The Occupation Secret

By Mario Reading

 

A German commander and a French farmgirl find forbidden love during World War II in this powerful, posthumous historical saga.

Relegated to an isolated provincial town in France after years spent fighting on the Eastern Front, German commander Maximilian von Aschau finds unexpected distraction in the form of beautiful and reserved Lucie Léré.

He’s seen every horror of the human experience. She’s never left her village. Opposites in every way, Max and Lucie manage to find common ground. But love is the most dangerous element of war. It makes you vulnerable . . . and careless.

With the Allied invasion imminent and tensions high, Max and Lucie will have to turn their backs on everything they’ve known and anyone they once trusted to protect their secret—and their lives.

A poignant, spellbinding historical novel of love and war that will appeal to fans of Anthony Doerr and Heather Morris.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Aug 12, 2019
• ISBN: 9781788634663

Mario Reading

Mario Reading is a multi-talented writer of both fiction and non-fiction. His varied life has included selling rare books, teaching riding in Africa, studying dressage in Vienna, running a polo stable in Gloucestershire and maintaining a coffee plantation in Mexico. An acknowledged expert on the prophecies of Nostradamus, Reading is the author of five non-fiction titles published in the UK and around the world.

Book preview

The Occupation Secret

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Epigraph

PART ONE

Prologue

Night Attack

Valhalla

PART TWO

Leave

Bach

Bettina

Homecoming

Father Bauer

France

PART THREE

Lucie Léré

La Bonne Auberge

Jeanne Léré

Hervé Najac

The Promenade

The Arrival

La Bastide De Marmont

Paul Meyer

Preparation

Anticipation

Tafelmusik

The Maquis

Canteloube

The Proposal

PART FOUR

Monsieur Phillibert

‘Un Amour Comme Le Notre’

Toulouse

Shadow-Play

The Oracle

The Bar Des Amis

Marie Léré

The Feuillardier’s Hut

The Tower

PART FIVE

Dominoes

Erste Licht

The Sea

The Auberge

Oysters

The Room

Goldengrove Unleaving

PART SIX

La Petite Mort

Le Retour

The Capture

Max

The Meeting

The Execution

St Gervais

Flairac Woods

Sanctuary

Grand Jean

PART SEVEN

The Invasion

L’Embuscade

Eberle

Tulle

The Villa

The Road To St Junien

Meyer’s Dream

Frayssinet-Le-Gélat

Oradour-Sur-Glane

Le Champ De Foire

Aftermath

PART EIGHT

The Return

The Cleansing

Walpurgisnacht

The Shrine

‘Collabos’

The Journey

First Dawn

The Farm

The Awakening

St Jean

PART NINE

The Cannery

No Return

Nomansland

Claustrophobia

Fish Heads

Pasajes De San Juan

Glossary

Copyright

cover-image.jpgThe Occupation Secret by Mario ReadingCanelo

‘But the real fierceness of desire, the real heat of a passion long continued and withering up the soul of a man is the craving for identity with the woman that he loves. He desires to see with the same eyes, to touch with the same sense of touch, to hear with the same ears, to lose his identity, to be enveloped, to be supported. For, whatever may be said of the relation of the sexes, there is no man who loves a woman that does not desire to come to her for the renewal of his courage, for the cutting asunder of his difficulties. And that will be the mainspring of his desire for her. We are all so afraid, we are all so alone, we all so need from the outside the assurance of our own worthiness to exist.’

From The Good Soldier, by Ford Madox Ford

PART ONE

Khodorov, Ukraine.

November 1943

Prologue

SS-Haupsturmführer Maximilian August Othon Ewald Áuxiliatrix, Count von Aschau, spat out the remains of the rolled-up scrap of newspaper he had been using to make himself a Makhorka cigarette, tipped back his crusher cap, and paused to check the time on the inside of his wrist.

He gave a fleeting smile as he caught the sound of his three remaining tanks firing up their engines against the cold. Grunting like an old man, he moistened the torn edges of the cigarette with the tip of his tongue, sealed the capsule with a dab of spittle, then pinched off the few remaining tobacco flakes and replaced them inside his rubber-lined pouch. Briefly, routinely, he checked out his surroundings with the partially focused thousand-metre-gaze shared by all veterans of the Winter War. Satisfied, he groped inside his camouflage jacket, retrieved the cord attached to his storm lighter, leaned superstitiously away from the stove, and lit the papirosu inside half-frozen hands.

He waited for a few seconds for the tobacco to take effect, and then checked his watch again. The three tanks cut their engines as one. He nodded his head in satisfaction. The resident grime on his face, the spider-work of combat lines around his eyes, the cold-driven slowness of his movements, all served to belie his twenty-eight years of age.

He squinted across the Hindenburg stove at his war comrade and last-surviving friend, Company Sergeant-Major Paul Meyer, tendrils of cigarette smoke dancing between them in the winter-bound air. ‘I hate to waste our Panzer fuel this way, Paul. Hate it. So each night we grow weaker. Less able to move our tanks. And each night the Ivans grow stronger.’ He flicked his head in a Deutscher Blick at the surrounding darkness, checking, out of long habit, to see who was listening. ‘Where is it all going to end, I wonder?’ In the sudden silence left by the stifled Panzer engines the two men could make out the faint sound of the enemy singing.

Meyer unhooked the curved Meerschaum from between his teeth, spat on the bowl, then buffed the pipe vigorously against his leg. ‘Listen to that, Captain. The Popovs have been given their vodka ration. The commissars must be preparing another attack. We have two, maybe three hours at the most.’ He stood up and blew his nose the farmer’s way, clamping a finger to each nostril in turn. ‘They have women with them, too.’

Max reared back. ‘Sweet Jesus! Don’t tell me you can smell them from this distance?’

Meyer grinned. ‘Hear them. They screech. All the men are basses.’

Max let out a derisive bark of laughter. ‘So. We’d better eat then. Build up our strength.’ He prodded at the overcooked meat in the eintopf – in the rapidly fading light it was indistinguishable from the cabbage swimming beside it. ‘What fresh delicacy has Schmidt managed to scrounge for us this time?’

‘Fox.’

‘Ah.’

‘Don’t worry. They tell me that if you rub it with salt, then pinch your nose and pretend that it’s a haunch of venison, it doesn’t taste so bad.’

‘Better than human flesh, anyway.’

‘Yes, Captain. Better than human flesh.’ The joke had gone stale on them a long time ago. Both men knew it. But still they clung to it for comfort.

Using the shared laughter as cover, Paul Meyer glanced furtively at his commanding officer. The collar of Max von Aschau’s camouflage overalls hung open to reveal the Knight’s Cross he had won at Kharkov, surmounted by the Oak Leaves – which he insisted on calling his ‘vegetables’ – the authorities had grudgingly awarded him after the defeat at Kursk, in honour of his third wounding. Inside his reversible jacket he wore the German Cross in silver, the Close Combat Clasp in gold, an arm stripe to show the single-handed destruction of an enemy tank, the Infantry Assault Badge in Bronze, the Panzer Assault Badge, and the Wound Badge. Even after three years spent living in each other’s pockets, Meyer was still able to summon up a surge of pride that he should be fortunate enough to serve under an officer of the calibre of von Aschau. It could have been so much worse. Look at Schachtel. The man was a worm.

But Meyer was becoming uneasy. The Kursk debacle had affected Max badly. These last few weeks he had become progressively humourless – highly strung, even. As a result of this change in his behaviour he was in imminent danger of losing the exalted boyishness that had so endeared him to the older and more experienced NCOs under his command. The war, it seemed, was finally getting to him – Christ, it was getting to them all – but to a man like von Aschau the thing seemed almost personal.

Shaking his head to clear it of such negative thoughts, Meyer tapped his pipe out on his knee and indulged in a preparatory clearing of the throat for his newest joke. ‘Listen to this one, Captain. You’ll like it. I promise you.’ He stabbed the stem of his pipe at von Aschau, while his lips began the involuntary chewing motion that was Meyer’s invariable run-up to telling a new story. ‘I have a question for you. And it is this. Why doesn’t Adolf show up at the front anymore?’

Max mimicked a groan. ‘Why, Paul?’

‘Because the Teppichfresser’s petrified we’ll scream out, Yes, my Führer! Lead us!! We’ll follow you!!! Meyer let out a smoker’s raucous cackle, revealing the tobacco-mottled remnants of his decaying teeth. His eyes belied his laughter, however, playing intelligently over Max’s face. Weighing his frame of mind. Judging the tenor of his mood.

Max’s face creased into the semblance of a grin. He could feel his affection for Meyer swelling in his throat – the simple presence of the man, the almost palpable aura of good sense and competence he exuded was a priceless comfort in this godforsaken wilderness. ‘You’d better not tell that to the wrong person, Paul. They shoot men here for less. In fact, if I was doing my duty according to that last shit-paper they sent me from HQ, I should stand you up against a tree and shoot you now, and to hell with your fighting record. We’ve reached such a damned stupid pass as that.’

‘The Popovs shoot people too.’

‘It’s a cleaner way to die when the Popovs get you.’

Fifty metres away a radio set squawked, then hissed into life. Max swivelled around and squinted into the gloom. He waited. Thirty seconds later young Doerr came sprinting across the clearing, a grey sheet of paper clutched to his thigh. He squatted silently beside his commanding officer and handed him the note. Doerr reeked of the familiar soldier mixture of tobacco, feet, sweat, gasoline, and the zinc ointment they all used against lice infestation. Von Aschau, after years on the Russian front, found the odour almost comforting. It was so much better than the bittersweet smell of physical dissolution that seemed to have been assaulting his nostrils ever since the catastrophe at Kursk – the stench of frostbite and bone caries, of pyoderma and lymph infestations. At least Doerr was alive and stinking. They were all alive and stinking.

‘Tell the men to assemble.’

‘Yes, Captain.’

Max straightened up. He could feel Meyer’s eyes boring into him. He crumpled up the flimsy and fed it slowly into the stove. ‘Schachtel wants some more prisoners to interrogate.’

Meyer sucked in his breath. ‘What was wrong with the last bunch we provided?’

‘They died.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Just what I say. They died. The Einsatzgruppe killed them before anyone had a chance to ask them any questions.’

‘Gott in Himmel!’

Max thrust the heel of one hand across his face, as if he were kneading a recalcitrant lump of dough. ‘I’ve decided not to send you this time, Paul. That new sergeant they foisted on us can go. The Berliner. What’s his name?’

‘Schuss. Sergeant Schuss.’

‘He can do it.’

‘They are my men.’

‘And you are my sergeant-major. I simply can’t afford to lose you.’

Meyer waved his pipe. ‘He’s a Jonah. He’ll get them all killed. The man’s not KV, for pity’s sake. Can’t you see he’s finished? Someone strikes a match near him, he leaps for cover. You must have noticed how the men avoid him?’

Max lurched unsteadily to his feet. The remaining eighteen men of the von Aschau battle group were patiently assembling at the far edge of the clearing, waiting for their commander to address them.

With a final glance at Meyer, Max rearranged his expression, straightened his shoulders, and strolled towards the expectant group, his gait belying the bone-weariness he felt in every overtaxed sinew. In a compulsive movement familiar to them all, he raised his crusher cap, smoothed back his unwashed blonde hair, then replaced the cap on his head at a jaunty angle. He stopped close to the men, his feet slightly apart, the shadow of a smile playing across his features. ‘Children, I have some bad news. Our beloved Major Schachtel wants us to go out and fetch him some more Popovs.’

One or two of the men flinched, as if at the detonation of some distant mine. The others stood motionless, their faces attentive, non-committal.

‘So, Sergeant-Major, you know the routine. You will detail five unmarried men for active reconnaissance duty. Two prisoners should be sufficient. The patrol will take no more than two hours at the outside, or they will find themselves overrun by tonight’s attack. When they return, they may take their prisoners to the rear and come back with food, fuel, and schnapps. Schnapps, you hear me? None of that Samahonka rotgut. Do I make myself clear?’

‘Perfectly, Captain.’

‘Do you wish to lead the detail yourself?’

‘Yes, Captain.’

‘Very well then.’ Max could sense the relief circulating among the men when they knew that Meyer, and not Schuss, would be accompanying them. Incredible how the bastard always had his finger so firmly on the underlying pulse. ‘Carry on, Sergeant-Major.’

‘Jawohl, Herr Haupsturmführer!’

As Max walked away, he could hear Meyer calling out the names of those he would be taking with him. Wahl. Karkowski. Brasick. Krug. Doerr. Some of his best soldiers. Two farmers, a carpenter, a blacksmith and a brewer – the salt of the earth. Each man with his own well-honed technique of survival and killing; each man, an adept at the deadly game of hide-and-seek they were increasingly being forced to play in these endless damned forests, defending this endless damned river. Max brushed vainly at his camouflage tunic. How much longer would he be forced to send good men to their deaths like this? And for what?

He stopped walking and glanced briefly back towards the group. They made a strange picture. In the rapidly falling dusk the pine trees loomed over them like a troupe of dervishes frozen in the act of twirling and bellowing their multi-coloured skirts. Thick flakes of snow were spiralling down onto the men’s camouflage capes, hissing against the surface of their portable heaters, settling inside the creases of their massive felt overboots, then gradually melting. At the far end of the clearing Meyer had already charcoaled his face, and was waiting impatiently for Doerr to finish taping up his machine pistol.

Max caught Meyer’s eye and raised one hand. He used the Bavarian greeting. ‘Servus, Spiess. Machs gut.’

Some of the men turned towards him, shocked that their captain would use the slang name for a sergeant-major in their presence. Then they saw Max’s smile and Meyer’s echo of it, and nudged each other, grinning.

Smiling broadly, Meyer slipped the SS collar tab beneath his camouflage tunic, adjusted his scarf, then buttoned the tunic snugly across his throat. ‘Get a move on, Doerr, you leprous little dung-beetle. The Ivans are expecting us. And I’m hungry for my supper.’

Night Attack

The snow hesitated, eased a little – as if weighing up whether or not it was worth its while restarting – then let up for good.

Max braced himself against the lightning-damaged tree and swept his 10x50 Dienst glasses along the outer edge of the forest. Something was wrong. Where was the Russian attack? And why was Meyer not back yet? He had made it perfectly clear that the patrol must return within two hours, prisoners or no prisoners. Meyer had understood his orders. It simply wasn’t like him to disobey them.

Immediately behind Max, the field-grey Tiger blended inconspicuously into the landscape, with only the white gnome emblem and the lemon-coloured runic Wolfsangel symbol of the Das Reich Panzer Division standing out in the grudging moonlight. Max doubled back to the tank and pulled himself hand over fist up the turret. He swung over the lid and dropped heavily down into the unheated cabin. Squatting awkwardly inside the gun-well, he mopped at his face with the back of his glove.

‘I want one volunteer from each crew to enter the forest, under Sergeant Schuss’s command, and find out what has happened to the reconnaissance detail. Then report back to me.’

‘May I go, Captain?’

‘Good for you, Schmidt. Hausser, contact the other vehicles and relay my orders to them.’

Max unwound his six-foot three-inch frame and slithered back into the turret. He stood up, raised his glasses, and made another detailed sweep of the forest edge. Nothing. Nothing at all. He let the glasses fall.

A breath of unseasonably warm air flicked at his cheek. An instant later he subconsciously registered the distant echo of a rifle shot.

He ducked swiftly back inside the cockpit, cursing. A slick of cold sweat had broken out on his forehead and was trickling down into his eyes, diluting the thin flow of blood from where the bullet had grazed his head. Christ, but that one had been close. An atavistic surge of fear flushed through his body, making him doubly angry.

‘Sniper! Rake the forest fifty degrees!!’

Below him the heavy machine gun opened up with its evil, staccato snarl. Max shinned back up the ladder, slipped on his headphones and throat microphone and focused his binoculars on the tracer as it arced towards the trees. That would make the bastards jump. His heart was still pumping uncontrollably fast.

‘Forward! Full throttle!’

The Tiger lurched into gear and began to pick up speed.

‘Now take her in.’

He was shouting into the mouthpiece now, struggling to be heard against the demented howling of the engines – struggling to think clearly.

‘Tell the other two tanks to cover us. But they are not – repeat: not – to enter the forest.’

The mass of the Tiger struck the edge of the trees, sweeping the half-grown timber aside. Max unbuttoned his pistol holster and slid the Mauser into his hand. From somewhere behind him the familiar yapping of the Panther heavy machine gun opened up, followed by the slower da-da-da of the captured Russian T-34.

‘I said full throttle!’

A shadowy figure broke cover from behind some nearby trees. Max snapped off a shot. The man pitched forward onto his knees, shrieking, his head tucked beneath him, the arm holding the rifle stretched out in front of him like a peasant in some mediaeval triptych begging for bread.

‘Move left! Left!! Make for the clearing.’

The Tiger lurched on its axis, mincing the trees in its path – its machine-gun chattered briefly, then fell silent. The fifty-two-ton tank lunged down a steep bank and then reared up on the opposite side, turf and stones flying in its wake.

‘Enemy at three o’clock. Fire at will!’

The sudden recoil from the 88mm cannon threw Max violently back against the metal framework of the turret. The Russian T-34 instantly returned his fire, the shell howling through the trees beside them. The Tiger rocked to a halt, facing the enemy.

Inside the now stationary cabin Schmidt slammed his foot down on the pedal, causing the turret to revolve smoothly on its gimbals – he squinted along the firing mechanism, his brows furrowed in concentration, the sweat misting his eyes, until the triangles met over their target.

Max hammered at the metal of the turret with his gloved hand. ‘Fire, damn you!’

The 88mm gun roared. There was a sudden unnatural silence, and then the T-34 plunged onto its side, one detached track flailing in the livid phosphorescent flare of the explosion.

‘Traverse left. Enemy turret at eleven o’clock!’

The Tiger seemed to hesitate, its snout testing the air. Then it locked onto its new opponent. Max could make out the darting shadowy forms of white-coated infantry in its wake.

A tongue of flame bloomed from the Russian 122mm cannon. The explosion rocked the Tiger, sending it briefly up onto one track, stone-chips and earth cannonading against the armour plating.

‘What are you doing down there? Fire!’

The barrel of the 88 recoiled. The T-34 dipped nose down into the first shell hole, then flowered phosphorous-white as the second 88 shell struck it. The figure of the Russian tank commander flailed wildly in the brief artificial daylight, then collapsed against the turret edge.

‘Use the flame-thrower. Hausser! Do you hear me?’

The foul red tongue of the Tiger’s built-in flame-thrower blossomed beneath Max, the naphtha fumes searing his unprotected eyes as he made a belated grab for his goggles. Max braced himself against the turret and squinted into the darkness beyond the inferno. The shadowy smudges of the retreating Russian infantry flashed between the trees – it would be madness, sheer madness, to pursue them. He would simply be inviting destruction by one of their own captured Panzerfaust rockets.

‘Right. Let’s get out of here. There’s nothing more to be done.’

He threw off his goggles, choking. He’d been insanely lucky, he knew it. But friendship was no justification for stupidity. After four years of frontline fighting, two of which had been spent in Panzers, he should have known better. He’d put the lives of his men at risk unnecessarily, and there was no excuse for it. What a fool he’d been, storming into the forest like that. The entire Division had only three combat fit Tigers left, and he had risked one of them – and on a hunch. He tapped angrily at his throat microphone.

‘Warn the others that we’re coming out.’

He could feel the fury eating away at him. Meyer was dead. Had to be. The other men too. He should never have sent them in so close to a Russian push. And to hell with that bastard Schachtel and his Sonderkommando dogs. The Ivans must have been lying in wait for them.

The Tiger see-sawed to a standstill. Max slithered stiffly to the ground, the tension leaching from his back and legs, his belly muscles unknitting themselves. ‘Schmidt, bring me some water. My throat feels as if someone has played a blowtorch across it.’

From the corner of his eye he could make out the figure of Sergeant Schuss, his arms flailing, running towards him from the stationary Panther. Shit. This was all he needed.

‘Captain! More problems with the cooling system. We urgently need spare parts. If you had ordered me to enter the forest behind you, I would have been unable to do so. The situation is impossible. I—’

‘Stop shouting, Schuss. I can’t hear you anyway. The gunfire has made me deaf. Schmidt, give me the map.’

Schmidt handed him the map case and a canteen.

Max took a long pull of the ice-cold water. His ears were still hissing with the residual echo of the action. ‘Hausser will take over my Tiger until further notice. You, Schuss, will be in overall command. We’ll bivouac here.’ He stabbed angrily at the map. ‘I shall take Schmidt, Spiegel, Wanger and Müller into the forest with me. You will be able to manage with just eight men?’

‘Of course, Captain.’ Schuss was visibly pulling himself together.

‘Good. Send to the workshop for your spare parts, then. And put in another requisition for food and fuel while you’re about it – we’ll see if those Etappenschweine have kept their sense of humour.’

‘Yes, Captain. Captain, your face is bleeding.’

Max straightened up, squinting at the sky. ‘Schmidt, the men are to prepare themselves. Light arms only. No. On second thoughts we’ll take the MG42. Three hundred rounds and a hundred in the breech. The Ivans will be busy licking their wounds. And the moon is with us.’ He flared his nostrils in a vain attempt to catch the elusive smell of the night through the overlay of gasoline, naphtha and charred flesh that still assailed his senses. ‘With luck, and by the grace of God, we should have a clear run of it for once.’

Valhalla

Max led his small troop along the devastated trail left by the retreating Russians, picking his way amongst the parboiled bodies of the killing field. At one point, Müller tugged at his arm and pointed silently to a dead soldier. Max nodded. Müller crouched down and eased off the man’s felt overboots, measured them against his own dismembered pair, then attempted to put them on. As he did so, the soldier groaned.

‘Christ Jesus! The bastard’s still alive!’ Müller lost his balance and windmilled backwards into the snow. Spitting and spluttering, he eased himself up on one elbow and peered at the Russian. ‘I nearly shat myself this time. If I had a heart condition, that would have been it.’

‘Give the man his overboots back, Müller. Let nature take its course. His comrades may return for him.’

‘But, Captain…’

‘I said give him his boots back. I won’t have any Executions-Tourismus in my unit. Find yourself a dead man to rob.’

Spiegel gave the Russian a derisory nudge with his foot. ‘Müller just has. Er ist aus. The groan must have been trapped air.’

Müller glanced expectantly up at Max.

‘Very well, Müller. You may take them now.’

Twenty minutes later they reached the first of the frozen rasputitsas – the mud-filled trenches that infibulated the Russian landscape and made spring and autumn fighting such a misery.

‘Has anyone crossed here in the past few hours?’

‘Yes, Captain. Four or five men. Moving towards the Ivans.’

‘We’ll have silence from here on. Sign language only. Anyone wants to piss, they keep it in their trousers.’

For the next twenty minutes there was only the crunching sound of compacted snow to remind them that this was no dream landscape they were threading their way through, but a highway leading directly towards the enemy. At one point Spiegel touched Max’s arm and pointed through the trees at some distant pinpricks of light. Then he motioned to the spoor they were following and made a questioning face.

Max made a cutting motion to indicate that they should continue forward on their same bearing, and only later circle back towards the clearing. He was privately convinced that Paul Meyer was dead. He had to be. If he was alive and lost, the sound of the tank skirmish would have drawn him back towards their camp like a homing pigeon. If he was alive and wounded, the cold would have despatched him as effectively as it had the Popov with the world class overboots. Max shook his head in disbelief, his eyes still fixed on the distant glade with its telltale flickers of light. Meyer had always seemed next to invulnerable. Of all the Alte Hasen he had ever known, Meyer had been the most resourceful and had taught him the most about survival in the seemingly impossible conditions of the Russian frontline.

He cast his mind back to their first meeting in the early spring of 1941, during the frenetic drive towards the Belgrade bridges, with Max a newly promoted Obersturmführer to Meyer’s veteran non-commissioned Hauptscharführer. In a surfeit of youthful enthusiasm, Max had pretended to misunderstand an order restricting his new platoon to the northern bank of the Danube and had inadvertently allowed his troops to become encircled. Temporarily at a loss, he had ordered his men to dig in. Meyer, knowing instantly that Max was as good as signing the men’s death warrants by his inaction, had taken him aside.

‘Remember the ambush training they gave you at Senne, Lieutenant?’

‘Of course I do, Sergeant.’

‘That’s good. Because very soon you’re going to have to use it.’

It was only because he was well out of earshot of the men that Max hadn’t issued Meyer with a formal rebuke. ‘I don’t understand what you mean, Sergeant. Explain yourself.’

‘I mean that when they eventually hit us – and hit us they will, with all the preparation time you’ll be giving them – our only chance will be to get our arses out of these holes we’re so laboriously digging, and take the fight directly to them.’

‘You’re implying that the foxholes are a complete waste of time?’

Meyer had sucked the air through his teeth, summoning up a sound that Max was to become infinitely familiar with over the next year of joint campaigning – a sound he would hear whenever he was in imminent danger of making yet another tactical misjudgement. ‘Not a complete waste of time. No. They will make magnificent graves.’

For a moment Max had hovered between vainglory and common sense. Now, in retrospect, he realized that it had been the one defining moment of his military career. And that the veteran in Meyer had suspected this at the time, and had been taking a calculated risk with him.

‘What would you do in my place?’ he said at last.

‘Fight my way back to the bridge, get my men across to safety, and only then dig in. Then swear blind that you didn’t disobey your orders, and trust that your men are grateful enough to back you up.’

‘Will they be, Sergeant? If I successfully follow your suggestion?’

Meyer had cracked his most contagious grin. ‘I personally guarantee it.’

---

Approaching the clearing in silence, Max pointed to each man in turn, held up three fingers and laid them across his watch face. Then he made a criss-cross motion with his left hand. Schmidt and Spiegel moved noiselessly to the left. Wanger and Müller to the right. Satisfied, Max raised the field glasses once again to his eyes.

Meyer, Doerr, and Karkowski were lying where they had fallen on the far side of the clearing. Max checked the luminous dial of his watch and began counting off the time in his head. Twenty seconds to go. He eased his grip on the Mauser. He could feel his hands sweating inside their gloves.

The three Cossack soldiers pulled Wahl to his feet and began dragging his flailing body towards two birch trees they had tied back in twin arches to the ground. Ten seconds to go. Oh Christ.

Max’s hand strayed inadvertently to the crucifix he kept tucked inside his tunic shirt, beneath his Knight’s Cross. Now the Russians were strapping Wahl to the tree, his legs splayed, one foot attached to each separate trunk. There were ten of them in the clearing. Thirteen, if you counted the women. The whole thing was insanity. He and his men were outnumbered three to one. If the Russians fought back, they were done for.

Max sprang up, firing his pistol into the air. Spiegel burst out on one side of the clearing, Wanger and Müller on the other, the Schmeissers steady in their hands, their faces livid in the smouldering glow of the birch twigs massed beneath Krug’s charred body. Schmidt moved swiftly into view, the heavy MG42 cradled in his arms.

One of the Russians made a move towards his machine pistol. Müller’s Schmeisser went tik-tik-tik and the man fell. None of the others moved. One of the men cried out ‘Pomoshch! Pomoshch! We surrender. Kamerad!’ Max saw the woman soldier drop her knife furtively behind her back, then kick it away.

He was aware, as if he were watching a shaky sequence from a slow-motion film, that Schmidt and Spiegel were herding the Russian prisoners into a group, that Wanger was attempting to untie Wahl from the tree, that Müller was throwing up what remained of his last meal near Brasick’s recumbent body.

Max strode up to Brasick, took one look at him, uttered a guttural, inarticulate cry of rage, and shot him in the head. Müller stumbled forwards, then pitched onto his knees, choking.

‘Pull yourself together, Müller. Damn you, man! Come and see to Doerr.’ Max dropped to one knee beside Meyer. He eased his friend’s head gently around, so that he could see his face. ‘What happened, Paul?’

Meyer’s eyes were wild. He opened his mouth, but was unable to speak. Max felt carefully around Meyer’s head, then down his neck and along his body. He discovered the wound at the base of Meyer’s back – a sucking hole. He dropped his pistol and scrabbled for his field dressing and morphine ampoules.

‘What shall we do with these bastards?’ It was Schmidt. His voice was trembling and on the verge of tears. ‘Major Schachtel said he wanted prisoners.’

‘For Christ’s sake, what do you think?’ Max’s eyes were almost crazy with grief. ‘Look at what they’ve done. And damn Major Schachtel to hell.’

‘And the Querfotzen?’

‘What women? Do you see women here?’

The firing began behind his back. For some time Max refused to raise his head from what he was doing.

PART TWO

Aschau, Bavaria.

December 1943

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In the distance, just as in his childhood, Max could make out the familiar tocsin of the Theresien-Kirche bells calling the faithful to Sunday Mass. He shut his eyes, struggling to unlock the images which the tolling of the bells had sent seething through his mind.

One moment there would be a satisfying flash from the past – him hardening a snowball, or skating on the frozen lake with Bettina; Hans-Albin pushing him down a meadow-bank near their house, then jumping on him, pinning Max’s biceps beneath his knees until Max surrendered, shrieking with masochistic pleasure – then darker, more recent images, would crowd in to spoil them. The Russian woman with her knife. The bloodied, ruptured sockets of Walter Brasick’s eyes.

He let his grip fall to the ground. The station was empty. Fresh snow was banked up beside the tracks, piled thickly onto the overhanging eaves of the waiting room, spread uniformly across the meadows, on the fences, down the familiar paths and lanes he had believed, in his Russian dreams, that he knew so well. Now they seemed alien to him, their flat expanses threatening. He tried to tear his eyes away from the horizon, distract them from their automatic sweep of the surrounding countryside, but found himself incapable.

He stumbled to a bench, not bothering to clear away the snow. He sprawled back, his hands to his face, his eyes closed. You are in Bavaria, he told himself. It has taken you a week, one whole week of your three-week leave to get here. There are no Russians. No one is threatening you. You are among friends. Two kilometres across the fields is your family home. The bells you hear are calling your father and mother, your brother and sister, to church.

Max thrust himself to his feet and began a stumbling run along the station platform. Halfway to the waiting room he lurched away from the tracks and fell to his knees, vomiting the thin gruel of his ersatz breakfast onto the virgin snow. He could feel the damp of the snow eating through his whipcord breeches and solidifying inside his fists.

He grabbed a handful of fresh powder and scrubbed at his mouth. The sound of the church bells echoed the hissing and ringing inside his head. He struggled to his feet and stood looking down at the vivid yellow stain he had left behind him.

The boy’s sudden appearance startled him. Max reached down as casually as he could and dusted the slush from his breeches. ‘You, Bursche, where is Herr Greiner? You know, the station master?’ The words came out too loudly, echoing off the insulated buildings. Max modulated his tone, forcing back the bile that was still souring the inside of his mouth. ‘Why is there nobody here? This place is like a morgue.’

A body emerged from behind the head that had been silently watching Max from across the storm fence on the opposite side of the railway tracks. The face was rat-like, undernourished, the clothes shabby and impractical for the time of year. ‘He’s in Silesia.’ The boy’s voice was reedy with malnutrition, midway between the treble of the early teen and a young man’s fully-fledged tenor. Raising his catapult, the boy let fly at a rail, striking it squarely with his stone, which ricocheted out of sight behind a maintenance shed.

‘Silesia?’ For a moment Max could make no sense of what the boy was saying. ‘What is he doing there?’

The boy pointed to Max’s uniform.

Max glanced down at himself. He had taken his greatcoat off in the train, and now the black of his tunic, the glitter of his decorations, and the mirror shine of the boots – which he had buffed himself, that morning, before dawn – must have seemed overwhelming against the snow’s luminescence. ‘Eh? Oh, the war. He’s fighting in the war?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Incredible. Greiner must be nearly sixty.’ Max kicked furtively at the mess at his feet in a vain attempt to camouflage the evidence of his weakness. He started briskly down the platform to recover his greatcoat and grip. ‘Come over here.’ The boy had already begun to edge away down the track. ‘Come on then. I won’t shoot you.’

The boy stopped abruptly, like a startled deer. He seemed uncertain, for a moment, whether to run or to duck.

Max shook his head in wonder at his own turn of phrase. Had he become so brutalized by his years of warfare that he was incapable of uttering even a single sentence without a military connotation? ‘Look.’ He rummaged inside his grip, a placatory smile fixed to his face. ‘I have real Cervelat Wurst. See. It’s good and hard. It’s come all the way from Berlin. What do you think of that?’

The boy’s eyes went slack with pleasure. He was staring at the sausage in Max’s hand. Max had already begun searching for his pocket knife to quarter the salami when he caught the intensity of the boy’s gaze. He swallowed awkwardly ‘Do you have a mother?’ The boy nodded, still transfixed by the sausage. ‘So. Give her this. With my compliments.’

‘The whole thing?’ The boy’s mouth was wide open with disbelief.

‘Of course the whole thing. What do you think? Would I give a man half a salami?’ The boy sidled a little closer, his gaze still locked onto the sausage, almost as if it