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

it seemed, had also presented his Minister with no fewer than four bodyguards, a tribute to his importance. Nehmann sat in the back as the car purred away, aware of the smell of new leather, wondering whether centimetres of armour plate and a huge engine was meant to offer him reassurance.

Nightmare, he’d already decided, was too small a word. First Stalingrad, just the word itself, a tocsin for the soul, a synonym for everything hateful about the world. Then Stalingrad’s weather, the bitter cold that stole into your very core, and the frozen parcels of flesh and blood, some animal, some not, that littered every ruined street, every pile of roadside debris, every next line of footsteps that might once have been a road.

These images, Nehmann knew, would stay with him forever but what was far, far worse was the journey he’d made at the priest’s invitation, the descent into hell, the moment of purest horror when the image he’d kept in his head of Kirile melted in front of his eyes and became a child’s papier-mâché apology for a face, scarlet daubs, obscene hollows, eyeless, broken, the work of someone deeply evil. Kalb, he thought. Kalb had done that. And whatever else happened in this bitch of a war, Kalb would pay.

31

BODENSEE, BERLIN, 25 DECEMBER 1942

Nehmann had never met Magda. Frau Goebbels was waiting in the dim fall of light at the open front door to greet the family’s Christmas Day visitor. Nehmann had seen photographs of this woman, erect, handsome, stern-faced, always exquisitely dressed. In her previous marriage, to a wealthy businessman, he knew she’d acquired a taste for the finer things in life, a passion Goebbels had been happy to indulge, but this afternoon she was wearing a plain dress in a sea-green velvet and for that Nehmann was deeply grateful. A middle-of-the-night escape from the Soviet Army and two days on a Tante-Ju did nothing for your peace of mind, let alone your appearance. In a word, he felt rough.

Goebbels, to his surprise, had readied a change of clothes. He escorted Nehmann along a corridor he recognised from his previous visit. He could hear the piping of children’s voices, the patter of footsteps, and a delicious smell hung in the air. Goose, he thought. And wonderfully waxy potatoes. And spiced sauerkraut. And – if he was really lucky – even a dumpling or two. He noticed, to his amusement, that on the wall at the end of the corridor the framed photograph featuring Lida Baarova had gone.

Goebbels led the way to a guest bedroom. The replacement set of clothes that awaited Nehmann might have been lifted from Guram’s apartment. The same heavy pullover with the same zigzag motif. A pair of trousers, freshly ironed, that fitted like a dream. Even the triangle of red silk scarf that Nehmann liked to knot around his neck.

‘We took advice.’ Goebbels was beaming. ‘We got word that you were losing weight, so we acquired a tighter pair of trousers. That was Maria’s doing. Don’t tell me you’re surprised.’

‘Not at all. How is she?’

‘Well, my friend. And as eager as ever.’

‘For?’

‘You, Nehmann.’ The smile was even wider. ‘Who else?’

The family, he explained, would be eating later, before the evening’s entertainments began. For their guest, the cook had prepared a cold platter from last night’s Christmas Eve celebrations. Nehmann would be dining alone in Goebbels’ study over a drink or two while together they did their best to resolve certain matters. Nehmann was very welcome to take advantage of the facilities. A bath had already been run. Afterwards, soaped and lotioned, he would doubtless be able to remember his way to the study. A glass or two of Gewürztraminer would be waiting for him once he’d had time to collect himself.

Certain matters? Collect himself?

Nehmann lay full length in the bath, his eyes closed. He couldn’t remember when he’d last enjoyed water this hot. It seeped into him, a reminder that life in the Third Reich could have its moments of purest pleasure. The temptation was to tally this against the countless images he’d just left behind him, to remind himself that everything in this weird regime came at a price paid by millions of others, but he shook his head. With luck, he’d be back on the road to the city within a couple of hours. Maria, he thought. Waiting for him.

Goebbels, when Nehmann joined him a full hour later, was showing signs of impatience.

‘You slept,’ he said.

‘How do you know?’

‘I checked. You’re a guest Nehmann. You live here by our rules, not yours.’

Goebbels was, as ever, sitting behind his desk. Nehmann settled in the proffered chair. None of this matters, he told himself. I’m still alive.

‘You have something for me?’ Goebbels couldn’t have been blunter.

Nehmann nodded. He’d typed up his encounter with Gigensohen, the pathologist, and now he handed it across. Goebbels, it turned out, knew about the pathologist’s visit to Stalingrad already. Indeed, by his own account it had been partly his own idea.

‘We need focus, Nehmann. We need to acknowledge the reality of things. And, in my view, there’s no better place to start than the findings of a man like Gigensohen. He’s a scientist. He deals in facts, not fictions. People will trust him.’

He bent his head and scanned Nehmann’s account. Then he read it a second time, a green pen in his hand, making notes in the margin.

‘He told you about having to thaw out the bodies? Before he carves them up? How difficult that can be? How long it takes?’

‘Yes.’

‘And he told you about the time he left one poor man to roast for too long? Charred him down one side? Like some Schwein on a spit?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then use it. Make it graphic. Make it real.’ He lifted his head at last and adjusted his reading glasses. ‘What’s the matter, Nehmann? Why do I have to tell you all this? Has Stalingrad done bad things to you? Robbed you of your appetite for that killer phrase we