Messner was back at Kalach. A brisk crosswind had given him problems on landing, but he’d retained a mental map of the deeper potholes and settled the Storch without breaking another strut.
Klaus, the orderly, met him with a battered old Kübelwagen. In the ten days since Messner had been here last, the town appeared to have emptied. Messner knew that Sixth Army had crossed the Don River only yesterday, but it was Klaus who had the latest news.
‘We secured the bridgeheads OK and the pontoon bridges were in place by dawn this morning. Sixteenth Panzer should begin crossing any time now. Have you seen those boys in action? God help the Ivans.’
Messner had only watched them from the air, an endless column of tanks, half-tracks, self-propelled assault guns, eight-wheeled reconnaissance vehicles and hundreds of trucks that served as a crowbar to lever Soviet defensive positions aside and open the way to Stalingrad. Face an onslaught like that at ground level and you’d know that your days were numbered.
Klaus was grinning. Fellow NCOs were taking bets on the day the first units got to the Volga. The huge river entered Stalingrad from the north and then flowed hundreds of miles south-east until it emptied into the Caspian Sea. Among Russians, Messner knew that the waterway had an almost religious significance. On the one bank, Europe. On the other, Asia.
‘Well?’ Messner wanted to know about the betting.
‘September—,’ Klaus swerved to avoid a goat. ‘My money’s on the first week, or maybe the start of the second. Either way, the Ivans will be on their knees. No one’s seen an army like this. Ever.’
They were heading west. On the outskirts of the town, among the battlefield debris that had yet to be cleared, the going got tougher.
Messner wanted to know where they were going. The message from Standartenführer Kalb had arrived at Richthofen’s Mariupol headquarters only last night. It was marked Immediate, Eyes Only.
‘The SS operate from a little church out here on the steppe,’ Klaus said. ‘They keep themselves to themselves, which suits us nicely.’
Away from the town, the steppe seemed to stretch forever, not a tree or the barest hint of rising ground to disturb the distant line of the horizon. From time to time, an oncoming vehicle would raise a gaggle of little birds, tiny brown dots that would dart away and disappear into nowhere, but otherwise there was no sign of life.
Then, minutes later, Messner saw the outline of a building a little to the left. At first it looked like a child’s addition to the greens and greys of this nothing landscape, a poorly formed collection of angles surmounted by an onion-shaped dome that might once have glowed silver in the brightness of the sunshine. Then he realised that Klaus had been right. He was looking at a church.
‘I’m told it was a shrine, Herr Oberst. Some miracle occurred here. Don’t ask me what.’
Messner nodded. He was wondering why the SS had chosen a place like this as a base. A path led from the dirt road to the gaggle of vehicles parked outside. Klaus got out and opened the passenger door. Messner was watching two men in uniform who’d just rounded the corner of the building. They were both wearing masks and one of them paused to tip his face to the sun.
Messner got out of the car. When he asked Klaus whether he was coming with him, the orderly shook his head.
‘I’ll stay here,’ he said. ‘These people will thieve anything.’
Messner approached the nearest of the two men.
‘Standartenführer Kalb?’
‘He’s in there. Downstairs. And you are?’
‘Oberst Messner. Fliegerkorps VIII.’
The two SS men exchanged smiles. Messner followed them around the corner of the church. Outside an open door was a row of metal ammunition boxes, full of silverware. Messner had time to glimpse a pair of altar crosses before he was beckoned inside. Thieves, he thought. Klaus was right.
The moment he stepped into the gloom of the church, Messner caught the smell. At first it had a sweetness, slightly perfumed, that took him by surprise. Then he became aware of something much earthier, fouler, more pungent, that lay beneath it. The taller of the two SS men was leading the way down the aisle, his steel-shod boots echoing in the confined space. A fresco of thin-faced saints gazed glumly down from the plastered walls, and a huge bible, propped on a wooden lectern, appeared to have survived the rapacity of the shrine’s new keepers.
A door in the depths of the nave was shut. When the SS officer pulled it open and announced their presence a bird appeared from nowhere and flapped madly around before finding another perch.
Silence again. Except for the keening of the wind.
The SS man had put his mask back on and the moment Messner stepped through the door he knew why. The stench here was overpowering. He’d smelled something similar in countless postings across the Greater Reich and normally it was nothing worse than blocked latrines, but this smell had a texture of its own. The sweetness he’d first noticed was definitely there but with it came the ripeness of offal. An abattoir, he thought. Dead bodies. And he was right.
Kalb was waiting at the foot of the wooden steps. He hadn’t bothered with a mask.
‘Herr Oberst!’
The stiff salute drew no response from Messner. He was staring at lines of corpses laid side by side on the earth floor. There must have been dozens of them. Most were the size of adults. Others were anything but. Each was wrapped in something that looked like canvas, heavily stained, but their faces were visible, their eyes mostly open.
‘You want to take a closer look? Be my guest.’
Kalb stepped aside. He might have been an artist, Messner thought, a painter welcoming specially invited guests for a private viewing ahead of his latest show. Take your time. See what I’ve managed to achieve here. All you need, ladies and gentlemen, is a little time and a little talent and the courage to break new ground.
New ground.
Messner was gazing at one of the longer parcels of human flesh. The sheer depth of the smell, sweetened by the thin grey curls of smoke from a pair of hanging censers, suggested these people had been dead for a while, days certainly, maybe even longer, but their faces were still intact, entirely recognisable, and Messner knew with a terrible certainty that three of the faces would be familiar.
He was right. He found the schoolmaster at the end of the line, the same strength in his face, the same hint of a smile. His daughter lay beside him, doll-like in death, her head turned slightly to one side, her blonde curls all too familiar. For some reason she’d raised her tiny hands to cover her ears.
Had she been frightened of something? Had something taken her by surprise? Messner didn’t know but it was all too easy to speculate. He took a step backwards, shaking his head. These people had probably been shot. The SS, according to Renke, were meticulous about saving ammunition. Just the one bullet. To the nape of the neck.
‘You know this couple?’ It was Kalb.
‘I stayed in their house. There were photographs.’ He turned to face the Standartenführer. ‘What are they doing here? What have you done to them?’
‘These people were terrorists. Someone has to deal with scum like that.’
‘Terrorists? This man was a schoolteacher. You dealt with his daughter, too. Explain that to me.’
Kalb said nothing. If he felt uncomfortable, it certainly didn’t show.
‘We didn’t invite you here for a debate on Reich policy, Herr Oberst. What’s done is done, and for very good reason.’
‘We have something else to discuss?’
‘Indeed. Tomorrow you intend to bomb Stalingrad. Am I right?’
‘Yes.’
‘Many aircraft?’
‘Hundreds.’
‘We need just one. A point I think I made when we last met. I’m not a flyer, Herr Oberst. I need a little guidance about the kind of loads your aircraft can manage. You’ll be using the Heinkels, ja?’
‘Yes.’
‘And the bomb bay?’ He nodded at the bodies on the floor. ‘How many could you take?’
Messner shook his head. He’d never had to deal with a question like this and he knew that his first impressions of Kalb had been right. The man came from a different place. He was insane.
‘What do you intend to do with them?’ Messner asked.
‘We intend for you to fly them to Stalingrad. I have a map upstairs. We need to have them dropped in the Volga, upstream from the city. The question, Herr Oberst, is how many?’
‘But why? Why are you dropping them?’
‘The current will take them through the city. Each corpse is carrying Russian identification papers. These are doctors, administrators, merchants and – yes – your precious schoolmaster. Once we know how many you can carry, we need to make our preparations.’ His gloved hand made a limp circle in the air.
Messner was staring at him. Madder and madder, he thought.
‘Preparations, Herr Standartenführer?’
‘Of course. The bodies will need to be unpacked. We have in mind various mutilations. You want me to be specific? Eyes gouged out. Fingers missing. Stomachs opened. Where appropriate, castration. These bodies will be retrieved from the river and each one will serve as a warning. A city like Stalingrad is full of people like these, people with a position in the city, people with influence, people with a voice. Once they know what lies in wait, the more eager they will be to flee. It’s human nature, Herr Oberst. And, once they flee, once they pack up their chattels and head east, then others will follow, millions of others, and the city will be ours for the taking. You spill a little blood to save our own. Is that such a terrible thing to contemplate? Or would you prefer a fight to the death?’
Messner shook his head. There had to be an alternative to this obscene rationale but just now he couldn’t offer Kalb an answer. Just to engage in a conversation like this filled him with shame. He felt dirtied. He needed to get out of this foulness, he needed to erase the memory of these alabaster faces. He needed to climb back into Klaus’s car, and fire up the Storch, and fly away. Nobody he knew in uniform had commissioned people like Kalb to do anything like this. Only when you saw the evidence could you believe that such a thing was possible.
‘Well, Herr Oberst?’ Kalb was waiting for an answer. ‘How many can you take?’
‘None.’ Messner turned to leave. ‘We drop bombs, not people.’
‘They’re dead, Herr Oberst. That’s the whole point.’
‘Dead or alive?’ Messner was at the foot of the steps. ‘What’s the difference?’
Kalb wouldn’t answer. For a moment, Messner anticipated a farewell salute but mercifully he was spared. Instead, Kalb checked his watch and then stepped closer. Even his breath, foul, pungent, smelled of death.
‘Is this a decision you should be taking, Herr Oberst? Or might we expect to be hearing from Generaloberst Richthofen?’