Cauldron of Blood (19 page)

While
his men did so, the young captain surveyed the scene: the long black furrows through the snow, the severed wing, the engine torn loose by the tremendous impact and catapulted high into the trees where it now hung grotesquely and finally the shattered fuselage itself, its nose bent back like a peeled banana.

He
frowned. It seemed impossible that anything could live through that. Still, orders were orders. He turned to his senior sergeant, ‘Vassily, take half the troops and secure the flanks. I’ll take the rest and look the wrecked crate over.’

‘
Da
,
Tovaritsch
Sotnik
,’ the white-bearded NCO replied, and dividing his force in half, set about his task.

The
Sotnik
turned to the rest. ‘Five metres’ distance. First sign of trouble — disappear!’

‘
Pity,’ a cross-eyed trooper sighed. ‘There’ll probably be some of that glycol in those engines. Good as pepper vodka when it’s mixed with a dash of lemon-juice.’

The
Sotnik
flashed an angry look and the Cossack closed his mouth swiftly. In a long file, with the
Sotnik
in the lead, they cautiously approached the wrecked plane, stepping over the pieces of metal debris and equipment which lay scattered everywhere, till finally the
Sotnik
halted them at the door, which hung on its hinges at a crazy angle. ‘Hold your positions,’ he commanded, ‘I’m going in.’

He
pushed aside the door and entered the green gloom of the shattered plane, feeling his way to the cockpit. A dead man — or what was left of him — barred his way. It was the radio operator, still slumped at his little table, with the battery-powered radio still crackling very faintly, but minus his head.

The
Sotnik
’s eyes instinctively searched for it; then he gasped with horror. The head, eyes wide and staring at him as if in accusation, hung swinging from the roof, still suspended in the earphones. He swallowed the green bile which threatened to choke him and pushed on.

The
cockpit was a shambles, the perspex a spider’s web of gleaming splinters, both pilots slumped over their shattered controls, their faces a blood-red mess, slashed to pieces by the flying metal. Hesitantly the
Sotnik
touched the shoulder of the first pilot and then that of his comrade. Both were dead.

‘
Boshe
moi
,’ he cursed, grateful that he need search no longer.
ALL
the Fritzes were dead. ‘Let me get some air.’ He turned, and keeping his gaze averted, worked his way past the headless horror of the radio operator and was just about to drop out of the door when he heard the soft groan.

He
instinctively flashed up his pistol and swung round.

In
the gloom of the tail area, a man clad in a thick leather flying suit, his head swathed in a blood-soaked helmet, lay groaning softly. It was a Fritz and he was alive. Hastily the
Sotnik
slipped his pistol into its holster and bent down to remove the bloody helmet. The young blond German’s eyes flickered open momentarily and he murmured: ‘
Danke
.’

The
Sotnik
shook his head ruefully and whispered, as if talking to himself, ‘Don’t thank me German... You’ve got to face Ivan the Terrible now....’

*

Schulze clicked to attention smartly. ‘Beg to report to the
Obersturmbannfuhrer
,’ he snapped in the old-fashioned style of military address once used in the Kaiser’s Army, ‘Two food bombs recovered containing two hundred and fifty cans of Old Man and eighty-eight packets of hard-tack. One crate of Iron Crosses, second class.’

Peiper
grinned and said, adopting the old style too, ‘Pray continue, simple soldier.’

‘
A container of medical supplies, with a special compartment, which contained approximately three hundred contraceptives, trademark “
Volcano
”.’

Next
to Schulze, Matz groaned and said in mock anguish, ‘What does the High Command expect us to do —
fuck
the
Popovs
to
death
!’

Again
Peiper grinned, while the Little Napoleon at his side looked on puzzled at the too rapid German. ‘Well the Parisians might be useful if you common soldiers do not want to get yon German maiden in good hope.’ He indicated Gerda, again clad in her fighting gear, complete with Army dice-beakers and steel helmet. She simpered and demurely lowered her eyes.

Peiper
’s grin vanished. ‘And anything else?’ he demanded, suddenly businesslike again.

‘
This, sir. For officers’ eyes only.’ Schulze handed Peiper the small weighted canvas sack which he had concealed behind his back.

Almost
greedily, Peiper broke the seal. It was what he had been waiting for ever since he had sent the radio message. He thrust open the neck and pulled out the first object: a small expensive-looking blue box with his name neatly printed on it. He knew what it contained and wasn’t interested. With his thumbnail he ripped off his own name and handed it to Little Napoleon. ‘The German Cross in Gold, Major. For you!’

Schulze
winked at Matz. ‘Old Peiper’s got a cupboard full of the Fried Egg Order. He don’t need another one.’

While
Little Napoleon proudly pinned the flamboyant medal with its great swastika centre-piece on his chest, Peiper rummaged deeper into the bag until he found what he sought: an operational order, written on the familiar yellow army form.

Hastily
he opened it, noting that it bore the normal formula:
Geheime
Reichssache
. His eyes flashed through it, while the others watched him expectantly, noting how the look of excitement on his lean handsome face changed to one of slight bewilderment and finally to a worried frown when he had finished it.

‘
Bad news, sir?’ Schulze asked finally when Peiper did not speak after a few moments.

Peiper
did not seem to hear.

‘
Isn’t my friend the Fuhrer going to help us, Colonel?’ Golden Pheasant asked anxiously.

‘
Oh yes,’ Peiper shook his head, as if he were trying to remember exactly where he was. ‘That he is. But not, I am afraid, in the manner we have all anticipated.’ He thrust the message into his blouse and touched his hand to his rakishly tilted cap, as Schulke and Matz clicked to attention. ‘But please excuse me,
meine
Herren
, I have some urgent planning to do
now
.’

And
with that enigmatic remark, he strode back to the shattered HQ, leaving them all staring at his slim back in complete bewilderment....

THREE

Alongside the whole wall of the farmhouse HQ there was the ruins of the New Year feast, a stained damask table-cloth, looted from somewhere or other, hanging to the floor, purple with wine stains. Opposite it, the great old-fashioned fireplace was littered with broken glass, as was the floor in front of it where the officers had missed the fireplace as the toasts had grown more frequent and they had become more drunk.

Now
the few survivors of the traditional New Year’s Eve drinking bout swayed visibly in the middle of the room, as Ivan the Terrible performed his last trick of that long boozy night..

Naked
to the waist to reveal a chest matted with hair, from stomach to Adam’s apple, he crouched with his knees up to his chin.

A
major who had not drunk as much as the rest pushed the stick behind his bended knees. He put his arms around it and clasped his hands so that the stick lay tightly between his knees and elbows. Finally he indicated the major could tie his hands together with a leather Army belt. ‘You can lift me now, and by the Black Virgin of Kazan
don’t
drop me,’ Ivan the Terrible proclaimed and hawking deeply spat fairly accurately into the glass-littered fireplace.

Half-a-dozen
officers took the strain and heaved up the Cossack officer’s massive bulk so that they could prop the two ends of the thick stick on two tables.

The
marshal, bald, ugly and barrel-chested like most of his kind, looked with bleary-eyes at his pocket watch. ‘All right,’ he said thickly, slurring the word drunkenly, ‘begin —
now
!’ Immediately the other officers started to rotate the Cossack on the stick like a wheel. Faster and faster. Time and time again Ivan the Terrible’s head missed smacking into the dirty floor by millimetres. The room whirled around him crazily until he thought the marshal would never call time.

‘
Stop!’ the marshal commanded.

Quickly
the laughing cheering officers lowered the stick and untied the belt. Ivan the Terrible caught himself from collapsing to the floor just in time.

The
marshal laughed. ‘All right, point the Cossack blow-hard in the direction of the vodka.’

Willing
hands grabbed Ivan and held him upright, as the world swung by him crazily.

‘
There!’ someone cried.

Ivan
the Terrible caught a wild swaying glimpse of the vodka bottle and then he was off, staggering madly from side to side, going down to his knees more than once, while his comrades hooted and jeered, wanting him to fail, his face brick-red as if he might have a stroke at any moment, the sweat pouring down his hairy chest and glistening in the thick black hair like pearls. Just before he collapsed on the floor, dragging the table down with him, he grabbed the bottle, but missed the neck, swilling vodka all over his chest to the cheers and applause of the few officers who had wanted him to succeed. He had done it again. He had shown these wet-arsed foot-sloggers what a real Don Cossack was made of.

‘
Enough,’ the marshal cried, sick now of games. ‘The party’s over comrades. Pull down the black-out curtains. Let us have light.’

Obediently,
several of his staff did as he commanded and the hard blood-red light of the early morning streamed in, making several of them blink and realize for the first time just how drunk they really were.

The
marshal raised his glass. ‘Comrades,’ he announced solemnly. ‘Let us drink to 1943.
Slava
krasnaya
armya
!’

‘
Long
live
the
Red
Army
!’ a dozen hoarse voices growled and glass after glass flew towards the fireplace exploding with a splinter of broken glass.

‘
Voda
!’ the marshal commanded, pointing to the Cossack still sprawled on the floor, eyes closed trying to regain his balance. ‘The Cossack stallion needs watering.’

The
major laughed and seizing a fire bucket, flung its contents over the big Cossack.

He
sat up abruptly, head completely clear once more, coughing and spluttering and glaring angrily at the grinning marshal.

‘
All right, Cossack,’ the marshal said, undeterred by the angry glare. ‘Tell your story once again.’

Grumpily,
wiping the water from his bearded face, Ivan the Terrible rose to his feet and related the same tale he had told the assembled staff six hours before, just before the start of the drunken New Year’s Eve orgy. He told them how the Fritzs down in the besieged town had been ordered to form a column and make preparations for a break-out to the west, as soon as conditions were favourable.

The
marshal and the rest of his staff listened in silence, but the looks on their fat soft, rear-echelon faces told the Cossack that they did not quite believe him.

‘B
ut are you sure that this Fritz flyboy was telling the truth, Cossack?’ the marshal asked when he had finished his account. ‘It might have been something the Fritz made up to fool us.’

Ivan
laughed maliciously. ‘I doubt it, Comrade Marshal. After they have had a couple of tastes of the knout, Cossack prisoners don’t lie.’

The
marshal frowned. In his youth as a revolutionary with Lenin, he had enjoyed that particular pleasure himself more than once when Czar’s Cossacks had charged him and fellow demonstrators. The sudden thought hardened his attitude to the big bastard, who was now pulling on his lice-ridden shirt, pausing only to take a deep slug at the vodka bottle. ‘Your prisoner might have, you know. The Fritzes do not lack courage.’

Ivan
the Terrible shrugged carelessly. ‘It’s the truth, Comrade Marshal.’

The
marshal frowned and scratched his shaven skull perplexed. ‘But it sounds wrong. Not even Hitler could be that foolish. If we catch them out in the open with the handful of armour at their disposal, the Fritzes will be massacred.’

‘B
ut that’s what the Fritz prisoner said they had been ordered to do by the Fuhrer’s HQ,’ Ivan the Terrible said doggedly, knowing that they were all against him. ‘Horse’s arses,’ he told himself contemptuously. ‘The marshal says crap, and they all bend their knees and crap their britches!’

‘B
ut doesn’t it sound wrong to you, too, Cossack?’ the marshal persisted.

‘
No. The Fritzes do a lot of things that no normal person would do — at least a Cossack wouldn’t do,’ Ivan could not resist the dig.

The
marshal frowned again and walked to the window, which was covered in glittering leaf patterns with frost. He stared at them, as if they were of great importance before turning and saying: ‘Well, what do you suggest we do, Cossack?’

The
big bearded soldier snorted angrily, ‘What Cossacks have always done, Comrade Marshal.’

‘
And what is that, Cossack?’ the marshal asked, mildly amused by the other man’s indignation.

‘
Ride to the sound of the guns, Comrade Marshal. When the Fritzes come out, we should be waiting for them.’

‘
Horoscho
. Then that is what will be done,’ the marshal decided.

‘
We will march?’

The
marshal shook his head and winked at his staff. ‘Not we, Cossack, but
you
.’ He held his hand in warning, as Ivan the Terrible’s face started to break into an evil smile. ‘But remember, the Fritzes have something up their sleeve. What it is I do not know, but they are not coming out just like that. Not the Fuhrer’s beloved SS....’

*

It was virtually the same thought that was running through Schulze’s brain, as he sat on the straw-strewn floor opposite Matz, a couple of kilometres away from the Russians, while all around them the excited Wotan troopers cleaned and greased their weapons ready for the big break-out, chattering among themselves and discussing Peiper’s announcement.

‘
They’re bound to stick one on us, Matzi, as soon as we leave the cover of this place,’ he said to his running-mate, his brow creased in a worried frown.

‘
Peiper ain’t the one to just let go out there and get our arses chopped off,’ Matz protested.

‘
The Fuhrer commands, we obey,’ Schulze quoted the popular wartime saying.

‘
Ner,’ Matz said scornfully, ‘Peiper isn’t like that. There was something else in that message the flyboys dropped. He’s got something up his sleeve.’

‘
Yer, his arm, you little peg-legged nit,’ Schulze answered cynically, and reaching out for his machine pistol, settled down to greasing it carefully, telling himself he was soon going to be needing it in perfect working order.

*

Peiper frowned at the map, while Little Napoleon and the Golden Pheasant watched him in worried silence. For more than an hour now since he had made his announcement to the troops that they had been ordered by the Fuhrer to make a break-out to the west and the river line, he had been considering the pros and cons of the daring operation.

Daylight
would ensure that the support Hitler had promised him would be present. But how could he ensure that the morrow would not bring snowstorms, fogs, or overcast skies which would make that support impossible?

No,
the young colonel told himself, daylight was too risky. Without support, his little force would be massacred by the Ivans within the hour. It would have to be after the sun, what little there was of it at this time of the year, had gone down.

He
straightened up and faced the other two. ‘Gentlemen,’ he announced, ‘I have made my decision.’

‘
Yes, Colonel?’ the Golden Pheasant asked eagerly.

‘
We go out at seventeen hundred hours tonight.’

‘
Gott
sei
Dank
,’ the Golden Pheasant breathed fervently. ‘Rescue at last!’

Peiper
ignored him and looked at the portly Spanish major, wondering what his reaction would be.

It
was positive. Despite his former declaration of making the little Russian town into another Alcazar, the Spaniard agreed. ‘
Bueno
,
hacemosle
. But, Colonel, you understand the risk?’ Peiper nodded, but said nothing, wondering what might be coming.

‘
We must make a —
como
se
dice
en
aleman
?’ Little Napoleon frowned angrily at his inability to find the right word. ‘How you say — make a feint?’

‘
A feint,’ the other two echoed.

‘
Yes,’ Little Napoleon said eagerly, taking out the cork once more. ‘Often we made our raids from El Alcazar, we did such things, make the enemy think we were about to do one thing, and then do another, with the Reds completely fooled—’

‘
Yes, I know what a feint is,’ Peiper broke in impatiently. ‘But what do you suggest?’

The
Spaniard beamed at him. ‘It will cost you your Panthers,
querido
Coronel
.’

‘
The Bodyguard never abandons its tanks,’ Peiper began indignantly, and then stopped abruptly. There was only enough fuel for the half-tracks, laden with the wounded, to reach German lines as it was. Somewhere during the break-out he would have to give up the Panthers anyway. But without them he would have no firepower whatsoever, save for the personal arms the men carried. ‘What kind of a feint have you in mind, Major?’ he asked warily.

‘
This,’ hastily the Little Napoleon took the cork out of his mouth and launched excitedly into his impromptu plan, while the two Germans listened in tense silence; then finally he was finished, his cork popped hurriedly back into his mouth, chest heaving with the effort of so much talking, staring at Peiper with expectant gleaming dark eyes.

It
seemed a long time before Peiper answered, and the two observers could see that his mind was racing, as he considered the bold plan. Finally, he said, ‘All right we will do it. But you realize the men who carry it out are on an Ascension Day mission.’

The
Little Napoleon drew himself up proudly. ‘My men will volunteer one hundred per cent,’ he declared, puffing out his chest mightily.

‘
Your men can’t drive tanks,’ Peiper answered sourly, asking himself whether that had been the reason the Spanish major had volunteered them so readily, and deciding against the ignoble thought a moment later. ‘They will have to come from our own people.’

‘
Your boys are pretty young for a one-way mission like that,’ the Golden Pheasant objected, speaking for the very first time since the Spaniard had outlined his concept of the feint.