Katastrophe, page 9
Nehmann held his gaze, but once again the yellow eyes slid away. This man’s knowledge of the circumstances that had sent him to Stalingrad was startling but in a way he’d been expecting it. You didn’t put listening ears in every corner of the known world and not reap the benefits. Maybe he’d been listening to the diplomat. Or maybe Nehmann had his own file at the Big House. But that was hardly the point. What mattered now was getting back to Germany.
‘I haven’t seen Goebbels for nearly three years,’ Nehmann said softly. ‘For all I know, he might be dead.’
‘He isn’t.’
‘Then how can I help? What do you want me to do?’
Stalin drew on his pipe, and the space between them was suddenly clouded in smoke. When he appeared again, his hand seemed to have found a button beneath the table. A woman appeared at the door. She was carrying a tray. On the tray was a bottle of vodka and two glasses. Also a bowl of what looked like caviar and a pile of blinis.
‘Eat,’ Stalin nodded at the food. ‘And a little of this, I think.’
He poured two measures of vodka and proposed a toast.
‘To Svaneti.’
‘To home.’
Nehmann tossed back the vodka, aware of Stalin’s gaze. At first sight, outside in the garden, he’d formed exactly the impression that the Vozhd had wanted to convey. An old man, scarred in every respect: by disease, by a Georgian childhood, and more recently by war. But now, perhaps too late for his own good, he was sensing someone very different. The Vozhd listened. The Vozhd watched. The Vozhd was doubtless in the business of digging little conversational traps, of quietly turning people inside out until they betrayed who they really were. Why? Because trusting anyone simply wasn’t in this man’s nature.
Power, as Nehmann knew only too well, touched a certain kind of nerve. It bred a merciless blurring of means and ends. It justified the most extreme measures. Surrounded by enemies, real or imagined, you simply dispensed with them all. Hence the years of the Great Terror. Hence the stories he’d heard in Kolyma about the state show trials and the vans marked ‘Vegetables’ and ‘Meat’ that left the Lubyanka every night, laden with men heading for the killing fields outside the capital. Zeks in Kolyma, political prisoners who’d tasted the murderous regime first hand, ascribed to the Vozhd the powers of the Devil. And Nehmann was beginning to suspect they were right.
Stalin had poured more vodka. He wanted to propose another toast.
‘To Kureika,’ he murmured.
‘Where?’
‘Kureika.’ They touched glasses and tossed the vodka down. Kureika, Stalin said, was at the top of the world, at the very edge of the Arctic Circle. He’d been exiled there the year the Great War started. He’d lived in a wooden hut with a peasant family. He’d worn reindeer fur. The men, he said, worshipped a primitive god and believed in shamans and he’d loved the rawness of their lives. They had a kinship with the spirits of the frozen tundra, and they gave the young Bolshevik a rifle, and ammunition, and sent him out for weeks on end to shoot Arctic foxes, and partridge, and duck. Those days, he said, and especially those nights, were the best times of his life. He’d throw up a shelter, and put on an extra layer of clothes, and he’d lie in the darkness listening to the howling of the wolves beyond the treeline. Then, when all his bullets were gone, he’d return to Kureika with his trophies for the pot, and the men would drink and dance and sing, and a couple of days later, at his own insistence, he’d leave the township and shoulder his rifle, and head back to the chill and silence of the wilderness where he was happiest.
‘You want to know what these men were really like? You want me to tell you? One day a man went missing. He’d been out by himself in his kayak, never came back. When I asked them what they’d done about it, they just shrugged, and said that the man was still out there. That was the phrase they used. Out there. What it really meant was that the man was dead, probably drowned, but the point was this: that it didn’t matter. We can always make another man, they told me. But we can never make a horse.’
He stared at Nehmann for a moment, as if he’d revealed a deep truth, something almost sacred, then he barked with laughter again, and slapped his knee, and reached for the bottle.
‘Life is cheap, Magalashvili. Just bear that in mind.’
Cheap. Nehmann was thinking of the women queuing outside the Big House. Their husbands, like the lone kayaker, were out there, in the darkness of this pitiless regime, discarded, never to return. For an insane moment or two, he wondered about putting this point to the mighty Vozhd but mercifully he never had the chance because they were on the move again. Evidently needing somewhere more intimate to continue their conversation, Stalin led him through to the warmth of a study next door. It was a plain man’s room with a desk, a small icon of Lenin, and a sofa almost as battered as Stalin himself. The sofa doubled as a bed and a worn army blanket was heaped at one end. Here, Stalin capped the bottle of vodka and told Nehmann exactly what he wanted from him.
Arrangements were in place, he said, to fly him west from Moscow to a town in Poland just behind the River Oder. There he would be joining a Red Army unit waiting to push into Germany. It would be Nehmann’s responsibility to cross the front line and melt into the flood of refugees the Red Army was driving before them. Berlin, he said, was only a hundred and fifty kilometres away. Within days, he could be back in the Wilhelmstrasse, back in the world he knew so well, back with the likes of Joseph Goebbels.
‘And then?’
‘Then you make friends again.’
‘Why?’
‘Because the Germans have gone behind our backs. And so have the Americans. And so have the English. They’re devious, Magalashvili. They’re making a nice little peace of their own and they think we know nothing. Only Georgians can see through shit like this, which is why you’re going to find out exactly what they’re up to.’
‘And you think Goebbels will know about this?’
‘I’m sure he will. And when he tells you what’s going on, you pass the news back to us.’
‘How do I do that?’
‘Ask Goebbels. He knows what to do.’
Stalin got to his feet. The conversation was evidently over but Nehmann had a question.
‘But what if I just disappear? What if I make it to Germany and just…’ he shrugged, ‘… mind my own business?’
‘That won’t happen.’
‘Why not?’
Stalin said nothing for a moment. Then he opened a drawer in the desk and pulled out an envelope, handing it to Nehmann.
‘Take a look,’ he said. ‘A bit thinner, maybe? Only you would know.’
The envelope was unsealed. Inside was a black and white photograph, the kind of head and shoulders shot they always took on your first day in the Gulag. Willi Schultz, his head newly shaven, looked terrible. Defiant? Yes. Angry? Very. But skinny as hell.
‘You know this man?’
‘Of course I do. He looked after me at Stalingrad. We were together when we were taken.’
‘And he matters to you?’
‘I owe him everything.’
‘Then, one Georgian to another, I suggest you’ll do our bidding.’ The yellow eyes narrowed in what might have been a smile. ‘Da?’
7
Wilhelm Schultz barely recognised peace. He stood on the edge of the harbour in the very middle of Stockholm, trying to remember the last time he’d been here. 1940, he thought, the year the Wehrmacht brought home victory after victory, scalps taken the length and breadth of Europe, France beaten, the Low Countries cowed, half of Scandinavia occupied, and Britain a lost little offshore island, begging the Americans for a borrowed rifle or two.
Then, back in the winter of that first proper year of war, he’d been tasked with planting a seed that might flower into peace talks between Berlin and London, using Tam Moncrieff, whom he’d known pre-war, as the messenger. Moncrieff, of course, had played the ex-Marine and told him he was wasting his time, and he’d been right, but that wasn’t the point. The point, here in Stockholm, was food in the shops, the streets busy and well lit after dark, the swirl of people coming and going without a single glance over their shoulders.
Back then, the capital of the Thousand Year Reich was still celebrating the blessings of conquest but already there were reports of air raids from Essen and Cologne, from Kiel and Hamburg, and the wiser heads were counting the nights before the RAF raised its game and gathered its skirts and headed further east for Berlin. Nights in the Swedish capital, on the other hand, remained blissfully undisturbed and Schultz remembered staying a day or two longer than strictly necessary, exactly the way you lingered in a hot bath, utterly relaxed and briefly at peace with the world.
*
The Café Almhult was a minute’s walk away. The blond young guy he remembered from his previous visit was no longer behind the bar, but the place was comfortably full. It was early evening and most of the tables had already been taken, couples deep in conversation, heads bent over plates of soup and pickled fish, two old men in the corner playing what looked like skat. Of the Swede he’d come to meet, a businessman called Dahlerus, there was no sign.
‘Willi? Is that you?’ Schultz recognised the voice at once. Valentina, he thought, the woman who ran the place. He finished hanging his leather coat on the back of the empty chair and shuffled round to greet her. She was a big woman, in her late fifties, with a tumble of blonde hair.
‘You speak German now?’ He was trying to muster a smile.
‘Ein bisschen.’ A little. ‘What’s the matter? What’s happened to you?’
Schultz pulled a face, shrugged, didn’t answer. The last time he’d been here, this woman had been more than accommodating. She had a suite of tiny rooms upstairs, but space enough for the once-big man in the battered leather jacket who’d plainly seen a bit of life. Yet another reason for extending his stay on neutral territory.
‘You’ve just arrived?’ she said. ‘You’ve come from Berlin?’
‘Of course. You’re busy. He nodded at the loaded plates that nearly hid the burn marks on her plump forearms. ‘Maybe we talk later?’
She didn’t move, couldn’t take her eyes off him. Then, with a start, she seemed to remember something.
‘You’re here to meet Birger?’
‘I am.’
‘He phoned. He won’t be coming. Not tonight. He says tomorrow, now. Funny, but he never mentioned your name. A German gentleman, he said. Just that.’
Again, Schultz didn’t respond. The couple at the nearby table waiting to be served were beginning to fidget. Valentina ignored them.
‘You want some of this?’ She nodded at the knuckle of pork, swimming in mustard sauce. ‘Maybe you need it, ja?’
‘I want a drink.’
‘Beer?’
‘Anything.’
She nodded, took a final look at him, shook her head, then delivered the plates to the waiting diners.
Schultz settled at his table, trying to avoid his own image in the mirror on the wall opposite. With everyone else in company, he wished he’d had the foresight to bring a paper or a book.
Valentina returned with a glass of beer.
‘You need to eat,’ she said. ‘Have they run out of food in Berlin?’
‘We’re at war,’ he said. ‘You might have heard.’
‘Meat? Fish? Something with cheese? Something to build you up?’ She might have been his mother.
‘Anything. Whatever’s best. You choose.’
‘And you’re staying tonight? To meet Birger in the morning?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where?’
He looked up at her, holding her gaze. It had been a very long time since any woman had asked him a question like this.
‘You’re offering?’
‘Of course we’re offering.’
‘We?’
‘My Per. Lovely man. We married last year. He has an apartment you can use. I’ll give him a call.’
The apartment, she said, was in a neighbouring street. Schultz had a second beer and did his best with a plate of goulash with choucroute but his stomach was no longer able to cope with a full meal, and he saw the disappointment in Valentina’s face when she returned to the table to collect the remains on his plate. The café was still busy.
‘No good?’
‘Delicious. I shouldn’t have had lunch.’
‘You want another beer? I’ve given Per a call. He’s coming over later. We can talk, all three of us, when it’s quieter.’
Schultz shook his head. When he asked whether she had the key to the apartment, she nodded.
‘You want to go straight there? Now?’
‘Yes. If it’s a problem, I’ll find a hotel.’
‘No need. Save your money. Tomorrow, maybe? Tomorrow we can talk?’
‘Of course.’
‘Good,’ she stepped a little closer. ‘Then you can tell me what happened.’
Before he left the café, Schultz used the phone on the bar counter to call Dahlerus. His wife answered the phone. Her name was Michaela and she was German by birth. Schultz had talked to her a number of times and she recognised his voice at once. Birger, she said, had been called away to yet another business meeting. He was free tomorrow morning, so maybe Schultz would like to come to the house for breakfast. She gave him an address and directions for the cab, and briefly enquired about life back in Berlin.
‘You need the right connections and a sense of humour,’ Schultz grunted. ‘It also helps to be a mole.’
‘A what?’
‘A mole. After dark, everything happens underground. Goering could learn a thing or two from the RAF, if only he’d get off his fat arse.’
‘I’ve seen some of the photos in the paper. All the damage. It’s truly that bad?’
‘Worse.’
Schultz left the café and walked for half an hour, his hands thrust deep in the pockets of his cheap jacket, hugging the shadowed side of street after street. Even by mid-evening, the city still felt alive, and he lost count of the number of blonde women – young, handsome, well fed – who’d turn your head in any company. Walking in roughly a square brought him to the street he needed, an indication that he wasn’t quite as useless and disorientated as he sometimes felt, and he found the number of the property without difficulty.
The apartment was on the first floor above a hardware store. There were two locks for the side entrance, and he had a key for each. A flight of narrow stairs led to a tiny landing, and there was a lingering smell of paraffin that must have seeped up from the shop below. He couldn’t find the light switch, but he felt his way along the wall to a door. Valentina had warned him about a cat inside. The cat was old, and probably asleep, and he waited for a full minute, his ear pressed to the door, before letting himself in.
Mercifully, the apartment was warm. Schultz found the lights and made himself at home. Valentina had told him where to find food for the cat, and he emptied the remains of a bag of biscuits into a bowl. The cat was asleep in the only bedroom. The bed was unmade, and he shooed the cat off before removing his jacket and boots and climbing beneath the eiderdown. In Moscow, especially during the winter months, you went to sleep early and put out the lights. That way, as he’d realised early on, the entire city could feign death, a state of mind that might – if you were lucky – get you through the next day or so.
*
He woke hours later, the cat curled on top of him. When he shifted his weight, it began to purr, nuzzling the boniness of his chest through the thin serge of his shirt, and he fought the temptation to push it away into the darkness. Instead, to his own slight surprise, he began to stroke it. Better a cat, he thought, than a night with a woman who’d once told him he was a tiger in bed.
Really?
He moved his head slightly, so his cheek lay on the softness of the pillow. He could smell a woman’s scent on the pillowslip, and earlier he’d noticed a little nest of black and white photos on the table beside the bed. Per, he thought, must be half Valentina’s age. He had a sturdy build, broad shoulders and a crop of golden curls. Half-choirboy, half-lumberjack, he’d be irresistible to a certain kind of woman, and the smile on his face told Schultz she took good care of him. What they said about older woman was true, he thought. The arts of patience and delight only come with age.
The cat was kneading him now, as if preparing a nest for itself, and he began to savour this small moment of peace. Schultz was no stranger to life’s uglier challenges. You didn’t get to the rank of Colonel in the Abwehr, the Army’s intelligence organisation, without meeting violence head on, and his talents as a street brawler in the Party’s early days had been the best apprenticeship for what followed. But the direction the Reich had taken, with coarseness and vanity prime qualifications for high office, had first troubled and then disgusted him. The people with whom he’d had to deal had a raw lust for power they rarely bothered to disguise, and by the time the Abwehr was bending the knee to Himmler’s rival organisation, he’d given up on the Reich. To defend a regime like that you needed to be able to ignore excess of every kind, no matter how crude. And Schultz couldn’t.
His last active posting had been at Stalingrad where he’d led a smallish detachment of Abwehr staff, headquartered in the remains of a suburban bus station. Both the Abwehr and the city were themselves on the edge of ruin, but as the merciless Soviet winter took its second bite out of the Wehrmacht’s flanks, a small compensation had arrived in the shape of the impish Georgian journalist who’d shed and buried his past in favour of a new name and a new persona.
Schultz had first met Werner Nehmann in Berlin and he’d never quite got to the bottom of his relationship with the Reich’s Minister of Propaganda, but he knew that a closeness to Goebbels had brought him opportunities of all kinds and even a modest degree of fame. Neither served him at all well in the abattoir that was Stalingrad, but Nehmann had a particular debt to pay, and, as the killing became a way of life, Schultz was very happy to help him despatch a sadistic SS Standartenführer called Jürgen Kalb, with whom Schultz had already crossed swords in Kyiv. It had never been Schultz’s intention to eat the man afterwards but by this time he and Nehmann, like everyone else, were beginning to starve. In this respect, he thought, seasoned cannibals were right. Even SS flesh, properly prepared and seasoned, tasted recognisably of pork.
