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

the car. He was starving. Beside the driver sat one of the bodyguards. Another was in the back beside Nehmann. Both were impeccably suited and barbered. Not a trace of the brutal SS haircut for the Minister’s retinue.

They drove back to the city in silence. Nehmann wondered whether to offer directions to the bookshop but knew there was no point. Goebbels was a master of taking care of the smallest details. This little scene, like much else in his life, had been carefully stage-managed.

By now it was mid-evening, the streets of outer Berlin deserted. There was a 20 kph speed limit during the blackout, ruthlessly enforced, but Goebbels’ driver took no notice. He was driving with his headlights on, ignoring the occasional red lights at major intersections, sounding the ministerial klaxon when a lone cyclist wobbled into view.

Nehmann sat back, aware of the warmth of the bodyguard beside him, thinking of Georg Messner. It was the Berlin blackout that had sent him through the windscreen and so nearly killed him. He’d managed, in the end, to put most of his life back together again but for what purpose? To fly handfuls of food into a besieged city without a future? To try and snatch some kind of victory from the jaws of a humiliating defeat? Nehmann shook his head, remembering the shriek of the incoming artillery shell on the airfield at Tatsinskaya and the moment Messner’s precious tent, his pride and joy, exploded. I must get out to Wannsee, he thought. I must present my sympathies and tell that wife of his that she had, in the end, married a good man.

They were in Mitte now. Nehmann recognised the turn that would take them into Kopernikusstrasse, and then the ghostly shape of the tree outside the bookshop. The big Mercedes came to a halt at the kerbside. Nehmann grunted a thank you for the lift, picked up his kitbag, and got out. The street was deserted but very faintly he thought he could hear a woman’s voice singing a carol. Stille Nacht.Beautiful.

There was no sign of life in the bookshop. He crossed the pavement and knocked lightly on the door. Nothing. He knocked again, waiting patiently in the darkness, aware that the Mercedes hadn’t moved. All three faces were watching him from the car. A third knock. He was trying to imagine the living arrangements inside. Was there a little room at the back, part kitchen, part living space, where father and daughter ate their meals together? Might there be a couple of bedrooms on the next floor where they slept? The prospect of a bed and a little privacy put a smile on Nehmann’s face. Then he heard footsteps inside, and a voice he recognised.

‘Who’s there?’

‘Werner. Werner Nehmann. Maria’s friend?’

‘Ah…’

The door opened. It was her father. He peered down at Nehmann, saw the car at the kerbside, frowned, gestured for him to come in. As Nehmann stepped past him, he heard one of the car doors open and he glanced back in time to see one of the bodyguards buttoning his jacket and making his way towards the corner of the street.

‘Komm, HerrNehmann.’

The old man led the way through the bookshop. In the darkness he seemed to know every hazard, every creaky floorboard, but Nehmann was more cautious, inching his way forward, his hands outstretched, one small step at a time.

‘Maria?’ he whispered. ‘She’s here?’

The old man seemed not to hear him. When Nehmann at last found a door at the back of the shop he was already in the next room, bent over a lamp, trying to coax a flame with a wavering match. The smell of paraffin took Nehmann back to Stalingrad.

‘Maria?’ he repeated. ‘She’s here?’

The old man glanced up at him. The wick was burning now and he turned it down, his face shadowed and seamed in the throw of light.

‘Those people outside? They belong to Goebbels?’

‘They do, yes.’

‘And you’ve come from his place? Out at Bodensee?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then you must have seen Maria. That’s where she is. She plays for the family this evening.’ He put a bony hand on Nehmann’s arm. ‘It’s an honour, my friend,’ he said heavily. ‘We should all be very proud, ja?’

Nehmann was staring at him. The entertainment, he thought, after the family have eaten their fill, and the children have opened their presents, and the staff have cleared the plates away. After the goose and the dumplings, a little light relief, maybe even a song or two.

Nehmann felt a sudden surge of anger. This, he realised, was Goebbels’ masterclass in humiliation. Everything scripted. Everything pre-planned. Not a single detail left to chance. You’re anticipating a plate of something delicious, something festive, to fill that belly of yours? Alas, no.

‘You’re expecting her back? Afterwards?’

‘No.’ The old man shook his head. ‘She’ll be staying the night. Again.’

‘She’s there often?’

‘Ja.Too often.’

Nehmann nodded, said nothing. He knew he had to get out of this place, this trap, this life. There was a door beside the big square sink.

‘There’s some kind of courtyard at the back? Maybe a way out?’

‘Of course. Live in this city and you have a bicycle. Where else would you keep it?’ He paused, frowning. He seemed to have remembered something. Nehmann was already at the door. ‘Wait, my friend. Please…’

He stepped back into the bookshop and Nehmann heard him rummaging in the darkness. Then he returned to the kitchen, a book in his hand. He examined it carefully in the light from the paraffin lamp before giving it to Nehmann.

‘From my daughter,’ he said. ‘Frohe Weihnachten, ja?’

Happy Christmas. Nehmann was looking at the book. It was the guidebook to Potsdam he’d last seen in the bookshop window. He opened it. Inside was an envelope he recognised, brown manila, carefully sealed. The water tank on the roof of Guram’s apartment block, he thought. Goebbels’ precious fucking billet-doux. She must have been up there, she must have retrieved it, kept it safe, knowing that one day I’d be back.

He lifted it to his