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

Nehmann shook his head, wouldn’t say. He wanted Schultz to keep driving away from the well, just a couple of minutes, no more. Schultz nodded, tense at the wheel, his face inches from the windscreen. The single wiper had broken, a thin black stripe heaped with snow. They were moving at no more than walking pace, the Wagen ploughing slowly onwards, lurching from tussock to tussock.

‘Here,’ Nehmann said.

The Wagen came to a halt, rocking in the blast of the wind. Nehmann forced his way out. Kalb, he judged, had probably been dead for less than ten minutes. His body would be cooling already and once out in the snow his exposed flesh would quickly freeze.

‘Help me, Willi.’ Nehmann had got the rear door open and was trying to extract Kalb by his booted feet.

‘You want him out?’

‘Ja.’

‘The fucker’s dead.’ Schultz was looking up at the rear-view mirror. ‘Isn’t that enough?’

‘No.’

Schultz shrugged and struggled out. Between them, they laid Kalb’s body on the snow. Nehmann knelt beside him, undid the buttons on his greatcoat, pulled it back. Underneath, Kalb had been wearing his SS field uniform. Beneath the stiff serge, God knows what else.

‘You’ve got that knife of yours?’ Schultz nodded. He’d given up asking questions. He dug beneath the belt of his trousers and Nehmann found himself looking at the hunting knife Schultz kept sharpened for every kind of emergency. The top edge was serrated with saw teeth while the cutting blade, lightly oiled, was razor-keen.

‘You don’t have to watch, Willi.’ Nehmann nodded towards the Wagen. ‘Just pass me the bucket and the spade.’

Schultz did what he was told. Nehmann was already unbuttoning the front of Kalb’s uniform jacket. Beneath, he used the blade to slide through the layers of wool and cotton, peeling them back, exposing Kalb’s bony chest. He did the same with the trousers, cutting down the line of the crease then folding back the material. The blade had already scored a line through the flesh beneath and blood was seeping out among the black hairs on Kalb’s skinny legs. Within minutes, in a nest of torn clothing, the Standartenführer lay naked beside the Kübelwagen.

Schultz hadn’t moved. Without a word, he passed Nehmann the canvas bucket. Nehmann looked up at him for a moment, wiping the snow from his eyes.

‘Thank you,’ he said.

Nehmann ran this thumb the length of the blade, the lightest touch. He was back in the abattoir his uncle owned in Svengati. Both cattle and sheep were suspended from meat hooks before the coup de grâce and moments afterwards, as an apprentice, Nehmann had always paid special attention to that first thrust of the butcher’s knife, the one that split the animal’s belly from top to bottom.

He remembered the spill of guts onto the tiled floor, the brightness of the yellows and greens and shades of indigo violet you never saw in any book. He remembered, too, the hot gust of shit and offal that stayed with you for hours afterwards, clinging to your hands, to your hair, to everywhere. This, he knew, was going to be different. There were no hooks. He couldn’t rely on gravity to loosen Kalb’s guts. And, when the moment came, the cold might steal away the stink of the man.

Aware of Schultz still standing beside him, Nehmann straddled the body, paused a moment, and then plunged the hunting knife into the tiny depression beneath Kalb’s breastbone. The thrust was perfect, no obstructions, nothing solid, and he used both hands to rip the blade towards him, cutting cleanly through the layers of fat and muscle, until he found the hard ridge of the pelvis. Exposed to the driving snow, Kalb’s guts were steaming. Schultz’s big hand covered his nose but he didn’t look away.

Nehmann had abandoned the knife for a moment. With gloves on, he knew that what he had to do next would be difficult, maybe even impossible, and so he pulled them off and left them in the snow before plunging his right hand deep into Kalb’s body, up beneath the ribcage, feeling his way through the tangle of blood vessels and connective tissue until his fingers found the twin sacs of Kalb’s lungs. They were still warm, slippery to the touch, and nestling between them he recognised the shape of what he’d come to find.

‘Here—’ Schultz was ready with the knife.

Nehmann reached up for it. Then, one by one, he slashed through the major vessels and moments later he pulled Kalb’s heart free. He held it in the palm of his hand for a moment. Blood was still seeping from the chambers inside. That, too, felt warm.

‘In the bucket?’ Schultz needed no prompting.

Nehmann gave him the heart. Next came the liver. This, to Nehmann’s relief, was easier. He could see it glistening, webbed with fatty imperfections, and he carved it out with a deftness that would, he suspected, have impressed his uncle.

‘Legs? Thighs? Something to chew on?’ Schultz had put the liver in the bucket.

Nehmann nodded. The temptation was to separate both legs from the pelvis but even under perfect conditions this operation would call for patience as well as skill. Kalb’s temperature was dropping fast. Better for Nehmann to carve off as much as he could before the flesh froze solid. His lightly muscled thighs yielded three decent slices each to the hunting knife, and Nehmann took more from both calves. Finally, with the addition of handfuls of intestines from Kalb’s abdomen, the bucket was full.

Nehmann got to his feet, admiring his handiwork. There’d been moments when life had tapped him on the shoulder and delighted him, but he’d seldom tasted anything as sweet as this. First he’d helped kill this man, and now he’d torn out his heart. For a moment, euphoric, he tried to find the words to describe the way he felt, and he decided that a kind of primitive bliss was the closest he’d ever get. The American Indians did this on the plains of the Midwest. And now he