Last Flight to Stalingrad Graham Hurley (sight word books .TXT) 📖

His father had been a cobbler, like Stalin’s, while his mother took in washing for the whole street. He’d never known Georgia under anything but Soviet rule and, when war came last year, he’d abandoned his university course and enlisted in the Red Army. As a volunteer in the Great Patriotic War, that made Kirile unusual.

By now, the interview had all the makings of a normal conversation and when the Georgian expressed curiosity about Nehmann’s fluency in Russian, Nehmann saw no reason to lie.

‘That’s because I’m Georgian.’ He smiled. ‘Like you.’

‘Really?’ Kirile couldn’t believe it. ‘So how come…’ he frowned ‘…you end up here?’

‘With the Germans, you mean?’

‘Of course.’

‘Because I made a choice. My uncle wanted me to be a butcher. My family name is Magalashvili. I did the training. We lived in Svengati.’

‘I know Svengati. Beautiful, especially in winter. You didn’t like it?’

‘I didn’t want to be a butcher. I didn’t want to be tied down. I wanted to travel. I wanted to write. I had to make a living. As a writer in Georgia that was hard to do. Have you ever been to Paris?’

‘Never.’

‘Paris turns you into many people. A writer, if you’re lucky, is just one of them.’

‘And now you’re a soldier?’

‘No.’

‘A butcher, maybe?’

‘Definitely not.’

‘What, then?’

‘I’m…’ Nehmann shrugged ‘…talking to you. That’s my job. That’s what they want, just now. Life could be tougher, my friend. For both of us.’

Nehmann got up for a moment or two, leaving the young Georgian in the care of the Leutnant from the Feldgendarmerie.He climbed the stairs to the ground floor and stepped out into the fresh air. The thunder of battle was as relentless as ever but much of the smoke had cleared and thin sunshine puddled on the wet concrete. Looking up, shading his eyes, Nehmann could see tiny silver fish high in the sky, then came the roar of heavier aircraft and he watched the big Heinkels positioning themselves for a bomb run. The release point was barely a couple of kilometres away, and he watched the tiny black dots falling earthwards. Then came a series of explosions almost blurring into one and a shiver deep beneath his feet as the bombs found their targets.

‘Well, Nehmann? You’re making progress?’

It was Schultz. He was smoking a small cigar. When Nehmann expressed surprise at the boy’s intelligence, Schultz nodded.

‘That’s why it’s you doing the talking and not me,’ he grunted. ‘We think he knows a great deal more than he’s said so far. According to another prisoner, he’s been in and out of Chuikov’s headquarters since the man arrived, but we seem to have picked him up by chance, which always makes me wonder.’

‘He told me he was studying languages at university. His German is good. I’m assuming Chuikov would be glad of some of that.’

‘You think he likes you, Nehmann?’

‘Yes.’

‘Trusts you?’

‘Maybe.’

‘Excellent. This shitfest gets more chaotic by the minute. You need to apply a little pressure, my friend.’ A rare smile. ‘And this is how you do it.’

*

Minutes later, back on his box in the airless cubbyhole, Nehmann insisted on sharing a jug of coffee. The coffee was Turkish and Kirile, it turned out, hadn’t tasted anything like this since leaving Tbilisi. He sucked greedily at the scalding liquid and used a dirty finger to scoop up the grounds at the bottom of his mug.

Nehmann waited for him to finish and then enquired about a flood of fresh equipment coming into the city on ferries across the Volga at night. Rumours suggested that some of these tanks hadn’t even been painted. Might that be true?

Kirile was frowning. This was the moment he’d obviously been expecting, the moment when a pleasant chat became an exchange of a totally different kind. This fellow Georgian with access to the coffee of his dreams was asking him to share a military secret.

‘I can’t say.’ He shook his head.

‘You can, Kirile, you can. Don’t tell me you don’t know because I don’t believe you. This isn’t about your courage. You people fight like lions. Everyone knows that. Everyone respects it. Would we do the same defending Berlin? I hope so. No, this is simply a question about the means, not the end. We accept that you mean to fight to the death. But we also believe that such a thing is unnecessary. Why? Because you lack the equipment.’

‘That’s not true.’ The boy was angry, and it showed. ‘We have everything we need. Shells. Reinforcements. Even food.’

‘Tanks?’

‘Yes.’

‘Unpainted?’

‘Of course. The factories are a couple of days away on the other side of the Urals. Why waste time with a tin of paint? A tank’s a tank. This fucking war’s no beauty contest.’

The phrase struck Nehmann with some force. No beauty contest. He couldn’t think of a better way of putting it.

‘You hate it, don’t you?’ he said. ‘The fighting? The killing?’

‘We hate you. You’re the thief who comes in the night. Every Russian has a choice. Fight or surrender. Surrender opens your door. In comes the thief. You lose everything. Your house. Your valuables. Your daughters. Everything. There’s a poem going around just now. You want to hear it?’

Without waiting for an answer, he launched into the poem. Evidently, he knew it by heart.

The tears of women and children

Are boiling in my heart

Hitler the murderer and his hordes

Shall pay for these tears

With their wolfish blood…

‘Blood of the wolf?’ Nehmann said. ‘That sounds like Stalin.’

‘It isn’t Stalin. It was written by a soldier.’

‘I meant the sentiment.’

‘So?’

‘Stalin’s a fellow Georgian, Kirile. Maybe that’s one of history’s ironies.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘You don’t? Then maybe you’re not old enough. I was in Svengati when the Russians came. It was 1921. I was eleven. There were hotheads in Tbilisi, in your town, who wanted revolution, Communism, all the rest of that Lenin shit, but most people hated the Russians. The country was ours, Kirile. And they were the thieves. Did you ever talk to your father about any of this? Your mother, maybe?’

The boy was looking confused now. The coffee was