Last Citadel - [World War II 03] (73 page)

Ivan called up that their time was running out. Josef heard this and thrashed around the bodies for a last check of weapons. She walked above the old man’s head, tracking him while he made his way to the front of the passenger car. There only two bodies lay. By their uniforms and their privacy in the car, these two seemed to be officers. One of the officers was high ranking, a fat man, a big target for the machine-guns and riddled with bullets. The other lay on his back. This one was in a sling with a broken arm, his gaunt face was framed by a gauze wrap. He wore black and silver, an SS officer like Colonel Breit. Katya had never seen an SS officer before. He was horrid looking, white and gossamer thin, the gauze and cast made him even paler, already a ghost even before he was turned into one by the partisans. She shivered to look at him, that place in her that was hardening somehow did not defend her against this one. He was different, not German, what was he? Barely human, thin like a blade. Josef rifled the body’s belt for a holstered Luger pistol. He handed the gun up to Katya. She did not take her eyes off the corpse while Josef clambered on a bench to climb out.

Below, Ivan had divided the weapons among the four satchels. He lapped the fullest one over his back and turned to make for the trees. Leonid struggled with the smallest sack, loaded only with papers and ammo clips.

Josef came up on the deck beside her. Katya held on to the Luger.

Josef slung himself to the ground. He lifted a hand to help her down.

Below, someone moaned. Katya glanced down into the dark recesses, into the piles of upturned and stolen life. One thing moved. The SS man, a gaunt white thing in silver and black, the body of a knife.

Katya lowered the Luger and fired. The thin body settled back.

It was wrong to leave anything alive in this train, that was what Plokhoi had come for. To kill all of them, even the ones leaving Russia, to send that message. She fired again, to do what she had to. Josef glared up at her. Ivan and Leonid stopped with the sacks over their backs and turned to look.

The pistol smoked in Katya’s hand. A gray spirit trickled from the barrel and drifted past her face - smelling of oiled things, machines, and leather - then moved on.

* * * *

CHAPTER 34

July 17

1210 hours

Old National Gallery

Berlin

Odd, Breit thought, how suddenly, once again, the numbers don’t seem to matter as much.

He rested his eyes on three panels, Gauguin side by side with van Gogh and Degas. The Impressionists again. Humanity. Emotion, randomness, illogic. On the canvas, in the streets, on the battlefield, on the rectangular pages of history, there is in the end nothing but the squiggles of the human hand.

Breit chewed his sandwich. Today he was alone in the gallery except for the museum staff. The air raid over Berlin five days ago was still being dealt with by downtown Berliners, they were not out strolling this afternoon for their luncheon. Hitler himself was not in his Reich capitol to hear the catcalls of sirens and see the trees burst into flame or the giant looping water sprays from fire brigades to put them out. Hitler was in his
Wolfsschanze
castle in East Prussia. It’s fine, Breit thought. Hitler doesn’t need to see this, the man is miserable enough.

Four days ago in Prussia, Breit had been in Hitler’s presence. The morning after the air raid, he was called to Hitler’s eastern command lair to report on the battle for Kursk. He was also expected to speak on the Russian partisan movement, since he’d seen them with his own eyes, as if being tied up by one, being kicked by that witch woman, and then escaping them on horseback in a frenzy during a botched raid qualified him to talk about the partisans. He knew nothing about them, except they were determined, they were not ignorant, and they could be vicious. He did not know why the Witch did not come after him, as must surely have been her orders, she could have done it with no trouble. Instead, she’d ridden down the old twin. Breit did not see what happened when she caught him. But she rode like a demon, and a demon, Breit knew, she must have been.

On July thirteenth, the day after the slaughter at Prokhorovka, he was ushered into the large meeting room at the
Wolfsschanze
. He’d heard about the great one-day battle in his sanatorium cafeteria, gathering as much as was known about the aftermath, then he was summoned to Prussia. There’d been no winner at Kursk, he knew only that Germany was badly hurt. Now the Reds would answer, and the end game would begin.

In the meeting, von Manstein urged them to continue Citadel. Victory in the south was still achievable, the Field Marshal argued. He asked Hitler to permit him and von Kluge to relaunch the offensive. The Soviets were pummeled; they would not withstand one more concerted blow. Their reserves were spent defending Prokhorovka, there was nothing left of them. The SS force in the south was paused but not halted. Tiger and Panther tanks were being repaired every minute; if cut loose again, they would retake the battlefield. Kempf was catching up, he would link with II SS Panzer in a day, two at the most. Together they could punch through Prokhorovka, the Reds were reeling there. Von Manstein claimed to have reserves, three panzer divisions, in position. There was nothing the Reds could do to buck up their defenses at Prokhorovka. All their available armor was committed; if they withdrew anywhere along the lines to shore up their positions, their entire defense would collapse.

Hitler listened. Breit watched from the shadows.

Next, von Kluge spoke for himself, instead of letting his rival von Manstein rope him into more offensive operations. The leader of the forces on the northern shoulder advised Hitler that he could not resume any attacks at the moment. He needed all of Model’s remaining strength in 11th Army to stem the gathering Soviet counter-assault, which was gaining momentum every hour. He beseeched Hitler to allow his force to go on the defensive. His men and resources were exhausted, they would do well to hold their ground, much less take any more.

Von Manstein had come to Hitler prepared with rhetoric, strategies, and pleas. Von Kluge came with numbers. The Reds had suffered terribly in their defense of Kursk, von Kluge began. In two weeks of combat on three defensive fronts, the Soviets had lost one hundred and seventy thousand dead and wounded of the million and a half men they’d begun with. They’d lost a third of their five thousand tanks.

The attacking German force of three-quarters of a million men had been ground down by fifty thousand. Their thirty-three hundred tanks had been depleted by a number von Kluge could only guess at: He predicted a thousand gone, maybe more. And these numbers would grow immensely for both sides now that the Reds had launched their counteroffensive in the north, total losses for the Russians would swell to a million men before the summer ended. As for the German force, the Field Marshal could only shake his aristocratic head. ‘It may be catastrophic,’ was how he summed up the encroaching costs for the Fatherland. ‘We may never recover from Citadel.’

When von Kluge had succumbed to his mournful pause, von Manstein re-took the floor. ‘Where is the man?’ he asked, peeved, not seeing Breit right away. Breit stood. His uniform coat lacked his medal for administration, and the new jacket fit badly. He stood from his dark chair along the wall and tugged at his hem. What could he say to offset von Kluge’s gruesome numbers? Numbers are absolutes, he thought, standing in front of the
Führer
. Plead all you want, imagine all you can, but numbers dictate reality. Numbers are the damning brushstrokes.

Breit waited, unsure.

Hitler erupted.

Hitler did not want to hear any more about Russia. He was sick, near to vomiting, with Russia! His complexion was pasty, his hands flew about and trembled. Breit sat down. He would have left the room, but he stayed to the end, to hear the rest. Hitler calmed, some of his color returned. Without more screaming, he called off the offensive. He reassigned his SS tank corps in Russia;
Leibstandarte
was to head for Italy, effective immediately,
Totenkopf
and
Das Reich
were pulled from the front lines and relocated south, to help fend off the Soviet counterattack directed toward Khar’kov.

Von Manstein objected. Hitler would not yield. The Field Marshal succeeded only in talking Hitler into allowing a few more days for General Hoth to continue southern operations, to inflict a little more damage on the Soviets, but that was all.

Citadel, the last German offensive in Russia, was over. Breit stayed at the
Wolfsschanze
two more days and nights, silent and listening. Then he returned to Berlin.

This afternoon, in the empty museum in the smoldering middle of the capital, Breit finished his sandwich. He thought of the Night Witch, a striking young Russian woman, caught up in war, wearing men’s dirty clothes instead of dresses and bows. She so clearly has passion, she ought to be in love. Instead she’s in battle, surrounded by killers, she is likely one herself. What has this war done to her, cost her? These thoughts of the grim young Witch led Breit to consider what he had done to Germany, what he had cost it in terms of lives and strength. How many souls were circling him unseen, how many? Far more than the Witch, surely, or even her wild partisans. He looked into the cool air of the gallery and wondered, if he could see them, what would a hundred thousand spirits look like? A million before his work was done? A cyclone of invisible souls would swirl over his head. Still he would add to that number. There was no place he would stop now, no number too horrible, to save Germany from itself.

He crumpled the paper that had wrapped his sandwich, making an echo in the gallery hall, and stuffed the wad into the paper sack. He held up the imperfect circle of his apple. He admired it, red and splotched, uneven, bumpy. Only numbers were perfect, he decided; nothing else of mankind was. But it was their perfection that made numbers cold, made them no longer so important.

Abram Breit left his paper sack on the bench. He set the apple beside it for the lingering guard.

* * * *

EPILOGUE

April 10, 1946

2:15 p.m.

village of Troickaya

the Kuban

‘Katerina Berkovna?’

Katya turned to the voice. Ten meters behind her, an ancient man loomed on the lawn. The sea breeze freshened in his moustaches and crackled in his red
burka
cloak. He was far too broad and erect to be as aged as he was. This, thought Katya, is the Kuban. These are the Cossacks.

‘Lumanova,’ she said to the cemetery keeper.

She sent a quick glance to Leonid. Her husband stayed to the side in his major’s uniform, quiet, folded against the chill swirling off the Black Sea. Leonid nodded to her. I’ll be here, his gesture said. Go on.

The elderly giant strode to her. He opened his arms. His breast was mottled with medals.

‘Katerina Lumanova,’ he said. ‘Hero of the Soviet Union. Welcome home.’

Katya held her place while the great arms wrapped her, the dark cloak eased over her. The old man smelled of oils and wax, loam, wind, years.

‘Come,’ he said.

The old man led Katya into the crowded cemetery. She did not look at any of the crosses and tablets, chiseled and weathered by centuries of this wind. She strode behind the flowing cape, ahead of her quiet husband, through the long path of graves. In a minute, they left the cloture of the cemetery and entered open, rising ground.

The old man led them up a slope, then halted. He stepped aside and Katya lifted her gaze.

There were only two graves on this hillcrest. The earth here was bare but green. The hill presided over the village below and the patchwork fields of spring plantings, all yellow boxes and emerald squares. The Kuban River sallied west to the Azov Sea, cows walked in the shallows. In the southern distance, the Caucasus Mountains serrated the mist, guarding the coastline.

Both graves lay at the foot of marble Orthodox crosses. One grave had grown over nicely, with grass new for the spring. The other was a bald brown rectangle, a hole freshly dug and filled.