The End of War - A Novel of the Race for Berlin - [World War II 02] (5 page)

Misha continues to nod even after Ilya has grown silent.

“Stop that,” Ilya says.

“Sorry. Old habit.”

“Can we go now?”

“I’m sorry, Ilya. It’s not right what was done to you.”

“This is war, Misha.”

“Perhaps.” Misha rocks forward from the wooden tank. “All right, Comrade Major. I will follow.”

Ilya joins him flat on the ground. The cold seeps through his coat into his chest.

“We’ll get to within twenty meters, then stop and see what we see. Move quietly, Misha. Go only when and where I go.”

Ilya slides over the ground at a pace he believes the smaller man can keep up with. He thinks back to Stalingrad now that Misha has brought it forth. From September of 1942 until February of ’43, you moved like this in the rubble, with stealth and strength and patience, or you drew a bullet from a sniper. There were no alternatives.

The eighty-meter creep seems to take a long time, waiting for Misha to catch up, but Ilya knows it is less than ten minutes. When they come to rest behind a log pile, Ilya notes that Misha’s breathing is not labored but under control. The little man has done well.

The lantern inside the tent has stayed on. Now Ilya hears voices fluttering into the bare branches overhead, a card game among the officers. And vodka, surely.

A single guard strolls a wide circle around the tent stakes. He has no lantern. At the front of the big tent no more than ten meters from the flaps, a skinned tree has been driven into the ground for a flagpole. At the top of the pole, attached to a tether, is the First Tank’s pennant, limp in the breeze-less night. Ilya counts under his breath while the guard makes two revolutions around the tent. The man walks without hurry. One lap takes him about a full minute.

“Misha.”

“What’s the plan?”

“When the guard is at the far corner of the tent, he’ll have about thirty seconds until he comes out there on the other side. When I say go, you run out and take down the banner.”

“Me?”

“Quiet.”

“You want me . . . ? What kind of a plan is that? I thought you came out here to do it.”

“No. I came out here to make you do it.”

Misha drops his face on his hands. Ilya grabs the back of his coat and lifts his head for him.

“Get ready”

“Ilya, please.”

“Don’t ever say that to me again. Now, get ready. Are you ready?”

“What if I don’t go?”

“You’ll have to face me later. And if you do go, I’m on your side later. You choose.”

“Why me?”

“Because I’m too recognizable. If I’m seen running off with the flag, I’m easy to pick out of a crowd. You, no one will remember.”

Misha rattles his head.

“Besides,” Ilya whispers, “I want you to get the glory.”

“You want me to get the stockade. All right. I can’t believe I’m doing this. When?”

“Get up to your knees. Quiet. Wait ... wait ... and ... now. Go.”

With startling nimbleness, Misha leaps to his feet. Bent low, he hurries to the flagpole. He grabs the rope and tugs to lower the pennant. But the line is tied around a peg, and Misha’s chilled fingers struggle with the knot. Ilya counts to ten, fifteen.

Misha looks back to the log pile, the lantern glow from inside the tent illumines the whites of his frightened eyes. Ilya rises to his knees and swirls his finger in fast circles, hurry!

The guard emerges from the far corner of the tent. He does not yet see Misha, who picks at the knot, but in five more seconds he will.

At that moment, Misha untangles the knot. With fast hands, he lowers the banner just as the guard rounds the corner.

The guard lifts his rifle from his shoulder and walks over.

“What are you doing?” His challenge is not loud nor violent. He doesn’t want to disturb the officers and their drinking game. He can handle one little unarmed interloper.

Misha freezes, but only for a second. He begins to fold the standard.

“Do you know this banner has to be taken down at night?” Misha asks in a resolute voice.”It’s disrespectful to have it up after the sun goes down.”

Sharp, Ilya thinks. Very sharp.

The guard shoulders his rifle, any threat seemingly absent. Misha continues to fold.

“All right,” the guard agrees, ”leave it with me and I’ll have it put up at sunrise.”

Misha wags his head.

“No, I’m afraid I’ll have to take this with me. This is a violation. I’ll have to show it to my superiors.”

The guard reaches for the flag. Misha holds it back. The guard asks to see Misha’s papers. “What unit are you with?”

Inside the tent, a voice calls out, “What’s going on out there?”

“Something about the flag, sir,” the guard responds, beginning to tug at it with Misha.

Misha calls into the tent, “There’s no problem, men. Go about your business.”

But there is a problem. Ilya hears chairs scraping. The lantern light moves, shadows on the tent walls shift.

Ilya has slipped without sound two meters behind the arguing guard. With one blow of his fist to the middle of the guard’s back, he fells him facedown at Misha’s feet.

Ilya grabs Misha and hauls him and the flag away at top speed, dodging the dark trees and fake tanks.

~ * ~

January 1, 1945, 2:00
a.m.

Pariser Strasse shelter

Wilmersdorf, Berlin

lottie is exhausted. her fingers ache. she has played her cello
without break for two hours.

She completes the final passage and lowers her bow hand. Enough, she thinks, I’ve done enough tonight.

The thirty-five people in the air raid shelter pause before they clap, the way they’ve been trained to do. In Berlin, classical music is loved as nowhere else except perhaps in Vienna. When Lottie indicates she is finished, they clap fingertips to palms, not to resound too much ruckus off the cold dirt walls. Besides, they are still moved by Lottie’s playing, she can tell, especially the last piece, a soaring solo from Strauss’s
Don Juan.
Gentle applause is appropriate. The appreciative faces flicker, are made angular by candlelight and shadows.

“I’m going to put it away now,” Lottie tells her mother, Freya, seated next to her. An older man, saying nothing, rises to help with the large cello case. When the instrument is stored, the man sits. Lottie slides again next to her mother. In the absence of the music, silence detonates among those gathered on the benches and plank floor. The quiet is a crater, as though a bomb has found them after all in their hole beneath the small church and they are every one of them dead but still sitting upright.

No one moves. Eyes lock straight ahead or dart like spooked minnows. Freya knits her hands in her lap and closes her eyelids.

There is a stranger among them tonight.

Lottie sighs. She has already played all afternoon with her string quartet at one of the few undamaged homes on the Kurfürstendamm. Why did he have to come tonight?

In every shelter, Lottie knows, there are taboos and good luck charms. There are regulars with preferred seats who bustle down the steps with the sirens blaring. There are special concerns: some residents fear fire most and have buckets of sand handy; others are preoccupied with the possible collapse of the building above and keep shovels and picks near their seats. There is also trust and sharing of meager foodstuffs with the faces one sees every day in the neighborhood, the gray heads and the children.

And in this shelter beneath the Ludwig Church on Pariser Strasse, as in every other corner of Berlin, there lurks a palpable mistrust of anyone unfamiliar, and certainly any unknown men of military age. The unasked question: why is he in Berlin and not at the front? He must be Gestapo, a Nazi functionary, an informer, maybe a deserter. Whatever he is, he spells mischief and bad luck for your shelter.

On those few occasions when there is in their midst an unknown for whom no one vouches, not one person in the shelter speaks. Even normal conversation, about potatoes, clothes, the Opera, is struck dumb, all words are vipers that can bite their handler in the presence of an unfamiliar face. The
Berliner Blick,
the quick, furtive glance over the shoulder to see who is listening, fills the hours of waiting, making them even more racking. Now that the Russian army is surely coming, Goebbels has made it a crime punishable by death to speak of anything that smacks of defeatism. The official term is
Zweifel am Sieg,
Doubt about Victory. Stories are rampant of innocent remarks that have led Berliners into unwitting oblivion. The man who joked that the Reds won’t attack Berlin, why would they come here when all the bigwigs will have taken off by then? He was shot in the street by the SS. A woman who hoarded bread and cheese for her family was punished for spreading lies that there was not enough food for Berlin under Goebbels’ leadership. She was stripped naked and forced to wear a placard reading
i do not believe in hitler.
Those elder folk who complain about the deaths of their sons, or housewives grumbling about the unavailability of shoes, at best are made to scrub police station floors. At worst, they’re beheaded. Last year, the Berlin People’s Court passed fifty-one death sentences against some who did no more than listen to a foreign radio broadcast and were denounced for it by a relative or neighbor. Children are encouraged to inform on their parents. A teacher, who likely is a Nazi, might ask, “What did your family have for Sunday dinner?” If the response is roast and sauerkraut and applesauce, not the economical casserole
Eintopf
ordained by the government, the mother could find herself reported.

Tonight, when the air raid sirens wailed at 11:30, thousands of New Year’s Eve parties were ruined. Lottie was at one near her flat on Regensburger Strasse, with her mother. She ran home first to gather up her cello, as she always does when there is a raid and she is anywhere near her flat in Wilmersdorf. Freya met her at the church. Lottie was disappointed, the party was fun and there had been real coffee, not the lousy chicory
ersatz.
Still, a raid was not unexpected tonight. The English, whose Mosquito bombers handle the nighttime chores over Berlin, have a black sense of humor. Many of the Anglo attacks are calculated to aggravate as well as kill: bombs on Hitler’s birthday and German holidays, raids following notable Allied victories, and the like. The English relish civilian targets. That’s only tit for tat. Hitler tried to make a pyre of London. By comparison, the American B-17 morning raids are punctual and careful; they’re always at work in the skies by 9
A.M.
and are aimed at factory districts, often in Spandau and the northern reaches of the city. The message from the Americans has no black hidden laughter, it is simply: “Berlin, stop the war.”

This evening the church shelter filled in minutes. By law, Berliners in every part of the city are to be off the streets until the all-clear signal; anyone other than diplomats caught aboveground can be shot as a looter or spy. The raids have been a part of Berlin life for more than four years now, since September of 1940, when the first British bombs rained on Reinickendorf, Pankow, and Lichtenberg districts. In the intervening years, Eisenhower and “Bomber” Harris have teamed up to destroy forty percent of the city’s buildings, over half a million flats, displacing millions of Berliners, killing fifty thousand. But on nights like tonight, after enduring years of destruction and close escapes, when the neighborhood people of Pariser Strasse see a new face crowding on their bench, they are less afraid of bombs than they are of speaking to one another.