War of The Rats - A Novel of Stalingrad - [World War II 01] (51 page)

Zaitsev made two fists. He shook them at the commissar.

“This is not what you think it is! This is a battle of concentration. The Headmaster and I are linked into something beyond what you can put into one of your articles. The Headmaster is not going to be patient with any mistakes. He’s a killer.”

“And so are you, Hare. You speak so well when you’re excited, did you know? I’ll be here two hours before dawn.”

Danilov turned to leave.

Zaitsev shouted, “No!”

Tania tugged on his pants leg.

“Yes,” she said.

Danilov turned to the snipers. “Private Chernova,” he said, eyes twinkling like moonlit waters, “thank you for your support. The Hare can be a stubborn man, can’t he?”

“Yes, comrade, he can be. But just before you came in, we were discussing the tactics of the Nazi sniper. He’s a most complex enemy, and I’m sure Comrade Zaitsev understands that the more help he can get in catching him, the better.”

Danilov hung in the doorway, his nose in the air. He seemed to sample the room for danger.

The commissar looked at her. Danilov wonders the same as I, Zaitsev thought. What’s Tania’s game?

Danilov turned on his heels. “In the morning, then.” He was gone with a tired sweep of the blanket.

Zaitsev waited, looking at the blanket, at the only thing in the room Danilov had touched. He felt words and impulses knocking at his brain, angry questions to throw at Tania. He sat quietly, preferring first to lie still behind the cover of silence.

“Vasha, look at me.”

He turned and blinked once, slowly. “Yes?”

She smiled. “I may have just done a very smart thing, or it may be very dumb. Can I tell you why it was smart?”

“Yes.”

“There’s something undeniable about Danilov. We both have seen it. You even went back to get him last week because of it. Remember? When you came hunting with me on Mamayev Kurgan.”

Zaitsev felt a moment building, like a swell of water. Tania was reaching out to him, and he wanted to reach back. He deeply wanted the inertia and warmth of Tania; his temper had to be dismissed into the cold and dark, out with Danilov.

Tania cocked her head. She rose to her knees and leaned her face so close that her blue eyes filled him, as if her eyes themselves were breathing onto his cheek. He blew at her like a bug to be brushed kindly away from his face. She blew back, softly, sexily, barely enough to shimmy a candle flame.

“Whenever he’s around,” she whispered, rubbing her nose against his, “things happen, don’t they? You said so yourself. So take him to visit Thorvald. And see what happens.”

* * * *

AN HOUR AFTER DAWN, THE GERMANS SURGED AGAIN AT
PAVLOV’S HOUSE.

Zaitsev, Kulikov, and Danilov could not see the fighting, which was two hundred meters from where they sat behind the park wall. The attack came from the south side of the building, blocking their view. Still, the sounds of artillery and automatic weapons seared the air. The smoke of guns and dust from the wounds inflicted on the walls of Pavlov’s House crept across the open ground. The thump of shells pounded in the ground beneath them, sounding down the street like someone beating dirt out of a carpet.

The attack exhausted itself by midmorning. Machine-gun fire issued again from the windows of the apartment building. Sergeant Jacob Pavlov, the Houseowner, was still at home.

Zaitsev and Kulikov kept their eyes sealed to their scopes. With the morning sun at their backs, they did not fear reflections off their sights. The Headmaster might catch a peek of us, Zaitsev thought, but he already suspects we’re here. He won’t be surprised. Also, in this battle haze, it’s unlikely he’ll see whatever we might show him well enough to shoot at it.

Danilov sat next to Kulikov. The commissar’s shoulders were hunched over another of his notebooks. Only the small of his back rested against the wall. That morning, when the commissar had met Zaitsev and Kulikov outside the snipers’ bunker in the dark cold, he had tucked under his arm the battered loudspeaker and the battery pack and microphone.

“We’ll have a little chat with the Nazi colonel this morning,” Danilov remarked in place of a greeting to the two snipers. Again, Zaitsev thought of the commissar as a barrel, rolling up to them, full nearly to bursting.

Danilov puffed up. “The Headmaster will talk back to me, and then you two can shut him up.”

Zaitsev had used all his powers of persuasion to talk the commissar out of bringing the loudspeaker. Maybe tomorrow, he’d said. Let’s lie low a while longer, get a better idea of whom we’re dealing with. Behind the commissar’s head, Kulikov had made childish, hilarious faces.

Zaitsev looked at the rear of Pavlov’s House. Dormant for the past two days, it was smoking and threatened this morning. Tania was right. Danilov is an event in human form.

The commissar closed his pad with a clap of paper and rammed the book into his pack. He rolled onto his knees with a grunt to put his belly against the wall. He whispered to Zaitsev, “Have you found him yet?”

Zaitsev sighed. “I have absolutely no idea where the Headmaster is. I just know he’s out there somewhere across the park. Before I can find him, he has to either make a mistake, which he will not do, or make the first move, which I must force him to do. The bad news is, when Thorvald moves, people get their heads blown off.”

Danilov reached again for his notepad to record the Hare’s statement.

Kulikov lowered his periscope and laid his arm lightly on Danilov’s wrist.

“Commissar, please. Stop scribbling. It drives me crazy.”

Zaitsev added, “He’s right. It’s distracting.” He grabbed a spare periscope. “Would you like to help us scan the front?”

Danilov rocked to his toes, ready for action.

“Yes. Of course. Where should I look?”

“You patrol the wall on the other side while Nikolay and I watch the terrain.”

Danilov snatched the periscope. Quickly, almost greedily, the commissar turned and brought the lens to his eye. Zaitsev watched him. The commissar is safe so long as the sun is at our backs and he stays low. The air is hazy. He won’t see anything. Let him look. Zaitsev took off his own steel helmet and crawled behind Danilov.

“Sit still,” he said. He took off Danilov’s fur hat and put his helmet in its place. Danilov kept his gaze in the eyepiece, facing the park. The helmet sat higher on his head than it should. Damn, thought Zaitsev, the man has a head like a bucket.

Zaitsev patted the helmet on top to push it down. It didn’t move.

“Stop that,” Danilov whispered. He’s all business now, Zaitsev thought. He plays the sniper fighter like a child.

“Good hunting, Commissar.”

“Thank you. Go back to your post.”

Zaitsev shook his head. Give him an hour with his eye at that periscope and he’ll be out of wind. Maybe he’ll go back and write an article about someone else and Nikolay and I can concentrate on taking care of the Headmaster.

Zaitsev slid back to his periscope. He raised it slowly above the wall and hurled his vision across the park. Nothing had moved in the three days he’d been watching. Not a stone, not a brick. Wherever the Headmaster was when he shot Morozov and Shaikin, he’s still there. He’s had no reason to move; we haven’t given him one. He hasn’t fired a shot since we got here.

Minutes passed, touching Zaitsev no more than the morning breeze. All of his senses had climbed into his eyes and hands to blend in the periscope. His voice, his sense of smell, his touch, his thoughts—all were magnified and cast over the pitted landscape. He had no idea what to search for other than some unknown clue he trusted would be revealed to him, some sign of life in the rubble and mist in front of him.

Don’t worry, he mused, that’s Stalingrad out there; it’s the perfect backdrop for a waiting, seeking sniper. It will betray life inevitably.

Where is he? Where is the snake? So many crevices, windows, shadows, craters, debris, the sun, the haze, the wind, the cold, fuck! It’s huge and dead all around me. And out there, like the point of a needle sticking up out of a rug, is that one invisible, deadly thing looking for me, knowing me, waiting for me. Waiting for my head with a bullet and a splattered ending, a sad story tonight beneath the lantern in my bunker and a sled ride along the riverbank to the cool storage of the caves. Maybe Tania will say goodbye to me beside the Volga this afternoon, then tomorrow at dawn sit at this spot behind the wall to avenge me. Will it snow and cover my blood mark before she can swear revenge over it, before my ghost can hover here and keep her safe?

Nothing in the rubble. Nothing in the buildings, the shadows, the snowy patches, the trenches, the tanks, the craters.

Nothing. Where?

A rustling movement beside him snagged his concentration, sucking it out of his eyes. He pulled his head from the lens. His thoughts, flung so far outward across the park, were slapped by the moment at hand, the rough, cold feel of now. The abruptness of the change left him dizzy.

He turned to Kulikov, kneeling next to him. Nikolay stared intently into his own periscope, unmoving. Zaitsev leaned back to see around Kulikov. There, Danilov was slowly straightening his knees, sliding his belly up the wall. He clutched the periscope tightly in his mitts, ramming it against his face. The commissar’s cheeks bulged beneath his hidden eyes, squeezing them outward like dough under the eyepiece.

“Commissar, get down,” Zaitsev ordered. How long has he been standing up so straight? he wondered. Damn it, I should’ve kept an eye on him.

Danilov answered in a voice taut as a bowstring. “I see the bastard.”

Before Zaitsev could speak, Danilov leaped fully to his feet. His helmeted head and the shoulders of his greatcoat were above the parapet.

“There he is!” Danilov took one hand off the periscope. “I’ll point him out!”

“Get down!”

Kulikov dropped his scope and slid to his right. He grabbed the commissar’s legs to yank him down behind the wall.

In that instant, Danilov was propelled backward from the wall as if by a shove. His hands flew from his sides, flinging the periscope into the dirt. His legs kicked up and struck Kulikov in the chin, he fell so hard. The helmet tumbled from his head.

Danilov’s head was intact. An upper chest shot. Even while the commissar fell, Zaitsev found the hole ripped in his greatcoat below the right collarbone.

Danilov lay for several seconds. Zaitsev and Kulikov were stunned, jolted by the rashness of the commissar’s action and the suddenness of the bullet. He’d been above the wall for no more than two seconds. In that thin slice of time, Thorvald hit him.

Danilov began to thrash, squirming like a grounded salmon fighting to flop itself back into the river. The mound of his stomach jerked and his back arced off the ground. He started to roll over, flailing his arms.

Zaitsev lunged to hold the commissar down. Kulikov laid his weight over the commissar’s legs, struggling to keep him still.

He’s in shock from the wound, Zaitsev thought. We’ve got to hold him until he regains his senses or faints.

Danilov grunted, straining to rise off the ground.

“Lie still!” Kulikov shouted in Danilov’s ear. “The pain will pass!”

Danilov heaved mightily against the two men on top of him.

“Get off me, damn it!” the commissar screamed. “Get off me!”

Zaitsev looked into Danilov’s eyes. They were wide open and clear.

“Let me go! I’ll kill the son of a bitch. I’ll kill him myself! He shot me, the fucking bastard son of a bitch! Let me up! I’ll kill him!”