Derek Lambert - Vendetta

Before leaving he asked Meister for his autograph. ‘You know, for the people back home.’ Meister scrawled it on the back of the FALL OF STALINGRAD.

Bug-eyed again with his goggles in place, the motor-cyclist kick-started his machine and, waving, took off down the frozen track.

The shell exploded so near to the school that it showered Meister and Lanz with debris. When Meister peered over the wall all he could see of the motor-cycle was one wheel spinning beside the shell-hole, the grave.

Skipping away in the breeze, heading for the river, was the poster; as it unfolded it reminded Meister of a fledgling bird, spreading its wings for the first time but looking just the same for its nest.

At 9.00 that evening Lanz heard a noise above the rattle of gunfire and the whine of an iced wind nosing through the jagged walls of the school.

He touched Meister’s arm, put his finger to his lips, a thief hearing a footstep on gravel, the creak of a door opening.

They had decided to wait until dawn before reporting to Paulus that, in their opinion, Antonov was no longer in Stalingrad. They had moved the burning schoolbooks to the grate in the ruins of the classroom and, wrapped in blankets, were watching knowledge go up in flames, sparks racing up the sawn-off chimney to return through the open roof like words trying to make sense again.

Meister listened. He couldn’t hear anything except the normal sounds of nocturnal Stalingrad. Lanz picked up his pistol and left the classroom. Meister saw him, dark and feline, scale the wall in the playground, drop to the other side on sponge feet. Meister picked up his rifle and, through a shell-hole, thrust the barrel into the night.

Finger hooked on the trigger, shoulder muscles tensed, he waited. Only when he had a target in the sights could he relax, stroke the trigger, breath gently. An aircraft lumbered overhead; a searchlight switched the sky; tracer bullets glowed and died.

Supposing he shot Lanz?

He had allowed Elzbeth to fire his rifle once on the banks of the Elbe. In fact he had done everything except pull the trigger, standing behind her, easing the butt into her shoulder, aiming the sights at a pine tree and feeling her warmth through her silk blouse.

The row startled him. Shouting, scuffling, cursing on the other side of the school. He ran to the space where the door had been as Lanz led in Misha squirming.

Lanz pushed him onto the blankets in front of the fire. ‘Antonov hasn’t quit,’ Lanz said. ‘That little bastard was leading him here.’

‘Were you?’ Meister asked in Russian. ‘Were you leading Antonov here?’

‘I was trying to save you,’ Misha shouted. He tried to get up but Lanz pinned him with his boot.

‘I don’t know what he said,’ Lanz said. ‘But whatever it was I don’t believe it.’

Meister said: ‘What do you mean, trying to save us?’

Misha told him that Antonov had been wounded and taken to a hospital on the other side of the river.

‘Badly wounded?’

‘I don’t know. He looked at me in a funny sort of way and kept wiping his forehead as though he was trying to get rid of something. But that’s not the point, not now. You’re in danger…’ He tried to get up again but Lanz’s boot went for his throat.

When Meister translated Lanz said: ‘Ask him where Antonov was injured,’ and when Meister had translated the answer Lanz said: ‘My local geography isn’t too good but isn’t that on the way here from the tunnel?’

When Misha agreed Lanz said with a sort of negative triumph: ‘You see, he was leading Antonov here. Then they got shot up. Maybe Antonov was concussed, who knows. But if you think he’s on the other side of the river you’re crazy. He’s here. Outside. Looking for you.’

Meister said to Misha: ‘Is Antonov here?’

‘I told you, he’s on the other side of the Volga.’ He blinked. ‘If he made it.’

Misha said that an assault group had been sent to rescue Antonov, that a row-boat from Vice-Admiral Rogachev’s Volga Flotilla had set off across the river with him on board.

‘But how are we in danger?’ Meister asked.

Misha said: ‘I knew two members of the assault group before the Germans came. They lived near the bakery. They were bad men and they robbed my father once. I heard them talking the day after Antonov left. They were talking about killing you.’

Misha paused and Meister thought: He should be in bed dreaming about football, not talking about killing.

‘What’s he saying?’ Lanz asked but Meister held up his hand. ‘Why do they want to kill me?’ he asked Misha.

‘They think they will become heroes. Get medals. Good jobs when the war is over.’

‘Then they’re stupid. If I’m going to be killed Antonov’s got to do the job. They won’t get medals, they’ll get bullets.’

‘They asked me to lead them to you but I refused. Look.’ Meister noticed the swellings on his face, dried blood at the corner of his mouth. ‘I ran away but they’ll still find you. Razin told them where you were. There was no reason why he shouldn’t.’

‘Razin?’

Lanz, picking out the one word, said: ‘Me, Russian version.’

‘They’re stupid all right,’ Misha said, ‘but they’re dangerous and they might be outside now waiting for you to show yourself.’

‘Then I won’t.’ Meister gave him coffee and a slab of bitter chocolate. ‘You stay here, don’t move, right?’

Misha said: ‘Right.’

When Meister translated what Misha had told him Lanz said: ‘I don’t believe him.’

‘You think everyone’s lying.’

‘Wrong. But I do think Antonov’s out there.’

‘It doesn’t matter, does it? Antonov or two bounty hunters, they’re all trying to kill us.’

‘It matters to you,’ Lanz said.

‘Maybe. It also matters to me that I stay alive.’ Meister picked up his rifle. ‘I’ll take the front because that’s the way they’ll come, up from the river. You take the back in case I’m wrong. We’ll wait until they think we’re asleep. Then they’ll show themselves because they’re stupid.

‘Antonov isn’t,’ Lanz said.

‘Antonov isn’t out there.’

‘Supposing they’ve got grenades?’

Meister asked Misha if they had grenades.

‘No pineapples,’ Misha said. ‘Lyudnikov’s hardly got any bullets let alone grenades.’ He opened his eyes wide, fighting sleep.

Meister positioned himself beside a shell-hole; to his right he could see Misha in front of the fire; he could tell from the curl of his body that he was asleep.

The wind had dropped and the clouds had parted in places and from time to time the moon shone through the rents; Meister hoped the two Russians would come when the moon was shining.

Time passed neither swiftly nor slowly; it had no dimension when Meister was waiting. Born in another place, he reflected, he might have been a hunter like Antonov. Circumstance.

He didn’t mind the waiting because in a way it didn’t exist: his senses melded. Familiarity with the gun, the occasional cough of combat as Russian marauders went about their work, a taste of rust, the moon projecting lonely pictures, the cold night in his nostrils.

He enjoyed the smell of night in Stalingrad, its misty flavour of gestation, because it was normality which by day was thrust aside by shells and bombs. When danger was close he sometimes smelled perfume.

He returned to Hamburg but his gaze didn’t waver from the rubble, now black, now silver. When he had decided to become a sharp-shooter he had been taken with a dozen other aspirants to a shooting range adjoining Landungsbrücken railway station by the harbour.

A brisk middle-aged instructor wearing civilian clothes as though they were a uniform, who was said to have been a sniper in the 1914-18 war, made them lie in a row on coconut mats. As he kicked their legs into position he said: ‘This is just to see if you’ve got the makings of a marksman. If not you can go home and take up knitting.’ His voice in the cordite-smelling, barn-like range reminded Meister of biscuits breaking.