Armageddon_ A Novel of Berlin - Leon Uris [115]
A fine boy, young Feodor, Igor thought ... my most promising officer. They had been through it all together, Feodor and the colonel. They were more like brothers than senior and junior officers.
The voice of Ivan Orlov joined in the chorus. Ivan sings well, Igor thought, but that is about all. He hangs too closely on the words of the commissars and the edicts. He spies on us.
Igor stretched, yawned, patted his flat hard stomach, and slipped into his tunic without buttoning it and went into the living room. The singers were warmly comfortable after the first flushes of victory and the afterglow of Vodka. They sat about in the deep comfort of the great house with their boots off and their tunics open.
“Sit still, sit still,” Igor said as he entered.
Feodor tossed a mandolin to the colonel; he perched his foot on a stool, lit a cigarette, and caught up in the chorus:
Volga, Volga you’re my mother,
Volga, you’re a Russian stream ...
Captain Boris Chernov came in from the outside just as the song came to its sorrowful end telling of a young princess being thrown into the waters as a sacrifice.
“You’re late,” Igor admonished. “I’ve been holding up the entire report on your account.”
“Forgive me, Comrade Colonel,” Boris said, slyly holding up a woman’s delicate watch. “I got delayed by a little German dumpling.”
Ivan Orlov laughed. Igor set his instrument down, snatched the papers out of Boris’ case, and returned to his bedroom slamming the door behind him.
“What bothers the colonel?” Boris asked.
“He thinks our officers shouldn’t screw the German women,” Feodor snapped, coming to the colonel’s defense.
“Nonsense,” Ivan Orlov said.
“Let me tell you that many officers are condemning the whole thing and want to put a stop to it.”
“I was at headquarters”—Boris laughed—“an old woman was complaining she was raped eighty-four times. The doctor insisted she was enjoying it or she wouldn’t have bothered to count.”
Ivan laughed; Feodor got more angry.
“Come now, Feodor,” Boris said. “Do you think the Germans deserve better?”
“The hell with both of you,” Feodor answered. “Besides, I don’t think much of your taste. As for me, I wouldn’t stick mine between a German woman’s legs.”
Igor Karlovy was standing in the doorway, his fists clenched. “Carry on your goddamned discussion elsewhere. I’m trying to finish my work.”
Forty-eight hours after his report was filed, Commissar Azov summoned Igor to meet with the head of the German People’s Liberation Committee.
V. V. Azov, who made a fine art of keeping himself inconspicuous, mysterious, and anonymous, had a mansion in Potsdam on the Wannsee. His house was in a forest, shades eternally drawn, grounds heavily guarded.
The usual portrait of Stalin hung over the conference table in the dark-paneled room replacing an oil of Prussian nobility. Even in the worst days of Leningrad, Igor thought, there was never a shortage of Stalin’s portraits. V. V. Azov looked expressionless and bored as he took his place at the table.
Two members of the German People’s Liberation Committee sat opposite him. Igor personally disliked most of the Germans on the committee. It was true that all of them were tested Communists who had fled Hitler, yet he felt there was too much German left in their souls.
Rudi Wöhlman’s face reminded Igor of the little field rats that used to attack the grain stores on the family farm ... thin face, thin beard, glinting front teeth. He had brought with him his young aide, Heinrich Hirsch.
“To get directly to the point,” Azov said, “I find your report unsatisfactory.”
Igor had dealt with party people successfully all during the siege and the great offenses out of Russia, across Poland, East Prussia, and Germany. He wished they would let him stick to Air Force problems, but his own talent trapped him; he knew the language. “If the Comrade Commissar would get to specifics I am certain