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

‘Socially?’

‘In any way.’

‘But he came to that meeting.’

‘He invited himself.’

‘Why? Why was he asking about our plans for Stalingrad? Why the bid for an aircraft?’

‘I have no idea. These people are a law unto themselves. You will notice that he left that meeting early, when it suited him. That’s the only clue you’ll ever need. These people have powerful allies in Berlin. They also appear to have the ear of the Führer. God knows why but that appears to be the case.’ He paused, then reached for the bottle again. ‘I’d like to propose a toast, Messner. It’s a small thing to ask.’

Messner held his gaze, then nodded. Another glass appeared. Renke filled it and passed it across.

‘To our schoolmaster,’ he said.

*

Messner slept badly that night. One by one, the other occupants of the house arrived. Klaus stepped in from the darkness around eleven in the evening with a welcome cauldron of stew that might have been horse.

By now, much against his better judgement, Messner had swallowed two more glasses of vodka and done his best to hold his own against one accusation after another that the Luftwaffe were becoming notable for their absence as Sixth Army prepared to push even further east. The Stukas had been more than welcome over the last couple of days, but substantial doubts remained about resupply. Was it really feasible to keep an entire army on the move without proper roads or a decent railway? Messner, who shared these doubts, did his best to defend the honour of Fliegerkorps VIII but by midnight his eyes were beginning to close.

Both bedrooms were occupied. Three men shared the living room. Renke offered to vacate his armchair for a berth on the floor but Messner wouldn’t hear of it. Klaus had left him a greatcoat and a couple of blankets. Messner spread the blankets on the floor and pulled the greatcoat to his chin. The rough serge smelled of tobacco and engine oil but within seconds he was asleep.

He awoke a couple of hours later, pitch-black. Somewhere outside a dog was barking. Closer, from one of the bedrooms, he could hear two men snoring. Messner stirred. His head was bursting, and he could still taste the rawness of the uncooked paprika in the stew. He struggled to his feet and fumbled his way to the tiny kitchen where he palmed water from the dripping tap into his mouth. Feeling a little better, he knew there was no point trying to sleep again. Better to get some air in his lungs.

Outside, huddled in the greatcoat, he settled himself against a corner of the house, his head tipped up. The sky was ablaze with stars, not a wisp of cloud, and a sliver of moon was already sinking in the west. He sat motionless for minutes on end, trying to rid himself of the images that had haunted the briefness of his sleep. Beata, his wife. Lottie, his daughter. And the little lakeside house that had been full of sunshine and laughter until the madness had overcome him and everything had turned to dust.

Her name had been Olga Helm. She was a movie star, nearly famous, and from time to time she’d appeared with Goebbels on one of the Führer Squadron flights. Messner had never seen a film of hers but when a fellow pilot rhapsodised about her Slav good looks he knew exactly what he meant. The wide curve of her mouth. The goddess cheekbones. The way her smile could transform any conversation. When travelling, she always favoured loose-fitting dresses, hints of a seemliness that Messner found mysteriously alluring. What was she like under those folds of cotton? What might a man expect at rather closer quarters?

To his great surprise, Messner found out. She had a stylish apartment off the Wilhelmstrasse and one night she invited him in after he’d given her a lift back to the city centre from Tempelhof. Anticipating a brief cup of coffee, she’d led him straight to bed. She’d flown with him three times. She loved his sternness, his air of command, and for a woman who was terrified of flying she’d never felt anything but safe. Now she wanted to find out whether he could work that same magic in bed.

The magic worked. When opportunities presented themselves, they continued to meet, sometimes in Berlin, sometimes elsewhere in the Reich. Messner, who’d always suspected that she was one of Goebbels’ mistresses, discovered that this was far from true. The Minister of Propaganda still enjoyed a pretty woman on his arm but a previous affair – once again with a foreign-born actress – had clipped his wings and so Messner found himself sucked into a relationship that turned his world upside down.

Never truly comfortable with physical contact, he became obsessed by Olga’s dexterity, and her repertoire of little tricks, and her shameless appetite for more and more of him. He wrote to her constantly, a letter most days, scribbled in haste but adolescent in the rawness of his passion. He wanted, needed,every inch of her, and in snatched moments together she was more than happy to oblige.

In the end, of course, in the words of his one close friend, he’d crashed and burned. He’d hidden Olga Helm from Dieter Merz exactly the way he’d hidden this secret life of his from everyone else. But Olga had been careless with his letters and, in someone else’s hands, they’d come back to haunt him. By now, he was in hospital recovering from the blackout accident that had nearly killed him. In every respect, he was a changed man – remote, solitary, frequently aggressive – and by the time he was physically ready to go home it was far, far too late.

A shocked Beata had sensibly changed the locks at the family home. His infant daughter became a near-stranger. And only the offer of a posting with FK VIII gave his life any discernible purpose. Hence that single-minded devotion to duty that Richthofen seemed to