Stray bullets smashed glass and punched into the wall ahead of him. At first, he thought his presence had been detected. He wanted to shout apologies, to beg, to swear that he had not meant any of it. But no other bullets followed the initial burst.
He climbed a motionless escalator with no clear aim. He absently considered seeking out a place to hide, even though he knew they would find him. He wished he could find the strength to die a hero’s death, to at least avoid shaming himself. He knew he had fought well. But his actions of the evening and night before seemed to have been the work of a different person. He could neither understand nor master his sudden inability. He kept thinking back to the tangled bodies in the town-hall basement, picturing his own corpse among them. He could not steel himself to return to the fighting.
He wandered through displays of women’s clothing. They were so rich. It did not seem fair to him. He had worked so hard all of his short life, and he had been an honest man to the extent of his capability. He had believed in the ultimate goodness of his fellow man. Now he would die in a burning town in Germany, and he would not see his son again.
As he meandered through the men’s clothing department it occurred to him that he could dress as a German, and that he might just be able to conceal his identity until Soviet forces finally arrived on the scene. He set down his assault rifle and stripped off his combat harness. Pulling at his paratrooper’s tunic, he began to hurry himself into clumsiness, almost into panic, tearing at the unwilling garment. He tried to identify a shirt in the correct size, but it was all too confusing. He tore open packages until he had freed a shirt that looked right. He grabbed a tie. Without bothering to find a mirror, he hurried into the shirt and pulled the tie into a knot. Then, in shirt and tie and undershorts, he rooted through the racks of men’s suits, settling for a gray jacket and trousers that had a lovely, expensive feel. The trousers were too loose, but he cinched them in snugly with a belt. He drew on the jacket.
Somewhere, there had to be shoes. He could not see any shoes, and he began to shake with nerves. He tore down the aisles in disbelief. There must be shoes, fine Western shoes.
In his rampage, he caught an unexpected glimpse of himself in a mirror. He stopped. And he began to laugh uncontrollably. He stared at himself through wet eyes.
His face was filthy, blackened by the residue of battle, and a clotted cut stood out above one eye. The fine jacket hung limply, ridiculously, and the trouser cuffs dragged along the floor. He looked like a child masquerading in his father’s suit. His dirty hands had fatally soiled the shirt.
He collapsed onto the floor in his laughter, sitting down hard. The noise he made broke into sobs. He cried into the fine gray cloth of the jacket sleeves. He was a fool. He even looked like a fool. He could never pass himself off as a German. He was ridiculous, and a coward, as well. Levin the fool. He doubted that he could even pass himself off as a human being anymore.
He crawled back toward his abandoned uniform, watched by the dead eyes of the massacred prisoners. He slapped his assault rifle out of the way and buried his face in the damp, stinking material of his tunic. He rocked onto his side and drew his knees up to his chest. Then he got a last desperate, fragile hold on himself.
Levin sat up. He pulled the camouflage uniform back on, fighting childishly against the unwillingness of the legs and sleeves. Then he reached for his holster. He thought of the men murdered in the basement room. He sensed them back in the shadows, behind the piles of sweaters and the absurd variety of socks. A sound like ocean waves drowned the noise of battle. He thought helplessly of his son and his faithless wife. Then he became angry at it all, hating for the first time in his life, hating indiscriminately.
He dropped his shoulders back against a wooden display rack and cocked his pistol. He closed his eyes. The taste of the metal was foul on his tongue. It was a relief to pull the trigger.
Nineteen
The radio reports from his forward element had not begun to prepare Bezarin for the scene in the valley below him. He had painfully worked what was left of his battalion — now designated as a forward detachment — through the confusing network of roads southwest of Hildesheim. There had been fighting down in the small city, where another forward element on a converging axis had been engaged, and funnels of black smoke rose high into the blue sky. Bezarin labored to keep clear of the action in Hildesheim, following the path blazed by Dagliev and his reconnaissance and security element. The mission was to reach the Weser at Bad Oeynhausen — not to get bogged down in local actions unless it proved absolutely unavoidable.
Dagliev had reported back to Bezarin about the backed-up traffic along the east-west artery of Highway 1, which was the main line of communication Bezarin hoped to exploit. The company commander became emotional over the radio, searching for adjectives, describing the scene up ahead in apocalyptic terms. But Bezarin had only his mission in mind. He ordered Dagliev to stop acting like a nervous little virgin and get moving.
As Bezarin’s tank broke over the ridge the view forced him to halt his march column. Dagliev had not been succumbing to emotionalism. Stretching across the landscape, civilian vehicles packed the vital highway, all struggling to move west. There was so little vehicular motion in the jammed-up lanes that, at first glance, the column appeared to be at a complete standstill. But once the eye began to seek out details, slow nudging movements became apparent, really more nervousness than actual progress. Along what had once been an eastbound lane, a column of military supply vehicles smoldered where they had been caught in the open by Soviet air power. Here and there, clusters of wrecked or burned civilian automobiles and small trucks further thickened the consistency of the traffic flow. Some vehicles had evidently been abandoned by panic-stricken occupants, and on both sides of the road, a straggling line of civilians with suitcases, packs, and bundles trudged along. Bezarin judged that this was the last wave fleeing southwest from the major urban center of Hannover and its satellite towns, trying to get across the Weser to an imagined safety less than fifty kilometers away. It was a pathetic scene, but Bezarin forcibly reined in his sympathies. The enemy would have put the Russian people in the same condition, if not in a worse one, had they been allowed to strike first. He doubted that a West German or an American tank battalion commander would have wasted as much thought on the situation as he had already squandered. He pictured his NATO counterparts as fascist-leaning mercenaries, fighting for money, unbothered by human cares.
Bezarin gave the order to move out, deploying cautiously into combat formation to facilitate a safe crossing of the high fields that tapered down to the highway. He still had no heavy air-defense protection, and he worried about getting caught in the open. He ordered the self-propelled howitzer battery to remain on the ridge, covering the movement of the tanks and infantry combat vehicles. His spirits had fallen off sharply. He had imagined that, once in the enemy’s rear, the roads would be clear. Now he had to work around this exodus. He could not see how he would be able to make adequate time.
But remaining static would not solve anything. Bezarin figured that, at a minimum, he could stay close to the refugee column, exploiting them as passive air defense. The enemy would have to strike his own people to hit Bezarin’s tanks. Bezarin was far from certain that the NATO officers would show any compunction about such an action, but it offered a better chance than driving openly through fields all day long. Bezarin wondered if the West Germans had perhaps even planned this, using their own people as a shield to block the progress of the Soviet Army on the roads. Well, he would make the most of this situation, too.