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

east, then others will follow, millions of others, and the city will be ours for the taking. You spill a little blood to save our own. Is that such a terrible thing to contemplate? Or would you prefer a fight to the death?’

Messner shook his head. There had to be an alternative to this obscene rationale but just now he couldn’t offer Kalb an answer. Just to engage in a conversation like this filled him with shame. He felt dirtied. He needed to get out of this foulness, he needed to erase the memory of these alabaster faces. He needed to climb back into Klaus’s car, and fire up the Storch, and fly away. Nobody he knew in uniform had commissioned people like Kalb to do anything like this. Only when you saw the evidence could you believe that such a thing was possible.

‘Well, Herr Oberst?’ Kalb was waiting for an answer. ‘How many can you take?’

‘None.’ Messner turned to leave. ‘We drop bombs, not people.’

‘They’re dead, Herr Oberst.That’s the whole point.’

‘Dead or alive?’ Messner was at the foot of the steps. ‘What’s the difference?’

Kalb wouldn’t answer. For a moment, Messner anticipated a farewell salute but mercifully he was spared. Instead, Kalb checked his watch and then stepped closer. Even his breath, foul, pungent, smelled of death.

‘Is this a decision you should be taking, Herr Oberst? Or might we expect to be hearing from Generaloberst Richthofen?’

14

BERLIN, 23 AUGUST 1942

Nehmann loved Sundays and this one, he’d promised Maria, would be special. The spell of fine weather showed no signs of coming to an end and yesterday’s encounter with Goebbels, much to his relief as well as his surprise, appeared to have cemented his position as a maverick in the Ministry’s stable of reporters. For once in his life he’d relied on the truth to protect him. And, for now at least, it seemed to have worked. In anyone else’s world, Goebbels’ parting shot – the hint that something unpleasant lay down the road – might have stirred a moment or two of anxiety but Nehmann had never seen the point of worrying himself without very good cause. The Fates had always treated him better than well. And now would be no different.

He left the apartment early to find supplies for a picnic. He had contacts in a number of restaurants across the city and even at this hour he could rely on a favour or two. By mid-morning, laden with cold meats, wedges of Spanish tortilla, warm rolls and a bag of freshly picked raspberries, he returned to the Wilhelmstrasse. Maria, who’d been playing at the club in Moabit past three in the morning, was still asleep. Nehmann sat on the edge of the bed, gazing down at her. Half awake at last, she reached sleepily up for him. They kissed for a while and then he felt her fingers loosening the buttons on his shirt.

‘It’s Sunday,’ she said. ‘You don’t have to go to work.’

Afterwards, he made coffee. What he loved about this woman wasn’t simply her wants, which were commendably varied, but her instinctive ability to meet his own needs. She had a deftness, a lightness of touch, that went way beyond the physical. In a previous life, he sometimes told himself, she might have been a sorceress or a fortune teller. She seemed to have an almost supernatural knowledge of who he really was. That this might extend to his dalliances with Hedvika in Venice hadn’t worried him in the slightest. What was beginning to occur to him was the possibility that he’d fallen in love.

Was this something that happened by accident? Did this have to do with a chance alignment of the stars? He’d no idea but the realisation warmed the very core of him, a much-protected corner of his psyche that no one else had ever visited. Women liked him. Some of them enjoyed him. Like Goebbels, he could make them laugh. But Maria was different because Maria, unlike any other woman he’d ever met, was somehow able to control their relationship. When she wasn’t there, he missed her. Worse still, he wanted to know what she was up to.

Still naked, he padded around the flat, in and out of the kitchen, assembling plates, cutlery, napkins, a bottle of Guram’s fast-depleting stock of Bordeaux claret. One of Maria’s seemingly few possessions was a wicker basket she’d picked up in the market in Prenzlauer Berg. They’d agreed that the banks of the Havel, out beyond Spandau, would be a fine choice for a Sunday picnic. They could eat and drink to their heart’s content and afterwards, if the fancy took them, they might hire a sailing dinghy at the little jetty at Wilhelmstadt and venture into the open water beyond.

Dressed at last, they were about to leave when the phone rang. Nehmann turned his back on the instrument but Maria suggested he answer it.

Just as well. Joseph Goebbels had never before rung Nehmann in person, but always through a secretary.

‘Ja?’ Nehmann could think of no other response.

Goebbels was in his office. He was alone all day and he needed a conversation.

‘You’re telling me you’re bored?’ Nehmann was staring at the phone.

‘Far from it.’

‘This is important?’

‘I think you’ll agree it is. There’s some kind of problem?’

Nehmann mentioned the picnic. The weather was wonderful. It was Sunday. What else would anyone half-sane want to do but get out and enjoy the sunshine?

‘We’re just about to leave,’ he added.

‘We?’

‘Myself. And Maria.’

‘Ah… then tell her the C minor was wonderful.’

‘The what?’

‘The C minor.’ Goebbels was laughing now. ‘Ten minutes, Nehmann. Ten minutes to get here and ten minutes for us to have our conversation. How does that sound?’

Nehmann was about to answer but realised there was no point. The Master of the Hunt had hung up.

He looked round. Maria was sitting in one of Guram’s armchairs, the wicker basket at her feet.

‘The C minor?’ he queried.

‘It’s a Beethoven sonata. The Pathétique. I played the slow movement last night.’

‘Where?’

‘In the club.’ She