Derek Lambert - Vendetta

So that was it, Chuikov had no time for prima donnas who didn’t share the suffering of his men.

‘With respect, Comrade General,’ Antonov protested, ‘I only take shelter when Meister is looking for me.’ Wrong, that sounded as though he ran away every time Meister picked up his rifle. ‘You see,’ he explained, ‘there comes a time when I’m stalking Meister when he becomes aware of me. Then our roles become reversed. Then I have to go to ground. It’s the same with him, when he comes looking for me and when I see him, I feel his presence then he takes cover.’

‘In a sewer?’

‘I don’t know where he’s hiding Comrade General.’ Meister had left the toy factory.

‘Then isn’t it about time you found out? The Soviet people are waiting to hear about your glorious exploit. Killing one German! But first,’ his tone wearily disgusted, ‘Comrade Khrushchev wants to take you on a riverboat.’

Khrushchev said genially: ‘We shan’t be long. One day at the most. I think you will enjoy yourself.’ The skin at the corners of his eyes crinkled with merriment.

‘May I ask –’

‘No you may not,’ Khrushchev said. A Stuka, Jericho siren on its undercarriage screaming, swooped overhead; no one took any notice. ‘I just wish,’ Khrushchev said, ‘that I were in your shoes.’

Tasya was waiting for him in a wooden cottage on the east bank near a white church with a green dome.

Her flaxen hair was braided and her lipstick glistened more brightly than he remembered and her figure seemed more defined.

‘Hallo, Yury,’ she said. She held out her hands. They had seen a film once in which the star, wearing a silk gown, lights shining on her hair, had made the same gesture to her lover returning from a foreign land.

‘Hallo.’ He held her hands and smiled, then frowned as flash bulbs exploded.

‘Now kiss her,’ said a cameraman.

And she was warm in his arms and her perfume smelled different, more expensive, and her lips were against his.

‘Just once more,’ said another photographer.

‘Hey, come on,’ said a middle-aged man with bunchy hair to the cameraman. ‘Don’t forget you only illustrate the stories we write.’

‘Don’t forget,’ said the photographer, ‘that you only write the captions for the pictures we take.’

They kissed again.

‘What are you doing here?’ Antonov asked.

‘I came to see you.’

‘What was that?’ the reporter asked.

‘I came to see him.’

Antonov looked around. The room, homely with rocking chairs, rush mats, a table with an embroidered runner on it, a stove and Lenin and Stalin on the walls, reminded him of the living room in Siberia; it even smelled of the same polish his mother used. It was a movie set and he and Tasya were the stars. He wished he was back on the other side of the Volga which was strange because the troops there were always wishing they were on the east bank because that was where the war ended.

The reporter said to Antonov: ‘It must have been dangerous crossing the river to see your girl.’

Other journalists waited expectantly, pencils poised. ‘Dangerous? Everyone would give a year’s pay to get away from the west bank.’

A voice in the background said: ‘I’m sure I don’t have to remind you that Yury is exhausted; that some of what he says shouldn’t be quoted.’

The reporter with the bunchy hair said: ‘When are you going to get Meister?’

‘Soon.’

‘How soon?’

‘When I’m ready,’ and someone said: ‘“When I’m ready,” that’s great.’

The reporter with the bunchy hair asked Tasya: ‘What does it feel like to be engaged to a future Hero of the Soviet Union?’

Engaged?

Tasya squeezed his hand. ‘It doesn’t matter whether he’s a hero or not,’ she said. ‘I always hoped that one day Yury and me…’

Antonov looked back through the weeks and saw a youth, a stranger, kissing Tasya after a Komsomol meeting and the stranger was himself.

‘Did you hope that Comrade Antonov?’

‘I hoped many things.’

‘When you’ve killed Meister do you intend to get married immediately?’

‘He hasn’t asked me yet,’ Tasya said coyly.

‘But I thought –’

‘We had an understanding.’

‘So?’ The reporter looked at Antonov.

‘I’ve got to kill Meister first,’ Antonov said.

‘Of course.’ A severely dressed woman journalist with a bosom like a bookshelf smiled understandingly. ‘Are you close to Meister? Do you think the same way?’

‘You would have to get a second opinion – from him.’ Remarkable how he was beginning to use words.

‘I was asking how you felt.’

‘We’re both snipers. We’re both trying to kill each other. We must have something in common.’

‘That wasn’t what I was asking you,’ the woman said, ‘and you know it,’ but she didn’t pursue it.

‘What special qualities does a sniper have?’ another journalist asked and Antonov told him because that was nearly always the first question anyone asked him. His replies were a recitation.

On the other side of the river he heard a German Ishak mortar, explosions like the neighing of a horse.

A plump reporter from Izvestia asked: ‘Do you have a message for the Soviet people?’

The room was filling with smoke. Antonov could never understand why anyone wanted to suck smoke into their lungs; in the mornings you could hear soldiers coughing and retching; sometimes the Germans picked up the sound and lobbed a few mortars into the trench.

‘I asked you a question young man.’

‘A message? Of course I have a message. We’re giving the Fritzes a run for their money.’

‘He means, of course,’ intoned the anonymous voice in the background, ‘that we’re going to smash them. Chase them out of the Soviet Union all the way back to Berlin.’

The emphasis was always on driving the Germans out of Russia. As though their intrusion was worse than the destruction they had wreaked, the misery they had inflicted.

Gunfire erupted on the west bank, calling him back. Other soldiers had reported that, after a few days of convalescence, they yearned to get back to the fight; as Chuikov had implied it became a habit, the sharing and the killing.

Why bother to ask him questions when the voice in the background answered them for him? The voice was faintly familiar. He turned. Pokrovsky, in the act of rubbing one pointed ear, smiled at him.

‘How long will it take you to kill Meister?’

‘I’ve answered that already.’ He had already acquired the serviceman’s faint contempt for the civilian.

‘Do you know anything about him? Education, background, family?’

‘Only what I’ve read translated from Signal.’

‘What will your feelings be when you kill him? Isn’t he very similar to you?’ It was the woman with the enormous breasts again.

Pokrovsky said: ‘Pride that he has struck a blow against Fascism.’

‘Have you and Meister had any exchanges yet?’

‘One or two.’

‘Close calls?’

‘Very.’ Like nearly having my head shot off outside the toy factory.

‘Does Yury write regularly to you?’ the reporter with the bunchy hair asked Tasya.

‘Every week,’ she lied.

‘And you to him?’

‘Sometimes twice a week.’

Tasya, who hadn’t written to him since he arrived in Stalingrad, smiled at him blandly.

A few questions later Pokrovsky called a halt. ‘I think,’ he announced, ‘that these two young people would like to be alone.’

Knowing smiles.

When the journalists had gone Pokrovsky said: ‘The house is yours. You have two hours.’