Derek Lambert - Vendetta

‘Razin?’ Antonov frowned.

‘Of course.’ Chuikov looked puzzled. ‘He gave you artificial respiration. He was barely conscious when he was brought here. Didn’t you know about that?’

‘He didn’t tell me.’

‘There are men like that. Enigmas. They become soldiers out of perversity.’ Chuikov picked at one of the bandages and stared at Antonov. ‘You’re a strange couple. You became a soldier because you had good reflexes. Without those you’d still be working in the fields.’

Chuikov’s attitude towards Antonov had softened since he had been wounded: a wound was a medal.

The captain spoke at last. ‘You’ve heard about our victories, of course?’

‘I’m not up to date.’ It was three days since Razin had visited him and when he asked the nurse about him she merely smiled secretively and punched his pillows into shape.

‘Paulus is trapped inside the Stalingrad pocket. He has two options: he can try and break out or he can wait to be relieved.’

‘Three options,’ Chuikov said. ‘He can surrender.’

‘He won’t do that, not yet anyway.’ The captain didn’t smile. ‘Hitler has ordered him to stay put. Stupid because he might just have spoken out. Therefore we have to consider option two. Hitler has appointed Field Marshal Eric von Manstein to organise the relief of Stalingrad.’

‘A very good general,’ Chuikov said. ‘As generals go.’ He smiled at Antonov.

‘We think,’ said the captain who was uncomplicated by humour, ‘that the Germans will bring up Panzer units from occupied Russia and other parts of Europe and attempt to break through to Stalingrad from the south. We shall be ready for them.’

‘I don’t underestimate Manstein,’ Chuikov said. ‘His speciality is armoured breakthroughs. It was Manstein who broke through in the Ardennes and sealed the fate of the French. It was Manstein who broke through the French lines along the Somme.’

Antonov realised that Chuikov had the same respect for Manstein that he had for Meister. But why was he sharing strategy with a soldier?

Chuikov said: ‘This means that, despite what Moscow may think, Soviet troops will have to be deployed to meet the threat. And that means that we, the defenders of Stalingrad, will continue to be holed up in the city with the German Sixth Army.’ Chuikov paused, listening to the sound of suffering on the other side of the screens. ‘Before the Soviet counter-offensive we received a message from Moscow.’ Chuikov handed Antonov a teletype. TRUST ANTONOV WILL BE FIT AGAIN TO RESUME DUTIES AT THE EARLIEST OPPORTUNITY STOP STALIN.

Antonov handed it back to Chuikov; he couldn’t think of an adequate reply.

Chuikov said: ‘To tell you the truth I wasn’t very interested in your duel with Meister. It was an indulgence for which I had no time. But now things are different. The focus of attention has shifted from inside the city and my men, still fighting, still starving, still dying, may think they’ve been forgotten. So you see, Comrade Antonov, they need a fillip – something more heady than the destruction of a cellar, the capture of a pile of rubble.’ Chuikov leaned towards the bed. ‘Now I want you to kill Meister.’ He held up the teletype. ‘At the earliest opportunity.’

The captain took a black fountain pen from the pocket of his brown jacket and held it up. ‘How many pens?’

Antonov stared at the pen. His concentration broke it in two. ‘It is a little indistinct.’

Reading from the medical report, Chuikov said: ‘We were wondering if your double-vision was any better.’

‘It’s better,’ Antonov told him.

‘How many generals do you see?’

‘One.’

‘Thank God for that.’

Antonov, turning on his pillows, saw two captains. They said: ‘Of course it is very difficult for a specialist to know whether a patient is suffering from double vision. To an extent he has to rely on the patient’s word.’

That angered Antonov as nothing had angered him before. ‘Are you trying to suggest…’

‘… that you’re malingering?’ Chuikov shook his pugilist’s head. ‘Captain Ostrov’s strong suite isn’t diplomacy. Rest assured I think no such thing. All that worries me is your appetite.’

‘Appetite, Comrade General?’

‘For the duel. Have you lost it?’

Antonov said he hadn’t and, hearing the lie in his voice, wondered if Chuikov had heard it too.

Chuikov stood up abruptly. ‘We must get back to Stalingrad. At least it isn’t so dangerous crossing the Volga these days: the Luftwaffe and the German gunners have other matters on their minds.’ He placed a bandaged hand on Antonov’s shoulder. ‘Get well soon, comrade. And when you re-cross the river bring your appetite with you.’

The captain parted the screens and Chuikov, footsteps crisp on the flagstones, led the way back to battle.

That night Antonov dreamt that he and Meister, cowboy and bandit, or it might have been the other way round, were facing each other, hands on their gun holsters, in the dusty main street of an American prairie town. But when he went for his pistol he found that he could barely lift it and when he did manage to level it there were two Meisters in his sights and when he pulled the trigger he shot between the two heads of Meister and his brother Alexander reared up with a neat hole between his eyes.

‘Sunday was the best time in Berlin,’ Lanz said one day in the middle of December. ‘Crowds window-shopping in the Unter den Linden, bands playing, skating in the Tiergarten, würst in the street booths, a glass of Berliner Weisse in a bar…’

Lanz swallowed noisily. The menu that day in Stalingrad, known now as The Cauldron, was: Midday, rice and horsemeat; evening, eight ounces of bread, two meat balls (horse) à la Stalingrad, half an ounce of butter and real coffee. Extras: four ounces of bread, one ounce of boiled sweets and four ounces of chocolates; tobacco, one cigar or two cigarettes.

An illusion. Some units hadn’t eaten for three days and all you could infer with any certainty from the bill of fare was that the beleaguered troops were devouring one of their means of transport, their horses.

Many horses hadn’t been lucky enough to make the abrupt transition from a bullet in the brain to the stewpot. They had frozen to death in the white, ravaged countryside outside Stalingrad. When Meister and Lanz had arrived in the south-west, transferred from the city to harry the Russians fending off Manstein’s relief force, some horses had still been alive, standing on three legs, waving a broken fourth limb in greeting and farewell.

From their observation post, a small pickling plant standing on a rise outside the charred remains of a wooden village, Meister could hear the sound of battle.

Strategically, he reflected, their position was curious. Here they were in German-held territory separated from another advancing German force by units of the Red Army who were retreating. Put like that it sounded as though the Germans were poised for another famous victory. The possibility was as illusory as the menu.

True the German relief force, known as Gruppe Hoth because, under Manstein’s overall command, they were led by General Herman Hoth, stood a faint chance of reaching Stalingrad. They were said to have advanced fifty miles in eight days, only thirty miles short of their objective, but the whole purpose of the drive was to allow Paulus to escape and there was nothing victorious about that.

What Meister wanted to know, as did every solider trapped in The Cauldron – forty-five miles from east to west, fifteen miles from north to south – was whether Paulus would try to break out and meet Gruppe Hoth. Whether Hitler would finally authorise him to do so. Whether, even if he did, the Sixth Army, reeling from typhus as well as Soviet gunfire, supplementing its rations with rats, numbed by frostbite, would have the strength to thrust its way through the encircling Russians.