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

is Kalb. I expect I’ll die, as well, but before you shoot me, might I ask one favour?’

‘What? What favour?’

‘That you eat me, too.’

The Leutnant didn’t answer. He thinks I’m mad, Nehmann thought. He thinks I’m clinically insane and he’s probably right.

The interview at an end, the Leutnant left the classroom without a backward glance. The sun was sinking towards the horizon, a huge orange ball wreathed in the smoke of battle, and Nehmann began to shiver as the temperature fell. A couple of books lay within his reach and he opened one of them with his spare hand. ‘A’ for ‘Apple’. ‘B’ for ‘Boy’. He stared at the cartoon faces, the sweetness of the smiles, at the way that every object triggered a thought, even the beginnings of a story. At the end of a lifetime devoted to telling stories, he thought, my days are ending where they began. ‘A’ for ‘Apple’. ‘B’ for ‘Boy’.

Had his questions made any impact on the Leutnant? Had they touched a nerve or two? Prompted a ripple in the cess pit that was his conscience? Had he gone away to think? To reflect? Or was he even now slipping a fresh magazine into that machine pistol of his?

Nehmann didn’t know, and he was so cold, so numb, that he didn’t really care. Why not now, he thought. Why not get it over with? Why not spare himself another night on this earth?

Darkness fell. The battle seemed to intensify. Then the classroom door opened, and a uniformed figure loomed briefly over him. It wasn’t the Leutnant.

‘Here—’

Expecting to be released from the radiator, expecting to be hauled to his feet and dragged out into the snow, expecting to find himself on his knees, the cold muzzle of a gun to the back of his neck, Nehmann felt something rough settling around him.

‘What’s this?’

‘Blankets.’ A soft laugh. ‘They belonged to Kalb.’

The figure disappeared. The door of the classroom closed. The noise of battle seemed to have diminished. Curled awkwardly beside the radiator, Nehmann slept.

He awoke at dawn, shivering. Another cloudless day. Nehmann pulled the blankets more tightly around him. He smelled of Kalb, he knew he did. He smelled of camphor, of mothballs, of menthol. He smelled sour. He smelled of death.

From the corridor outside the door came a murmur of voices then a thump as something heavy was dragged across the floor. The voices receded. A door opened and closed. Then came the soft crunch of footsteps in the snow outside and, perhaps a minute or so later, Nehmann heard a single shot, very close, followed quickly by another. Schultz, he thought. Dawn. The hour of our passing. The moment of execution. Me, next.

He closed his eyes, tried to still the raging in his empty guts. Please let it be quick. Please let me think of nothing. In this city of nothing, nothing.

But nothing happened. No more footsteps. No more voices. Nothing. Slowly, over the next hour or so, the sunshine grew stronger and the temperature in the freezing classroom began to inch up. And then, for the first time, Nehmann saw the hunting knife. It belonged to Schultz. It was the same one he’d used on Kalb. Someone had left it on the floor beside the radiator. Someone had stolen into this room during the night and measured the space by eye and given Nehmann a little parting gift.

He struggled free from the blanket, rubbing his eyes, trying to ease the cramp in his legs, and reached for the knife. It was close, tantalisingly close, teasingly close, maybe ten centimetres beyond his closest foot. Someone, maybe the Leutnant, was playing games with him. With the point of the knife he might be able to force the lock on the handcuffs. With the serrated top of the blade, and a little time and effort, he could certainly saw through a link in the chain. But how could he reach the fucking thing?

A challenge, he thought. For the journalist from the Promi, for the little Georgian cannibal, one last test. He stared fiercely at the knife, concentrating every gramme of psychic will, trying to make it move, trying to make it levitate. Hopeless. He looked round for a stick, a child’s ruler, anything to bring the knife within reach. Then he realised the answer. The blanket, he told himself. Use the blanket.

And so he did, casting it out towards the knife one-handed, like a fisherman spreading a net. The first couple of times, it didn’t work, but the third cast snagged the knife and he heard a scraping on the rough wooden floorboards as he tugged the blanket towards him. Nehmann, all his life, had loved irony. Kalb, he thought, may have saved my life.

For most of the morning, Nehmann worked to get himself free. When he failed to unpick the lock itself – the angle too awkward, the lock too well made – he began to saw through the chain. He chose a particular weld in one of the links, hoping to find a point of weakness, but the metal was tough and it was difficult to keep the chain steady. Expecting the return of the Feldgendarmerie at any moment, he once lifted his face to find himself looking at a rat, large, brown, plump, crouched peaceably among the schoolbooks on the floor, watching his efforts. He’s waiting, Nehmann told himself, returning to the tiny groove in the link. He’s waiting for me to give up and die.

But he didn’t give up. By what he judged to be noon, he was nearly through. Another minute, and another minute after that, and the serrated edge of the knife was sawing at empty air. In the golden pool of sunshine, Nehmann had even worked up a light sweat. Redemption, he thought. Who’d have guessed?

He used the knife to lever the broken link apart and then pulled the chain from the radiator, trying to keep the noise to the minimum. He was still wearing a single handcuff, but