Pursuit

Pursuit

Robert L. Fish

MYSTERIOUSPRESS.COM

For

MAME

Prologue

Summer
—1944

The Russian T-34-76 tanks clank forward in the summer heat like huge beetles, their newly equipped 80-mm cannon weaving slowly, restlessly from side to side, rigid antennae searching out the enemy. The four-man crew take turns at the hatch, relishing a breath of air. Between the rows of moving tanks spread across the barren plain the cavalry ride, the horses gaunt, the riders' faces wrapped against the clouds of powdered earth churned up by the tanks. The newly supplied American personnel carriers follow, and then the foot soldiers, unable to find room on the crowded trucks, the ear flaps of their caps buttoned back, their greatcoats almost brushing the ground, their eyes squinting against the acrid dust. In addition to his rifle, each soldier carries a bag on his back with bread or vegetables or anything else he has been able to collect from the fields or from the destroyed villages on the hurried march; the horses eat the moldy straw from the thatched roofs of razed cottages. Above, in the blue sky, the reconnaissance planes buzz like angry bees, darting ahead to scout and then swooping back in sight, radioing their findings. There is an even level of noise in the air, so steady as to appear as silence to the inured ears of the troops.

Occasionally, when his supply lines are considered sufficiently shortened, when his reinforcements have arrived, when a supposedly advantageous terrain has been reached—or when the pressure from Berlin becomes too great or too dangerous to disobey—then the enemy turns and makes a stand, often against the better judgment of the Wehrmacht. His tanks wheel about awkwardly to dig in facing the Russians; his troops throw themselves down behind whatever protection they can find, bringing up their rifles and unloosening their grenades; the sky suddenly darkens with Stukas and Messerschmitts while Russian fighter planes rise like flies to challenge them. The heavy artillery in the Russian rear opens up, the big guns blasting their steel and smoke; the bursts plow huge craters in the earth, erupting great clouds of dirt, tossing tanks aside like toys. Truck-mounted rocket launchers send swarms of Katushas flashing across the battlefield like brief chalk marks against a sky suddenly darkened by the smoke of the struggle. The mortars give their deep asthmatic cough; the soldiers of both sides run, half-crouched, under the protection of the tanks to suddenly stand erect and throw their grenades. Then the Shturmovics come in, the dreaded flying tank-killers with their 37-mm cannon, disregarding the German fighters, concentrating on the enemy armor, and tanks explode and burn and tip over like helpless bugs while attempting to escape, and men burn and blow up with their grenades, and over it all the hellish shrieking of the planes and the roar of the cannon and the screaming of wounded horses and the cries of dying men, and the shaking, shaking, shaking, shaking of the tortured earth.

And when the battle is over and the enemy has withdrawn leaving his dead and wounded on the plain together with the Russian dead, the torn bodies of the injured are given whatever first aid is possible, and sent to the rear with the prisoners. The tanks move forward once again, lumbering around their burning or dismantled or upended counterparts of both sides, past wrecked and smoldering planes, their pilots crushed into their instrument panels, picking their way through the carnage of burning men and equipment, trying to avoid having their huge treads pulverize their own dead, taking up the relentless pursuit again. And the cavalry gathers together what is left of itself and follows and the remaining personnel carriers wait until they are once again jammed with troops and then join in the advance, while the foot soldiers pause long enough to hastily search the corpses for whatever food they might be carrying, or hurriedly cut up the dead horses, sharing with each other, each man cramming as much as he can carry of the bloody carcasses into his bag before running to catch up.

Villages come and go, all leveled to the ground. There are no cattle to be seen, and most of the people they find are either hanging from gibbets or laid in trenches, newly slain. They are not soldiers, these hanging bodies, these carelessly thrown corpses; they are civilians. At Zhoblin a trench contains 2,500 cadavers, their blood not yet congealed, old men, old women, children. The troops march past, the tanks slow so that their crews can stare wordlessly at the horror, and all faces grow harder and their hatred more bitter. It is three years almost to the day since their land was invaded, an invasion many had welcomed at the time, until they learned at firsthand the nature of the enemy in the endless senseless executions, the relentless and needless destruction, the wholesale enslavement of men and women, the brutal slaughter of the innocent. Now they are on the march, regaining their own territory, averaging between eight and ten miles a day, and they are determined not to be stopped by anyone or anything until they have reached Germany itself and have exacted from every German man, woman, or child their terrible revenge.

Cities are come upon and marched through, the tanks crushing the rubble beneath their treads so the troops can pass, the personnel carriers bumping their way over the broken concrete, the horses of the cavalry whinnying at the strong smell of death. Half-standing walls confront them, mountains of debris, fumbled through by a few old women searching for God knows what. The mark of the retreating army is visible in the endless display of the dead, swinging from the well-used gallows in every town and village. The troops march past, eyes left, eyes right, their resolve made more cruel by the cruelty they see, and their hatred grows and expands with every rotting corpse in every ditch, with every devastated town, with every sight of a plowed-under crop, or a destroyed village, or a shattered tree.

The Polish border is crossed at last, and the marching soldiers look about themselves in utter amazement. It is as if they had been led by their tanks into a new world, a world that has never seen war. The cottages are newly painted in neat white, the cattle graze peacefully, trees are leafy, people stare at them from the evenly planted fields as if they were men from another planet.

And the fury grows, and the tanks and the cavalry and the troop carriers and the foot soldiers roll on, an army grinding out its daily advance, its ultimate goal never out of sight. Berlin—and blood. And whatever stands between.

BOOK I

Chapter 1

Colonel Helmut von Schraeder surveyed the lobby of the old hotel as he gently tugged his gloves free. He was remarkably young for his rank, a tall athletic figure, handsome, with clear ice-cold slate-blue eyes, and a sharp, almost classic profile. His military cap with its SS insignia was cocked just a trifle to give the wearer a look of insouciance, his uniform was neatly pressed and fitted perfectly, and his boots gleamed.

There was no sense of nostalgia in his inspection; Colonel von Schraeder was not a man who lived in the past. Usually he lived just in the present, but of late he had been living more and more in the future. But, he thought, one would think he would remember the physical appearance of the place, at least. After all, it was the last place he could remember having been happy; it was after their Rhine vacation that year of 1924—he had been seven at the time, he remembered—that things in Mecklenberg had begun to fall apart. But either his recollection was faulty or the place had been done over, for nothing looked familiar. The colonel shrugged and tucked his gloves into his pocket; nothing could have been of less importance. Instead he glanced at the clock over the reception desk, saw there was ample time for a drink before the meeting was scheduled to start, and moved in the direction of the arrow pointing to the bar. And then he heard his name called.

“Helmut!”

He swung about and smiled, his usual cold smile. “Hello, Willi.”

“Heading for the bar, weren't you? I'll join you.” Major Willi Gehrmann, a friend since their days as fellow students at the Technical Institute, now holding down a desk at the War Ministry. Gehrmann was a short, stocky man with thick glasses; he took von Schraeder's elbow and led the way into the bar. It was quite deserted and they selected a corner booth, isolated but commanding a view of the room. They ordered their drinks and then sat and smiled at each other with the meaningless smiles of people waiting to be served. Von Schraeder placed a cigarette in a long holder and leaned across the table to accept a light from the major. He leaned back, exhaling smoke.

“What do you know about—?”

He paused to allow the waiter to place their drinks on the table, waited until the waiter had discreetly retired, and then returned to his question.

“—this meeting?”

Gehrmann shrugged. “Quite a bit, I suppose. What about you?”

“Nothing, other than it's supposed to be top secret. I was in Berlin taking care of some personal business when I was asked to attend—very quietly—and asked to keep pretty quiet about it, too.” He sipped his drink, placed the glass back on the table, and returned to his smoking, speaking about the holder, exhibiting perfect teeth. “I was also told, without details, that there would be some rather important names here today.”

“There will be.” Gehrmann tried to sound noncommittal, but there was a glint in the eyes swimming behind the thick lenses. “Georg von Schnitzler of I. G. Farben, for one. Krupp von Bohlen of Krupp steel, for another. Top representatives of Roehling, of Messerschmitt, from the Goering Werke in Linz, and others. Some important bankers, the leading men in the chemical and oil industries, a few like myself—very selected, I assure you—from the War and Armament ministries, as well as some of the big family names who can be trusted—like you.” He smiled. “Are those people important enough for you?”

Von Schraeder returned the smile coldly. “The last one or two, at least. And what are all these important names here to talk about? So secretly?”

Willi looked him in the eye, assuming an air of importance that struck von Schraeder, who knew him, as being both theatrical and ridiculous.

“They're going to talk about the future of Germany and the future of the Party.” He lowered his voice. “It is their feeling that the war is lost. It's also mine. They want to start making plans now, for the time when that fact finally sinks into the heads of—well, into other heads.”

“Such as our Fuehrer, for example. Yes.” Von Schraeder crushed out his cigarette, tipped it free into an ashtray without having to soil his fingers, blew through the holder to clear it, and tucked it neatly into a pocket. The action had all the ceremony of a ritual. His cold eyes came up. “What type of plans?”

The major shrugged. “We'll learn the details at the meeting.”

Von Schraeder nodded, and then also dropped his voice, although they had not been speaking loudly. He did not make the mistake of leaning forward in any manner to compensate.