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

to some effect. With his repertoire of gestures – the pointing index finger, the clenched fist, the hammering on the lectern, the planting of arms akimbo – he had the ability to transcend the confines of both his body and his trademark leather jacket. For Werner Nehmann this was yet further proof of the powers of levitation, but here and now, watching Goebbels’ pencil race from line to line, he sensed the Reich’s favourite dwarf was in serious trouble.

He looked even thinner than usual and scarlet shell bursts of eczema had appeared on the bareness of his forearms. There was another sign of stress, too: one highly polished shoe tap-tapping on the looted Gobelin carpet.

‘You’re lucky, Nehmann.’ The Minister didn’t look up.

‘Tell me why?’

‘I like it that you don’t dress for dinner.’

‘I’m here to eat?’

‘You’re here to listen. And to drink. And as it happens I brought back some fine Weisswurst from München.’ He glanced up at last. ‘You think that might be acceptable?’

Nehmann nodded. Weisswurst was a Bavarian sausage, an irresistible marriage of minced veal and pork back bacon. Goebbels knew that Nehmann adored it.

Goebbels lifted a telephone on the table by his chair and muttered an order. Then he gestured at the notes on his lap.

‘We’re running out of grain seed. Can you believe that? I can explain anything within reason. I can turn defeat into victory, I can make angels dance on the head of a pin. Offer me enough money and I can even raise a thin cheer for that snout-wipe Ribbentrop. But a loaf that turns out to be half-barley? In a country like this?’

Nehmann mentioned potatoes as a substitute for grain seed. At short notice it was the only suggestion he could muster. Kartoffelbrot. Kartoffelomelett. A Spanish tortilla on every man’s table.

‘Nein?’

‘Nein.This swinish weather has done for the potatoes, too. So far we’ve had the measure of every single enemy. And now we surrender to the fucking rain?’

Nehmann could only agree. Lately, the weather had been evil. Even back home in Svengati, where the mountains made for serious weather, he’d never seen so much water.

One of the kitchen staff appeared at the door with a tray. As well as a pile of fat Weisswurst, Goebbels had ordered a bottle of champagne. He gave it to Nehmann to pop the cork and then watched him pour.

‘A toast, my friend.’ Goebbels reached for a glass.

‘To what?’

‘To Trappenjagd.’ He frowned. ‘The Kerch Peninsula? Key to the Crimea? You haven’t heard? Manstein cleaned out what’s left of the Soviets yesterday afternoon. The Führer’s planning a major speech. I may even say something myself.’

The two men clinked glasses. Then Goebbels sat back.

‘You don’t listen to the radio any more?’

‘Not today.’

‘But I thought your Coquette’ –a thin smile – ‘has been otherwise engaged?’

Goebbels, who lived for gossip, obviously knew that Hedvika had started an affair with an Italian film director but Nehmann didn’t rise to the bait.

‘She’s shooting in Franconia.’ Nehmann nodded at a pile of scripts on Goebbels’ desk. ‘I have my life to myself.’

Goebbels held his gaze, said nothing. Every night, to Nehmann’s certain knowledge, the Minister devoted time he couldn’t afford to going through pre-production movie scripts. The sight of the ministerial green ink in the margins of scene after scene in these scripts had driven a whole generation of film directors crazy yet in this corner of his empire, as in the others, the little man insisted on total control. A disease, Nehmann thought. And at this rate, probably terminal.

Goebbels was talking about his unhappiness with the Propaganda Companies, yet another innovation for which he claimed sole credit. Nehmann had accompanied one of these outfits during last year’s lightning descent on the luckless French. Goebbels, who treated everything in life as a lamp post, wanted to cock his leg and put his personal scent on the probability of a quick German victory. The Propaganda Companies – film crews and journalists – bounced along in the wake of the Panzer columns, raiding the battlefield for images and interviews to send home. Thus, within days, cinema audiences across the Reich would be treated to victory after victory, an epic movie told onscreen in real time, and all of it thanks to the little genius at the head of the Promi. Given the cannibalism within the upper reaches of the Reich, rival warlords were quick to spot the countless benefits of sharing these spoils of Hitler’s war, and now, it seemed, Goebbels was facing a serious turf battle with Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop.

‘The man’s a fool, an impostor,’ he said, reaching for a sausage. ‘He has the ear of Hitler because he bought off the Russians for a couple of years, but tell me this: what on earth does the man know about propaganda?’

‘He lies,’ Nehmann pointed out. ‘All the time.’

‘Yes, but what lies. Paper lies. The thinnest of lies. The most obvious of lies. Ribbentrop is an impostor. He married his fortune. He stole his title. He has a dentist’s smile. Even his staff say so.’

Nehmann nodded and emptied his glass. He hadn’t been summoned here to listen to Goebbels beating up his many enemies. There had to be another reason.

‘So what happens next, Herr Minister?’

‘What happens next, my friend, we owe to General Manstein. The Führer believes that Trappenjagd is just an hors d’oeuvre.The main course is yet to come. He’s as sensitive to the grain crisis as I am, and he believes the people deserve a little glimpse of what awaits us. The news footage from the Crimea arrives tomorrow. Ribbentrop is trying to get his hands on it. He won’t succeed. He thinks it’s due at Tempelhof just before noon and that’s because we’ve planted all the clues. In reality, it’ll arrive at Schönwalde around nine in the morning and you, my friend, will be on hand to collect it. I’ll be supervising the edit myself. The music is already written, and the earlier battle footage is already cut. Half a day’s hard work