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

Zaitsev’s victory. If Danilov were here, it would’ve been described in grander terms, Communism over fascism, Russian will over German arrogance, good triumphs against evil. Is it so great, so momentous, that Vasha killed the Headmaster? One stick, one rifle erased from Stalingrad? Does that warrant cheers and toasts? Yes. Thorvald was the Nazis’ best, their generals’ handpicked hope, and he was crushed. Yes, we can drink to the death of hope for all the Nazis.

Tania heard footsteps outside the bunker. She put her journal away and stood. Vasha entered. He endured the cheers and thumps on his shoulder blades with his eyes locked on Tania’s.

She folded her legs and sat again in his corner to tell him to accept the praise: Take the center, Vasha. We’ll have our moments later, you and I, in private.

A bottle was thrust into his hand. He held it up to show it off as if holding Thorvald’s head and tipped it into a big swallow. He gulped deeply, and the snipers applauded. He swept the bottle from his mouth and leaped up at Viktor to grab him around the neck in a headlock. He buried his nose in the Bear’s scalp and inhaled, then gasped out the burn and pep of the vodka.

The others snatched bottles from Chebibulin’s box and raised them. Tania laughed and clapped her hands at the toasts.

When the last tribute had been offered, Nikolay Kulikov stepped to the middle of the bunker.

“This,” he said, pivoting slowly in the dirt, his palms facing the gathering, “this is the story of the Hare versus the Headmaster. Vasha, if I tell any lies, you shoot me.”

“How would I know if I’d hit you?” Zaitsev laughed. “You’d fake it.”

This private joke between the two revealed the end of Kulikov’s account. He scowled at Zaitsev.

Kulikov told the story: how the Headmaster had been sent by the German high command to kill the Hare. How several comrades— brave Morozov, crazy Baugderis, handsome Shaikin—painted a map in their blood of the spot where the Headmaster waited, across Ninth of January Square. Then, of all unlikely heroes, the pug Danilov had been the key, getting himself shot but giving Vasha the inspiration for the plank of wood and the white glove. The flare at night, scanning the empty tank and bunker and craters and then, finally, the metal sheet across the park where they guessed the viper kept his nest. The subterfuge the next morning with the hollow mortar shell, Kulikov’s decoy shot at the bunker, then the Headmaster’s answering round striking the brick beneath Nikolay’s helmet. How he got the sudden impulse to stand and throw out his wings like a bagged mallard.

“Like this.” Kulikov beat his arms in the air for the rapt snipers. “Aaaaargh. He got me!”

With his hands in the air, freezing this moment of his tale in time, Kulikov whispered, “The Headmaster was confused. He hesitated.” Nikolay pointed at Zaitsev behind him. Zaitsev laughed. Quiet Kulikov was a wonderful storyteller.

“Vasha zeroed in on the blue flash of the Headmaster’s muzzle deep in the dark hole.” He let his voice climb. “Firmly, calmly, as only a true hunter could do, the Hare let a few seconds pass, to allow the Nazi’s head to settle. The Headmaster was setting up his second shot. He’d got me, and now he was bringing back his bolt for the bullet that would come for Vasha. But Vasha waited with courage until the last possible moment, when he repaid the Headmaster’s first and only mistake, the one he made under the Hare’s crosshairs. Vasha fired his lone bullet of the duel into the blackness and blasted the Headmaster’s unseen head into his sniper journal. Which I signed as witness, of course.”

The snipers clapped. Nikolay wasn’t finished. At the end of the story was the German’s white body and the blackened, blasted face lying in the hole under the metal sheet.

“We pulled the metal sheet back like we were opening a tin of caviar. And I took back my rifle”—he knocked his chest with his fist— “completing my victory.”

The snipers waited. Kulikov lifted his bottle. “To Vasha. The best of us all.”

The others, even Viktor, repeated the toast and drank.

Zaitsev rose. He thanked Nikolay and the snipers for their help and their own victories against the enemy. Then he made his report to them as their leader.

“Let me tell you what General Chuikov told me tonight. Right now, there are seven hundred and fifty thousand Germans surrounded on the steppe. Yesterday and this morning, a million Russian soldiers, thirteen thousand artillery pieces, and nine hundred tanks staged a counterattack to isolate the German army from its supply lines. The enemy is trapped in an area fifty kilometers long by thirty-five kilometers wide. The Germans are calling it der Kessel, the ‘cauldron.’

“Stalingrad is the eastern boundary of the cauldron. And though the Nazis have got ninety-five percent of downtown, it’s our job to keep them here until they can be finished off or Stalin can force a surrender.”

Viktor stood. “Sounds like we still have a job to do, boys.” The Bear glanced at Tania and smiled. He did not correct himself to add “and girls.” Tania stuck out her tongue. Viktor made a show of pocketing his vodka bottle to take the celebration out into the night with him and to lead the others to do the same.

The snipers rose and filed out, except Tania. She made no attempt to hide the fact that she was staying behind while the others shook the Hare’s hand one more time.

Zaitsev sat next to her.

“While Nikolay was talking,” he said, “I wondered just how good Thorvald really was. He must have been phenomenal.”

Tania snorted, impatient with this sort of humility, that Vasha would actually pause to admire a German. Vasha marveled that he had somehow beaten the Headmaster. And why not. He was right: Thorvald never missed. The butcher’s bill the Headmaster had rung up during his one week in Stalingrad was frightful. But Vasily Zaitsev was the most dangerous man in the Russian army, perhaps the most lethal with a rifle in the world. Was Thorvald better? They would never know, Tania thought. The Headmaster was dead, and that was the measure of his skills on this day.

Zaitsev took her hand. His fingers were warm from all the congratulations. Tania preferred his hands cool at the beginning, fresh to her touch, so she could warm them herself.

“Thank you for the party,” he said. “It was a surprise.”

“I have more.”

He squeezed her hands. “I’m sure. But now I have a surprise for you. Chuikov thinks the Germans are going to try a breakout soon. Tonight, four hares are going to kill Paulus.”

Tania’s eyebrows went up. “Cut off the head of the Sixth Army and the body will lie still.”

“Exactly. Chuikov asked me to lead the mission.”

Not a mission, Tania thought. An assassination.

“And which three hares are going with you, Vasha? I hope this is my surprise.”

“You’ll be my second in command.”

Zaitsev told her he’d also selected two new hares from the latest sniper class. Tania knew them both. One, a Lithuanian Jew, Jakobsin, tall and slender, had dark skin that seemed to sizzle with electricity when he spoke. He’s a talker, Tania thought, but she’d seen him quiet and mean. He’s strong and can shoot. His eyes, narrow and black, see as straight as crows fly. And a woman, Yelena Mogileva; she’d lived only a hundred kilometers east of Stalingrad on the empty steppe of Kazakhstan. Tania knew little about Mogileva. The woman had said few words during her sniper training. She was skinny, but her hands were big like a man’s, with pronounced tendons and blue veins. Her cropped hair, once jet, was graying. Tania couldn’t guess the Kazakh woman’s age, couldn’t tell much about her at all except that she’d definitely handled a rifle before she was handed one in Stalingrad; she was a good shot and could sit unwavering for hours behind her scope. Mogileva had her own reasons for joining the snipers; whatever they were, Tania hoped they were good enough. Why is she coming? Why do we need two women along on this mission? Vasha’s teaching her, I suppose, the same way he taught the rest of us. I’m pleased Vasha selected me. He’s flattering me, telling me he doesn’t consider me a woman in battle. He wants me near him in danger; he trusts me when the time comes for killing.