Triumph (1993) Page 12

  "But there is Patton ..."

  "He is being diverted to the south, to find the redoubt that the Americans believe we have prepared in the Bavarian mountains."

  Goering did wince this time. He had promised his Führer an impregnable fortress in those wooded mountains. Not much more than a few dugouts had actually been built.

  "In the east," Hitler went on, his eyes glowing brighter, "we face a situation similar to Tannenberg, in the First War. Two Russian armies invading the Fatherland, led by generals who hate each other. Just as Hindenburg did then, I will drive a wedge between the two Russian armies and then defeat each one in turn!"

  As mildly as he could, Goering asked, "Do you have the resources to accomplish this, my Führer?"

  "Reinforcements are streaming toward Berlin! That is why we remain on the defensive in the west. I am stripping the units there of every man they can spare."

  "But wouldn't it be better if we got the Americans and British to agree to a truce on the western front? Then we could—"

  "They will not agree to a truce!" Hitler snapped. "I know this. They will insist on unconditional surrender. They will not be moved from their alliance with the Russians. They are too stupid and too stubborn to see that it is the Russians who threaten civilization. Churchill and that Jew Roosevelt are in league with the communists! Can't you see that?"

  Goering could see that his Führer's mind was made up, and that arguing would be pointless. But he sat there for another two hours as Hitler worked himself into a spluttering, storming rage, railing against the archfiend Churchill and the cripple Roosevelt who was secretly a Jew.

  Finally the furor died away and Hitler's face went from angry red to the dead-gray color that this underground life had caused. Goering recognized anew how his Führer had been living out of the sun for years now; it was not merely this recent descent into the bunker that had given him this prison pallor. For years Hitler had spent his days and nights in conference chambers and map rooms, behind thick concrete walls or deep underground in his various headquarters.

  "You may go, Goering," the Führer was saying. "I know you want to be in your beloved Carinhall."

  Goering blinked. The Russians had overrun his mansion north of the city more than a week ago. He had personally supervised the dynamiting of the house and all the other buildings, even his first wife's mausoleum.

  As he got up from the chair, Goering said, "Come with me, Führer. To Bavaria. You can conduct the battle from there."

  Slowly, painfully. Hitler struggled to his feet. "No, I will remain here in Berlin. We will win, Goering! You'll see. We'll drive the Russians back to their steppes."

  "We could be better assured of that if we could withdraw the forces facing the Americans and British," Goering suggested one more time.

  Hitler shook his head wearily. "No, they will never agree to such a truce."

  "Let me negotiate with them," Goering pleaded. "Perhaps—"

  "It's the camps," Hitler said, his voice sinking to a whisper.

  "They've found some of the camps. They will never negotiate with us now. The Jews have destroyed us."

  Goering's heart fell. Belsen. Buchenwald. Dachau.

  Auschwitz. The Führer is right. The Americans will never negotiate with us once they see the camps. Our last hope is gone.

  Chapter 20

  Frankfurt, 16 April

  First squad, third platoon, I company, 506th Parachute Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, jounced and rattled through the bombed-out remains of Frankfurt as part of a long convoy of trucks and jeeps.

  The sun had set, and the twilight was deepening into darkness. As long as the light lasted, Jarvick stared at the wreckage that the bombers had inflicted. As far as he could see, not a house or a building stood intact. Walls gone, roofs blown away, windows staring mute and empty. Only this one street had been cleared away by the Army Engineers' bulldozers to make an avenue leading to the front.

  What was it Hemingway had said about this kind of thing? Jarvick searched his memory. From the First World War, from A Farewell to Arms. "The sudden interior of a house." Something like that. He saw a three-story house, front wall gone, bathtub hanging perilously from the crumbling remains of the second-story flooring. Sudden interior.

  Hemingway knows how to use words.

  Jarvick would not let his buddies know of his reverence for literature. They kidded him enough about being a former newspaper reporter who was just as much in the dark about where they were going as any hillbilly recruit. Hollis thought he was too serious; called him an ant. My own fault, Jarvick thought. I started it by calling him a grasshopper.

  He thought about his wife, who had taken over his job as news editor back at the paper in Turnersville. Was she lonely? Jarvick ached for her. Despite the occasional opportunity he had been faithful to her, except for that drunken spree after the Third Army broke through the Germans and saved their asses at Bastogne. That had been a wild couple of nights; the Belgian and the French women had been more than willing and there was no force on Earth that could stop men who had faced death a scant thousand yards away.

  Was his wife being faithful? Sure she was. It's been thirty-two months since I've seen her. Jarvick knew the time down to the day: thirty-two months, three weeks, six days. Sure she's been faithful. She wouldn't screw around with another guy. She's not the type.

  He did a little multiplication in his head. Nine hundred eighty-seven days. And nights. Almost a thousand. Then a thousand and one, Hke the Arabian Nights.

  On through the night the trucks kept rolling, far beyond Frankfurt, heading east, toward the fighting. Jarvick and the others sat as numb as animals being hauled cross-country by a circus. They drowsed, heads bobbing as they slumped on chests. Snores and grunts competed with the hypnotic drone of the truck engines and the whine of tires on pavement.

  Only Jarvick remained awake. His rifle clamped between his knees, he leaned his head back until his helmet was pillowed against the truck's taut fabric top. He had parachuted into Normandy in the dark almost a year ago. He had survived D day and the breakout from the beachhead.

  Then the bloody shambles at Eindhoven last September. He had survived Bastogne and the Battle of the Bulge. Without a scratch. Half the platoon killed or wounded so badly they never came back, but he had not even been nicked. Don't let me be killed now, he prayed to no one in particular. Let me be shot clean, in the leg or shoulder or somewhere they can fix. Just let it be bad enough to get me back to the States.

  But he felt certain that he would not get through the next battle, wherever it was going to be. He knew that for sure.

  Kaluga, 17 April

  It was not much of a town, thought Grigori Gagarin, although fortunately the fighting here had been comparatively light. Most of the buildings still stood. Only a few were pockmarked by shell fragments or bullet holes.

  There was no material for new construction, of course; all available materials were going to the war effort. Still, some of the townspeople had managed to patch up their damaged homes with makeshift repairs. There was not even glass to replace shattered windows, but Grigori saw rough-made wooden shutters, burlap curtains, even scraps of tattered German uniforms where windows had once been. And the city hall, a dull gray brick building, showed splotches of lumber and stone and uneven rows of rough red bricks covering over the damage that had been done during the fighting, more than two years earlier.

  Yuri acted as if it were a holy shrine, though, tugging at his big brother's hand, practically dragging him through the streets from the railroad station toward the little stream that flowed off at the town's outskirts.

  Grigori had told the administrator of Yuri's distant school that the lad was needed at home for a family medical emergency. Which was no lie. Grigori knew he was near death; he wanted to see his baby brother one more time before he closed his eyes forever. It had taken all his skill and effort to get Yuri released from school for a week and put onto a train for Moscow. As the private secr
etary of the deceased Stalin, Grigori still had considerable powers of persuasion among the lower echelons of the state. But those powers were waning as the new commissariat gradually took control of the shocked nation. No matter, thought Grigori. I won't need the power of my former office for more than another few days.

  Yuri had surprised Grigori by insisting on a visit to Kaluga. The boy was aflame to see the place. Why not? thought Grigori. It's the last favor I'll be able to do for him.

  It's the last time I'll see him.

  Going on twelve years old, Yuri completely failed to see how sick his brother was. The unconscious indifference of youth. He was so excited at being released from school for a week and the prospect of going to Kaluga that he paid no attention at all to Grigori's condition.

  Grigori slept most of the time on the four-hour train ride to Kaluga. He was in constant pain, all his joints ached, and he had difficulty keeping food down. His gums were bloody, as were his bowel movements. His hair was coming out in patches. He was losing weight and his skin had an unhealthy sheen. He felt cold, chilled to the bone, despite the sunny springtime warmth of the day. And despite his chill, he sweated from every pore of his body.

  But once the train finally rumbled into Kaluga station, Yuri grabbed his brother's hand and almost ran out to the stream and the little house that he revered as a shrine.

  The home of Konstantin Ivanovich Tsiolkovsky.

  "I never heard of him," said Grigori as he wearily followed his brother down the dirt path that led to the wood frame house.

  "He was a great man!" Yuri exclaimed, his voice high with excitement. "A revolutionary thinker. A pioneer."

  Revolutionary? Pioneer? Grigori leaned against the sagging fence that fronted the house. It was nothing more than a cottage, really. There couldn't be more than two or three rooms inside.

  "We read about him in school. My instructor told me that one day Tsiolkovsky will be famous all around the world."

  "Famous? For what?"

  "Space flight!" said Yuri. "Flying to the Moon and Mars. Even to the stars!"

  Grigori would have laughed if he had not been in such pain.

  Yuri ignored his brother's seeming lack of enthusiasm; he had enough for the two of them. The cottage was kept by an elderly woman who seemed happy to have visitors. She showed the two Gagarin brothers through Tsiolkovsky's study, where Yuri marveled over shabby old notebooks filled with strange drawings of machines that looked like nothing Grigori had ever seen.

  "Rockets," explained Yuri, his voice low, subdued, as if he were in a cathedral. Grigori had heard that hushed tone in many men, in the presence of Stalin.

  The woman saw that Grigori was near collapse and brought him into the kitchen. It was little more than a shed tacked onto the rear of the cottage. She sat Grigori at the wooden table and gave him a glass of tea. Yuri was still in the study, poring over Tsiolkovsky's open notebooks, hands locked behind his back to ensure his promise not to touch anything.

  "He is your brother?" the elderly woman asked. Her hair was gray, her thickset body solid and strong, her face seamed with a lifetime of cares and fears. Yet she survives.

  Like Mother Russia, Grigori thought. She survives despite everything the world throws at her.

  "Yes," he answered. "My only living relative."

  "Does he know how sick you are?"

  "I have not told him."

  "You should, you know. You shouldn't let it come as a shock to him."

  "I intended to. He wanted so to visit this place, though, that I didn't have the heart to tell him before we got here."

  "He is a bright lad. He will go far. Not many realize what an important man my uncle was."

  "He was your uncle?" The woman faded out of focus slightly and then back in. Grigori felt faint.

  She nodded. "He was a teacher of mathematics. But he dreamed great dreams."

  "Apparently Yuri shares those dreams," Grigori managed to say.

  "That is good."

  He could hardly speak, he felt so exhausted. The woman made a bowl of hot borscht for him, with a steaming potato in it.

  "For strength," she said.

  Grigori thanked her weakly and spooned up a little of it.

  After a while he realized that the sun was setting. Feeling somewhat stronger, he struggled to his feet and pulled a few crumpled ruble notes from his pocket.

  "It is not allowed, comrade," said the woman firmly.

  "To repay you for the borscht and tea."

  She hesitated a moment, then took one bill from his hand. "You are a kind man."

  "Thank you."

  Grigori tottered back into the darkening study and pulled a reluctant Yuri away from the wooden models of airplanes and space ships that he was admiring, hands still clasped tightly behind his back.

  It took all Grigori's remaining strength to walk slowly through the twilight back to the railroad station. They waited in silence for the train back to Moscow, Grigori simply trying to keep his heart pumping, Yuri lost in dreams about adventures in space.

  At last the train chuffed in and they boarded it. A vendor plied through the car's aisle, offering snacks and drinks.

  Grigori was too exhausted to eat, but Yuri feasted on thick slabs of dark bread and hot tea.

  As the train hurtled through the night, wheels clicking on the tracks, Grigori watched his little brother. He was a handsome lad, with winning ways. And intelligent, too, you could see that in his clear blue eyes.

  "Do you really think," he asked, "that people will fly to the Moon some day?"

  Yuri practically bounced up and down on their seat, he nodded so enthusiastically. "Yes! Of course! I want to be one of them."

  "You do?"

  "Yes. To fly into space. To go to the Moon. Or maybe to Mars. That's what I want to do when I grow up."

  Grigori smiled faintly. "I thought you wanted to be an aviator and shoot down the enemies of the State."

  "Oh, the war's almost over, Grisha. And flying into space will be much more fun than shooting at people."

  "That's right," Grigori said, feeling an immense relief flow into his soul. "That's true."

  "I'll have to learn to fly airplanes first, I suppose," Yuri went on. "But then I'll learn to fly rockets. You'll see!"

  Shaking his had gently, Grigori said, "No, little Yuri, I'm afraid I won't live to see you fly a rocket."

  Yuri's eyes went wide. "What do you mean?"

  "I am dying, Yuri. I have a few days more, at most."

  "Dying?" Yuri stared at his brother, seeing him truly for the first time. "Dying?" he repeated, in a whisper.

  Grigori nodded. "I have made all the necessary arrangements for you. You will receive my pension. You are already registered in Moscow University. Everything is set—"

  "But you can't die!" Yuri said desperately. "You're my brother! I love you!"

  With his remaining strength Grigori pulled Yuri to him and held his head against his breast. "I love you, too, little Yuri. More than life itself, I love you. But I must die. I must. It will be hard for you, I know, with no one to look after you. But you are strong and brave and intelligent. You will be successful in life in anything you want to do. The world will be a better place for you, Yuri. The war will be over. A new world can be built. You can even fly into space if you truly want to. I did it all for you, Yuri. I give you this new world as my final gift ..."

  The breath left his body. Grigori Gagarin died there in the railroad car with his arms clasped around his sobbing brother, a final smile of peace on his bloodless lips.

  Chapter 21

  Moscow, 18 April

  Molotov's office was thick with smoke. It was a spacious comer room in the Presidium building, with a pretty view of St. Basil's ornate colorful spires and the Moscow River. But both the foreign minister and his visitor were chain smokers; the office windows were shut against the cold blustering wind outside, and the air inside the office was a murky gray haze.

  Which did not bother Viachislav M.
Molotov in the slightest; nor his visitor, Harry Hopkins. They sat in comfortable leather armchairs by one of the closed windows, heads bent together in earnest discussion.

  Molotov was a tiny man, with small delicate hands and a little black moustache that made Hopkins want to laugh.

  But the Russian's face was usually set in a dour scowl of disapproval. It was a roundish face, pinched in the middle by a pince-nez. His dark hair was receding, but not a touch of gray was evident.

  Hopkins was not much bigger than the foreign minister.

  He wore a gray suit, wrinkled from his long trip. His face had an ash-gray pallor to it. He had been an aide and confident to Franklin Roosevelt since before his presidency, when FDR had been governor of New York. Hopkins had held a variety of positions in Albany and Washington; their titles never worried him, for he was always interested in actual power rather than its trappings. As long as he was close enough to guide his chief, he was satisfied.

  ". . . so you see," Molotov was saying, "that despite Stalin's unexpected death, we will continue to prosecute the war against the Nazis. The Soviet Union will not change its goals; our armies in the field will keep on bearing the brunt of the battle."

  Hopkins, caught in the act of lighting a fresh cigarette on the stub his last one, coughed a bit and replied, "Are you implying that our troops aren't fighting as hard?"

  Molotov's iron expression did not change in the slightest.

  "I am merely reflecting on the fact that Hitler has always put his best forces against us. Your troops have had a comparatively easy time of it."

  Hopkins puffed his new cigarette into a fierce glow, thinking. He's not going to give you a better opportunity than this.

  "All right," he said, making himself smile, "I will tell the President that we should move faster and harder against the Germans. Instead of stopping at the Elbe, we'll push on as hard as we can to give your armies as much help as possible."