Blood Red City (30 page)

When the first German units entered the city, Hoffman was with them. But he didn't stay with them for long. At the first opportunity he struck out alone, down streets he barely recognised beneath the rubble that had been buildings and homes. He was answerable to no one here, but even if he had been there was so much death that he would not be missed any more than the men whose bodies already lay scattered across the rubble.

He spent the first night huddled inside his greatcoat jammed between the remains of a wall and the debris from its collapse. The next day he found a dead civilian who was about his size, and changed clothes with the man. Rigor mortis had set in, so he had to break the man's bones to get the clothes off him. When he was done, he stared at a reflection of himself in a muddy puddle, the water curdled with blood. He looked nondescript, ordinary, unremarkable.

The battle was already evolving into a new form of urban warfare the like of which had never been seen before. The German army was used to rapid advances – sometimes as much as fifty miles in a day. Here, they were forced to fight for every street, sometimes every building. The Russians retreated slowly, fortifying any structure that was still intact. Every house was potentially a fortress.

In the streets, the fighting was often hand-to-hand – Russian civilians attacking the advancing Germans with anything they could find. Shovels and spades with their edges sharpened were especially brutal and effective.

Snipers were a constant threat to both sides, but particularly the Germans as they pressed further into the city and entered new areas. Even without his uniform, Hoffman found himself a target for both sides. Anyone caught out in the open was likely to be shot.

The difference was, Hoffman didn't care. The first time a sniper's bullet ripped into his chest, he assumed he was dead. It was almost a relief. The impact knocked him backwards, into a bomb crater. He lay there in the mud staring at the clouds for a long time before he even realised he was still alive. Looking down at his chest, he saw the familiar orange filaments knitting the skin and flesh back together. Was the bullet still inside him? He neither knew nor cared.

There were other people, real people if you could call them that, as well as the soldiers and the armed civilians. People trying to survive in this devastated city. He caught glimpses of them scurrying through the wreckage, desperately searching for food or clean water. Rats were everywhere, but especially round the bodies of the dead. In less than a week the city had become an open grave, a charnel house. Even though there was almost nothing left, the bombing and shelling continued. As much as anything it seemed a matter of pride for the Russians to defend, and the Germans to destroy, the city that bore Stalin's name.

Only when he unearthed a street sign from beneath a tombstone of bricks was Hoffman sure he'd found the right street – what was left of it. Outside Alina's ruined house he sank to his knees and wept. He didn't know he could still cry until that moment. A moment when he realised emotionally what he had known intellectually since he arrived. Alina was not here. Not any more. Please God she had left before the siege began …

*   *   *

With no chance yet of getting to Moscow, the rubble of Stalingrad became his home. If the Germans eventually won through and continued their advance, he would go with them. Or if he had the chance to join the Russians pulling back across the river, he would take that. But for the moment, no Russians were getting out of Stalingrad. The battle was fluid, moving back and forth through the city, and so he moved with it – to keep out of its way. He didn't seek out Germans, but if he came across them, he killed without thought or conscience. They had ripped the heart out of his country and whatever kinship he might have felt from his time masquerading as one of them had been ripped away with it.

Whatever he had become, Hoffman – he still thought of himself as Hoffman, one habit he could not so easily break – was cursed to be a perpetual survivor in a blood-red city of death. Even the rats seemed to sense he was different, dangerous, and avoided him.

He couldn't stay here for ever. If he did, then he would never find where Alina had gone. If he did, he would go mad with the scent and sound and sight of death all around him. The stone axe-head was a constant weight pulling at his pocket, and he had to decide what to do with it.

But he kept searching, despite knowing it was futile. And if he did find Alina, what then? If she was still in the city then she was either dead already or she was one of the emaciated, pale survivors – probably armed with a sniper rifle, knowing Alina. He smiled thinly at the thought. If she was here she was fighting, not scavenging.

So every day he searched another area, and every day he found only the dead, the dying, or the killers. One morning he stood for an eternity staring down at a body. The sun was rising over the ruins, casting a jigsaw of light and shadow across the ragged landscape. The body was a young woman, of about Alina's age. Roughly her build and height. Dressed as she might well have been dressed. Her hair was the same colour. She was lying face down, the back of her coat a bloodied mess where the bullets had hit and she had bled out. He didn't dare turn her over.

He finally summoned the courage, finally convinced himself that it couldn't be Alina anyway, and turned her on to her back. One look was more than enough. He turned away and retched, heaving on an empty stomach. The rats had eaten away her face, down to the bone. It wasn't Alina. It couldn't be, not like that.

But from then on, he saw her everywhere. He caught glimpses of Alina in the shadows, watching him. He saw her duck behind piles of rubble and into the skeletal remains of broken buildings. He saw her shadow walking beside him as the afternoon sun gave the city an awful majesty. He heard her laughter in constant gunfire and the interminable explosions.

And one night, he saw her walking towards him down the street. She picked her way cautiously through the rubble, constantly looking round, alert for any trouble. Even so, she walked right into it.

There were three of them, two from one side, and another from behind. The field grey of their uniforms merged with the night shadows until they were almost on her. Hoffman didn't see them as he was too intent on the girl – tall and slim, though her body was smothered in shapeless clothes. Dark hair cut short, features slightly pinched but startlingly attractive.

Then suddenly, the German soldiers were on her. Two of them knocked her to the ground, holding her down while the third tore at her clothes. Her cries echoed round the ruins, lost in the constant sounds of battle and suffering – just more screams. She struggled, kicked, scratched, spat – more animal than human now. Desperate to survive, but knowing that she wouldn't, that this was it – this was the night she would be violated, discarded, killed.

Until Hoffman arrived.

The first soldier was standing over her, grinning as he shrugged out of his jacket. Hoffman grabbed him from behind, hands either side of the man's head then twisting suddenly. He heard the neck bones snap and the man went limp, dropping without so much as a whimper, falling across the girl's body and pinning her down.

The other soldiers reacted at once, their nerves strung out so tight and alert from the constant danger of snipers. One of them already had a rifle to the girl's head. He swung it up and fired, point blank, into Hoffman's body. He didn't even feel it. He grabbed the hot barrel of the gun and ripped it from the soldier's startled hands, swinging it hard at the other soldier. The blow crashed into the side of the man's head. He wore no helmet and the impact crushed his skull instantly.

The surviving soldier turned and ran. Hoffman watched him clamber over a pile of rubble, throw himself down the other side, reach the other side of the street and perhaps consider himself safe at last. Then Hoffman brought the soldier's own rifle to his shoulder, sighted, and shot him with it. The man's head exploded in a satisfying mist that was distinctly red even in the gloom of the night.

Hoffman dragged the dead weight of the first soldier's body away from the girl and offered her his hand. She took it warily, watching him all the time as he helped her up.

‘Are you going to…' She couldn't bring herself to say it.

He shook his head. He didn't know if he was relieved or disappointed to see it wasn't Alina after all. She didn't look anything like Alina now he was close enough to see her clearly.

‘He shot you – I saw him,' she said, taking a step away from Hoffman.

‘He must have missed.'

She seemed to accept that, struggling to pull her clothes back into place, tucking in the ripped edges. She turned away, embarrassed at what he might have seen. That made Hoffman smile. How could human dignity survive in this place?

When she turned back, she was smiling too – with relief rather than joy. ‘Are you hungry?'

He wasn't. Not really. ‘Isn't everyone?'

‘I was meeting my friends, in a cellar below the next street. We have some food – it's not much but … Thank you.'

Hoffman removed the pistol from the holster of the soldier he had killed first – an officer. He didn't bother to check the man's rank. There was no seniority among the dead. He handed the pistol to the girl. She took it without comment and pushed it into the waistband of her skirt. He hefted the rifle over his own shoulder and gestured for her to lead the way.

There were three of them, all women. The girl Hoffman had rescued was the youngest but the others weren't much older. They had a rifle between them, and Hoffman added the one he had brought. Some of the bricks round the top of the cellar had been removed so they could see out – and shoot at any German soldiers they spotted.

‘We keep on the move,' the girl told him. They hadn't bothered with names, so nor had Hoffman. ‘We'll need to leave here soon and find somewhere else.'

‘We killed two of the bastards yesterday,' one of the other women said proudly.

‘So that's five with the three you got.'

Hoffman acknowledged the praise with a nod. He ate a little of the food – they didn't tell him what it was they had boiled up on a fire made out of floorboards and paper. Probably rat. If they were lucky they might have caught a cat or even a dog, but there were hardly any left now. They had collected rainwater in a rusty can and took it in turns to scoop some out in a chipped tea cup.

‘You can stay with us, if you want,' the girl told him when they'd eaten. ‘I owe you my life.'

Hoffman wasn't sure exactly what she was offering, but he shook his head anyway. ‘You seem to be doing all right without me. Smaller groups are safer.'

They all nodded their agreement. If they were disappointed they didn't show it.

‘But there is something you can do for me.'

‘Oh?'

‘Not what you think,' he reassured her. He picked up the chipped cup. It would have to do. He could write letters on what was left of the paper with the charred end of a piece of wood from the fire.

The three women watched him with interest.

‘What are you doing?' the one he'd rescued asked. ‘Is it a game?'

‘Everything is a game,' he told her. ‘But no. Actually, if you're willing, I want to hold a séance.'

The three of them exchanged puzzled looks.

‘A séance? Now? Here?'

He nodded. ‘Now. Here.'

‘I guess we all know lots of dead people,' one of the others said. ‘Is there someone special you want to contact?'

‘Yes,' he said. ‘But not in the way you think.' Hoffman thought of Alina. But séances wouldn't help him speak to her – even if she was dead, and he hoped she was not.

‘Well,' the woman he'd rescued said, ‘I have nothing else planned for tonight. So I guess this is as good an entertainment as any.'

‘Except killing Germans,' one of her friends said.

*   *   *

All he could do was try. He would keep trying, on his own if necessary, every night. Hoffman had no way of knowing if the message he was trying to send would ever get through. If it had any effect, he knew it would be thousands of miles away.

But as he sat with the three women, huddled over an upturned china cup in a ruined city of brittle buildings and rotting bodies, something stirred much closer to them.

The Volga was dark as a river of blood in the pale moonlight. But an even darker shape was forcing its way up from the silty riverbed. A skeletal tentacle broke the surface, testing the cold air. Another followed. A bulbous body like a misshapen football rose up above the water, its glistening eye seeking out the distant shore. Then the creature disappeared again into the murky depths.

Until, a few minutes later, it hauled itself out onto the bank. Moments later, another joined it. Then more. They stood poised, pulsating, glistening wet with water and mud for a moment beside the river. Then, like grotesque giant spiders, they scuttled off into the ruins of the city.

 

CHAPTER 30

After the excitement of the Crete expedition, Brinkman was aware that time seemed to be stretching out again. Elizabeth Archer was running tests on the axe-head, but with little to show for it. The UDT activity was about the same as usual, although standing orders now were for the RAF to keep clear of them. In several incidents planes had simply disappeared after making contact. So long as the UDTs were not actually attacking, it was safest to avoid direct contact. Dr Wiles continued to collate the tracking and interception data.

Leo Davenport and Sarah spent time searching through the British Library and the British Museum archives for any clues about the third axe-head, and Guy was helping Miss Manners and Sergeant Green organise the new photographic department.

‘Department' was an exaggeration. With the help of Alban in MI5, Brinkman had managed to arrange for two secretaries at the Ministry of Information to look through photographs. With the discovery that an Ubermensch could potentially be identified in photographs, it needed someone to look through any photographs that might reveal one lurking.