Red Shadow (9 page)

On the far bank of the River Bug were the Russians. At least he assumed they were there. His division had been perched in their start position for several hours now and they had not heard a whisper from the other side. The Germans had even brought up their tanks – there was no hiding the thunderous rumble the Mark IV Panzers made – and the smell of exhaust still hung in the night air like some monstrous creature panting and sweating after a night's marauding.

The simple truth was, Grasse wanted the communists to win. As an eleven-year-old he had joined his father fighting the Nazis in the street battles in Berlin, before Hitler wangled his way into power. When the Nazis got in, his father was one of the first to be sent to Dachau. He came out five years later. Augustus didn't recognise him – he was skin and bone, and bald. That fine head of black hair had disappeared, and his bushy eyebrows had gone white.

‘Get out, son. Go to Russia, or France,' his father had said, shortly before he died of tuberculosis. ‘The devil has come to Earth.'

But Augustus didn't go. He didn't know the right people to bribe for a visa, and he knew instinctively that he had to keep his head down, otherwise they'd come for him too. So he went along with all the military training at school. Some of it he even enjoyed. No one could throw a grenade quite like him. He had a silver cup on the mantelpiece to prove it.

Augustus never forgot his father's politics. It made perfect sense. Power to the people. From each according to his ability – to each according to his needs. There was almost a religious logic to it. Didn't Christ want to help the poor and oppressed to make a better life for themselves? He looked at his watch. They were four hours away from H-hour.
Barbarossa
. The greatest invasion in history. That's what the Division Colonel had told them earlier that evening. Why couldn't they have posted him to Norway or the
Afrika Korps
?

Steiner finished his cigarette, coughed, spat noisily, and said, ‘I need a crap.' He hauled himself out of the trench and disappeared into the bushes behind them. ‘Don't step on a mine,' whispered Grasse, half wishing he would.

In an instant a mad idea gripped him.
Let them know
. Let them know the
Wehrmacht
was coming. Let them know millions of soldiers and thousands of tanks and aircraft were about to pour into the Soviet Union and destroy their army. Grasse weighed up his chances. It was entirely possible he would die in the morning attack. And he didn't like to think what the odds were of him still being alive when they reached Moscow. If he went over, the Russians would treat him like a hero, and he'd get out of this whole mess. Once he told them he was a communist too, or at least his father was, then they'd sort him out a cushy job, surely?

The worst that could happen was that he'd spend the war in a prisoner of war camp. He fumbled in his pocket for his hip flask and took a long drag of schnapps. Then he hurriedly removed his combat jacket and webbing. He took one last look around to see if Steiner was coming back, then gingerly made his way to the water's edge. Slipping silently into the cool water he began to swim towards the other side.

 

Grasse emerged on the eastern bank of the River Bug dripping wet and shivering uncontrollably. The water had been colder than he had expected, and even as he swam he had begun to regret his decision to desert to the Soviet side.

He was sure the noise he made as he clambered up the bank, trousers swishing against his legs, water dripping from his shirt, must have drifted back across the river, but no one on the German start line seemed to have heard. His companion, Private Steiner, had noted Grasse's absence but hadn't yet realised that he had gone for good.

Grasse stumbled on into the darkness, expecting to meet Soviet troops at any moment. But there was nobody about. He carried on hurrying east, desperate to make contact with the Russian soldiers before the invasion began and he was overtaken by his own side. He hadn't thought that through. He'd be shot for desertion, without a doubt. Maybe he'd be the first German soldier to be executed in this campaign. That would be something that would have made his father proud.

He heard a town clock chime 1 a.m. and headed towards the sound. Within half an hour he had reached a small village where he heard Russian voices. In the moonlight he could see horses and a few motor vehicles and realised this must be a detachment of Soviet soldiers. There was a small group of them clustered around a field kitchen, and he called out as he approached, ‘Comrades! Don't shoot.'

A moment later he found himself staring down the muzzles of several rifles. Instinctively raising his hands above his head he spoke slowly, in German. ‘Comrades, I must talk to your officer. Very urgent.'

The soldiers muttered rapidly to each other. Clearly no one here spoke German. Grasse noticed with alarm that one of the men was fixing a bayonet to his rifle. The soldier advanced towards him but beckoned Grasse to crouch on the ground.

He muttered a single word to him, like a man talking to a dog, and another one of the soldiers ran off into the darkness.

Within ten minutes the man returned with an officer. He had a smarter uniform and looked more intelligent than these peasant soldiers.

‘Who are you?' said the man in poor but comprehensible German.

Grasse snapped to attention.

‘Augustus Grasse of Generalfeldmarschall Fedor von Bock's Army Group Centre, Fourth Army, 197th Infantry Division. I have urgent news. My division, indeed the whole German army, is about to invade your country. Please be prepared.'

Grasse didn't expect what happened next. The officer hit him so hard it knocked him over. ‘You are lying.'

‘No, no, comrade,' shouted Grasse. ‘Please, you must believe me. My division will cross the Bug at four this morning.'

Kicks rained down on him, on his back, in his groin, in his stomach. One of them connected with his head and he could feel blood in his mouth. He thought a tooth had come loose.

‘Please, comrade,' he spat out. ‘I am a communist. My family has suffered enough already under Hitler. I am here to help you.'

The beating stopped. Through the pain and bewilderment, he heard voices shouting at each other in Russian. Then the officer spoke to him again. ‘I will contact my senior commander. If you are lying, I will kill you myself.'

Augustus was taken to a cellar room and locked in. Then the lights went out. He crawled his way to the door and politely called for a drink. He flinched when the locks from the door opened and blinding light spilled in. Three Soviet soldiers beat him some more. When they left, he noticed through the shaft of light under the door that there was a tin mug on the floor with water in it.

Alone in the dark he listened for the quarter-hourly chimes of the town clock, and sank into despair as each chimed off the time to the invasion. Shortly after 3.00 a.m. the door opened and light flooded into the cellar again. Two Soviet soldiers called him up the stairs. When he reached the top, one of them grabbed his hand and twisted it behind his back. The other then bound both his hands together with a piece of rough rope. Grasse was surprised when a blindfold was hurriedly tied around his eyes. These Soviets were keen to keep things secret, he thought. He was swiftly ushered outside; he could tell by the drop in temperature and the warmish night breeze that blew over him. Night air, it was so delicious. He prodded his loose tooth with his tongue. It had stopped bleeding. Maybe he wasn't going to lose it after all.

Then he heard someone shouting – a barrage of what he guessed were orders. He imagined they were going to take him to talk to a senior officer, maybe even a general. He listened out for the sound of a car engine, but the last thing he ever heard was the crack of six rifles in a firing squad.

Chapter 12

Misha lay awake for much of the early hours staring at the ceiling. He hoped desperately that his father and Valya were wrong about the Germans, but in his heart he was sure they were right. Eventually he drifted off but woke to the sound of a ringing telephone. He dimly remembered hearing his father come home sometime in the middle of the night, and had assumed Stalin had had one of his usual late-night meetings. But this telephone call was definitely unusual. The dim light filtering through the drawn curtains told him it was barely dawn.

He got up to see his father looking exhausted in his dressing gown. ‘Papa, are you all right?’ he asked.

Yegor nodded. ‘I have to go. Something has happened. Comrade Stalin is meeting the Politburo in half an hour.’

‘Do you think the Germans have invaded?’

Yegor beckoned Misha to come into his arms. He hugged him tight. ‘We have to be brave, Mikhail. This will be our greatest ordeal.’

Misha made his papa a coffee as he dressed, then sat with him as he ate a hurried breakfast. He left the apartment at five thirty and told Misha he would probably have to cook his own supper. He would try to let him know when he would be back but, whatever happened, Misha was not to come to the office and disturb him.

As soon as Yegor left the apartment, Misha turned on the radio. He could get nothing from the Soviet stations, so he turned the dial to see what else was being broadcast. Amid the foreign babble he heard city names close to the German border, like Minsk and Odessa, and wondered at once if they had been bombed. Elena, his sister, lived in Odessa. On one radio station he recognised the language as German and the announcer seemed unnaturally strident and excited as military brass-band music played in the background. This time he heard ‘Kiev’, where Viktor lived, and realised that if all three of these big regional cities had been targeted this must be a massive attack.

Misha felt sick with worry. It was still only six o’clock, so he went back to bed and drifted into an uneasy sleep. Outside he could hear the rumble of cars and lorries. There was a lot of coming and going inside the Kremlin walls. He dreamed of Valya marching off to war dressed as a commune worker and carrying a Simonov rifle. As her squad passed by in a big Red Square parade, she saw him in the crowd. She turned and shouted something he couldn’t hear.

He woke again around eight and this time it was fully light. The sky was overcast and appropriately glum. Misha wondered if it was too early to go over to see the Golovkins. There was a knock at the door and he knew at once it was Valya. She was wearing the same cotton dress she had worn the day before, with a blue cardigan.

‘I have some pastries,’ she announced, marched boldly in, and threw the bag down on the table.

‘Papa was summoned at five o’clock,’ she said.

‘My papa too,’ said Misha.

‘I’m going to volunteer immediately. Will you come with me?’

‘They won’t have me, Valya. I’m too young.’

‘I don’t mean for you to sign up, Misha. I don’t want you to go to the front. It’s going to be very dangerous, and yes, you are too young. Most of us who go will probably not come back, but I can’t sit here and wait for the Hitlerites to arrive. I have to do something.’

‘What does your papa say?’

‘I’m not going to tell him.’

‘Valentina, if I go down there with you and he finds out, he’ll be furious with me.’

‘Misha, I’m going anyway. Come if you like. Don’t come if you don’t like.’

They ate their pastries in silence. ‘All right, I’ll keep you company,’ said Misha, ‘but let’s just see what’s going on on the radio.’

This time the Soviet stations were broadcasting. One of the announcers told everyone to be prepared for a very important broadcast at midday.

‘Let’s go out into the street,’ said Valya. ‘We know what it’ll be about. But this is history. This is something we’ll remember for the rest of our lives – whatever’s left of them!’

‘You’re brave,’ said Misha – half in mockery and half in admiration.

‘Actually, Misha, I’m terrified.’ She laughed nervously. ‘Make yourself look presentable, We might be in one of the newsreels, looking stoic and heroic. I’ll meet you back here at half past eleven.’

Valya turned up in her red dress this time, with the matching red ribbon in her hair. Misha wore his best tweed jacket. She took his arm. They walked out of the Kremlin at Trinity Tower and up Gorky Street, which was packed with grim, anxious people, many huddled together in small groups of friends or family, their arms linked together. Strident brass-band music was playing through the street tannoys, not unlike the music Misha had heard in the Nazi broadcast, but this was entirely unusual for a Sunday morning. Eventually the music stopped and the crowd’s dull murmur turned to a frightened silence.

Misha expected to hear Stalin, so he was surprised when a hesitant Molotov started to speak.

‘Citizens and citizenesses of the Soviet Union. Today at four o’clock in the morning, without a declaration of war, German forces fell on our country . . . an act of treachery unprecedented in the history of civilised nations . . . The Red Army and the whole nation will wage a victorious Patriotic War for our beloved country, for honour, for liberty . . . Our cause is just. The enemy will be beaten. Victory will be ours.’

Misha and Valya stood close to each other and seemed to be the only ones there who weren’t surprised. People seemed shocked and upset, and some had tears streaming down their faces.