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

in the building. Seconds later, the phone on Nina’s desk began to trill. She picked it up, listened for a moment, then had a brief conversation Nehmann couldn’t follow.

The call at an end, she got to her feet.

‘We have a problem with the elephant. It’s gone berserk. Two people injured on set so far and no one with any idea what to do next. I’m glad you’re here.’

She said there were a dozen German children trapped on the set. They’d been on a studio tour all day. Their teacher was one of the injured. Might Nehmann be able to help in their mother tongue?

‘Of course.’

He followed her out of the office. The alarm bell was ringing again and the corridors on the ground floor were choked with people fleeing the building. In the distance, very faintly, Nehmann thought he could hear the howl of a siren.

They were outside the biggest of the studio sets now. The huge wooden doors were closed but Nina led the way through a maze of passages until she paused beside a small access door. She inched it open very slowly. Nehmann offered to take her place but she wouldn’t hear of it.

Finally, the door was open. The view across the studio was hidden behind scaffolding that held part of the set in place but there was no mistaking the deep bass roar of the elephant. As a kid, back in Svengati, Nehmann had haunted the travelling circus when the Big Top came to town. He’d seen these animals at close quarters, and he knew how volatile and unpredictable they could be. No one in his right mind would argue with three thousand kilos of elephant.

He and Nina crept around the scaffolding. Men were shouting orders to each other and some of the children were screaming. That ripeness in the air, thought Nehmann: definitely elephant.

The moment they rounded the scaffold, the set yawned before them. Nehmann stopped, astonished. He loved magic. In his own small way, he adored casting spells. The business of illusion fascinated him. But what he saw before him defied description. He was looking at one half of a tiny coliseum from the Punic War. The semi-circle of terraced steps, artfully stone-like, seemed thousands of years old. Palm trees flanked an imposing portico and even the sand on the studio floor looked ancient. In the middle of this space, the elephant reared on its hind legs, trumpeting its rage while half a dozen men tried to cage it behind a thicket of spears. Two of them, obviously actors, were dressed as Romans. The rest, equally brave, were scene hands.

Nina was looking at the children. They were trapped halfway up the terrace of steps, the younger ones plainly terrified. Every time the elephant turned in their direction, lumbering towards them, stopping, roaring, they seemed to physically shrink, trying to make themselves smaller.

‘You need a gun,’ Nehmann said. ‘Shoot for the legs. Drop the animal. Put it on the floor.’

Nina spared him no more than a glance. She was off again, hurrying along the back of the scaffolding, looking up at the lattice of steel tubes, trying to find a way of getting the children off the terraced steps, but it was Nehmann who found the solution.

‘There,’ he said.

He’d spotted a wooden ladder propped against the studio wall. With Nina’s help he manhandled it across to the back of the scaffolding. Propped against the top rail, it might be possible to ferry the children down to safety.

Nehmann began to climb. Every time the elephant reared up on the studio floor, he could feel the ladder shaking beneath him. At the top, a panel of painted canvas blocked access to the steps. Nehmann tore at it with his bare hands, pulling as hard as he could, trying to wrestle it free. He was cursing the efficiency of Italian carpenters when it finally gave way, nearly tipping him backwards, but he clung to the ladder, aware of the sweat cooling on his upturned face.

Then, very suddenly, came a shot, and then another, and the entire set seemed to move bodily with the weight of the elephant collapsing against it. The children were screaming again, much closer this time, and Nehmann inched himself onto the topmost step of the terrace, staring down at the elephant lying in a widening pool of its own blood. The bullets had taken it in the chest, not the legs. The animal’s eyes were open, but lifeless, and a last breath bubbled crimson onto the sand.

The man with the rifle was wearing a pair of blue overalls. He circled the elephant, keeping his distance, then put a final bullet into its head. Two of the girls on the steps below Nehmann were hiding their eyes. The rest were weeping.

*

Mercifully, there was no need to use the ladder. Nina appeared in the area and climbed towards the children, beckoning Nehmann to join her.

‘Tell them everything’s going to be all right,’ she said. ‘Tell them they’ll be safe with us.’

Nehmann talked to the tallest boy among them. He checked that no one had been physically hurt and told them to follow the lady out of the studio. When the boy asked about the teacher, Nehmann said that he, too, would be in good hands.

Nina led the way to the dressing rooms. A handful of make-up staff had appeared and fussed over the children. Keys appeared. Doors were unlocked. An older woman arrived with a tray of fizzy drinks and a huge plate brimming with pastries and sweets while Nehmann and Nina moved from child to child, offering whatever comfort they could. Then, looking up, Nehmann noticed the name on one of the dressing room doors. Lida Baarova,it read.

The children were beginning to calm down. One or two of them, pale, were plainly in shock and, as they began to talk to Nehmann, to open up to him, it was obvious that this experience had been doubly horrible. First, the rampaging elephant. Then the man in