Last Citadel - [World War II 03] (3 page)

But I am not blind, Breit thought. And I am not mute.

At that moment the old museum guard would have in his hands two folded sheets of paper pulled from the crumpled bag Breit left on the bench. The Old National Gallery was one of a half-dozen drop sites around Berlin the Lucy network had arranged for him. The two pages were filled front and back with coded script. They would reach Moscow tomorrow, after being routed through Lucerne, the base for Lucy. The coded sheets gave an exacting report on Hitler’s meeting yesterday with his generals, every detail Breit could recall about the coming battle for Kursk. Breit related the
Führers
desperation, the indecision of his generals, the immensity of the forces to be committed to Citadel, the fantastically high political stakes for Germany, the last throw of the dice. He described the deterioration of Hitler’s physical condition, Hitler’s obsessive fretting over an approaching American invasion of Italy and Mussolini’s chronic weakness, even the training and morale of young Captain Thoma’s Tiger tank crews, the number of tanks to be involved, the mechanical problems popping up with the Panthers, everything Breit could gush to the Russians to help them beat the Nazis out of Germany like dust out of a rug.

Abram Breit was a spy. He remained a quiet stroller through the war, but he was not a mote or a minion, not like these speechless souls shuffling across the river. Breit was a changed man whom Hitler would personally hang on a meat hook if even a whisper surfaced of who he was, and how much influence Abram Breit was finally having with what he could see, hear, and tell.

* * * *

CHAPTER 2

June 28

1430 hours

Vladimiriovka, USSR

Dimitri Konstantinovich Berko laughed and could not hear himself. He bumped his head hard but his padded helmet softened the jolt. He straightened his goggles over his eyes and licked dusty sweat. The metal around him humped and bucked and because it was Dimitri making all this happen he laughed more and whooped.

He rammed his left boot down on the clutch and in the same instant mashed the brake with his right. The tank ground to a halt. Dimitri hauled the gearshift into reverse; the gears of the new tank fought him for only a grinding second, confused by the speed of his hands and feet, then meshed. He stepped on the gas and popped his foot off the clutch. The tank around him jumped and slammed down, the tracks spun fast and bit farther into the dirt. Dimitri hit the brake and clutch again, shifting to neutral.

Whorls of dust, the black spume of the steppe, spilled into the open driver’s hatch, riding on the June sun. He let the tank idle, hoping to hear screams from the men beneath it; the engine growled out any sound but its own. This is the way of the tank, Dimitri thought. You hear nothing, see nothing, feel nothing, but the tank. You have to imagine the rest.

Oh well, he thought, I’ll keep having fun even without the screams. Looking out through the hatch, he saw the whole company had gathered to watch his antics, the way Dimitri could make a tank shudder and dance, spin, and even run in place to dig its way down into a trench. They should see me on a horse, Dimitri thought. Next to an old Cossack on a horse, this tank, this machine, is nothing.

He shifted into gear, hit the gas, and let the clutch fly again. The tank bolted, its treads scoured the ground, Dimitri nodded; this T-34 fresh from the factory had some fire in its belly. He felt the chassis drop again toward the men in the narrow trench while dust thickened the air inside the tank. He pulled his hands off the twin steering rods. Rearing his goggled head out of the hatch, he raised both arms in the air and shook his fists for the crowd. I am the best driver! I am the Cossack of the tanks! He did not hear the men’s shouts but saw them raise their arms in reply, Yes, you are!

While he waved his fists in the air, several men broke ranks from the crowd and ran toward the tank. They dove through the dust cloud into the trench. Dimitri leaned over to see just how far he’d scraped down to the 6th Guards infantry trainees who’d hunkered under his bouncing T-34. Good, he thought. Almost all the way down to the undercarriage. That must have put some shit in a few britches under there, watching the bottom of a thirty-ton tank bore its way down on you. That was the point, wasn’t it? This was an exercise to help these peasant boys get rid of their fear of tanks. A job well done, then, Dimitri told himself.

He lowered himself through the hatch back into his driver’s seat. He gunned the engine and pulled the T-34 out of the trench. The diesel engine spit black fumes onto the trainees in the trench and doused those do-gooders helping their quaking comrades. Dimitri yanked back on the left steering lever and shoved on the right, spinning the tank in a tight circle, gouging out one last billow of dust. He shut the tank down.

He climbed onto the glacis plate and slid to the ground. Six soldiers staggered out of the trench, three helping another three whose legs wobbled. Those who could muster angry stares shot them at Dimitri, but like the tank his armor was sufficient to repel them. With his soft helmet and goggles pulled from his head, he could now hear the cheers. Dimitri ran a hand through his gray, close-cropped hair. He waved, then bowed.

When he straightened, he saw a sergeant stomping furiously over to him.

‘Private. What do you think you were doing?’

The commander of Dimitri’s tank was neat and good-looking, wearing the Russian tankers’ slate-gray coveralls like Dimitri, except his weren’t so sweaty and smirched. He was built like Dimitri, a bit long for a tanker, not so squat and thick to fit inside these cans of war. He was no peasant.

‘What I was ordered to do, Comrade Sergeant.’

Dimitri was calm. The man was much younger than him. All of the men were.

The crowd went quiet.

The sergeant worked his jaw, careful with Dimitri but resolute to show displeasure.

Dimitri spoke first.

‘A lot of these men have never been in combat. You and I have, Sergeant. What did you want me to do, be nice to them?’

The sergeant’s eyes cut away. Dimitri followed where he looked. A colonel stood in the crowd of men, hands on his hips, unhappy. The officer was obviously from 3rd Mechanized Brigade headquarters, come to watch the progress of the anti-tank training. The men were supposed to wait in the trench for Dimitri’s tank to roll past, then jump out behind the T-34 and clap magnetic mines on the rear above the tank’s engine and air-filtration systems. What the colonel had seen instead was a tank driver thwarting the training for some amusement and torment.

The sergeant brought his gaze back around to Dimitri. Bugs buzzed in the tall steppe grasses. Other tanks on other training areas growled in their own exercises. Dimitri lowered his voice below the insects and engines so only the sergeant could hear.

‘Who is that?’

The sergeant kept his voice low, as well.

‘It’s Babadzhanian.’

Dimitri grimaced. Colonel Babadzhanian was the commander of their 16th Regiment.

Dimitri looked down to think, but also to look sorry.

‘Slap me.’

The sergeant bristled at this.

‘I will not.’

‘I was insolent. Slap me now.’

‘No. It’s against regulations.’

And if you don’t, I’m headed for the stockade. Come on, boy, show some balls and save me a week behind bars. I hate their food.’

The sergeant held still. ‘No.’

‘Your mother was a whore.’

‘I know.’

‘You should have been drowned at birth.’

‘I know.’

‘Then slap me.’

Dimitri shuffled his heels in the torn-up earth. This was taking too long. Many more seconds and the colonel himself would stride forward to mete out regimental justice. Dimitri gritted his teeth.

Alright, Valentin. What will it take?’ he asked.

‘Your promise.’

‘What, to be good?’

‘Yes.’

Dimitri hesitated.

‘For how long?’

Both the sergeant and private saw the colonel take a step into the ring of quiet men.

‘Alright,’ Dimitri said.

Valentin’s hand lashed across Dimitri’s face, turning his head with the force of the blow. A good shot, Dimitri thought, over the burn in his cheek.

‘Private!’ the sergeant shouted. Dimitri sneaked a glimpse at the colonel. The officer was holding his ground.

The young tank commander laid it on. ‘The men in that trench are your comrades, Private. The Red Army has no place in it for behavior like what you just displayed! You will apologize to these men and you will in future conduct yourself according to the rules set out in the training manual. Or I will personally see you to the stockade myself! Is this understood?’

Dimitri stiffened. ‘Yes, Comrade Sergeant! Deeply understood!’

Everyone in the company who knew Dimitri knew this was more of his clowning, but they also knew no one had better laugh in front of the colonel, or Dimitri would not be so funny later.

Valentin stabbed a finger at the T-34. ‘Now get back in your tank. You will do another shift and you will perform your duties without flaw. Or there will be consequences. Move, Private!’

Dimitri ran the several steps to the tank. The green-painted metal was warm under the summer sun, filthy with flung dirt. With practiced ease and agility beyond his fifty-five years, he lifted himself and swung his legs through the hatch, settling into his seat. With swift hands he flicked the ignition switch and hit the starter. The diesel engine coughed and fired. Dimitri pulled down his goggles and gripped the twin levers. This was the third tank he and Valya had been given. In the last year they’d had two shot out from under them, one in the pocket outside Stalingrad in the winter, one more in the lost battle for Khar’kov three months ago. With their tanks went two crews; twice, he and Valya had been the only ones to escape. Four dead, all the hull machine-gunners and loaders. And when you die inside a tank, you always die ugly. Dimitri looked around the compact room of the T-34, designed for battle, not comfort. Metal everywhere, and where there was not steel there were glass gauges. When the armor gets pierced by a shell, the compartment turns into a razor storm, a pit of flame, a gas chamber, any number of things that will kill you faster than a blink. Dimitri permitted himself a wistful second, recalling what he had seen inside these tanks. When will the luck run out for him? And Valya?

It’ll happen, he thought, somewhere on the road ahead. It’s always been there. So why worry? Dimitri laughed at this. He wanted a saber in his hand and a strong horse between his legs, to gallop off down that road ahead, to find what waited for him there and call it to a challenge. But he had no horse, he was a Cossack without a steed or a blade. Instead he gunned the engine of the tank the Red Army gave him to ride, he looked up at the long barrel of the gun this sergeant was given to fire, and for now these were good enough. Valentin’s head appeared in his hatch.

‘Private.’

‘Yes, I know’

Dimitri grinned.

‘Valya,’ Dimitri said.

‘What?’

‘Next time don’t smack me so hard.’

Valentin drooped his eyes and shook his head. The boy is always amazed at me, thought Dimitri.

Dimitri sprang the catch on the driver’s hatch and let it fall shut with a clang. He charged the gearshift forward, let go the clutch, and the tank surged ahead. He couldn’t see, but he knew his son had to leap clear fast.

* * * *

June 28

1440 hours

Dimitri rumbled the tank away from the training field to a clearing. He was filthy with dust and perspiration. Valentin kept him going back and forth over the trenches until the new tank was almost out of gas. He eased above the trainees in the ditch, even braked for them to catch up to him and lay their wooden disks, the fake mines, over his ventilation system. Valentin stood always in his vision, signaling him to turn and do it again. In his gritty cabin, Dimitri cursed the boy.