SS General (7 page)

Heydrich arrived a few seconds later, padding silently into the room. He was more wild beast than man, with the elegance, cunning and cruelty of a lynx. Himmler watched as he crossed the room, and Heydrich, ever on the alert for danger, returned his gaze out of hooded eyes that gave away no secrets.

"Take a seat, Obergruppenfuhrer."

Heydrich inclined his head and settled himself in the chair that was still warm from Eicke's presence. His blue eyes were deep and chill and his light gray uniform, pressed to knife-edge precision, gave off a faint odor of horses. Every morning, from five o'clock to seven, Heydrich was in the habit of taking a ride with his mortal enemy, Admiral Canaris.

Himmler removed his pince-nez, polished the lenses, rubbed the bridge of his nose. The two men looked at each other across the desk, and it was Himmler who broke first, under the pretext of replacing his pince-nez. He settled them back on his nose and began leafing through Eicke's papers. He spoke without looking up. "Tell me, Obergruppenfuhrer --what exactly was it that was written on your grandmother's tombstone?"

Almost imperceptibly, Heydrich stiffened. And then laughed. His lips parted in amusement, but the chill blue eyes narrowed to slits. "Her name, for one thing," he said. "Her name was Sarah . . ."

"I'm told," Himmler interrupted him, "you went to some lengths to have the tombstone removed."

"Removed?" echoed Heydrich, raising his eyebrows.

"Why should I do such a thing, Reichsfuhrer? It cost a great deal of money."

"Which is doubtless why you have now had it replaced --but without the name of Sarah, curiously enough."

There was a silence.

"This name--this Sarah," suggested Heydrich. "Has it ever appeared on the tombstone of my great-grandmother, Reichsfuhrer?"

Himmler stared at him across the table. Heydrich sat calmly in his chair, an expression of alert curiosity on his face, and it slowly came to Himmler that this, his most competent of generals, was also his most dangerous. He decided, for the moment, to let the matter drop. "All right, Heydrich. You can go. We'll forget it for now."

Heydrich smiled an inward smile of triumph and trod silently over to the door. He also had his weapons, but they were not yet for public display. The time was not ripe.

Porta's Breakfast

Sergeant Lutz kicked open the door so hard that I thought an earthquake had hit us. We were wakened every morning by his hideously rasping voice. "Wake up, you lazy jerks! Rise and shine, out of bed, put some vim into it!"

This morning, it was even worse than usual. For one thing, it wasn't so much the morning as the middle of the night; and for another, he had a special message for Porta, myself and Tiny, which he relayed in a gloating bellow.

"You--you--and you! Report immediately to the
CO
And when I say immediately, I mean immediately. For special duties, no less, aren't you the lucky ones?"

"Go fuck a duck!" was the only reply to be heard, from the depths of Porta's blankets.

"I'm warning you!" barked Lutz. "Any more of that and I'll have you up on a charge!"

Tiny shot up in his bed and fixed Lutz with one frenzied, red-rimmed eye. "What the hell's the matter with you? You got a flea up your ass or something? Can't you see we're trying to sleep?"

Porta let loose one of his celebrated, reverberating farts and lay in bed sniggering. "Wrap that one up and take it to the CO with my compliments!"

Lutz breathed very deeply. "I'm not telling you again," he said nastily. "But you'd better get a move on. You'd just better get a move on, or I'm warning you--you'll be up on a charge of refusing to obey orders."

He slammed out again, happy at the havoc he had wrought. The air was full of obscenities, but we reluctantly wriggled out of our warm blankets into the freezing blasts of the extreme early morning. Lutz was a bastard and as good as his word, and being had up on a charge of refusing to obey orders could well prove to be worse than the orders themselves.

Porta sat up, cursing, and deftly picked off a flea that was crawling over his thin chicken chest in a vain search for blood. He crushed it between finger and thumbnail and shot it across the room.

"Screw the lot of 'em!" he declared. "I can't do nothing without my breakfast."

"You've got a hope," I said. "Breakfast at this hour of the night?"

"Don't you worry!" Porta jumped out of bed and into his uniform in one perfected movement. He advanced on the door, doing up his buttons. "Don't you worry, I'll get some breakfast out of the bastards if it's the last thing I do."

Tiny and I hurried after him, half dressed and anxious, pulling on boots and jackets, determined not to miss our share. At our own field kitchen there was nothing doing. Porta stood and bawled his head off, with no result.

"Swine! You call that cooperation, do you? You call that cooperation? Let your pals go off into the godawful freezing cold without so much as a cup of coffee? Well, God rot the balls off the lot of you, that's all I can say!"

Actually, he said a great deal more, accompanied by much spitting and a variety of oaths, until the happy notion struck him that the Third Company's cook owed him some money, and we trotted off behind him to batter the unfortunate man awake. We were stopped on the way by Lieutenant Welz, who seemed to think we were reporting for duty.

"There you are!" he said tersely. "And about time too!"

"Aw, give it a rest, Ulrich!" Porta pushed the lieutenant in the chest and moved him contemptuously aside. "Just because you've gone up in the world, you think you can shove your old buddies around, eh? We know you don't mean it, we know it's all show, so come off it, for Chrissake."

"Obergefreiter Porta, this isn't the first time I've had to tell you that under Paragraph 165 .. ."

"OK, OK, take it easy," said Porta peaceably. "You'll wear yourself out before you reach puberty, the way you're carrying on." He put a hand over the lieutenant's mouth.

"You forgotten that day I pulled you out of a shell hole? You forgotten I risked my life for you? Your lousy bones'd still be rotting there if it weren't for me, right?"

The lieutenant jerked his head away. "I've repaid you for it."

"What? Slipped me a few stinking marks now and again? You call that repayment? I call it more like bribery and corruption. You can't win, Ulrich, I can run rings around you and you know it!"

We walked on toward the Third Company, with Lieutenant Welz trailing slightly behind. Porta dragged a sleep-ridden but meekly unprotesting cook from his blankets and we gathered around to watch as he brewed us up some coffee on a spirit stove. Even Welz, temporarily forgetting his rank and the particular circumstances, accepted a cup and found the time to put away a thick ham sandwich. The cook, meanwhile, had succeeded in negotiating another loan from Porta, at some phenomenal rate of interest.

Half an hour later, we reported for duty. Colonel Hinka was waiting for us. "So! You've deigned to put in an appearance, have you? Very good of you, I must say. I was beginning to think I should have to come and fetch you myself. All right, all right, Obergefreiter, don't waste time with fanciful excuses, I've a job for you to do. Come and take a look."

He spread a map over his table and we jostled each other with a show of great eagerness, trying to atone for our unpunctuality.

"Now look, the thing is this--it's essential we know exactly what the enemy is up to. We already have information about a tank unit up here at point X. What I want to know is what they've got hidden away between point X and Yersovka, down here. In other words, I want you three men to take a good look at the enemy buildup between these two points. Get the idea?"

He turned to us with his most enchanting smile. I smiled back and wondered sourly why he had chosen us for the task.

Porta scratched his chest. "Jesus, it's a good thing that coffee was strong," he muttered.

Hinka ignored Porta and turned back to the map. "I've already warned our infantry. You can cross at this point here." He jabbed a finger on the map, and we all peered anxiously down at it. "Now, I suggest you check your watches. The time is exactly 0145 hours. I want you back here again within six hours, reporting to me by 0800 at the latest." He smiled again. "All right? If you're delayed by more than half an hour," he said pleasantly, "it'll be a court-martial for each of you. Any questions?"

"Yes, sir." Porta stopped scratching his chest and stood to attention. "I should like to ask how far the enemy lines extend. According to the Fuhrer, they go all the way from the Black Sea up to the north coast. Well, it seems to me we couldn't possibly get up to the north coast and back in six hours and then . . ."

Hinka held up a hand. "Don't push your luck, Obergefreiter! Do you never listen to a word I say?" "Yes, sir, but . . ."

"Between point X and Yersovka. No more than three miles at the most. No one's talking of going all the way to the Black Sea. Don't be more stupid than you can help."

The night was black and moonless and it was beginning to snow. We were all three agreed that a rest was required before we set out, and we accordingly crept into the shelter of a thick clump of bushes and passed around a bottle of French brandy I had recently picked up.

"Where'd you get it?" demanded Porta jealously. I shrugged. "General HQ. You'd be amazed the stuff old Paulus has stashed away there."

"Not really," said Porta, who never allowed himself to be amazed by anything. "That's the way it goes--the higher you are, the more you get away with. I guess it's always been like that. You know that war they had in China?" "What war?" demanded Tiny suspiciously. "What's it matter?" Porta wrinkled his forehead. "Some lousy war. Some lousy rebellion. Half the fucking world had to go and stick their noses in and send their troops over there."

"The Boxer Rebellion," I suggested. "That's it," agreed Porta. "That's what I said. Well, anyway, there they were, fighting all over this goddamn desert. And it seems like the Chinese desert ain't too well provided with luxuries--know what I mean? No booze, no grub, no dames--damn all. So one day they come across this great slob of a colonel feeding his face off the fat of the land--huge great chunks of roast meat, lashings of the stuff, and the best cuts and all. Know what it was? When they took it off him and looked at it, you know what it was?" "No," said Tiny. "What was it?"

"Camel?" I said vaguely.

"Camel!" Porta gave a scornful laugh. "Bird, that was what it was--roast bird. Human bird--Chinese human bird. Seems he'd taken her along for the ride, lost one sort of appetite and found another. So he cuts her up and pops her in the stewpot. Easy!"

"I'd like to see you faced with it," I said. "You'd go bats, wouldn't you? Trying to eat it and stuff it at the same time."

Porta grinned evilly.

Tiny snatched the brandy away from me. "All this yakking--I haven't had my eight hours' sleep. I don't work so good without I get my eight hours." He downed a few mouthfuls of brandy and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. "Why couldn't the stupid bastard ask for volunteers, eh? There's always a gang of 'em lusting after their Iron Cross. Why pick on us? What have we done to get in his hair?"

"Oh, stop bellyaching!" said Porta. "It's an honor, that's what it is. You ought to be proud of it."

"Yeah, big talk!" jeered Tiny. "Only right at this moment I got gooseflesh, and it ain't just because I'm cold. You know they got the lousy Siberians out there somewhere? You fancy being nailed to a tree and used for target practice like they done to that patrol from the Second Tank Regiment?"

"Shove it," said Porta curtly. "What's the time?"

I looked at my watch. "Quarter past one."

"OK, come on. Let's get cracking."

Tiny moaned and clutched protectively at the empty brandy bottle. "Why can't we spend the night here and cook up some hogwash to satisfy him?"

Porta turned and hissed in his ear, "Because when the bastards found out we'd been lying, we'd be for the high jump, that's why! Now get off your great fat ass and get a move on!"

Yawning and muttering, Tiny staggered to his feet. We left our own lines and crept forward into no-man's-land. It was fortunate the night was so dark. Even Tiny's vast bulk merged into the background, while Porta, snaking a few paces ahead of us, might not have been there at all. Nevertheless, we used what cover there was, slinking along by the side of bushes, taking care to make no sound.

As we approached the Russian lines, I became aware of a faint, unidentifiable clicking somewhere to our right. I stood still, straining my ears. The sound came again. It was rather like a gas mask case knocking against a rifle. Porta turned and moved back a few paces, his hand making an imperative gesture to me to get down and stay down, which I relayed to Tiny, a few feet behind me. We sank into the snow and waited. I saw Porta crouch behind a bush and raise his submachine gun.

Tiny's hand gripped my arm. "What's the stupid jerk doing that for?"

"Christ knows," I muttered.

"He fires that and we'll all be done for."

No more than a few yards away, five solid black shapes emerged from the shelter of a thicket and began treading single file through the snow. They were Russians, but too big and bulky in build to be the dreaded Siberians. They passed very close to us. I could hear the thud of their boots and the swish of the snow. I held my breath, wondering if they would notice our tracks, but, thank God, it was too dark. They moved on, straight across our path, and I felt Tiny relax at my side.

As we got to our feet, Porta farted; a sharp crack like a gunshot. The sound traveled clear and fast through the still night air, and Tiny and I were straightaway back on the ground.

"For crying out loud!" I protested. "Another one like that and we'll have the whole of the Red Army down on us!"

"I can't help it," said Porta with dignity. "It's the way I'm constituted. I've always been like it. The least bit of excitement and it goes to my bowels."

"Well, just try and control it!" I snapped, in no mood to humor his physiological weaknesses. "It's like a goddamn cannon going off!"