The End of War - A Novel of the Race for Berlin - [World War II 02] (24 page)

Ilya lifts his PPSh. He releases a burst at a muzzle flash coming from a narrow slit in the rampart wall. He can’t hit anything running at this distance but the closer he gets he might make them blink. The galloping men on all sides of him fire as well, and from three hundred joggling weapons they emit an effective covering fire.

The company hustles to within ten meters of the edge of the moat. A handful in Ilya’s company are wounded in the surge and lie on the short plain the rest have crossed. The dead German soldier lies on his back just steps from where Ilya drops. The company sets up a firing line. Quickly the sappers crawl forward dragging assault ladders. Ilya and the line open up with every rifle to cover the sappers. The ladders are hauled a pace at a time to the edge of the moat. Once they’re in place, the company will stream down them and break across the floor to the opposite bank. Two of the sappers jump up and hurl smoke canisters into the moat, then are shot down to tumble out of sight behind their billowing bombs.

Next a pair of men wearing portable flamethrowers hurry forward. Ilya and the rest of the men keep up their firing. The rampart wall grows cottony behind pink puffs of busting brick. The flamethrowers spew streams of fire twenty-five meters across the moat. The flames splash over the embrasures, trying to silence them. Ilya rotates his submachine gun to accompany the flames. Bullets and eruptions strain every muscle, smoke and fire fill every dart of his eyes. Hundreds of weapons are in full voice around him. Men scream when they’re hit, those still firing bray for revenge and fire more, madder. Even in Stalingrad, where Ilya took part in battles this pitched and dangerous, never was a fight so chaotic.

The flamethrowers exhaust themselves. The two men pull back. This section of the citadel pauses to collect itself. The company stops firing. Elsewhere down the line, men continue to engage the brick monster.

Ilya knows they cannot hold this position. They’ve thrown everything at the walls and can’t approach any closer to the moat. After the blunted charge, eight more men in his company lie dead or wounded. Without concern for who is supposed to give the orders, Ilya readies himself to shout “Fall back.”

He glances over his shoulder to see how the men are arranged, how best to retreat. He shifts to sit up higher, to holler and motion the company a hundred meters back.

A tug comes at his pants leg. Misha lies beside him.

“Maybe you shouldn’t do that, Ilyushka.”

Blood stains Misha’s front and collar, trickling down the side of his neck. A gash streaks his cheek. His right earlobe has been shot away.

Misha looks to the rear. With his head turned, Ilya sees the little man will bleed for a while but the dribble will stop. He’ll need stitches. He’ll have a battle scar.

Ilya tells him, “We’re going to get killed up here.”

The little man pinches his shoulders together. “They’ll just send us up again. That hole in the wall is the only way in.”

Ilya eases to his elbows to listen. “All right,” he says, “Captain Misha. You have some grand strategy?”

Misha points at the battered walls. “I figure it this way. The citadel’s a fortress, right? They’re surrounded. They’ve got no supply lines. All the ammo they have is all they’re going to get. If I was in command in there, you know what I’d do? I’d tell my men to fire only to repulse attacks. Save your rounds, you won’t be getting any more.”

“Why not just pick us off right here?”

“Because, Ilya, this is a delaying action. They’ve got absolutely no intention of winning, or getting out of there. You saw what happened when those men tried to surrender. Some dyed-in-the-wool Nazi officer dick made an example out of them. No one gets out alive, that’s their order. Just like Hitler told Sixth Army at Stalingrad.”

Ilya recalls the starving wraiths that were German and Italian soldiers, left by Hitler to hold “Fortress Stalingrad,” one million men left to rot.

Misha continues. “In the last two weeks, Posen has already tied up four of Chuikov’s divisions. That’s seventy thousand men along with tanks and artillery. If the Germans can hold out in the citadel for another two weeks, down to the last man, they’ve won as far as Hitler’s concerned.”

Misha draws a tender finger down his cheek. He winces crossing the bullet gash. He examines his blood on the fingertip, then sucks it off with a scrunched face.

“Besides, if we retreat it just means we’ll be back attacking again in another hour. We’re pretty dispensable, you know.” Misha takes in the crop of bodies around them. “But running up, running back, running up again, I don’t like it. And I don’t think the officers will either. We’re here now, let’s see what we can do. I think it’s our best chance.”

“All right. You have a plan?”

“Almost.”

Ilya reaches to Misha’s mangled ear. “Does that hurt?”

“Fucking
yes
that hurts! Ow!” Misha slaps the big hand down.

“You’re going to look stupid when that heals.”

“It’s a worry I want very much to have someday Now let me think.”

Misha sticks his tongue behind his lower lip. Ilya taps the dirt with his fingertips. A burst from one of the company is answered by a tower, stitching the ground two meters from Ilya’s boots. He shinnies out of the way. The company answers. The tower shuts up, broods, waits.

“Now would be a good time, Misha.”

Misha nods.

Without a word he crawls away, to the sappers behind. A minute later he returns with two satchel explosives and four sappers hauling a ladder.

“Ilya.” He juts his thin chin at the citadel walls. “I’ll bet it’s awful loud in there.”

“Probably.”

“Brick walls. Low ceilings. Tiny windows.”

“Yes, I’m sure it’s less than ideal lodgings. Your point.”

“Let’s try something.”

Misha hands over one of the satchels. He sets the ten-second timer on his pack and slithers toward the lip of the moat. Shocked at the little man’s eagerness, Ilya hesitates, but recovers and joins him. Five meters from the lip, the citadel opens up on them, answered by the company. Bullets sizzle in both directions.

Misha hurls his satchel, landing it directly beneath a firing embrasure in the rampart. Ilya tosses his next to it, a lucky fling, but he doesn’t stop to admire his work. The two scramble away from the moat and bury their noses in the dirt.

The twin explosions rock the ground, clods of dirt rattle down on their helmets. Misha rises and fires at the left tower. Ilya sees the plan and joins in. The rest of the company turn their weapons on both towers left and right, keeping them under fire, gnawing at them. The embrasures are obscured behind wasps of bullets at their sills. The sappers hurry forward and lower their ladder over the edge of the moat. They scurry back behind the company. When the shooting stops, the ladder is in place.

Ilya is impressed. Misha’s tactic is simple. The Germans have three defense points covering every meter of the moat: from straight ahead, and with flanking fire from the tower redoubts. The company can’t storm the rampart head-on, they’ll be cut to ribbons from front and sides before they even drop the ladders in place, much less get down them. They can’t just sit back and bombard the citadel, it’s too solid; the defenders are barricaded under brick and mounds. And with the infantry this close to the citadel, the artillery can’t operate. But if the gunners inside the walls can’t be eradicated with artillery or reached by bullets, they can be stunned with big enough explosions. If the flanks are kept busy with suppressing fire, the company can surge down the ladders and attack the rampart before they regain their senses.

How to make big enough explosions?

Misha answers the question before Ilya can ask it.

“Oil drums.”

Ilya hoists his eyebrows.

“Big empty oil drums. We pack them with explosives. Light the fuses and roll them down the slope, right under the firing points. Boom. We stun them cross-eyed. We cover the towers, rush down the ladders, and head for the hole. And we get someone up on top of the rampart to drop satchel charges down the ventilation ducts.”

Ilya pokes out his bottom lip and nods. “I haven’t got anything better.”

“Let’s go tell Pushkov.”

“He’ll be thrilled to see us.”

“He’ll have to give us credit, Ilya. It’ll work.”

Ilya lowers to his stomach to scrabble back to Pushkov’s position, behind the sappers. Misha is beside him.

Before moving, he asks, “And what’s your plan after we’re inside? Pushkov will want to know that too.”

“Simple.”

Misha sticks a finger in Ilya’s breast, the spot where Ilya used to wear his medals.

“You take over.”

* * * *

FOUR

February 18, 1945, 11:45
A.m.

Goethe Strasse

Charlottenburg, Berlin

L
ottie stares at the yellow door.

She tightens her sweater around her, expressing huffiness, but her mother pays no heed. Freya busies herself making sandwiches and a big pot of potato soup, humming over the stove in a pretty, warbly voice. There is electricity this morning and she wants to cook as much as she can during these random hours of civilization. For months Freya has hoarded a salami, hiding it wrapped in waxed paper under a loose floorboard. This morning she carves from it precious slices.

Lottie leans against the wall in the short hall between the dining room and the kitchen. She could stick out her foot and kick the door leading to the basement. That would get some attention.

The basement door is painted a meringue yellow. A gross color, it looks like pus. Behind the door she imagines hell. A demon waits behind that door, her personal devil, come into her life to ruin her.

She might have survived. Her chances were good. But now there is a devil.

Invited into her life. By her own mother.

A Jew.

In the basement, Freya keeps a Jew.

He sits at the top of the steps—Freya says that’s what he does—listening to them, to Freya hum, Lottie grumble. He hears everything, he never moves from the step. It’s always dark in the basement, he lives on what little light creeps under the door, what little sound he can snatch through it. Lottie thinks of him as a gargoyle, folded wings, cleft pupils in his eyes.

Lottie will not speak to the Jew behind the door. For two weeks, since she came to stay with Freya when her building was destroyed, she has refused. Lottie leaves the room whenever Freya talks to him, she does not want to hear the Jew. She goes from the house whenever Freya opens the door to take him food. She does not want to be there if they’re caught. She reasons that if she’s ever questioned, she can claim no knowledge of the Jew; her mother said he was there but Lottie never heard or saw him. This is her only slim hope to survive him.

She wants to throw him out. Kick open the door, bruise him on his stoop for the outrage of his presence, and order him to leave. But this is not her home, it’s her mother’s. She suspects Freya would sooner order Lottie banished than the Jew.

Lottie shifts her gaze from the basement door to the kitchen. Freya pares potatoes over a skillet. The peels she will fry in lard and seasonings. She has a lovely voice. Her dress hem seems a bit higher lately, her shoes shine. She swore to save the salami for the most dire times. Now she makes sandwiches. It’s the Jew’s fault, Lottie believes, that she thinks these evil thoughts about her mother.