Derek Lambert: Vendetta

‘It’s true. But what does it matter?’

And that was true, too. What did it matter anymore? Gruppe Hoth was retreating and the Sixth Army was trapped and that was all there was to it; nothing Misha could tell the Russians would make any difference.

They opened the can of condensed milk and broke the bread and leathery fish into pieces. Meister tried to feed the sick men but they had no appetite.

Meister chewed some fish, then asked the question he had been nursing. ‘Do you know where Antonov is?’

He and Lanz had come to the playground calculating that, if, as Paulus had suggested, the Russians wanted them to find Antonov they would send Misha there.

Misha sucked the thick, sweet milk from his finger. Then hesitantly, he delivered what sounded like a rehearsed answer: ‘I can take you to him,’ in the same tone that he must have used in reply to a question in the classroom.

Lanz’s words of counsel earlier that morning came back to Meister. ‘I know he saved our lives once but that doesn’t mean you can trust him. If this thing with you and Antonov is heading for a showdown one of you is going to get killed and, although Misha has taken a shine to you, he’s got to choose one way or the other and he is Russian. So make sure he doesn’t lead you into a trap.’

Meister said: ‘I asked you where Antonov is?’

‘Between the German and Russian lines. One of those positions that’s Russian one minute, German the next.’

‘What is it now?’ Meister asked.

‘Nobody’s.’

Lanz asked: ‘What’s he saying?’ and when Meister told him: ‘Ask him where the cover is. Factory, store, warehouse, a pile of bricks…’ but when Meister asked Misha all he said was: ‘I can take you there.’

‘Then it’s a trap,’ Lanz said, rolling a piece of black bread into a pellet and popping it into his mouth.

‘I don’t think so.’

‘You mean you don’t want to think so.’

Meister addressed Misha, moulding his words with great care. ‘All right, lead us there. But don’t forget that neither of us wants to kill each other. But, as we have to, everything must be equal. Do you understand that?’

The gold watch chimed deep inside Misha’s clothing. ‘I understand,’ he said.

‘I must know the real place where Antonov is waiting and he must know that I know.’

Misha said: ‘I can take you there.’ He turned, hands thrust in his pockets, shoulders slightly hunched, and walked through the classroom and out of the door beyond the fire, and for a moment he was a nine-year-old schoolboy on his way home on a cold winter’s day.

As he stood waiting outside a wind loaded with snow bowled through the ruins, found the school and shook the pear tree divesting it of one of its decorations. The shrivelled pear bounced once, then lay still.

Picking up his rifle, Meister, accompanied by Lanz, followed Misha, leaving the two soldiers to die.

Often white-clad Russians inside The Cauldron attacked during a snowstorm; they did so as Meister, Lanz and Misha reached a German command post, a cellar protected by a cluster of foxholes and a crippled tramcar.

As grenades tumbled out of the snow, as ghosts uttered jackal war cries, Meister and Lanz dived behind the tramcar pulling Misha with them. A German machine-gun chattered. A white figure reared up, one hand clawing the red patch on his chest. Fragmentation grenades exploded. One rolled towards Meister; he stared at it fascinated. Swearing, Lanz grabbed it and hurled it away; it exploded above them, cubes of cast-iron thudding into the ground and striking the snow-pasted sides of the tramcar.

Meister told Misha not to move; then he climbed inside the tram, levelled his rifle through a broken window beside the driver’s controls, and shot a Russian through the head. He fired again, twice, on target both times.

How many more of them? The white-clad soldiers, bayonets drawn, had already taken two foxholes; behind them came the mainstay of the attack, troops wearing fur hats and brown padded jackets. Meister shot two of them.

In the next foxhole bayonets flashed. In, out. He didn’t know whether he would have the courage to face a thrusting blade. Or to wield one. Stalemate. Until he killed you.

A Russian knelt, aiming his rifle at the tramcar and Meister shot him seeing, as he squeezed the trigger, a target with black circles round a bullseye. Beside the tram, Lanz was firing his pistol.

As always the Russians attacked with little regard for their own lives – Meister didn’t believe there was anything to choose between the courage of Russians and Germans – but they had to minimise losses and suddenly Meister realised they were concentrating on the firepower from the tramcar.

Snow fell softly in Christmas flakes.

Meister, re-loading his rifle, turned and found he was sharing the tramcar with a Russian soldier.

They stared at each other. The Russian was young, about his own age. The ear-flaps of his fur hat were tied above his head. His face was lean and wild. Meister could smell him. Vodka and tobacco and, despite the cold, sweat. Meister was terrified of the bayonet, its nakedness. But the terror was guiding him; avoid the thrusting blade, hit back somehow. So there wasn’t much difference between fear and courage, he thought, as he prepared to pull back the rifle from the window, swing it round and shoot.

If one of them spoke maybe the need to kill would disappear. He opened his mouth but no words emerged. The Russian moved towards him. He looked like a student Meister had known in Hamburg.

As Meister flung himself to one side, swivelling his rifle, the Russian lunged with his bayonet. The blade buried itself in the varnished wood beside the driver’s seat.

The Russian pulled the rifle. The bayonet began to come loose.

Meister levelled his rifle at the Russian. They looked at each other. The Russian had thick eyebrows that almost joined each other.

Meister wished they could talk.

He took first pressure on the trigger.

The Russian spat.

Turning, Meister clubbed him on the head with the butt of the rifle. As he climbed from the tramcar he felt as though he were alighting outside Hamburg’s rathaus.

By which time German re-inforcements had arrived and the Russians were retreating into the falling snow.

What was left of the bathhouse, the meeting place of the Soviet male, lay between Mamaev Hill and the chemical factory amid a confusion of twisted railway lines leading nowhere.

Although devastated, it still retained traces of nobility and hints of decadence. Like a Roman ruin, Meister thought. Marble benches climbed from either side of a miniature amphitheatre; a brass rail, fragile with wear, swung in the breeze; steps led down into darkness that was surely scented.

Here, on the benches, while steam issued from pipes attached to the walls, convivial men had met to talk and share and boast and argue and beat each other as pink as prawns with birch twigs before retiring to the rest-room to drink beer, eat salted fish, play chess and continue the debate.

Situated on a rise, it was a perfect look out post. What’s more it was only 800 metres from the vantage point where, according to Misha, Antonov was waiting.

Meister, standing in the small arena of the steam-room, called out to Misha but there was no reply.

While Meister explored sniping possibilities, Lanz disappeared into the darkness below the stairs. A scrape of a match followed by a spurt of light and the glow of candle-light. Another matchscrape and Meister smelled wood-smoke ascending the stairs.

He sat on a slab of masonry and peered through a crack in the wall. Snow fell lightly on him through the space where the roof had been. He could just see the ruins of a church, a cemetery containing graves demarcated by what looked like brass bedsteads, beyond it the remains of a house.