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

“Here, little rabbit. Here, bunny, bunny.”

“THERE. THERE, VASHA! I SEE SOMETHING. A… A helmet. Look. Quick, damn it!”

Zaitsev had just finished his hour-long shift poring over the park through his periscope. His eyes were exhausted. He’d slid on his mittens and been slumped back against the wall for no more than a minute when Kulikov spotted something.

He pulled off the gloves and scrambled fast for his periscope. Kulikov continued to curse.

“Where?” Zaitsev asked, slamming his chest against the wall. He raised the periscope above the bricks. “Where?”

“The wall at the far end of the park. Behind that tank. There. There!”

“Nikolay, calm down. I’ll find it.” This was as animated as he’d ever seen Kulikov. He’s very intrigued by this Headmaster. Oh well, I’ve been living with Thorvald for a week now. Nikolay has just gotten started.

“He’s moving right to left,” Kulikov whispered.

No need to whisper, Zaitsev mused. Thorvald’s close enough for a bullet, but we can still speak normally.

Zaitsev panned across the wall 250 meters away. The sun setting in front of him made it difficult to identify shapes, giving everything in his scope a ghostly aura. Thorvald, of course, knows this. He’s positioned himself so that the sun makes this his time of day, his advantage. Mine was this morning. Thorvald knows that, too; the morning passed with no sign of him.

“Found him?” whispered Kulikov.

Not yet. Not there. Past the tank. Along the wall, not there… what is that? Is it a stone? No, it… yes, it moved. A helmet, it must be. The range of the periscope was taxed at this distance, but right now Zaitsev trusted Kulikov’s vision and instincts more than his own. Is it actually moving, he wondered, or is Kulikov’s nervous chatter making me want to see it move? “I see it,” he said before he was sure he really did. He watched closely the wavering gray lump at the edge of the wall. His tired eyes slowly began their automatic task of compensating for the glare and the hazy focus of the scope’s optics at this distance. The lump did move. There. Certainly. It was a helmet.

“I see it,” he repeated.

“He’s your meat, Vasha. What do we do?”

Zaitsev watched the swaying helmet. It moved unnaturally, in jerks rising and falling, not at all like a man walking behind the far wall. It was a poor imitation, a helmet on a stick, bobbing as if the wearer had only one leg or were walking on his knees. The wall there was tall enough for a man not to have to walk on his knees to stay covered unless the man were holding up a stick with a helmet on it. No, this is not the Headmaster. The bastard is lying hidden elsewhere, within sight and range, waiting for me to fire as Shaikin and Morozov did. He’s waiting for me to give away my position. This helmet carrier is an assistant, a clumsy assistant.

With a pang, Zaitsev lowered his eyes from the periscope. This lowly ruse, this freshman bit from the Headmaster, insulted him. This was not the opening move he’d anticipated. He didn’t know what he’d expected, but it was not this.

“It’s a trick. A very poor one.” Zaitsev blinked to ease the tension around his eyes. “We’ll do nothing.”

Zaitsev and Kulikov watched the helmet rise and fall along the ridge of the brick wall. After several minutes, whoever was carrying it grew weary in the arms and lowered it.

The sun dropped until it lurched below the ruins on the western edge of the park. The light was too low for telescopic sights now. The only target this late in the day, the kind Viktor Medvedev and his bears excelled at would be a lit cigarette or a muzzle flash somewhere in the gathering darkness, not the kind of error the Headmaster would make. Or would he? After all, he’d walked a helmet on a stick in front of the Hare, a disappointment. The Nazi’s far less than brilliant; he was not even craftsmanlike,

Thirty minutes later, after full night had descended, Zaitsev and Kulikov gathered their packs and rifles to leave.

“Where is he?” Kulikov muttered. “Damn him.”

Amused, Zaitsev observed to himself how Nikolay, the quiet one, had grown absolutely talkative over Thorvald.

When they returned to the snipers’ bunker, Medvedev and Tania were waiting. Zaitsev reported on the day’s long inactivity, ending with the helmet ploy. For half an hour he listened to their opinions on what tactics he and Kulikov should employ. Then Kulikov raised himself off the floor in silence and left.

“Did we hurt his feelings?” Medvedev asked.

“No,” Zaitsev said, “but he’s taken this duel with Thorvald personally. My guess is he wants it too much to listen to advice. I don’t know. It might still be Baugderis bothering him. He’ll be all right. I think that’s enough for tonight.”

Medvedev rose from the floor. “Maybe I’ll hunt your park tonight,” he said. “Perhaps the Headmaster smokes.”

Zaitsev laughed. “If he does, light one up for him.”

Across from Zaitsev, Tania sat cross-legged, watching Viktor take his leave.

“How is Shaikin?” he asked her.

“I don’t know. I don’t want to know. I tell myself he’s alive.”

Tania rubbed her palms on her knees. Zaitsev sat with her in the hush, trying to calm the percolating things in his breast that wanted to reach out and pull her in.

She spoke. “Thorvald. Why is he behaving like a freshman?”

Zaitsev shook his head. “To make me think it’s not him. To make me mad. I can come up with ten reasons why he does everything he does. And then I don’t know anything.”

Tania stretched her legs. The outlines of her calves and the stems of her pelvis showed through her white canvas pants.

“The Headmaster wants to know if it’s you he’s facing. He knows you, Vasha. We can assume he’s read all the articles about you. He knows the Hare wouldn’t shoot at a helmet on a stick. When you held your fire today, you told him you were there.”

Tania rubbed her hands together. Then she stopped and looked into her palms as if looking into the bottom of a teacup for mystical clues.

She continued: “He’s being unpredictable. You’re the one who’s acting in a pattern.”

Zaitsev lay back on his bedroll, ignoring her comment. What does she know? he thought. A woman, still mostly a freshman herself. She’s not out there with me staring into the haze and shadows, looking for her own personal assassin. Pattern. The only pattern I’ll follow is this one: When I shoot, somebody dies. One man, one bullet. Thorvald will be no exception.

But Tania’s comment gnawed at him. Is she right? I’m hounded by detail and nuance in this battle with Thorvald. Could she be seeing it more clearly from a distance than I see it up close?

Shit. She’s right. A pattern. Thorvald knows it. One man, one bullet. My stated, printed creed. No, not a creed. My damned brag is what it is. He knows it. He’s read it I don’t know how many times in those articles. I ought to wring Danilov’s thick neck for putting all that information about me into In Our Country’s Defense. He’s put strings on me, made me into a puppet Thorvald can pick up and make dance. Thorvald knows how I hunt, all my patterns. When I didn’t fire at the helmet this morning, he knew it was me, just like Tania says. And when Shaikin and Morozov did fire yesterday, Thorvald knew he wasn’t facing me then. I should have stopped talking to Danilov, told the little troll there would be no more interviews. But I didn’t, did I? I liked it; I rolled in it like a dog in high grass. And now my smell is so strong, Thorvald can track me with it. Hero? Fucking idiot! I’m facing a supersniper I know nothing about, and he’s staring across no-man’s-land at an enemy he’s read a book on.