Derek Lambert - Vendetta

‘Did you help in the bakery?’ Antonov asked.

‘During the school holidays. With the cakes. Sometimes I make a small one for myself. We made lots of cakes on national days. My father said national days were a baker’s icing-sugar.’

Antonov knew what he meant. Stick a pin in a calendar and you stood a good change of spearing a national day. New Year, Lenin’s death, May Day, Young Pioneers, Komsomol, the Revolution… In his patch of Siberia the bakers made rings of pastry symbolising the sun for Maslennitsa, the end of winter.

‘Papa made lots of jokes,’ Misha said. ‘He used to make biscuits with currants in them and he called them fly-biscuits. He was small and neat and his hands were always very clean when they weren’t covered in flour. When he dipped his hands in flour he looked as if he was wearing white gloves.’

‘Did your mother work in the bakery, too?’

‘Sometimes, if there was a rush. A lot of people getting married in the Palace of Weddings perhaps. She was taller than Papa and she used to tell him not to be silly when he made his jokes but often when she turned her head I saw her laughing. She used to help me with my homework. She said she wanted me to become a doctor. I didn’t want to become one: I wanted to be a soldier.’

‘No brothers or sisters?’

‘I had a brother once but I never saw him. My mother went to hospital with him inside her but she came back without him. She said it was God’s will but after that she never talked about it. I remember the first day Papa came back from hospital. He went to the bakery and threw away a cake he had baked. It had a little silver cradle on it. The bomb fell on the bakery when my mother was taking my father his breakfast,’ Misha said. ‘Eggs and cold sausage – he couldn’t stand bread.’

He turned his face away from them puffing furiously on his cigarette. After a few moments he said: ‘You could get Meister now. From behind the factory.’

Antonov didn’t know how to explain but it wasn’t right to shoot Meister in the back and he knew that was stupid, a target was a target.

Misha said to Antonov: ‘Shouldn’t you be out there looking for him?’

‘We have been,’ Antonov said.

‘Yury nearly got his head blown off,’ Razin said.

‘You mean the svoloch missed?’ Misha’s sharp features registered disbelief.

‘Don’t swear,’ Antonov admonished him. ‘No, he didn’t exactly miss: I anticipated him.’

‘Anticipated?’ Misha thought about it. ‘You mean you ducked?’

‘Anticipated first. There’s no point in ducking when someone’s shooting at you. It’s always too late. But when you hear the crack then you know you’re okay because the crack is caused by the vacuum behind the bullet.’

Misha wasn’t interested in vacuums. ‘He is good, isn’t he?’ and Antonov realised that as far as the boy was concerned it had to be a battle between aces. As far as the Red Army was concerned, come to that. And the Soviet people.

‘The best,’ Antonov said.

‘No, you’re the best. You’ll get him.’

‘With your help.’ Antonov smiled at him.

‘Then why don’t you go after him now? He won’t be expecting you.’

‘Want to bet?’

Misha shrugged. You know best, the shrug said, but I think you’re wrong. Nipping out his cigarette, dropping the butt in the top pocket of the grey jacket that he had outgrown, gathering his importance around him like a cloak, Misha disappeared down the tunnel.

‘I suppose he’s right,’ Antonov said. ‘We’d better go and get him before he finds us.’

‘He won’t find us here.’

‘We can’t spend the rest of our lives in a sewer.’

‘How long will our lives last out there?’

‘Longer than they would at the Red October or Barricade factories.’

‘True.’ Razin stood up and stretched. ‘Come on, follow nanny.’

Two days later Antonov was summoned to 62nd Army headquarters. The sergeant who found him in the tunnel said: ‘Misha told us you were here,’ a flake of disapproval in his voice.

General Vasili Ivanovich Chuikov, forty-two, was waiting for him in his bunker in one of the ravines on the west bank.

He was a chunky man with a soft bush of black hair, a boxer’s face and a mouthful of gold teeth. His skin had erupted in sores caused by nervous strain. Not only was he responsible for the besieged army, he had been besieged himself – by fire. German bombs had hit a cluster of oil tanks and burning fuel had swept through the dugouts on its way to the river; the torrent of flames continued for three days but Chuikov and his officers stayed put. When the Germans poured shells into the HQ they moved 500 yards to the north.

The troops respected him: he was one of them, a frontovnik, a front-liner, and a peasant, and when he first arrived he kicked the asses of the officers who fought campaigns far from the sound of battle. Rumour had it that there was no love lost between Chuikov, commander of the 62nd Army, and General Andrei Yeremenko, overall commander of the Stalingrad Front.

Two officers sat on either side of Chuikov. One was Antonov Krylov, chief of staff, the other, squat with a head made for butting, exuded aggression, but not even Razin, chronicler of gossip and rumours, knew who he was. Their faces were lit and hollowed by a kerosene lamp.

The chief of staff dismissed Razin and the officers lit cigarettes, Kazbecks. The cement bunker reeked of smoke. Antonov coughed; Chuikov offered him the packet; Antonov shook his head. ‘No thank you, Comrade General.’

‘So you don’t smoke. Or drink?’ Chuikov’s voice was as hard as winter, but frayed with fatigue. And when Antonov shook his head: ‘What do you do?’

‘Kill Germans, Comrade General.’ Antonov was startled by his words: they had a ring of impudence that he didn’t feel; nerves, he supposed.

‘We all do that, in our different ways.’

A radio operator handed Chuikov a message. Chuikov read it aloud. ‘Surrounded. Have a little ammunition. Will fight to the last bullet.’ Chuikov said: ‘He always had a flair for the dramatic,’ but he didn’t say who the message was from.

He clasped bandaged hands and stared at Antonov. ‘You know the situation in the north is desperate? The Germans have taken the Tractor Plant and our forces have been cut to ribbons. The 208th, the 193rd, the 37th, they’re just numbers now. But God how they fought.’

The third officer looked from Chuikov to Antonov. He was on the small side but he looked as tough as a ram; and yet laughter had creased the corners of his eyes.

‘Have you ever been in the thick of a battle?’ Chuikov asked Antonov.

‘No, Comrade General.’

‘After a while death and suffering don’t have much impact. Not when your belly is empty and your skull is full of noise. Your senses, you see, are bewildered. You smell mud and cordite and you see it and taste it and feel it. And the man next to you who has just had his jaw blown off seems as normal as a companion on an assembly line. Why, you even welcome the thrust of a bayonet. And death,’ the general said.

‘Come, come, Vassili,’ the tough-looking officer said. ‘This young man doesn’t want to hear that sort of thing. Save it for your memoirs.’

‘This,’ Chuikov said to Antonov, ‘is Comrade Nikita Khrushchev of the War Council of the Front. He is going to take you across the river.’

Bewildered, Antonov stared at Stalin’s political emissary. Why did he have to cross the Volga with him? How could he shoot Meister over there?

But Chuikov wasn’t to be diverted from the point he had been pursuing. ‘I understand the sergeant found you hiding in a sewer.’