‘Now look what you’ve done,’ Prishchepa teased Garanzha.
Panka shook Benya. ‘Come on, Golden. We’ve all had to harden our hearts, dear boy. We’re almost there.’ He offered the flask and Benya took it and drank too deeply. He coughed but the cognac steadied him.
‘Listen,’ he said to the three Cossacks. ‘We have nothing to show for our time behind enemy lines. We need a prize.’
IV
‘Lieutenant Kreutzer, the horses are restless. Check they’re watered or maybe there’s an animal out there,’ said Captain von Manteuffel of Intelligence, Sixth Army, as he sat on the bench in the office of the collective farm granary. He was reading the Soviet General Staff maps in front of him with a rising excitement. ‘Schwerin will be here later tonight. Kreutzer, get some cigarettes and the schnapps from the saddlebags.’
‘Jawohl, Herr Captain! On my way.’
The office of the manager of the Sergei Kirov Collective Farm 23 was spartan and messy. The walls were plywood, the floor was made of old planks and the room was decorated with a faded print of Stalin and a map of the huge farm that lay alongside the Don. There was a rough bench, wooden chairs, a couch where the managers must have napped after vodka-fuelled lunches with other local apparatchiks, and a gas-ring for heating chai.
Manteuffel was waiting for Colonel von Schwerin, who had selected this place for their meeting. ‘You’ll find it serviceable,’ he’d said. ‘I will rendezvous with you by twenty-four hundred hours at the latest. Prepare your report.’
Dr Kapto lay on the only couch, smoking a Belomorkanal cigarette. ‘Are you impressed, captain?’ he asked in his precise, velvety voice. ‘Are they useful?’ Then, after an intervaclass="underline" ‘Will I get a little pat on the head from the general? I better think of a reward, eh? I can think of a thing or two…’
Manteuffel was still horrified by the events of the morning, the way the doctor had come back, with his glib smile and his pride in his facility of fixing things neatly. He realized that intelligence was a dirty game in which one had to deal with all manner of freaks and mountebanks. He understood that this was a filthy war against a repellent enemy, that the Führer was waging a savage campaign of annihilation against the Jews – men, women and children – and that this had to be conducted by Himmler’s ‘specialists’ like Dirlewanger who were not much better than beasts and certainly not men whom he would ever entertain at home at Schloss Manteuffel. But that child…
After an initial interview with Kapto to ascertain his credentials and how he had procured the materials, taking meticulous notes in his oilskin notebook, Manteuffel had concentrated on the maps, the importance of which dawned on him gradually. He was aware of the danger of Soviet disinformation, and of course he recalled the recent case of Major Reichel whose plane had crashed behind Soviet lines with the full operational plans for the Führer’s Case Blue offensive. That paranoid peasant Stalin had believed this was German disinformation and ignored it. Fortunately so, because the plans were genuine and they were currently winning this offensive that would probably secure victory. Such a prize was not always a trick.
If Dr Kapto’s maps were genuine (and several factors, which could not have been fabricated, made Manteuffel lean towards this view), they must be flown directly to the Führer’s headquarters as soon as possible. If he was lucky, Schwerin would take him along on the trip. The maps he was now holding could change the Führer’s plans for Stalingrad and the Caucasus oil fields.
‘Captain von Manteuffel!’ It was that fool Kreutzer.
‘What?’
‘One of the horses is missing.’
‘How can that be? Hornochse! You ox with horns! Weren’t they hobbled? Weren’t you watching them?’
‘Yes, captain, yes. I can’t understand it…’
Manteuffel followed the plump lieutenant out of the hut. He looked around. The hills, the woods: all was still.
‘You didn’t tie it up properly, Vollidiot! Total idiot! Your work is shoddy. Be more precise. Now go and find it! I’ll be right there…’ He watched Kreutzer’s flabby arse bouncing down the steps to the horses, then went inside to fold up the maps. ‘The fool has lost a horse,’ he told Kapto, who sat up, about to speak, but Manteuffel didn’t wait for him.
He ran out of the office again, swearing at the lieutenant, ‘Kreutzer, you Höllenhund! Hellhound!’ He was still cursing when he found the lieutenant lying full length between the two remaining horses.
‘Jesus Christ!’ Manteuffel said, and when he looked up, he found himself looking right into the Nagant barrel of a very blond youngster in Soviet uniform and boots who was singing to himself.
But I am flying to the Führerhauptquartier tomorrow so nothing can happen to me today, thought Manteuffel, when something shiny and almost blue flashed so fast in front of his chin that it almost hissed. Reaching up to touch his throat, he was surprised to find it was soaking wet. And then he was falling back into the arms of another man who caught him and laid him on the ground. He was sure that this could not be happening to him because he had been so full of life just moments earlier and because he was so alert even now. He had been looking forward to a cigarette and a shot of schnapps, and there was the appointment with Colonel von Schwerin later, not to speak of the flight to the Führer’s headquarters. He was looking up into the face of a man with an oversized jaw and a wide slit of a very scarlet mouth with scarcely any lips. Above was a bleakly cloudless sky. He should have suspected something when the horse disappeared, that was obvious. A shot rang out close by but Manteuffel was not alarmed; it came from another realm.
Garanzha knew Manteuffel was dead. He could see the cornflower-blue sky in the glaze of his open eyes. Brandishing his Papasha, he walked round to the door of the foreman’s office, but then he relaxed. Panka was coming out. ‘Time to ride on,’ he said. Inside, Prishchepa was laughing: ‘You can’t leave our writer for a moment,’ he said. ‘He’s become a menace. I think he’s spent too much time with you, Spider.’
Benya was still holding his Parabellum over Dr Kapto, who had been shot cleanly in the forehead. Now Kapto was dead, he was afraid to touch him. Garanzha searched the doctor for his papers. He found Kapto’s new ID as an officer of the Schuma, in German. Benya gathered up the maps that lay on the table, along with Manteuffel’s notebook, and put them all in the original satchel which he hung over his shoulder.
When they came out of the building, Panka was helping himself to tinned meat, chocolate and ammunition from the Germans’ saddlebags. The four mounted their horses. Benya’s hands were shaking: he couldn’t believe what he had done. He’d shot a man in cold blood. Without a word. Just like that. It was over. And now he rode on, untarnished. And yet the child – a little Jewish girl – was gone; she lay nearby somewhere on the rough ground, and he ached with sadness, for her, for his family, for Fabiana, and for all the others wounded in this cruel, cruel war.
‘Only a Cossack could sweet-talk a horse like I did with that German horse,’ boasted Prishchepa, ‘and only a Cossack of the Don could steal it right under their noses.’
‘Shut up, magpie,’ said Garanzha.
‘Brothers, now we have to decide what to do,’ said Panka. ‘Decisions are like the carp in the Don!’
‘Slippery and full of bones,’ explained Prishchepa.
‘You decide, Sergeant Panka,’ suggested Benya.
‘I shall, with pleasure,’ said Panka. ‘It will be good to see the Don. I can smell it. Our mother river, our darling gentle Don.’