Last Flight to Stalingrad by Graham Hurley (novels to read .txt) 📕

the airfield he’d got the impression that the rabbit had been offered in exchange for the lift out to Wannsee but having met Beata he decided that it deserved a good home. A little walk, he thought. A chance to size up the rest of the neighbourhood.

Out on the pavement he turned to wave goodbye, but the front door was already closed again, Beata gone, and Messner’s tall figure was striding down the path towards him.

At the kerbside, Messner carefully stowed the pillow slip on the back seat of the car and told Nehmann to get in the front. Nehmann didn’t move. He wanted to know what was so special about the stands of white daffodils in the corner of the front garden, and the little mound of earth surmounted with a cross.

‘Where?’ The question appeared to take Messner by surprise.

‘There.’ Nehmann took him by the arm and pointed out the daffodils. Messner stared at them again. Then he frowned.

‘We kept a rabbit in the early days,’ he grunted. ‘And that’s where we buried her when she died.’

Nehmann nodded. He thought he understood.

‘This rabbit had a name?’

‘Of course.’

‘Schnurrhaar?’

‘Ja.’

*

With Messner at the wheel they drove back to the airfield. Nehmann was good with difficult people. One of the reasons he’d won Goebbels’ favour was his talent for getting inside other people’s heads, having a good look round and then stealing away with whatever took his fancy. This talent for breaking and entering had served him well in assignment after assignment, as well as with a small army of women, but in the shape of this mutilated air ace he knew he’d met a special challenge. The man was so unpredictable, silent one minute, terse the next, then offering sudden unexpected moments of near-intimacy.

Take the nest of toy aeroplanes on the back seat. They’d skirted Berlin and were barely ten minutes away from the airfield where Messner’s Me-110 had been refuelled for the return flight to the Crimea, but a queue of traffic had lengthened behind a farm cart and everyone was travelling at the speed of the horse.

Nehmann, aware of Messner’s impatience at the wheel, asked about the model aircraft. Was he young when he’d put these things together?

‘I was seven. Just.’

‘And you knew how to do it?’

‘Of course. Every child wants to be a bird. Wood. Glue. Time. That’s all it took.’

His face contorted at the memory and it took Nehmann a moment or two before he realised he was looking at a smile.

‘Your father was a flier?’

‘My father was a drunk. We lived in Hamburg, an old house, freezing cold. The place had been in the family forever but my father was hopeless with money, and with everything else as far as I remember. Evenings and weekends, it paid to lock yourself away because he could be violent, too, so you had to have something to do.’

‘Planes.’

‘Indeed. My mother used to cut photos out of magazines. Those little Fokker monoplanes. Big Gotha trainers. A Junkers float plane, way ahead of its time. Once my father bought a medal from a man he met in a Bierkeller.He gave it to me for Christmas. He said it was really valuable but it turned out to be a cheap copy. Not that it mattered. I wore it day and night for the rest of the winter. My own campaign medal. Pour le Mérite.’He barked with laughter. ‘Bravery in the face of impossible domestic odds.’

The queue of traffic had come to a halt. Nehmann twisted in his seat and reached for the pillow slip.

‘Do you mind if I take a look?’

‘Go ahead. Should I be flattered?’

Nehmann didn’t answer. One by one he fetched the toy aircraft out. Each one was a work of art, neatly put together, beautifully painted. No wonder he’d asked for them back.

‘You were really seven?’

‘Ja,to begin with. They came in pieces. All you had to do was glue them together. After a while I had a flight, then a squadron, then a whole wing. As a kid you can invent any fantasy you like.’ He nodded down at Nehmann’s lap. ‘They were mine.’

‘But you turned it into real life? Later?’

‘Yes.’

‘And now?’

‘It’s still a fantasy. Except in real life there’s usually someone trying to kill you.’

‘I meant the models. They’re beautiful. You’ll take them back to the east?’

‘Yes, they’ll keep me company. All except one.’

One? Nehmann looked down at the spread on aircraft on his lap, then asked for a clue.

‘A clue?’ Messner looked briefly amused. ‘The best things in life always come in threes. Think about it, ja?’

Nehmann nodded. Then he remembered Messner’s query on the doorstep back at Wannsee. His fingers crabbed towards a tiny Fokker triplane, painted a fierce red.

‘This one?’

‘Ja.And you know why? Because that one belonged to the Red Baron. Manfred von Richthofen? You’ve heard of him? I work now for his cousin, Wolfram. Another legend.’

‘You’re giving it to him? This is some kind of present?’

‘No. Better than that.’

The traffic was on the move again, faster this time, and Nehmann glimpsed the back of the farmer’s cart disappearing into a field of potatoes. He still had the Fokker, the fuselage gripped lightly between his thumb and forefinger, and when Messner suggested he tried a loop or two, he held it at arm’s length, the tiny fighter silhouetted against the brightness of the sun through the windscreen.

Ahead lay the airfield at Schönwalde. Messner wanted to finish his story. Very recently he’d flown a Wehrmacht Oberst on a recce over the Caucasus. The Oberst had a regiment of mountain troops under his command and he wanted to take a look at some of the bigger peaks.

‘The highest is Mount Elbrus: 5,633 metres. It’s cold at that height, very thin air, but he was pleased with what he saw. When the sun’s out, the glaciers glow green as well as white. He was looking for a route to the summit and he found one.’

‘He’s going to climb it?’

‘Ja.’

‘When?’

‘In the summer. After we’ve dealt with Sevastopol. Imagine a single