David Robbins - War of the Rats - A Novel of Stalingrad

“Now?”

Viktor lit another match. He reached down with his free hand and pulled the Hare to his feet with ease. Zaitsev felt Viktor’s power and excitement.

The Bear laughed. “Excuse me, but I didn’t question Vidikov for an appointment on your behalf.”

He gathered up Zaitsev’s rifle and pack, shoved them into Zaitsev’s hands, then pushed him toward the uncovered door, propelling him into the night.

“Go, my hero. You son of a bitch.”

Zaitsev quickened his steps to a rising thrill. Viktor’s voice bellowed through the dark over his shoulder.

“Go and get it for all of us. You son of a bitch! Hurry!”

ZAITSEV’S PATH TO CHUIKOV’S BUNKER LED HIM ALONGSIDE the Volga. The river was a two-thousand-meter-wide ribbon of unbroken darkness. No boats risked the crossing, fearful of the jagged ice floes swarming under its surface. No planes rent the night sky, no red and green flares burst and sailed down. It was all brooding, waiting, punctuated only by the grinding of the ice giants in the river.

Running, Zaitsev realized that he knew very little about the man he was going to see, the defender of Stalingrad, the commander of the Sixty-second Army, General Vasily Ivanovich Chuikov.

He knew the city had become a pyre for the Germans under this commander. But what else was a proven fact about Chuikov? The man had never run beside Zaitsev through the blistered nights and spitting bullets, hadn’t dived for cover under the metal heaps in the factories or helped him stanch the spraying blood of a comrade’s wound. Chuikov was just a name. A man who made decisions from his bunker with his staff around him, with women running his radios, with food and a cook and plenty of good soldiers between him and the Nazis. Zaitsev pondered how he would soon feel in the presence of General Chuikov.

He arrived at the command bunker and informed a guard that he was expected by the general. The guard, a burly private, escorted him into the bunker, then stood behind Zaitsev while they waited in a doorway. A tall, slender man in the next room looked up from a sheaf of papers and approached, peeling off a glove. He thrust a warm and dewy hand out to Zaitsev.

“Chief Master Sergeant Zaitsev. I am Colonel Vadim Vidikov. Come in. Come in.”

Vidikov led Zaitsev past a table covered with radio equipment. Two men plugged and unplugged wires, never saying a word. There were no maps in the bunker. Zaitsev guessed it was because the Red Army controlled too little of Stalingrad to worry anymore about charting it.

“General Chuikov has been waiting for you all day, Comrade Zaitsev,” Vidikov said. “He admires you greatly.”

Vidikov pushed open another heavy wooden door. Inside, lit by three candles and a lantern, sat a short, thick-necked man. His nose and lips were heavy, almost swollen, under a shock of wavy black hair. Dark stubble took his chin into the fur collar of his officer’s coat.

“Chief Master Sergeant Zaitsev,” Vidikov said, closing the door behind him.

The stocky man stood at once, his hands left hanging at his sides. He appraised Zaitsev up and down.

“You are a very important man.”

Zaitsev was surprised. The man who had just stood at the table had not said these words.

He turned quickly to the shadowed corner. The voice had come from there.

Out of the dimness walked a man shorter than Zaitsev, rounder almost than Danilov. The top of his head was bald; the hair on the sides was shaved close, white as the driest snow. His eyes were the blue of a clear, frostbitten sky. He held out a hand, puffy and soft. Zaitsev knew such a hand could belong only to a commissar.

“My name is Deputy Nikita Khrushchev. I am Comrade Stalin’s political adviser in Stalingrad. I wanted to meet you personally, Comrade Zaitsev.” Khrushchev pointed to the man standing beside the desk. “This is, of course, General Chuikov, your commander.”

Zaitsev looked at the three men. The power in this room was not of his sort. He felt uncomfortable when Chuikov approached him.

“We are very proud of you,” the general said, “all of us. You have done Russia a great service.”

Zaitsev muttered, “Thank you, general.”

Khrushchev floated forward. The size of his shoulders and belly, the white of his skin and hair, made him seem as cold and large in the bunker as an iceberg.

The deputy spoke. “You are a member of the Komsomol, yes?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. By tying up the arms and legs of the Germans here in Stalingrad, do you realize what we Communists have done?”

Zaitsev shook his head.

“The Party has taken upon its shoulders the weight of the world, not just that of the Soviet Union. The world is relying on our toughness and battle skill to keep the enemy here, to destroy them here. You see only the horrible details of the fighting. But believe me, the effects of what is transpiring in these streets and houses are worldwide. The Americans, the British, even the lowly French spill their coffee every morning when they read in their newspapers that we are still here.”

Khrushchev’s girth jiggled at his own humor. Behind him, Vidikov laughed at the back of the deputy’s bald head, at the icy white crystals of his rim of hair.

“The world press is calling it ‘Fortress Stalingrad.’ And that is what it is. That is what we have made it. I can tell you, Comrade Stalin knows your name. Because of men like you, he avoids shifting troops south. He does not have to weaken the defenses of Leningrad and Moscow to reinforce Stalingrad.”

Chuikov, motionless while Khrushchev spoke, sensed his turn in the ceremony. He picked a small medal from his desk, a round bronze medallion that hung from a red ribbon. On the emblem’s face was the familiar goateed visage of V. I. Lenin, in profile, staring slightly upward against the backdrop of a five-pointed star.

The medal lay in Chuikov’s palm.

“Comrade Zaitsev, there is so vast a land beyond the Volga. Can you tell me how we will look into the eyes of our people there if we do not stop the Germans here? You know the motto of the Sixty-second Army?”

“Yes, sir. ‘Not a step back.’”

“Do you believe it?”

Zaitsev looked at his general, taken aback by the question. How can he ask me that? he thought. These fucking Communists, always asking you if you’re brave, if you can cut it, if you’ll die for the Party defending the rodina.

Why are they asking me this, to test my resolve? The Nazis don’t test it enough for them every day? Do I have to come in here to this safe bunker dug into the side of a cliff behind a shield of Red soldiers and have it tested again? I’m a fighter, a hunter for the Red Army, for their fucking Party. I’ve proven myself. What have they proven? Just give them what they want and get out of this bunker.

Zaitsev turned to Khrushchev. In a full voice, he said, “For us, there is no land beyond the Volga.”

Khrushchev nodded. His gaze, though fixed on Zaitsev, was inward. He spoke to himself.

“There is no land beyond the Volga,” he repeated quietly, rolling the phrase on his tongue. “Yes. Yes.” The stout little deputy addressed Chuikov. “Give him the medal, General. The Sixty-second Army has a new motto. Vidikov, print that. Tell the men the noble hero Zaitsev said it. That we are all bound by it. For us, there is no land beyond the Volga.”

Khrushchev clapped Zaitsev on the back, turning to leave. “That’s the way, young Komsomol member,” he said with a laugh. “That was very good.” Then Khrushchev nodded at Chuikov, said, “General,” and quickly was gone, with Vidikov following in his wake.

Chuikov handed Zaitsev the medal. “Vasily Gregorievich Zaitsev, I award you the Order of Lenin for your efforts in founding the sniper movement in the Sixty-second Army, and for your courage in battle.”