Last Flight to Stalingrad by Graham Hurley (simple ebook reader .TXT) 📗

BLOOD

OF THE

WOLF

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

DI Joe Faraday Investigations

Turnstone

The Take

Angels Passing

Deadlight

Cut to Black

Blood and Honey

One Under

The Price of Darkness

No Lovelier Death

Beyond Reach

Borrowed Light

Happy Days

DS Jimmy Suttle Investigations

Western Approaches

Touching Distance

Sins of the Father

The Order of Things

Spoils of War

Finisterre

Aurore

Estocada

Raid 42

Blood of the Wolf

FICTION

Rules of Engagement

Reaper

The Devil’s Breath

Thunder in the Blood

Sabbathman

The Perfect Soldier

Heaven’s Light

Nocturne

Permissible Limits

The Chop

The Ghosts of 2012

Strictly No Flowers

Enora Andressen thrillers

Curtain Call

Sight Unseen

Off Script

NON-FICTION

Lucky Break

Airshow

Estuary

Backstory

GRAHAM

HURLEY

BLOOD

OF THE

WOLF

www.headofzeus.com

First published in the UK in 2020 by Head of Zeus Ltd

Copyright © Graham Hurley, 2020

The moral right of Graham Hurley to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN (HB) 9781788547543

ISBN (XTPB) 9781788547550

ISBN (E) 9781788547536

Author photo © Laura Muños

Head of Zeus Ltd

First Floor East

5–8 Hardwick Street

London EC1R 4RG

WWW.HEADOFZEUS.COM

To Jenny and Pete with love

‘The wildest life is the most beautiful’

Joseph Goebbels,

Diaries, 1937

Contents

By the Same Author

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

PRELUDE: BERLIN, 6 JULY 1940

1. GRAMMATIKOVO, KERCH PENINSULA, CRIMEA, 20 MAY 1942

2. BERLIN, 21 MAY 1942

3. SCHÖNWALDE, BERLIN, 22 MAY 1942

4. BERLIN, 22 MAY 1942

5. BERLIN, SATURDAY 18 JULY 1942

6. VENICE, 9 AUGUST 1942

7. MARIUPOL, UKRAINE, 9 AUGUST 1942

8. VENICE, 10 AUGUST 1942

9. KALACH, 10 AUGUST 1942

10. ROME, 10 AUGUST 1942

11. MOUNT ELBRUS, 21 AUGUST 1942

12. BERLIN, 22 AUGUST 1942

13. KALACH, 22 AUGUST 1942

14. BERLIN, 23 AUGUST 1942

15. TATSINSKAYA AIRFIELD, RUSSIA, 23 AUGUST 1942

16. KYIV, UKRAINE, 23 AUGUST 1942

17. TATSINSKAYA, RUSSIA, 24 AUGUST 1942

18. TATSINSKAYA AIRFIELD, 24 AUGUST 1942

19. TATSINSKAYA AIRFIELD, 24 AUGUST 1942

20. TATSINSKAYA AIRFIELD, 2 SEPTEMBER 1942

21. STALINGRAD, 17 SEPTEMBER 1942

22. STALINGRAD, 18 SEPTEMBER 1942

23. STALINGRAD, 18 SEPTEMBER 1942

24. TATSINSKAYA AIRFIELD, 27 SEPTEMBER 1942

25. BERLIN, 28 SEPTEMBER 1942

26. BERLIN SPORTPALAST, WEDNESDAY 30 SEPTEMBER 1942

27. STALINGRAD, OCTOBER 1942

28. STALINGRAD, NOVEMBER 1942

29. STALINGRAD, 28 NOVEMBER 1942

30. TATSINSKAYA AIRFIELD, 23 DECEMBER 1942

31. BODENSEE, BERLIN, 25 DECEMBER 1942

32. STALINGRAD, 12 JANUARY 1943

33. STALINGRAD, 16 JANUARY 1943

34. STALINGRAD, 17 JANUARY 1943

About the Author

An Invitation from the Publisher

PRELUDE

BERLIN, 6 JULY 1940

Levitation. Werner Nehmann told her he’d first seen it in a circus ring erected in a meadow outside Svengati. He’d been a kid, immune from disbelief, and later he swore he’d experienced it himself, a kind of magic, his soul leaving his body, everything you took for granted viewed from a different angle. He also said that Hitler understood it, practised it, had fallen half in love with it. Obvious, really.

She’d spent the night with Nehmann, here in this apartment in the Wilhelmstrasse. The apartment belonged to Guramishvili, a fellow Georgian who’d made a fortune importing wine. Nehmann said Guram, as he called him, was out of town just now and had left him the keys. Hedvika had never met Guram but knew that, unlike Nehmann, he’d never bothered to disguise himself behind an adopted German name. Too proud, he said. Too Georgian. And very rich.

The apartment was on the first floor. The tall window in the bedroom offered a fine view of the Wilhelmstrasse, the broad boulevard pointing at the heart of the Reich. The Chancellor’s train was due at the Anhalter station at three o’clock. According to Goebbels, whom Nehmann had seen last night, every allotment in Berlin had been ordered to supply a tribute of flowers to brighten the route from the station to the Chancellery. As a result, the boulevard was ablaze with colour.

After waking late, Hedvika had got up and stationed herself at the window, offering Nehmann a running commentary on the hundreds of busy hands unloading the carts and barrows below. Trays of crimson begonias and delicate gladioli. Handsome stands of lilies, nodding in the breeze. Even the Führer’s name, prefaced with the obligatory Heil,picked out in yellow roses on a first-floor balcony across the street. Minutes later, with the city’s trains cancelled and swimming pools closed, long queues of workers began to appear, marching from their workplaces to swell the crowds along the Wilhelmstrasse.

Senzacni,Hedvikahad murmured in her native Czech. Wonderful.

Nehmann agreed. In a handful of weeks, Hitler had crushed every Western European country that mattered except Italy and Great Britain. In the case of the Italians, Nehmann told her there’d be no need because Mussolini was simply Hitler with a bigger chin and a fancier wardrobe. And as far as the British were concerned, he added, it was simply a matter of time. In a month or two, once Goering had dealt with the RAF, there’d doubtless be an even noisier homecoming. Maybe they’d lock Churchill in a cage and parade him through Berlin. Assuming, of course, they hadn’t already put a gun to his head.

Now Nehmann emerged from the kitchen, fully dressed, with a bottle of champagne and two glasses. Ever since they’d first met on set in the Ufa studios, he’d called Hedvika Coquette. The scene she was shooting had required her presence on a tiger-skin rug in the palatial setting of a rich man’s weekend retreat. She’d been naked under a mink coat the colour of virgin snow and Nehmann, assigned to do an interview, had afterwards spent an hour or so in her dressing room. The woman who attended to her make-up, a Czech cousin, called her Koketa. Nehmann liked the sensation of the word on his tongue but thought it sounded even better in French. And so Coquette she became. It meant ‘temptress’, with undertones of ‘tease’.

‘What time is it?’ Naked but for a silk blouse, Hedvika was still at the window, her back to the bedroom, her elbows on the windowsill, looking down at the street.

Nehmann put the two glasses on the windowsill,