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a memory.

‘We’ve got lots of tanks.’ He was looking at his hands. ‘Lots of everything. Winter is coming. You know the word rasputitsa?’His head came up at last. ‘The moment when the rain and the snow turn everything to mud? When there are no more roads? When life stops completely? Have your generals thought about that?’

Nehmann acknowledged the question with a smile. He glanced at the hanging blanket that offered them just a little privacy and then lowered his voice and said he had no faith whatsoever in generals. The ones he’d met, he said, were an excuse to dress up in fancy uniforms and get pissed on looted wine every night. They spent other men’s lives the way a gambler might spend his winnings.

Kirile was frowning again. He looked, if anything, slightly shocked.

‘You believe that?’

‘I do. Is General Paulus, an exception? Yes, he is. He doesn’t drink much and he’s fussy about losing too many men but he’s slow, and he’s cautious, and that, too, makes him a liability. War is madness, Kirile. You know it and I know it and that makes us both good Georgians. I like you. You’re my countryman. I believe you should have a future.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘It means that I will arrange for your escape. This very night. You’ll be taken out of custody and released.’

‘Released where?’

‘Just short of the front line. Fifty metres to your brethren, Kirile. A specially chosen place. Pitch darkness. And all those unpainted tanks just waiting to make life safe again.’

‘They’ll kill me,’ he said at once. ‘They’ll put a bullet through my head.’

‘Who, Kirile? Who will kill you?’

‘The Commissars. The NKVD. Anyone who comes back they kill. It happens all the time. They trust no one. They’ll think I’m a spy, a traitor. I got taken prisoner. You whispered in my ear.’ He shook his head, buried his face in his hands. ‘This is a death sentence. They’ll kill me.’

Nehmann did his best to look concerned. Then he put a hand on the boy’s knee. He could feel him trembling beneath his touch.

‘I don’t believe you,’ he said. ‘We’ll do it tonight. This is a gesture, just us, you and me, one Georgian to another. Liberty, Kirile. Freedom. Is there a better present in the world?’

That evening, Schultz returned from God knows where with a live chicken. Kirile had been handed back to the Feldgendarmerie for safekeeping and Nehmann, after a brief discussion with Schultz, planned to talk to him again towards midnight.

Now, the Abwehr man tossed the chicken across to Nehmann and told him to get it ready for the pot. He’d also managed to lay hands on a bucket of potatoes and a beetroot he’d liberated from the woman who used to clean the bus depot.

Nehmann hadn’t killed a chicken since his days in his uncle’s abattoir. He chased it around the makeshift office while Schultz’s staff looked on. One was cheering for the chicken. The others were hungry. Nehmann finally trapped it in the corner beside the field stove, gentled it in his arms for a moment or two, and then, with a single twist of his wrist, broke its neck. The bird went limp in his arms and then, in one last spasm, defecated all over his trousers. Even Schultz was impressed.

‘This butcher shit.’ He was laughing. ‘I never believed you.’

Nehmann asked for boiling water from the kettle on the field stove. He decanted the water into a bucket, added a little cold, then dunked the bird head-first in the water. Some of the feathers came off at once. The rest he plucked by hand, starting with the legs, before putting the chicken to one side to be gutted.

Schultz kept a bottle of vodka for early evenings. He poured two glasses and then checked his watch. There was a small service-issue radio receiver on one of the two desks. The Promi ran a special series of programmes for serving personnel the length and breadth of the Greater Reich and if you had nothing better to do, then it was easy to gather round the little sets and dream of home. Nehmann knew one or two members of the ground crews back at Tatsinskaya whose entire week revolved around a particular show or a favourite radio host. This evening, said Schultz, there was a programme offering a taste of new musical talent and he thought Nehmann might be interested.

Nehmann had his right sleeve rolled up and was deep in the carcase of the chicken. The innards were still warm as his fingers separated loops of intestine from the smoothness of the ribcage; he was only half listening to the radio. The presenter had a Bavarian accent. He said he’d crossed the border into Austria and made his way to a tiny village down near the Italian border. There he was to meet a native of the village, a young pianist now living in Berlin whom he was certain was destined for fame, someone who’d found the time between concert engagements to pay friends and relatives a flying visit on the eve of the harvest festival.

Nehmann paused. Maria had told him she came from a village near the Italian border. She also played the piano. And, as far as Nehmann knew, she still lived in Berlin. Coincidence? He glanced across the room. Schultz was studying him with some interest. Then he put one thick finger to his lips. Just listen, he seemed to be saying. Just enjoy what we’ve got for you.

Nehmann had missed the introduction to the first piece of music but the moment he heard the opening notes he knew it had to be Maria. Her stool drawn up to the grand piano in the big lounge on the Wilhelmstrasse, he thought, her fingers dancing on the keyboard, her head bent, her eyes half closed.

‘Beethoven.’ Schultz was smiling. ‘She plays well, your friend. I listened to you in Kyiv, Nehmann, and now I think I understand. Is she always this good?’

‘Better.’ Nehmann pushed

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