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 Nick Sumner |
The Dark Colossus: Part 17 |
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Posts: 596 (29-Jun-2008 18:39:04) |
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Nick Sumner |
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Posts: 597 (29-Jun-2008 18:40:32) |
Part 17: Wednesday 18th August 1943
"Stalin? I killed him, I killed him with my own gun, I looked into that bastard's eyes and I shot him in the guts. I watched him die, I enjoyed it, he cursed me with his dying breath but the last thing he saw on this earth was me, it was my face, smiling at him. I hope he burns in hell." The teahouse is crowded with men, their clothes are ragged, their heads wrapped in black turbans, dark faces worn by hardship and fatigue. The broken window has been patched with newspaper, they sit on cots that stand around the room. The yellow walls are painted with simple patterns in blue, a fireplace in the corner heats a dented brass samovar. The man reaches again for his glass of tea, his hands shake as he takes a bottle from inside his jacket, the lip of it rattles against the glass as the clear liquid creates a swirling pattern in the green tea. Lieutenant Commander John Leighton looks at him evenly. He says; "That isn't the only thing that I came to ask you about." The man's eyes narrow, he rubs his hand over the stubble of his shaved head, as he speaks his Adam's apple bobs noticeably up and down in his thin throat. "What is it that you want?" That was a good question and the answer wasn't as clear as it had seemed when Leighton had set off from England two months previously. The third man at the table looks at him, his name is Carstairs, he is the local British Consul. "I wanted to ask you," he stops, groping for the words "I wanted to ask you about the 470th rifle division?" "I was in the first Regiment, what about it." "Were you in the action around Patomnik?" "Of course, the division was almost wiped out, hardly any of us survived but God wanted me to live, he had a purpose for me, he wanted me to kill Stalin." Leighton waits for a moment then comes to a decision and stands up. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have come." "Yes, yes you should have come, God brought you here, don't say you shouldn't have come it is blasphemy." Blasphemy? Perhaps it is. "Tell me, tell me why you are here, you are from England? That is a long way, tell me why you are here?" * He had not been happy about his transfer away from Istanbul and his new fiance in July of '42, still he did as he was ordered and took the BOAC flight to Teheran and from there an RAF transport to Kraznovodsk to become one of the British military observers attached to the Russian forces. The Russians had been cruel in their taunts mocking the British and French for their capitulation affirming that Russia would fight the Germans to its last drop of blood. He had swallowed these insults with outward equanimity but inward chaffing and concentrated on his job, which was to gather as much information about the war, the tactics used by each side, their methods and equipment, as he could. In 1941 when operation Barbarossa had started the then Labour government in Britain, always quick to find affinity with the Soviet Union had sent almost a hundred observers, as well as some aid. All of them were career military men, many of them specialists and the information that they gathered had proved vital in rebuilding Britain's armed forces after 1940. Leighton had expected a post on a Soviet ship or a least to a naval base, he was surprised when he was ordered to report to a line infantry Regiment, the third Regiment of the 470th rifle division. It had been a long train journey across the steppe to Stalingrad, but the commanding officer was a captain in the Red Navy and his soldiers had all been ratings in the Soviet fleet. Their ships had been sunk or trapped in harbours and Russia's desperate need for Manpower meant that they were required to fight as infantry. The captain had been impatient, condescending; "You want to see what the Red Navy does, this is what we do - we fight the Germans - any way that we can." To his surprise they had let him talk to the men, after the morning parade, the captain had interpreted, they had seemed confident, self-assured, laughing and joking like schoolboys. Leighton didn't doubt that many of them had been schoolboys until very recently, if he had been asked to guess their average age he would have said 16. As the two men had walked towards the officers mess afterwards he had complimented the captain on his troops élan. The captain's response had been flat, matter-of-fact, brutal. "We are leaving for the front tomorrow, I have 400 rifles and a thousand men - a week from now they will probably all be dead." He had not gone with them, he was transferred to Batumi and was on board the destroyer leader Kharkov during the action of 28th August 1942 when the Soviet Black Sea Fleet was almost annihilated by Fleigerkorps X. He was transferred again to Guryev on the Caspian Sea, the transfer had perhaps saved his life, in the chaos and confusion as the Soviet Union unravelled in the autumn of 1942 some of the British observers were killed. He had stolen a sailing boat and piloted it back to Bandr-I-shar on the Persian shore, it had taken him two weeks staying close to land, travelling mostly at night, hunger and the cold had almost killed him, Dorothy barely recognised him when he saw her again. He had tried to find out about the fate of the 470th Rifle Division, as far as he could tell they had been thrown into a counter attack south west of Stalingrad near a town called Patomnik and the division had been destroyed. And that had seemed to be an end of it until he had received orders to travel to Mazar I Sharif in Afghanistan and there investigate the story of a man who had deserted from the Red Army and slipped over the border, a man who claimed to have killed Stalin, a man who had been a lieutenant in the 470th. He had barely recovered from the ordeal of his escape and had been hoping for a seagoing commission on a carrier. The brand-new Indefatigable was working up, Intrepid was about to return to the fleet after her reconstruction but he was going to one of the wildest and most inaccessible regions on earth. The orders came from MI6, along with his promotion, the fact that the 470th had been one of his postings in Russia had selected him for the job. 'You might even have met him.' as the briefing officer said. He also said that the man he was going to see might be completely insane, or simply telling a story in the hope of notoriety, asylum or both. What had happened to Stalin was one of the mysteries of the war, it was certain that he was dead, but how he had died was not known for certain. Leighton, couldn't have cared less about Stalin, but the faces of the boys who made up the 470th rifle division would remain with him always. The journey had taken weeks, a flight to Istanbul, another to Karachi, the train to Lahore, then another train to Peshawar and from there the tiny train of the Khyber Railway as it puffed labouriously up the switchbacks to Landi Kotal below the pass where he met the two men who would guide him through the Hindu Kush on horseback to Kabul. They spoke some English and had a suit of local clothes for him to wear. He had allowed his beard to grow and almost looked the part. The men were Pashtuns, smiling and affable, he had been assured that they would guarantee his safety for two reasons, firstly there were the laws of Moslem hospitality, secondly they had been handsomely paid. Still, on the fourth day of the journey they had unnerved him, when they had come to the village of Gandamak they had delightedly shown him the hill where the 44th Regiment of foot had made its last stand 101 years previously. Laughing and slapping his back they had said "Many British killed here!" but he had kept his face impassive and waited until the joke wore thin even on them. Two weeks later he had finally reached Mazar I Sharif and the tiny house that served as the British Consulate. The Consul - Carstairs - was pathetically glad to meet another Briton, he begged Leighton for news of home and he answered the questions as best he could until finally the questions came to end and Leighton asked to be taken to the man he had come so far to see. * Leighton sits down again, he looks at the man carefully; "How were you able to get so close to Stalin?" The man sneers as if responding to a foolish question; "After Patomnick I was posted to his bodyguard." "By whom?" "Beria, who else." "Why did you kill him?" The man smiles, takes another drink from the glass. Leighton searches the lines of the tired, cynical, prematurely aged face in front of him. He cannot reconcile its expression with the faces he remembers. The man gets up, opens the window, outside the street is crowded, the sound of the call to prayer comes drifting across the rooftops; distant, ethereal, achingly beautiful, he remains standing. "Why do you ask me why I killed him? Everyone in this country had a reason to kill him, I just got to be the lucky one. What you are trying to ask me is who put me up to it, well who do you think? Who stood to profit the most?" "Beria?" "Yes Beria, and Kaganovitch too, and Bulganin - those three, the bosses now. Beria came to me personally, he offered me money, I took it, but I would have killed Stalin if he had offered me nothing, it was Gods purpose for me - my family died because of Stalin, my wife, my son - gone because of him, our village was overrun by the Germans because we weren't ready, because he had a pact with them, because he killed all the officers who knew what they were doing. My Regiment, my friends - they died because of Stalin, they died because the only way we had to fight the Germans was to throw half trained men at them, men with no weapons, men with no hope, only rage, rage at the enemy, at what they were doing to our country. What was Stalin hoping? That eventually the Germans would just run out of bullets? What trade was he making? One Russian soldier for every Nazi bullet? My country came apart because of him - but it isn't over, they will go on fighting, the Germans will have to kill every Russian, every last one - and perhaps they will, but that is the only way they will win, the only way." He pauses, Leighton says, "Why did you desert?" the man smiles. "To make it harder for Beria to kill me - they don't want the world to know that they bumped off the boss, I've been on the run for seven months - seven months - but they will kill me, sooner or later…" He looks straight into Leighton's face; "And what of England? Will you fight? Will you fight the Germans? All we hear is rumours - they say you have a new government now, but there are always new governments and they always lie - will you fight? Will you fight alongside Russia or not?" Leighton pauses: "I don't know." there is silence for a moment, they hear the hubbub of voices from outside and the twittering of birds. "I think you will… yes, I think you will." He is looking straight at Leighton as he lifts the glass of tea to his lips but before it reaches them the side of his head explodes and a wet red splash of blood spatters across the wall next to it. The report of the shot reaches them a moment after and Carstairs cries out, the glass slips from the dead man's fingers to shatter on the floor as his knees buckle and his body collapses sideways onto the table, a dark pool of blood spreading across its surface. The room is suddenly filled with shouts and cries as the men in the teahouse rush the exits, overturning the cots and tables, their glasses smash on the floor. Leighton throws himself to the ground and draws his revolver, he rolls to the window and looks out into the street, but whoever fired the shot has melted into the crowd. Carstairs is on his knees, words escape his mouth in panting jerky breaths. "Oh my God… oh my god… they found him… he's dead…" Leighton replaces the gun, his hands are shaking. A woman is screaming somewhere nearby, the owner of the teahouse is trying to speak with them, shouting, gesticulating - terrified. Leighton does not understand what he is saying, Carstairs responds with monosyllabic answers as the sound of the call to prayer dies away in the distance.
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JNiemczyk |
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Posts: 6550 (29-Jun-2008 20:20:53) |
Very nice, an aspect of Flemming to it IMVHO.
In October 1949 Commander Eugene Tatom still felt confident enough to assert that it would be possible to stand on the runway at Washington National Airport 'with no more than the clothes you have on now, and have an atom bomb explode at the other end of the runway without serious injury to you'.
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Nick Sumner |
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Posts: 600 (30-Jun-2008 17:45:20) |
Thanks Jan, I'm sorry to say its a while since I've read any Ian Flemming but I'm a huge fan of his brother Peter's work, 'Bayonets to
Lhasa' and 'the Seige at Peking' are well written and accesible histories while his 'Operation Sealion' has some fascinating info on plans
for the British Resistance. Even his travel writing is good, I'd reccomend 'News From Tartary'.
On a related note have you by chance read 'The Man Who Saved Britain'?
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JNiemczyk |
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Posts: 6556 (30-Jun-2008 20:26:55) |
You know I haven't (to my shame) I do have the book by Richard Cox of the same title. I'll look out for The Man Who Saved Britain, it sounds an
intriguing title, though I can think of several people who could take that title.
EDIT: just checked on Amazon and it gets an average of three stars; some top reviews and some that say it is terrible and suggest that the author was in some way anti-British. The only way to make this chapter more Flemmingesque would be to have one of the characters tortured by having him hit in the knackers with something unpleasant.
In October 1949 Commander Eugene Tatom still felt confident enough to assert that it would be possible to stand on the runway at Washington National Airport 'with no more than the clothes you have on now, and have an atom bomb explode at the other end of the runway without serious injury to you'.
Last Edited By: JNiemczyk
30-Jun-2008 20:32:06.
Edited 2 times.
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NoOneFamous |
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Posts: 1314 (30-Jun-2008 23:24:19) |
Really good, keep up the excellent work.
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Nick Sumner |
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Posts: 602 (30-Jun-2008 23:41:50) |
Flemming's Operation Sealion isn't as good as Cox's but it does go into some interesting detail Cox doesn't include.
I haven't read 'The Man Who saved Britain' either but the premise is fascinating.
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Nick Sumner |
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Posts: 603 (30-Jun-2008 23:43:14) |
NoOneFamous wrote: Thank you Sir!
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JNiemczyk |
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Posts: 6559 ( 1-Jul-2008 20:11:13) |
Nick Sumner wrote: I think I might order both from the library rather than buy them. If they are good I might invest some of my hard earned pennies.
In October 1949 Commander Eugene Tatom still felt confident enough to assert that it would be possible to stand on the runway at Washington National Airport 'with no more than the clothes you have on now, and have an atom bomb explode at the other end of the runway without serious injury to you'.
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