A Kiss for the Enemy (36 page)

The
Feldwebel
shuffled to attention with an inward sigh. Toni slipped his spurs into his greatcoat pocket, jumped lightly from the window sill and scrambled with agility up a pile of rubble to the top of a broken wall that ran parallel to the street and toward the enemy.

The men from Combat Group Schroder watched without emotion. He seemed a good sort, but if he wanted to get himself killed quickly that was his business. Toni moved nimbly along the wall, reached the far end where it joined the jagged corner of another ruined building, climbed a few feet and brought up his binoculars. He was, as far as the watching
Feldwebel
could judge, in full view of any Russians hidden behind the street barricade.

Nothing happened. No shot rang out. Toni's body was silhouetted against the leaden sky beyond the barricade, although the
Feldwebel
acknowledged grudgingly that it was probably more difficult to observe from the opposite direction.

‘The bloody fool's got away with it,' he thought with relief. ‘Now, he'll come back.' And that same bloody fool, who might be one of those said to bear a charmed life, would presumably then go away and leave them alone.

Toni, however, was not yet disposed to return. He looked to his left. The bodies of Russian soldiers still lay in the snow. None moved. He supposed they were all dead: from every point of view he hoped so. But to his right his attention had been attracted by something unexpected.

On the right-hand side of the wall along which Toni had clambered – hidden from the men of Combat Group Schroder in the building from which he had started and also hidden, as far as he could judge, from any other German detachment in adjoining blocks was a small, enclosed yard. No upper windows gave on to it. It appeared to have no direct access to any street. Toni supposed that in other times, when these buildings were standing, various doors gave on to the yard. It probably housed rubbish bins and an incinerator. There was a manhole cover
in the middle of its rough concrete floor. The surrounding buildings on three sides had suffered varying degrees of destruction. Toni's wall formed the fourth side. It was a squalid little area which overlooked nothing, led to nowhere and appeared to have, in present circumstances, no tactical significance. Toni surveyed it from his perch without particular interest.

As he looked the manhole cover appeared to move. Toni stared, fascinated. Had he imagined it? Everything seemed still and desolate.

Toni instantly decided to inspect further. But if he climbed down to the yard would he be able to haul himself up again? He didn't want to be caged in this depressing little rectangle which neither Army appeared to think worth occupying or even watching. He saw, however, that the corner of the building on one side of the yard – the corner nearest Combat Group Schroder's detachment – was damaged in a way which would certainly afford footholds, so that he could easily climb out of the yard at that end, regain the wall along which he had scrambled and thence descend to Workers Block Red Dawn. Below him there was an intervening, sloping cornice and if he steadied himself for a second on that it wasn't much of a drop into the yard. He started to lower himself from the ledge on which he stood. The cornice was almost his whole height below the top of the wall, however, and as his boots found it he realized that there was no question of hauling himself up again. Field boots and a greatcoat weren't ideal climbing gear, Toni grinned to himself, panting, as he balanced on the cornice, ready to loose his hold on the wall, twist his body and jump. The important thing was not to do something inept like spraining an ankle:

‘Among the casualties in the heroic Sixth Army it is necessary to report one gallant Major of the General Staff with a sprained ankle!'

He retained his grip on the top of the wall for a moment, spreadeagled against its surface before committing his whole weight to the cornice, turning and leaping. He glanced down. He had already decided that what he was doing was unnecessary and perhaps unwise and wished very much to be at the top of the wall again.

At that exact moment the manhole cover moved again.

This time there could be no mistake about it. The manhole cover was pushed up strongly by a pair of arms wrapped in thick quilting. These arms were immediately followed by a fur cap and then a body swathed in shapeless garments and hung with a machine carbine. With astonishing rapidity the body was followed by others. They appeared to have run a ladder against the inner wall, and were now swarming into the yard.

Toni was spreadeagled, hanging and uneasily balanced. He was above and about fifteen metres from the manhole. It took a fraction of one second for his mind to recall, too late, what he had been told. The Russians holding the Volga front had tunnelled inwards from the steep banks of the river, into the city sewers, brought them into use as underground communications and approaches. Then Toni's hold on the top of the wall slipped and without further calculation he dropped into the yard. He heard rather than felt a bone give in his knee. Fur caps, yells, quilted bodies! Greatcoat flapping, cap knocked off, boots slithering as he tried to regain his feet, hand moving uselessly to his revolver holster, Major Count Rudberg found himself involuntarily joining a patrol of twelve Red Army soldiers of the Soviet 62nd Army.

‘This one's got to go back to Headquarters. Over the river.'

It would be best – perhaps essential – Toni had decided, not to let it be discovered that he could speak and understand Russian – not, at least, until a later stage if at all. He was still dazed from the extraordinary moments which had followed his capture several hours ago. There had been a hubbub of voices from the soldiers around him, clearly dumbfounded at this booted apparition that had suddenly dropped into their midst. One seized his revolver and binoculars. Another gave him a savage blow in the crutch which doubled him up. Toni remembered seeing a carbine muzzle lowered towards him, and a shout which might have checked an immediate bullet. He could distinguish no sense in their discordant cries. He felt physically sick.

Later he deduced that there had been argument as to whether the taking of so unexpected – and, perhaps, important – a
prisoner justified abandoning the task for which, presumably, the patrol had been ordered out. The latter, probably, was the deployment of a number of snipers. Toni now recalled being told that snipers used the sewer tunnels to great effect. It was unlikely that the patrol's orders covered the taking of a Major of the General Staff! The decision must have been a difficult one, Toni thought later when he had leisure to ponder. Somebody took it, however, and Toni found himself unceremoniously booted down the manhole, into what was, clearly, one of the main sewers of Stalingrad. Had the decision gone the other way, and the patrol continued with whatever was its original mission, it was likely, he guessed, that he would have ended his days in the little yard.

There had followed a nightmare procession along the sewer for what felt like and doubtless was several miles. For the first part of their journey it was necessary to move doubled up, in a position of almost unbearable discomfort. After what seemed at least an hour but was probably ten minutes they reached, mercifully, a larger, higher sewer tunnel and could move upright. Most of the march was conducted in silence, although occasionally the leading Red Army soldier turned to call some words, indistinguishable by Toni, to the rear of his little column. The only light was provided by a torch held by the leader. There was, at intervals, a paling of the darkness, perhaps coming from manhole covers removed in areas under Soviet control. Rats scurried between their moving feet. The men were trudging along apathetically, Toni in the centre of the file. Periodically the muzzle of a machine carbine was shoved into the small of his back with brutal force. The pain in his knee was excruciating. He found it difficult to keep up but the carbine in his back propelled him, stumbling, onwards. At one point he fell over a heap of sacking. The smell told him it was a body. He soon found that, wherever a little light came through, indicating the nearness of a manhole, there would be bodies. He guessed they were in various stages of decomposition. The stench was indescribable. The Stalingrad sewers were communication routes, tombs – and, of course, sewers. Toni retched, and received a sickening blow at the base of the spine by way of reward.

He supposed he was as likely as not to find death at the end
of the tunnel. The Russians were known to have a short way with prisoners, and had announced their view that the German General Staff was a criminal organization. Toni told himself that, if he survived the first stage, the moment when front line soldiers might say, ‘He's too much trouble. Shoot him!' he might last longer. Perhaps he already had survived that first stage. At a higher level they would certainly wish to interrogate him – if they ever heard about him. That would mean survival for a little. He limped painfully on.

Toni realized, as yet in a blurred sort of way, that if he were to keep any sort of mental balance he must discipline his thoughts, try to control what images should or should not be allowed to invade the mind. Already, as he groped his way along through the darkness and the fetid air, he felt strong temptation to self-accusation. It had been idiotic – and improper – for him, a visiting Staff officer, to carry out a private reconnaissance and get himself into this sort of mess. It was impossible to justify it as ‘getting to know at first hand the conditions under which the troops had to live and fight'.

On the contrary, he had behaved like an adventurous adolescent. He was a danger to the Wehrmacht through what he might ultimately disclose (he switched his mind from this aspect as well as he could). He would certainly have got the brave, patient detachment of Combat Group Schroder into trouble for not looking after him. He was leaving his own Divisional Headquarters, quite unnecessarily, without one of their principal staff officers when they were already short-handed and likely to be facing the prospect of a new battle on the Don front. Perhaps most reprehensibly of all, he had failed to produce the report which he had been sent to Stalingrad to compile. He had failed to do even his limited best to make others understand the ordeal of the gallant men of Sixth Army. He should be brought before a Court Martial. Perhaps one day he would be. If he survived.

Suicide would be a perfectly honourable, perhaps the only honourable course for a failure of duty so complete. Deprived of a weapon, Toni nevertheless saw little difficulty in losing his life if he so decided. In fact it ought to be particularly easy. An attack on one of his guards, for instance, would surely bring instant death from a Russian bullet or bayonet. But that
seemed an inappropriate gesture – the sense of it would be lost, nobody would ever know. Suicide in such circumstances, after all, ought to be an act of semi-public atonement. No, to court death as secret self-punishment for failure as an officer wouldn't do. Anyway, things might turn out a little better than the worst. There would be other officer prisoners. There might (although he felt dubious on this score) even be the possibility of liberation by the Wehrmacht. There might, one day, be freedom again. When Germany had won the war! He found the latter consummation as difficult to envisage as any, but one never knew, something might turn up. The important thing was to survive, clearly no better than an even chance; and to remain sane, which might be at least as difficult.

‘But you never know,' said Toni to himself. ‘I was born lucky!'

He hobbled along down the sewer, in a good deal of agony, towards, as he rightly supposed, the banks of the Volga. Somewhere above his head, no doubt, little detachments of men like those from Combat Group Schroder were shivering hungrily among the rubble, bloodshot eyes blinking from grey, unshaven faces, frozen fingers curled round triggers, Sixth Army fighting off unremitting Soviet assaults among the ruins of the city of Stalingrad.

The little column halted. Ahead the darkness was dissolving. They had, it seemed, reached the end of their journey. When Toni emerged, half blinded at first, into the grey, cold light soldiers closed in on either side. A sack was thrown over his head. It was a nerve-racking moment, perhaps to be one of his last. Then he was pushed, slipping and slithering, down what felt like a muddy chute, although his heel caught the edge of a step, showing him that it was some sort of stair. The atmosphere was even colder than before. He tripped and fell, in darkness. He cursed in German and received a numbing blow in the small of his back. Next moment he was yanked to his feet and the sacking was pulled from his head.

The dug-out in which Toni was standing appeared, to have been cut into a cliff face. Through a large round hole in one wall he could see sky and hear sounds, including the sound of water, which seemed to come from far below. This dug-out, he thought, must be in one of the cliffs overhanging the Volga.
It was from these cliffs, from the west bank where they held a shallow bridgehead into the city, that the Russians had tunnelled with such extraordinary effect. The dug-out walls were dripping, the air damp and chilling to the bone. The place was about three metres square. A kerosene lamp stood on a table.

At the table sat two men. One wore the shoulder straps of an officer on his greatcoat. On the other, who was in shadow, Toni could discern no mark of rank. The latter spoke first, in a lilting, broken German. His voice was high-pitched. Both he and his companion wore fur hats and smoked pungent, Russian cigarettes. The reek was strong.

‘Your name?'

‘Major Rudberg.'

‘Your unit?'

Toni described himself as attached to Sixth Army Headquarters. It was strictly true at the time of capture, and it could do no harm.

‘What is your position at Sixth Army Headquarters?'

‘I was attached to the Army Staff for a particular task. Temporarily.'

‘What particular task?'

The conventions dictated that interrogation must be limited to the eliciting of certain specific facts. The conventions, Toni decided, were hardly likely to apply. He would do the least possible damage to his comrades and to Germany, and be judge, while he still had strength, of how and what to answer. And he would, somehow, survive. The immediate problem was how to comport himself so that these particular Ivans would think it desirable to keep him alive: and to send him to the rear. What sort of command post was this, he wondered. Battalion? Regiment? He looked neutrally at his interrogator.