Derek Lambert - Vendetta

‘And the 112th. What about them?’ Razin demanded. ‘They fought like demons but they haven’t been given Guards status. Why? Because they’re hooligans, criminals, that’s why. Worse, political agitators – the worst crime in the penal code. No, they won’t get any medals: doubters can’t be heroes.’ He brushed a drop of rainwater from his sagging moustache. ‘Have you ever doubted?’

Doubted? Razin made belief sound shameful. What he didn’t understand, or had forgotten, or had never known, was that in childhood doubt doesn’t arise, trust prevails. What is there to doubt? He wanted to explain this to Razin but instead he said: ‘Yes, I’ve doubted,’ although the doubt had only been with him for a few days.

‘Doubted what?’

‘Values.’

‘Did you know that when the Germans first attacked Russia our army was run by a bunch of amateurs because Stalin had purged all the professionals? And when I say purged I mean shot. They say he got rid of 35,000 commanders.’

‘You expect me to believe that?’

Razin shrugged. ‘I don’t care what you believe. But I do know that the greatest crime is naïvety.’

A Russian 50 mm mortar opened up. Antonov waited for the explosion in the German lines, wondering if he could distinguish it from the all-encompassing din of battle. At first the noise had sent needles of pain shooting through his skull; now he was indifferent to it, although at dawn, before the daily bombardment began, his head ached. A heap of bricks erupted where the mortar shell had fallen, but he couldn’t identify the explosion.

Razin said: ‘You must have heard how the peasants were massacred because they didn’t want to work on collective farms?’

Only whispers over the vodka bottle when his father entertained. But they had contained little substance and he had. bracketed them with jests which took on an uncharacteristic coarseness half way down the bottle.

No, the only injustice with which he had been regaled by his teacher, who always wore black and combed her hair into a polished bun that looked like a doorknob, had been the tyranny of the Czars until Lenin and then Koba, the Indomitable, Stalin, had come to the rescue of the downtrodden masses.

‘Millions died,’ Razin said.

‘Why are you telling me this?’

‘So that you know what you’re fighting for.’

‘For peace,’ Antonov said.

‘Cosy.’

‘What are you fighting for?’

‘What might have been.’

‘You’re fighting because you’re a Russian,’ Antonov said. ‘Just like the other Ukrainians you told me about.’

Razin smiled his yellow smile. ‘That too.’

Another mortar shell exploded, closer this time. Antonov wiped the lenses of his field-glasses with a handkerchief and peered over the rim of the crater. A German Panzer III tank was approaching, a prehistoric monster foraging uncertainly in another age, so any moment now Russian PTRS anti-tank rifles would be barking. Through the field-glasses Antonov saw a Death’s Head on the tank’s turret.

He swivelled the glasses and gazed at the remains of a small house, staircase still clinging to a green-painted wall. He imagined generations of a family climbing those stairs, children’s fingers trailing on the green paint as they raced down them, early for play or late for school. A movement. As slight as a blink but positive. A rat, a cat, a wounded man, a sniper… He handed the field-glasses to Razin. ‘Can you see anything?’

Razin concentrated on the ruin. Then: ‘You know what I think?’

‘Meister?’

‘Who else would be holed up in No Man’s Land opposite our crater?’

The rain thickened. Water streamed off Razin’s helmet veiling his face.

The Panzer III turned and headed for the crater.

Razin said: ‘Look at it this way. Either he,’ pointing at the ruined house, ‘gets us or,’ pointing at the tank, ‘we get crushed by that or,’ tapping his chest, ‘we die of pneumonia.’

‘The trap.’ Antonov wasn’t as enthusiastic as he should have been. ‘Here, use my helmet.’

Razin balanced the helmet on the end of a length of picket-fence, and Antonov thought: ‘This isn’t the way it should end.’

‘Ready?’

Antonov nodded.

‘Got bullets in that thing?’ pointing at the Mosin-Nagant.

Antonov shook his head.

‘You should be a comedian.’ Razin raised the helmet over the lip of the crater and the crack came immediately and the helmet leapt from his perch splashing into the puddle in the bottom of the crater, and Razin was rearing up screaming and Antonov, gun-butt pushing into his shoulder, was peering through the telescopic sights at the house and hoping that no one would fall for such an elementary ruse but there he was, head and shoulders making a beautiful target, but it was too easy. Stupid, he tried to kill you. He squeezed the trigger knowing that it was the worst shot of his life. The head and shoulders became a body, arms upraised, rifle falling, and above the sound of battle Antonov heard his scream.

Later, when the tank had passed, when the shooting had become sporadic, they made their way to the house. They found him lying beneath the exposed stairs, still alive, the wound in his shoulder instead of between his eyes. For a sniper of Antonov’s skill it was a very bad shot; but in a sense that was irrelevant because the wounded man, middle-aged and unshaven, wasn’t Meister.

The rain was turning to sleet as Antonov and Razin returned in the late afternoon to the tunnel, taking a mine-free route two sappers had shown them. Fires burned in the shells of factories, three Stukas, songsters as the troops called them, made a last sortie over the beleaguered Russians. A corn-cob, a Soviet bomber made of wood, limped back to the east bank, wounded by Messerschmitt 109’s or anti-aircraft guns. Fish stunned by shells and bombs floated on the Volga, silver bellies bared to the sleet. Antonov and Razin’s long boots sank ankle-deep in new mud.

On an evening such as this the tunnel was home.

It was certainly drier than the world outside and Razin had furnished it with a shabby red carpet, a couple of straw mattresses, mugs and plates, pots and pans, two boxes that had contained rattles – boxes of anti-infantry grenades the Luftwaffe sometimes dropped instead of bombs – a primus stove and a packet of yellow candles. On the wall he had stuck a German leaflet calling on the Russians to lay down their arms.

When they climbed into the tunnel through a shell-hole fifty yards from the riverbank they found a candle had been lit. In its light they saw Misha sitting on one of the mattresses. He was eating sunflower seeds and Boris the rat was watching him keenly.

Sketch-map in hand, Lanz led the way through the sleet. ‘It’s over there somewhere,’ he said, pointing in the direction of the Red October Plant. ‘At the foot of some shallow cliffs near a stony beach.’ He peered at the map on which Misha had marked the site of the tunnel with a red crayon.

They made their way through a park gouged with craters towards the Volga. It wasn’t dusk but already there was cruelty, as distinct from the brutality of battle, abroad; Meister could feel it in the sting of the sleet, smell it on the stale scents of distemper and spent explosives, feel it in the gaze of unseen watchers in the ruins. In some countries dusk was known as the time between dog and wolf; in Stalingrad that time was now, a brooding interlude between day and night conflict.

A sentry challenged them from the shadow of a signal box. They gave the password, Pandora, and identified themselves. The sentry, young with a wound cobwebbed with stitches on his cheek, was impressed. ‘Are you looking for Antonov?’