The Cross of Iron (66 page)

They pressed into the corridor and ran into the next room, where the men who had remained behind received them excitedly. Schulz waved his hand impatiently to stop their torrent of questions. ‘Not so much talk. We have to block this side with boxes too. The Russians are coming.’

In feverish haste they began barricading the second corridor also. Steiner had meanwhile looked around the place. The room seemed ideal for withstanding a siege. From both sides the Russians would have to run down a long corridor completely without cover; they would easily be stopped by the heavy machine-guns and could be held off far enough so that their hand grenades would do no damage. As Steiner ran from one corner to another he felt silent vexation at observing the men whispering to one another, throwing meaningful glances at him. As soon as he came near them they stopped talking. Krüger and Faber behaved in the same way. They sat on a box, their faces chalky, watching him. Behind them lay Schnurrbart. They’re all scared stiff, Steiner thought contemptuously. The stinkers are scared stiff. He noticed the radio men in a corner. As he approached, one of the two men raised his head. ‘We have communication with Regiment now,’ he said.

‘What about Battalion?’ Steiner asked.

The man shrugged. ‘They don’t answer. God knows what’s wrong there.’

‘I can tell you what,’ Schulz put in as he joined the group. ‘They’ve written us off, the brutes. As far as they’re concerned we’re through. Dead and gone.’ He looked up at the dirty-grey arched ceiling that curved above them like the lid of a coffin. ‘Shut up,’ Steiner said with disgust. To the radio men he said: ‘How did you get here?’ As one of the men explained, Steiner stood with closed eyes, trying to reconstruct the diagram of the cellar. Finally he nodded. ‘We’ve run around the sides of a square and come out under the tower again. If they don’t fight through to get us out, we’ll have to try it ourselves. Get in touch with them,’ he ordered sharply.

The radio men slipped on their earphones.

After receiving the alarming radio message from Triebig, Stransky sat at his desk in a mood of blankness. The news of Steiner’s death brought him none of the inner rejoicing he had anticipated, and he wondered why this was so. The feeling suddenly swept him that a vast cloud of danger was gathering around his head. If they are wiped out by the Russians, he thought, things will be bad here. For a moment he thought of removing the First or the Third Company from its position and ordering it to the defence of his command post. But Brandt would have to approve such a step. At last he lifted the telephone and spoke with the signals platoon leader. ‘Get all your available men and take up position in front of my command post,’ he ordered. ‘If anything should happen, send a courier up to me.’

For a moment there was a dead silence at the other end of the line. Then Hüser exclaimed in dismay: ‘I need at least four men for the switchboard and radio communication, sir.’

Stransky bit his lips impatiently. ‘One man is enough for communication,’ he said imperatively. ‘The Russians may be on top of us at any moment. You will need every man down in the street below the command post. Once the danger is past, I’ll inform you and you can have your men again and resume communications. How many are you?’

‘Only six at the moment,’ Hüser replied, his uneasiness plain. 

Stransky frowned. ‘How is that? Your platoon is fifteen men strong.’

‘The others are out taking down the telephone lines to First and Third,’ Hüser explained.

‘Then take the couriers also, and hurry up about it, man.’ He replaced the receiver and lit a cigarette. But after the first few puffs he dropped it to the floor in disgust and ground it out with his boot. The silence in the room intensified his nervousness. He tried to win a little pleasure by turning his thoughts to his transfer back to France. If what his cousin had written were accurate, the transfer ought to come through any day now. His cousin could be relied on, he thought, grinning.

Now and then he glanced impatiently at his watch. The battalion was due to start its withdrawal in one hour. The other companies, except for Second, had been informed and would evacuate their positions according to plan. Lieutenant Moninger had sent a message that he was in communication with Third and that all was peaceful on both sectors. Peaceful? Stransky smiled grimly. Nothing reassuring about this peacefulness; it plucked at the nerves and was harder to bear than all the racket of yesterday.

Unable to banish his gloomy thoughts, he went over to the window and looked down into the dark back yard. ‘There is no peace,’ he murmured to himself. ‘One is a hunted animal.’ His thoughts returned again and again to his Second Company. It was really time now to order it to withdraw. Perhaps it will be better after all, he told himself, if I send a courier over there. Was Triebig still alive? He was not eager for Triebig to come back, but he could not put off issuing his order much longer. Glancing at his watch again, he saw that nearly an hour had passed since his conversation with Hüser. It was twenty minutes to four now. As he reached for the telephone it occurred to him that the house was deserted except for the communications platoon out front. He started for the door. Suddenly he recalled the radio message from Triebig. Since he had deliberately failed to report this message to Regiment, he returned to the table and carefully burned the message slip over the candle. Then he turned toward the door again. At that moment it flew open and Stransky found himself confronted by Kiesel. The adjutant’s face bore an expression of anger and harshness such as Stransky had never seen before in him. Without a word Kiesel strode past him into the room, sat down at the desk, reached into his pocket and accusingly laid a sheet of paper on the desk. The silence became unbearable; it stood like a wall between the two officers. At last Stransky pulled himself together, managed a dim smile and murmured: ‘You. Herr Kiesel?’

‘As you see, Herr Stransky. I have something to say to you.’ He waited until Stransky had taken a seat. ‘The commander has sent me. What is the situation of your Second Company?’

Stransky moistened his dry lips with his tongue and tried to keep his voice on a casual, even note. ‘The last radio message came from Triebig. But you know how Triebig is.’ He assumed a sardonic air that dissolved at once under Kiesel’s icy gaze. ‘I didn’t take his assertions too seriously,’ he added rather vaguely. As Kiesel persistently did not speak, Stransky’s discomfort mounted. He passed his hand nervously over his temple. ‘What makes you ask?’ he murmured.

‘The last radio message came from Sergeant Steiner,’ Kiesel replied, picking up the sheet of paper he had laid on the desk. ‘He says that Triebig has been killed and the company is surrounded in the cellar of the factory. Didn’t you know that?’

His eyes probed Stransky’s corpselike face. Stransky’s lips moved without making a sound. At last he whispered incredulously: ‘Impossible.’

Kiesel regarded him impassively. ‘You didn’t know that?’ he asked in mock surprise. ‘But you have radio communication with the company, Herr Stransky.’ He spoke now with naked scorn.

Stransky fought to restore some order to his thoughts. To gain time he lit a cigarette. But his fingers were trembling so hard that he feared Kiesel would notice his state, and he laid the cigarette on the edge of the desk. ‘I don’t understand that,’ he murmured weakly.

There was a knock on the door and a tall, broad-shouldered man in lieutenant’s uniform entered. He paused at the threshold and snapped his hand to his cap.

‘You’re a little earlier than I expected,’ Kiesel said, rising. ‘Do you know Lieutenant Gollhofer?’ he asked Stransky. When Stransky shook his head, he continued: ‘He has been commanding the engineer’s platoon for the past eight days. Lieutenant-Colonel Brandt has ordered him to go to the relief of Second Company. I have no more time to spend talking with you. You are to take the rest of the battalion as planned to the new position. The commander will expect you in his command post at nine o’clock.’

He had spoken very rapidly. Now he swept the lieutenant out with him into the hall. Side by side they ran down the steps to the street. There several dozen men were huddling close to the wall of the building, talking in whispers. ‘You know what to do?’ Kiesel asked. Gollhofer nodded. They looked beyond the fence at the shadowy outlines of the factory. Kiesel bit his lips. Then he shook hands with the lieutenant. ‘I hope you are successful. The business must not take too long, or you’ll lose contact with us. Good luck.’ He stood watching as the men disappeared into the shadow of the fence. Then he hurried on to the next intersection, where his car was waiting. ‘Back,’ Kiesel snapped, swinging into the seat beside the driver. He ordered him to drive fast.

It seemed to Kiesel that he had been doing little else but ride in this car for the past two hours. He had reached the new command post and sent the car back. Half an hour later it returned with Lieutenant Stroh who told him that Brandt wanted to see him at once. Turning the task of arranging quarters over to Stroh, he had driven back to the old headquarters to find Brandt in a state of intense excitement. ‘I’ve deliberately refrained from getting in touch with Stransky,’ the commander had told him. ‘I want you to go there and find out for yourself what has been happening.’ Then he told Kiesel about the radio messages and his order to Gollhofer to relieve the factory. ‘Drive over to Stransky at once,’ he concluded. ‘I want to see him at the new command post at nine o’clock. If he has tried any more slimy tricks, I don’t intend to let it pass this time. I’ll wait here for you.’

The commander’s hunch had been entirely right. Meeting the battalion communications platoon leader in front of Stransky’s command post, Kiesel had learned that the radio station had been left untended and communication with the second company broken off on Stransky’s orders. That will cost him his head, Kiesel thought grimly as the car drew up in front of the regimental command post. ‘Wait till I come back,’ Kiesel ordered the man at the wheel. He bounded up the steps.

The candles in the hallway were still burning, but almost all the doors stood wide open, and his footsteps echoed loudly through the deserted building. The commander sprang to his feet, irritated and impatient, as Kiesel entered the room. ‘You can tell me about it while we drive,’ he said quickly. ‘I must get to the new headquarters. Since the communications men have left I’ve been up in the air here. Where is the car?’ Without waiting for a reply he snatched his baggage and hurried out. On the way down to the car he told Kiesel that the rest of the staff had left half an hour ago. ‘I put them all on trucks,’ Brandt said. ‘It will be light in an hour. The time for the withdrawal was set much too late. I don’t understand the general.’

‘Neither do I,’ Kiesel agreed. ‘The battalions will reach the new line in broad daylight.’

Sighing, Brandt settled on the seat. ‘Get started, man,’ he barked at the driver. He turned to Kiesel, who had sat down beside him. ‘It’s four sharp now. I hope there was no last-minute hitch with the withdrawal.’

‘Let’s hope so,’ Kiesel murmured. Brandt watched indifferently as the car barely by-passed a fallen telegraph pole. ‘You can turn on your headlights now,’ he called to the man at the wheel. Unhappily, he eyed the greying sky. Then he turned to Kiesel. ‘Now let me have it.’

Silently, he listened to Kiesel’s report, while the car gathered speed, left the last houses of the city behind, and reached the highway. When Kiesel finished, there was a long quiet. Finally Brandt looked up, shaking his head. ‘He must have gone stark raving mad,’ he said. ‘In the language of military law there’s only one word for that: sabotage. And the rope is the penalty for sabotage. Stransky knows that as well as I. I’d like to know what he could have been thinking of. He must have reckoned on the possibility of this foulness coming out.’

‘Certainly,’ Kiesel said. He looked back. The silhouette of the city was beginning to emerge gradually from the darkness, black against the grey of the sky. ‘Of course he must have reckoned on the possibility,’ Kiesel repeated absently. Suddenly he turned to face Brandt. ‘I feel like a deserter.’

‘So do I,’ said Brandt, ‘but we have done all in our power. H-hour couldn’t be postponed on account of a single company. The bridgehead has begun to move and will go on moving until the last man has reached the Crimea. A moment of historic significance.’ He smiled bitterly. ‘We are making history once more.’

Still holding its smile, his face suddenly convulsed. ‘Drive faster, damn it all,’ he shouted at the driver. Frightened, the soldier hunched his shoulders as though he had received a blow, at the same time pressing the accelerator to the floor. ‘But we are like the sorcerer’s apprentice,’ Brandt continued in an easy conversational tone. ‘We have forgotten the magic word for stopping the flood. Or do you perhaps know it?’

‘Capitulation,’ Kiesel said.

Brandt dismissed that with a wave of his hand. ‘The time for that has passed. What would we get out of it now?’

Kiesel shrugged.

‘There you are,’ Brandt said. ‘Incidentally, I want to have everything on this business with Stransky in writing. Don’t forget any of the details, including those radio messages. I’ll need them as evidence.’

‘Are you intending to start so soon, tomorrow, on...?’ Kiesel asked hesitantly.

Something in Kiesel’s voice alienated Brandt. His own tone became more reserved. ‘As soon as I know how the affair in the factory turns out,’ he replied crisply.

Kiesel bowed his head. For all his outrage at what Stransky had done, he suddenly felt rotten at the thought of contributing toward bringing the man before a court-martial. But did Stranksy deserve anything better? He pursued this thought until the commander’s voice, louder and somewhat sharper now, made him conscious again of the upholstery and the sway of the speeding vehicle. ‘You are unstable,’ Brandt said challengingly. ‘You are unstable and should never have been permitted to wear a uniform. A person like yourself ought to be careful about entering a sphere where justice is not meted out by the hand of God. In military life there’s no time to wait for that kind of justice. But you cannot change your spots any more than I can. If I find fault with you for anything, it’s for not perceiving sooner the nature of the individual you work for. If you have perceived it, you should by now have accepted it.
J’y suis et j'y reste.
Since I have been commander of this regiment I have sent several men up before a court-martial, not because it amused me, but because I happen to be commander. In Stransky’s case, too, I shall do what is my duty. That’s all there is to it.’ He pressed further back into his corner and fell into a profound silence.