge and now the big Bavarian was attempting to saw through Colonel Stuermer’s bonds with the blunt metal loop that connected the false teeth. It was an immensely laborious business and in spite of the freezing cold, Ox was sweating with effort. All the same he kept at it, urged on by the knowledge that the blonde woman who had once slept with him would shoot him in the morning as easily as she had once opened her wonderful long legs to let him enter her.
Time and time again, Stuermer bit back a cry of pain, as the rope dug deep into his swollen, chaffed wrists or jerked alarmingly at his throat, as Ox-Jo tugged a little too hard. But he knew, too, that time was running out. He didn’t know exactly what he was going to do with the women, if and when Ox-Jo managed to free him; but he told himself he would worry about that eventuality once he was released.
Time passed leadenly. Stuermer cocked his ear to one side to check whether the barely glimpsed figure of the woman in the sleeping bag had nodded off. But her breath seemed the same as ever and he guessed she was still awake, unlike her companion who slept the heavy sleep of the utterly exhausted.
Abruptly he felt a soft crack. Behind him Meier hissed, ‘through a bit, sir. Do you think you could use your strength to part more, please?’ He heard Meier suck his bleeding fingers.
‘I’ll try,’ he answered through gritted teeth.
With bowed head and hunched shoulders, he made a titanic effort to break the rope, the veins standing out at his temples. The rope gouged deep into his flesh and he bit his bottom lip till the blood came in order to stifle his cry of pain. The damned rope wouldn’t give, and in the end, he was forced to say, ‘Try a bit more, Ox, I can’t do it.’
Meier said nothing, but Stuermer could guess what he was thinking. It would soon be dawn and then it would be too late. The NCO started to saw at the rope with the blunt curved metal once more.
The minutes ground on. Stuermer felt another soft snap, as yet another strand gave. This time it was the colonel who took the initiative. ‘Hang on, Ox,’ he hissed, ‘I’ll have another go.’ He took a deep breath, shoulders hunched, the air tight in his lungs. He exhaled and in that same instant raised his shoulders and with all his strength thrust his wrists outwards.
Something gave! He felt the pressure on his swollen wrists relax and it was only with an effort of will that he prevented himself from crying out loud in triumph. He had done it! But in that same moment, the dark figure in the sleeping-bag rose, and behind him Meier gasped with shock, as if he feared that they had been discovered after all.
But they were still in luck. The blonde woman whispered something in Russian to the other woman and struggling into her parka, she crawled through the tunnel outside. ‘Going to take a leak perhaps?’ Jap suggested in a whisper.
‘Perhaps,’ Stuermer agreed, knowing that it was now or never. With the other woman outside they stood a much better chance and besides, he guessed that she would not go back to sleep again. Now it was almost dawn and she would want to deal with them and get the dirty business over with. He strained once more and felt his bonds flop to the ground behind him. His wrists were free!
For one brief instant, he massaged his hands to restore the circulation before whispering urgently. ‘Quick, Ox, back to me!’ Meier reacted immediately.
With fingers that felt like clumsy, thick sausages, Stuermer fumbled frantically with the other man’s bonds, ignoring the burning stabs of pain as his nailless fingers snagged and caught on the knots, scattering fresh gobs of blood on the ground.
‘Good enough, sir,’ Ox-Jo hissed. ‘I can do the rest alone. Take care of the slit.’ He grunted and gave a stifled sigh of relief, which told Stuermer he had freed himself too.
‘I’ll count up to three, Ox,’ Stuermer whispered, ‘then I’ll go for her. Get ready to tackle the other, if she comes in. No killing if possible…One…two…three. Now!’
Stuermer hurtled himself forward from the sitting position. His shoulder socketed into the surprised girl’s stomach. The thwack of hard muscle hitting soft flesh filled the hut. The girl’s breath came out of her surprised lungs with a sound like a deflating balloon. She sank to the ground while Stuermer sprawled full length. But she did not relinquish her hold on the pistol. Much more speedily than Stuermer she sprang to her feet, all breath gone out of her skinny body, but with the pistol raised, finger crooked round the trigger, about to fire.
Meier didn’t hesitate one second. He dived forward and collided with the girl. The explosion crashed back and forth in the tight hut, as the two of them — girl and NCO — clung together in its middle, seemingly frozen thus for eternity, both their eyes wide and startled with shock.
Stuermer gazed up at them in awed alarm. For a moment all movement ceased, as if it had been cut off by the blade of a sharp knife. There was nothing but the loud, echoing silence which seemed louder than the clamour which had just preceded it.
Meier, the pistol wrestled out of the girl’s limp, dying hand, fired again. In that place the noise was deafening
and at that range, the dying girl was lifted clean off her feet. She slammed against the wooden wall, her entrails bulging out above her leather belt, arms extended against the planks, as if she had been crucified there. For one incredible instant she remained thus. Then the life drained from her completely. Eyes wide and empty with death, she slowly crumpled to the floor in the same moment that the alarmed voice from outside cried, ‘Lydia!’ and then, obviously in control of her emotions again, harshly and menacingly, ‘Stoi, nia dvigatissya!’
Stuermer did not need to know Russian to understand the threat in those words. ‘Quick, Ox, you’ve got the pistol — through the planks and round the back. I’ll draw her fire in the tunnel. You get her from behind.’
‘But, Colonel—’
‘No buts about it,’ Stuermer rapped, knowing just how completely trapped they would be in the hut once they had lost the initiative, ‘get a move on!’
Meier waited no longer. Springing over the still tied Jap, who looked up at him reproachfully, he rammed his right boot against the plank to the back of the hut. It snapped and broke at once. Reaching down, he ripped it out with his big paws, as if it were made of matchwood. A second one followed, to reveal packed hard snow. A moment later Meier was burrowing into it like some enormous snow rat.
Stuermer waited to see no more. Gripping the dead girl, his face wrinkled up in self-disgust at what he must do, he started to push her in front of him down the dark tunnel which led to the outside.
‘Stoi?’ the woman outside commanded, her voice a little unsure.
Stuermer sighed his approval. Perhaps the other woman thought the sentry was still alive. He continued his progress towards the patch of milky white, which indicated it would soon be dawn.
Just before he reached the exit, he drew a deep breath and thrust the dead girl in front of him.
‘Lydia!’ He caught the gasp of surprise and shock.
In the same moment that he pushed her outside to fall limp and lifeless into the scuffed snow, the woman screamed, ‘You perverted Fritz swine!’ and fired a wild volley at the exit.
Stuermer ducked hurriedly. The wood splinters crackled and hissed around his head, as he tried to count the number of slugs she had fired. If she finished the whole magazine, he’d tackle her. If she didn’t, and kept him pinned down at the exit, then it would be up to Meier.
Zop! Stuermer ducked low in reflex instinct as another slug hit the planking above his head and splintered it. That was her eighth bullet, he told himself. She must have a nine-slug magazine in her pistol, just as was the case with most German automatics. One more and he’d go for her.
He tensed. There it came. The swift dry crack of a pistol. Another slug hit the wood and splintered it viciously. Stuermer lowered his head and flung himself out across the dead girl’s body and into the open.
The blonde cried something he didn’t understand. She raised the pistol and took deliberate aim. Stuermer froze in his tracks. He had miscalculated. Fatally! The woman was holding a pistol that was unbalanced by an overlong, ungainly magazine. It was the old-fashioned kind that held twelve bullets! Stuermer tensed and awaited that slug which would rip open his defenceless flesh and end it all. But Colonel Stuermer was not fated to die — just then.
Just as his horrified eyes made out the sickly white colouring of the knuckle of her forefinger curled round the trigger, which meant she was going to fire the next instant, a dark figure hurtled from round the back of the hut. It was Meier. He had done it! Meier’s pistol cracked. In his urgency he missed. The slug kicked up a flurry of angry white snow a metre away from her feet. But the bullet sufficed. Her own pistol shots hissed purposelessly over Stuermer’s shoulder.
Fighting for breath, her face suddenly flushed in alarm, the Russian woman ripped off the empty magazine and dropped it in the snow. Walking backwards, not seeming to notice Meier’s bullets hissing through the air all around her, she fumbled feverishly for the spare mag. in the pocket of her heavy parka.
As Meier flung down his empty pistol with an angry curse, and prepared to make a headlong rush at the woman before she had fitted the new magazine, Stuermer saw her danger. He didn’t want her killed, whatever she might have done to him; she was a woman after all. He opened his mouth and cried frantically, ‘Watch out…watch out, the drop behind you!’
The woman did not hear. All her attention was concentrated on fitting the fresh magazine.
‘For God’s sake!’ Stuermer roared, his face stricken, ivory-knuckled hands clenched in desperate futility, ‘you must watch what—’
The words died purposelessly on his lips. The woman had just rammed home the magazine. He could hear its click quite distinctly above the sound of the wind. Her eyes flashed upwards in triumph as she raised her pistol to kill the two men frozen there into powerless immobility. Her lips opened to say something, which ended in a scream as the ground gave way beneath her feet and the pistol went off purposely into the dirty-white sky and she was suddenly falling into nothing.
Both Stuermer and Meier darted forward. They peered over the edge of the ledge. She was slithering faster and faster, the slither becoming a glissading crazy roll, ever swifter, her scream of fear trailing behind her, getting further and further away until abruptly the snow fell away altogether and she was riding out far, far into the valley, cascading wild blue-white snow behind her. Then Comrade Captain Roswitha Mikhailovna, the founder of the Red Ravens, was gone for ever, and there was nothing left but a loud, echoing silence, which seemed to go on forever…
FIVE
Now the clouds had parted, and the cold sun cast its pink light across the slope ahead. It glittered like a myriad rubies. Above, the twin peaks of Mount Elbrus looked down upon the three tiny figures, in remote mysterious silence.
Colonel Stuermer adjusted the rope looped across his right shoulder more comfortably and drew a deep breath. He let it out in a sudden cloud of grey and commanded, ‘All right, let’s get on with it!’
‘With you, sir!’ Meier answered.
‘With you, sir!’ Jap echoed.
In silence they moved off. The final assault on Mount EIbrus had commenced.
They had been marching upwards for three hours now. The sun had disappeared and the day was grey, with a threat of more snow in the leaden sky. Not that the three men looked upwards much. Their whole attention was concentrated on the rock. Under normal circumstances the fifty-five degree angle of the slope wouldn’t have worried experienced mountaineers such as they, but under the thin film of snow which covered the slope, everything was pure ice, so that in spite of constant use of their ice-axes, they slipped time and time again.
But the ice was not their only problem. The altitude was beginning to have its effect again. All of them had splitting headaches, nausea and accelerated breathing. Once, during a five minute break, Colonel Stuermer bad checked his pulse and found that it was racing at an alarming rate. He knew what that and the other symptoms meant — they were suffering from altitude fever again. Still they pressed on, climbing steadily along the long humpback ridge which ran southwards from the mountain’s eastern peak, down its further side northwestwards in the direction of the western peak, working now by compass and altitude metre, since the twin peaks had long vanished into the grey gloom.
At eleven o’clock, Stuermer halted and wiped his face before checking his compass and altitude metre, while the other two just stood, panting like two ancient, broken-down cart-horses. ‘Five thousand, two hundred metres,’ he announced after a minute. We’ve got the worst part behind us.’ He paused and waited for some reaction from the two NCOs. None came, so he said, ‘We’ve got a mere three hundred metres to cover because we’re in the dip between the two peaks.’
‘A mere three hundred metres, the colonel says,’ Meier gasped with an attempt at his old humour. ‘It might as well be three hundred kilometres for this old Bavarian barnshitter! Mrs Meier’s little boy is kaputt.’
Jap did not even smile.
‘All ri
ght,’ Stuermer said, ‘The last three hundred metres — straight up. March!’
Linked together by their ropes, digging their ice-axes into the almost sheer sides of the peak, they worked their way upwards in a zig-zag course with infinite slowness, clinging to the white surface like tiny human flies.
In the lead, Colonel Stuermer thought he had never been so cold in all his climbing career. The howling wind, which made all conversation impossible save by shouts, slashed like steel knives at their naked bodies beneath the thin clothes, smashed icy fists into their faces, and ripped the skin off their hands and lips. In between the gusts, the light glared and waved against his frozen goggles making it possible to see only through screwed-up eyes; and all the time the white sludge collected at his boots and turned them into crippling hobbles.
Now Stuermer and the two other men had forgotten the peak somewhere above them in the flying white gloom. They were fighting death, not the mountain; and they had to keep moving to stay alive. There was no place to move to, save up or down, and for some reason that their numbed brains could no longer fathom, they kept moving upwards.
Now it was midday. Still there was no sight of the summit. Wearily Stuermer wondered if he had made a miscalculation. He stopped and checked his compass and altitude meter, while the other two, their shoulders bent, their breath coming like that of broken-lunged asthmatics, stared numbly at his back.
‘Another hundred and twenty metres,’ he shrieked above the howl of the wind. ‘Hundred and twenty…perhaps another two hours!’ he lied.
The two NCOS said nothing. They waited like dumb animals about to be led into the slaughter house.
‘Aufs geht!’1 Stuermer commanded, and they stumbled forward once more.
Now they were working their way upwards with their ice-axes. Step by step, they hewed out their path to the summit. Their faces were crimson with the effort. Even Ox-Jo’s massive frame could not stand the strain. More than once he let his ice-axe fall from his great paw and it was only by sheer willpower that he could force himself to bend and pick it up again.
