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

“No, Vashinka,” she whispered. “You meet Thorvald tomorrow morning. You need to be pure. I’ll wait.”

She held his hand for another minute of swirling time and darkness. Zaitsev saw nothing, not even the night. His mind stood still, linked into Tania’s while her fingers tumbled softly like a mouse playing in his palm. She surrounds me, he thought. Even sitting beside me, touching only my hand. She takes me.

He took his hand back and reached to her forehead to dig his fingers deep into her hair. It was thick, the strands like straw; he could not have pulled his fingers straight up and out of it. He slid his hand down her forehead and across her eyes and nose. He touched her face gently, like a blind man, enough only to ruffle water. His heart and his consciousness were in his hand, crowding into his fingertips like tourists to a window for a glimpse of her. At her neck, the flesh at her collar, he stopped. He dropped his hand beside him on the blanket.

I must be pure, she told me.

Tania stood. Her clothes rustled and broke the spell.

She walked to the blanket. “It’s time for the Headmaster to learn a new lesson,” she said into the dark. “How to die. One bullet, one lesson, from the Hare.”

Tania lifted the blanket. A rim of moonlight silhouetted her legs and waist in the doorway. Her form slipped away.

“Kill him, Vasha,” she said, and was gone. The blanket tumbled across the opening. A cold gust filled her space in the room and crawled on the floor next to Zaitsev where she had been.

IT WAS LATE AFTERNOON WHEN NIKKI AND THORVALD arrived at Ninth of January Square. Thorvald’s interest soared immediately upon seeing the park.

The space was ideal for his mission, he said. He peeked above the low stone wall and swept his hand back and forth over the dusky panorama, 250 meters square, as if feeling it for lumps or irregularities. The park allowed him vision in a wide range. The sun would set at his back and put him in shadow in the afternoon. There were plenty of hiding places in this, the western half of the park: several burned-out tanks, an abandoned redoubt, and lots of rubble. The other side of the park, the Red side of the line, was smoother. Most of the fighting in this area had centered on the building to their right, called Pavlov’s House. The Reds were hanging tough in there, though the park itself had remained an empty fighting ground, a no-man’s-land. “Perfect,” Thorvald called it.

Nikki crouched behind the safety of the wall while Thorvald rose with his excitement to scan the park’s terrain through his field glasses. After a minute, almost standing upright now, Thorvald said, “Ah, yes. There.”

He hurried along the wall fifty meters to his left. Nikki followed him. They stopped at a breach in the wall where a tank had smashed through. Ten meters in front of them lay a wide sheet of corrugated metal atop a pile of bricks.

Thirty minutes later, Thorvald had commandeered a shovel from a soldier to their rear. When full night had fallen, Nikki was set to work digging a foxhole under the sheet.

He loaded the dirt from the excavation onto a canvas tarpaulin. The colonel dragged the tarp from the hole and dumped it behind the wall. Thorvald told Nikki to be careful while digging not to move or alter in any way the alignment of the bricks facing the Red side of the park.

Two hours later, Nikki looked out from the shooting cell he’d created. The hole was now deep enough for a man to rise to his knees, just skirting the top of his head against the metal roof. The sheet would keep the colonel totally in shadow all day. The hole, the bricks, and the sheet would hide not only his body but also the noise of his rifle. He could lie here in the neutral zone, out of sight and sound— even out of the Russian wind—aiming east between the bricks.

Nikki completed his labor, then crawled out of the hole. He sat in a tired heap beside the colonel.

Thorvald was chipper. “Well, let’s see what we have here, Corporal.” He skittered under the metal.

Nikki heard him laugh, hidden in the cell.

“Oh, this is very good.” His voice under the metal was clanging and eerie, its source invisible.

THE NEXT MORNING, THORVALD CARRIED WITH HIM INTO the cell several blankets, two boxes of ammunition, a thermos, and two sandwiches. Nikki was left ten meters back, behind the wall, also with provisions, to wait for the colonel’s instructions.

Thorvald sat silently in his nest until late afternoon. With the sun behind him, with Nikki watching through binoculars, the colonel fired on several Red medical personnel, visible only for moments hustling in and out of Pavlov’s House with wounded. Nikki winced at every report from the rifle, though they were muffled and swollen and not the sharp cracks he was used to. The shots were like body blows, making his stomach quiver.

Nikki despised Thorvald’s shooting at nurses and medical workers and the glee the colonel took in hitting them. After each trigger pull, Thorvald counted up the score: “One… two… aaaand three.” Though Nikki days before had wrestled his conscience to the ground, he struggled now to hold it still while the colonel killed more unsuspecting victims. He knew the answer to his own question before he asked it: Was it right? Should nurses, medics, and wounded soldiers be cut down and used for bait for the Hare as if they were nothing more than carrots and cabbage set under a rabbit trap? Yes, of course. Stalingrad is no longer about right and wrong or winning—only surviving. No, these were not military targets. But what I’m trying to do has nothing to do with the military. I want to go home. How many would I let die for that? Nikki couldn’t name a number. All of them.

The second morning began like the first, before sunup. Thorvald crawled into the hole and again stayed quiet until the afternoon, when he fired twice with automatic speed, paused, and fired a third time. All he said to Nikki was, “Three more.”

That night, Thorvald and Nikki walked to their separate quarters downtown without conversation. It seemed the colonel had entered a realm of concentration; once he’d laid his eye to his scope, he did not look away or flinch until he’d hit his target. The duel with Zaitsev had been joined; the target was selected but not yet beneath the colonel’s crosshairs.

The third dawn at Ninth of January Square, just as the sun restored the park’s colors, Nikki heard Thorvald’s tinny voice.

“Corporal. We’ve got company.”

Nikki unwrapped the blanket from his shoulders and grabbed his binoculars. He prepared to raise his eyes above the parapet. Then Thorvald hissed from inside his lair.

“Stay down. Snipers.”

For the rest of the morning, Nikki sat hunched at the foot of the wall. He was on edge, wondering if the Hare himself was finally within the colonel’s sights.

He waited for hours. Boredom jangled against his alertness; his nerves wore raw. At midday, with the sun at its highest and the shadows underfoot, Thorvald’s voice slunk out of the hole.

“Go thirty meters to the left. Stop there and put your helmet on the shovel handle. Raise it over the wall just enough to make it look like your head. Walk with it to the left. Nikki, do you hear me?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do it. And if the helmet gets hit, drop it quickly.”

Nikki snatched up the shovel. On his knees, he scurried to his left the thirty meters. He took off his helmet and raised it on the shovel handle just above the wall.

After moving no more than ten meters, the helmet snapped around with a clang, struck by a bullet. The shovel blade stung his hand. He dropped the shovel and heard the trailing echoes of a shot from across the park. He gathered in the tool and helmet and rushed back to his perch behind Thorvald.