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

Nikki continued. “I was captured. The night after you landed. The Russians were behind our lines; they caught me while I was fixing a telephone wire. They were going to kill me. I had to tell them something or they were going to cut my throat.”

Nikki stood. One rifle hung in each fist.

“So I gave them you, Colonel. I didn’t think it would matter. I told them you were here to kill Zaitsev. They liked that. A duel between their supersniper and our supersniper. They let me live so that I could tell you about it. But I didn’t.”

Thorvald glared up at the corporal. The boy’s admission was plausible. Nikki was captured; he panicked and talked, just like I would have done, he thought. But the tale didn’t allay his sudden suspicion of Nikki. This boy has known all along that Zaitsev is looking for me. He knew and didn’t tell me. He’s been manipulating me, risking my life, planning more confrontations that might have been with Zaitsev, the Red superman, without my knowing it. Well, well. Young Nikki. A killer, a liar, a traitor, and a coward.

No. This is definitely enough.

“Corporal,” he said, his voice chilly, “I believe you. And I can see why you would hesitate to tell me about your adventure with the Russians. After all, giving information to the enemy is treason and punishable, I believe, by summary execution.”

Nikki’s knuckles went white on the two rifles. The boy’s stance shifted. Thorvald wondered if the corporal was afraid that the SS colonel at his feet might rise, demand one of the rifles, and fire a round into his head for treason. Nikki tensed as if he might drop one of the rifles, lift the other gun, and just shoot Thorvald first.

“I also understand why you decided to tell me. After all, if Zaitsev blows my head off, you don’t get to go home with me, do you? Is there anything else I should know about you, Corporal?”

Nikki stood still, looking ruined, like Stalingrad.

Thorvald gazed up to the low, scudding clouds to consider this new fact. Zaitsev knows I’m here. Well, that makes for a different game. I no longer need to let this child drag me all over the city, creating corpses just to get Zaitsev’s attention. I’ve already got it. Now, if I were in the Hare’s shoes, if I’d been told that a specialist had been sent from Berlin to kill just me, I’d hide and hope the bastard got killed by someone else first. But Zaitsev? No, the legend will come to find the German master sniper. The maniac is not living a life anymore; he’s writing chapters for the Red newspapers. And it’s going to be his anchor, his downfall. I can bring him to me now with ease. I’ll give him a sniff of me and he’ll head straight for it. I’ll make this, what he hopes will be his greatest story—his chance to confront and destroy the master Nazi sniper in a one-on-one showdown on a stage watched by the world—into his obituary. I’ll turn the Hare’s pride into his tombstone.

Nikki was silent, waiting. Thorvald could tell, the boy had no idea what was to follow. I have him; I’ve stabbed into him so deeply that he’s witless in front of me. I have the power of surprise in almost anything I do or say to him from this moment on.

We’re going to stop chasing Zaitsev. Instead the Hare is going to be invited to a trap, into a duel he cannot win.

Thorvald tried to make his face stern; the moment seemed to call for it. But he knew from a thousand mirrors that his skin was too white, his cheeks too round. He made his voice firm instead.

“Well, Nikki, now that we are on what I hope is a level playing field, we’re going to make a change. You and I are going to stop crawling around this city, looking for jousts like two knights-errant. Instead we’re going to select for me a single position. It’s going to be perfectly located. It will be undetectable. From that position I’m going to kill every Russian within sight. I’m going to turn a thousand-meter diameter into a killing ground. Zaitsev will come to me because, according to what you have just told me, he’s waiting for me to appear. I’m going to oblige him. He’ll come to me, just so. Then I will shoot him and I will go home.”

Thorvald stood. He carried his pack two steps forward and dropped it at Nikki’s feet.

“And I’ll take you with me, Corporal. I can see now that you’re no better than me. You need to get out of here as badly as I do.”

ZAITSEV’S LEG QUIVERED. THE THUMP OF HIS BOOT against the dirt made Tania lower her scope and look at him.

His leg shook again.

“Can’t,” he mumbled. “Don’t… find me… run.”

Tania pulled her rifle from the lip of the trench facing the eastern slope of Mamayev Kurgan. She slid across the floor to him. She laid her hand on his knee and he stilled.

Zaitsev had curled around his rifle like a vine of ivy. He’d told her to wake him after fifteen minutes, but she’d let him sleep an hour. All day since dawn, she, Zaitsev, Shaikin, and Chekov had crept and climbed, looking for signs of Thorvald. She stroked Zaitsev’s shin. He’s been chasing the Headmaster pretty hard, she thought. He was up most of the night plotting strategies with Medvedev, poring over maps and reports.

For the three days since she, Zaitsev, and Danilov had accidentally met Thorvald here on the hillside of Mamayev Kurgan, little had been heard from the Headmaster. That’s good, she thought; his signature on Baugderis was grisly. Maybe he got himself gunned down by someone else. Maybe he wasn’t so good after all. That would be fine. It would help keep Vasha safe. The Hare has been exposing himself to the greatest dangers in each sector, talking with soldiers, interviewing wounded, artillery spotters, machine gunners along the front line, examining bodies, running under fire every step of the way, all just to find this schoolteacher.

I hope the stick from Berlin is already dead, she thought.

Zaitsev’s body twitched; the rifle he clutched rattled. His eyelids fluttered and he raised his chin as if lifting it above a rising tide.

His breath quickened. “Where…,” he murmured, “where…”

Tania felt his leg muscles contract. She jiggled his thigh to rouse him.

Released from whatever gripped his rest, Zaitsev relaxed. He opened his eyes and tensed suddenly, startling Tania. She reared back on her haunches to give him room to sit up and focus.

“Where were you?” she asked.

Zaitsev sniffled and blinked. He drew in a sharp breath, the kind a man takes before hefting a heavy object.

“How long did I sleep?”

“An hour.”

“An hour? I told you—”

“You needed it.” She laid her rifle across her lap. The light had dropped to dusk. “You were exhausted.”

Zaitsev rubbed his forehead. “Next time, do what I ask.”

He sniffed again and looked down the trench to where the other team, Shaikin and Chekov, was positioned a hundred meters away, gazing up at Mamayev Kurgan’s spoiled face.

“Anything?”

Tania shook her head.

“What was your dream?”

“Oh… um…” He paused, remembering it, or deciding not to tell her.

She prodded him. “You said ‘run.’ And ‘find me.’ What was the dream, Vasha?”

He ran his hand over his chin. The stubble hissed in his palm. “I was being hunted. In the taiga, I was running from a hunter. I had no weapon, just, …I just ran like an animal.”

Tania waited for him to say it, then, unable to stop herself, said it for him.

“Thorvald?”

Zaitsev’s eyes locked. His hand froze in the air.

That was stupid, she thought immediately. She reached to touch his leg. “It was probably your grandfather. You’ve said he was the best. Besides”—she pulled her hand back and shook her head—”you’d never run from Thorvald.”