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

‘No.’ He reached for the last of the cucumbers. ‘You think Gustav’s going to be OK? You think he might find his way back to those mates of mine?’

*

The departure of the plane for Berlin was delayed by a problem in one of the engines. At first it was a question of hours but then a Ukrainian engineer appeared and announced that the plane wouldn’t be taking off until early next day. By now, Knaus was dozing at the table, his head pillowed on his folded arms. Nehmann stared at his pad, flipped a page and then got to his feet to find somewhere more private to start writing.

Next door to the cafeteria was a bare, empty room with a single folding chair propped against the wall. Nehmann unfolded the chair, found a pencil and began to write. Present tense, he told himself. Make it real.

His mates, he wrote, call him Billy the Kid. His real name is Wilhelm Knaus. On the battlefield he’s known as the fastest gun in town and his fame in this little corner of the Wild East extends to even the Soviet trenches. When little Willi Knaus appears, enemy tank crews know their days are numbered. Why? Because Billy the Kid and his trusty 88mm flak gun never miss.

Nehmann smiled and sat back a moment. He especially liked ‘the Wild East’ and he knew that Goebbels would, too. It was funny. It would raise a laugh or two. And only the handful of veterans who’d made it back to the Reich in one piece would understand the irony. Wild, indeed. And not in a good way.

Half an hour, and the profile was complete, a cheerful confection of falsehoods, another rung in the ladder that would take this little gunner to heights he’d never dreamed about. For a moment or two, he toyed with letting Knaus have a peek at what he’d written but then decided against it. The man was a peasant at heart, and most peasants – uncursed by imagination – had a respect for the truth. Nehmann doubted whether their paths would ever meet again, and even if they did he’d mutter something about the editing process and blame the whole thing on his boss.

What was left of the day slipped past. A truck arrived from the city and drove the marooned passengers to a nearby army barracks where they spent the night. Nehmann, keen to avoid Knaus, spent a pleasant hour or so with a surgeon from the biggest of Sixth Army’s field hospitals, returning to Berlin to plead for more resources. He took a wider view of what was happening in Stalingrad and agreed with Nehmann that even a hundred ack-ack regiments wouldn’t guarantee any kind of victory. We’re overextended, he said. Geography and the weather have a brutal logic of their own. And that’s before we even start discussing the Ivans. It was only at this point in the conversation that Nehmann admitted working for the Promi. This confession prompted a shake of the head.

‘That boss of yours has a lot to answer for,’ the surgeon murmured. ‘As you doubtless know.’

*

Goebbels, as it turned out, had sent a car to Tempelhof to meet the incoming flight. Expecting to be driven straight to the Promi, Nehmann found himself drawing up outside Guram’s apartment on the Wilhelmstrasse.

‘You’re going to drop me here?’

‘That’s right. The Minister’s office will be in touch. I’m told there’s Weisswurst in a cupboard in the kitchen. That makes you a lucky man, Herr Nehmann.’

Nehmann let himself into the apartment, relieved that the key still worked. The Bavarian sausage was a favourite of his, as Goebbels well knew, and the weather in Berlin was fabulous, a perfect autumn day. Late afternoon sun was streaming in through the windows and wherever he looked there were stands of fresh flowers. He could smell perfume, too, a scent he recognised, and for one giddy moment Stalingrad had never happened.

‘Maria? Liebchen?’

Nothing. Not a sound. He was looking round. On the wall above the piano was a picture he’d never seen before, not here in the apartment. It was the front cover of a magazine called NS-Frauen-Warte, one of the Reich’s top sellers, and it showed a black and white photo of the half dozen soldiers who’d scaled Mount Elbrus. The shot was beautifully framed, no expense spared, and Nehmann sensed at once that it was here for his benefit. A thank you? A ministerial pat on the back? He’d no idea.

Shaking his head, he explored the rest of the apartment. In the bathroom he found a collection of soaps and lotions he knew Maria liked. They, too, were expensive – way beyond the means of a Moabit nightclub singer – and when he opened the bathroom cabinet he found a small, square bottle of French perfume, Shalimar by Guerlain, Maria’s favourite. The bottle had been here since Nehmann arrived at the flat. It had belonged to a girlfriend of Guram’s and Maria, at Nehmann’s invitation, had helped herself. When he’d left for the east, it had been a third full. Now there was barely any left.

She’s moved back in, Nehmann told himself. He’d left the bathroom now, and he was looking down at the bed where they’d slept. On one pillow was a carefully scissored rectangle of newsprint. Nehmann picked it up, recognising the font, the layout, even the trademark style of clipped, flat reportage. He’d last seen prose like this in Paris, he thought, in the pages of the Wehrmacht newspaper published locally for German occupation forces in the capital and the major provincial towns beyond, a publication that never raised its voice, never risked a joke, but relied solely on a bland diet of foreign victories and news from home. Goebbels, he knew, had been itching to get his hands on it. He’d put fire in its belly, rouse the Wehrmacht from its torpor, give the idle captors of France a bit of a