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

with the boy’s information and although it lacked real detail it certainly confirmed Schultz’s darker fears. Stalin was reacting exactly the way he’d anticipated. Time to open yet another bottle. Nehmann, of course, knew this was a fiction but was glad about the vodka and the ham. Tell people what they want to hear, he thought. And then fill your belly.

Messner was waiting at the airfield, alerted about the Ju’s imminent arrival. Nehmann pumped his hand, knowing at once that the bond sealed by the flight to Stalingrad was still there. Messner even risked a joke.

‘That plane we went out on? The damage was worse than I thought. I just made it back.’ He gestured towards the distant carcase of a Ju-52. ‘They’ve stripped it of everything useful and left the rest for our children to visit after the war. My daddy flew an aeroplane without engines, they’ll tell each other. Just imagine that.’

Nehmann gave him the ham and a bottle of vodka. Messner was impressed.

‘Tonight, we’ll eat like kings.’ He was weighing the ham in his hand. ‘My place or yours?’

Nehmann crossed the airfield to his tent. The other two beds were now occupied, one by a movie cameraman from the Propaganda Company, the other by an aircraft engineer, but he didn’t care. Tomorrow, thanks again to Schultz, he had a seat on another Tante-Ju,first to Kyiv, and then to Berlin.Goebbels had been in touch again, this time in person. The Führer was planning a major speech in the Sportpalast and the Minister needed a full briefing before the text was finalised. This came as some surprise to Nehmann but was also a relief. Maybe Schultz had been kidding him about Kalb’s murderous intentions. Maybe he was safer in Stalingrad than he’d thought.

The flight to Kyiv was leaving at dawn. Nehmann gathered his few possessions, shared a glass or two of the vodka with his new companions, and then recrossed the airfield to the spotless tent that Messner called home. It was freezing again, a bank of clouds massing in the east, heavy with snow, and in late afternoon the light was already draining from the sky.

Messner had news about the next day’s flight. A Wachmeister from one of the Luftwaffe’s anti-aircraft regiments had been on the airfield for several days. His name was Knaus and he’d become the toast of his comrades in Stalingrad after destroying no less than twenty-one enemy tanks.

‘You’ve met him?’ Nehmann asked.

‘I have. Twice. He’s an ordinary little man, nothing much to say for himself. Hard to believe, really. The Generaloberst has recommended him for the Ritterkreuz and they’re flying him back to Berlin for the presentation. You’ll meet him tomorrow on the plane. I gather your people want you to talk to him.’

Nehmann nodded. It was Richthofen who’d first used the powerful 88mm anti-aircraft guns in quite a different role at ground level. These monsters could bring down an enemy bomber flying at seven thousand metres, packing a knockout punch that would equally tear through the thin armour of a Soviet T-34. Nehmann had seen a battery of them at the airfield at Pitomnik, their raised barrels black against the greyness of the sky. If Knaus was as modest as Messner seemed to think, the story would be a gift for the Promi’s publicity machine. Wilhelm Knaus, the little man from nowhere, the name on the nation’s lips, our hero on the Volga, yet another legend in the making.

Messner had found an old card table from somewhere and set it up in the middle of the tent. A square of torn sheet served as a tablecloth. Two unmatched plates, a glass and a mug, both brimming with vodka, and a metal mess tin containing three eggs he’d evidently just boiled. He tested the eggs with his fingertips, then blew on them.

‘Hot,’ he said.

He’d already carved thin slices off the ham. Now he arranged them in an artful fan on the plates while Nehmann took the eggs outside. The snow was already lying on the freezing turf and Nehmann tipped the eggs into the beginnings of a drift on the windward side of the tent. Minutes later he was back inside the tent, the eggs shelled.

‘Perfect.’ Messner looked genuinely delighted. ‘Is this some kind of Stalingrad trick?’

‘Svengati. Whatever you learn as a kid never leaves you. We kept chickens. Winters especially, we lived on eggs.’

When Nehmann said he was cold, Messner nodded at a neatly folded pile of garments in the corner of the tent. It was nearly dark now, and the hissing lamp threw long shadows as Nehmann picked out something to keep him warm. The sight of the little Georgian in Messner’s service greatcoat brought a smile to his face. As did the leather gloves.

‘A tent within a tent,’ he laughed, reaching for the eggs.

‘What’s that?’

‘This?’ Messner held it up. The smile was, if anything, even wider and there was a faintly manic gleam in his eye. ‘This is going to make my fortune.’

It looked like some kind of device. There was an egg-shaped indentation in the base and a hinged metal frame on top. The frame was strung with tight strands of wire that gleamed in the flickering light from the paraffin lamp.

‘It’s my own design. It came to me in the middle of the night. I had one of the engineers in the maintenance bay knock it up for me. Watch.’

He selected one of the eggs and put it on the base. Then, in a single movement, he closed the frame over the egg and Nehmann watched, fascinated, as the strands of wire carved through the outer white, and then through the yolk, and the egg fell neatly apart. Seven slices, all perfect. Nehmann counted them again, just to make sure.

‘That’s magic.’ He didn’t quite believe it. ‘Do it again.’

Messner was happy to oblige. First another egg, then the third. Messner arranged the little discs of egg on the plates, framing the slices of ham. A meal in the middle