Derek Lambert - Vendetta

‘Every kid’s dream,’ Lanz said, ‘to have his school demolished.’ He had put a chair on the grass and was sitting smoking a cigarette. ‘I wonder why he was lying.’

‘Maybe he wasn’t.’ Meister sat on the grass. It was like holy ground; even the gunfire seemed distant, the accompaniment to someone else’s battle. He plucked a blade of grass and nibbled the cold stalk.

Lanz fished in the breast pocket of his tunic and produced a soiled sugar almond – Lanz’s pockets were lucky dips. He handed it to the boy; Misha, sitting under the pear tree, sucked it experimentally.

Lanz said: ‘Ask him if he knows about Antonov.’

Misha said he did, everyone did.

‘Ask him if he knows you’re Meister?’

‘Of course,’ Misha said, cracking the sugared almond with his teeth, surprised at the question.

‘Do you think he’ll kill me?’ Meister asked.

‘It depends.’

‘On what?’

Somewhere a dog barked, a lonely sound in the chilled sunlight. A rifle shot and the barking stopped.

‘We had a dog,’ Misha said. ‘It was called Druzhok. It disappeared in the fighting.’

‘Ask him where his mother is,’ Lanz instructed Meister.

Misha jerked his thumb downwards and spoke rapidly.

‘I think,’ Meister told Lanz, ‘that she’s hiding in a cellar or a sewer. Apparently there are thousands of refugees underground.’

‘Does she know what he’s doing?’

‘Does it matter?’

‘I just don’t believe a kid like that would want to help us.’

‘A lot of Ukrainians joined us.’

‘That was before Kiev. Then they fought us with only five bullets apiece, fought with Stalin’s voice booming over the loudspeakers. And when they had used their five bullets they still fought.’

‘Were you there?’ Meister was curious about Lanz’s Iron Cross but the thief never discussed it.

‘I’ve been everywhere.’ Lanz pinched out his cigarette. ‘Ask him where Antonov’s hiding.’

Misha was wandering about the wrecked schoolroom poking about in the debris. He found a grey exercise book and riffled the pages. They were filled with crayoned drawings, children with beetroot faces, ships on pointed waves, bears with huge paws, all beneath strips of blue sky.

‘I asked you a question,’ Meister said.

‘I don’t know where he is.’

‘He’s lying,’ Lanz said.

‘You think everyone’s lying.’

‘Even to themselves. Ask him again.’

The boy turned his back and stared at the clock.

‘He knows,’ Lanz said. He delved into one of the lower pockets of his tunic.

What now? A white rabbit?

The gold watch lay in the shiny palm of Lanz’s hand imprisoning the sunlight. Lanz called Misha’s name. ‘Look.’ He swung the watch on its chain. ‘Come here.’ He beckoned with his other hand. ‘Listen.’ After a moment the watch chimed, a tiny silver noise inside the gold. ‘Tell him he can have it if he tells us where Antonov is.’

Meister hesitated.

‘What’s the matter? You want Antonov to find you?’

‘I don’t like using the boy.’

‘A sniper with a conscience! Jesus Christ!’

Lanz turned to the boy. Dangled the watch. Pointed at it and pointed at Misha. ‘Antonov?’ he asked.

The watch swung like a pendulum.

The boy’s eyes moved from side to side.

‘Antonov?’

Misha stretched out one hand.

Lanz withdrew the watch.

‘Antonov?’

The boy swallowed.

Very slowly, Lanz moved the watch towards his tunic pocket.

Misha told Meister that Antonov was hiding in a sewer on the banks of the Volga.

Later that morning Meister was summoned to the presence of Paulus who was conferring with his commanders at 6th Army headquarters, a cluster of farm buildings at Golubinskaya, forty miles west of Stalingrad on the banks of another river, the Don.

But the general was alone, warming his back in front of a log fire in the farmhouse overlooking a mutilated cornfield, when Meister arrived. He looked older and Meister who until now hadn’t considered subtleties of age – only young, old and very old – couldn’t quite make out where it showed.

Paulus, theatrically spruce – he was said to wear gloves on the battlefield – was absent-mindedly tapping a cigarette on a silver case when Meister entered the room. He stared at Meister and through him, a tic fluttering beneath one eye. Eventually Paulus told him to stand at ease.

He lit the cigarette and turned to warm his hands and Meister got the fleeting impression that he was preparing himself for winter because it wasn’t that cold. Winter… They were supposed to have taken Stalingrad in August!

Meister glanced at the table separating him from Paulus. There was a bottle of schnapps on it, Korn, and an ashtray heaped with cigarette butts and yet another map scored with arrowheads; but these arrowheads, probing from the south and the north had question marks beside them and suddenly Meister realised they were Russian.

‘So, what do you think?’ Paulus asked, noticing that he was studying the map.

Think? Think about what? Ah, the map ‘Is this where you think the Russians will try and counter-attack, Herr General?’ It hadn’t occurred to him that the Russians had a counter-attack left in them.

‘It’s a possibility. And if they do…’

Paulus didn’t elaborate. The pouch under one eye quivered. Why should a general discuss tactics with a soldier? Thinking aloud probably. Debating possibilities that he couldn’t broach with officers? It was a flattering proposition.

‘It’s getting cold,’ Paulus said. ‘Soon it will snow. The Russians love snow – it’s their ammunition.’

Meister said nothing because no reply had been invited but a word that he had considered fluttered like a snowflake into his consciousness. DEFEAT. But that was preposterous.

‘At first,’ Paulus said, ‘cold is good. It freezes the mud and we can move our trucks and guns. But that’s only cold as we understand it: it isn’t Russian cold. When the Russian cold makes its début the earth becomes concrete three feet deep and the wind blows the temperature down to minus forty and soldiers wear anything to keep it at bay, even towels and bedclothes, but even then, they lose their arms and legs and when a horse is frostbitten to death there’s a celebration because there’s meat to eat. I only know,’ Paulus said, ‘because I had a friend at Moscow.’

A half-track trundled past the window on the rutted road. Between the pink and blue fretted eaves of the farmhouse it looked as though it were crossing a stage. ‘Re-inforcements,’ said Paulus; Meister detected a sardonic note.

Paulus kicked a log with the toe of one polished boot; ash fell softly, a strip of bark caught fire.

‘Tell me, Meister, is this how you envisaged the war?’

‘No, Herr General.’

‘How then?’

‘Just victories. Like Poland and France. Stupid of me, I suppose.’

‘Not so stupid,’ Paulus said. ‘It was what you were brought up to believe. What do you think went wrong?’

‘Nothing I suppose. Things had to get tougher.’

‘Before final victory?’

‘Before final victory, Herr General.’

‘And you’ve never doubted the final outcome?’

‘Never, Herr General.’ Not until now.

‘The Führer is a great man.’

Meister nodded.

‘Without him we would still be nothing. The Thousand Year Reich, an inspired concept.’

Meister could find nothing to add to that.

‘If only we had the reserves… Do you know you’re an old man, Meister? They’re sending us seventeen-year-olds now. Children.’

‘I’ve heard,’ Meister ventured, ‘that the Soviets have brought in tailors and cobblers, sailors even, to fight here.’