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

‘Warum?’wailed one little girl. ‘Warum musste er es tun?’

Why? Why did he have to do it?

Nehmann did his best to explain but then felt the lightest touch on his arm. It was Nina. Transport had at last arrived for the children. The studio, she said, was deeply grateful for everything Nehmann had done but now she had to get her charges off the premises.

‘And the schoolteacher?’

‘Nothing serious. He was doing his duty. He was trying to protect the children. He’ll be there at the hostel by the time they get back.’ She smiled, then beckoned him closer before kissing him lightly on the lips. ‘Thank you,’ she said again.

Nehmann watched them all leave. The moment they’d gone, he stepped across to Lida Baarova’s dressing room and closed the door behind him. This, he assumed, would be her professional home over the weeks of shooting to come. There was a pile of neatly folded towels beside the single wash basin. A selection of soaps and shampoos. Trays of make-up. Umpteen shades of lipstick. Even a pile of new-looking Czech fashion magazines in case she was feeling homesick.

Nehmann studied himself in the mirror for a long moment. This, he knew, was the moment of decision. Goebbels’ billet-douxwas still in his jacket pocket. He could leave it beside the magazines and knew that it would be safe here. She’d walk in to find everything ready, everything prepared, and then her eyes would drift to the envelope. Her name on the front. Something personal. But what?

Nehmann tried to imagine her slipping her finger under the flap, easing the envelope open, spreading the pages inside. She’d recognise Goebbels’ crablike, schoolboy script. She’d probably weather the first paragraph or two. She might even be curious enough to make it through to the end. But if she was half the woman Nina had implied, there’d be absolutely no prospect of this drivel getting her back to the Minister’s arms. Hedvika had been right. Joseph Goebbels had been talking to himself.

Nehmann hesitated a moment longer, then he reached for one of the lipsticks. It was the deepest crimson. It spoke of passion, and abandon, and Nehmann knew that Goebbels would have gone for it without a moment’s thought.

He stepped towards the mirror, aware of raised voices outside. He paused for a moment, deep in thought. Then he reached out to the mirror, neat little loops, two perfect lines of text, as close to Goebbels’ hand as he could manage.

Gute Jagd, meine Isolde. Immer dein, immer Tristan.

Good hunting, my Isolde. Always yours, always Tristan.

11

MOUNT ELBRUS, 21 AUGUST 1942

The joint twenty-three-man team rose early, an hour before dawn. These were elite mountain troops, some from the First Mountain Division, the rest from the Fourth. Led by Hauptmann Heinz Groth and Hauptmann Max Gammerler, both veterans of countless alpine ascents, they brewed coffee, struck camp and set off for the last steep kilometres that would take them to the summit of the highest peak in Europe. With them, they carried the Reich War Flag, as well as a pair of divisional standards.

Both Gammerler and Groth knew that the rest of Army Group ‘A’ were doing less well below them, moving at snail’s pace through the mountains, plodding south towards the Black Sea, but the mood among the climbers was buoyant. They’d been acclimatising to the thinness of the air for days but even so it was wise to move slowly, one step at a time, enjoying the first long shadows on the surrounding icefields, cast by the rising sun.

At altitude, nearly five and a half thousand metres, it paid to take regular breaks, huddling against the biting wind, watching the little moguls of powdered snow snaking up the mountainside towards them. From a perch like this, a man could get a very different perspective on this unending war. The climbers nodded to each other, exchanging smiles before heading upwards again. Wirklich grossartig.Truly magnificent.

They reached the summit shortly before mid-morning. The mountain peaked on a steep shoulder of rock sheathed in snow. The honour of planting the War Flag belonged to the man who had carried it up the mountain. Steadied by a friend,he reached up and drove the base of the flagpole through the crust of ice and deep into the packed snow beneath. The moment the pole was vertical, the War Flag streamed out in the stiff wind, the swastika and its blood-red background the starkest message against the blueness of the sky.

To the cheers of his Kameraden,the mountaineer who’d planted the flag stepped back, raising his right arm in the Führer salute. The climber charged with recording this moment asked for a tiny shuffle to the left to make the most of the endless spread of mountains beyond. Then, to more applause, he pressed the shutter.

Gammerler was carrying a bottle of schnapps. He went from man to man, offering them each a tiny glassful. The schnapps was ice-cold but Gammerler had insisted on 84 per cent proof, the strongest he could find, and each man tipped back his head as the clear spirit burned its way down his gullet and kindled a fire deep in his belly. The bottle empty, he stowed it carefully in his pack. Then, almost as an afterthought, he opened the flap again and produced a tiny wooden aeroplane.

This, like the schnapps, came as a surprise to most of the men. They gathered round, curious, passing the little triplane from hand to hand. Gammerler didn’t have the full story but told them it had come from Generaloberst Wolfram von Richthofen. As a fighter pilot he’d cut his teeth with his uncle’s squadron over the trenches in the last war and – as a favour – he’d asked the climbers from Army Group ‘A’ to find a niche for the Fokker on the very top of Mount Elbrus. The Red Baron, he said, would doubtless be looking down. Listen hard for his applause.

The men, warmed by the schnapps, loved the