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

The general patted Zaitsev on the arm. He smiled and looked around the room. “Looks like it’s just the two of us. Oh, well. We’ll get ourselves a parade in Moscow sometime, eh?”

Zaitsev looked at the medal. The bronze was thick, with some weight to it. It’s odd holding this, he thought. I have one of my country’s highest honors in my hand, but I’d rather he hand me more ammunition for my hares. The copper in this medal might’ve made three bullet jackets.

Chuikov stepped back. Zaitsev looked up and met his gaze.

“I wouldn’t pin that on, Vasha,” the general said. “Not for a while. Keep it in your bag. It’ll stay clean that way.”

Zaitsev slid the medal into his coat pocket. He smiled at Chuikov. At least he lives on this side of the Volga like a soldier, Zaitsev thought. Not like that fat white rat Khrushchev. I’ve never seen that one over here, never even heard of him before. He’s probably trapped by the freezing river on this side with the rest of us; he’s handing out medals to pass the time.

“May I go, sir?” Zaitsev fingered the medal in his pocket. He’d show it to Viktor that night, and maybe Tania. But no one else. Of course, Danilov will insist on seeing it and writing about it. Damn, he thought. I’m a hero. Hero. Why did the word sound so repulsive in the mouth of Khrushchev? He made me feel like a show pony. Vasily Zaitsev, the hero trotter.

Chuikov pulled out both chairs to his table and motioned Zaitsev to sit. Zaitsev moved his hand toward the door, beseeching quietly, again, to be allowed to leave.

“Not just yet, Vasha. Someone else wants a word with you.”

Zaitsev sat. Chuikov reached under his desk for three stubby glasses and a bottle of cognac.

Through the doorway stepped Colonel Nikolai Filipovich Batyuk, commander of the 284th Division. Zaitsev jumped to his feet. This, he thought, is my leader. Batyuk, the tall, skinny Ukrainian with the famous circulatory problem, the colonel who sometimes can’t walk for the pain in his legs and has to ride on the back of one of his aides. Old Fireproof Batyuk. I’ve heard of him stepping out of a smoking bunker beating out sparks on his tunic, shouting orders like a mad fishwife.

Zaitsev saluted. “Colonel. Sir.”

Batyuk returned the salute.

The two stepped forward and shook hands.

“Congratulations, Sergeant. General Chuikov approved your Order of Lenin with me. You deserve it.”

Zaitsev had no answer. If they say so, he said to himself. It’s in my pocket, anyway.

Chuikov poured three glasses of cognac.

“Na zdrovya.” Chuikov hoisted his glass. He faced both men one at a time and threw back the liquor. Batyuk and Zaitsev wished Chuikov his health in return and drank. It had been months since Zaitsev had tasted any alcohol other than vodka.

This has been quite a day, Zaitsev thought, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. The medal in my pocket, the sticky cognac on my tongue, Tania in the warm pile of clothes, seven kills in three sectors, a toast from Chuikov and Old Firepoof. Quite a day.

“Comrade Zaitsev, I will not take long,” the colonel said. He clinked his glass down on Chuikov’s desk. “I know your medal was a surprise. It must be your lucky day, because I have another surprise for you. We have information that the Germans have brought in a specialist from Berlin. His name is SS Colonel Heinz Thorvald. He’s the head of an elite German sniper school.”

Zaitsev licked his lips, tasting the sweetness of the cognac lingering there. A sniper can become a colonel in the German army. That’s excellent, he thought. That’s respect.

Batyuk continued. “He’s been sent here to kill you, Vasha.”

Zaitsev looked down and shook his head, smiling to himself. He didn’t want his officers to see him lack reaction; he took a moment to create one for them. By the looks on their faces, this was important. What’s the big deal, he thought? They’ve all been sent here to kill me.

He rolled the empty cognac glass in his hand. He felt his own warmth in it. Well, now I’ve collected a specialist from Berlin. Yes, quite a day.

He looked up and widened his eyes once for their purposes. “What do we know about this Thorvald?” he asked.

“Not a thing.” Batyuk shook his head. “He’s an SS colonel. Draw your own conclusions from that. I can assume they think he’s their best man for the job. It’s rather ironic, really. Our best against their best.”

Batyuk held out his glass for Chuikov to refill it. Zaitsev considered the word ironic. It fit. Irony was another thing his day had lacked. Now he had that, too.

“Oh, and there was something else, something about him being a coward,” Batyuk added, “Don’t believe it.”

Chuikov approached him with the bottle. “Hold out your glass.”

The general poured, and again the three men raised their glasses. Batyuk offered the toast. “Too bad they didn’t send Hitler himself. That would’ve been a nice hunt for you, eh?”

Zaitsev lowered his glass from the toast to drink. With the fragrance of the cognac under his nose, he stopped and blinked; his vision fired out past the colonel and the general while their heads tilted back under their glasses. He flew back through the day, to the morning, to the battlefield, to sector two with Tania and Danilov in the trench, to Pyotr’s quivering, perforated head. The sharp clang of bullets banged into the pit of the helmet again. It echoed behind his eyes, trickled down his spine, three seconds apart.

Not two men.

One.

The specialist from Berlin.

Zaitsev cleared his face. He wondered what he’d shown the two officers looking at him. He drank.

He swallowed the prickly liquor hard and fast, the Russian way. The cognac scraped nicely down the back of his throat. He exhaled, cooling the liquor that clung in his mouth.

He looked at Batyuk and smiled.

“I think the Berlin sniper and I have already met.”

Chuikov cocked his head. “Really? Where?”

“On the eastern slope of Mamayev Kurgan this morning.”

“How do you know it was him?”

Zaitsev rubbed his neck.

“He has a…” He paused to look for the right word. “Style.”

“Good,” Chuikov said. “You are off all assignments as of now, Vasha.” He collected the glasses and laid them on his desk, then turned to Zaitsev. “Your one job is to find this German supersniper and kill him.”

Zaitsev thought, Find him?

He lowered his face, to hide his eyes from the general and Batyuk. He collected all of Stalingrad he had seen in the past months, the decimation, the tangled wrecks of the factories, trenches ripping through the streets, blasted rubble and smoke, men running, men hiding, tens and tens of thousands of men living and dying and killing. A city full of this. The accumulation of Stalingrad was too much to consider in this way, to add it up and think on it as one thing in which to find one man, one supersniper who, in return, has been assigned to kill you.

Without thinking, for he would not have spoken, Zaitsev mumbled, “Find him.”

“Yes.” Chuikov held open the door for Zaitsev to leave.

Zaitsev moved through the doorway.

Batyuk patted him on the back and said, “Before he finds you, of course.”

NIKKI LED THORVALD DOWN FROM THE SPOTTER’S HILL. The colonel wanted to roam for a few days, to “spread his scent around.” Thorvald insisted on avoiding any zones where he might be trapped by fighting. “Always leave us a back door,” he said.

Nikki thought it best to keep the master sniper clear of the factories. Though the Germans controlled the Barricades and all but small corners of the Red October and the Tractor Factory, those labyrinths were better left off the tour. Nikki thought of the men in those metal jungles as tortured, terrible creatures now. For six weeks they’d spent their days and nights itching with blood lust, clawing at themselves with hunger and thirst, scratching the welts left by lice. The war was forgotten in there; all that was left was the killing. Thorvald needed distance to conduct his wizardly marksmanship, and Nikki knew that distance wasn’t something you could ask for in the factories. Most of the fighting there was still hand-to-hand. Grenades and shovels shredded as much flesh as bullets.